There are several rules to remember when looking at your marketing. This applies to paper, print and web marketing.

1. The Five Seconds Rule: What do your visitors see when they visit your page. What makes your site stand out. Does a visitor get a quick look at who you are, what you do, and answer the question of why they are at your site. Follow the directions in this post over at Sazbean to give your website, and others that you know, the five seconds test.

2. At a Glance Rule: How long does someone look at your flyer, or print ad whether in a magazine, advertising publication, or even your website. At a glance can they figure out what you want to be saying? Do this test, pick up a newspaper or magazine. Glance at it for 3-5 seconds. What was your eye drawn to first? We did this test, hands down images of people or even in some cases animals caught our glance. If your ad is buried on a page full of ads, what should the elements be in the ad that someone’s glance is directed towards your spot. Are you paying for advertising that fails the at a glance rule? Hmmm, something to think about.

3. Quick and Easy: Have you ever gotten a flyer and needed to find information quickly, but couldn’t seem to find it? There are many purposes a flyer can have, and some we try to give it that it is not really intended for. If you are creating a flyer for an event, make it quick and easy to within 5 seconds, take a glance, and find the date, time, and relevant information. Or, if your flyer is an informational piece, make it quick and easy for someone to understand what they should do as a result of reading the flyer. A word of advice, don’t hand someone a flyer unless they ask for it. We don’t carry around flyer organizers, nor do I have a flyer file on my desk. If I go to a trade show I keep the flyer until I get back to my office, then it is run through the 5 seconds, at a glance and quick and easy test. If it fails any one of the three, chances are that it is going in the circular file.

What do you think? Do your marketing elements, your website, flyers, and BUSINESS CARDS pass the tests?

This is a guest post by Tom Harris, Your Marketing Coach. Tom helps entrepreneurs and small businesses develop and execute marketing plans. He specializes in website usability and effectiveness.

If you have a business website, the information in it is free to whoever wants to come read it. Maybe you have a blog, and everyone in the world can read your blog posts for free. But it bothers you that you never know WHO is reading your site content or your blog posts. If you did know, then you could market to them. And you certainly want to build up your email list.

So, you have this great idea – you’ll come up with a document containing a generous amount of detailed, valuable and really useful information (an e-book, a whitepaper, a whatever), and you’ll give it away for free to promote yourself and your business, BUT you’ll ask for a person’s email address in exchange for letting them download the information. How logical – they get the information, you get to add a new contact to your email list. Good trade, right? Why wouldn’t everyone want to take you up on this offer? I mean, you’re just asking for their email address, not their name and phone number and detailed driving directions to their house!

Well, a number of studies suggest that merely asking for someone’s email address will result in about half as many downloads as not asking for any information at all. And don’t even think about asking for MORE than an email address, as many companies still do.

How good an idea is it to say, “OK, I’ll give you something, but you gotta give me something first.”?
Here’s the big question: Which would you rather have – (a) a number of email addresses that you can send unsolicited/unwanted messages to, or (b) twice that many people who now have your information in their hands? If you think the most important thing is to simply “get your name and message out there”, then consider making the information really, totally free.

I have a friend who is an awesome marketing and website coach (if you are reading this blog post, I am sure you know who you are). One of my favorite parts of his presentation is where he outlines the user experience in terms of a website, and shares that the first five seconds of a users experience on your website is simply to get you five more seconds of attention. Every element of a website needs to have a purpose, or maybe it shouldn’t be there.

What if we treated our new meetings and interactions with the same rules of interaction? The first five minutes of our discussion are the basis for me giving you permission to have five more minutes of my time. What if we had a stopwatch, that kept resetting in these intervals, and at any one of them when you’ve had enough it was okay to walk away? How many of your conversations would end early? How much time are we spending non concerned about the user experience as it pertains to our in person interaction? I bet we would show much more value on our time and that of others if we treated our in person interactions as unique user experiences with the same permissions.

Interesting concept. If you got to the end of this post, I’ve held you for five of these user experience web intervals, which I believe is a great accomplishment in itself. What is your measure of the user experience, both online, and in person?