Do You Have an Online Conversation Strategy?
For those of you running a seasonal business, you may often feel like you're on a roller coaster. One minute your inquiries and bookings are pouring in, the next they taper off to near silence. From an operational perspective, this fluctuating pace may work well for you on several fronts, alternating a hectic pace with a more relaxed one, or one seasonal business with another. But from a customer growth perspective, this hot and cold approach is far from ideal.
Any meaningful relationship is the result of regular communication, support, and attention—and this takes time and effort. Those in solid relationships will be loyal to each other, and the same goes for customers who feel they've been treated well—which makes nurturing your customer relationships throughout the year all the more important. If you're unable to maintain the 'romance' past your peak season, you can bet your competitors will take advantage, both on and offline.
Keeping the positive brand experience alive in the minds of your customers year-round takes dedicated focus, but that needn't feel like a daunting challenge. Think of it as an opportunity to properly map out your online conversation strategy and determine how it fits into your marketing plan. The bottom line objective is to ensure that when somebody is making that purchasing decision, your brand is top of mind, even if you're a heli skiing operator and it's mid July!
Revamped Website Launches Pro Ride Snowboard Camps' 2012 Season
There's nothing quite like good early snowfalls to boost the spirits of Whistlerites. And if honing your freeride or freestyle snowboarding skills is your goal this season, then a visit to the new Pro Ride Snowboard Camps' website at www.pro-ride.com is a great place to start.
When our old friends at Pro Ride first approached us about revamping their site, it was obvious what needed to be done. Their old site was dated and next to impossible for them to administer and amend. So we took the opportunity to start afresh and really showcase the 'awesome' factor that sets Pro Ride so far apart from any of the competition.
The result? An extremely visual layout, with epic, full background images, that makes it easy for campers to quickly determine what program is right for them while getting stoked about their time in Whistler. With a focus on delivering real time contents, the new site is chock full of recent news/blogs, trick tips from Pro Ride coaches, and latest video and photo posts. The new site sets the scene, builds anticipation and shows everyone just exactly what Pro Ride is all about, both on and off the hill.
Built on the Drupal 7 Content Management System, the new site includes a more fluid registration process, better program content display, and enhanced social media integration to keep growing the Pro Ride community.
Engaging with Video
How well can you remember life before YouTube?
Launched in 2005, it’s popularity grew so quickly it’s difficult to think back to a time when you couldn’t do a quick online search to find a video about pretty much anything. A recent study pointed to the number of Americans watching video via their mobile devices jumping more than 40% over last year!
The rapid growth in popularity of video-on-demand services like YouTube has fueled the advancement of the technology used to create videos (cameras, editing software, etc) and the technology used to view it (e.g. hand held devices and tablets like the iPad). This has been made possible by greater access to broadband networks.
Simply put, video content has become an essential component of online branding. Not only is it considered one of the more engaging formats to share information, but it's also a means to increase interaction (traffic, follows) from consumers not currently connecting with your brand. Yet how do marketers, already struggling to keep up with the content demands of social media channels and blogs, effectively leverage video in their marketing program?
Look before you leap.
Before calling your agency and commissioning an elaborate video production, consider how your video will be used alongside other marketing and communications tools. What aspect of your business is your video intended to highlight or what myth is it going to clarify? From that point you can collaborate with your marketing team to plan a strategy and move forward with production.
The Year of Google Updates & What They Meant to it's Users?
Has anyone else noticed that Google has had a rather large year? They launched a new social media platform, throwing Buzz to the wayside. There was the 'panda update', initially unleashed on February 23rd, only to receive continuous updates throughout the year (April 1st, May 9th, June 22nd and September 28th), ever sending SEO's into a spin (and they're still making updates—10 in the past month).
Updates were made to the Places algorithm, relegating reviews from 3rd party review sites, something that has definitely had a negative effect on many a business. Then, in a move that seemed to really upset the seo community they announced that keyword data, for users surfing the internet while logged into their account, would no longer be shown in Analytics, citing privacy as the main reason—and this is just the tip of the iceberg!
Although what I love about this job is the constant change and the need to be forever reading, researching and learning in order to keep up with everything happening and how to work with it, this year seemed almost over the top—and this was just from Google, forget everything else happening within the realms of an online marketers job description! So with all of this change, we thought that it would be nice to go over a couple of these changes, in a sort of 'Google state of the nation'.
For more fantastical posts, please see our archives
