Etika Marketing

Category: Inbound Marketing

  • How to Recover from a “Marketing Malfunction”

    How to Recover from a “Marketing Malfunction”

    On October 31, I blogged about how one marketer dropped an f-bomb on his mailing list and paid the price with lost subscribers and customers.

    It was more of a “what not to do” post.

    Now I’d like to explore how you can recover from a blunder like this, the marketing equivalent of a “wardrobe malfunction.”

    More cynical people might assume spin doctoring is in order, but the simplest solution usually requires little more than eating a jumbo slice of humble pie. Be honest with your subscribers and customers and admit you screwed up.

    Let’s take a look again at our WordPress consultant’s marketing malfunction, when he dropped the f-bomb in an email subject line, not once, but twice.

    Subject: BYOB Live – How to Fix a WordPress Website that is Totally F**ked Up!

    Karl — Yes, I know that the f-bomb is entirely inappropriate for professional communication. But sometimes a site gets so messed up that polite language simply can’t capture the agony of owning it. Sometimes something happens that screws up a site so much that it makes you despair for your humanity. One of our members has such a site.

    In my previous post I discussed how his blunder cost him customers and subscribers, but let’s explore how he should have responded.

    First, he should have apologized immediately on the same day or no later than the next. This wouldn’t bring back the people who had already unsubscribed, but it might have given him a chance to make good with those on the fence. Maybe even recovered a few paying customers.

    Here’s one possibility for an apology email:

     Subject: BYOB Live – I am So Sorry!

    Karl – I owe you an apology for my earlier email. It was entirely inappropriate and I’m sorry if I offended you.

    I wanted to get your attention for what I truly believe is a critical issue for WordPress site owners. But I went too far. I promise it won’t happen again.

    I still would like you to attend this important webinar and I assure you that I will conduct this webinar in a professional manner with family-friendly language.

    Again, you have my sincerest apology. Here are the details for your webinar:

    The goal is to keep it simple—a sincere apology followed by a renewed invitation for the free webinar.

    Of course, he could have quietly taken his lumps and pretended it never happened. That’s what many businesses do, but I don’t recommend it—especially if you received a number of complaints.

    Yes, it’s damage control (not a bad thing if you’re sincere), but it’s also important for maintaining the relationship between your business and your customers/prospects. As an inbound marketer, your greatest asset is your relationship with your customers and prospects. It’s your job to repair any damage you do.

    Most businesses typically face problems other than profanity in their marketing communications. It’s often a technical glitch or a problem related to order processing, quality control, or customer service. But your response should be the same: Acknowledge your blunder and offer to make good on the problem.

    If it wasn’t your fault (like a major storm delayed product deliveries), then tell your customers that you understand their anger, concern, or inconvenience and are sorry they had to experience it. Acknowledging your customers’ pain or frustration goes a long way toward solving the prolem. Sometimes, people just want to know that they’ve been heard. And always be sincere in your response, not patronizing.

    But, if the screw up truly is yours, then respond according to the severity and your customers’ reactions. Always fix the problem. Then, if you feel that fixing the problem isn’t enough, offer them something of value, like a discount, an extension to a subscription, or a gift. Sure, it’s a bribe, but it’s also a good investment in retaining your customers.

    What stories do you have about marketing blunders and their resolution? Please share them below.

  • How to Lose Clients and Alienate Your Readership

    How to Lose Clients and Alienate Your Readership

    I was preparing this morning for my weekly webinar with the LinkedIn Inbound Networkers Group, where our topic was “Marketing Dos and Don’ts.” I remembered a doozy of a marketing “don’t” from two months ago: A pair of emails sent by a WordPress consultant to his email list. This consultant ran a paid membership site offering WordPress video tutorials, custom plugins and help forums.

    Back in August, when the first of these had emails arrived, I was absolutely stunned by the author’s idiocy. I was going to say “cluelessness,” but “idiocy” is the only word that truly conveys his colossal blunder.

    Here is the first email subject line and opening paragraph (asterisks are mine, not his):

    Subject: BYOB Live – How to Fix a WordPress Website that is Totally F**ked Up!

    Karl — Yes, I know that the f-bomb is entirely inappropriate for professional communication. But sometimes a site gets so messed up that polite language simply can’t capture the agony of owning it. Sometimes something happens that screws up a site so much that it makes you despair for your humanity. One of our members has such a site.

    Now, I’m not prudish and I sometimes use similar language among people who aren’t offended by it. I even worked on a project back in 1994 that resulted in some very profane and funny conversations with a client. That project was The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 1: A-G and the client was Random House. Huge project that took most of a year to complete.

    The high-pressure New York City publishing world is infamous for salty language, but the conversations we had with the client during the course of producing this book were priceless. Here’s a snippet of a typical conversation that my wife, my employees or I would have had with the client:

    Client: Go to “f**k your buddy week.”

    Me: Let me open the last “F” file. OK, “f**kwad,” “f**k-you lizard”—here we go, “f**k your buddy week.”

    Client: We need hyphens between the words “f**k your buddy” for the entry and in some of the citations, including “f**ck your friend week” and “f**k your buddy night.”

    And we went on in the same vein. At first, it was hard to resist the desire to giggle a bit at these absurd conversations. But, by the end of the eleven-month-long project, we’d become immune to the power of the f-bomb and other cuss words.

    Thirteen oversized pages of tiny dictionary type were devoted exclusively to variations of the f-bomb in this enormous tome that documented more than 300 years of American slang. I think the f-bomb had the dubious honor of claiming more pages than any other slang term in Volume One.

    My point of this odd segue? There is a time and place that’s appropriate for certain language. I can even think of a few markets where you might need an f-bomb or similar language for authenticity.

    But not for a general business audience.

    Twenty days later I received a follow-up email from this consultant (again, the asterisks are mine):

    Subject: BYOB Live – How to Fix a F**ked WordPress Website Redux!

    Karl — Yes, I know that the f-bomb is entirely inappropriate for professional communication. Hey the last time I sent this out a bunch of people quit! – But that’s how bad it can be sometimes. So bad that the last time I tried this EVERYTHING went wrong. Tomorrow we’re going to take another crack at it.

    He obviously didn’t learn anything! In this email he admits that “a bunch of people quit” after he sent his first email. I assume he lost subscribers to his email list AND paid members of his website. And then he does the same thing again!

    Like I said earlier—idiocy.

    And he paid the price for it with the loss of subscribers and customers. All for a little sensationalism.

    So, is there ever a good reason to shock your audience?

    Sure. Grabbing attention with a provocative email subject line or headline is nothing new. In fact, it’s often critical to cut through the clutter.

    But ALWAYS consider your audience and your credibility with them.

    When I moved from Pennsylvania to Texas, I suffered a bit of culture shock. People back in the northeast tend to throw around mild profanity casually; whereas, people in Texas avoid it. Even a common explicative like “damn it” is often rephrased as “darn it” or even “dag-nab-it.” I’m not kidding! I’ve even heard people refer to “hell” as “H-E-double hockey sticks.”

    So imagine the response you’d get dropping an f-bomb on someone uncomfortable saying “damn it” or “hell.”

    And you’d better believe that our WordPress consultant had such people on his mailing list and as customers. Emphasis on HAD. I’m sure many of them have departed.

    In case you’re wondering, his general tone and language in previous emails was always inoffensive and Rated G—about what you’d expect from someone writing to a general business audience. That made his f-bomb even more shocking because it completely deviated from the persona he’d established in his communications.

    Have you ever received—or used—similar emails or marketing messages that crossed the line? What about ones that shocked but were effective? Please share!

  • Selecting a WordPress Theme for Inbound Marketing

    Selecting a WordPress Theme for Inbound Marketing

    With the re-launch of the Etika Marketing website under a new design, I thought it only appropriate for the inaugural blog post to discuss WordPress theme selection. The theme I’m using for this site is called Good Bones, by Make Design, Not War (MDNW on Themeforest) and available from Themeforest. (9/10/14 update: The Good Bones theme has been pulled from sale at Themeforest after many promises from the developer to update it. A perfect example of why you need to consider developer support of a complex theme or theme framework. Themeforest is not at fault; they are merely the marketplace. I suggest avoiding any themes by Make Design, Not War. I’m now shopping for a new theme for this website.)

    I’m a big fan of using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) for inbound marketing websites. I enjoy the design flexibility, the ease of expanding capabilities through plugins, and its search engine friendliness.

    Clients appreciate the ease of adding content via a familiar WYSIWYG interface. I like to tell newcomers to WordPress that adding a blog post is as easy as editing a document in Microsoft Word. And they don’t need to deal with the technology to perform routine tasks.

    Another huge plus for WordPress sites is the availability of thousands of themes, which allow you to alter your website design with only a few clicks.

    Well… maybe.

    A (Very) Short History of WordPress Themes

    As WordPress has evolved, so have themes. In the old days you had a fairly straightforward collection of templates and CSS (cascading style sheet) files and a limited number of configuration options. It was rather easy to recognize WordPress-driven websites without peeking at the source code.

    If you wanted to modify your theme beyond the out-of-the-box configuration, you needed to delve into CSS and PHP coding to make those changes—and pray the next release of WordPress didn’t break those customizations.

    Then themes like Thesis appeared, giving the more tech-savvy among us the ability to control many design features via dashboard controls. More complicated CSS and PHP customizations were managed via customization files. This made the theme more stable and less likely to break during both theme and WordPress updates.

    Along with Thesis (and later, Genesis) came the rise of “super themes,” called “frameworks.” Frameworks are base themes that allow for much more sophisticated customizations that could be saved as “skins.”

    Not long after, WordPress introduced “child theme” capabilities. Child themes allow users to customize a theme without changing the original or “parent theme’s” files. A child theme is a set of customized CSS files, templates, function files, and images stored in a separate directory. Only the customized files are stored in the child theme’s directory. WordPress will automatically use the parent theme files if a required file is not presentin the child theme.

    When a developer releases a new version of a theme, only the parent theme’s files are updated. Customized child theme files usually need to be updated manually.

    In addition to themes based on frameworks and others based on parent-child relationships, we have hybrid themes that use both.

    What’s Needed in a Theme?

    So what does all this have to do with selecting a WordPress theme for your inbound marketing site?

    Be patient, I’m getting there.

    Today’s WordPress themes can range from simple “old school” themes to hybrid monstrosities with frameworks, child themes, skins, additional settings files, and even special plugins.

    So what’s the best theme for you?

    In the old days you would either pick a theme whose design appealed to you or you would contract with a web designer to create a custom theme for you.

    For now, let’s forget about custom theme development and focus on how to pick an off-the-shelf theme.

    As an inbound marketer, you should have the following elements available in the theme or through third-party plugins:

    • Ability to create landing pages free of distracting elements like sidebars and navigation.
    • Flexibility to customize your sidebars (third-party plugins like Custom Sidebars can provide this capability if your theme doesn’t).
    • Responsive design, where the layout automatically adjusts for the screen size or device type, like desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones. Third-party plugins can handle some functionality for mobile devices, but it’s far better to have a responsive design built into your theme.
    • Ability to easily add boxes to your pages and blog posts for calls to action. This can also be handled through third-party plugins, like Call to Action.
    • Flexible page layouts, like multiple columns and boxed content, which are easy to create and modify. This allows for more modern and dynamic page layouts.

    How to Shop for a Theme

    Here’s how I shop for a theme:

    • Find several themes that have designs that appeal to me or my client. I usually ask clients to provide several examples of websites they like, then I review those sites with the clients to establish the design elements they want and need.
    • Check to see which themes support my “must have” design elements, like responsive layouts for mobile devices, flexible page design via widgets or customizable boxes, sliders, tables, etc. I also view the theme documentation, if available, to get an idea how the theme works from the inside. Some themes require extensive CSS experience for customizing, while others don’t.
    • Look for active developer support. I want to see recent theme updates–at least within the last six months. And the developer must maintain a community support forum. That’s an absolute for me. A support ticket system is also appreciated. Some themes have a flat license fee with lifetime upgrades and support, while others require periodic license or support subscriptions.
    • Read customer reviews about the theme. Start with the negative reviews first to expose any fundamental problems. Then move to the support forum and view the common user complaints and questions. Not every developer will offer refunds, so do your homework, especially if the theme is expensive.
    • Lastly, buy the theme and test it on a development WordPress installation. You won’t know if a theme is right for you until you try it. You might have to sacrifice the cost of a theme to test it, unless the developer offers a good refund policy. How much you are willing to sacrifice is up to you.

    Regardless of the theme you buy, expect to invest several hours to learn how your theme works and even more time to tweak and adjust your site to your liking. How much time you spend and how much frustration you experience depends on how wisely you pick your new theme.

    The plus side of picking a smartly-designed and well-supported theme is the time you will save after you’ve covered the initial (unavoidable) learning curve. Changes and updates should go much more smoothly—your site will look great—and it will meet your needs as an inbound marketer.