Business KISS

If you’re in the business world, you’ve probably heard of the acronym KISS. What does it stand for? Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Too many times, business owners decide to write their own company materials, whether it is their main website copy, their promotional materials or even their business plan. Often, they can be “too close” to the business, as they have been a part of it since its inception. The mistake that can be made is that they say too much in their message and they lose potential business because of it.

As I posted in the previous blog, you want to make sure that you can fit your company message on the back of a business card. If you can’t, it’s too complicated to explain to your target market in an advertisement. Customers like uncomplicated products with a simple value proposition.

When you are looking at another company’s information, it’s easy to see when you are being shown too much information. You can feel it. You glance at the page and feel overwhelmed. You can’t grasp the general message. As a result you put down the written material, close the browser window or tune out or mute if you’re watching a commercial.

The same can be said for your company brochure or packaging. I know you want to get your message across, but the key is to pique peoples’ interest, not tell your entire company story.

If you have ever purchased anything from Apple, I’m sure you felt the difference in the experience. When you opened your quality packaging with minimal copy on it. It felt sleek; it felt special. Rather than sporting a bunch of bright stickers demanding your attention, with a lot of hype, all of their product packaging is just simple and streamlined. (Now I’m sure you windows users are immediately turned off by what I just said – but until you’ve had that experience, please give me the benefit of doubt) Less is more.

When it comes to your own business, it can sometimes be easy to forget that you may be saying too much. It’s understandable. This is your baby and you’ve got a lot to say about it. You’ve invested long hours and good money in this thing and you want to make sure everybody knows how great it is!

I myself am guilty of the very thing I’m preaching about. I’ve got a lot to say! I’ve got things I want to show people and I have a tendency to want to include everything. I have to constantly check myself to try and make sure that I’m not going overboard.

In the next post I’ll look for some examples of “too busy” to show you.

Joanne

The Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) Explained

Every year my family publishes a “Bad News Letter”. Ever experience the annoying high achieving family newsletter that comes in the mail from a distant relative? That’s not the case when it comes to my family. We love to highlight and laugh at the bad things that happened throughout the year. You won’t find any braggarts in that gem. I've been busy after work hours getting it together to pass out to relatives on Christmas Eve.

On to the subject…

Last week I was conversing with a client over the phone and she mentioned that she wanted her new website to be on the top of the SERP’s page. When I started to explain to her the logistics of being listed at the top for her search terms she was fascinated. She is a very intelligent woman with several websites already, and it got me to thinking that I should probably do a post for people who don’t quite understand it all.

So, with that in mind – let me just explain (gently) how it all works:

Whenever you go to a search engine such as Google and you type in a keyword or phrase (the words you are using to search for something), after you hit “Search”, the items that come up are broken down as follows:

Take a look at the image below with the results in red:

Those are the top paid results. To get in that position, you have to be engaged in a PPC (Pay Per Click) or (Adwords) campaign with Google and you have to be the top bidder for the keyword phrase that was searched on. In this case the phrase was “complete business cards”.

In the next image, look at the results in red:

These are also paid or “sponsored” results from a PPC campaign. The results on the side are not the top dollar advertising. Again, the person in charge of the campaign has a choice on what keywords to bid on, how much they want to spend per word or phrase and what position they want to be in.

In the next image, look at the results in red:

These are the natural search results. Meaning, the results that are showing up here are based on SEO (search engine optimization) and not a paid advertising campaign. This clearly demonstrates how important search engine optimization can be to your marketing budget.

I can get into more about PPC campaigns and how they work in another post. Next time we can have a look at Yahoo or MSN. I hope this was helpful to you.

Joanne

Not really a "Small Business Tip"...

But then again...

If you live in Arizona and you are in need of a corporate identity package, this could be a great business tip!

A small shameless self promoting blog post:

On November 7th, we opened our Arizona office. We had several existing customers in the region and we noticed that a growing number of customer inquiries were coming from the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Our main headquarters will remain in Capitola, CA.

You can read the full press release if you're interested.

Tomorrow I'll give you some help with Website Analytics while you start defrosting your turkeys.


Joanne