Be slim, slender and let Google notice you
Posted on 16. Sep, 2009 by Franz in Web Marketing
I was just reading a bit today in my coffee session and saw this ad on slimming centers. Since the media throw occasional hypes on “Be healthy, be beautiful, be strong, be sexy, BE SLIM!” and all kinds of those, I thought to myself, “What the heck happened to their website?”
So I took the lift upstairs to my office and started collecting some key indicies on what the hell is going on. To my surprise, slimming centers in Malaysia is not doing a very good job online. I mean, come on. Think about it. How can this one and that one and another one convince you when all you see is this and that? Dear God, please help them.
Elioe.com’s white papers may not shed much light to you if you’re just a general reader, because stuff like that are what marketers should know before they even do the job. We’ve always iterated that Internet marketing campaigns should never come in one-price packages catered to each and every business because that would mean ‘doing a bad job’. SEO is one thing. Marketing concepts are another. Bring them together and you may just get the ideal campaign, or so called.
But wait – Are we turning our backs on the Internet right now, or are we just too busy complimenting the Hari Raya days?
Slimming Centers – What they can do to help themselves
I took a look at some of the ‘prominent’ entities on Google and I ended up with a few – Mayfair, Bizzybody, Esthetika, Marie France and Slimming Sanctuary. Well, at least they are ‘talked’ about in forums and blogs. One way or the other, these slimming centers can benefit much from the Internet (I’m looking at you all, slim-slender-and-beautiful-wannabe bastards).
One of the few marketing practices A LOT of marketers don’t do is to look at their internal resources before moving on to look at external ones. And when I say internal, I mean your client and yours. Here are some suggestions for you:
- First impressions – Capitalize on it. Run your UE, UI and source-checking run throughs’ before you even propose to the client. Use [marketers], [general users], [idiotic bastard], [competitor], [interested client] point of views.
- Look at their current state on the Web – Go do some searches and pin what the Web says about them. (e.g. Trends, acceptance, hype, behaviors, patterns, etc.)
- Question their state – And make some sense. Get to know their company (size, people, previous campaigns, web contractors, historical budgets on marketing, etc.)
- Check for competition – When I say that, I don’t mean Alexa Rank, PageRank, mozRank, TrustRank or stuff like that. I mean LITERALLY check their competitors out. Just like how you evaluate websites.
Four of those would probably keep a few of your boys busy enough for the week. That’s if you’re extensive enough. But why bring less food to the table when you can bring more?
Slimming Center – Ideas
Of course, why stay only in Mid Valley when you have enough financial bullets to open up 100 centers nationwide? Sure. That’s useful for your future clients. Since you’re already making it useful for fat blops in Johore to visit you, why don’t you go all the way?
- Check your marketing campaign, and target your campaigns by “state”, “city” or “town”. This will help a lot with your long-tail targeted search term, since search engines have placed importance on locality since 2007.
- Bring all your branches together. “www.slimming.my” and “www.slimming-penang.my” is double the cost, double the marketing effort and triple the fuss. If your hierarchy of branches work corporate-style, go for “www.slimming.my/penang” or “www.slimming.my/mid-valley”.
- Stop using terms like ‘weight loss’ and ‘burn fats’ online. They are not only very ineffective in many perspectives but can be detrimental to some of your marketing campaigns.
- Build an ‘internal’ community center for each branch. There isn’t any ’social’ media/networking without head counts. Encourage your staff to interact more and build relationships in their box. So when they get stuff like, “What are you working as now?”, a possible answer will be “I’m a slimming consultant.. XYZ slimming.” This method is very CULTURALLY-biased so beware.
- Acquire data – On each and every visit. Set up a small ‘data collection’ campaign in individual branches and encourage users to just write in. You can also lie – e.g. “Just fill in 5 of your details and we’ll include + FAVOR you in the XYZ Slimming Contest: Win three (3) slimming visits!”
- Encourage information-based discussion (not just any discussion). Get writers or staff to fill in the content blanks with favorable information. Reward them, of course. This method is also culturally-biased.
- Break down your promotional campaigns into text-friendly formats and give it a good whip of content. This not only gives you a little extra spice in search, but it also eases users to share your content.
- Gather testimonials from satisfied and happy customers, and let them be your brand ambassadors. Link them up into your website and offer them widgets, connections, social profiles, etc. Your bargaining power will come in when you provide them with more offers on your products.
- When the mass media covers your story, capitalize on it. Don’t just let journalists do all the work. Be their friend, explore their community, offer back-to-back packages and provide them with wealth of information. In essence of search, there are many different ways to make printed materials benefit your website. That, is a trade secret. =)
- When you have events or stuff like this, be sure to include responsive campaigns. Your goal should always be data acquisition and enquiries, so make it easy for them to submit. For example, offer photo shoots, free full treatments, purchase-on-purchase, discounted beauty products and house-visit-with-TV-crew beauty treatments. On top of that, make sure they give you data, ask for recognition in their community and build a hype.
Of course, I don’t know much about them because I haven’t profiled any, and we’re keen to profile it at this current moment. If you want a personalized free consultation, why don’t you contact me and see how we can help you?
