Underrated Series – Part 3

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Welcome to the latest edition of our new weekly blog series, The Underrated Series. Each week, we will highlight an important, often underrated component of marketing success.

Last week’s underrated topic was easy to use forms.

What are we underrating this week? Product design.

I don’t claim to be a design expert. Nor am I able to measure the exact business impact of strong product design vs. weak.

But what I do know – and what the point of this post is – is that product design must be, at least partially, a marketing function.

Steve Jobs knew this. The user interface teams behind some of today’s most popular apps know this.

The way something looks matters. It impacts how you are perceived by consumers. It impacts how users interact with your product. It can mean the difference between “oh my god, this is amazing”, and “oh okay, I get it”.

Take advantage of every chance to wow your customers. And product design, the way it looks and feels, is a big opportunity to do just that. So stop ignoring it.

Have something you think deserves more attention? Send us your suggestions for the Underrated Series using the comments below or submit them here.

Underrated Series – Part 2

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Welcome to the latest edition of our new weekly blog series, The Underrated Series. Each week, we will highlight an important, often underrated component of marketing success.

Last week’s underrated topic was someone that answers the phone.

What are we underrating this week? Easy to use forms.

No doubt your website has forms on it. Forms you want your visitors to fill out.

Most sites have them. They are your contact forms, your lead generation forms, your checkout forms, etc. They are there for a reason. You know what that reason is, I don’t need to tell you.

But the point is this, you want people to fill them out. So why would you not spend time making them easy to use?

Too many companies leave too many forms on their site that are a pain in the ass to fill out. Either they don’t work well on mobile phones, or they are hard to read, or they take forever to load, or they’re asking for far too much information.

The simplest tip I can give you is to review all the forms on your website from the eyes of your visitors. Test them out constantly, on all devices, and make sure they are easy to use. Don’t ignore the little mistakes that give you pause. Fix them.

The easier your forms are to fill out, the more people will. It’s that simple.

Have something you think deserves more attention? Send us your suggestions for the Underrated Series using the comments below or submit them here.

Q & A: Success in the Digital Age

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Success in the digital age relies on many things. You have to think different and act differently than in age’s past. Consumers have all the power, and it’s up to companies to respond and react to what consumers want.

You need to be Q & A. Quick and Agile.

I know, I know, not what you were expecting when you saw the title of this post. But it’s better than a question and answer, it’s just a perfect answer.

Quickness and agility are the two biggest factors to success for your company…in all areas.

Your marketing needs to be quick to change and update based on new trends or product releases. Your social media team needs to be quick to respond to public comments or questions. Your customer service team needs to have the quickness to answer inquiries on time and the agility to come up with creative solutions for customers who need them.

Slow companies are struggling in today’s business climate. Whether they’re slow to react to a crisis, slow to change course after a misstep, slow to answer questions from potential customers, or slow to offer discounts and specials when their competitors are already doing so.

Small companies benefit from a natural ability to be quick and agile. It’s time that larger companies follow suit.

Q & A, it’s your new mantra.

Why Aren’t You ____?

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There is not always an answer. And not having an answer is not the end of the world.

The other day, I was asked by someone why my company did not ask for potential customers to signup via Facebook in addition to on our website. For the life of me, I could not think of an answer.

It’s not that I had never had that idea before. It’s not that I thought it was a bad idea (I actually thought it was a great idea).

I realized that not having an answer is not the worst thing. It was an experience that I can now look back on and say, that was the reason I ultimately took the plunge and put the signup form on Facebook. I talked with our developer, figured out how to customize a tab on our Facebook page, and helped him create a form that fed straight to our website.

Be open to new thoughts, and new ideas. Don’t shoot down a question just because you don’t have an answer for it. Sometimes it takes an inquisitive outside perspective to point out something that may be completely obvious to everyone but you.