Yvonne and Jane

If you market to women, or like reading about marketing to women, or just enjoy exceptionally well-written marketing-related blog copy, check out Yvonne DiVita's Lip-Sticking blog. As a strictly b2b marketer, and a guy, I'll acknowledge that I'm as clueless on this subject as the Hahn beer guy (if you've never seen these videos, you must).

Yvonne writes about blogging, conferences, copywriting, advertising and other related topics from her own unique perspective and with her own inimitable style. A great example is "5 Things About Your Website that will send Jane Screaming in Frustration" -- although these apply equally to men.

Who's Jane?

*****

The portal for online marketing, WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

WMC Interviews: Jay Lipe

WebMarketCentral had the chance to sit down (figuratively speaking) with Jay Lipe, founder of marketing consulting firm Emerge Marketing, to talk about his background and his company, and to tap into his Web marketing wisdom. Herewith, the inaugural WebMarketCentral blog interview.

WebMarketCentral (WMC): What did you do before Emerge Marketing?

Jay Lipe (JL): My background is pretty much all in marketing. For almost twenty years, I’ve worked to market companies, products, services, universities, cities, even politicians.

After I received my MBA in Marketing from Northwestern (Kellogg School of Management) in the 80’s, I worked for marketing powerhouses like General Mills, Novartis and Select Comfort. I went as far as I could on that track, then I launched my own business, Emerge Marketing in 1994. I help small companies (less than 100 employees) gain focus in their marketing.

WMC: How, when and why did Emerge Marketing get started?

JL: September 23, 1994. On that day I met with a good friend who is also a top-notch strategic consultant. He encouraged me to start my own marketing practice and when I got home that night there were two voicemail messages from potential clients (neither of whom he referred). Things happen for a reason.

My first two years were spent helping Fortune 500 companies with outsourced marketing projects. Then I was hired by a $3 million manufacturer that needed a marketing plan. I continued to work for that company for another 2 ½ years and realized that serving small business people made my heart go pitter patter.

WMC: Who do you target, that is, who is your ideal or typical client?

JL: Small companies (to me, less than 100 employees), I work only with the president or owner, this person is usually a non-marketer and in their first meeting with me they say something like “I know we need to be marketing, but I’m not sure where to begin”.

WMC: What is your key differentiator (or differentiators), that is, what separates you from your competition?

JL: I have red hair and I play drums—I’m the only red-headed, drumming, marketing consultant that I know of!

Really though, what makes me unique is that I focus exclusively on smaller businesses—those with less than 100 employees. And I come from a big company background (worked in marketing management for General Mills, Novartis and Select Comfort). So, I can take the strategic marketing concepts that the “big boys” use, and boil them down to a level where small business people get them, and do them.

WMC: How do you market/promote your business?

JL: To me, successful marketing leverages variety. To that end, I use a variety of marketing vehicles to promote my business. They include:

The Emerge Marketing website – This is a key tool for me to connect with the online community. On my site I feature all my services, over 25 free articles on small business marketing topics and copies of all my newsletters. Check it out at http://www.emergemarketing.com/.

My Smart Marketing blog - I frequently update my blog with marketing how-to’s for the small business. In fact the tagline for my blog is “Jay Lipe’s blog at the intersection of Small Business Street and Marketing Avenue. Check it out at http://jaylipe.typepad.com/smart_marketing/

In 2002, I wrote my first book, The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Business, and it has really helped expand my business. Three different kinds of people buy the book: 1) Early-stage entrepreneurs who have launched a business within the last 5 years 2) Established business owners with less than 10 employees who want more significant growth and 3) Small business leaders with larger companies (up to $100 million) who want growth, but without an internal marketing department.

I’m now at work on my second book for Dearborn Trade Publishing, due out next year.

I also give about 20 speeches a year in front of Chambers of Commerce, Industry Associations and Small Business organizations.

I write a lot of articles for online and offline publications. My advice has been featured in publications like Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, United Press International, Marketing News and the Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune.

I also publish an online newsletter called Jay Lipe’s Marketing Tips and Tools. If any of your readers want to be added to my subscriber list, they can sign up at my website.

WMC: What’s are the most important marketing lessons you’ve learned since starting Emerge Marketing?

JL: 1) Marketing has its own process – In accounting you close every month and you follow a standard process to balance your books. Small business leaders need to understand that marketing involves a process too. You analyze, plan, implement, and then analyze again. For more specifics on how a company can use this marketing process, I’d suggest my book The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Business.

2) Patience is a marketer’s best friend – Even brilliant marketing takes time to shine. People are too busy these days to drop everything and take notice of your marketing. You must do a new marketing initiative at least 5 times before your audience even notices. Any company that doesn’t stick with a new marketing effort for at least 5 times is short-changing itself.

3) Technology rules – The company that focuses on helping small businesses with their technology problems will make a lot of money. I’m just a little bit tech-savvy, yet I still feel overwhelmed by technology at times.

WMC: Anything else you’d like to add?

JL: Marketing is a discipline all its own. If you’re a non-marketer who’s responsible for your company’s marketing, you have to learn the discipline. In some recent research from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, more than one-half of the small business owners it surveyed launched their venture without any prior marketing or sales experience.

Also, this is increasingly becoming the Age of Marketing. These days it seems, business owners must know how to market their companies just to survive.

Google Notes, Good People

First, I noted in my last rant here that "The Web's most popular search engine still won't find all of the words "Bronto Topica Silverpop" on WebMarketCentral, even though they are all listed on the Hosted Email Marketing Services page." Well, I checked again today and -- Google still won't find these terms on the WMC site, but it found my blog post (top spot). Guess I need to keep working on my search engine optimization.

Second, one of the most enjoyable things about running WebMarketCentral thus far has been the outstanding people I've been able to "meet" (in some cases, just via email). Kelly Allan gave WMC one its first real links. Jay Lipe, president of Emerge Marketing, agreed to be the subject of the first (of many to come) WMC blog interview (to be posted soon). And just today, Skip Lineberg at the Marketing Genius blog gave WMC a nice endorsement. The opportunity to develop new relationships with great people is one of the most rewarding aspects of what we do.

Search Engine Optimization 101

New on WebMarketCentral.com is a page on Search Engine Optimization Basics, a how-to guide to getting at least decent placement for your site on the major search engines. While expert search engine position services offer more sophisticated techniques, this guide covers the basics of text optimization, meta tagging, alt-text for images, page naming, links and code tweaking for those without a big search budget.

Having exposed my knowledge and experience on improving one's search position, it's embarassing that the WMC site isn't showing up more respectably on the search engines yet. Through yesterday, a Google search for own press release brought up a number of sites where the release had been posted -- but missed the press release on my site! (Google is finding it today.) Also up until yesterday, Google couldn't find the name "Jay Lipe" on my site, even though it's in both the text and meta tags for my marketing-related blogs page. Again, that's working today. The Web's most popular search engine still won't find all of the words "Bronto Topica Silverpop" on WebMarketCentral, even though they are all listed on the Hosted Email Marketing Services page.

The bottom line on all of this seems to be that the final paragraph of my SEO basics page is spot-on: "The final step in improving your search engine positioning involves the least effort, and yet is the hardest -- waiting...It can take several weeks for Google to find your site, and about the only thing you can do to speed this up at all is to try getting your site linked from more sites so you are easier to find." Hopefully, within a few weeks, I'll be able to report much improved results -- and validate my own advice.

Gratuitous key phrase of the week: WebMarketCentral, the Portal for Web Marketers, Officially Launched (my press release -- we'll see if/when the search engines find this)

WebMarketCentral Gets Official

After several weeks live, WebMarketCentral.com has now been officially launched with this press release. Most of the world won't see the release until PRWeb releases it tomorrow, but you can see it on the WMC site today.

Our goal, as always, is to help Web marketing and e-commerce professionals to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently by showcasing the top marketing books, providing useful advice, and providing an extensive directory of helpful online marketing resources.

To that end, we've also recently added to the site a directory of Marketing and Operations Consulting firms, including some of those whom we have found to truly outstanding such as Kelly Allan Associates and Green Point Partners.

Nest week, we'll post our first interview with a key player in the online marketing space. Until then, best of luck to you, and stay tuned.

The Hydra of Web Site Development

Like the Hydra of Greek mythology, though much more benign (and not to confused with the 1990 Toto album, one of their weaker efforts), effective Web site development requires many heads. Perhaps not nine like the Hydra, but at least four: a technologist, a graphic designer, a writer, and a Web strategist. Finding all four skill sets in one individual is as rare as finding the next Michael Jordan in basketball, though finding two may be possible.

Many companies -- and not just small ones -- make the mistake when looking for Web development talent of focusing on the technology side: "knowledge of HTML, Java, Flash" etc. is among the absolute requirements in their want ad. While technology skills are important, they are not necessarily key, any longer, to the development of a truly effective online presence.

Take this law firm site for example: the graphic design is simple yet elegant, and technologically it works fine; but the navigation could be improved (Who are they targeting? What exactly do they want me to look at first on this site?) and much of the content has been written by lawyers (and reads like it). Yes, particularly in a larger company, it is important to enable multiple individuals to contribute content to the company Web site in their area of subject matter expertise, but as the brilliant Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa pointed out in this column, it is also important to have a "keeper of the words" in order to maintain consistency and ensure the maximum impact from your Web communications.

So, for smaller firms who can't afford to hire a Web team, the question becomes: what talent do we hire and what do we outsource? Actually, the technology and graphic design aspects are the easiest to outsource. Virtually every Web hosting company now offers easy-to-use content management tools from entry-level (e.g. GoDaddy's WebSite Tonight) to professional-grade (such as the Neuance tool from Neulogic), taking the technical burden off the business. Graphic artists are generally not hard to find locally, and since complete site redesign is something most companies only undertake once every two to three years, it makes little sense to hire one full-time (unless you have a lot of other needs in this area). If you're not sure where to look, there are national marketing temp firms such as The Creative Group and Aquent who can connect you with professional graphic artists on a project basis. If you don't have the budget to hire a graphic artist, Web site templates for a variety of popular site-building and content management programs are available for prices ranging from free to about $100.

Writing is a talent you should have in-house. Although this individual does not need to be dedicated solely to Web writing (unless you have a very large and dynamic Web site), this individual should have knowledge of how to write for the Web: in other words, the "4-C" ability to write content that is compelling, clear, concise and consistent.

Most important is the Web strategist. This is the person who can answer the basic questions such as "Who exactly are we targeting with our Web site?" and "What are the key messages we want to communicate?" as well as determining what content should be on the site, how the navigation should flow, and what special features/capabilities should be incorporated (e.g. news feeds, stock feeds, links and resources, events, Webcasts, white papers / expert knowledge, online support, e-commerce, online chat etc.). This individual will be key to the success of your online marketing efforts; he or she won't be an entry-level marketer and won't come cheap, but will be critical. The Web strategist doesn't necessarily have to be an expert in technology or graphic design, but if you can find one who can also write, that's a bonus worth paying for.

Cars and Viruses (Real Ones) Online

Less than ten years ago, selling a car meant calling your local paper to place a classified ad, and getting sick meant a call to your doctor. Today, these are two of the many things we do differently in an online world.

I had both situations last week. To sell my car, I went to CarSoup.com. This site has a great interface; buyers can search and sort by year, make, model, body style, mileage, location, price and color -- in short, drilling down from thousands of vehicles to just the right one. So skipped the local paper and listed my 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible here.

Feeling a bit under the weather, and hoping to avoid a doctor visit (or at least have some indication of what was wrong with me), I checked out the leading medical Web sites: WebMD, DrKook, er, I mean, DrKoop, HealthCentral, and several others. I was hoping to find the medical version of something like the CarSoup interface -- let me enter or select from a list of symptoms and then tell me what I've got.

Unfortunately, while there is a great deal of health information now available online, none of these sites offered this type of drill-down capability. I was able to narrow down my malaise to one of four conditions, ranging from minor to life-threatening(!). I was left slightly more informed but a lot more nervous.

So, I reverted to pre-internet mode and went to the doctor. He didn't run any of the expensive tests that the health sites had indicated might be necessary (thank goodness). He simply asked me a couple of questions, checked me over briefly, told me what was wrong with me (nothing too serious, thankfully) and wrote me a prescription.

In short, while the Web has become a helpful resource for obtaining health-related information, the usability and value of even the leading sites has a long way to go. My prescription for the health-related Web sites? Check out CarSoup -- provide visitors with a clean and easy drill-down from their symptoms to the most likely diagnosis, preferably without unnecessarilly scaring them.