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Showing posts with label Customer service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Customer service. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

3 Keys To Website Viability - Being "Reference-Friendly"

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Your website, aside from being mobile-friendly, visitor-friendly and search engine optimized must now be "reference-friendly". [Which latter term I invented, or Lingovated, because it, or its web address -- that's url, brother --, is easy to remember, easy to say and easy to spell -- which is the entire hokey pokey of what reference-friendliness is all about].

Once again, because, this is so very important, there are 3 keys to making your website (and your company or enterprise) Reference-Friendly, and they all have to do with your selected url [Uniform Resource Locator]:

1) People must be able to pronounce it - make it simple to pronounce by using plain speech, or something catchy (you may incorporate a rhyme), keeping it short, and by avoiding weird words. The test is this: Could a radio announcer readily read it and pronounce it? Or this: Could a SitePal synthesized text-to-voice announcer say it clearly if you spell it out pho-net-ic-[a]-lly?

2) People must be able to remember it - make it easier by using five syllables or less, and have them make sense in some manner. If it is an endoscopy facility (just for example), an url  like http://www.ISeeMoreButts.com is relatively easy to remember because it is brief relevant and actually describes an action. And if an action is incorporated, people tend to associate that action with a mental picture. Mental pictures are easier to remember than words, but it is easier to recall the words if the mental picture strikes you first. http://www.HolyMen.com, albeit it admittedly sexist, might have been a fine name as well.

3) People must be able to spell it - make it easy to spell, and limit the number of ways that it will likely be spelled. In fact, you might want to find the most probable misspellings and reserve those at your local domain registrar and point them back to your actual website. If you're a great plumber (I can't seem to get away from things scatological today, for which I will apologize in the end) and you're proud of your family name, which is D'Agostinacciorella, don't even think of putting it into your website address.

In fact, don't even put it in your company name. You'd be much better off creating an url along the lines of http://www.BowlBusters.com than the ego maniacal http://www.DAgostinacciorellaPlumbing.com.

Be certain that your website address is Reference-Friendly. It will make it easier to use the optimal media mix for your objectives, and it will definitely increase the ease with which you get referral business as well as the percentage of referrals which you will actually hook... and the best marketing and sales people are invariably the happiest hookers.

Douglas E. Castle, whose personal blog can be found at http://www.DouglasECastle.com.


Sponsored By:
CFI - CrowdFunding Incubator LLC at http://www.GoToCFI.com
Global Edge Technologies Technologies Group LLC at http://www.GetGlobalEdge.com
ICS - International Connection Services at http://www.ICSwebsite.com



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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Massive Marketing Tip - 1 Single Trick

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The trick is this. If you want to increase responsiveness to all of your marketing and sales campaigns, the trick is this: Humanize Yourself. Be a person in a world of automatons, faceless bots and girls at the cashier's of the local pharmacy chain who file their finger nails and talk on their mobile phones while you wait in line, juggling several differently-sized and oddly-shaped objects because you thought that you probably wouldn't need a cart. Be at least one half of a conversation with prospective or existing client.

Let your readers know there is a living, sensitive, caring, flesh-and-blood personality behind your efforts who isn't afraid to make mistakes, laugh at himself or herself, and to express joy or disappointment.

Some of it can be incorporated in your copy writing style, but the places where it counts most is at the end of your correspondence, with a self-deprecating or funny p.s. (nobody can resist reading a p.s. -- it's Human Nature), or in the form of an emoticon... a simple, childish but wonderful trick which acts to reduce your recipients' defenses and opens a gateway to let you in!

You can place emoticons at various places within your message, and they are not only Humanizing, but they serve as anchors to punctuate important points - they give your readers pause and an opportunity to stop and think about what you might be thinking.

Better still, you can use emoticons in emails, text messages, newsletter briefs, responses to customer inquiries, on service tickets, and even in those special customer service chat room (or IM) services where you can use the typewriter QWERTY keyboard on your transmitting apparatus (PC, Notebook, Razr, IPhone, Droid, tablet -- any of these things as new ones come out every week). It does not mean that you're not serious; in fact, used creatively, strategically placed emoticons can show that you really DO care, and you ARE serious.
Or not.


Here's what UserVoice had to say:















Make 84% more users happy simply by using emoticons.
It sounds stupid, right? Why should a silly little face make any difference in a support ticket? o_0
But the fact is: it does. Our research shows that support tickets featuring emoticons are more likely to get kudos from users. 

Don’t think of it as a goofy affectation - think of it as a communication tool.
Before you get frustrated and make a D:< face, swing by our blog post for more information. Once you factor in body language and user preconceptions, a little :) starts to make sense...
Enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
Evan Hamilton



-Evan Hamilton
Head of Community, UserVoice


####

I don't know this Hamilton character, but I'll bet that I could be him in a fight -- if he didn't get me smiling at my own foolishness first. The advice is great, and I would advise all my readers and colleagues at The Mad Marketing Tactics Blog to take it to heart ( <3 ) and to take it seriously :-(

Only kidding. Evan is quite right. Go with it! ;-)

You know....despite myself, I think that I'd like this fellow Evan Hamilton although we've never met.

EMOTICON TOOLS, LISTS AND SITES OF INTEREST

Please have a look at these emoticon-infested...er, ah... emoticon-rich sites:

Text-Based Emoticons
http://pc.net/emoticons/

MSN Messenger Emoticons
http://messenger.msn.com/Resource/Emoticons.aspx

Free App for iPhone And Other Apple-Based Tools To Add Emoticons To Your Mails And Texts
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/emoticons/id354870264?mt=8

The Complete List Of Downloadable Cool Smileys
http://www.cool-smileys.com/text-emoticons

Downloadable Copy And Paste Web Smileys (Code Snippets)
http://www.websmileys.com/

####

Douglas E Castle

p.s. This Halloween I'm thinking of dressing up as an adult and fooling everyone...

p.p.s. It's true: "Sometimes the simplest things are the most elusive and the most brilliant."
 -- Douglas



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