Clara Lim's Blog

Clara is a Product Marketing Specialist for Autonomy Interwoven and has extensive experience working in email marketing, multivariable testing, online advertising, and Web content management. She joined Autonomy Interwoven with the acquisition of Optimost in 2007. Clara’s blog leverages her experience to provide advice for online marketers and Web content management professionals seeking best practices, and interactive marketing trends and strategies. Clara is an avid snowboarder and an MBA graduate of San Jose State University. Connect with Clara on LinkedIn

Let’s Really Get Personal

January 7, 2009 @ 1:23 pm by Clara Lim

One day, as I was sitting in traffic during Silicon Valley rush hour in an attempt to get home for dinner and trying to distract myself from the fact that I hadn’t moved my car in the last 5 minutes, I look up at a billboard ad for a well-known Vegas hotel with the caption, “250 a night, but just for you $79 a night.”

As I looked at the hundreds of cards around me, I thought “just for me, $79 a night? What a horrible billboard ad!” The fact that the billboard attempted to make it sound like it was offering me a unique offer from everyone else, but clearly wasn’t, just confused me. It was obvious that the $79 discounted price wasn’t specifically just for me, and saying it seemed disingenuous. Didn’t they know that it would be posted on a Silicon Valley or California Highway where drivers would see it? Couldn’t they have made it targeted to the geographic location, anything but merely slapping a “just for you” line at a poor attempt to seem personal?

Now because my background is in online marketing, and delivering truly relevant and personalized content to your audience is a mantra in the online world, maybe I was being a bit too critical. After all, it is a billboard ad and in the offline world it’s hard to be personal. You don’t have the wealth of data that you do online, or the technology to help you do something with it. You don’t know that the person reading your billboard is female, owns a Mac, and is driving home from work at 6:30pm. You can’t target billboard content so that it’s relevant different types of drivers. And you surely don’t know that your billboard is turning your visitors the other way. 

So okay, maybe I’ll cut them some slack, but what about the thousands of online Websites that aren’t targeting or personalizing their content? What’s their excuse? I mean I get it, I’m a marketer myself and I’ve been there, buried in never ending tactical lists with constant pressure to execute without enough time or resources to get everything done. But not targeting Website content makes a big statement to your customers: “I’m not investing the time to get to know you” or “I’m just not relevant to you.” And no time is better to start getting personal with your online visitors than now.

As consumers, we gravitate and buy from brands that get us, those that seem to be listening to rather than shouting, hoping that someone will listen. We try to filter and separate what’s relevant from the clutter of marketing noise we get inundated with. And those messages that aren’t relevant are lucky if we even notice.

I guess my reaction to the billboard reminded me how much I appreciate the opportunities that online marketing provides to marketers. Because in the online world, it’s easier to listen to consumers and create marketing that’s relevant, meaningful, and targeted to your consumer – the marketing that consumers want to see and hear, and the marketing that gets them to act. And to not take advantage of the ability to target means you’re delivering content that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to many of your visitors, or worse leaving them with an unfavorable impression like the impression I was left with from the billboard ad.

No Comments | Category: Online Marketing | Targeting & Engagement

Using Press Releases to Improve SEO

December 23, 2008 @ 2:55 pm by Clara Lim

Earlier this month, I attended a seminar where they showed an example of how a well-known B2B company is optimizing organic search rankings using press releases. By integrating search keywords throughout the copy of their press releases and posting those releases to their site, they are able to rank #1 for that search keyword. Coming from the world of Web Content Management, I had to chuckle at this, because it reminded me of how press releases had long been used for WCM demos to the point of nauseam. For those who’ve been there, rolling your eyes and thinking “not again” every time you saw another WCM vendors demonstrate how easy it is to publish press releases to their site, bear with me.

The reason why “posting press releases” was such an overused scenario for WCM product demos was because they clearly pointed to common problems in marketing: having the ability to create, publish, and update time-sensitive content in minutes. Although using press releases in demos have quietly lessened, the need to easily and quickly create and deliver content has become even more critical whether to publish press releases to your site or maintain a search marketing strategy.

 If you’re not already doing it, writing press releases with search in mind and simply posting them to your site can improve your search marketing. Incorporating your top keywords at the top of the press release (headlines, subheaders, and first paragraph), making sure top keywords are in your boiler plate, repeating keywords throughout the press release at an optimal (and I stress optimal) frequency, and connecting keywords with your product names are some of the simple ways to use them to improve SEO. 

 What I love best about this tactic is that it’s fairly easy to implement and the benefits can be twofold: more press, better rankings. What I’d strongly caution is writing press releases just to merely improve your SEO results. Press releases should always be developed with a strategic purpose, be well written and concise, and have newsworthy information. Too many of them today lack informative and compelling content, causing many people to treat them like junkmail. And writing them with irrelevant keywords that have no valuable content or connection to satisfy the reader’s intent of the search will do further harm than good.

 Press releases in the context of the WCM world already have a bad rep, so resist the urge to crank out daily press releases just for the sake of SEO, instead craft them strategically from both a search and journalist angle, and you’ll reap their multiple marketing benefits.

No Comments | Category: Online Marketing | Search Engine Optimization

Leveraging WCM for SEO

December 9, 2008 @ 4:57 pm by Clara Lim

Search has been such a hot channel in the past couple of years, and with good reason. Content on the Web exponentially multiples every second, requiring Internet users to leverage search to find relevant content and companies to make sure they’re the first results users see.

So many companies pour money into PPC campaigns even though, according to Google’s Avinash Kaushik, only 14% of visitors click on paid vs. organic results. With the economic uncertainty putting pressure on businesses to scrutinize their marketing spend; more companies will and should shift their focus to a more cost-effective approach for reaching visitors: SEO.

If you’re currently leveraging a sophisticated WCM solution, congratulations, because most WCM solution can help you optimize your organic search. Discovering this is like finding extra money in your pocket that you didn’t know about it.

Why? Because you don’t have to dish out more money to improve online results. Instead, you can leverage your WCM solution to manage your sites AND improve search rankings. What you will have to do, is invest some time in implementing SEO tactics.

Here are just some SEO best practices that you can start implementing today:

Tagging content with key search terms will help search spiders read and rank your content higher (especially if your site has flash or image heavy content), make it easier to manage your content, and can be done within the user interface of WCM solutions.

Using your WCM solution to include keyword rich copy throughout your site will enable quick and easy publishing of keyword-rich content.

Keeping your content fresh and up-to-date can help you rank high in search results for content before your competition, replace outdated information with content that can improve SEO, and provide your visitors with more relevant information.

Creating intuitive navigation and organization of content not only makes your site more user friendly, but also helps search crawlers navigate your site better.

Creating search friendly URLs in replacement of long, meaningless URLs with your WCM solution is good for both visitors and spiders, especially if you can use the search keyword in the URL.

No Comments | Category: Online Marketing | Search Engine Optimization | Web Content Management

Website Hall of Fame

September 29, 2008 @ 3:45 pm by Clara Lim

What if creating Websites was like a competitive sport like baseball or football, where the best players of all time are honored in the National Baseball or Pro Football Hall of Fame? And the playing field is a competitive battleground for the player that has the best stats.

Or what if creating Websites was like rock and roll, where legendary artists are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? And unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime performances go into rock and roll history for music lovers to pay tribute to.

The comparison of creating and managing Websites to sports and music isn’t too far stretched. The Internet is a competitive landscape. Websites today do battle for the attention of Internet users. With hundreds of sites going live daily, competition only gets fiercer. And like sports, the Websites that are at the top of their game boast high performance stats or Web metrics (like clicks and conversions) compared to their competition.

Creating Websites is also a form of art, like rock and roll. Engaging Websites that draw visitors in, connect with them, and continue to satisfy their audience have lasting power than the short-lived, one hit wonders.

In the short history of the Internet, there have been many Websites that have revolutionized the Internet and drawn masses of fans. If there were a “Website Hall of Fame” created today, Friendster and MySpace.com would be two of my nominations for popularizing social networks and engaging millions of users during their time.

Although there is no “Website Hall of Fame,” Time.com did recently publish the 50 Best Websites of 2008.

If you go through the list Time selected, you’ll notice that they are all fairly new sites, but you’ll also notice other common characteristics:

• Most leverage social computing like blogs, forums, and polls to get visitors to stick and interact with the site.
• Many offer rich applications, interactive activities, and games to get visitors to stay on their site.
• They have content that is informative, relevant, and doesn’t go stale.
• They are or were the first or among the first to offer something innovative

To create engaging sites like the ones recognized by Time, Websites need to be created, managed, and sometimes reinvented with the right WCM solution. Your WCM solution needs to give you the ability to facilitate social computing, serve rich applications, create relevant content, and deliver engaging Web experiences easily and quickly in order to stay ahead of the fast pace of the Internet. Having the right solution and tools will enable your site to perform at its best and maybe one day achieve “Hall of Fame” status, or at least one that your visitors will rave about.

Who would you nominate for the Web Hall of Fame?

No Comments | Category: Online Marketing | Targeting & Engagement | Web Content Management

Online Businesses Better Geared for Recession

August 26, 2008 @ 5:00 am by Clara Lim

Let’s face it; we’ve had better years than 2008. The sluggish U.S. economy, rising gas prices, and the housing crisis have many businesses worried about maintaining profits. Some businesses have already felt the pressure with stagnant growth and slashed marketing budgets. Others will be affected dramatically, but businesses that have built strong Web presence with investments in the right technologies and online marketing strategies will be well positioned to survive an economic downturn. Here’s why:

Shifts in consumer spending

Rising gas prices; they make us cringe every time we drive by a gas station. Yet, online marketers should be bullish to hear that rising gas prices are shifting consumer spending online. A recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive, showed that one third (33%) of U.S. adults claimed they would rather shop online than in-person due to the high price of gasoline. Many online marketers are already taking advantage of high prices at the pump by enticing consumers with free shipping and return promotions. The NY Times recently published an article stating that big retailers have seen double-digit sales growth online, because consumers are increasingly going online to save on gas:

Online offers the measurability of ROI

Doing business on the Web offers measurability you just can’t get offline. Offline, you don’t always know what marketing was effective and what wasn’t. You may have heard the saying, “I know half of my marketing works, I just don’t know what half.” Online businesses say otherwise. They have the transparency and the ability to measure the return of each marketing initiative. They know where and how to spend their money wisely and effectively. In fact, many increase investments in strategic tools like targeting and multivariable testing during economic slumps due to the high ROI.

Ability to enter global markets

With the right technology in place, businesses can expand globally to offset the effects of declining consumer spending in the U.S. Companies with robust WCM or targeting tools have the capability to quickly create and deliver multi-lingual, localized sites or serve targeted content by the geographical location of a Web visitor, making it easier to tap into new and lucrative markets.

Focusing on the brand

Even with declining sales, online businesses have built (and should build) brand relationships with their customers online. As consumer spend less, companies will have to work harder in creating brand loyalty and recognition to compete for less demand. Companies ahead of the curve have implemented blogs, forums, games, videos, and other interactive applications to engage and maintain a dialogue with consumers. If you haven’t been to Taco Bell’s website, you’ll find that they’ve created some fun ways to get people to come to their site with their “Rap Name Creator” and “Taco Fu” game, just to name a few.  The tactics are quite savvy if you ask me. It keeps their brand fresh and top of mind once consumer spending picks up.

Business agility

Lastly, online businesses with the right technical and online marketing foundation have the ability to respond to dramatic changes in the marketplace quickly and cost-effectively. Being able to rapidly rollout a landing page to support an ad-hoc campaign or respond to a competitive move is critical, especially in an unpredictable economy.

No Comments | Category: Online Marketing | Web Content Management