Retail Hell

Last year was the worst in decades for retailers and this year looks to be even worse. So consider how hard it is to convince retailers to spend money on technology right now.

Selling tech products to the IT manager of an industrial enterprise is one thing. Selling IT to people who would rather be out on the sales floor checking merchandise or greeting customers is another. They have little money and less patience -- especially for well-worn lines like “data is your most valuable asset.”

That is an actual headline from a brochure draft a software company CEO showed me last week. The vendor -- the first and largest ERP supplier to restaurant chains -- needed his 12-page brochure rewritten within 72 hours so that it could be printed in time for a trade show. He asked a lot of questions about whether I understood ERP and whether I could write to an audience that is not necessarily enamored with computers.

I got the project based partly on a brochure I’d written in 2008 for a supplier of retail point of sale and back office systems. He liked the theme of the brochure and the fact that there was a theme: Technology is more than a solution. It’s an answer.

(Anyone who sells tech products knows that prospects get tired of hearing about “solutions” all the time.)

The CEO also liked how that theme leads naturally into the key issues retailers care about -- and the relevant technology payoffs. Issues like:

• How much stock should I buy?
• What should I buy?
• Which employees perform, and which don’t.

The presentation could not be more direct. Above all, it is not technology evangelism. The way you know if you have a good theme is if the text almost writes itself, and is also an easy read for the audience.

By the way, do you want to see the new tagline I created for the CEO who sells restaurant chain ERP?

Turn food into money faster.

Case Studies’ Fine Line

“We have amazing Flash developers but we don’t have the depth of Flex experience we needed. What’s different about Universal Mind is that they build truly enterprise class Flex applications in a tight timeframe.”

--JibJab Co-Founder Gregg Spiridellis

In customer case studies the idea is to make you look good without making your customer look bad. Messages like “our customer was a mess until we showed up and fixed everything” don’t work on a whole bunch of levels.

That’s especially true in B2B marketing where success may come from partnerships between companies highly skilled in closely aligned but not identical competencies.

Take this case study for Universal Mind, an expert in rich Internet application development -- and JibJab, the well-known entertainment brand famous for its political parodies. Both companies have a lot of knowledge when it comes to deploying highly interactive experiences in Adobe Flash. Although each firm has “amazing Flash developers,” JibJab tapped Universal Mind for UM's more specialized expertise in developing enterprise applications that employ Flash.

The key in making the case for Universal Mind without undermining JibJab is to clearly delineate the roles of the partners, not simply trumpet Universal Mind’s technical skills. That’s a much more strategic sell and it actually helps push the technical message as well.

You can read the case here.

You can also see some of my other web writing for Universal Mind here.

Just the FAQs

When you consider the time and cost involved, adding a FAQs page may be the next thing you do to increase your website’s value.

As we all know, search engines love fresh content as well as content that serves the needs of the user rather than just the needs of the content author. That’s why current SEO algorithms rank pages higher based on internal semantic criteria combined with external criteria like whether pages are frequently viewed in response to actual questions typed in Google search bars.

Semantic criteria distinguish between “dumb” text like keywords in web page headers and “smart” text that reveals syntactic clues indicating the content is indeed meant to inform or educate rather than simply sell.

So it’s amazing why more websites do not include a FAQs (frequently asked questions) page. Simply list the 10 or so questions that: a) differentiate you in the mind of your audience; b) showcase your expertise in your field; and c) educate your audience about some of the mysteries or popular misconceptions about your area of activity.

A FAQs page may convey exactly the same messages as a marketing web page or a white paper -- but both people and search engine robots will process the information differently. Just listing the right questions goes a long way in helping readers quickly get a grasp of what’s key. It’s also a great exercise in positioning yourself because it forces you to distill your message down to the essentials and in the correct order. And when you consider the time and cost involved -- adding a FAQs page may be the next thing you do to increase your website’s value.

Most websites that do post a FAQs page do so as documentation -- for example, to help customers resolve common technical issues. But the same principles that make FAQs effective in that role also make FAQs great as a marketing tool.