Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Quick Update: Performance Improvements
This week I have been able to make several changes to the Rails and JavaScript code to gain some significant speed improvements when serving up promotions. This has resulted in eliminating some delays that were needed to ensure IE and Safari displayed the HTML code without returning JavaScript errors. I'm currently testing these changes on the Marketing for Mavens web site.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Web Marketing: Stop Spamming the Masses and Start Building Relationships
One of the problems with web marketing is that thousands of dollars are spent to bring in new visitors but only a small percentage of this is used to retain and nurture these visitors once they come to your sites.
One reason is the difficulty in building and targeting pinpoint messages, promotions, and campaigns to web visitors. Companies tend to focus all of their effort on getting the company message out to the public. The problem is "the public" is a very broad group so the content is watered down for consumption by the masses. This is not what most of your visitors are interested in.
Another reason is how difficult it can be to manage, maintain, and update content for individual web visitors. The people in the company who would best manage this content don't have the tools and resources to access the web site and track how well campaigns and promotions are doing. Instead, they must fill out a web request form to get added to the queue. On the other hand, the web team is busy creating new pages for a product launches, managing Google Adwords campaigns, or analyzing web site statistics. They have tools that assist them in managing all of these tasks but they don't have a tool for efficiently managing campaigns that are targeted to individuals.
A third reason is how easy it is to setup a Google Adwords campaign, show how many click-throughs your site is receiving, and stop there. You can get your ads out to the masses in just a few minutes. Then, every few weeks, you justify this spending because you can see the results in real time using the web interface or through nicely printed reports. This is great but it's only half the battle. Wouldn't it make more sense to take all of this great traffic you are getting from Google Adwords or search and continue to assist your visitors in finding what they want once they're on your site?
This is why I built Marketing for Mavens. It's a unique web application which puts the power of marketing to web visitors into the hands of those who are most capable of maintaining these campaigns. The web team can choose to keep control over the content management of the campaigns or give access to people in marketing programs or other groups within the company to handle this themselves. In addition, Marketing for Mavens tracks and tags each individual based on the pages they visit so now your company can ensure that your campaigns are matched up with right person at the right time. With Marketing for Mavens you know who your top visitors are and you can customize your messaging to them leading to quicker sales and improved visitor satisfaction.
If you are curious as to how this works please feel free to check out the demo. Marketing for Mavens is scheduled to launch a beta release in June so please sign up if you are interested in taking part.
One reason is the difficulty in building and targeting pinpoint messages, promotions, and campaigns to web visitors. Companies tend to focus all of their effort on getting the company message out to the public. The problem is "the public" is a very broad group so the content is watered down for consumption by the masses. This is not what most of your visitors are interested in.
Another reason is how difficult it can be to manage, maintain, and update content for individual web visitors. The people in the company who would best manage this content don't have the tools and resources to access the web site and track how well campaigns and promotions are doing. Instead, they must fill out a web request form to get added to the queue. On the other hand, the web team is busy creating new pages for a product launches, managing Google Adwords campaigns, or analyzing web site statistics. They have tools that assist them in managing all of these tasks but they don't have a tool for efficiently managing campaigns that are targeted to individuals.
A third reason is how easy it is to setup a Google Adwords campaign, show how many click-throughs your site is receiving, and stop there. You can get your ads out to the masses in just a few minutes. Then, every few weeks, you justify this spending because you can see the results in real time using the web interface or through nicely printed reports. This is great but it's only half the battle. Wouldn't it make more sense to take all of this great traffic you are getting from Google Adwords or search and continue to assist your visitors in finding what they want once they're on your site?
This is why I built Marketing for Mavens. It's a unique web application which puts the power of marketing to web visitors into the hands of those who are most capable of maintaining these campaigns. The web team can choose to keep control over the content management of the campaigns or give access to people in marketing programs or other groups within the company to handle this themselves. In addition, Marketing for Mavens tracks and tags each individual based on the pages they visit so now your company can ensure that your campaigns are matched up with right person at the right time. With Marketing for Mavens you know who your top visitors are and you can customize your messaging to them leading to quicker sales and improved visitor satisfaction.
If you are curious as to how this works please feel free to check out the demo. Marketing for Mavens is scheduled to launch a beta release in June so please sign up if you are interested in taking part.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Beta Coming in June
I've decided to push the beta release of Marketing for Mavens to June. The application is coming along nicely and could be ready at the end of May but I feel that taking a couple of extra weeks to add some additional features is going to be well worth the delay.
I've been using the application for the past month on some my personal sites and I'm quite impressed by how well it's working. One feature I've been testing is the ability to push the same content across multiple web sites. Using Marketing for Mavens, I can create a promotion that shows up on Blogger, MarketingforMavens.com, and almost any other site where some JavaScript code can be added to the bottom of a web page. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for content distribution using one simple tool.
As the weeks progress, I'll continue to fill you in on the latest new features and update you on the progress being made. It's very excited for me to see everything coming together and I look forward to sharing this application with you soon.
I've been using the application for the past month on some my personal sites and I'm quite impressed by how well it's working. One feature I've been testing is the ability to push the same content across multiple web sites. Using Marketing for Mavens, I can create a promotion that shows up on Blogger, MarketingforMavens.com, and almost any other site where some JavaScript code can be added to the bottom of a web page. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for content distribution using one simple tool.
As the weeks progress, I'll continue to fill you in on the latest new features and update you on the progress being made. It's very excited for me to see everything coming together and I look forward to sharing this application with you soon.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Quick Update: development finishing, design continueing, demo considering
Most of the major changes are out of the way. There are a few minor issues to wrap up over the next week and I need to focus more time on the design of the application. I've been spending a majority of the time making sure the application is solid but I don't want to neglect the usability and design.
I've also been thinking about creating another demo to follow up on the previous overview demonstration. This would be a quicker demo to show how any form on your site can be used to capture visitor information and link it a visitors history within Marketing for Mavens.
I've also been thinking about creating another demo to follow up on the previous overview demonstration. This would be a quicker demo to show how any form on your site can be used to capture visitor information and link it a visitors history within Marketing for Mavens.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Get Better Sales Leads
Business Problem: Obtaining better sales leads
Cause: You receive limited information from your web site on what a person is interested in
Audience: Sales and Marketing
Solution:
One feature built into Marketing for Mavens is the ability to track a visitors history from the first time they come to your web site. As your web visitors provide more information to you through your web forms, it is matched up with their visitor history in the Marketing for Mavens application. So, instead of only knowing that Mr. Smith downloaded a data sheet, you know that Mr. Smith visited product page 'x', read article 'z', and came to your site 3 times before he downloaded the data sheet. Now, which set of information would be more valuable to your sales team? If you're in Marketing, which set of information would help you determine this persons level of interest in your product or service so you can further "nurture" this lead?
If you're interested in learning more, please feel free to view our new video demo or sign up to be part of our upcoming beta program.
Cause: You receive limited information from your web site on what a person is interested in
Audience: Sales and Marketing
Solution:
One feature built into Marketing for Mavens is the ability to track a visitors history from the first time they come to your web site. As your web visitors provide more information to you through your web forms, it is matched up with their visitor history in the Marketing for Mavens application. So, instead of only knowing that Mr. Smith downloaded a data sheet, you know that Mr. Smith visited product page 'x', read article 'z', and came to your site 3 times before he downloaded the data sheet. Now, which set of information would be more valuable to your sales team? If you're in Marketing, which set of information would help you determine this persons level of interest in your product or service so you can further "nurture" this lead?
If you're interested in learning more, please feel free to view our new video demo or sign up to be part of our upcoming beta program.
Simplified Web Content Posting for Marketing Team
Business Problem: Updating and tracking promotions on corporate web site
Cause: Need for HTML experts to publish and manage corporate site promotions
Audience: Marketing Programs Team
Solution:
This is an issue I've faced many times as a web developer. Often, the marketing programs team needs to post updated promotions to the home page for events, webcasts, product news, etc. These updates are generally simple but would be better managed by the team running the programs. In this instance, a web developer isn't adding any value, and could potentially delay the roll-out of an important campaign.
This is one of the reasons why I've been developing Marketing for Mavens. My goal is to simplify this process and put the power into the hands of those who need to own and maintain the content. The application should be simple enough that people in programs marketing can update and test their web promotions and publish them live. Reporting is done in real time to see how well a promotion is running. If necessary, quick changes can be made and rolled out based on site analysis.
In this scenario, Marketing for Mavens, works as a micro content management system. It's designed to sit between your content management system and web analytics system to quickly deploy web promotions and respond to your web feedback in real time. It's a low cost way to solve a frustrating business problem.
If you're interested in learning more, please feel free to view our new video demo or sign up to be part of our upcoming beta program.
Cause: Need for HTML experts to publish and manage corporate site promotions
Audience: Marketing Programs Team
Solution:
This is an issue I've faced many times as a web developer. Often, the marketing programs team needs to post updated promotions to the home page for events, webcasts, product news, etc. These updates are generally simple but would be better managed by the team running the programs. In this instance, a web developer isn't adding any value, and could potentially delay the roll-out of an important campaign.
This is one of the reasons why I've been developing Marketing for Mavens. My goal is to simplify this process and put the power into the hands of those who need to own and maintain the content. The application should be simple enough that people in programs marketing can update and test their web promotions and publish them live. Reporting is done in real time to see how well a promotion is running. If necessary, quick changes can be made and rolled out based on site analysis.
In this scenario, Marketing for Mavens, works as a micro content management system. It's designed to sit between your content management system and web analytics system to quickly deploy web promotions and respond to your web feedback in real time. It's a low cost way to solve a frustrating business problem.
If you're interested in learning more, please feel free to view our new video demo or sign up to be part of our upcoming beta program.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Quick Update
We've had a couple of bugs that have slowed down development over the past couple of weeks but they have been resolved. We're still targeting an end of month launch of the beta. If you're interested find out more, please check out our sneak peak demo. This 10 minute demo will give you an idea of how we're using our web content management system to distribute custom content to visitors.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Custom Web Content Distribution: Demo Now Available
After some delay, I've posted the demo to our web site. The demo takes you through the "getting started" process showing what it takes to open an account, setup page tracking, build tags, and analyze visitors to distribute custom web content. The full demo takes about 10 minutes. If you have any questions, please post your comments here or email me at chris@marketingformavens.com.
View the demo.
View the demo.
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