Leaving No Stone Unturned

If you like to watch people, they call you a people-watcher. So, I guess that makes me a google-watcher. I like to reading every news release they put out, and I'm seeing a trend when it comes to advertising.

When the Internet became popular some proclaimed that all other forms of advertising would become obsolete. Well, ten or so years later and Google is poking around in many of those traditional media channels. Now with Internet radio that can be listened to from any computer or streamed down to your cellular phone, is radio advertising going to have a resurgence?

In March 2006, listeners to the classic oldies station WMTR-AM 1250 heard the first Genealogy Today radio commercial [ mp3 ] as I expanded my offline marketing efforts. Months after the ad campaign finished in July, people were still commented how they had heard about my site on the radio.

Now we're in 2007, and with the launch of Family Roots Radio, I see another excellent and very vertical advertising opportunity. Of course, I am biased being responsible for the marketing of the show. But, setting that aside, I'm excited to see how Internet radio performs against the traditional airwaves. Do people listen to Internet stations all day long?

Family Roots Radio is going to be broadcast on Modavox's VoiceAmerica Channel, which has been broadcasting since 1999 and is the largest network of Internet Talk Radio stations. Modavox already knows how to monitor and track listeners, and they will tell us the exact number of impressions delivered to the show. A recent Arbitron report noted that over 50% of Internet users consume streaming media!

As Family Roots Radio launches tomorrow, I'll be running that same ad and it will be interesting to see if it gets a better response. WMTR-AM 1250 also had a stream of their shows, so even though it was a N.J.-based station, the listeners spanned the country.

What's next? Perhaps some video advertising, comparing the power of cable to the phenomenon of YouTube.

Do They Know What You're Doing?

If you run a genealogy web site, you probably (or maybe not) spend most of your time building the business by adding more content, or working on your marketing efforts to drive more traffic to you site. But do you ever ask yourself if the people arriving at your site understand what you're trying to offer them?

Many people (especially earlier this month while I was on a great genealogy tour) ask me what Genealogy Today is all about. And the more often I get asked, the better I get at answering. But, the better I get answering, the more I begin to realize that the Genealogy Today home page wasn't as successful at conveying the same message. [The home page has been improved since I wrote this post]

Often it's the evolutionary process that creates this disparity, so you should expect this to happen if you often engage in a variety of projects -- involving different type of information, or geared towards a slightly different audience.

There are plenty of articles out there on the topic of testing, but they typically measure success based on the number of visitors that complete a specific task. How do you measure whether or not someone understands what you're actually doing after they visit your web site?

Find Yourself a Genealogical Niche

If you're a small genealogy business owner, stop posting general information like census data or passenger lists on your site, the big companies will always outpace your efforts. And our industry is seeing an increase in the number of medium companies (e.g. WorldVitalRecords.com and GenealogyBank.com) joining in the fray.

Yes, many genealogists are frugal and will often seek a free source for the information they are looking for, but as these medium companies grow and the bigger companies invest more and more in mainstream advertising, will the next generation of genealogists even think to check your site for these commodity items?

Compound this changing climate in our industry with the glut of keyword-happy Google AdSense web sites, and the visibility of a smaller genealogy web site will clearly be on the decline.

One of the solutions is to hone your collecting skills and expertise on smaller, more unique information sources and then become the best online resource.

Another reason I'm looking at this strategy is that the affiliate marketing opportunities available today (versus several years ago) are more focused on new customer acquisition. By specializing in more unique resources, you have the opportunity to reach individuals that may be interested in genealogy but not actively pursuing the hobby.

For example, a couple of months ago I stumbled upon a World War Two ration book in an antique shop. The book had interesting genealogical information on it, so I bought it. When I got back to the office, I did some research and found that there weren't any online repositories of these little books.

Now, as I'm collecting and expanding the WW2 war ration book database index on Genealogy Today, I'm also attracting military enthusiasts and researchers.

And the last marketing incentive for creating a specialized online resource is the ability to establish links from non-genealogy web site. Developing a highly focused page on the topic will get you good search engine placement, thus webmasters will find your page and link to it. How can they resist when you're the only site with an abundance of information on the topic, right?

The remaining question is how many niches can you establish and still have enough resources to be remarkable in each!

What's Your Weakest Link?

Between running your business, worrying about year-end accounting, and doing some planning for the new year, it's a challenge to find the time to stop and look at where you're NOT doing a remarkable job. But, perhaps such an exercise may yield better results in the long-term.

If you take a moment and think about what part of your business doesn't quite run as smoothly as it should, or is there a typical business function that you haven't even addressed. This should be part of your planning for the new year. Do what you do better before you attempt to do more.

So, I asked myself last month, what could I do better? The answer was improve my customer service. What if instead of waiting up to two days to get a response from me, customers could get one in a matter of hours? Sounds like a great plan, but how can a small business afford to provide remarkable service like that?

Enter the Virtual Assistant!

The explosion of the Internet created a whole new industry, giving talented people the opportunity to work for companies remotely. Then International Virtual Assistants Association defines a virtual assistant as, "an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services."

There are many VA's out there looking for opportunities to fill up a 40 hour work week. The best part of this arrangement is that you can get what you need (say 5 hours of help a week) without having to foot the cost of hiring a full-time (or even part-time) employee.

Interesting, right? So, rather that try to fix the real problem (i.e. I'm wearing too many hats to provide my customers with prompt responses), bring in some extra help to offset it. When you distill down something like customer service (for a small company), it shouldn't add up to more than a few hours a week. (If it's consuming more than that, perhaps you have a weaker link in your business and need to dig deeper)

Several years ago (when the VA thing was starting), I contacted several VA's (and a few contacted me), but could never get past the mental block of what could this person really do for me that I'm willing to pay for. It's really the exploration of what your weakest at, or what you're not even getting to altogether, that will help identify where to invest in outside help.

Striking a Genealogical Balance

As 2005 came to an end, I thought about possible resolutions for 2006. One of the things that has bothered me lately are the emails I get complaining that Genealogy Today is just another paid site.

It always strikes me as odd, when the site (launched in 1999) didn’t have any subscription databases until the end of 2003. But when visitors voice their impressions, I do listen.

While I am not a Buddhist, I do put a lot of creedence into the philosophy that everything should be in balance. I follow this in my personal life all the time through the holistic therapies and remedies I use for any ailments. So, why shouldn’t I apply it to my business.It made me think back to June 2000, when MyFamily.com acquired RootsWeb. The announcement said, “the acquisition will provide the RootsWeb.com site the financial backing to expand its focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging family history research. The RootsWeb.com site will expand with additional technology tools, increased family research content and a greater range of genealogical resources.” Did RootsWeb really need to be supported? Or were there higher powers at work trying to put MyFamily back into balance?

Well, this was unlikely a holistic action to balance their growing collection of subscription information, but it did give me the idea for my resolution. Well, at first, it just made me wonder what the ratio of subscription versus free data was.

I’d always had plenty of free content, both organic and through acquisitions, but never thought to monitor the quantity of free versus paid names. So, I added a feature to an administrative page that I have to show me the exact counts of all paid a free databases. And, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the site was not too far out of balance at 56% paid.

So, since then I have been resolved to getting (and maintaining) the site’s data collection at a more exact balancing point. And I am pleased to share that since February this goal has been achieved and the ratio has stayed at 50% (+/- 0.75%) ever since.

Whether it’s the free vs. paid issue, or original content vs. affiliate links, you should always try to maintain a reasonable balance. Have you looked at your own site lately? How balanced is it?

Did You See What I Published Today?

I read an interesting blog post today on a Geek Blog by Phil Burns. He said his company instituted the following doctrine for it’s employees: “If the customer didn’t see it, you didn’t do it.” What a great creed for publishers (webmasters and bloggers ARE publishers, by the way).

For a long time I have given myself the goal of posting something of value to genealogists every weekday on Genealogy Today. But reading this doctrine made me wonder if those countless efforts had ever been seen by anybody, and thus according to Phil, had I actually done them?

I have no way of measuring my net accomplishments, but I can share with you the steps I took to make sure that, at a minimum, the things that I published could be seen.

1. Did I put appropriate keywords in the META tag?


2. Does it appear in the site search?


3. Can I find it on my site map?


4. Does it deserve a home page link?


5. Is it newsworthy? (then it goes on my news page)


6. Is it pressworthy? (then I write a press release)


7. Is it buzzworthy? (then I’ll post it to some lists)


8. Is it linkworthy? (then I’ll message a few webmasters)


9. Should I add it to my site history page?


10. Did I mention it in my weekly newsletter?


11. Should I blog about it on my corporate blog?

That’s right, I go through this list at the end of every day to make sure that whatever I’ve published can be found by my visitors. (#11 is a new addition to the list)

In looking at this list, however, I noticed that I don’t have a “what’s new” page. I’d like to get some comments on whether or not genealogists find “what’s new” pages useful when visiting sites.

Being a Smart Affiliate Partner

In the online world there are several ways to generate revenue; you can sell things, you can seek paid advertising or you can join an affiliate program and earn money for referrals.

When you sell things, you are always thinking of better ways to present your products or services. You try different ways to draw in visitors and analyze your page layout to make sure the purchase process is simple and efficient (otherwise visitors won’t make it all the way through).

When you add banner or text advertising to your pages, you usually plop them in the highest trafficked and/or visible places. Since most webmasters settle for CPM advertising relationships, impression volume is all that matters.

So, why do many affiliates treat affiliate relationships like advertising? Yes, it is true that with any affiliate program, shear volume should yield sales. But, why waste all that traffic?

As an affiliate partner, you’re an extension of the partner company’s sales and marketing department. You’re effectively selling (or pre-selling) their products or services.

While you still want to focus some attention on placing creative that yields a solid clickthru rate, you also should consider whether the landing page for each creative produces the best sales per click.

The partner may offer two search boxes that have comparable clickthru rates, but one may yield more sales. Commission Junction offers EPC (Average Earnings Per One Hundred Clicks) calculations with all the creative. This is a helpful calculation for comparing similar creative.

Remember, however, that all web pages are not alike, and so the program-wide statistics you see may be distorted. For example, a US Census creative might show a high EPC, but there may be sites in the program that are census-oriented and draw in traffic looking for census data. These kind of sites will probably achieve a higher EPC for a census creative than your site if it is less focus on the topic.

My own web site, Genealogy Today, is a pretty generic site and with a specialized piece of creative like a US Census banner I would never see the EPC that say a census-centric site like Census-Online.com would. So, pick creative that best matches the needs of your own unique visitors.

That’s not to say that you should avoid creative that doesn’t match your site’s focus. It’s always good to have some in the mix as your visitors may actually check our you site and not find what they’re looking for. Just recognize the performance of these creatives may not match the EPC listed.

One of the most important factors in selling things on a site is to make sure you clearly state what the product or service offers. For products, it’s key to layout all of the attributes down to size, weight and a clear, readable picture is essential. For services, it’s important to spell out the terms, benefits and any deliverables.

You’re pre-selling a partner company’s product or service, so you should do some of the same things you would if you were selling it yourself. Look at the creative you’re using and ask yourself if the visitors know what they’re getting when they click on it.

Think about your own objective. You want visitors to click on the creative and do something — preferably make a purchase. You can send blindly send 1,000 visitors and hope to make a few sales. Or, you can selectively send fewer, more qualified visitors.

A “red flag” goes up in my head whenever I look at a performance report and I see clicks increase without a relative increase in sales. That red flag usually indicates that I’m not doing my job in pre-selling. (Yes, it could also mean the affiliate partner landing page is lame, but I rarely can control that. It could also be that the partner changed the landing page)

I find the following tactics to be the most effective at whittling away unproductive clicks:

1. Make sure partner company name is clearly displayed,


2. Make sure it is clear MONEY is involved (nothing is free),


3. Provide an alternative, more direct click.

Let me explain #3. Visitors like options. Many like shortcuts. Say, for example, you’re displaying a search box that (after clicking) shows the visitor some results and asks them to signup. The “action” button may be somewhere on the page that the affiliate partner feels is the best place, and you’re not likely to change it. So, give your visitors a shortcut before they get there and lose interest.

There’s one last suggestion I want to make, and its one I am just beginning to explore. There’s a feature on Google that I’ve rarely used, but I now see the relevance and think it could be applied to affiliate marketing.

I’ve often thought about the situation where I’m promoting an affiliate (let’s call it “A”) and the visitor is already an “A” customer. They either pass by the creative, or generate an unproductive click. My thought is why not offer something akin to Google’s “Similar pages” feature. This way, if the visitor already knows what “A” offers, you can share with them related sites (that are also affiliate partners).

So, to do a quick recap:

1. Monitor clickthru rates. Replace low-clickthru creative placed in high traffic areas.


2. Compare EPC values of similar creative.


3. Match creative to your own visitors, but mix in some unrelated stuff also.


4. Make sure partner identity is clear on creative, or add it yourself with text or modify graphic (if program rules allow).


5. Clearly show where $$$ are involved.


6. Provide shortcuts to action pages.


7. Try offering related alternatives.

There are plenty of “tricks” and slightly-deceptive ways to drive clicks to affiliates, but if you give me 1,000 visitors, I’d rather send each of them to a place where they are most likely going to act, rather than rely on “chance” that some of them will.

Do Less with More?

Seems like the opposite of what some companies are doing, however, it also may be the right tactic for the challenging financial times we’ve been facing since 9/11. Well, this is my mantra for 2006 and I’ll explain why.

If you’ve been to a national genealogy conference in the past few years, there are always a bunch of small booths, and then there is the BIG one. Yes, the Heritage Creations booth run by Leland Meitzler (blog). The vast quantity of books and CD’s and the unique displays for concentrating his inventory in a relatively small area, were an impressive feat.

Well, much to my surprise, Leland blogged that Heritage Creations [was] Filing for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, and spelled out the history of how his company arrived at this point. Leland and I have exchanged emails over the years, and even had the pleasure to meet and hang out at the 2005 NGS conference in Nashville, TN.

Recently, Leland said something to me that struck a chord. He “wasn’t making a profit at [genealogy conferences] and wasted a lot of valuable time chasing around the country.” It sounded to that he was trying to do more with less (income in return).

Was I following, albeit at a smaller scale, in his footsteps? I reflected on the things I’d accomplished with Genealogy Today, and decided it was time to focus on those things that I was really good at (i.e. core strengths), and had the potential to generate revenue.

Another recent event in our industry was the extensive MyFamily.com, Inc. layoff. Dennis Partridge (blog) wrote about the “tragic loss for the employees and families involved,” which I don’t dispute. But the real messages, and the people to “blame”, are that (in my opinion) management allowed the company to grow too rapidly and invested energies in areas that offered less value to the organization.

Rather than haphazardly expand my holdings with smaller, less valuable content month after month, my plan is to stay focused, measure every opportunity against a more refined set of criteria, and begin to grow the company at a faster (yet managable) rate.

If someone were to ask you, “what exactly does your company do?”, would you have a clear answer for them? The ease of Internet technology and the abundance of information floating around us promotes a “heck, why not” kind of attitude when it comes to new prospects. Don’t go adrift, identify your core competencies, and build on them.

(Genealogy Today is an affiliate of Ancestry.com, a unit of MyFamily.com, Inc.)

Introduction

In keeping with our core values, I’ve established this blog to maintain a level of open communication about the achievements of and the challenges faced by my company, Genealogy Today LLC.

My name is Illya D’Addezio, and I’ve been developing genealogy web sites since 1998 when I launched my own family site at D’Addezio.com. Since then I’ve had many successes and launched a few duds, but in every case I’ve learned a great deal about my three passions: marketing, technology and genealogy.

As with all of my projects, I hope that this blog helps to improve the genealogy community through the open discussion of topics that are pertinent to genealogists and webmasters alike. Your feedback is appreciated, however, I will reserve the right to not publish comments on this blog if I feel they are inappropriate.