5 Tips to Creating Raving Fans

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 by Jenn Lisak
As we all know, last Thursday was the official release of the infamous iPhone 4, complete with new features, such as FaceTime and multitasking. People camped overnight, stood in long lines, and even missed work to buy this hot commodity. All day long, I was surrounded by talk of the new phone on Twitter, Facebook, the news, and chit chat between friends. But amongst all of the hype, I started thinking about all the commercial commodities that have been popular throughout my own life. Some of the things that came to mind were Furbys, Beanie Babies, Tamagotchis, Harry Potter books, Halo, Backstreet Boys CD's, etc. Then, I asked myself what do all of these have in common? They are all physical, tangible products, and all of them have generated a "raving fan" following.

In recent years, most businesses have transitioned into the service industry, even if there is a product component to their business. Service, in layman terms, is intangible work completed for the benefit of others, and I would venture to say that it is harder to create the "raving fan" mentality for a service as opposed to a product.  In the last week, we have seen the raving fan mentality with the iPhone 4, and it is just as much a service as it is a product, even if the product component is what initially rives the customer to your service. So how do you create the "raving fan" if you're in the service industry? Here are some ideas:

1. Provide a quality product.
It doesn't matter if you have great service if you don't have a quality product to back it up. For example, as a website design company in Indianapolis, we have to give our customers not only an aesthetically pleasing website, but one that fits the client's web based strategy. The final product is what the client is going to see and use every day, so creating the product with care and precision will ensure client satisfaction.

2. Provide exceptional customer service.
This might seem obvious, but you won't retain clients without giving them a reason to stay with your business. Respond to your client's emails/calls quickly, ask questions about what they need, give them all the information they need to make an informed decision, and work with them to give them what they want without sacrificing your business. It is your job to make your clients happy without giving up your ideals, as well as producing a return on investment for each project.

3. Execute and represent an effective brand.
Clients want to be able to identify with a brand when deciding on who to use for a service. A well-defined brand is one of your greatest marketing tools if executed properly. If you say you're a "green" company, practice environmentally safe policies. Do as you say and say what you do.

4. Provide value by advertising your clients' products/services (B2B).
Instead of just marketing for your brand, feature your clients in blog posts, or mention them to your social media community. By doing this, you can provide extra value for both you and your client. It helps promote their brand and services while enhancing your testimonials and portfolio.

5. Give back to your community.
Whether it be a national corporation or a small business, people are more attached to businesses that provide their communities with resources and a helping hand. It's a way of showing that you care about the people who have contributed to your business.

These tips might seem simple and obvious, but it's important to revisit the basics of what makes a customer drawn to your brand. You want raving fans? Provide them with raving fan business!
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What I Learned from Leroy Stick - The Man Behind @BPGlobalPR

Friday, June 11, 2010 by Jenn Lisak

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard about the oil spill that had caused a fair amount of damage to the Gulf of Mexico and to British Petroleum’s reputation. In order to “rectify” the situation, BP has released a number of press statements over the past couple of weeks that have not satisfied an overwhelmingly disgruntled public. In response to BP’s lackluster statements, a man, who has dubbed himself as Leroy Stick, decided to take matters into his own hands; he created a Twitter account, cleverly named @BPGlobalPR, which pokes fun at how BP executives are dealing with the current situation. According to Stick, he started @BPGlobalPR because he believed that BP did not offer anything to ease the nation’s concerns. As a result, @BPGlobalPR has already accumulated over 150,000 followers since May 19, and it continues to grow on a daily basis. Leroy also supports the campaign that sells “bp cares” t-shirts to fund the activities of the Gulf Restoration Network, and his team recently made a $10,000 donation to the charity. All in all, he has become a celebrity within the social media community overnight and has molded BP’s brand into the punch line of his own joke.

His popularity or humor, however, is not what has captured my attention; it’s his message. Leroy Stick felt the need to create an entire web based strategy with @BPGlobalPR because BP wasn’t responding to the general public with urgency, sincerity, or solutions. Instead, Leroy argues that BP has been doing whatever it can to maintain a positive image and to keep making money. In other words, the executives are paying Internet marketing and PR representatives to promote a positive brand image that has been destroyed by employees of the company instead of trying to fix the problems at hand!

“So what is the point of all this?” Leroy asks. “The point is, FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing. You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?”

This is exactly what marketers do not want to hear, but it’s the truth. Companies can pay agencies tons of money to create marketing campaigns that represent integrity, quality, service, etc. But at the end of the day, none of this matters unless the client perceives the company (or the point of contact) as such.

So what does this have to do with me? Well, as a project manager for Fusework Studios, I am charged with providing my clients with the best service possible in order to create a positive brand image for the company. I will be a point of contact for clients, and I have to face the truth that Leroy Stick presents. Despite this challenge, I am excited to take on the responsibility of embodying the brand of Fusework Studios while maintaining my own values. Regardless of whether it is a global, multibillion dollar company or a small Internet Marketing and Website Design Company (with offices in Indianapolis and Muncie, Indiana), the point is to represent your values by making ethical business decisions and providing your clients with the best possible solutions; something that both the public and Leroy Stick feel BP is lacking.

As a result, I am even more motivated to practice what I preach in response to Leroy's skepticism. So, thank you, Leroy Stick, for encouraging me to face this challenge.

Jenn Lisak is a new Project Manager for Fusework Studios, and obviously, we're excited to have her join our team! Look for more posts from Jenn soon.

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Web Based Strategy for the Indianapolis Prize

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 by Nellie Stout
As the Indiana website development provider for the Indianapolis Zoo, we have had the pleasure of taking on a complete web re-design of the Indianapolis Prize, the visible component of the internationally recognized conservation efforts being undertaken by the Indianapolis Zoo.

The Indianapolis Prize is the largest individual monetary award for animal species conservation in the world and is given as an unrestricted gift to the chosen honoree.  The Prize is given every other year to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts involving a single animal species or multiple species.

For many nonprofits and small businesses in Indianapolis, online marketing is becoming increasingly competitive, so the Indianapolis Prize web based strategy was focused on embracing the social media community, creating a clean and direct design, and engaging users through video production.

Fusework Studios is proud to be a part of this project, both for the impact the Prize has on conservation and for adding to the great examples of Indianapolis web development.

Stay tuned for information on the 2010 Indianapolis Prize Gala that is scheduled for September 25 at the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Visit the new site at www.indianapolisprize.org. 
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Don't forget Conversion.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 by Bruce McClain
Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Advertising, Blogging, Pay Per Click, Interactive Strategy, Email Marketing, the list can go on and on. These days it seems everyone has a new area of expertise for generating traffic to your site, or your social networks.

While I believe in almost all of these Internet Marketing Strategies, I often wonder when do we talk about your Corporate Internet Marketing, or you Social Media Strategy, why do so many Internet Marketing companies fail to talk about the most important piece to the puzzle, CONVERSION.

Sure I can drive thousands of visitors to your site. I have used Google's pay per click service with great success. I have seen companies drive a 100,000 visitors a month to their site using this service. I worked with one company in particular who would spend over $40,000 per month, just to generate traffic. Believe me, it does work.

However, when I asked this company the percentage of visitors they converted on their marketing objective they had no idea. After further review, we discovered it was less than 1%. I may not be a rocket scientist, but that seems like a waste of money. What about CONVERSION?

I now see all these companies who claim they are a Social Media Agency. I even saw a proposal that promised to increase the number of fans a company had on Facebook, and to increase their Twitter followers. Again, this is not a bad thing, but what about CONVERSION?

You need to have a Web Business Strategy for how you are going to convert your traffic to be customers or clients. You need to give them multiple opportunities to execute your objective, and you need to make it so straightforward your visitors have no doubt what you want them to do on your site.

As you make your plan, think about the typical grocery store. Where do they put all of everyday items like milk, eggs, meat, etc? Yep, you are correct in the back of the store. Do you think they have a strategy behind that. Absolutely. They are trying to convert their business objective, and to get you to purchase, look at, smell, and sample, other items on your way to the things you really need. They are all about CONVERSION.

As you look at this blog post you may notice small buttons, or self promotional ads all over the page. Do you thing that we just put them there for design purposes? Absolutely not, we have an objective in mind. We blog to get you to our site. We want to get you to our site to tell you more about Internet marketing and what we do as a Internet Marketing Agency in Indianapolis Indiana. We hope you find the information helpful and also candidly we want you to talk to us more and ultimately become your trusted business partner.

So before you spend next years advertising budget with Google, take a few moments to think about what you will do when you drive traffic to your site. Google may be great at driving traffic, but what about CONVERSION?

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Why I joined Smaller Indiana.

Thursday, April 9, 2009 by Justin Bryant
As I proud member of Smaller Indiana, A social media community created by Pat Coyle, Communications Director of the Indianapolis Colts, Doug Karr of Compendium Blogware and Kyle Lacy of Brandswag. I thought I'd write just a few words to tell about this awesome community for Indianapolis and Indiana.

I first became aware of SI through a coworker at Fusework Studios. After I signed up for the group, I was immediately notified with a personal message from Kyle.

"Hey Justin! Welcome to Smaller Indiana and congratulations on becoming a SMOOSIER! Let us know if you have any questions about the site and remember to have some fun!"

I was also invited to the 3000 member party, which has now grown to over 5000+ members in the the past 6 months.

Since becoming a member, I have met with several hundred of it's members, joined several networking groups, both on-line and off-line. In fact, I created my own group the Social Media Lunch Club which has nearly 80 members!

SI is a great resource for any local Marketer, Designer, Web Developer or  just about any small to medium business or entrepreneur.

Sign up, check it out and add me as a friend. Don't forget to join the Social Media Lunch Club while you're there!


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10 Do's and Don'ts of Bookmarking for Business

Thursday, April 9, 2009 by Fusework User
Social Bookmarking is a great tool to use for your interactive strategy on the Web. Effectively engaging in communities such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, and others (Buzka is business-focused community) has many of the same benefits as other social media sites. The opportunity to have a "front page" or viral bookmark will help the spread of your blog posts and Websites, plus you can also monitor your brand and related keywords.

Here's a list of tips to help you get started.

Top 5 Do's of Social Bookmarking

1. Get used to the community before you dive in head first. All online communities have some kind of understood code of conduct that members follow. If you dive in and make a major faux pas, then people are going to take notice!

2. Incorporate Social Bookmarking into your blog and news posts, and encourage your loyal following to promote your materials.

3. Monitor your brand and related keywords. Responding to negative comments can go a long way in the eyes of community members and can build lasting credibility, especially if the responder is an involved member of the community and in a position of authority in your business. Searching on a social bookmarking site is different than through Google, Twitter, etc. because it's more based on readily measurable popularity rather than SEO, keywords, or anecdotal data.

4. With your bookmarking activity, be a person first and a business second. Most social bookmarking sites don't have business accounts, and quite often the environment is hostile to businesses that obviously use the services to advance their own agenda.

5. Have multiple people at your organization start accounts. Related to #1 above, make sure that each person uses these on an individual basis, but it never hurts to have more votes and coordinate your efforts to help give the necessary push when there is something has the potential to go viral.

5 Don'ts of Social Bookmarking

1. Avoid aggressive promotion on  these sites. Community members- especially the established and savvy ones- will know what's going on and if the community finds out, they can block your accounts. This will inevitably end up in a PR nightmare!

2. Stray away from gobbledygook titles or descriptions that are written in sales or marketing lingo. This will make your posts transparent and they almost surely won't spread. An article called "Indianapolis Small Business Marketing Success story" would be better off as "Fusework Studios' Viral Campaign Causes a Stir in Indy" or something more natural. Take note and heed the success of successful article titles.

3. Don't post all of your blogs and news. Be selective by choosing information that you think has the potential to go viral on the community based on your observations of the types of content that goes viral on a specific community and the content that you've posted on your site.

4. Don't post materials that are outside of your marketing objectives. If a post doesn't fit your Internet marketing branding strategy, you should probably reconsider publishing it in the first place! Preferably, your site is setup to drive conversion, in which case this shouldn't be an issue in most cases.

5. Make sure to keep activities within your overall strategy. Although you need to come off as a real person in the community, you'd probably want to avoid bookmarking that Website for the mud wrestling match unless of course your business involves or is driven by mud wrestling!

For more resources on social bookmarking check out these articles:


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Internet Marketing Using Video - Start Here

Thursday, March 26, 2009 by Laurie Buschmann
I was working with an Indianapolis client the other day who wants to produce a corporate Internet marketing video for his web site. Sounds straightforward enough, right?

Well, not exactly. In order to truly "tell your story." you've got to ask yourself some basic questions before diving headfirst in to the production process.

I've been a Producer and Writer in the video production world for many, many years, and in order to oversee a great product, the process should always start with answering these questions. 

  1. Who is your target audience?

    Is it your current customers? Future customers? Business partners? Vendors? Employees? Knowing your target audience is paramount. The answer will drive your message.
     
  2. What is your message?

    In the small business marketing world, a video can be a great way to introduce people to your business. Is that your message? Or do you need to be more specific about your services and/or capabilities? 
     
  3. What do you want the viewers to take away from the video after watching it? What do you hope to accomplish?

    The answer should always be the real reason you contemplated making a video in the first place. Is it a better understanding of your business? Is it to demonstrate a new product? Is it damage control? Are you using this video as a fundraiser? See question four.
     
  4. What is your call to action? 

    Think conversion, conversion, conversion. Complete Internet marketing includes some sort of conversion. If you introduced a new product in the video, your call to action could be to have clients purchase that product directly from your web site. If it's a basic marketing video, your call to action could be a link to a "contact us for more information" form on your web site. Now you've just acquired a qualified business lead. Bottom line, that's good web strategy.
     
  5. How long do you want the video to be? 

    Ideally, if it's going on the web, you want it to be no longer than three minutes. If it's longer than that, people get bored. Seriously, that's the truth. This length constraint will also help you narrow the focus of your message.
     
  6. Who, if anyone, would you like to profile? Who's story would you like to tell? Who's going to represent the company?

    Generally, people like to watch a video with a real human interest element.  In other words, give a face to it. Don't always rely on an omnipresent narrator and PowerPoint-type graphics. That being said, it's sometimes best to hire professional talent than to use this video to launch the acting career you've always wanted. But then again, maybe this video could be the perfect platform to show the "real you," and your customers just might dig it.
     
  7. When would you like to launch the video on your site? Is there an event or milestone coming up at which you could reveal it?

    Create some buzz for the addition of the video to your site. Promote it in an e-newsletter. Tease its addition in all of your marketing efforts. This will give you the biggest bang for your advertising buck.
     
  8. In what other ways do you plan to show the video?

    The social media community is blowing up, and you need to get on board! Put the video on your company's Facebook page. Consider making a YouTube channel and posting it there. And by all means, don't forget to tweet about it! You would absolutely be remiss if you didn't take advantage of all of the social media Internet marketing options out there.

By answering these questions and by really thinking about Internet marketing strategy, you will undoubtedly be left with a video that does exactly want you want it to do.....whatever that may be.

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