Beacon continues to provide website design and development for several universities through newly signed projects for customized enhancements and new features.  These Cascade Server CMS projects are:

• Rollins University
• The University of Hartford
• Framingham State

We are ready. We are ready for a great 2010. This will be the most exciting year ever for Beacon Technologies and a very successful year for our Clients!

Why will 2010 be so great? Our People.

I am a Business Development Manager here at Beacon. I have been selling Beacon’s quality solutions for over 10 years and I have always been proud of our work with our focus on:
• Website Design and Development
• Web Marketing Services with Google Analytics
• Cascade Server CMS Development
• Managed Hosting

This year will be great for many reasons but the most important reason is the people working here. Never before have we been so smart with our approach, strategy, solutions and most importantly our people. We have very carefully and selectively grown our Web Marketing Team and we can confidently put our team up against the best web marketing minds in the business. We have an exceptional team of very smart, energetic, innovative, team-focused, and personable marketing experts. Beacon’s clients are now receiving expertise from a large group of experts that work as an organized team with synergy and collaboration.

I am confident that we can provide you with a well organized, carefully considered, innovative strategy! Our goal is to deliver a strong ROI so you want to continue to invest in our support.

Our Web Marketing Services include:
• Business Consulting
• Organic Optimization
• PPC Pay-Per-Click Management: Adwords Qualified Company
• Google Analytics: One of a handful of GAACs in the U.S.
• Website Conversion Optimization: One of a select few GWOs
• Return on Investment Reporting and Analysis
• Social Media Marketing: We have creative and innovative expertise on staff to support your SMM efforts.

Call me to talk about your business.

Patrick, 336-232-5668

Patrick Flanagan

pflanagan@beacontechnologies.com
# 336-232-5668

We work with a lot of universities, assisting them with consulting and more complex development within their Cascade Server instances.  My team and I have recently wrapped up a very challenging project for one of our best customers, and I’m very pleased with the results.  We greatly enhanced their basic Cascade Server calendaring system in order to create a centralized repository of the entire university’s events.

The site in this example contains multiple listings of the events, including:

• Today’s Events
• Seven-day View
• Listing by Category
• Homepage Listing
• RSS Feeds
• Top Stories by Category displayed on a department’s homepage

The most important requirement for our developers was to make it simple for the end user to maintain, while creating a robust solution that met the client’s requirements.  The events are displayed in multiple places across the entire site; thus, we wanted the user to enter the event details in one place, and have it automatically be displayed in the appropriate listings.  Thus, the user doesn’t have to worry about finding all places where an event needs to be listed…it’s all done for them.  All they have to worry about is keeping up with the large number of events that come their way every day!

To add an event, the user simply fills out a form inside Cascade Server.  Among other fields, the user fills out:

• Event Title
• Start & End Date/Time
• Category
• Is this event able to be displayed on the homepage?  Yes/No
• Is this a featured event?  Yes/No
• Details about the event

That’s it.  They save it, and the publish it.  Cascade Server takes care of the rest.  The added story displays in the appropriate listings at the right time.  Some of the noteworthy features of this product are:

• A story only shows in the Today’s Events listing if the start and end date span today’s date.  This allows the user to enter one event that spans multiple days.
• Category listing pages were set up to display all stories tagged with a certain category (such as Athletics, Libraries, etc.).  With this solution, users from any section of the Web site can link to their category’s stories.
• The story is displayed on the homepage (if it was tagged to do so).  Also, if the story was tagged as a “featured” story, it will display first on the homepage to give it prominence.
• The RSS feeds of events are automatically populated as well.
• If an event’s end time has passed, the event no longer displays on any listing pages.

This was definitely a team effort involving analysis, system design, and skilled coding…something all of my colleagues excel at.  This is just one of the many custom applications we have written in Cascade Server.  For example, we’ve also written an advanced News application.  But that’s for another posting.

“Make it so”

Captain Jean-Luc Picard says YOU need to do three things in three chintzy lines very quickly with your Google AdWords copy.

• Stand out & get attention  (Headline- Line 1)
• Create a desire  (Line 2)
• Incite an action  (Line 3)

-

“Make it so, Number One”!

(1)  The headline is the most important line.

There are several techniques to try.

• Dynamic  Keyword Insertion
• One word headline
• Two word headline
• Three word headline
• Have the headline ask a question
• Begin your headline with the word “How to” (see example below)

-

“Make it so, Number Two”!

(2)  On the second line after the headline, make it personal.

• Ask yourself the question,  just how can the customer benefit?

In the Google ad below, the line reads “Customers Search and Find You.”

Thats how the customer will  benefit.

-

“Make it so, Number Three”!

(3) On the third and last line, get immediate action.

People don’t need time to think it over. You will lose sales that way.

Here are some techniques to try:

• If the price is going up, say so.
• If the supply is limited, say so.
• Set a time limit.
• Use call to actions such as “Act Now”,  ”Shop Today”,  or “Don’t Delay”
• State another great benefit the visitor will get by buying your product (“Save 15%”).

See the example below:

The examples used above are actual Google sponsored ads. There is a very high probability that these Google Ads have been tested and are being displayed for a very good reason. The reason is because the chintzy ad format works.  Google’s 5.7 billion in revenue doesn’t lie.

And why listen to Picard? According to wikipedia:

Picard is deemed the ultimate delegator of authority, knowing “how to gather and use data better than any other Star Trek captain.”

“Hit them now and hit them hard” is a phrase that should never be associated to your strategy for an effective, email marketing campaign.  You have worked hard to collect the addresses in your database, and you want these contacts to continue strengthening their loyalty to you through your commitment to excellence and your brand credibility.  You do not want to attack them at all angles so much that they feel bombarded or pressured to take action immediately.  While hoping for them to react to your specific calls to action, they shouldn’t have to do so three times a week.  Your contacts vary and therefore should be divided appropriately into different email lists.

Segmenting Your Email Database

Some customers want everything you have and more,  while others want to demonstrate their loyalty to your company or brand but might only want to hear from you once a month.  We need to differentiate these customers and keep them all happy by utilizing a more complex opt-out option when unsubscribing.

Over the years, you have continued striving for excellence on your website, as well as collecting email lists from customers, clients, and vendors.  You now have one big email list, but you notice that while the traffic hitting your website continues to grow alongside your conversions for email address submissions each month, your total email address database continues to remain flat.  You do some further review in Google Analytics and see that one of your top landing pages is your unsubscribe page.  What can you do to decrease the number of opt-outs?

Updating your Opt-Out Page

When customers receive your email blasts, they have the option from the link to go directly to your un-subscription page to remove their email addresses from your database list.  Like most companies, your site probably only has one option on this page–to unsubscribe completely.  Once they select this option, their direct connection with you is gone. You have worked so hard to gather their information, so don’t you think it would be wise to provide them some options in an attempt to retain some of these customers?

Your goal as a company should be to make the opting out process as easy and painless as possible for the customer, even if you don’t want them to go.  Remember, by leading an effective and positive unsubscribe experience; you can keep the user as a customer for years to come even if they are no longer on your email list because despite popular belief in the marketing world, an unsubscribe is not necessarily the end of your relationship with that customer.

Instead of a single unsubscribe option, why not provide them with some choices for them to consider before they sever all ties?  A great ecommerce website that provides two simple options is Victoria’s Secret.  When customers receive an email blast and click on the unsubscribe link, they are directed to a certain page, and instead of disconnecting themselves completely, they can choose their level of intensity.  More often than not, the customer will select the “fewer” emails than the end-all “unsubscribe.”

Ideas to Expand and Optimize your Opt-Out Page:

1)  If you send a quarterly newsletter along with custom email blasts, you could split up your groups into three main lists:  Newsletters Only (B2B and promotional), Email Blasts Only (promotional), and both.

2)  Provide options such as brand specific targeting if your company hosts a series of products and services, or for products that tend to be seasonal, it may be appropriate for you to give them the option to only be emailed during the specific seasons or holidays.

3)  Provide them the option to update their email address listed since they might be leaving if you are sending these blasts to their work account

4)  Consider briefly reminding the subscribers at the top of the page the benefits of remaining on your email lists ( seasonal promotions, exclusive offers, new and online only merchandise, etc)

Just for the record, revising your unsubscribe request to include options will not keep 100% of your database in constant conversation with you but it is a great start to providing excellent customer service to your need-based clients.

I’ve been a sports freak nearly all my life – as a player, coach and fan.  I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that success is dependent on three main things:  hard work, skill level and most of all, teamwork.  We’ve all heard the sayings “There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM” and “You win as a team and you lose as a team.”  Yes, there are “stars” (highly skilled players) on every team, but all the members of the team have to contribute to be successful.  Watch a pass play unfold during a football game from above  (where you can’t see their numbers or faces) as the receivers run their routes, the linemen execute their blocks, the backfield blocks or  slips out into the flat and the quarterback reads the defense to hopefully make the best choice for his team to advance.  Or watch a baseball game from high above (again, the names and faces don’t matter) as a ball is hit to the gap and you will see EVERY player take action with players backing up each other, lining up for a relay and communicating during the play.  To me, it’s a work of art that requires commitment from every team member.

In the business world, it’s no different.  Success is dependent on the same 3 things and I was so thrilled to see it “live” during a meeting this past Friday.  I know.  I know.  “Thrilled” during a meeting?  What?  If I was Jim Gaffigan (the comedian), I would now mutter under my breath, “This guy’s sick”.  Anyway, our Web Marketing Team has grown quickly over the last few years and as a result, we’ve carefully brought in some tremendous marketing and technology talent to take great care of Beacon’s clients, many of which are extremely high profile with high expectations.  When we started the web marketing business unit here at Beacon over 10 years ago, it was primarily search engine optimization (organic) with a single specialist assigned to our clients.  Once we got to a point where we had enough SEO clients to justify adding more staff, I quickly realized that the overall knowledge base of the team grew exponentially because they could bounce ideas off each other, discuss techniques and essentially, provide significantly more value to our client base.

Like in any competitive arena, players have a choice:  They can play for themselves or they can play for the team.  But guess what, our clients’ success and Beacon’s success requires teamwork.  I’ve seen way too many “one-person shops” that just can’t compete and their clients truly have “all their eggs in one basket” (I hate clichés, but this works here!).  Can a one-man shop seriously stay current and provide expertise in all the critical areas – SEO, PPC, social media marketing (SMM), Google Analytics, eMail, Shopping Engines, Google Website Optimizer, and many other areas?  It’s essentially evolving into a model that is very similar to an IT Development Team – requiring varying areas of expertise. Beacon’s clients get a team of experts – a team that works hard and shares information to win the marketing battles that occur on the internet. 

This leads me back to this “thrilling meeting”… 

So I’m sitting at the end of our board room table and the entire web marketing team is in attendance.  Every Friday morning, we come together to discuss 2-3 of our clients in depth from a marketing, technical and business standpoint.  Collectively, we look at their website.  We look at their pay-per-click ads.  We look at their key phrases and SEO results.  We dig deep into Google Analytics and review Google Website Optimizer testing results.  We talk about what’s working and what isn’t.  We brainstorm for new ideas.  We share alternative approaches, new techniques and the latest industry information.  Well, at last Friday’s meeting it dawned on me that it’s like a surgical team (or, for the sports theme, maybe it’s more like a “chalk talk”).  This group is totally focused as a TEAM, not as individuals, for the sole purpose of providing the best results for our clients.  It was truly amazing to see this group of bona fide experts working together to make a good thing even better – much like watching that pass play or handling that ball hit to the gap.  I’m looking forward to next Friday’s meeting!

As social media and traditional internet continue to blur their boundaries, the availability of online reviews has never been higher.  You can read about people’s experiences with given companies in blog posts, on forums, in countless yellow page directories, and even on Twitter or other social media.  Have you searched for you company in Twitter yet?  You may find what your customers are saying about you to be very interesting and/or surprising.  Good reviews offer free online advertising, and bad reviews may be even more valuable!  If the latter part of that statement seems odd to you, read on…

There are three primary benefits that a bad review can offer.  You might be able to think of more, but I think most can fit under these large umbrellas:

• First, bad reviews add credibility to the good ones.  If I see a product listed on a retail page that has 100% glowing reviews, I tend to take it with a grain of salt.  No company leaves its customers 100% satisfied.  This leads one to believe that these responses are fluff and possibly even bought and paid for.  However, a site that shows a product/service to have 85% positive reviews has more credibility.  It is less likely that the site manager is screening or cherry picking reviews.  There is an acknowledgment that the product/service may not be for everybody.  As a consumer, I still learn that the vast majority of the customers were happy with their purchase and the information is more believable.
• Second, bad reviews show you where your company can improve.  This follows the old adage that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes.  Your customers may see your business much differently than you do.  Learn from this – odds are that one bad review online represents many angry customers overall.  If you are not meeting their expectations, you may have to adjust your business or how you are marketing/presenting it.
• Third, and most important from a web marketing perspective, ANY review offers exposure.  By reading reviews, SEOs can learn what keywords people are linking with a brand  Getalistic has a good methodology to follow for using reviews to improve your product/service descriptions:  read here.  Sometimes, reviewers will even link to your company’s site.  The search engines do not care that this is a bad review, that link still has clout for your rankings.  At the end of the day, people talking about you and your company is far better than being forgotten or ignored.

None of this is to say that ALL publicity is good publicity.  JetBlue was once seen as a legitimate competitor to Southwest Airlines as the king of airline efficiency, but its image still has not fully recovered from stranding thousands of passengers (including leaving planes on the runway for up to 8 hours) after a snowstorm in February of 2007.  This came just two years after Thomas Friedman raved about their efficient information systems consisting of mothers-working-from-their-homes-across-the-entire-country in his best seller The World is Flat.  It turns out that it was a great system…as long as everything was working perfectly.  When it fell apart, the results were disastrous and JetBlue saw its stock price fall 70% over the next year.

Take all this advice within reason.  If you are getting 5-15% bad reviews, use them to build and improve your business.  If you are getting 80% bad reviews, go back to school and learn a new trade.

Finally, I leave you with this takeaway – encourage all your customers to write and publish reviews online, even the dissatisfied ones.  Put a link to your Twitter or Facebook feed on your site, or send people to your favorite yellow pages directory and ask them to review their experience.  Do not try to act as a censor (provided that it is not obvious spam or an attack from a competitor), encourage free expression and feedback.  Your ego may take a hit, but your business will love it.

-EW, Alumnus of the #7 ranked Kansas State Wildcats

BMI Surplus Site

Beacon announces the launch of the BMI Surplus website.  This is an extension of BMI’s main website which providing users the ability to search through thousands of used Hi-Tech products that are not yet available on the main site.  The database-driven search tool quickly produces a list of products based on keywords or product IDs that are input by the user.  The search results list displays the SKU, Product Name, Quantity on Hand a link to a request form (pre-populated with SKU #) so that online users can easily inquire on a product.

Last year location-based applications started popping up everywhere and had everyone speculating.  2009 was the year that location applications became user-friendly and widely available. Networks like Foursquare offer real time location information and larger networks like Facebook and Twitter are starting to include their own location-sharing features. What does this mean for businesses?

Unlocking the power of location can give many businesses a boost. Foursquare and now Google Buzz allows its users to “check-in” at various locations and recommend activities, nearby businesses, or local products to other users. This serves as free viral advertising and can be very effective. Twitter has started offering a location feature as well. You can choose a location for a profile, which helps other Twitter users find it. Also, simply submitting your business to local search engines makes sure your business appears when customers are looking.  Another way to use location to better your business is to segment email communication by location in order to provide relevant information to your customers. Gathering location data about your customers can help avoid high unsubscribe rates resulting from sending irrelevant information.

One final tip: Stay informed. New location applications and features will continue to roll out. There are plenty of great blogs and news sites available that stay up to date on tech trends. Learning about new location applications and features is the only way to start using them!

Professionals who are shocked when their competition copies one of their latest innovations bewilder me. How could they find out so fast? Did they know about this new unique promotional concept or product before it was released last week? Is this a case of espionage? More than likely, it is not. Intelligent competitors are not your colleagues; they are your clients. More importantly, you should be one of theirs, too, before they sail away and leave you in their wake.

Impede the number of late nights and weekends wasted browsing the web, and start receiving accurate information sent directly to you as soon as it is released. Simply follow their social media accounts, sign up for their email blasts and coupon offers, and become a member of their Web page or club. Consequently, you will have a handle on all information available. My dad was right when he taught me, “Work smart, not hard,” and this strategy, my friends, is a perfect example.

One of the best FREE tools is Google Alerts, http://www.google.com/alerts, and you should be implementing it every day. This tool will send you email alerts every time one of their triggers locates a company name, keyword, or phrase you entered in a news story, blog, or website. Do not be worried about the constant flow of emails you may receive; Google has already thought of this. For your convenience, you can set up how often you receive these gifts of knowledge: as they happen, once a day, or once a week. Here is how to do it:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts.
2. In the “Create a Google Alert” box on the right, insert your keyword in quotes, i.e. “Superhero Training Classes.” Using quotes will help ensure relevant results.
3. Select the Type of alert (news, web, blog, video, groups or comprehensive (all)).
4. Select your desired e-mail frequency.
5. Enter your e-mail address and you’re done!
6. And repeat…Enter your next keyword phrase, i.e. your company name, your name, a competitive company name, etc.

If you select daily notifications under the category of “Web,” tomorrow you will start receiving the latest Website pages that are being indexed by Google for your specific keywords/phrases. If you input very specific, niche terms, you may not get much on a normal basis. But if your keyword/phrase is more generic, you may find that you are getting too much and you need to refine your alert keywords.

Remember: always keep your friends close and your enemies closer.