This is from the WSJ article:

“GM marketing executives, including Mr. Ewanick, met with Facebook managers to address concerns about the site’s effectiveness and left unconvinced advertising on the website made sense, according to people familiar with GM’s thinking…”

Given that I don’t know GM’s campaign particulars, I can only guess why the ads weren’t performing. That being said, I can’t help but think GM’s marketing agency got it seriously wrong somewhere along the line. This has left me with a number of questions and quite a bit of confusion.

Are GM’s Low Click-Throughs Really an Indication of an Ineffective Platform?

First of all, Business Insider reports GM’s  $10 million Facebook ad campaign suffered from a low click-through rate (CTR). Business Insider suggests part of the problem could be the fact that Facebook ads have a lower than expected ROI in general. I’m not so sure you can make this assumption, or lay the blame on Facebook’s ineffectiveness.

With a budget of that size, I think it’s fair to assume that the company was paying for a huge number of ads. Combine that with a low CTR, and I can’t help but think targeting and segmentation were significant factors here. It suggests to me (keep in mind that I’m purely guessing at this point) that one (or more) of three things happened:

• They targeted far too wide of an audience.
• They targeted the wrong audience.
• They approached the right audience, in the wrong way.

Can You Really Compare Facebook Ads to Other Platforms?

I also question the comparison of Facebook and Google AdWords. (Before I go any further, I want to say that I have a huge amount of respect for Wordstream. I will happily recommend them to anyone, and I do so regularly. This is not critiquing the company, their report, their quality, or their work. I’m merely exploring the topic and questioning BI’s use of the study in this context. With a bit of luck, I’ll maybe even inspire a bit of healthy debate that I can learn something from.)

With no way to see the data, how it was collected, or where it came from, I don’t feel I could confidently make the assumption that Facebook ads are less effective than Google ads. (Not that I’m 100% confident with any of my other assumptions in this big rant little post, either.)

Another reason why I don’t think it was an appropriate use of the study in this instance is because Google AdWords and Facebook ads are far too different. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.

I enjoy these kinds of studies and find them helpful, but at the same time, I don’t think the Wordstream team intended the study to be used in this manner. I think it was merely intended to make people think about where their money is going and make sure they consider all the options. I think it was also a great way for them to publish their findings and encourage discussion.

To put this another way: The scientific or healthcare communities don’t make major decisions based on a single study. They subject the study to a peer review and perform multiple studies on the same subject before making a broad, definitive decision like cutting a $10M ad campaign.

So, do I think Facebook ads are less effective that Google’s paid ads? Not yet. I think they’re two very different systems, with different users, different advertisers, and as a result, the two systems are worlds apart.

And while we’re on the topic, let me present this idea: When users search Google, they’re actively searching for a solution to a particular problem. When users are on Facebook, I don’t think their sole reason for being there is to research a product. So, the idea of measuring the ROI of your Facebook ad campaign by the number of sales and click-throughs you get is a bit flawed.

(According to one Oracle study (Word Doc), “24 percent of consumers say they incorporate their online purchasing activities on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, nearly the same number of people said they didn’t even know this is a possibility.”)

The Buying Process, Yardsticks, and How Facebook Ads Fit Into It

Now, I don’t know about you, but the buying process I go through when I want to purchase a vehicle is quite a bit different from the one I follow when buying a pair of shoes, a magazine subscription, or music. I have, on rare occasion, been known to click on a Facebook ad to purchase a Christmas gift. BUT, I can promise you that I’ve never clicked on a Facebook ad to purchase a vehicle. I don’t research vehicles on Facebook, either. (I usually talk to mechanic friends of mine to find out what they’ve been fixing lately.)

What if 5% of these click-throughs resulted in a sale? What’s the value of a click-through, anyway? How many of those click-throughs are converting? It could be very little. It could be almost all of them. In truth, you just don’t know. Someone could be clicking on the GM ad, checking out the car, and looking at the vehicles offered by their competitors, before stopping in at the dealership on his or her way home from work the next day.

Alternatively, let’s say a wife saw an ad with the picture of a car she likes. She realizes it’s the car from the TV ad she saw the night before. So, she turns to her husband and says, “This car looks really interesting. I hear it has x, y, and z features. Maybe we should get one of those?” The husband then stops at the dealership to look at the car. They may not make the final decision for weeks or even months after that. Are they going to say they heard about the car on Facebook when they made the purchase? Not likely.

Because GM has a fairly strong presence on Facebook, it might not notice much of a difference, but I’m worried that they won’t realize what they’ve missed out on. That’s like saying you lost the $5 million lotto prize because you forgot to buy a ticket for Monday’s draw.

I’m not the only one considering the validity of the Business Insider article and GM’s decision to pull the ads. Marty Weintraub of Aim Clear also has doubts and published his own rant on the topic, which has a number of other issues I didn’t bring up here. Business Insider also made some interesting arguments on both sides of the fence.

I don’t know. Am I way off base here?  The only thing I’m completely sure of is this: I would have loved to hear the arguments GM’s marketing team gave against the campaign. I think it would have been quite interesting and informative.

This poll led to some great discussion and I added my two cents as well (I’ll let Mike tell you about that on his blog) . The truth is, I’m just not that excited about it. I don’t see it doing well, and while it may rope a few businesses, and a number of sites will likely use it, it just doesn’t have the power.

Is +1 Really a Social Thing? No, but Yes

When people originally started picturing +1, they compared it to the Facebook ‘Like’ feature. There’s no denying the similarities, at least not after it is out in the wild and on your favourite sites.

Unfortunately, for social media lovers, +1 is missing a key feature known as aggregation and conversation. Facebook does this, and does it well. So, other than seeing an ad that some guy from Tuktoyaktuk I know through Twitter clicked or +1′d (which is a social failure all on its own), it has no real purpose.

That isn’t the only role +1 is speculated to have on the Web, however. And really, iIt isn’t exactly meant to be social.

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+1 As a Business Thing and Cash Grab

Not long after it launched, Search Engine Watch published several speculations about the real purpose behind +1. Aaron Wall and Loren Baker said it’s purely a business thing, created specifically to push Adsense ads, Google Accounts, and other features. I completely believe it. Anyone who read the Adwords blog that day would too, and let’s not forget Google is in this to make money.

By launching +1, it can push businesses to use Place pages and other local, business specific features it has been known to monetize in the past. This is fully their right, and just may work, but I highly doubt they’ll be successful.

Ruud Hein of Search Engine People also spent some time speculating how the data gathered through +1 could be used for ranking purposes. Ok, I could maybe see that working too, but…

Google Forgets About One Important Thing

There is no doubt in my mind that, if business owners see their ads will be found more easily because someone clicked a button, they’ll pay to opt into the feature. This side of the feature will likely fly.

What they did forget about, however, is that people actually have to click and use the +1 feature, and they have to be in your social network. Will people really use it? I honestly can’t see it.

Facebook’s ‘Like’ and Twitter buttons already do this and have already been adopted by users. Why would they switch now? I sure wouldn’t. Right now, I have two groups of people I share things with. Business associates, with whom I share things on Twitter, and family/friends, who I share with on Facebook. What incentive or benefit do people have to switch?

The other issue is that people actually have to go back to the SERP at this point to +1 something. Now, I don’t know about you, but I spend a fair amount of time wandering online. I jump from link to link, switch tabs, and do a fair bit of digging. Why in the world would I waste time researching something or pressing the back button repeatedly to find a stupid button that may or may not be seen. Others, such as Lee Odden and Jon Henshaw have expressed similar concerns.

Here’s another conundrum Google has: I have three distinct social circles: 1) Friends and family who don’t know and don’t care about what I’m mumbling about, using, and sharing online because it’s usually work related. 2) Work related people who actually may be interested in the things I share. 3) Friends and acquaintances, who understand and may be interested in the odd tidbit, but really could care less for the most part.

Why would I share personal things I like with group #2? Why would I share work related things with group #3? In the SERPs, they get it all, even if it’s research for a client project. On my social networks, I can share it with people who are already looking at what I have to say. If it’s personal, I share it on Facebook. Work related stuff gets shared on Twitter. Why would I need a third?

I would also like to add that what I find relevant, quality, and interesting is only shared by a small percentage of my social connections. Many times, I pass up the links they share elsewhere because they simply aren’t that valuable, in my opinion. Having these same links show up in the SERPs isn’t going to make me any more interested.

(Photo: Derek Gavey)

What Google Needs To Do If It Ever Hopes To Go Social In Any Way

I think marketers and Web-savvy people pretty much agree that Google sucks at anything social. They just don’t seem to grasp the concept, and either mimic things other companies already do well, or create something so disjointed it’s essentially useless as a collaboration or social tool. Google has yet to decide where it stands in a world out of its control.

The way I see it, businesses are jumping into social media with both feet and figuring out what to do with it all afterward. Many of them post without any real central location or any way to access it all. They fail to create a hub of value.

Google, one the other hand, has already been including features such as tweets and status updates in the search results. What it really needs to do is aggregate all social content and serve it up much like it does in the search results already. However, give users an option to filter it globally, within their social circles, and divided by lists.

Give users a global dashboard, much like some social apps already do, where they can see all of their social networks at once, search their content, and find what they need. Create a hub that consumers can use to see a company’s social interactions and reviews all in one place.

Greplin is already very much like this for your own social stuff, and Trunkly is great for aggregating several sites into one place, but they both still have a long way to go, if they intend to become an aggregated social hub. Sadly, they need access, power, and money. Sort of like what Google already has, but has dedicated mostly to neat toys. In short, Google needs to stick to what it does best: search.

The other thing Google needs to do is connect all of its services together so that they play nice with each other. My Motorola ATRIX phone automatically picks up all of my contacts, including those stored in Google contacts, and puts them all together in one central location where all of my apps can access and use them. Why doesn’t Google do that?

Of course, I’m not sure I’d want Google having quite that much information about me, but it already has way more information about me than any other company on the planet, most of which it can gather without permission or a password. Make things like Google Docs easily sharable and workable right from the major social networks. I’d love to be able to share a calendar or item from Google Docs with a quick push of a button or two, or define groups for collaborative work, without having to set up each site separately. Remove the repetition! And for goodness sakes, make sure all it’s current offerings are integrated and work together!

They have true potential here, and simply are failing to use it.

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Well, there’s more to it than just saying ‘we’ll do a little bit of x, y, and z’. Your UGC needs to match your marketing plan and business goals, but it also needs to cater to the needs and desires of your client base. In short, the strategy must satisfy everyone involved and provide value on one side of the conversion process or the other.

User-Generated Content Basics

You’ve been hearing the chatter about this type of content for months, so I’m not going to go into the basics. If you’d like to know more on those, you’ll find some great posts on TopRank (stats and integration), WiseGeek (nitty-gritty, point form ABCs), and Chris Grannell (Psychology of User Generated Content PDF).

We’ll add a great slide presentation here, too:

The Strategy’s Target

While it’s tempting to do it all with one strategy, you have to decide which product or service is most important. Which one needs the most attention and will hopefully leave you open to integrate other offerings? You can offer multiple opportunities at some point, but focus on one main goal at a time.

There’s a bit of a trick to this. If you get too granular, you will have to push really hard to get user-generated content and run the risk of not getting any at all. Not to mention, the views and interest in the subject will be lower. If you get too broad, your message and the purpose gets too muddled and diluted to be effective.

If you’ve become too general, you’ll have to start creating multiple sections, complex systems, and lots of rules or hands-on editing to keep it going. And while this is occasionally pulled off with flare, it usually just makes the system difficult for everyone. If you make it difficult, people just won’t bother using it.

Here are a few examples: An auto sales website might focus on Fords or used vehicles. A web designer can likely get away with pushing website designs or logos. If you are a shoe manufacturer that only creates one type of shoe, on the other hand, you can get away with pushing the shoe type and cover the entire site.

Gathering the Ideas For Your UGC Strategy

Every time I create a user-generated content strategy, I have to start be creating pools of information that we can manipulate and tweak in order to generate the ideas that we can either ditch, use, or put on hold. Sounds simple right? Just start listing off ideas, right? Well, not quite. Not saying that you won’t get lucky and hit a winner, but it’s not exactly a methodical approach.

To get this pool of ideas, I create lists of information we can pull from users and how those things can be integrated into a website.

Pre-Sales Funnel Needs — What do users need before purchasing your product or service? What do they have? What do they need to know if they’re going to buy from you?

Product Needs — What do users need while using your product or service? What sorts of things do they use with it? What can they do or use to get more from the things they purchase from you?

Post-Purchase Needs — What sorts of needs do they have after using your product or service? What’s their next step? What sorts of materials do they have to offer after use?

Website/Marketing Capabilities — What sorts of mediums do you have at your disposal that would make use of the previous three lists?

Under each of these, I just start listing all of the things that fit including information, products, services, ideas, and problems users will encounter at each stage. Then, I wander through various target-rich environments and see what the chatter is all about, what questions they’re asking, and what they’re praising. These get added to the lists, and by the time I’m done, I’ve got massive lists of ideas I can pull from.

In your last list, mark down the types of mediums or concepts your website either currently handles, or could handle with a reasonable amount of tweaking. Photo albums, membership areas, video uploading, audio collections, user-generated blogs…the list is endless. At this point, list them all. You never know when something odd will become a unique streak of brilliance. (Hey, it happens!)

Associate a Need, Want, Or Desire With an Idea

Here’s where your creativity, cleverness, and insanity come in handy. Look at each item and think about how you could present that information to others. While I’m in the middle of the process, I give myself extra brownie points if I can come up with something that will make people laugh, prompt a trip down memory lane, go ‘aaaahhh how cute’, or drive (healthy) controversy. You’ll also want to give yourself extra brownie points for any ideas that naturally show off the benefits or traits you’d like to highlight in your products and services.

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Consider User Habits, Interests, and Preferences

Hopefully, by now, you’ve already profiled your target audience, your complementary businesses, and vendors (and know which of these three you’re focusing on here). This should be a complete profile which includes everything from demographics, beliefs, habits, economic situation, and any other little tidbits you can gather together.

Then, compare these details to the ideas you generated in the previous step, tossing out anything that might be offensive or otherwise unusable. Next, mark anything that’s likely ineffective because of these same traits and move them to the bottom of the list.

Choose the Best Concept

At this point, I’d move the ideas with the most brownie points to the top of your list, go through them, and try to find reasons to keep or discard each one. Be ruthless! (Oh, and do yourself a favor and write them down. Trust me. You only have to forget once to figure out why.)

Don’t toss out the ideas you didn’t use. You’d be amazed how many of these simple ideas can fit together. Also, if your idea *gulp* fails, you’ll have plenty of other ideas to fall back on.

Go ahead! Try it!

A short while ago, Charlie Southwell of the soon-to-launch Screendrip asked these same questions. I certainly don’t claim to have answers he was seeking, but I do think the answers are subjective. I think the right answer depends on how you look at the situation.

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Content Is More Important

As humans, our instinct is to judge and assess everything we encounter. Our brains automatically want to identify friend from foe, good from bad, and helpful from harmful. Since the days of cave dwelling and spear throwing, our ability to assess our surroundings and place everyone on the scale from 1 to 10 contributes or harms our chance of success and survival.

When you meet a complete stranger for the first time, you use all the information you receive about that person consciously and subconsciously to form an impression of them. Their bad fashion sense, for example, will influence your opinion just as much as, if not more than, their posture and the way they carry themselves.

By the time the stranger opens his mouth and extends his hand, you are already 80% sure of where he fits in your mind. If he speaks poorly or says something distasteful, it will surely lock him into a lowly position in your mind. If, contrary to his appearance, he speaks positively and impresses you, you’re likely to reassess him. The stranger will stick out in your mind, at the very least, just like lawyers with long hair and hippie clothes or the clean business suit-wearing punk rocker.

Think of your site as the stranger. His clothes are your design, his posture, your navigation and layout, and his words are your content. The hand he extends? Your comment system and contact information. If you routinely say things (produce content) no one wants to read, use, or enjoy, the visitor’s opinion of you is going to decline sharply regardless of where you put it.

The bullshit posts on Techcrunch or the poorly researched content CNN has published in the past are good examples. If this happens too often, it will severely damage their credibility, if it hasn’t already.

That being said, the value of content is subjective; how much content is worth varies from person to person and depends specifically on the individual’s knowledge base and situation. For a small business owner new to the Web, a guide to creating a successful website would be worth its weight in cold. For the Internet marketer who has been online since the mid 1990s, it’s redundant, old news, and wasting his time.

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Context Is More Important

Have you ever come across an amazing tool, a great resource, a smart individual, or a wonderful business and thought it was a shame that no one else knows about it? Or, thought about how sad it is that it’s on an unusable or horribly ugly platform? This is a case of bad context taking away from the value of the content.

It’s sort of like handing out $100 bills to everyone who walks passed you. If you were to offer me a $100 bill with no strings attached, you can bet your bonnet I’d take it. I wouldn’t think twice. What’s it worth? $100!

For me, that money has value. It would pay my power bill, put food on the table, or pay my son’s school fees. If you were to do the same thing in the middle of the cow pasture, however, it’s not going to work out quite how you’d like it to. To the cow, that $100 bill is getting in the way of what he really values: Food!

If you were to create a comprehensive travel guide on Antarctica, this bit of information would be priceless on a travel site. This information isn’t exactly widely available, and for travelers interested in going somewhere different, it would certainly fit the bill. If you were to promote this content on the financial social site Tip’d and publish it on CNN Money, however, most visitors would be disappointed in the content, if not annoyed.

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Great Content, Publishing and Marketing Go Hand In Hand

The way I see it, you can’t create content without considering where you’re going to publish it and where you’re going to market it. You also can’t decide where you’re going to market the content or where you’re going to publish it without considering the content itself. It’s sort of like trying to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without bread, peanut butter, or jelly. You have to consider all three, at the same time, by putting each element in priority.

If you want to market in a particular place, you need to choose a host for your content that performs well on that platform or in that niche. You also need to create content the visitors there are interested in and would find valuable.

If you have a particularly great piece of homeless content, you need to identify the right site to host it. You also need to determine which social site or marketing platform that content would do well on. The same can be said for your host. If you’re asked to create content for a specific site, find the right marketing platform and determine which content would be best.

Which is most important for you? Content or context?

Guest blogging (content placement) is one of my favorite ways to build good links, expand a company’s reach, build authority, and bring more traffic to a site.

Guest posts can also be a smart alternative to paid links — many believe the links acquired through guest posting are worth more because they’re located in the content, rather than in a sidebar, or list of links. They’re less likely to disappear; they have a one-time cost, and give you the most bang for your buck.

If you want all this, however, you can’t just drop guest posts on the first site you come across. You have to choose the destination sites very carefully.

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Find Authority Sites To Guest Post On

Social Media Today recently published a list of the 10 Places To Find Blogs To Guest Post On. In it, the author listed several places that maintain collections of authority sites. This is excellent advice. It works well, but you can’t rely on this alone.

First, use search to find the ones the lists above have missed. Advanced search queries are a powerful way to find good guest posting opportunities.

You can find out more about advanced search queries here:

• Google Search Basics — Google’s Web Search Help
  
• Link Building Search Queries Collection — Search Engine Journal
  
• 21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries — Search Engine Land
  
• Long List of Link Searches — SEOmoz
  
• Link Building Tools and Content-Based Link Opportunity Analysis– Ontolo
  
• Link Search Tool — Solo SEO
  

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Sort the Great Guest Posting Opportunities From the Good Ones

Finding the best places to guest post involves more than just locating authority sites on a related topic. In fact, if you focus purely on the link value of guest blogging, you’re missing out on the real SEO and marketing value this tactic can generate.

You need to find a spot to guest post that matches your goals and attracts your specific target audience. It should reflect the skills or strengths of your business, and open the door to future opportunities.

Being a copywriter, you’d think I’d post mostly on copywriting sites. This isn’t true. Instead, you’ll find I frequent SEO, social media, and Internet marketing sites, as well as various industry-specific sites. Why?

While there are plenty of authority sites in the copywriting industry, these sites have very little value for me:

• I’m rarely hired by other copywriters.
  
• My customers don’t read sites focused on copywriters.
  
• My business and I are painted into a corner. If I only post on copywriting sites, I’m perceived as being strictly a good writer. And while I do have excellent copywriting skills, I’m much more than that. To be a great copywriter, you need to know about more than just spelling and grammar. In reality, copywriting online involves SEO, social media, conversion optimization, branding, business, marketing, usability, buyer behavior, and much more.
  
• There’s no opportunity for growth, if I stay in the copywriting niche.
  
• I have more competition within the industry. This isn’t to say other copywriters disappear once you leave the industry, but unless you’re willing to get out there and stand out, you’ll blend in.
  

When I guest post, I focus on helping others see the value in quality copywriting and how to use it to their advantage. I help others understand how to integrate content into their businesses and websites, how to create winning content strategies, and how to achieve and surpass their goals because that’s what my products and services do.

In return, my guest posts have earned award nominations, become a recommended resource for governments and university professors, generated clients, and opened the door to opportunities I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. This is all in addition to the buzz, traffic, and additional links the practice initially created. This would have been much more difficult to accomplish if I had stayed on my own blog.

I would say these  benefits are worth the time invested in choosing guest post destinations, and far more valuable than a $2,000 paid link. Don’t you think?

You can and should do the same with your guest posting strategy. To get started:

• Make a list of authority blogs and content-based sites.
• Study their style, direction and audience.
• Make connections with the site owners.
• Craft and publish your content.

That’s it!

Do you have a guest posting strategy?

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Identify Your Competitors

Sit down and make a list of all the websites and/or businesses you would consider your biggest competition. If your customers aren’t turning to you, who are they turning to? Keep in mind this may not even be something in your direct niche.

For instance, one of my clients produced videos and taught classes on how to type in a healthy manner on various devices. They didn’t really have much in terms of direct competition, but what they were competing with is the many ergonomic devices out there. This made their competitor market huge.

So, yes, even if they don’t seem like direct competitors, if your target audience might choose someone else, you have to include them in your plans.

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List Their Strengths and Weaknesses

You need to know what it is your competitors do well and where they need to improve. So, make a list of strengths and weaknesses for each one. This will become your ‘power list’.

One you’ve recorded everything, go through, item by item and list how you’re better than that competitor and how you outperform them. Once you have this, you’ll be able to lay the groundwork for your copywriting, your marketing plan, your business model, and almost every element of your business.

Layout Each Competitor’s Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy your competitors use can tell you a lot about your market and how best to find them. By listing out the main way each of your competitors generate business, you’ll be able to use the same concepts and ideas yourself. Keep in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean copying them! Doing that will also mean you’ll copy their mistakes!

As an added bonus, you’ll be able to analyze each competitor’s marketing plan and identify areas, segments, and concepts they’ve missed. This will give you years of information and ideas for years to come, particularly if you refresh your competitor analysis on a regular basis.

Find out what types of places their using to generate traffic. Where are they advertising? What kind of referrers do they have for their website? What sorts of keywords are they using? Which audience segments are they targeting? Particular regions they’re performing well in?

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Competitor Content Analysis

Take a wander through your competitor’s content strategy. Start on their home page, go through their product/services pages, look through their blog posts, their guest posts, social media content, everything.

As you go through, make note of:

• What features and benefits do they place an emphasis on?
  
• What style and tone do they use?
  
• How have they structured their content? Does it work? Why or why not?
  
• Have they used link bait or buzz content? Was it successful, and if so, why and who did it attract?
  
• Have they been using specific social networks? Which ones? How?
  
• Where have they been placing content?
  
• Have they been focusing on certain target audiences, uses, products, or ideas?
  

At this point, you already have the framework for a comprehensive and effective marketing plan. You simply need to incorporate your own goals, priorities, ideas, and needs.

The Stitches website and marketing campaign is ok, but I would personally like to see them match their clothing and the hip, warm atmosphere of their stores. In real life, Stitches staff are friendly, helpful, and know a thing or two about fashion. They are eager to help you find different sizes or create looks, but if you’re with something else, they’ll leave you to it and just help you switch sizes and return the clothes to the racks.

In short, they’re intuitive to the needs of the customer, and I’d love to see this reflected in their online marketing. I hope they’ll find some helpful tips here, and if not, I hope that you’re able to get some good ideas or thoughts for your own website.

Stitches Email Marketing

One of the emails I received from Stitches looked like this:

They use ‘Add Sale to Your Style!” as their subject line. Now, I know who this email is from, and remembered signing up for it, but a subject line like that made me think twice about whether it was another spam mail or not. Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to be clever!

I guess my real  issue with the tagline/subject line is that, when I buy something on sale, I don’t want it to look like I bought it cheap! I want it to be my dirty little secret. I DON’T want my clothing to look like I bought it on sale!

I think they could have come up with something far more effective. Even “Stitches Fall Fashion Sale” or “Fall in love with Stitches’ fall fashions” would have been better.

Once you open the email, you get this:

Looks good, right? Amazing sales! (To be honest, I can’t remember if it gave me a choice between text and html emails when I signed up, but if it didn’t, it should! They should at least add tags to the images so I can figure out what the email is about without downloading the images.)

My biggest complaint with this email is that I want to be able to click on the various sales advertised and immediately start buying! Unfortunately, when I click on the $3 knit tops and leggings ad, I get this:

And then this:

And when I click on the “graphics tees” ad, “graphic hoodies”, and the “amazing jeans” ad, I get the same thing. If I had wanted to click through for the faux leather jackets, I’d have discovered they disappear completely on the site, with no hint as to where they may be.

It’s really too bad they missed the sales opportunities in their email marketing campaign. I would love to see them code each ad separately, so that when I click on one, I can find the sales items instantly. Now, as soon as I land on their home page, I find myself thinking “where are they? Is it only certain styles? Are they in a different section?” Even if they linked them directly to the category pages, it would boost their conversions.

Website Marketing and Usability

I thought they might have coded the ads separately on the website homepage, but alas, these weren’t clickable at all. In fact, if you look in the bottom left corner of the main graphic, you’ll see there is a choice of 4 main home page graphics. This was difficult to spot and impossible to use. Clickable flash would have been a much better choice. This is prime real estate that could be boosting the interest in their products!

Well, I shouldn’t say none of the images weren’t clickable. The ’6 Reasons To Dream of Jeans’ article? When you click on the image for it, you immediately get a new tab with the main graphic and are able to page through a series of images depicting girls in various pairs of jeans. This doesn’t help me because I can see what I want, but still have absolutely no idea where to find each pair so I can order it.

Also, a bit of text about which body shape each style was best for, the benefits of each type of jean, or even how to tell the difference between the six styles would have been informational and given me a reason to look through them.

Category and Product Pages

I really liked their navigation and how, when you click on a category, the navigation stays open so you can easily switch between them. The text could have been bigger and easier to click, but it is one of the best designed features on the site.

The item pages like their graphics tees page was nice and clean and the products really pop out at you. That being said, I’m a little confused as to why there are jeans advertised above the fold in that section, or why they’re there at all really. The naming of the different products would have been a great spot for them to show off their creative side. Naming 10 shirts ‘graphic T’ tells me essentially nothing. Imagine: If I tell you they have a graphic T you should buy, would you know which one I meant? How about if I said the ‘Disgruntled Money Bags T’?

Have a look at their Monopoly themed t-shirt. There’s no text. I have no idea what the shirt is made out of. I don’t know if it’s going to end up being a dry clean-only item, and while we’re on the topic, why would it suggest belts to go with a t-shirt, when I’d be much more likely to buy a pair of matching jeans? Suggest belts on the jean product pages.

One company who does product pages astoundingly well is Think Geek. Their descriptionsare so much fun I’ve actually clicked through the different products just to see what they’d written. Stitches wouldn’t have to get that creative with their product pages, but information about the products written in a chic, hip voice would definitely improve their sales and help the customer connect with them a bit.

Overall, when I wander around on the Stitches website, I feel like I’m window shopping, rather than actually wandering in their store.

Their shopping cart software is mysteriously not working. Not sure why, but it was probably in my best interest. It could have been a very expensive night and my credit card would’ve been feeling the weight. (PayPal option would be great folks! Not sure what payment methods you offer, or if you have a secure checkout because, well, it doesn’t say and I can’t get to the checkout page.)

Their URL structure and titles are also quite unfriendly. When I want to bookmark certain products…say I’m watching to see when they go on sale…The titles tell me nothing about which product I bookmarked, there are no unique descriptions, and the URLs tell me nothing. So please, use referral strings, but for the love of pete, please do something with your titles! Even when they’re shared on social networks, there is nothing decent describing what I’m sharing and no way to manually change it myself.

Next point: When I want to buy a product, let me see the entire product…back, sides, top, bottom, whatever. Stitches does an excellent job giving me a close up, but I don’t want something dorky on the back of the shirt. The way it’s set up now, I can’t tell.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

This part was quite fascinating to me:

Remember that email I got? Well, if you click the Social Media icons at the top, it will take you to each one of its social profiles. On their website? NONE of them are clickable! I was quite disappointed when I had to fish the email out of the trash to find their social profiles. (The bottom of the page had a Facebook like button…so I guess my initial statement was a little inaccurate, but c’mon! If you’re going to have buttons above the fold, make them usable!)

Stitches On Twitter

Stitches does have a branded Twitter profile and its user ID matches the site URL. Two points for them! This is important because it makes them relatively easy to find and you know you’ve got the right one when you get there.

They’re interacting a little with other Twitter users, but they’re using the account mainly with Twitterfeed to tweet out links to teen fashion trends. I admit this made my heart break a little. For a store that’s so friendly and good at connecting with girls and guys 16-30, they’re not showing it here.

Most of their links are to Teen Vogue articles. Why are they not creating this stuff and hosting it on their own website? Where are the links to their great sales? Their fashion advice? Regardless, they’re generating a lot of ad revenue for someone else’s site. (This could be because their site isn’t working, but personally, they’d be better off to get the site fixed and tweet more of their own links than sending everyone elsewhere.) In short, their account needs balance and a human touch.

Stitches On Flickr

The Stitches Flickr stream is quite small, but considering the fact that it’s only been in use since April, I expected it. Unfortunately, like their emails and photo shoots, they don’t tell me what clothing the models are wearing, where to find it on their site, or even where I can find these photos online so I can see them in use. All it says is “BTS 2010″, which again, tells me nothing.

There are tons of opportunities here, and Stitches have missed many of them. I would love to see them embrace the power of this medium! What about customer photo shoots? Creative contests? Ten pairs of jeans you can put with a particular shirt that’s on sale that month? This last one could be great because they could put together ‘fashion packages’, so that when someone clicked on it, it would add all the clothing items from a picture or set of pictures to the shopping cart.

The Stitches YouTube Channel

I was quite happy to see Stitches is on YouTube! My first thought was that there were going to be great interviews with their fashion experts with tons of tips on stretching your wardrobe, the latest trends, makeup tips, or even just videos on *gulp* teen issues.

Well, they don’t have any of that, but they did upload two ad kind of things. Again, I’d love to see information in the description about the clothes shown off in the ad, links to the items, what their ‘Back To School’ collection was based on, what the trends are this season…something! I’d like to think that people would subscribe just to see their ads, but unless they take lessons from Old Spice, I just can’t see that happening…at least not people who will buy their clothing.

Stiches Facebook Fan Page

With almost 20K likes on the Stitches fan page, there is tons of marketing power here! They’re doing a pretty good job of using it too. Some people are uploading pics of themselves in the hottest Stiches fashions. Their video and notes sections have groups of ads (more than their YouTube channel) and they let you win tickets for a local event. They put up images of the sales ads, but again, nothing is clickable and there aren’t any links to where you can find these items.

Sadly, while fans are speaking up and sharing their love of Stitches, the company is doing very little interacting with its loyal customers. Even a quick note back to some of their customers would be a great investment. Also, why is their fan page opening to their wall when the hook for their visitors is on the free tickets page? Why not create a mini-ad page for people to land on?

Stitches did happen to reveal some information about their website on their Facebook page: Their site is down (duh! Lol) and the online store is being rebuilt. This is great news! I’m a little confused as to why they’d disable the online store before the new one is ready, but I’m hoping there’s a good explanation because they have to be losing a fair chunk of change. I’m also quite confused as to why they’d continue with their online marketing campaign. I thought the idea might be to convince people to go to their brick and mortar stores, but I can never find the fashions they advertise online in their stores!

Closing Thoughts On the Stitches Online Store and Marketing Campaign

If I could give any suggestions to Stitches at all, I’d strongly suggest that they study their competitors. What do they do well? What’s working for them? What isn’t working? What aren’t they covering?

They need to figure out exactly who their target audience is and find out what’s most important to them. Generate content they’ll find interesting and valuable, even if it’s just a collection of funny cartoons or jokes about the issues they face.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I think teenagers really want to see themselves in fashionable clothing. They want to feel welcome and accepted and they want to feel popular. This is where Stitches marketing power will come from. This is where Stitches will really be able to break their industry open and begin to claim a fair chunk of the market share. In fact, I’d love to see them come up with an online app that people can upload pictures of themselves and virtually ‘mix and match’ outfits. They could even use the images of schools, malls, or other popular hangout locations in the background.

They need to hunt out complementary businesses and figure out ways to team up and offer deals and opportunities their competition hasn’t. Music, beauty, magazines, electronics…there are an unending number of ideas and possibilities here.

Stitches needs to shake their corporate image and start to stand out.

Their site is also impossible to find in the search engines. They are in dire need of some SEO and some ad campaigns if they hope to revitalize their stores and making some serious profit.

Again, I wish Stitches well and hope they make use of their online marketing, whether they find and use the information in this post or not. (Which reminds me: If Stitches hasn’t got any sort of buzz monitoring or Google Alerts set up, they need to. They need to figure out what’s being said about them and use the information to their advantage.)

I also hope you were able to follow me through this audit/case study and pick up some ideas you can use in your own ecommerce stores.

In recent months, Google has introduced social and real time results to its regular SERPs in addition to an increase in personalization. With more and more people out of work and bending under financial strain, new websites and competition are popping up everywhere. The big question is what are you doing about it?

In terms of basic SEO, there isn’t much besides keeping up with the changes and doing what you can. Social Media is definitely starting to play a much larger role in many marketing plans. In fact, the latest study suggests 66% of government agencies have even got onboard. But what about your marketing plans and the strategies you create for others? Are they changing with the introduction of personalization and an increase in competition?

The Internet Marketer’s Guide to Battling Personalization?

One thing is for sure, sites that don’t cater to the user are going to be left behind, if they haven’t been already. Site owners need to start considering how they’ll go the extra mile in order to make the user feel at home and become a favorite. On the other hand, webmasters also need to keep it profitable. No easy task, for sure.

Usability

Usability has become almost a trend word, but there really is something to it. After all, the more easily I can navigate your site and find what I want, the more money I’m likely to spend. You might be thinking your website is already quite user friendly, but like someone who smells his own body odor for too long, it can be hard to spot the obvious.

Having a usability expert is one way to fix this. And, if you choose a good one, you’ll find that he or she has the uncanny ability to spot things that most of us don’t think of until they’re fixed. If you can’t afford one, but would still like to make improvements, talk to a partially technologically-challenged person and have them test your site.

Sit down with them at the computer and watch as they go through your website completing various tasks. This could include purchasing an item, signing up to your RSS feeds, finding specific information, and many other seemingly simple actions. Take note of how long it takes them to complete each thing, where they look, and the items they click on. You’ll find that doing this with a few people will help identify trouble spots. (Bonus tip: When they first open the site, ask them what the site is about and what they see first. This can be extremely powerful information!)

Conversion Optimization

Often confused with usability, conversion optimization can be a long, drawn out process. Experts in this field use analytics, live tracking, and many other components and tools to figure out what types of visitors use your site, what they’re looking for, and where they’re going. From there, they will create defined paths customized to meet the needs of each type of (profitable) visitor in order to boost conversions.

While this is no easy feat, there are steps you can take on your own to improve conversions. Site testing, analyzing your own analytics by creating custom events, and using tracking codes to find out what your customers are up to, what they like, and what they don’t like. Then, you can make the appropriate changes and test it out.

Site Optimization

While this is technically part of usability, SEO, and conversion optimization, I think it’s important enough to deserve its own category. This covers the technical side of the website and makes it work more efficiently and more accurately. In my eyes, this breaks down into two areas:

Data Optimization — This is a big one for sites with large amounts of information that are accessed by the user (For example, online catalogs, complex structures with numerous departments). These techniques use various structures and code systems to organize this data, recall it faster, and more accurately.

Web Design Optimization — Techniques such as combining or separating images into PSDs, improving the focus on particular elements, and improving the loading of the CSS through Javascript make the site faster, improve usability, and boost conversions.

These things might not help you overcome the effects of personalization and an increase in competition, but they can certainly help. If nothing else, you’ll be able to make the most of the traffic you do get.

So, what are you doing to help counteract personalization and improve the performance of your site?