Archive for November, 2009

November 30th, 2009

To Improve Your Website, Click Here

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HttpWe found a fun, cool website that provides some compelling A/B test results on website designs. Ann Holland’s WhichTestWon.com does simple website results testing. Visitors have the opportunity to choose which website design they think did better in test results, and then to read which page actually won in real life. Some test results are a little more scientific than others, but they still give some ideas for improving your websites.

Here are a few of their findings:

1. Click Here works better than hyperlinked words. They found that using calls to action such as “To visit our website, click here” was 72.5% more effective than “Visit our Website.”

2. Putting the add-to-cart option on the left side of the page increased purchases.   Simply by moving the add-to-cart button from the traditional right side of the screen increased sales by 16.7%. There was no definitive explanation for why this was so, but it worked.

3. Multi-page forms generally work better than single page forms.   Results from an application form page found that users were more likely to fill out more, shorter pages versus one longer page. It was pointed out, however, that audience preferences vary on different e-commerce sites.

If you are trying to improve your website’s design, this website is a good source to get you thinking.

CategoryDesign | CommentNo Comments »

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November 28th, 2009

Google’s Matt Cutts Provides Insider SEO Tips

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Matt Cutts has been a key member of Google’s team since 2000. Prior to joining Google, he was working on his PhD at the University of North Carolina.Picture 2

Not long ago, Matt sat down with USA Today to discuss some insider tips on how to set your website up so that it gets seen by Google and other search engines. In the interview, Matt discusses everything from the importance of Title Tags to ways to get more insider tips from Google.

If you’re interested in checking out the video, you can do so by clicking the video image.

What are some of your best SEO tips? How have you improved the rankings of your website? Share your secrets with our readers!

CategorySEO | Comment1 Comment »

November 26th, 2009

Join the Social Media Roundtable. Space is Limited. Sign Up Today.

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BlogRSSFeedJoin the 60 Second Marketer team as we facilitate the Social Media Roundtable on the first Friday of every month at 1:00 pm Eastern Time (6:00 pm in London and 10:00 am in Los Angeles).

Our Social Media Roundtable is an open-ended discussion designed to keep members of the 60 Second Marketer community up-to-date on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing.

Attendance in the Roundtable is limited, so if you’re interested in learning more about Social Media, register today.

The Roundtable will take place on the first Friday of every month. If you’re a subscriber to the 60 Second Marketer eNewsletter or if you’ve ever registered for our Social Media Roundtable (including this one), you’ll get a notification reminding you to register prior to each month’s event.

The Social Media Roundtable is not a webinar. It’s more like a training session designed to teach members of the 60 Second Marketer community the newest techniques in marketing.

We’re looking forward to a lively, interactive event on Friday, December 4th. See you soon!

CategorySocial Media | CommentNo Comments »

November 24th, 2009

Improve the Readability of your Website

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WebpagesText is perhaps your website’s most important asset. Make it flow with these quick tips:

1.  Research shows that most people don’t read – they scan instead. Therefore, make the most highly trafficked pages easier to scan. If your current site consists of large blocks of text, break it up so that it’s easier for the average internet user to scan.

2. Consider using bullet points, short sentences and bold text wherever possible.

3. Write your meaningful headlines instead of vague or cutesy.

Short and simple works!

CategoryGeneral Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

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November 23rd, 2009

How to Measure the ROI of your Online Campaigns

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Marketers like to measure stuff. And indeed a most telling way to measure stuff is your ROI. The Return on Investment has been a trusted way to check that you are indeed making money.

PieChart

Now a new dilemma: With social media becoming a more acceptable marketing channel, how can you measure its contribution towards the ROI?

OMMA Magazine investigated this in a recent article, and here are the suggestions they shared:

1. Track New Customer Acquisitions: “If you can get an idea of their purchase path, you can figure out what is bringing them to your site.” New Customer Acquisitions also helps in long-term planning, and can help make a case for developing non-brand strategies, especially if you find non-brand keywords are bringing customers to your site.

2. Track Order IDs: Use Order ID’s to tell which of your online campaigns or programs drove new customers to buy. If you track Order ID’s, you can determine which of your media touchpoints initiated, influenced and closed the sale.

3. Measure Traffic Across Multiple Channels: Where are your customers interacting with your brand? Are they signing up for newsletters or promotions, sharing on Facebook, or forwarding to a friend? Measure them, then move to the next step below.

4. Track the ROI of various elements on your website: Although this may be a challenge, you can develop at least an idea of which areas of your website are leading to sales. By doing so, you’ll be able to track ROI at a very specific level.

The customer interactions on your web campaigns don’t have to be left out of the ROI. Use these multiple metrics to help bolster your ROI by 1) evaluating the true benefit of your online ad spends, and 2) helping you allocate your budget where it will drive the most overall benefit.

++++++

Thanks to OMMA Magazine for sharing this information.

CategoryGeneral Marketing, Internet, Social Media | CommentNo Comments »

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November 23rd, 2009

Take a Tip from Colin Powell

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From General Colin Powell last week in San Francisco: The boundaries that separated the world’s countries from one another are not there anymore due to the information revolution.

colin powellFormer General and Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a inspiring speech in front of 8 thousand last Thursday at the salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference. I wish I had had time to send in the blog a little sooner, but I was working at the conference and didn’t have a moment to spare. I feel so behind the times – no internet on my cell phone. (gasp!) But even though this comes four whole days after his speech, an inexcusable eon  in internet time, it is always relevant to those of us interested in social networking. In fact, I feel a little corny calling the speech “inspirational” until seeing the comments on the General’s Facebook page from others at the conference. “Inspirational” it is.

Here are the social networking topic highlights of General Powell’s speech:

  • He said he “loves watching technology change,” especially with the large leaps since his leaving Secretary of State office in 2005.
  • He  commented on the way it has contributed to changes globally, calling it the “information revolution.”
  • His personal interest in social networking began with Tweeting, with some help from his grandson.
  • Then came Facebook. He tells that his grandson really talked him into it. General Powell’s first reaction was “no!” But once his grandson told him that a Facebook page had already been set up, and that there were already 17,000 fans…well, says the General, maybe Facebook wouldn’t be so bad.…
  • Quote: “Once we link all social media together, we start to see how it can change the world.”

My takeaway from the speech that applies to all of us:

Folks, the formal General and Secretary of State Colin Powell

a) Took the time to learn social networking, and
b) Sees the incredible power that social networking has for making change globally.

Seems to me we can learn it and use it to make changes, too.

CategorySocial Media | CommentNo Comments »

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November 21st, 2009

What’s Your Favorite iPhone App?

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A few posts ago, I mentioned that Mobile Media will eclipse Social Media as the next “big thing” in about 9 to 18 months. The only thing that’s kept it back so far was that Smart Phone technology had to gain more adoption before it could take off. Well, that time has come. Smart Phones are everywhere.

In fact, I’m writing this post from my iPhone. WordPress, the blogging platform I use, has a free iPhone App that makes it easy to write blogs on the fly.

Every so often, you’ll see a post from me written from my iPhone. They may not be long posts, but hopefully, they’ll be helpful.

What are your favorite iPhone Apps? Let us know and share it with our readers!

CategoryBlogs | Comment5 Comments »

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November 20th, 2009

Five More Common Paid Search Mistakes

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We’ve got even more paid search mistakes for you to avoid, in addition to yesterday’s list.sherlock hat

We remember Sherlock Holmes, and his expert ability to find clues. Your prospective customers need clues to be able to find your company,  too.

#6 Poor or no landing page at all – Many newcomers to paid search don’t understand the impact of your landing page on your quality score. If your ad links to a page with irrelevant information, this will damage your quality score, causing you to pay more for clicks and appear lower in searches. This correlation is why linking all ads to your home page is such a bad idea. Creating specific and highly relevant landing pages will improve the effectiveness of your campaign.

#7 Poor ad copy – While this mistake should be obvious, there are a few simple rules to follow that will keep your ad copy fresh and click-friendly. First of all, never use the same word twice. You only have so much space and almost no words are important enough to use twice; think of a different way to state your offer. Also, as mentioned previously, you want to include the keyword pointing to the ad in your ad copy. Most engines will highlight the keyword if you include it, which improves the visibility of your ad. Lastly, you must clearly state the offer and use action words in your copy. If you’re going up against competition directly, make sure your offer at least sounds better than theirs. If they are offering a lower price, for example, you use a percentage number or other differentiating statistic to improve how your offer reads.

#8 Focusing only on “big” keywords and not the long tail – These long tail keywords are generally less competitive and less expensive. Additionally, their clicks skew towards searchers that are farther along in the buying process, because they are searching for a specific term, such as a model number like “Blackberry 8330”. According to some recent studies, 28 percent of terms searched in 2008 had never been searched before. This statistic speaks to the opportunities available in long-tail keywords.

#9 Not pairing SEO with paid search – If you’re not leveraging both, you’re missing out. There is so much commonality in the research that if you are doing one, you might as well do the other. Not to mention that doing both ensures that if something goes wrong, such as the algorithm changing or your paid search budget running out, you are still alive in the other part of search.

#10 Bidding on brand terms only – Bidding on non-brand terms is what brings you new customers. If someone is searching for a term with your brand name in it, they are already familiar with your brand and potentially your exact product. While you must cater to these people as well and complete sales, it is important to remember to seek new customers. The beauty of the internet is its broad reach, and if you do not bid on non-brand terms, you are not taking advantage of this reach to its full extent.

Give paid search a shot with a small campaign budget. Remember, even with a small budget, you can compete with big competitors. Provide the right clues for your prospective customers to be able to find you.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

CategoryPaid Search | CommentNo Comments »

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November 19th, 2009

Five Common Paid Search Mistakes

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sherlockPicture Sherlock Holmes. Armed with his overcoat, magnifying glass, pipe, and unmistakable detective hat, Holmes sets out to look for clues. And he always finds them. After all, he’s got all the right tools for a productive search.

How about your prospective clients? Do they have the right tools to find you?

Whether or not your brand or product already has a presence online, you are missing out if you are not using paid search as a marketing channel. Recent research has shown that 40% of all people on the internet querying a search engine will click on a paid search link first, and that number is increasing.

Paid search allows for unprecedented targeting and tracking, letting you, the Chief Paid Search Detective, control expenditures down to minute details. You can run a paid search campaign with $20 or $200,000, and the $20 campaign is not necessarily at a disadvantage. It can earn the same ROI.

Ready to jump in? Just look before you  leap.

Here are ten of the most common paid search mistakes that you want to avoid when starting your campaign.

#1 Ego Bidding – This mistake usually results from emotional attachment to a certain keyword or campaign on the part of the bidder. For example, the bidder decides that his/her phrase must rank number one on a particular engine. In most cases, the bidder simply wants the satisfaction of running a search and seeing his/her keyword in a top position. Sometimes, they want to rank a phrase using  internal language, which is irrelevant to most searchers. This mistake can easily result in inefficient spending of the budget, and can often deplete your daily budget before dinner…or even lunch.

#2 Too many keywords per ad – This mistake is common to people fairly new to paid search; it’s easy to fall into but easy to get out of as well. Adding too many keywords to one ad group often leaves you with irrelevant keywords generating impressions for the ad.  First, these non-targeted impressions will decrease your quality score because your click-through rate will likely decrease. Second, these irrelevant keywords will cost you extra money.

#3 Focusing on budget instead of ROI – Paid search campaigns are not like other marketing mediums, so viewing them as another line item in your budget is a mistake.  The trackability and accountability that paid search offers allow it to run more efficiently than other types of marketing. Focusing on what you are spending instead of what you are getting in return leads to inefficient bidding and a campaign that does not maximize the benefits that paid search offers. Instead, manage paid search on a day-to-day basis, adjusting your bids and keywords in order to capitalize on the return on your investment.

#4 Not learning from your competitors’ strategy – Some paid search programs and software offer the ability to track what your competitors are doing online; what keywords, where they bid, when they bid, etc. Especially if you are going up against larger, more established brands with larger paid search budgets, you must learn from their strategies so that you are not two steps behind. With this approach, you should be able to circumvent a lot of the guesswork and gain on your competitors with efficient bidding, even on a small budget.

#5 Forgetting to think negatively – A common mistake in the campaign planning process is not thoroughly researching negative keywords. Positive keywords will drive traffic to your site, but negative keywords will filter out the traffic that you don’t want. For example, if you are selling Nike sneakers, and you are bidding on the general phrase “sneakers,” you would want to negative keyword “Reebok” or any other brands competing with Nike. This negative keyword will ensure that anyone searching “Reebok sneakers” is not directed to your ad simply because they typed in sneakers.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

CategoryPaid Search | CommentNo Comments »

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November 18th, 2009

What is Augmented Reality?

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The following post was written by 60 Second Marketer community member Garrett Fuselier who is an Integrated Experience Designer at T2 based in Kansas City.

On any given day, you’ll engage with a number of different online interfaces — typing emails, shopping online – all by clicking on a screen with a cursor.  But that’s a flat, two-dimensional experience. What if you could create a three-dimensional experience with your SmartPhone?

That’s exactly what Augmented Reality does. Just as the name suggests, it enhances our perception of reality by adding new, dynamic pieces of information that couldn’t exist naturally in the real world.

Businesses are starting to use Augmented Reality to build new relationships with brands, with audiences physically and emotionally connected on many integrated levels. These elements and tools, by choice of your segments, will become part of their every day lives. For example, imagine a clothing store with blank price tags, where by looking through the lens of your phone, you could reveal the price. This line of thinking promotes dynamic data, providing opportunities to easily modify sale prices.  Simple ideas that engage your users, which are cheap and intuitive, will set your brand ahead of others.yelp

What’s amazing is that marketers are already beginning to take advantage of Augmented Reality to enhance the user experience. One good example is a new feature on the iPhone app, Yelp.  The app allows you to peer through your iPhone, into your environment, and visualize what restaurants are around you. Utilizing the compass and GPS technology on the phone, labels of restaurants appear depending on the direction you’re facing.  This is fantastic for those in foreign cities, or someone willing to try new restaurants, creating a useful tool and loyalty to the online service of Yelp.

But, why has it taken us this long to progress to this point?  The obvious answer comes with the progression of mobile technology.  Where these applications resonate are within computer systems that can move around through a space, and are not bound to a desktop.  Soon enough, we will see these elements within stationary environments: in retail spaces, gas stations and even under the hood of your car. Our old, ’80s visions of “the future” are actually manifesting themselves, opening up new platforms for marketing and communication.

Bio:

Garrett Fuselier is an Integrated Experience Designer at T2, a company that creates stories and imagery for all types of media.

CategoryAugmented Reality, Mobile Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

November 18th, 2009

How to Use LinkedIn for Business

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Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. He is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Not long ago, Guy wrote a piece on LinkedIn called 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn. It provides several great ideas about how to leverage this valuable tool.

(Interestingly, Guy’s list includes 11 tips, not 10. This, of course, proves the old dictum that there are 3 kinds of people — those who can count, and those who can’t.)

Here’s an excerpt of Guy’s article. For the complete article, visit 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn.

Most people use LinkedIn to ‘get to someone’ in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 40 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 170 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized, so I’ve compiled a top-ten list of ways to increase the value of LinkedIn.

  1. Increase your visibility: By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 67,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.
  2. Improve your connectability: Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. The added benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment.
  3. Improve your Google PageRank: LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you. To do this, create a public profile and select ‘Full View.’ Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web. For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature.
  4. Enhance your search engine results: In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like ‘My Website’, ‘My Company,’ etc. If you select ‘Other’, you can modify the name of the link. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and voila! instant search-engine optimization for your site. To make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to ‘Full View.’
  5. Perform blind, ‘reverse,’ and company reference checks: LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search will find the people who worked at the company during the same time period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glowing, this is a good way to get more balanced data.
  6. Increase the relevancy of your job search: Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work experience like yours to see where they work. For example, a programmer would use search keywords such as ‘Ruby on Rails,’ ‘C++,’ ‘Python,’ ‘Java,’ and ‘evangelist’ to find out where other programmers with these skills work.
  7. Make your interview go smoother: You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting. Knowing that you went to the same school, plays hockey, or shares acquaintances is a lot better than an awkward silence after, ‘I’m doing fine, thank you.’
  8. Gauge the health of a company: Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the ‘Current Companies Only’ box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board.
  9. Gauge the health of an industry: If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors-or even better, companies who failed. For example, suppose you wanted to build a next generation online pet store, you’d probably learn a lot from speaking with former Pets.com or WebVan employees.
  10. Track startups: You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as ‘stealth’ or ‘new startup.’ Apply the ‘Sort By’ filter to ‘Relationship’ in order to see the people closest to you first.
  11. Ask for advice: LinkedIn’s product, LinkedIn Answers, aims to enable this online. The product allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums. For example, here are some questions an entrepreneur might ask when the associates of a venture capital firm come up blank:
  1. ‘Who’s a good, fast, and cheap patent lawyer?’
  2. ‘What should we pay a vp of biz dev?’
  3. ‘Is going to Demo worth it?’
  4. ‘How much traffic does a TechCrunch plug generate?’

CategorySocial Media, Uncategorized | Comment2 Comments »

November 18th, 2009

Marketing Best Practices: Three Mistakes to Avoid on Your Next Marketing Campaign

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Several months ago, I wrote a post about the three most common mistakes marketers make. I just took another spin through that post and thought some of the insights were worth sharing again.

So, with that in mind, allow me to do a little cutting and pasting:dont do it!

As a marketing person, it’s your job to understand what makes a great campaign. But it’s just as important to understand what makes a bad campaign.

There are three big mistakes many marketers make, resulting in wasted money and, worse yet, lost revenue. Here are the three big mistakes:

  1. Not getting inside the mind of your customer: All great campaigns get their start when a marketing person has an intimate sense of what motivates the customer prospect. What are their needs, desires, interests and dreams? Just as importantly, what are their fears, pains, insecurities and wounds? When you understand these, you have the foundation of a successful marketing program.
  2. Assuming your customer is as interested in your product as you are: Do you know why great ad campaigns work? Because they break through the clutter. Despite the fact that “break through the clutter” is an over-used term, it’s true — the average person sees between 5,000 and 20,000 messages a day (depending on which research you believe). No matter what the figure, it’s your job to be one of the two or three messages that a consumer remembers on any given day. That happens when you spark some emotion in the mind of your prospect: fear, love, happiness, joy, saddness, longing, euphoria, etc.
  3. Not creating a dialogue with your customer: The days of running a commercial on network television and reaching 80% of your target audience with a one-way piece of communication are over. Today, you need to open up a dialogue with your prospect so that they can talk to you when they want to and how they want to. Think email marketing, blogging, YouTube marketing, article marketing, Twitter, LinkedIn and a whole slew of other new and emerging marketing tools.

The reason most marketing campaigns are snoozers is because most marketing directors don’t know the top 3 mistakes many marketers make. By keeping an eye on these issues, you can give your campaign every chance it needs at succeeding. There are no guarantees, but you’ll be ahead of the vast majority of marketing directors out there.

CategoryMarketing Best Practices | CommentNo Comments »

November 17th, 2009

Warning: Don’t Let Your Website Get Caught Unprepared for the Holidays

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santa left behindWe came across this article with its very important reminder that the holiday seasons are coming fast. Now is the time to plan for the success of your website during the approaching purchasing frenzy.

How can you be sure you are ready for the onslaught of potential customers?

Read the abbreviated story here, or click to read the entire article from MarketingTips.com.

Quick Tip #1:  Add a benefit to your headline

If the headline on your web site isn’t grabbing your visitors’ attention as soon as they read it, you’re losing sales. That’s a fact. And nothing grabs a visitor’s attention like a compelling headline with a clear benefit.

Quick Tip #2:   Feature seasonal specials in the first fold of your homepage

It’s important that your special be featured on the first fold of your homepage. (The first fold is the first screen of your homepage that is visible without scrolling.) Remember, you want to make it EASY for your visitors to find and buy your products. The best way to do this is by making sure that every single visitor to your site sees your featured specials.

Quick Tip #3:   Send out a holiday e-mail promotion

Remember: The clock is ticking! You really don’t have time to go out and acquire a bunch of new traffic in time for the busy holiday rush. But the good news is that you don’t need to. If you have a list of customers and/or subscribers, you’ve already got an incredibly powerful database of people who are just waiting to make purchases from you!

Quick Tip #4:   Consider replacing third-party ads

Take a moment and think about whether or not your site is using the first fold of your web site effectively, especially if you’re hosting advertising for other companies.

Figure out approximately how much money you’ll receive from hosting third-party advertising over the holiday season. Include all revenue from any banners ads, skyscraper ads, text ads, etc. that are located within the first fold of your site.

Now, ask yourself whether you could make more by replacing these third-party ads with ads for your OWN products. For many businesses, even one sale would be worth more money than their banner ads generate for them in a whole month!

Quick Tip #5:   Offer fast, flexible shipping

There’s one thing that continues to scare people about buying online for the holidays: late delivery. There’s nothing that drives customers offline and out to the shopping mall faster than the idea that their kids’ Christmas presents won’t arrive until the 28th of December!

If you use a major nationwide delivery service such as UPS or FedEx, you’ll want to feature this information. People will feel much more comfortable ordering from a site that uses one of these services than one that ships through the mail.

Also, be sure to tell your customers that they MUST order by a certain date in order for you to guarantee delivery by Christmas. This will save you a lot of headaches when disgruntled customers call you on Christmas morning wondering why the products they ordered on the 23rd haven’t arrived yet!

Quick Tip #6:   Offer to ship gifts directly to recipients

If possible, offer to ship your customers’ purchases directly to the gift recipients. This saves your customers the hassle of waiting to receive the package from you and then sending it out to someone else. This is a great way to add value to your service without any additional cost to you!

Quick Tip #7:   Include some sales material

Each package that you send out as a gift from someone else should include a flyer, brochure, or coupon from your company. After all, the recipient of this gift is the perfect potential customer!

Quick Tip #8:   Offer online gift certificates

Gift certificates can be an easy way to boost sales for sites that sell products and services to niche markets.  If you are selling a service online, gift certificates are a great way to turn your service into a gift! No matter what you’re selling — it could be spa packages or landscape design — I can guarantee that your service would make the perfect gift for somebody out there.

Plus, you can remind your customers and subscribers that since gift certificates can be delivered electronically, they make great last-minute gifts. Personally, online gift certificates have saved the day for me a few times!

Quick Tip #9:   Explain why your product (or service) would make a great gift

At this time of year especially, it’s important to remind people why your product would make a great gift idea. Of course, sites selling products like neckties or Christmas ornaments won’t need to worry about this as much, but what if your site is selling something like office supplies?

Quick Tip #10:   Offer a “Book Now and Save” promotion

One of the biggest problems encountered by some online businesses is that they suffer from what I call a “Holiday Hangover.” Not only does business fall off in the month BEFORE the holidays, it also suffers during the month AFTER, when people don’t have any money left!

Because of this, it can be a real challenge for some businesses to get revenues back on track in the New Year. One of the best ways to deal with this is to motivate your customers to purchase your product or service NOW for the New Year in exchange for a discounted price or value-added bonus.

Final Thoughts

The holiday season is a make-or-break time of year for many online businesses. And just because you haven’t found the time to set up a comprehensive holiday marketing strategy doesn’t mean that you can’t turn a great profit over the next couple of weeks.

But you do need to take the time to implement some of these quick tips IMMEDIATELY… do whatever it takes to get your site ready for the holidays NOW. Every day you wait is another day of missed opportunities and lost profits!

The great thing is that all of the tips I’ve just given you can be implemented quickly and easily. Most of these should only take you an hour or two to set up on your site, and the results will make you wish you had started much sooner.

Happy holidays!

CategoryMarketing Techniques | Comment2 Comments »

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November 16th, 2009

Mobile Marketing: Has its Time Finally Arrived?

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People have been talking about mobile marketing for quite some time. It seems every year is going to be the “Year of Mobile Marketing.”

Well, folks, 2010 may just be that year. If you think social media is big, wait until you see the impact of mobile media.MobilePhoneGlobal

Here’s an excerpt from a recent article in ADWEEK. (For the complete post, click ADWEEK.)

“Overall, there are now more mobile phones in the world than personal computers. There are over 4.6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, according to eMarketer. Yet mobile advertising remains a tiny market. eMarketer expects it to generate $416 million in U.S. ad spending this year, about the same amount spent on search marketing in two weeks. This will undoubtedly change, although perhaps not as quickly as mobile’s biggest boosters hope, according to agency executives, analysts and mobile veterans.

Here are the key reasons why:

Stepping on the Scale: For all the big numbers bandied about in mobile, the opportunities today are quite small. Think about smartphones. The typical person in San Francisco or New York could be forgiven for believing everyone is toting around an iPhone. That’s not the case. In fact, fewer than one in five Americans has a smartphone, according to most estimates. That knocks out the most advanced ads like applications — and greatly cuts into the opportunity to reach mobile consumers.

That’s meant that while iPhone applications and mobile display ads get the most attention, the best way to run a mobile ad program with scale is through the humble text message, according to mobile ad tech provider Placecast CEO Alistair Goodman. “You’ve got to be able to run on all phones, not just on smartphones,” he said. “Eventually everyone will have one. Today that isn’t the case.”

Hunt for the Killer App: Current mobile formats borrow from the Web, treating mobile phones as little more than tiny computer screens rather than highly personal devices that physically accompany a person as they go through their day.

AdMob is an example of an early iteration of mobile advertising. Most of the ad impressions it serves are tiny static billboards.

“I don’t think the ad formats we see now are the killer ad formats,” said Jonathon Linner, CEO of Brightkite, a location-based mobile service and a founder of early mobile ad net Enpocket.

What’s more, targeting ads to mobile phone users is still in its infancy. The carriers sit on a trove of user information and location data that is largely unavailable to marketers. Brightkite hopes to change that by showing ads to users based on their physical location. In a campaign launching this month, it’s combining location and prior user behavior with augmented reality to show users on-screen product offers from nearby retail outlets.


Apps, Not Ads: The decision by Volkswagen to launch the new GTI exclusively on mobile would appear to be a seminal moment for the mobile ad market. And it has been a roaring success: the GTI iPhone app has been downloaded over 2 million times in three weeks. But VW didn’t buy mobile ads for the launch, plowing the money instead into app development.
This is part of a larger shift to pull marketing, but it’s also reflective of data that shows low acceptance of mobile marketing messages. BIGresearch concluded in a study released last week that two-thirds of users objected to mobile text ads. Over half said all mobile advertising was an invasion of privacy. That’s meant many marketers want to take a soft-sell approach that avoids ad messaging in favor of creating content and utility.

“We’re leaning less on mobile marketing,” said Scott Shamberg, svp of marketing and distribution for Critical Mass. “We want to allow consumers to find us rather than pump out [mobile] banners.”

Plumbing Problems: The mobile Web is much like the Internet in its early days: a small market without standardized methods and simple ways to run and measure campaigns. There’s one other glaring factor missing from mobile that holds it back: an easy transaction option. Much is made of Pizza Hut generating $1 million from orders placed through its iPhone app. Yet consumers are jumping through hoops to do so: they need to enter credit card info rather than just hit a button.”

CategoryMobile Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

November 16th, 2009

Be a Social Media Whiz: Secrets of a Successful Online Campaign

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elearning desktopYes, you can be a whiz at using social media successfully.

Here’s the secret: You wouldn’t start a new billboard campaign without careful planning, would you? Of course not. Yet many companies seem to jump right in to a social media campaign without giving this type of marketing the careful consideration that other types get. Why? It is a new medium to many, and we’re still learning the ropes. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others can be very effective – if done with a little planning.

Here’s a 10 point road map to help you plan to make the most effective use of a social media campaign, taken from a recent webinar presented by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer. Already using social media? Review to see if there’s a new idea for you.

1. Competitive Assessment: What are your competitors doing in this space already? What can you borrow from them?

2. Internal Situation Analysis: How much awareness is there of social media within your company? Is there an understanding that it can be measured and create a positive ROI?

3. Major Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish with your social media campaign?

4. Consumer Thought Process: What is the typical sales cycle for your product? How much trust do you need to build before you can make a sale? (Hint: The more expensive the product, the more trust needs to be built.)

5. Key Strategies: What approach are you going to take in order to have a successful program?

6. Brand Essence: What is your brand essence and how are you going to communicate that using social media?

7. Positioning: How is your brand currently positioned in the marketplace? Where do you want it to be positioned as a result of your social media campaign?

8. Essential Message: What is the essential take-away you want consumers and prospects to have after engaging with your brand via social media?

9. Tactical Plan Overview: Which social media platforms are you going to use for your program? Which tools are you going to use to measure the success of your program?

10. Executional Roadmap: What are your SMART Goals for this plan? How are you going to be held accountable for them?

Careful planning will make the time spent well worth it, and make you look like the whiz that you are. Just don’t forget to have fun and be creative with your campaign. You may be the next trend setter, with competitors following your example!

CategoryFacebook, LinkedIn, Marketing Techniques, Social Media, Twitter | Comment5 Comments »

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