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Marketing

Be Different

by Karen on April 16, 2009

I’ve been listening to a few different marketing podcasts lately and one of the recurring themes is that you need to be different (this is aimed at small businesses). There are lots of people out there who offer the same services or products that you do (welcome to the World Wide Web) so you need to differentiate your business from theirs.

Okay, sounds like a good idea, but how do you really go about doing it?

Well, one blogger has some ideas, though he calls it being interesting. There’s a good post on his blog (Hello, My Name is Blog) called 30 Ways to become the Most Interesting Person You Know. I have to admit, I haven’t read all the ways (and I heard him talk about some of them on an episode of Duct Tape Marketing, good marketing podcast). My attention span just wasn’t up to 30 different things. But one of the ways he mentioned really sounded good to me and I think I’ll start using it in the planning phase of my website projects.

He calls it ‘Avoid the Always/Notice the Never’ and he has a quick exercise you can do to get started. Basically, start by thinking about what people say about your industry (not your business in particular, but in general and we’re talking stereotypes here, they won’t always be true).

So, say we’re talking about web designers. We’d start by writing down all the things people say that start with ‘Web Designers always …’

I might come up with a list like this:
Web designers always use a bunch of technical talk that I can’t understand. Web designers always charge too much. Web designers always think they know more about my business than I do.

Then do the nevers:

Web designers never finish anything on schedule. Web designers never give any support for the website once it’s finished.

Now you have a list to look at to see how you can be different. You’ve just brainstormed what’s normal for your industry/business. You can pick and choose some of the statements to focus on and show how you do the opposite.

And it can help me as your web designer get a quick look into the industry and the competition and what people think of it.

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What are Extra Domain Names Good For?

by Karen on August 25, 2008

Not a whole lot, actually. When you bought your domain name (internet address or URL, like cornercode.com), whoever sold you the domain name probably suggested that you get a few extra ones, maybe with different endings or similar words in the name.

Should you get those extras?

That depends. If you’re trying to protect your name, you may want to buy the domain names that end in .inc, .biz, .org even, if you can. That way someone can’t set up shop at acme.biz when you are acme.com. You may also want to get domain names that are very similar to your name. If you are acmewidgets.com, you may also want to get acmewidget.com for the same reason. The last thing you want to happen is to have someone else’s website come up when a customer puts in your company name.

But should you buy similar domain names? Some people suggest that you can actually get traffic from owning just domain names. The only way that works is if that domain name used to point to a site and people are still typing that domain name into their browser to visit that now-defunct site. If your sites are similar and the defunct site had a following, then that’s a good way to get some new customers. If you’re buying a completely new domain name, it won’t have any traffic associated with it.

Web users are pretty savvy now, they don’t just type words in the the location bar of their browser, they type search terms into the search bar or into google. None of your other domain names will show up in searches because they don’t have any web pages associated with them.

So, if you’re buying extra domain names to protect your company name, I say go right ahead. If someone told you that buying 10 extra domain names that use different words for your products will get you traffic, well, they’re just trying to get you to buy more domain names (and give them more money).

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Should I have a Blog on My Web Site?

March 11, 2008

A lot of people have heard about blogs (web logs, a site where someone or a team of someones posts short articles on a particular topic) and I use blogging software (Wordpress, to be exact) on some of my sites because it makes it very easy to set up a blog and to set up [...]

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