Are you standing out?  Are you marketing just like everyone else or are you taking the extra steps to stand out against the competition?  Good companies market themselves like everyone else and most of the time, that’s ok.  The problem, however, is that in a democratized market online where the barriers to competition are neutralized, it’s not enough.  It’s too easy for potential customers to view your competition and make their own decision about working with you.  All of your competitors have a web site just like yours.

Example: searching for a dentist

Take for example, searching for a dentist online.  You arrive in a new city, and you need a dentist. Assuming you search online first – and studies show 60% of consumers today search for vendors online first – you can very quickly come up with a short list of 10 or 20 dental clinics you might want to become a patient at.  So how do you decide which one to call?  Maybe a list of testimonials? dental certification?  reviews by patients?  a well designed list of services? pictures of staff?  But wait, does that sound familiar?  That’s because it is. You see, your competition is doing the same thing and providing everything I just listed.  In fact, they probably all are.  So what do you do then?

The Purple Cow

The key in getting that extra edge on your competition is standing out, being different, and doing something memorable.  Seth Godin calls it “The Purple Cow” in his book by the same name.  Seth says that being different is what works – just like if you were to see a purple cow in a field of brown cows – and being different is what you should be working at doing. 

Take the dental clinic example. What if the clinic owner takes that extra step to stand out?  Maybe with weekly videos on dental health management or with a “best smile” rating application on their web site.  Or maybe with giving new patients a personal makeover kit, or holding a monthly running and health improvement clinic. How about creating a web site called 1000smiles.com and inviting users from all over the web to add their smiles and featuring smiles from your clinic’s patients.  Being different, going that extra mile is all about standing out.  Whatever business you are in, come up with a list of 10 or 20 ideas that help you stand out, that help you become the “Purple Cow”. 

I’m not special right?

Now, you are probably thinking to yourself

• I don’t do anything special
• I don’t have a business that’s different than everyone else
• It’s too risky.  I don’t want to be different
• My customers want me to be like everyone else
• Why bother?  I have enough customers
• Being different is dangerous and I could alienate some customers
• My customers are reserved and don’t take risks
• It’s a waste of time and money and a gamble

Well, that’s might be true.  Yes, you don’t HAVE to be different, and you don’t HAVE to be special.  But online, that’s the only way to stand out.  You see when someone searches online, they have certain expectations on what they want to see online and you need to provide at least that much information on your web site.  But what if you go the extra mile, and have something memorable like the ideas I mentioned above?  Is it possible that your customers will remember your uniqueness?  Is it possible your idea was so juicy your customers tell others about it?  Is it possible the blogosphere gets wind of your idea and your idea goes viral?

Checklist: Just ask your customers

If you are still unconvinced that standing out is essential to your marketing efforts, try on this checklist with some of your customers.  Go ahead, print out this list and see what your customers say.

1. What do I/we do differently than my competitors that you noticed?
2. Why did you choose our/my business?
3. What was the one thing I/we had different than anyone else?
4. Would you recommend me/us, and if so, what would be one thing you would mention?
5. What was one product or service we/i had, that nobody else had?
6. Did you view our/my website before deciding to call?

The answers to these questions will very quickly give you something to sink your teeth (pardon the pun) into.  Continuing with the dental clinic idea, let’s say a customer mentioned your extended business hours, and that you had a laser whitening system.  These are two big advantages you had compared to your competitors and these were big factors in deciding to visit your dental clinic. Now that you know, leverage this uniqueness and ways you were able to stand out in your online marketing and branding.  Mention your extended business hours and laser whitening system in your marketing copy and on your web site.

Now, here is where the real ideas start

So you have already taken the time and made the effort to be different.  You know how you are different and you market this in your marketing copy.  Great.  But what about going the extra mile to be different.  What about doing something extra-ordinary.  Something way outside the norm?

10 ideas for making you stand out online

It’s not that hard to stand out, truth be told.  Very few of your competitors are reading articles like this one, and even fewer are implementing outstanding marketing ideas. Here are 10 cheap, free, and easy ideas you could launch right away, with minimal effort

1. Give away ebooks (start with a checklist style book and make a bunch of them)
2. Show a video on your home page (use tubemogul to distribute it).  Look at 136words.com for a great example of online video
3. Do a weekly podcast and distribute it through the Apple.com store.
4. Give away an iPod each week to online subscribers
5. Write a monthly newsletter (use campaignmonitor for awesome e-newsletters)
6. Implement a ratings web site for pictures/sounds/ideas related to your product (for example 1000smiles.com if you are a dental clinic)
7. Interview celebrities, dignitaries, or notable authors in your industry and post the results on your web site
8. Show your real photograph (professionally done of course).  Yes, you would be truly shocked how few of your competitors are doing this!
9. Record a 2 minute audio clip for each page of your web site (easily done with a good publishing system like Wordpress – it’s what I use for all my clients).
10. Interview your past customers on video and feature them in case studies on your web site.  Even though potential customers know it’s a marketing ploy, it still works!

Hopefully you get some indication about why standing out is essential and how you can go about discovering your own uniqueness.  If you still need help, feel free to give me a call.  I’m always ready to consult and coach businesses on business marketing.

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If you own a web site or design web sites for companies, you should be checking site performance on a regular basis.  It’s the only way to know objectively if you are on track towards improving your search ranking and keyword placement, and thus getting a positive return with your online marketing efforts.

Of course, once your visitors arrive at your site, your site needs to have well constructed “calls to action” and entice visitors to make the next step of buying your products or contacting you, but let’s leave that to a future blog post.

Below are 5 tools I use on a regular basis to measure how my web sites are doing.  Each has it’s own purpose which I describe below.

WebsiteGrader.com – an indispensable tool and the one I use most often it gives you Pagerank, counts inbound links, and tells you other details about your site you might not have thought about (like 301 redirects or domain expiration)

BacklinkWatch.com – get excellent insight into what links are pointing to your site. The report also tells you if the links have “nofollow” (something a lot of bloggers are adding into their comment widgets)

Quarkbase.com – get info about things like your Alexa rank, what tools were used to build your site as well as some general traffic and ranking data.

URLtrends.com – An incredible amount of information far beyond all the other tools mentioned so far.  However, the page navigation is terrible and the bar graphs produced are cryptic and hard to decipher.  Nevertheless the data is significant and you can come up with plenty of ideas on site improvements from the data here.

LinkPopularity.com – this last tool doesn’t do much more than give you 3 links to view your search indexing progress at the big 3 (Google, MSN, Yahoo).  It’s handy when you want to quickly see how well your site is being ranked.

NEW! TestEverything.com – this one is new and one I just found from sitepoint.com.  I haven’t tried it yet, but it covers an extensive list of possible tools to literally test everything about your site.  I will post a review in the future about it.  If you have used testeverything.com, let me know and give me your opinion.

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Out of the blue, I was contacted today by a local business owner seeking Wordpress theme customization from a theme they purchased on Themeforest (by the way, read about how I was able to provide everything the client wanted in my other blog post)  At first, I thought someone referred them to me, but after asking I was told they found me by searching for the phrase Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver on Google where I rank #6.  

As you might guess, I’m extremely pleased by the first page ranking considering I have had my new site, Full Motion Group, out for less than a year, and that I only recently installed a new theme from Themeforest.  I’m going to share with you what I believe are the key factors in getting the ranking, and why I believe it’s partly attributed to the single page design I decided to implement.

Before I list my reasons, let’s get clear on WHAT a single page web site is:

1. A theme or design where all of your primary keyword rich site content is loaded into the client browser when they hit your domain name root
2. No frames, iframes, or fancy post-backs to load content in-line. 
3. Flash is NOT your primary content vehicle (can be used for headers and non-keyword rich content).
4. Any sub-page content or blog posts can be linked to, but those pages are not your primary keyword-rich content

As mentioned, I recently implemented a single page theme on my business portfolio web site, Full Motion Group.  The theme was from Themeforest called Personal Landing Page. I made many modifications to the theme (which i discuss at length about in the comments to the theme) to suit my needs like adding testimonials and making it possible to link to individual posts in the portfolio section. 

If you visit the site, and then view the source code, you will see that the site’s primary content is loaded when you visit the home page.  The only content that doesn’t appear on-load are the in-depth profile case studies (like this profile).  In future, I might enhance the design further to load this content as well but for now I’m happy with the way it is.

After purchasing the theme, and playing around with source code, I knew that the theme had potential for good search engine ranking, but I never guessed it would produce results until today.

How I got to be #6 on Google for “Wordpress Theme Customization Vancouver” and why a single page web site is better for your search engine ranking

1. Reason #1: All site content is loaded when a search engine crawler visits the site.  No additional links need to be followed that contain keyword rich content. 
2. Reason #2: If keywords are repeated unnecessarily (like in site footers), they pollute crawler statistics.  For example, let’s say you have a page footer on every page that contains a short description of your business and some relevant keywords.  Keywords used in that description appear for each page of your site and that forces crawlers to make some guesses about what that page could be about
3. Reason #3: You only need to maintain meta-tag information for one page.  I used the All-in-one seo plugin whenever I launch a Wordpress site, and one of the first things I do is enter the home page title and description.  With a single page theme, I only need to do this once and I can carefully monitor my analytics results and tweak those keywords to match the results I’m looking for.
4. Reason #4: Content deeper within your site might not get crawled.  With traditional multi-page web sites, you need to hope that a crawler will index your entire site. Who knows how search engine crawlers behave, and it might not always be the case (as anyone that has tried to search the Microsoft site can attest to). Single page web sites on the other hand, are crawled and indexed completely, that you can be sure of.
5. Reason #5: Single page web sites load more quickly. Well, this isn’t always the case, but certainly a single page theme creates less total traffic than say 10 individual pages of the same content (barring content that is cached in browser).
6. Reason #6: Single page web sites that are updated are re-indexed completely. I’m sure that every time I updated my web site, a search engine eventually revisits and recrawls the site eventually.  Having all my content on a single page load also means that all my content is re-indexed which is even better because I can carefully tweak my entire site’s keywords without too much fuss.

I have yet to prove for sure that a single page theme is better for you from an SEO point of view, and certainly this doesn’t always apply for all sites (as you get larger, you will need to split content into multiple pages), but if you can get away with it, I suggest you give it a try.

Like this post?  Leave a comment or link to me!

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Being Creative is a Curse and a Blessing

As a designer, I’m looking at other designers for inspiration all the time.  That creative spirit, however, is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I’m looking at new designs all the time and am curious about how other creatives look at branding.  I like design and I enjoy the creative process and that’s definitely a feather in my cap.  Being curious about design is also a curse, however, because I’m never satisfied with my own brand.   It always feel’s a bit incomplete, and as I learn more about design, branding, and standing out, I feel like I need to do something different.

My Brand History over the last 10 years

Take my own brand and how I market myself which I started doing in 2001 with bcbold.com:

• 1998 – Launched bcbold.com as my first exercise into online marketing.  View this version at archive.org.
• 2001 – After several revisions, I relaunched with a new design and also started using Active Server Pages to manage the content.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – I changed from bcbold.com to redprimary.com.  View this version at archive.org
• 2003 – 2008 – I changed the design of redprimary.com over that 5 year period many times and have at least 12 verifiable revisions of the site.  Every time I learned something new about design, I tweaked my own online presence.
• 2009 – I changed from using redprimary.com to fullmotiongroup.com which is my online portfolio because I felt redprimary.com didn’t really represent what I do.
• 2010 – I’m going to launch WebMarketingMasterPlan.com which is where all of my web marketing articles and expertise will eventually go.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards Minimalism and the idea that less can be more.  Take the latest version of fullmotiongroup.com.  It’s a dead simple design and all fits on one page.  No frills, no marketing, no lengthy blog posts, no sales pitches, no lengthy content, and no ebooks.  It’s a portfolio site that stands alone and if someone wants to read more about me, they can contact me or visit this blog.

The Rise of “Jack of All Trades”

I don’t know if it’s becoming more common globally, but certainly with IT Professionals such as myself, being multi-talented and a jack of all trades is commonplace.  Nearly everyone I know in IT has multiple skills and abilities.  I have decided that having multiple domains for each of my “personas” is a good thing too, and I’m going down that route now.

• fullmotiongroup.com – my simple portfolio site for my web design work
• webmarketingmasterplan.com – an educational resource I’m launching in 2010 with articles and best practices on web marketing and design or maybe as an ebook (I haven’t decided which will bring greater profits).  I might also do video with each blog post.
• mayurj.com – this blog and dumping ground for everything that doesn’t fit into the above two sites
• mayurj.org – A launching pad or lifestream page I have no plans on launching for now. I expect it to look something like Gina Trapani’s site and it might be the one domain I hand out to people looking to hire me.

My other domains, redprimary.com and bcbold.com I expect to keep for the forseeable future and won’t let them go (the Pagerank and domain history can’t be replaced).

5 reasons to have multiple domains

1. Reason 1: You have multiple skills and all together they don’t fit in one site
2. Reason 2: Thin-slice yourself and represent each skill/ability with it’s own brand
3. Reason 3: When customers visit one of your domains, they get what they want quickly and without fuss.  They don’t have to wade through hundreds of categories or a series of menus.
4. Reason 4: Experiment with a brand idea or marketing angle like MRPWebmedia did with 136words.com
5. Reason 5: Expand a series of blog posts or skills you develop into it’s own site.  If you have too much on one site, designers will tell you that your original brand becomes polluted.

10 places I get design inspiration

1. Wired Magazine – there are some great ad and article designs in this magazine and I get a copy every month.  I keep copies around and flip through them before I start a design project.
2. Television Ads – Sure shows are great, but ads during primetime or major sport events are great places get new “memes”, themes, and angles on marketing.
3. Vandelay Design Inspiration – Definitely one of the best resources for web design ideas, the author sends out an email each month which I always look forward to reading.  If you are a web designer, definitely subscribe to the author’s emails.
4. Twitter – Recently I’m getting a lot of people adding me to Twitter.  Sometimes, I look at their twitter accounts and visit their site to see what they do.
5. Local Mall – You would be surprised what you can see at the local mall (besides all the pretty eye candy) when you pay attention to the poster boards and in-store marketing
6. Books – I’m into personal development these days and have a big collection of about 3000 hours from guys like Rohn, Tracy, Robbins, Waitley, Covey and more.  Often, I get inspired to think differently about marketing and branding and that has definitely influenced my work.  In particular, Blink and Purple Cow from Seth Godin are outstanding examples of thinking outside the box.
7. MRPWebmedia – I just found this one recently.  It’s a great collection of articles about branding and marketing and the authors have gone down the path that marketing is about being like a Purple Cow (a reference to Seth Godin’s book on the subject) – ie that marketing is about doing something outstanding that people talk about.
8. Lifehacker, Engadget and ZdNet.com – These sites together offer links to vendors, articles, and tonnes of in-site content.  All of it together helps me to see design differently and sometimes in a fresh way. Often I will click the sidebar ads to see what other new ventures are coming out the woodworks.  I found some of my favorite services like MediaTemple (web hosting) and Basecamp (project management) this way.
9. Sitepoint.com – This is a large site focused on design and online marketing and they have several different email newsletters they send.  I subscribe to all of them which often feature ads from related businesses.  Flippa.com is one site I found this morning while looking at the Sitepoint email newsletter.
10. Supermarkets – Surprisingly, this is a great place for design ideas.  The food business is highly competitive and retailers have to make every square inch on product packaging count.  Web design can benefit from the same requirements – to make every square inch of a design count for something.  Next time you visit the supermarket, pay attention to product packaging that catches your eye and ask yourself what made it standout.

5 Reasons Why you MUST stand out

Having read most of the articles at MRPWebMedia.com, I’m convinced that doing something extraordinary is crucial in marketing. Actually, it’s an idea I always knew, but reading the articles helped refresh my memory. Online, it’s even more critical.  Here’s why:

1. Reason 1: With the rise of web sites, everyone skims pages and rarely reads a page in full.  You have about 10 seconds and you might as well make it count with something extra-ordinary.  Seth Godin talks about this in a book called Blink if you’re curious about how to stand out and why
2. Reason 2: With easy access to Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, a great idea can go viral very quickly.  Do something different and people will talk about you.  This is good for your business, and it’s also good for your Pagerank
3. Reason 3: People don’t remember “Just like Everyone Else” .  They remember the guy with the red mohawk, or the girl with the long platinum blonde hair and grey eyes.  People’s emotions are triggered when they see something different, and hopefully, if you did a good job, they remember it for good reasons.  If people see something different, they are more likely to do business with you when their need arises.
4. Reason 4: People buy emotional states, not features and facts.  Nearly everything you buy you do so for the emotional state you hope to feel.  Good branders and marketers know this and don’t try to sell features and facts about a product or service.  They sell the emotional state and that alone is all you need.  If you don’t stand out, it’s probably cause you didn’t sell an emotional state in your branding and marketing.
5. Reason 5: Competition is fierce and the Internet levels the playing field.  In less than a minute on Google you can find a list of 20 potential businesses you might want to do business.  If 18 of them all look the same and have the same boring features and facts listed on their site, they all look the same in the customer’s eyes.  But if one or two of them stand out and have something unique or create an emotional response worth buying, they win.  Online, standing out is a must, and if you don’t, you lose.

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