#visualcue

I’m not going to lie. Things are starting to get pretty cool. The more I learn about Internet Marketing, the more fascinating I find it. I’m also starting to notice more and more internet related marketing going on every day. It’s also become increasingly easy to spot the good from the bad. It’s been a lot of work, but this month’s course in New Media Marketing has been so worth it. I’ve learned a lot, but the life changing takeaway has been by introduction to the value of podcasts. Holy cow! I am now subscribed to three different internet marketing podcasts. I’m learning real world, bleeding edge marketing from the top people in the field, in addition to the rock solid grounding I’m getting from an extraordinarily talented group of educators at Full Sail.

On an exciting note for me, the company I’ve been focusing on for my case study, VisualCue (www.visualcue.com) has started implementing some of my recommended changes on their website. I hope they’re making the changes because they think it’s the right way to go, and not just taking a shot in the dark :). The changes I recommended were relatively easy to make, and most to this point were straight usability fixes. Pretty soon I hope to be able to offer them changes “under the covers” that will boost their Google scores. In the industry, they call is “SEO”, Search Engine Optimization. Just think of it as “Google Juice”. The better your website looks to Google, the farther up the page your company goes. If you can get yourself on or near the top of the search results, you can change the life of your company. If a customer can’t find you, they can’t buy your product.

For the last four weeks, the class content has been on web design and usability. I knew that there were things called that, but it never really occurred to me why things are the way they are, and how you can tell the difference between a good website and a bad website. I think we all know good and bad websites when we see them. Typically, we see a bad website for only a few seconds, then find something else to do (in the industry, that’s known as “bouncing”) on a better site. With at least 4.7 billion pages to choose from (WWWSize 2016), the odds are pretty good of finding something better.

My goal for this four weeks has been to start a process to turn a passable website into a good website (usability). Simultaneously, I learned the basics of how to get users to come to a website (search engine optimization / SEO), find what they need, and keep them coming back (findability). The process of getting my case study company (VisualCue.com) from where they are now, to where they need to be is going to a long road. The good news is, they have some really talented folks and good designers. Many of the website “fixes” will be easy for the company to execute (I just have to hope they take my advice as a relative Internet Marketing novice).

From changing the way the menus look to adding more user input and testimonials, each step in the process should cause the website to be a little more usable and a little more findable on the Internet. Currently, without knowing the name in advance, VisualCue.com is virtually impossible to find through the use of an online search engine (i.e. Google, Bing, Ask, etc.). Under the hood (so to speak), I’m planning to have them make some improvements to not only the content of the website, but how the search engines see and index it (part of the SEO process). Combining these upgrades with active participation in the online community through social media, blogs, etc., VisualCue.com will create more connections to itself from other websites. The more connections, the better the search engines can find them.

So, what’s the bottom line of my continuing mastery adventure these last four weeks you may ask? Make the website findable on the internet and convince people to stay there and use it (aka buy or use your) by making the site “user friendly”. If a user can’t find your product, they can’t buy your product (BizFilings 2012).

References:

Business Activity Monitoring Platform | VisualCue. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://visualcue.com/

Can't Buy Your Product If They Don't Know It Exists. (2012, May 24). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/sbg/marketing/advertising-pr/marketing-program-planning.aspx

I’ve spent the last four weeks starting to grasp what the Internet Marketing Master of Science is all about. Though I’ve been drinking from the firehose of knowledge, the weeks have flown by and I feel that I’m getting an initial grip on the material.

We didn’t waste a single minute this month, with selecting companies that we will focus on for the rest of the year. The end product will be a complete internet marketing plan for whichever company we’ve chosen to represent. The exciting part for me was being able to choose VisualCue, a big data company partially owned by my friend Daniel Amato. My e-mail recommending that his company be the beneficiary of my project got me a lunch with the CEO, an intro to the CMO, and a promise of support should I need it. While I’m hoping not to lean on them at all, it’s nice to know they are supportive of my efforts. 

This class in Internet Marketing Fundamentals has gotten my imagination energized. From developing a scorecard for VisualCue’s website in comparison to several competitors to a company SWOT analysis to discussions of retargeting, each precept built on the ones that preceded it. Despite my heavy use of every variety of software, I used Keynote for the first time! I found it a valuable asset and look forward to adding it to my professional “bag of tricks”.  

One other discussion I enjoyed this course was on the topic of click fraud (or how people rip off marketing companies by engineering overcharging for website referrals). It’s certainly something that can be applied at any company that engages in pay-per-click or similar marketing. VisualCue can potentially reap the rewards of knowing that click fraud is a major problem in the digital space.