Online success depends on something very important – it requires a multi-tactic approach. I like to consider online strategies as a solution made up of three important web marketing pillars that each work together to achieve strategic objectives, namely a corporate or brand website, ROI-driven web marketing and influence-focused social media.
Before I explain, let's identify some typical strategic objectives:
* Generate traffic and and links
* Improve search engine rankings for targeted key phrases
* Build awareness amongst your target market
* Increase your subscriber base or generate a lead
* Build trust amongst your customers
* Sell a product
* Help users move through the sales cycle
* Build influence in the market place
* Support your crisis management communications strategy
* Learn new things about customers
* Identify relevant online networks
Different strategies address different objectives
As we can tell, most of these objectives are relevant to most businesses; however, it's important to understand that different online strategies address different objectives. As an example, social media may be great to build influence or learn new things about customers but would need the support of search engine optimization (SEO) to sell a product or generate a lead. It's not to say that social media cold not address these objectives; having the two working in a combined fashion just makes it all the more successful.
So back to the three important web marketing pillars…
The foundation to any online strategy should be a corporate website. It's what some would call the starting point for customers who are interested in your company – for instance, where they get their news about your company and your product and service offerings. Pay a lot of attention to this because, if anything else, this is the most important online real estate you will own. It's what pulls everything together and what supports all your other strategies.
The second important online pillar is what I call “traditional digital media”. Examples of this includes affiliate marketing, response-driven advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation and WebPR, to name some. When used properly, these strategies offer a very targeted, ROI-driven manner of reaching out to consumers and drawling them closer to a predetermined goal.
The third – yes, third – pillar is social media. I put this one last because well-executed social media needs the support of some of the above in order to be more effective than its isolated application. Unlike the other two pillars, the social media arm of the online strategy is about leveraging relationships and networks for the purposes of engaging in open dialogue with and amongst target markets, to create influence within the market and to discover new business-relevant information and trends.
Source:http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/21944.html
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Running Successful PPC Campaigns: Attracting The Right Click
Creating and refining successful PPC campaigns requires the ability to think and act like the average web surfer. It requires taking time to understand your ideal customer as well as the wrong visitor (the guy who just cost you a $2.00 click). It's worth the effort to figure out how to attract the former and dissuade the latter.
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
Monday, February 4, 2008
10 Search Engines You Don't Know About
Go beyond Google and get vertical. These specialized search sites will help you find the business information you need -- fast
We've got some big news for you. Brace yourself. There are search options beyond Google -- and we're not talking about Yahoo! and MSN. Vertical search is on the rise, and whether you're looking for business products, services or information, or a new place to advertise, vertical search sites can benefit your company. Market research firm Outsell predicts that the vertical search market will reach $1 billion by 2009. While Google gets around 65 percent of search traffic today, it doesn't mean it's always the best place for your search.
"When we speak about an alternative search engine, we're speaking about something that's extremely industry-specific, very niche," says Jason Prescott, the owner of vertical search engine TopTenWholesale.com. "It's pin-pointing, accurate and only going to be for that topic you're searching for, [rather than] having to scour through the billions of search results you'll get on a mainstream, tier-one search engine."
The same logic applies when determining where to spend your search engine marketing dollars. If you sell a general consumer product, Google may be your best bet. But if you're looking for highly targeted business purchasers, it may be wise to go vertical. "[You get] a much more relevant user, a much higher conversion and a much better return on your investment," says Prescott. "User traffic might be a little less, but the visitor is highly more qualified."
Here are 10 vertical search engines we've identified as useful to any business owner. Be sure to research your own industry, however, for more specific verticals that can hone your searches or boost your advertising ROI for business customers.
* TopTenWholesale.com: One of the biggest hurdles for new retailers is finding wholesale merchandise to sell. Prescott aims to place all those product sellers in one place so that when you search for shoes, you receive wholesale results, not Zappos.com. The site also offers news, a blog, directory listings, forums and classifieds, fulfilling Prescott's goal to create not just a wholesale search site, but a wholesale portal.
* ThomasNet.com: ThomasRegister has been a leader in the business information field for more than 100 years, and ThomasNet.com is the place to go if you're in the market for industrial and manufacturing goods and services. This robust site allows you to search by product/service, company name, brand name, industrial websites or CAD models. You can narrow your search by U.S. state or Canadian province. Browse by category, download 2D and 3D CAD models of mechanical parts, and even download a search plug-in for your Firefox browser.
* FindLaw.com: Both FindLaw.com and Lawyers.com serve the same primary functions: They allow users to search for attorneys by location and specialty. But FindLaw has an easier-to-use interface, making its extra information quicker to find, such as the free form examples, free full-text books and legal dictionary. Both have general search functionality, message boards and blogs, but again FindLaw.com wins us over with its small business section.
* USA.gov: The government has a labyrinthine web of sites, and if you're looking for information, it's easy to get lost. This all-things-U.S.-government portal/search engine has a tab specifically for businesses and nonprofits, and you can browse by topic. By far, the most helpful area in the business tab is Get It Done Online, an area with links to business necessities that, yes, you can take care of online.
* IT.com: Rather than offering a plain vanilla directory or just one basic search bar, IT.com provides several tech-oriented search options. This includes product and service categories (enterprise networking, open source, product development) or industry solutions (government, SMB, financial markets). The interface takes non-tech folks into consideration as well; each search choice has a roll-over with an explanation of the terminology. In the main search bar, you can choose to search for news, companies, white papers or webcasts.
* Zibb.com: Reed Business is one of the leading vertical publishers with more than 200 business titles. Zibb.com is the company's new online venture, a vertical search service for business that offers not only websites and blogs in the results, but also Reed Business content. This site has a strong UK bent to its information, but it's one to keep an eye on because of its strong news element along with the typical search results and directory listings.
* VerticalSearch.com: VerticalSearch gets super meta as a vertical search engine for vertical sites. The homepage offers pre-determined categories, but you also can choose your own keywords. Results pages offer feeds of headlines and research papers, and you can choose to pull an RSS feed from any search that you choose.
* SearchFinance.com: This site bills itself as the "search engine for financial executives," making it quite the portal for corporate finance. While search is front-and-center, there are a ton of browsing options: blogs, podcasts, events, webcasts, magazines and alerts. Search results are particularly impressive. Directory matches pop up first, but you can also scroll over the results sources for more information on a particular company and choose to remove any "commercial" sources from your results.
* Yahoo! Local: This site is the most consumer-oriented of the bunch, but a recent redesign with a focus on vertical categories makes it worth a look. Yahoo! Local has broken out of the restaurants-and-nightclubs city guide mold to offer a number of business categories like health and beauty, automotive, and real estate--useful information whether you're looking for professional service vendors in your neighborhood, a new bistro to take a client to, or a local advertising solution for your business.
* Melissa Data: This is a slight fudge on our part as this site is more of a new customer enticement for data service provider Melissa Data than true vertical search, but there are so many free search options, it may become a favorite on your bookmarks. You can search for basic demographic and market data, maps and mailing information, statistics or specific data like SIC codes. There's a daily limit to your number of "lookups," so unless you subscribe, you'll have to curb your information appetite.
Source:http://www.bmighty.com/services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918774
We've got some big news for you. Brace yourself. There are search options beyond Google -- and we're not talking about Yahoo! and MSN. Vertical search is on the rise, and whether you're looking for business products, services or information, or a new place to advertise, vertical search sites can benefit your company. Market research firm Outsell predicts that the vertical search market will reach $1 billion by 2009. While Google gets around 65 percent of search traffic today, it doesn't mean it's always the best place for your search.
"When we speak about an alternative search engine, we're speaking about something that's extremely industry-specific, very niche," says Jason Prescott, the owner of vertical search engine TopTenWholesale.com. "It's pin-pointing, accurate and only going to be for that topic you're searching for, [rather than] having to scour through the billions of search results you'll get on a mainstream, tier-one search engine."
The same logic applies when determining where to spend your search engine marketing dollars. If you sell a general consumer product, Google may be your best bet. But if you're looking for highly targeted business purchasers, it may be wise to go vertical. "[You get] a much more relevant user, a much higher conversion and a much better return on your investment," says Prescott. "User traffic might be a little less, but the visitor is highly more qualified."
Here are 10 vertical search engines we've identified as useful to any business owner. Be sure to research your own industry, however, for more specific verticals that can hone your searches or boost your advertising ROI for business customers.
* TopTenWholesale.com: One of the biggest hurdles for new retailers is finding wholesale merchandise to sell. Prescott aims to place all those product sellers in one place so that when you search for shoes, you receive wholesale results, not Zappos.com. The site also offers news, a blog, directory listings, forums and classifieds, fulfilling Prescott's goal to create not just a wholesale search site, but a wholesale portal.
* ThomasNet.com: ThomasRegister has been a leader in the business information field for more than 100 years, and ThomasNet.com is the place to go if you're in the market for industrial and manufacturing goods and services. This robust site allows you to search by product/service, company name, brand name, industrial websites or CAD models. You can narrow your search by U.S. state or Canadian province. Browse by category, download 2D and 3D CAD models of mechanical parts, and even download a search plug-in for your Firefox browser.
* FindLaw.com: Both FindLaw.com and Lawyers.com serve the same primary functions: They allow users to search for attorneys by location and specialty. But FindLaw has an easier-to-use interface, making its extra information quicker to find, such as the free form examples, free full-text books and legal dictionary. Both have general search functionality, message boards and blogs, but again FindLaw.com wins us over with its small business section.
* USA.gov: The government has a labyrinthine web of sites, and if you're looking for information, it's easy to get lost. This all-things-U.S.-government portal/search engine has a tab specifically for businesses and nonprofits, and you can browse by topic. By far, the most helpful area in the business tab is Get It Done Online, an area with links to business necessities that, yes, you can take care of online.
* IT.com: Rather than offering a plain vanilla directory or just one basic search bar, IT.com provides several tech-oriented search options. This includes product and service categories (enterprise networking, open source, product development) or industry solutions (government, SMB, financial markets). The interface takes non-tech folks into consideration as well; each search choice has a roll-over with an explanation of the terminology. In the main search bar, you can choose to search for news, companies, white papers or webcasts.
* Zibb.com: Reed Business is one of the leading vertical publishers with more than 200 business titles. Zibb.com is the company's new online venture, a vertical search service for business that offers not only websites and blogs in the results, but also Reed Business content. This site has a strong UK bent to its information, but it's one to keep an eye on because of its strong news element along with the typical search results and directory listings.
* VerticalSearch.com: VerticalSearch gets super meta as a vertical search engine for vertical sites. The homepage offers pre-determined categories, but you also can choose your own keywords. Results pages offer feeds of headlines and research papers, and you can choose to pull an RSS feed from any search that you choose.
* SearchFinance.com: This site bills itself as the "search engine for financial executives," making it quite the portal for corporate finance. While search is front-and-center, there are a ton of browsing options: blogs, podcasts, events, webcasts, magazines and alerts. Search results are particularly impressive. Directory matches pop up first, but you can also scroll over the results sources for more information on a particular company and choose to remove any "commercial" sources from your results.
* Yahoo! Local: This site is the most consumer-oriented of the bunch, but a recent redesign with a focus on vertical categories makes it worth a look. Yahoo! Local has broken out of the restaurants-and-nightclubs city guide mold to offer a number of business categories like health and beauty, automotive, and real estate--useful information whether you're looking for professional service vendors in your neighborhood, a new bistro to take a client to, or a local advertising solution for your business.
* Melissa Data: This is a slight fudge on our part as this site is more of a new customer enticement for data service provider Melissa Data than true vertical search, but there are so many free search options, it may become a favorite on your bookmarks. You can search for basic demographic and market data, maps and mailing information, statistics or specific data like SIC codes. There's a daily limit to your number of "lookups," so unless you subscribe, you'll have to curb your information appetite.
Source:http://www.bmighty.com/services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918774
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Search Engine Optimization Best Practice Helps Ecommerce Store to Increase Sales by 780%
Using desme’s strategic online marketing expertise, Bradley’s Military Mall achieved a remarkable increase in sales of 780%. The recently launched army surplus ecommerce website accomplished this feat through their revitalized online presence and marketing campaign, both developed by desme.
Eighty-four days after implementation, the website has seen vast improvements in conversion rates and an increase in overall sales. Bill McKinney, the owner of Bradley’s, commented on these achievements, “Bradley’s web page actually experienced a whopping 780% growth rate since desme developed our new ecommerce website. This phenomenal, outlandish figure is usually only found in fairy tales, but it’s an accurate figure.”
desme was contacted by Bradley’s Military in January of 2007. After the initial exchange of information and a few helpful meetings, both companies came to an agreement for a redesign of the old website and the implementation of an intense online-marketing campaign. The first step was for desme to develop a brand new ecommerce website using the advanced ASP.NET technology on an MS SQL server.
desme’s website usability team conducted a complete target market survey to identify the user trends of Bradley’s intended audience. Based on these findings, desme’s graphics team put together a new layout for the ecommerce website. Once graphics were completed, desme’s technology team leader, Ashraf Alam (a Microsoft MVP for .NET technology), built a strong architectural backbone for the ecommerce solution. In less than ninety days the entire technology had been developed, including a fully integrated custom shopping cart.
While the website development was going on, a team of desme search engine optimization experts put together a complete keyword study. Working side by side with the developers, their work ensured the new website was fully optimized and that search engines could index the website content properly.
The website was launched in October of 2007. Within days the company started to see great results. With the old website, Bradley’s received about 3.4% online orders for all of their mail orders. In less than ninety days, the total online sales increased to over 780%. This increase currently makes up about 27% of all the mail orders. desme CEO Enam Noor says, “We feel very confident about this systematic improvement, and expect to see total online sales exceeding 50% of their total mail orders.”
desme’s view of a successful online marketing campaign includes the use of best practices, as well as a combination of increased site visibility and improved conversion rates through enhanced website usability. Using a systematic implementation of these principles, desme has achieved quantifiable results.
source:http://www.prweb.com/releases/Website_Marketing/SEO/prweb670163.htm
Eighty-four days after implementation, the website has seen vast improvements in conversion rates and an increase in overall sales. Bill McKinney, the owner of Bradley’s, commented on these achievements, “Bradley’s web page actually experienced a whopping 780% growth rate since desme developed our new ecommerce website. This phenomenal, outlandish figure is usually only found in fairy tales, but it’s an accurate figure.”
desme was contacted by Bradley’s Military in January of 2007. After the initial exchange of information and a few helpful meetings, both companies came to an agreement for a redesign of the old website and the implementation of an intense online-marketing campaign. The first step was for desme to develop a brand new ecommerce website using the advanced ASP.NET technology on an MS SQL server.
desme’s website usability team conducted a complete target market survey to identify the user trends of Bradley’s intended audience. Based on these findings, desme’s graphics team put together a new layout for the ecommerce website. Once graphics were completed, desme’s technology team leader, Ashraf Alam (a Microsoft MVP for .NET technology), built a strong architectural backbone for the ecommerce solution. In less than ninety days the entire technology had been developed, including a fully integrated custom shopping cart.
While the website development was going on, a team of desme search engine optimization experts put together a complete keyword study. Working side by side with the developers, their work ensured the new website was fully optimized and that search engines could index the website content properly.
The website was launched in October of 2007. Within days the company started to see great results. With the old website, Bradley’s received about 3.4% online orders for all of their mail orders. In less than ninety days, the total online sales increased to over 780%. This increase currently makes up about 27% of all the mail orders. desme CEO Enam Noor says, “We feel very confident about this systematic improvement, and expect to see total online sales exceeding 50% of their total mail orders.”
desme’s view of a successful online marketing campaign includes the use of best practices, as well as a combination of increased site visibility and improved conversion rates through enhanced website usability. Using a systematic implementation of these principles, desme has achieved quantifiable results.
source:http://www.prweb.com/releases/Website_Marketing/SEO/prweb670163.htm
Freight Broker Hits Top 10 on Search Engines
In addition to search engine optimization (SEO) the company's internet marketing program also includes a monthly email newsletter, frequent direct email campaigns, link exchange program, online directories as well as some pay-per-click advertising. The company has tracked over $500,000 in revenue in 2007 directly back to their internet marketing efforts. "Internet marketing has always been an important part of our marketing program. Our new site and the search engine rankings really highlight the fact that we are a technology driven freight management company," said Dennis Brown, the company's CEO.
The company expects the traffic to their site and the revenue linked to it to grow significantly in 2008. Recently, the company received an inquiry from a shipper which resulted in over $47,000 in new business since December 2007. In addition, the success of the company's freight broker agent program has been fueled by online marketing with over 100 inquiries per month being submitted through the company's website.
About Logistic Dynamics, Inc.
Logistic Dynamics, Inc. is a Buffalo, New York, based third party logistics provider that specializes in transportation management services including full truckload, less than truckload and rail. Their mission is to provide innovative, practical and top-quality logistic services that offer our customers a competitive advantage.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64193&Itemid=9
The company expects the traffic to their site and the revenue linked to it to grow significantly in 2008. Recently, the company received an inquiry from a shipper which resulted in over $47,000 in new business since December 2007. In addition, the success of the company's freight broker agent program has been fueled by online marketing with over 100 inquiries per month being submitted through the company's website.
About Logistic Dynamics, Inc.
Logistic Dynamics, Inc. is a Buffalo, New York, based third party logistics provider that specializes in transportation management services including full truckload, less than truckload and rail. Their mission is to provide innovative, practical and top-quality logistic services that offer our customers a competitive advantage.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64193&Itemid=9
Online Reputation Management To Keep Your Nose Clean?
Techdirt is reporting that as a response to all the hoopla about people being able to Google for information on potential employees (or lovers) a new market has opened up in "online reputation management". This seems to be the ultimate realization of those dubious firms who promised to scrub your records clean from a few years back.
"From the description in the article, it sounds like this involves a combination of search engine optimization, plus legal bullying of anyone who says something you don't like. If anything, that sounds like a recipe for more trouble, but you can see how it would appeal to those who are unhappy with how they're perceived online. Obviously, it's no fun to have something bad about you exposed online, but efforts to suppress that information have a decent likelihood of backfiring and serving to highlight that information. I wonder if these online reputation managers have malpractice insurance for when that happens
source:http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/01/1618215
"From the description in the article, it sounds like this involves a combination of search engine optimization, plus legal bullying of anyone who says something you don't like. If anything, that sounds like a recipe for more trouble, but you can see how it would appeal to those who are unhappy with how they're perceived online. Obviously, it's no fun to have something bad about you exposed online, but efforts to suppress that information have a decent likelihood of backfiring and serving to highlight that information. I wonder if these online reputation managers have malpractice insurance for when that happens
source:http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/01/1618215
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