I just came across a great quote by author Karen Lamb, one that’s particularly apt for the new year: “A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
As we set our 2010 goals and make our New Year’s resolutions, visualize where you want to be a year from today. And then get started. Resolutions don’t bring results. Action does.
Happy New Year everyone!
Here’s another very cool idea from one of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 E-tailers that translates very well to gardening companies. Rejuvenation Hardware’s website includes a Projects Blog, written by Rejuvenation customers who discuss their restoration, renovation and building projects. The home page for the Projects Blog includes a photo of the various authors and/or their projects, a brief description of the project, and links to 5 blog posts detailing the progress of the job along the way. It’s a great way to bring Rejuvention’s products alive and help customers connect with each other – and one that’s very applicable to gardening, which progresses over time.
While reading Internet Retailer’s profiles of their Hot 100 E-tailers for 2009 recently, I came across an idea from an unlikely source that a number of gardening companies might adapt. BabyAge.com’s website includes a timeline divided significant milestones: each trimester of pregnancy, hospital stay, welcome home, and so forth. Click on any portion of the timeline, and visitors can get specific how-to information relevant to their situation.
Gardening companies that focus on specific crops, like onions or potatoes, are challenged by the fact that growing conditions vary widely from one part of the country to another, so no single set of care instructions works for everyone at any given time. Such companies might take a page from BabyAge’s book and use a similar timeline to give care instructions X weeks after planting.
I just finished reading profiles of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 E-tailers for 2009. It’s always fun to see what companies in other industries are doing that our clients and Let’s Grow readers might adapt. One thing that struck me was how many of the Hot 100 Retail Web Sites had incorporated a Q&A feature directly on their product pages. That’s right, not a separate FAQ section, but right on each product page.
With this new feature, a prospect with a question doesn’t have to search for contact information, and is promised a quick response by a company representative. Both questions and answers are posted on the product page, further reducing future questions without the need to revise product descriptions. In some cases, other customers are able to post answers as well.
For one of the more elaborate examples, have a look at one of Golfballs.com’s products, such as this: http://www.golfballs.com/PC3017/PING-G15-Driver.html. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll find questions and answers by both Golfballs employees and other customers. To help readers better evaluate the responses, customers who answer questions are identified as having a low-, medium- or high-handicap.
Pretty nifty, huh?
We don’t normally test the “from” line on the emails we send, but a recent situation gave us some quantifiable data on the difference it can make.
A client, for whom we publish a regular monthly newsletter, decided to send a series of three email holiday promotions they created in-house. When compared to the average open rates for our newsletters, the first promotion fell 15% and the second 7% – not surprising for a promotion vs. a newsletter. But what gave us a jolt was that the first promotion received 3 times the usual number of spam reports, and the second more than 6 times!
Before the third promotion went out, we took a closer look. The “from” line appeared to be the culprit. Newsletters were always sent from newsletter@[CompanyName]. By contrast, the promotions used the “from” line of [ClientName]@[CompanyName].
At our recommendation, the client changed the “from” line for the final promotion. We suggested [CompanyName]@[CompanyName], but they went with promotions@[CompanyName]. The spam reports fell back to normal levels.
The moral of the story: choose your “from” line carefully. Don’t use a personal name, unless it’s one that your subscribers recognize. Be sure it includes your company name. And once you’ve chosen a “from” line, use it consistently.
As I was settling down to write this post, a friend happened to email about a free tool she’d learned about for measuring the marketing effectiveness of your website. You simply enter your website URL and it returns a report that includes these sections:
• On page SEO (such as titles, descriptions, content and URL)
• Off page SEO (such as inbound links and whether pages are in the search engine indexes)
• Blogosphere (whether your site includes a blog and if so, how effective it is at driving traffic)
• Social mediasphere (your online presence outside of your own website and blog)
• Converting qualified visitors to leads (how effective your site is in moving visitors to the next step)
• Competitive intelligence (how your site compares to the competition)
While an automated tool like this may not get every nuance 100% right, it’s an easy to use, helpful tool. Check it out!
Have you noticed ads with images popping up recently in the Sponsored Links served up by Google AdWords? Google is beta testing a new type of ad, called Product Listing Ads. They’re designed to work with the Google Merchant Center, and are currently available only to a limited number of retailers.
Product Listing Ads include an image, product name with link, price, and merchant name.
Two key features distinguish Product Listing Ads:
• Pay only for results. Payment for Product Listing Ads occurs only when a user clicks on an ad and completes a purchase.
• Promote your entire inventory easily. Product Listing Ads draw on the data in the Google Merchant Center. When a consumer searches on a keyword relevant to an item in a Google Merchant Center account, a Product Listing Ad may appear. That makes it easy to promote your entire inventory, without specifying keywords or ad text.
At the moment, Product Listing Ads are in limited distribution. However, Google plans to increase both the number of times they’re displayed and the number of advertisers able to participate in the program.
If you’re like me, it can be tricky locating useful information you’ve read in the past when you need it at a later date. And if we’ve been doing our job with Let’s Grow, you’ve found our articles and blog tips helpful and have wanted to refer to them at a later time. Our recently updated website may make that a lot easier for you.
The greatly expanded Our Services section of the site includes links to past articles and blog posts, categorized the following ways:
• Blogs
• Catalog circulation planning
• Catalog development
• Customer retention
• Email marketing
• Magazine ads
• Market research surveys
• Marketing strategy
• Media planning & negotiation
• Newsletters
• Online banner ads
• Online video
• Package inserts & bouncebacks
• Pay per click advertising (PPC)
• Podcasts
• Postcards & other mailings
• Sell sheets
• Social media
• Trade show strategy
• Website improvements
Just click on the category of interest, scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll find links to a wealth of information on each subject.
Have a look and let us know what you think!
I just happened upon a year-old Nursery Retailer article by Kip Creel, garden industry analyst extraordinaire of Standpoint, about marketing to Gen X and Gen Y. One sentence in particular stayed with me: “We have to stop assuming that if someone buys a plant, they are a hobbyist.”
What he meant by that is that there has been a generational shift in attitudes toward gardening, but not in gardening-related expenditures. When we look at gardening-related expenditures, Gen X and Gen Y fall within known industry norms. However, unlike Baby Boomers, the younger generations don’t consider gardening a favorite hobby. It is instead a necessary element of home improvement.
This shift in attitude will have an increasingly important impact on advertising appeals over the coming years, as the number of Gen X and Gen Y homeowners grows.
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