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Archive for Online Tools and Tips
May 4, 2007 at 3:48 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
Social shopping sites have hit the US by storm and also search engines. An item placed on Crowdstorm will be indexed on search engines within the week. Unfortunately no link is provided by Crowdstorm to the item but if it is Brand awareness and customer appreciation you want then Crowdstorm is for you. More specialist sites have cropped up like Stylehive where you can provide a link and tags for the item. Most of the items on style hive are fashion orientated, but again heavily optimised. If you are struggling for a particular keyword ranking then a site such as stylehive (as long as the products match) is for you. Other sites to include in this post are Kaboodle, ThisNext and Wists. When you join any one of these sites you are given an array of free widgets to show off your choices and recommendations on your blog or site. A smart retailer will make sure that he or she has some of her products on these sites to make sure certain keywords are covered.
February 9, 2007 at 1:39 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The buzz word of 2006 was web 2.0. ‘Oh its so Web 2.0′ you might hear at conferences and seminars. My take on web 2.0 is building a community for your buyers based on the product type on offer. Your customers are moving to on-line sales but they need your advice. Truthful, simple advice without the hard sell. First magazines, gossip columns and newspapers caught onto the blog wave, but now product sellers are paving the way to help the customer make the right purchase.
Adverts may be boring and invasive at times but Blogs are not, take ‘Innocent smoothies‘ they have a web log that provides an interesting insight to their origins, ethics and the people in the company. A blog like this takes of the lid off a large company letting the consumer take a look inside. This is what corporate blogging is all about.
For instance Bluefly.com a fashion designer and retailer launched their blog http://flypaper.bluefly.com to raise awareness and keep customer informed of new styles and movements in the fashion industry.
Top free blog providers out there include Blogger.com, Typepad and Wordpress. Wordpress is also one of the most popular open source blogging software, with a new release at the end of January and a unique ‘Multi-Blogger’ system dubbed ‘Wordpress Mu’ so you can provide your employees with a blog of their own linked to your main domain.
As a new ‘blogger’ I would suggest a free hosted blog before you integrate a blog into your main domain. A ‘news’ blog needs to be updated with new content everyday, but a corporate blog only needs feeding 3-4 times a week. If you don’t update your blog your customers interest will wane and the point of the blog will eventually be lost.
We hope to see you in the blogging revolution!
February 9, 2007 at 1:37 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
E-Commerce is one of the most important aspects of the Internet. Under this umbrella we have websites with shopping cart functions, marketplaces and shopping comparison sites.
Ecommerce allows people to carry out business without the restraint of time or location. A traditional website can serve anywhere in the world that can log on! The cost per sale is reduced when you’re talking about e-commerce. No human interaction is needed, and errors are reduced as the customer provides all the information.
Customers can search for niche products in an instant, and if you are a seller of niche product, reaching out to the world can increase your sales volumes thus decreasing the cost of the item for you, the business.
The customers experience can be streamlined, they will spend less time over order discrepancies and there is an increased chance of cross selling as the products are just another click away.
So when as a business would you choose a marketplace such as eBay?
Marketplaces are great for customer acquisition; a marketplace such as eBay will spread your branding across the web quicker than any pay per click scheme. Marketplaces have high velocities, great for brand new stock and finishing lines. Marketplaces can also be places to test ideas or new products, you will soon know on whether a product is not going to do well or fly off the shelves.
Protecting your bricks and mortar:
Many traditional companies are afraid of marketplaces and the fierce price wars between competitors. They are afraid of a detrimental effect to the brand, their brick and mortar shops not being able to match the prices and keeping up with the demand of a high volume marketplace. Fear is a great controller, and you must know your enemy. Many high street businesses trade under a pseudonym, access to the product, but it causes no cross over in their high street stores.
As for prices, well the competition for the product types are already there. Many will browse shops muttering that they can get it cheaper on eBay. I know I do. You have to join the race, not shy away from it to stop your competitors getting ahead. Brands are more dilute when it comes to e-commerce; smaller brands come into their own. This trend could start creeping into the high street as broadband gets faster and cheaper and the payment gateways more secure.
Protecting your brand!
As with any new route to channel, you have charlatans to go with it! Is someone trading as you? Using your brand awareness to gain sales? Even if you are not e-commerce active you need to make sure you regularly check your brand on the internet. Reputation is everything to a business and with the anonymity of the internet is easy to impersonate a leading brand.
Advertising on the Internet
Back in the days of the dot com boom all you needed was a website and the traffic was yours. But the giants like Google and Yahoo forced us to search their ay and the fight for natural search was on! To fund their world domination these two titans have their own search marketing schemes or pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic using keywords. Large advertisers can spend thousands on pay per click advertising (probably wasting a lot of it due to bad management) Marketplaces are an active way to do this. For instance on eBay you are advertising as well as physically selling an item. The marketplace has done the hard work for you
February 8, 2007 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The buzz word of 2007 is web 2.0. ‘Oh its so Web 2.0′ you might hear at conferences and seminars. My take on web 2.0 is building a community for your buyers based on the product type on offer. Your customers are moving to on-line sales but they need your advice. Truthful, simple advice without the hard sell. First magazines, gossip columns and newspapers caught onto the blog wave, but now product sellers are paving the way to help the customer make the right purchase.
Adverts may be boring and invasive at times but Blogs are not, take ‘Innocent smoothies‘ they have a web log that provides an interesting insight to their origins, ethics and the people in the company. A blog like this takes of the lid off a large company letting the consumer take a look inside. This is what corporate blogging is all about.
For instance Bluefly.com a fashion designer and retailer launched their blog http://flypaper.bluefly.com to raise awareness and keep customer informed of new styles and movements in the fashion industry.
Top free blog providers out there include Blogger.com, Typepad and Wordpress. Wordpress is also one of the most popular open source blogging software, with a new release at the end of January and a unique ‘Multi-Blogger’ system dubbed ‘Wordpress Mu’ so you can provide your employees with a blog of their own linked to your main domain.
As a new ‘blogger’ I would suggest a free hosted blog before you integrate a blog into your main domain. A ‘news’ blog needs to be updated with new content everyday, but a corporate blog only needs feeding 3-4 times a week. If you don’t update your blog your customers interest will wane and the point of the blog will eventually be lost.
We hope to see you in the blogging revolution!
February 8, 2007 at 10:45 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
One of the most simple and useful articles I have read about marketing a service to fellow businesses is this article from entrepreneur magazine ‘Hit the sweet spot‘ by Kim. T. Gordon. An excerpt from the article reads
‘For many business owners, marketing to fellow entrepreneurs is job one. The challenge is, entrepreneurs are time-strapped multitaskers who are also relatively risk-averse–making them a difficult audience to reach and persuade. Sound familiar?’
This article explores a ‘common sense’ approach to marketing and designing a business to business product or solution.
What do businesses want? According to this article:
- Increased sales - does your solution provide that?
- Safe Choice - do you have a content rich campaign with customer feedback and cases?
- Maximum Convenience - is there a huge amount of work the buyer has to do? Is this included in the solution? If it needs 20 hours work on the clients side is their an alternative?
- Ways to save money - Can you add features? Bundle products together for a ’special price’?
- Do it yourself solutions - businesses love low cost self service solutions but if again time is an issue. Free customer support in the bundle is a great seller!
- Reliability and Performance - What guarantees or warranties does your company offer? If something goes wrong are you their to help?
- Vendors they trust - Special events and networking are great to build trust with a customer.
The finishing line of this article is ‘What matters most is that you create an opportunity to build positive relationships’ Probably the most important statement for businesses I have heard in a long time.
February 8, 2007 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
Over the past few months I have been hearing of various sites implimenting the anti-spam technique suggested by google. Sites like del.icio.us and wikipedia have now introduced the ‘no follow’ tag into their homepage. Anti-spam yes…..but as google page rank depends on the links its kinda cutting off your nose to spite your face? Or is it?
Google created the world of links SEO, forcing companies to use spam like techniques to get anywhere with google. So how does a company improve its position on the interweb?
We have gone back in time and now it is all about ‘Natural Linking’ - no automation, no spam and definatly not reciprocal!
Taking this from an enclick article by
1. Natural links are deeplinks. Links that point to specific material deep within the body of knowledge.
Deep linking is linking that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to linking to a website’s main or home page. Deeplinking goes hand in hand with the long tail.
2. Natural linking is not reciprocal. Scientific papers are published sequentially in time. More recent papers reference older papers as they try and build the body of knowledge. Link exchanging, where websites exchange links, is not natural.
3. Natural links are built slowly over time. A seminal academic paper accumulates references, links, slowly over time. It is only well established highly regarded academic papers, like the discovery of DNA, that accumulate large number of references quickly.
4. Natural links make a point. Academics construct an argument around their references. So natural references are surrounded by relevant text and have specific anchor text, as each scientists tries to make his own point. The ratio of number of links to text has an upper limit, the density of links is relatively low, and the context surrounding the reference is relevant material.
5. Natural links come from everywhere. Scientists publish their research in many places. From important journals, like “Natureâ€, to less important conference proceedings. So, natural links come from varied sources of relevant material.
So unless you have a team of employee’s seaking out relevent links and communicating with webmasters peronally whats the fastest way to improve your page rank?
Spend alot of money….websites that have been arround a while will have the best page ranks in the end. I find this a good thing for the old school webby, but for new companies trying to get a grasp of the interwebby and improve sales, this is gonna hurt.
I am going to be watching this space, and I am going to work on my deep linking for my little business I wish to start up next year. I have 12 months, wonder if that will be enough time to get a decent page rank. I will probably make lots of web friends in the process!
I might even start a natural/deep linking experiment - leave a comment if you want to join or a link!
February 8, 2007 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The second chance offer is a great eBay feature. When running an auction you can offer your underbidders the item at the price they bid without having to incur and further listing fees. Final Value fees with apply as with a normal auction close but if you have multiples of a product a great way to sell!
The SCO is available for one, three, five or seven days and the offer will only be visible to the specific underbidder.
For example you have an item starting at 5.99 and you WANT to get about 8.99 for the item.
- Â Set your Min SCO price at 8.99
- Â List your item at 5.99 on a normal auction.
Senario 1:
The auction ends at 6.99, darn it thats a bad price! You wanted 8.99! There were 2 bidders and one winner. T
Senario 2:
The auction ends at 15.99! Yay! There where 3 people bidding with one winner at 15.99. The two underbidders bid 14.99 and 15.39. You have 100 of these items in stock so BOTH underbidders are offered a SCO. With one listing you have sold 3 items, and paid the listing fees for one!
Senario 3:
The auction ends at 15.99! Yay! There where 3 people bidding with one winner at 15.99. The two underbidders bid 14.99 and 15.39. You have 2 of these items in stock so the highest underbidder is offered a SCO. With one listing you have sold your 2 items in stock, and paid the listing fees for one! Â < Prev
February 8, 2007 at 4:49 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
Free basic web site optimisation tools - http://www.submitcorner.com/
If your website is not in the top search engines, how will your customers find you? Learn the techniques, tips, indexing strategies and gain the competitive edge you need in e-business. Welcome to Submit Corner. This website was developed with the goal of helping businesses and webmasters optimize their rankings to the top of search engines. We’ve created guides and web-based tools to help prepare and scan your website before submitting to search engines. Using our tools and guides, you get a full site optimization at your fingertips without costing you a penny.
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Keyword Thesaurus
Find what are the most popular keywords related to your website in the top search engines. This search thesaurus is most beneficial for finding keywords you should use in META tags according to related searches made by users.
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Link Popularity
Quantify how popular your website really is and have the search engines tell you exactly how many (and who) is linking to your website.
Link Popularity >>
META Tag Generator
Fast track creating your META tags with our advanced META tag generator. Just select the META tags you would like and let our META tag generator spit out the code for you. Takes under 30 seconds and you’ll have a complete set of META tags without needing to know anything about them.
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META Tag Scanner
Before firing off your site to search engines, make sure you verify your META tags are formatted correctly and optimized properly. Let our META Tag Scanner analyze your tags and make suggestions on how you can improve the common elements of your page(s).
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Robots Generator
Control the level of spidering, searching and indexing a search engine can do on your pages through a set of rules as defined by a Robots file or Robots META Tag. Let our Robots tool take the hassle out of creating robot rules through this easy to use wizard.
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Word Tracker
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February 8, 2007 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
1.Successful e-marketing requires a defined top-level planning process
2.Links e-marketing objectives to the various organisational elements to achieve them.
SOSTAC framework for e-marketing strategy:
Situation – Situation Analysis
Objectives – e-Marketing Objectives
Strategy – how to get there
Tactical – uses marketing mix etc
Action – do it
Control – assess & monitor (Paul Smith in Chaffey, Ch 
Situation Analysis
Aim – understand current & future environments to set realistic objectives
Examine following elements:
Immediate (operating) environment
customers, competitors, suppliers, intermediaries
External (wider macro) environment
Internal audit – capability to deliver
People, resources, processes, technology
Demand Analysis
Current & projected use of each channel
Internet Access Web Site Users Sufficient Income Web Site Buyers Off-Line Buyers.
Competitor Analysis
Monitoring and Benchmarking
Current Capability Analysis
Marketing effectiveness
Internet effectiveness
Objective Setting
Increase Market Share
Reduce Costs
Increase Sales
Should be SMART 
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timed
Increase On-Line Revenue Contribution!
Strategy Formulation
How the e-marketing objectives are met:
Usually an iterative process (draws heavily on previous strategy formulation topics)
Penetration into a particular market
Market Development – expand the market (Lucozade)
Product Development – modify the product (cereal bars)
Market Segmentation
understand specific needs of new and existing markets & develop strategy to exploit
Tactics, Action & Control
Tactics
Based around elements of the marketing mix
Action
Identify investment levels, training, responsibilities, changes etc.
Just do it
Control
Monitor and obtain feedback through market research and management information
Advertising
What’s different about the web?
“will slowly discover that nothing less than an entirely new publishing and advertising economy is taking shape in this information-based terrain.†(Schwartz 1996)
Questions are:
1.How can marketing content best be delivered to consumers?
2.Will advertising techniques used in print and electronic broadcast media work on the web?
3.Will standard methods used to track the success of advertising in these media work on the web?
Dominant Advertising Principles:
1.Direction of the advertising message is reversed
2.In traditional advertising, the message is imposed on the consumer, who is passive
3.The customer is delivered over to the advertiser in a one-to-many model of marketing communications
4.On the web, the consumer:
Chooses to view an advertisement on a site
Takes actions to uncover the information the advertiser wishes to deliver
Enters the “clickstream†(taking further action)
5.Content regains core of advertising effort
6.Traditional advertising uses brief distilled messages to catch and hold our attention
7.It depends on repetition to deliver the message
8.Content is minimized and simplified to fit the time constraints of media or the size constraints of the page
9.Packing the maximum amount of meaning into the minimum amount of content is critical
Internet Advertisements
1.Banner Ads
an image or banner of varying size on the web page which has the following objectives
2.Click- through: industry average is 0.4%
Branding: you want them to know who you are
Good design enhances click-through & size does matter
3.Interstitial ads
A way of placing full page messages between the current and destination page
Like TV commercials make viewers a captive of the message
Typically last ten seconds or less where the viewer is (hopefully) doing nothing but looking at the ad
February 8, 2007 at 4:47 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
A solid internet marketing strategy can provide your company with an important advantage over competitors and can include e-mailing, advertising, promotions and public relations.
Keeping user profiles, recording visits and analysing promotional and advertising result and key to measuring the effectivness of your marketing campaign
Brand is typically defined as a name, logo or symbol that help one identify a companies’ product or service.
A company’s customers’ experience can be considered as part of its brand and include the quality of customers interatcions with a company and its product or service.
Businesses that already have a strong brand may may find it easier to transfer this to the web, while internet only businesses must strive to develop a brand that customers trust and value.
Uniformity of the brand as it is used across all channels of customer contact will increase brand recognition.
The internet provides an opportunity for further branding for a company and its products. However the internet makes it difficult to protect a company’s brand from misuse and complaint spamming.
Web sites should be designed with customers preferances in mind and NOT those of the company.
Email is a fast, cheap and far reaching marketing tool.
By discovering your target market, you increase visits, responses and possible purchases.
Marketing reasearch can be preformed over the internet, giving marketers a new, faster option for finding and analysing industry, customers and competitor information.
Internet marketing should be used wth traditional marketing to enhance your strategy.
Organisations that plan to hit a global market must have the ability to send emails translated into the appropriate language , demonstrating your value to international customers. You can use altavista babelfish as a basic translating tool, but there are web based email marketing services that WILL provide this service.
Outsourcing servuces should be used when email marketing gets to difficult to manage, because of volume and inadequate staff or technical support.
Determining a goal for your campaign includes defining the reach, or the span of people you would like to target, incliuding geographical locations and demographic profiles. Determining the level of personalisation of the campaign is also improtant.
Use your ‘opt’ in mailing list for existing customers on a monthly basis, there are customers who are confident in your service and product and should be kept informed of new products/services. Word of mouth is also a forgotten aspect to marketing. A satisfied customer with recommend a brand and also buy again.
Traditional and direct marketing includes sending information by mail and using telemarketing, this should be used with email to reach more people.
Direct mailing is often more expensive, more difficult to analyse and has a lower response rate.
To allow people to view your company infomration, add your contact details to a list of companies or organisations related to your field of business.
Placing a direct email link on your website is a great idea but you will need to have the resporce to handle the anticipated volume.
Spamming, mass emailing to customers who have NOT expressed interest in receiving these email can refect badly on your company.
Offering something extra when your customers buy using promotional scheme or points systems can increase brand loyalty.
Placing a discount in your advertising in magazines, newspaper or direct email can bring new and repeat customers.
If you are providing a service offer a free trial so your customers can feel confident with the service before buying.
Your company can place coupons on sites that specialise in online coupons to bring in traffic.
Publising you URL on all marketing and business cards, place links on other companies websites and register with search engines and directories as a means to increase site traffic.
Continually strenthen your branding. Your brand should be unique, recognisable and easy to remember. make sure your main email address and URL are not to lengthy, sales@blah.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or support@blah.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it are short and easy to remember.
Test out using banner ads. The benefits of banner advertising include increased brand recognition and exposure.
Be weary of using pop up ads. Most interent users now have pop up blockers and are increasingly annoyed at these kind of ads.
Use minimal adveretising click throughs on your OWN site, for example from google. This can increase your revenue.
Search Engine Ranking is improtant to bringing customers to your site. This is acheived using meta tags.
Know your key words! Good key words are essential to search engines and auction sites
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