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Archive for January, 2010
Killer Campaigns: Making Emotional Connections
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:28 AM
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Killer Campaigns: Making Emotional Connections
We live in an age of clones: somebody makes a very profitable
movie about vampires, and the next thing you know we’re all
inundated with movies, television shows, books, blogs, websites,
and every form of blood-sucking permutation you can imagine.
CSI begets CSI Miami, which begets CSI New York, which begets
NCIS, which begets NCIS Los Angeles, which is just about as much
as anyone can take. If something is successful, you can be sure
more of the same will follow.
Despite the occasional success story, most clones either fail
completely, or never live up to the success of their
groundbreaking predecessors.
Most of the copycats fail because the clone-masters behind them
don’t understand why the original worked, and as a consequence,
they clone all the wrong elements. This is as true of commercial
presentations as it is with broadcast programming.
Cloning a successful format is not the same as Slipstreaming.
Clone marketing is just rote copying of technical elements
without any reference to why the original worked, whereas
Slipstream marketing takes a familiar idea and plays off it like
a great jazz musician reinterprets an old standard.
Kleenex “Let It Out” Campaign:
Recognizing The Emotional Value Proposition
What is more generic than facial tissue? A consumable paper
product that you use once and discard; it is the very definition
of a commodity, and as we all know commodity-sales are primarily
based on price. Enter Kimberly Clark, one company that has
managed to turn their commodity product into the industry
standard to the extent that the commodity itself has become
known by Kimberly Clark’s designated brand name – Kleenex.
The Kleenex, “Let It Out” campaign is just one example of a
company that recognizes that in order to turn their commodity
product into something of higher value, they have to link it to
what we refer to as “an emotional value proposition:” the
implied psychological or emotional connection between the
product and the consumer.
The original series of Web videos was housed on a dedicated
video microsite. The series of videos showed a casually dressed
interviewer with an engaging personality asking people to sit
down on a couch in the middle of a busy street to chat about
some significant emotional moment in their lives. Some people
talked about their children; one woman even discussed Katrina
and the impact it had on her. People cried, and people laughed,
until tears came to their eyes, at which point, the interviewer
handed each person a Kleenex: Kleenex and emotions go
hand-in-hand. Let It Out, the concept was brilliant.
The following version was created for television; it is a
compendium of clips from various videos, and as good as it is,
it doesn’t have the same emotional power of the Web video
versions that concentrated on each person’s emotional response
to the interviewer’s questions. It’s good, but not as good,
but it does serve to illustrate the point. Unfortunately the
individual videos are no longer available.
Kleenex “Let It Out” TV Commercial
(http://videos.sitepronews.com/video/687/Kleenex-Let-It-Out-TV-Commercial)
Everything in the commercial works: the interviewer’s manner
and personality, the visual imagery of the couch in the street,
and the memorable music message. It’s all good, very, very
good.
On The Other Hand…
Rogers Communication Inc. is a large Canadian communication
company that provides digital cable TV, high speed Internet, and
mobile phone services. Their primary competition would be Bell
Canada.
In order to promote their new Home Phone service Rogers
initiated a series of commercials featuring a man on the street
interviewing people passing by, asking them to compare their
phone service to their competitors. They used a red and blue
couch in the street with the red side of the couch representing
Rogers and the blue side representing Bell. They handed each
person a blue phone and asked them to call a friend or relative;
then they handed the person a red phone representing Rogers, and
asked them to call the same person. Then the interviewer asked
them to compare the service, which according to the commercial
was the same. The difference of course was in the price.
Anyone who has seen both campaigns could come to only one
conclusion, and that is the Roger’s commercials were patterned
after the Kleenex, “Let It Out” campaign. Did it work? Take a
look.
Rogers Home Phone Campaign
(http://videos.sitepronews.com/video/688/Rogers-Home-Phone-Campaign)
On a very superficial level, the commercials are eerily the
same, both have a couch in the street, an interviewer, and a
passerby; but on an emotional and psychological level, they are
as far apart as you can get.
Kleenex tied the use of their product to people’s most personal
feelings, their response to emotional reminiscence, while Rogers
relied on price only. Their service isn’t better, it’s the
same; it’s just cheaper so the ad says. The Kleenex interviewer
is courteous, interested, and responsive, while the Rogers
representative is glib, and a bit smarmy.
The Technique and Why It Worked
The Kleenex campaign works for all kinds of reasons, the most
important of which is that it engages the audience with an
intriguing visual presentation that resonates on a psychological
level by providing an emotional value proposition associated
with their brand. On the other hand, Roger’s value proposition
is price.
You may say, price is important, but pricing tactics are a
dangerous game. Competitors aren’t just going to sit back and
let you drive them out of business. If you fire a price missile
across your competitor’s bow, you can bet they’ll respond, and
that’s exactly what Bell did.
Whoops!
By not understanding what Kleenex had done in their campaign,
and not following Kleenex’s precedent by associating their
brand with an emotionally resonant value proposition, they laid
themselves wide open to a slipstreamed response by their
competitors, who created a campaign that riffed on their
imagery, and one-upped them with an alternate price comparison.
Rogers Advertisement
(http://www.sitepronews.com/images3/rogerscouch.jpg)
Bell Advertisement
(http://www.sitepronews.com/images3/bellcouch.jpg)
Conclusion
If a commodity product like facial tissue can become a major
brand by employing marketing strategies that emphasize their
emotional value proposition, then so can your product or
service. Delivering a marketing message based on it’s
underlying emotional value is a better strategy than price and
feature selling, a tactic guaranteed to be short-lived. Features
are forever being added and prices are continually under
competitive pressure, but emotional relevance is sustainable.
For many companies, it is very difficult for them to see the
emotional value their offering brings to the table, but the
conceptual basis of any effective marketing campaign starts with
discovering that underlying human connection your product or
service has with its audience.
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:23 AM
Friday, January 29, 2010
Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies
Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of
marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must
plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your
target market in order to develop your message conveying
exactly the kind of high value business proposition which
your niche will respond to.
The first steps are to:
1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting
and work with the demographics from there.
2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target
market and decide how you’ll foster this perception.
3) Identify and refine your value proposition.
Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and
distribute your value proposition, making sure that your
value proposition is perceived by your target market
exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer
perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s
everything.
You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived
in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain,
develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem
necessary.
The real challenge is putting these principles into action:
Driving Traffic
There are some important principles of traffic generation
you need to understand in order to be successful at
bringing visitors into your website.
There are both principles and rules of traffic generation;
principles have to do with your approach to the task and
the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving
traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger
picture before you can successfully put the practical
techniques into action.
What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone.
While this is still valuable information, you probably
won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in
the underlying principles of traffic generation.
These are the most important principles of traffic
generation:
* Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something
which largely relies on common sense and methods which
can be replicated with consistent results.
* The reason people usually fail in their traffic
generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to
making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated
part of their business strategy.
* You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of
it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not
carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to
reflect your real life experience and results.
* Continually test and track the results of your traffic
generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.
* Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the
bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single
objective.
* Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results
immediately.
* Remember that driving traffic begins with building your
site – Why is this? Because your site should be built
from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other
sites in your industry to gain an understanding of
patterns of visitor behavior.
See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to
take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see
something which is working for them.
This is where things can become challenging; it’s something
like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a
megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd.
The goal here is to get the attention of your target
market and get them to come to your site.
All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is
cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of
higher value – buy low, sell high.
For example, SEO and other free traffic generation
strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is
of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly
in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as
signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of
driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what
you deem to be a small amount for something else which you
see as more valuable.
If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have
noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by
the search engines; that’s because this falls under the
heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic
generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this
isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which
will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using
other strategies.
Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will
come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is
indexed, it’s no guarantee that visitors will follow.
Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for
the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of
using other traffic generation methods. What you should be
focused on is getting targeted traffic to your site. For
instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even
a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine
crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other
site and voila! Your site will be indexed.
What you need to do is to let the web know that your site
is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffic. The
best way to do so is to create links to your site from
other sites; not only do these result in your site being
indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they
can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks.
Here are a few things you can do to start driving traffic
almost immediately:
* Whenever you add new content to your site or blog,
submit this content to the social bookmarking sites
(Digg, Technorati, etc.). Make an effort to give your
posts attention-getting titles so that people will be
interested in reading your content.
* Post comments on blogs which have a similar audience to
the one you’re trying to reach. Don’t post comment spam;
write real, thoughtful comments and include a link back
to your own site.
* Start contributing to forums and message boards relevant
to your industry.
* Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and submit this
feed to directories.
* Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to
article directories.
* Join link exchanges
* Build a linkwheel; create blogs and pages on platforms
like HubPages, Squidoo, Facebook, etc. and link them to
each other in a web ring-style structure. This helps
the search engines identify the topic of your site and
will improve your page rank as well.
These techniques can start driving traffic to your site
very quickly; if you implement all of these methods and
follow the basic principles of traffic generation, you
really can’t fail at bringing in targeted traffic.
So why do so many people fail at traffic generation?
Because they don’t stick with it and follow through; far
too many website owners give up after a few days or a few
weeks, saying that it’s just too much work for too little
result – instead of analyzing their efforts and figuring
out what is and isn’t working for them.
So how about search engine optimization (SEO)? Here’s what
you really need to know about:
1) Focusing on search engines rather than your potential
customers is always a losing bet. If you’re putting all of
your energy towards keeping up with the search engines and
their constantly evolving algorithms, you’re losing sight
of your visitors.
2) Optimizing your site for very competitive (i.e. popular)
keywords means fighting an uphill battle with no guarantee
of success.
3) Generally speaking, you’ll do best with long tail
keywords; these require far less work in terms of
optimizing your content. Long tail keywords are also very
effective at attracting targeted traffic. The effort you
put into optimizing your content for long tail keywords
will bring you much better results than the same amount of
time and effort spent optimizing your site for popular
keywords.
4) Offsite optimization is just as important (if not more
so) than on site SEO. Back links can do wonders for your
traffic; but remember to keep all of your efforts focused
on visitors, not search engines whether you’re working on
on-site or offsite SEO.
5) Base your traffic generation strategy on visitors and
the search engines will follow.
6) As you develop and implement SEO techniques, always keep
in mind how people actually look for information online -
that’s why long tail keywords are so important. It’s a lot
easier to rank high in the search results for long tail
keywords. Being in the top 10 on Google for several long
tail keywords will bring you a lot more traffic than being
on the 10th page of results for a highly competitive
keyword (which is where you’ll start out if you’re very
lucky if you choose to go this route).
Remember that it’s a long way to the top; be patient and
enjoy the view on your way up. Stick with it and you’ll
eventually have more traffic than you know what to do with!
Web Design For Beginners
Define your audience and their needs
Defining the purpose and objectives of your website should be your first step. Focus on what you want your website to achieve. Create a profile of your intended audience and try to understand their needs and tastes, and design the site with them at the forefront of your mind at all times.
Take a look at competitor websites to gain an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Easy navigation
In order to make your content easy for your intended audience to navigate, make sure the links to the main sections of your website are easily visible from each web page. You want to invite people to view as many pages of your site as possible, so make it easy for them to find each page.
A good way to help you visualise the structure of the site is to create a flow chart of the whole website on paper. Think about think about how your users might structure the information within the site to help them find the information they need easily.
Try to keep the information on your first page a general overview so you don’t bog people down with too much information. They can then click on the (clear and easy to use) links to view more information about the topics that they are interested in.
Layout
Most web pages have a common structure consisting of a header and footer, a horizontal navigation bar along the top and / or a vertical navigation bar down the left of the page and a central section for the main content.
This structure is based on simple, easy-to-understand layout principles.
If there’s a lot of content, split it up into several different pages so your viewer doesn’t have to digest too much information on one page.
Keep text simple and to the point, and make sure grammar is correct – check and check again to avoid looking unprofessional. Text is more difficult to read on screen than in printed media, so it’s crucial get your message across in a succinct and easy to understand way.
You should always keep your text blocks relatively small. Huge paragraphs are more difficult to read and may make your audience lose interest quickly.
Stick to 2 or 3 different fonts at the most – and make sure they are ones generally found on most computers. San serifs are easier to read on computer monitors so stick to these for the main text, and make sure your text is large enough for everyone to read.
Bullet points, lists and relevant photos can help to break up the text.
Learn the basics of html
Learning the basics of html – even if you are using WYSIWYG software Front Page or Dreamweaver – will help you gain an understanding of how a web page in built, and deal with problems you encounter using the software. A good beginner’s guide to html can be found at: http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/
Try and stay away from tables, and create the pages using layers (divs) and cascading style sheets (CSS).
Tables mix ‘presentational’ data in with your content, which makes the file size of your pages unnecessarily large, as users must download this presentational data for each page they visit.
But by using structural markup to create web pages, you can keep the actual content of your page separate from the way it is presented.
Table-based pages are also much less accessible to users with disabilities and viewers using mobiles and PDAs to access the Web.
And to change the layout of the site, all you need to do is change the style sheets; you do not need to edit the pages themselves at all.
For more info about the advantages of using divs and CSS over tables, take a look at http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html
Using colour
Creating a balanced colour palette from which to choose your website colour scheme will help you to create a professional looking website. Bright clashing colours scream amateur.
If you are creating a website for a company with a logo, start here. Upload the logo to your host server and go to a colour palette website such as (http://www.colorhunter.com/) to create a palette, from which you can choose colours for the main banner, buttons and text rollovers etc.
And keep things simple and uncluttered – empty space makes colours stand out and text easier to read.
Optimising photos and images
Don’t use a graphic just for the sake of it – make sure there’s a reason for it’s presence, i.e. it improves the user’s understanding and experience. A site full of unnecessary graphics looks amateurish, and it can be an obstacle for accessibility tools such as screen readers.
Make sure the photos and images you do use are clear and well optimised to reduce file size and increase page loading times. One sure sign of an amateurish website is a page with a huge image that takes forever to load. And your viewer will probably click away from the site before they even get a chance to see it.
Creating clear, professional looking graphics
GIFs are really grids made of tiny pixel squares. Data about every pixel is saved (so it’s lossless), and you can save up to 256 colors. Pixels may also be transparent.
A GIF may contain more than one frame, so it can be animated.
It is a good format for saving images with fewer colors, like charts and small graphics, images containing text, and drawings.
JPEGs are a good file format for images with millions of colors, like photographs, drawings with many shades, images containing gradients etc.
For more information on optimising images for the web, have a look at this tutorial: http://inobscuro.com/tutorials/read/35/
Design tips:
a.) Use design to highlight functionality. For example; using gradients on button also helps make them seem more ‘button like’, different coloured mouse over text draws attention to links.
b.) Be wary of animation and sounds unless they serve a specific function. It is difficult to concentrate on reading what’s on your site when there are things flashing on and off and flying around the page. And visitors with slow connections may resent that you wasted their time by forcing them to load animations and sound files against their will.
Some recent research does indicate that visitors assaulted by blinking ads are more likely to leave the site immediately, and are far less likely to bookmark the site, return to it, link to it, and recommend it.
c.) Don’t use images as a web page background. Image backgrounds scream “amateur”, because it’s mostly amateurish sites that use them. They take longer to load and the text over the background image is usually difficult to read.
d.) Design the webpage including all elements within it for your audience. For example, create a chilled out mood for a massage / therapy website using colours like lavender and blue. Use darker, more restrained, stronger colours for a more traditional finance website.
e.) If your business doesn’t already have one, make a logo for your site, display it at the top of every page, and add a link from it back to your homepage. It will make your site look more professional and create a sense of branding to help people remember your site and recognise it as yours.
Going ‘live’
Hosting
When it comes to hosting, cheapest is not always best. For a small-ish ‘beginner’ website you shouldn’t need much bandwidth (unless you’ve not been following the ‘image optimisation’ guidelines!) But I wouldn’t recommend hosting your website with the cheapest offer available until you have checked that they can give all the support you may need as a newbie.
I would always recommend looking for a local contact telephone number on the website of the hosting company you are considering using, and ringing it to make sure there is an actual person at the end of it.
Ask if you can get technical help from this number – they may only communicate via email for technical support. If they give you another number, ask how much it costs per minute, and ring it to make sure there is someone at the end willing to help you as a beginner should you have any problems connecting to their server, uploading your files, or sorting out your email accounts.
You should also make sure email accounts are included in the cost, and, if you have any dynamic elements such as a search facility or enquiry form on the website, check that the server will support the PHP or ASP etc needed to allow this facility to work, and if that is included in the hosting price quoted.
Ftp
You can download free ftp software to upload your new website to your new hosting space from Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) or Smart ftp (http://www.smartftp.com/), or you could try a free trial with Cute ftp (http://www.cuteftp.com/cuteftp/).
Search engine optimisation
Although professional web designers have the optimisation of the website in mind from the start of design and development, as a newbie, you have to take it one step at a time! So now you’ve designed, built and uploaded your website, take a look at some of the ways you can now begin to optimise it for search engine ranking:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization
http://www.seo-news.com/archives2009.html
10 Tips to Grow Your Business Using Online Video
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:15 AM
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Lacking any information to the contrary, many businesses still think that all they need to do to get new clients is to put their name and face in the Yellow Pages or online social directories, get some professional looking business cards, a website and Voila! It’s the old adage “build it and they will come”.
Trouble is, that’s what their competitors are doing also and in this day and age, it’s just not enough.
Does Your Business Stand Out Online?
Most advertising on the Web follows a time-honored format, although some might call it a time-worn format as it does little to differentiate itself. You can bet that a high percentage of this advertising will be ignored and the money spent on it will be wasted.
So how does a company stand out from the crowd online?
Thanks to an oversupply of similar text, claims, and presentation – coupled with a short 21st century attention span – your website has less than ten seconds to move a visitor to action. If it doesn’t, that visitor will click away to another site, and then another. Therefore, it’s critical that you find a way to break through the noise your competitors are making. But even that’s not enough.
Statistics show that even the best-looking websites generate conversion rates of under one percent, so for every 100 visitors you do manage to get, less than one will call or email you.
Sound bleak? Thinking of redirecting more of your advertising budget back to the Yellow Pages? Don’t. You’re on the right track – you just haven’t leveraged all the power available to you online.
One-to-Many Communication. One-on-One Feel.
Most websites are little more than electronic versions of Yellow Page advertising. For the most part, they don’t encourage interaction beyond the obligatory “Contact me for more information” plea. These sites don’t encourage trust any more than their print counterparts. They don’t give visitors the warm-and-fuzzy feeling that a face-to-face meeting would.
But they can.
Searching for a local service provider online can be a daunting prospect, but even more daunting than the search is deciding which provider to use once you get to the page, especially since most websites promise the standard good service, competitive pricing and high quality.
So how does a business differentiate itself from the sea of competition? Web video makes this possible on a grand scale.
Thanks to rapidly improving technology, it’s easier than ever to add that warm-and-fuzzy, face-to-face element to your site, replicate an in-person interview, and offer your visitors an opportunity to check you out before picking up the phone. With Web video, you can present an interview that addresses all the questions and concerns of potential clients. You can keep them on your site longer and give them insight into the “business behind the business.” In a way that wasn’t possible even a few years ago, business owners can now speak directly to their audiences and showcase their personalities and areas of expertise. This is especially helpful if you are a professional service provider.
Any business that relies on conveying trust-ability will benefit from this type of web marketing. Really, it’s one-to-many communication with a one-on-one feel. It’s the perfect ice breaker and an efficient means of generating the interest and trust needed to compel potential clients to make an appointment and do business.
A high-quality Web interview placed strategically on your site is a huge timesaver for you and prospective clients because you reach a wide audience in minimal time. Potential clients get the information they need to pre-qualify – and pre-sell – themselves before they call.
Online video delivers some of the best ROI of any advertising medium today and if set up properly, is actually ranks higher than text now by the major search engines like Google. Short of spending valuable face time with a potential client (often times a poorly qualified potential client) there is simply no better way to forge a personal connection with them. With that in mind, here are 10 tips to help you get the most of your online video marketing efforts.
10 Tips for making the most of Online Video
1. Make sure your video is professionally done.
This is an absolute must. The whole point here is to establish credibility and trust, but you’ll do the opposite with a poorly executed and produced video. Yes, many of the videos you find on sharing sites are mediocre at best, but that is changing rapidly as companies begin to see the value of promoting themselves in this manner. In fact, a recent Permission TV survey found that 67% of 400 hundred top executives intended to focus their online marketing efforts on video in 2009. The rush is coming – find a personable, engaging interviewer and a top notch production crew to really stand out.
2. Submit your video to as many outlets as possible.
While YouTube is the clear leader here, there are many other video sharing sites worthy of consideration. Here are some others you won’t want to pass up:
• Google Video, http://video.google.com
• Yahoo! Video, http://video.yahoo.com
• Daily Motion, http://www.dailymotion.com
• MySpaceTV, http://vids.myspace.com
• MetaCafe, http://www.metacafe.com
• Revver, http://www.revver.com
• Veoh, http://www.veoh.com
• Blinkx, http://www.blinkx.com
• Break, http://www.break.com
3. Embed your video on the front page of your site.
Don’t hide what’s going to become one of your most effective selling tools on a dusty inside page. Get it out front. Customers and search engines will love you for it.
4. Find out what search terms your potential clients are using and put them in your video’s title.
If you don’t know what words clients in need of your services are typing into Google and other search engines, get professional help or use some of the resources featured on this page. Once you’ve identified these terms, use the most popular in your video’s title.
5. Make your tags and descriptions SEO-friendly, too.
Most video sharing sites let you tag videos with keywords and post a short description, so get the most out of these by sprinkling in the search terms you’ve identified.
6. Don’t forget your thumbnail.
A thumbnail is a still shot from your video that appears along with search results. Don’t waste this opportunity to present yourself in the best light possible – choose a key moment from your video, preferably one where you’re smiling as you speak with your interviewer.
7. Link back to your site.
Put your URL near the top of your video’s description. You’ll get a higher search ranking and potential clients will quickly learn where to go for more information.
8. Interact with your viewers.
Most video sharing sites allow viewer comments. Use this opportunity to answer questions, respond to comments, and further promote your business.
9. Consider a pay-per-click campaign.
Natural search engine optimization, while effective, takes time to bear fruit. In the meantime, you might want to jump start the process with a pay-per-click campaign that gives you a sponsored search listing. You can learn more about PPC advertising at www.google.com/intl/en/ads, sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing, and http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising.
10. Add new content often.
Search engines look for it and so do potential clients. Keep your content fresh and up-to-date and keep visitors coming back for more.
With an ever-increasing stream of competition, it’s more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. These days standing out means maximizing your online presence and leveraging the technology to present the unique advantages of you and your firm. There’s no better way for a growth-oriented business to build a solid and secure future than by using effective and affordable online video.
Use these free resources to get a handle on the terms that potential clients are using to search for you right now.
Wordtracker, http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Google AdWords, http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Keyword Discovery, http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
KwMap, http://www.kwmap.net
Google Trends, htttp://www.google.com/trends
In addition to design, a business website should offer the right features for its users. Although professional web design is important, usability of the website is crucial to its success. A professional website should be rich with features and allow customers to interact with the business.
Customer expectations have evolved with time. When internet users visit a website today, they expect the website to offer a certain level of interaction. With the popularity of second generation websites, popularly known as Web2.0, it has become common for businesses to offer a range of interactive features on websites such as videos, podcasts, and many ways in which customers can offer their feedback. Many of these features are easy to implement on a website and most web design companies and professionals will offer them as standard features with their websites.
Businesses can benefit from this trend by offering interactive features on the company’s website that are easy to implement. Building an effective web presence is vital for any company today and the company’s website is its greatest marketing tool. Improving the interactivity of the company website can help increase conversion rates and improve brand loyalty and recognition.
Discussed below are some the top interactive features that are easy to implement on your website. It can add value to any website.
Newsletter Subscription
Collecting email addresses of potential customers is vital for direct marketing or sending newsletters. Most websites offer an automated system for subscribing or unsubscribing to their mailing list via their website.
Commenting on articles
This is commonly found on blogs. Allowing users to comment can be useful in many ways. In addition to feedback, it also allows the content to build with user generated content. It should only be added to relevant sections of the website.
Most Recent Posts
If you have a blog, then you can display a list of 10 most recent posts from your blog on your main website. It can add value to your website especially if your blog and website target the same niche.
Google Map
An interactive Google Map can make your website interactive. Google map can be used in many ways. You can use it simply to display an interactive map of your location or you can use one of its built in features such as distance calculator, etc to add more functionaility. It is also possible to custom applications for your website using Google Map’s powerful development API.
Most professional web design companies and freelance web designers today will be able to work with this technology to add to your website if required.
Google Custom Search feature
Google’s custom search feature has become popular with websites in recent years. Google custom search allows websites to implement search functionality on their website using Google’s powerful search algorithms. It is possible to restrict the search to your website only or include other partner websites in your searches. Ad revenue generated by Google using your custom search feature can be shared so there an opportunity for generating revenue on your website.
Related Articles
This can improve the readership of your website by providing users with content that are related. It is relatively easy to implement on a website and can be automated or work by assigning manual tags or keywords.
RSS Feed
RSS is a commonly used format for sharing content on the web. By offering RSS feed of your website content, you make it readily accessible to millions of internet users who use feed reader applications to find information on the internet. It also makes it easier for users to subscribe to website updates by email. RSS feeds also make it easier for users to share content on other social media sites.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking has become quite popular on the internet. Millions of users use social bookmarking to organise favourite content and share it with others. It also helps in promoting your website and can generate massive traffic. A website should offer a shortcut for adding the web page using leading social bookmarking accounts.
Latest Content Tab
A list of latest content from relevant sections of the website can improve the usability of the website.
E.g. List of the Latest Articles, News and Jobs can be displayed at the side of a website; similar to what is found on leading blogs and portals today. This offers better utilization of space and adds interactivity.
Feedback forms to gather information
Feedback forms are still an effective method to collect response from website users. It is used by many websites. The form should be customized to the specific needs of a website.
Survey/polls
Surveys and polls on website is another also important and widely used to collect information from customers. This feature is now standard with most leading CMS or blog platforms.
There are many features that can make your website interactive and more effective. Websites designed by a professional Web Design Company or designer will most likely include a range of interactive features to start with.
2009 saw a lot of exciting changes and additions to the world of online marketing and search engine optimization. Some important events that took place were the launch of BING, announcement of Google Caffeine, the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft search. 2010 will see real time web emerging which will become more popular than the traditional methods of optimization.
Following is the list of pointers to get your website on top, reach out to potential customers and ensure brand visibility in 2010.
1. Decrease Webpage Load Time. Google’s Matt Cutts recently hinted that the load time of a website may affect its ranking in the search engines. That is, the faster a website loads, the better its chances to rank well for its niche keywords. Website load time is touted as the next big step towards improved rankings. The pre-requisites to a good webpage load time are; reputable web host and fast internet connection.
2. Get Listed in Google Local Search. Getting listed in Google Local Search ensures brand visibility in front of visitors from the nearby places. It has been proven that the number of visitors to a website increase exponentially when listed in local search results. The reason being, a customer will always prefer to purchase a quality product which is easily available in his or her vicinity rather than order it from another unfamiliar city or state.
3. Get Involved in Social Media. Social Media is the flavor of the season and in 2010 organizations are going to actively engage in conversation and social networking and reach out to their potential customers. Social Media Marketing is a must for every organization as it helps create brand awareness and build relationships with consumers in the highly competitive market. Micro targeting and Personalization will be the keywords in 2010.
4. Optimize Your Website Mobile Users. With and ever increasing number of people tweeting and using Facebook from their mobile devices, a lot of organizations are now finally paying attention to how their websites appear on mobile phones. You can have your website appear on the mobile under the same URL or have a special domain for the same. The most common way is to have the domain name as mobile.websitename.com.
5. Apply Web Analytics to its full potential. There are hundreds of web analytics tools in the market which provide a mountain of data pertaining to the visitor’s usage. Some of the most well known web analytics tools are Omniture, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics etc. Web Analytics tools can answer the “how” but not the “why”. That is, you can find out how many visitors checked the product catalogue webpage, but not the answer to, why the visitors didn’t place an order for the product. Organizations need to dissect the data from web analytics tools and successfully apply its learning’s to enhance their visitors experience and in turn increase sales revenues.
In 2010 companies must go beyond organic search engine optimization by integrating social media marketing and optimizing their websites for mobile users.
Marketing Results: 7 Crucial Stats You Need to Track Your Marketing Success
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:05 AM
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Marketing Results: 7 Crucial Stats You Need to Track Your Marketing Success
You may feel as though you’re on a hamster wheel when it comes to measuring your marketing. You run, run, and run some more, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere. That feeling is perfectly natural if you’re not measuring your ROI (Return on Investment) with your marketing. For years, I’ve been on this hamster wheel myself, without a system that I liked to help me measure my marketing results. Numbers and statistics have never been my strong suit, and even though I got A’s in most of my math classes, it took every brain cell I had to do so. 
Late last year, I finally determined what was important for me to track in my marketing, and now have created a system so that I can track my marketing from week to week. Whether you set up your system in a document or spreadsheet, you’ll be amazed at the power that you feel when you view the numbers from week to week and can spot trends developing or problem spots that need a solution. I was amazed to discover that when I started paying attention to my weekly stats, I actually found myself engrossed, fascinated, and excited! Now that I am tracking these numbers, I know exactly where to spend my time and efforts to receive the highest and best rate of return.
Here are 7 statistics that I track in my weekly marketing tracking system:
1. Number of marketing activities. I now list by name and amount of the total number of marketing activities in which I engage each week. This number includes article submissions, direct mailings, direct contacts (in person or by phone), press releases, and programs given. I’ve noticed that the higher the number, the better the rest of my marketing results for the week.
2. Web site stats. I’m primarily seeking the number of unique visitors to my web site each week. However, it’s also important to know what keywords visitors used to land on your site as well as what sites referred the visitor to your site. I don’t keep a separate log of this info, but do have a weekly Google Analytics report emailed to me with this information. Google Analytics is a free web tracking program that’s easy to install on almost any site.
3. Blog stats. I want to know the number of people who read my blog this week. Now, this is a difficult stat to measure, as blog readers use any number of RSS readers to view blog posts or subscribe to my blog via email. So, I have also installed Google Analytics on my blog and look at those results to determine the number of unique visitors to my blog in any given week, which I interpret as number of blog readers.
4. Ezine stats. My weekly ezine serves as my primary connection to my list. I track how many new subscribers I gain each week on that list, my open rate for each issue of my ezine, the number of clickthroughs for each issue, and my total number of ezine subscribers.
5. Social networking connections. I’m not in a contest to acquire the most connections possible for all of my social networking sites. I believe it’s the quality of the connection (i.e. relevance to your target market) rather than the quantity of connections that will be most useful for you. What I’m primarily tracking here is that I’m making a slow and gradual increase in the number of my connections on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
6. Product and service sales. I note how many product sales I have made each week as well as how much revenue I have earned in the services and consulting side of my business. Because my primary product is my membership site, I probably have many more product sales (i.e. memberships) than many of you who sell information products as an income stream in your business.
7. New clients. I get a number of requests from potential clients each week, but never tracked those in any meaningful way. Now I know how many inquiries have come in, how many have become new clients, and which inquiries need follow up at a later date. This system always keeps me in motion and in front of new client prospects.
Measuring the results of your marketing activities is crucial to your success, and anyone can do it. Start to evaluate your marketing activities to empower yourself to make those strategic decisions about how and where to focus your efforts going forward so that you can achieve the level of success you desire.
Internet Marketing – Misconceptions That You Must Consider
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 10:00 AM
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Internet Marketing – Misconceptions That You Must Consider
Internet marketing is seen as a get rich quick scheme by many newbie marketers because of the ease and convenience linked to the world-wide-web. This is however misleading, as the success that you achieve whether online or off line, is directly linked to what you put in.
It usually takes much time, tribulations, steep learning and also some failures before you will succeed in the internet marketing world. It is advisable to take heed of the following misconceptions.
Cash will flow in very quickly
Internet marketing takes a substantial amount of work. Spend lots of time learning the ropes, but do expect the odd failure along the way. Your success is entirely up to you and you usually reap what you sow.
You will not make any money
Life is an issue of balance, and your input towards any business venture, will determine the output. The supreme goal for internet marketing success will only be reached by consistently applying yourself in a disciplined manner. If you are prepared to learn and accept the occasional failure whilst learning from your mistakes and apply that knowledge, the money will come.
Anyone is suited for internet marketing
If you adopt the attitude of telling yourself there is nothing to this, you are already starting of on the wrong footing. A venture such as this takes a lot of discipline and you must be willing to learn. Have an open mind get rid of your preconceived ideas and be willing to embrace new thoughts as they come up.
It is too difficult
Have you ever taken a deep look within your self to discover where the true potential lies? Is there a potential internet marketing guru waiting to come out? What do others need that has not been created yet? The answers to these questions are only the beginnings of your ability to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
It will only require a few hours work a day
This is possible but in the beginning, long hours are not unheard of. You must be prepared to spend up to 18 hour days in front of your computer. The compensating factor however is that at some point in the future you will be able to automate most of your efforts.
It takes many years to learn online business
This is not true and if you apply yourself in a diligent and consistent manner, your learning can be accelerated without compromising on the quality. Study hard, read newsletters and articles, join online forums and listen to those who are already successful within the internet marketing field.
Internet marketing is a real and authentic business venture, but be prepared for the many skeptics and other people who will look at you in a funny way.
They react in this manner because of not seeing you leave your house at 8 in the morning and returning at 6 every evening. Remind them that you are just as exhausted from working and researching all day as they are from slogging in the workplace or office all day. If you work on your business model and ignore the misconceptions, then you will succeed.
Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds
posted by Luigi_M_Scollo @ 9:52 AM
Friday, January 22, 2010
Link Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds
You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.
More is Not Better in Link Building
Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.
Targeted Anchor Text is a Must
When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.
Pay Attention to Links In and Out
Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.
PageRank Isn’t Everything
Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.
Concentrate on Site Relevance
Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickies. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.
An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious
Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?
Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.
Does Social Networking Matter?
We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.
It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.
Are You Getting Clean Links?
When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.
When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”
It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.
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