Coaching For Success
Internet Marketing
Two Kinds Of Internet User
Sep 1st
Two Kind Of Internet Users
There are 2 general types of internet users: those looking for information and those looking to buy. We all wear both of those hats at different times and sometimes something is so compelling we put our buying hat on when we thought we only wanted to wear our research hat. For purposes of most effective optimization you want to make sure you are targeting both groups of people.
You want researchers because catching them early in the process exposes them to your expertise and creates you as a possible future solution for them. You also want buyers because that’s your bread and butter.
Which group you attract is determined by your keywords. You want keywords that call out to researchers and you want keywords that reach out and grab the buyers.
It’s important to consider commercial intent when selecting our keywords. A great tool that can be effective for this is http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/
The Leading Trends In Search Marketing For 2011
May 2nd
The subject of search is of vital importance to internet business owners, so the results of a recent survey by SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) should be of great interest to anyone trying to achieve success online.
Social And Mobile More Important Than Ever
If part of your marketing strategy includes social and mobile marketing, the findings of the survey should be a real eye-opener for you; if they’re not part of your strategy, you’ll want to pay close attention to what you’re about to read.
Some 900 companies participated in the survey, which estimates that there will be an increase of 16% in search in 2011 over 2010.
Facebook is growing in popularity among pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, with almost half of survey respondents claiming to use Facebook for PPC (47 percent based in North America and 45 percent elsewhere). Advertising agencies show even higher use of Facebook among their clients, with 74 percent of North American based clients and 69 percent of clients outside North America placing PPC ads on Facebook.
Mobile Is Changing The Game
But, at the end of the day, the mobile internet is what’s really changing the game where search marketing trends are concerned. About 40 percent of companies involved in the survey stated that the growth in mobile internet was seen as “highly significant” to their businesses, an increase of 26 percent over the preceding year. Another 39 percent claimed that mobile internet was “significant” where their businesses were concerned.
The numbers are even more impressive where agencies are concerned, with 47 percent declaring mobile internet’s impact highly significant.
Local And Other Search Trends
Hot on the heels of mobile in the internet search marketing trends arena comes local search, rated as a highly significant trend by some 43 percent of respondents, with 41 percent rating it as significant.
Ad agencies claim that their clients spend 34 percent of their search budgets on local PPC advertising, which consists of advertising at regional, city or sub-market (markets within a company’s principal marketing focus, also referred to as “hidden” markets) levels.
Local search has not had such a significant effect on client-side advertisers, with only 26 percent stating that its effect was highly significant and budgets being correspondingly smaller than the clients of agencies at around 23 percent compared to 34 percent.
According to the survey, behavioral targeting is also seen as taking on increasing importance, with the percentage considering it significant or highly significant rising from last year’s 68 to 2011′s 78 percent.
The use of social media in general for advertising purposes is on the rise, with 84 percent of companies surveyed using Facebook, compared to last year’s 73 percent. Twitter is used by 75 percent to promote their brands or companies, and 52 percent use Linkedin’s platform.
It should be obvious from the above that you should be positioning your internet business to take advantage of these search marketing trends, if you haven’t already.
A UK internet business consultant can provide all the assistance you need to help your company reap the benefits of these exciting new trends, so don’t delay – contact them today!
Use An E-mail Service Provider To Push Your Campaigns Into Overdrive
Apr 25th
E-mail marketing is still not only a relevant option for internet business owners, but it’s actually thriving, with e-mail newsletters still a very effective marketing tool.
In fact, a Pew research recently found that some 56 percent of internet users subscribe to e-mail newsletters of one kind or another, while online business owners are utilising this platform increasingly to transmit their messages.
Content Counts When All Said And Done
The trick is to provide subscribers with content that keeps them interested and wanting more, as well as increasing the number of subscribers, thereby expanding your business and its revenue.
Here’s a list of several e-mail service providers that can give your business the boost it needs:
1. Posterous
More a microblogging site than an e-mail provider, Posterous recently added a feature that allows bloggers to convert their content into e-mail newsletters. They’ve also stated their intention to enhance their e-mail services in future, so this is well worth looking at.
2. MailChimp
One of the most popular e-mail services, MailChimp provides tools that are easy to implement and use, including features for mobile and social marketing. A free trial is available, while packages are available costing up to $240 per month for up to 50,000 subscribers.
3. Constant Contact
Simple editing tools, mobile and social functionalities, as well as almost 500 templates for newsletters to which companies can add their own logos and colours are just some of the features that make this service such a standout. It’s priced from $15 a month (500 subscribers) to $150-plus a month (25,000-plus subscribers).
4. Campaigner
For a startup this is an excellent service that provides many features that allow users to create, send and keep track of their e-mail newsletters, as well as providing the ability to edit images without the need for additional software. The cost is $10 a month (includes 30 day free trial), rising to $55 a month for as many as 10,000 subscribers.
5. Campaign Monitor
An Aussie (Australian) company that’s mainly focused on design but is a full-service e-mail marketing provider. The service has a complete set of features to facilitate a company’s e-mail marketing campaigns, and its offerings are priced from $15 for 500 subscribers to $500 for as many as 50,000 subscribers.
Give your internet business and your e-mail marketing campaign a shot in the arm with any one of these fine services.
Check with a UK internet marketing consultant who can assist you with all aspects of your company’s e-mail marketing strategy and work with you to increase your subscriber base substantially.
Google Rings The Changes Yet Again With +1
Apr 14th
If you want to succeed as an internet business owner, you’ve got to stay abreast with Google and the changes they’re constantly making to their search results.
We recently reported on what became known as Google’s Farmer Update, which basically put greater emphasis on quality, original content influencing search results. Well, Google keeps ringing the changes, the latest one being “+1″, which is all about where search and social meet.
Google’s Growing Love For Social
Google has already acknowledged the growing importance of social media by including Twitter updates in its search results, but now Google’s taking the importance of social in its results up another notch. In future you’ll see a button alongside search results which can be clicked to recommend a result to your social graph as defined in Google Profiles.
This acts as a citation and creates a backlink for SEO. When a user performs a search, results that received votes from within that user’s social graph will be profiled.
This Is Big, Really Big
While the implications of this latest change to Google’s search results aren’t yet fully known, what is certain is that you and your business need to be ready to take advantage of it, because, if it’s big for Google, it’s big for you.
If you don’t already have a Google profile, now’s the time to change that. Then you can check your connections in Google Dashboard’s “Social Circle and Content” – the more people you are connected to and that are connected to you, the more you can influence their results. It goes without saying that expanding your circle of influence should be a major priority.
If you have a subscriber list, check for gmail addresses and import them into your Google social graph.
Video is already a major factor in search results, but that may also be about to increase in importance so be sure your company’s channel is properly branded and set up for social connections through friends and subscribers.
There’s also a +1 button that can be added to web sites that will allow visitors to vote for a page and help improve the page’s search results.
Vote For Your Favourite Ads
The +1 vote button will also be added to Adwords ads, allowing users to recommend ads that appeal, causing them to display as recommendations to personal contacts.
For advertisers, this means making their ads as appealing as possible in order to garner as many recommendations as possible.
Don’t Forget The Other Social Networks
This is Google, after all, so this is something to act on, but it’s too early to tell how much effect votes will have on search engine results or even whether users will take the time to vote.
And while you and your internet business should take advantage of Google’s new initiative, don’t ignore the other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, since they are very powerful vehicles in their own right. A balanced approach is advisable at all times.
Let a UK internet marketing consultant help you to make the most of Google +1 and the other social networks to boost your search result rankings.
Use Heat Maps To Find Out What Works And What Doesn’t
Apr 1st
The use, analysis and understanding of heat maps on your internet business‘s web site can provide many benefits, not least of which are the ability to see where visitors are and aren’t clicking, predicting the optimum placement of ads, aiding with future design and re-design, etc. Heat maps can pretty much provide any and all information on metrics concerning your web site, so it’s mainly a matter of knowing what to look for and then making plans accordingly.
Heat Maps Alone Don’t Tell The Whole Story
Heat maps are great for showing how users interact with the various elements on a web site such as links – the more intense the colour the greater the amount of interaction. You can see which parts of a site users are most interested in and which they aren’t, allowing you to make adjustments to your site accordingly.
Heat Maps + Analytics = Bingo!
But, heat maps don’t tell the whole story as far as optimisation is concerned. Using analytics in addition helps track other, non-clickable elements, thereby covering practically all aspects of a web site for optimisation purposes.
This way you can get an understanding of not only user interaction with links but also how users interact with other elements on your page and site that aren’t clickable, i.e. how they interact with a page as a whole. For instance, armed with heat maps and analytics, you’d be able to see which links users hover over and for how long, giving you some idea as to the effectiveness of anchor text.
Also, knowing how much time elapses between a page loading and a user clicking a link gives an indication as to whether an element has been placed in the right area for maximum conversion.
Heat map analytics can also be very helpful when it comes to seemingly unrelated data, such as referrer information. You can find the pages with the highest entry points and then, using heat maps, find the relationship between the highest ranked referrer and the number of clicks or lack thereof. You can then test landing pages using multiple variables and approaches based on the traffic source.
Points To Bear In Mind During Analysis
Analysing data from heat maps can be time-consuming and labour-intensive, so here are a couple of points to bear in mind that may help bring focus to the analysis:
- Consider removing any areas that receive few or no clicks, and replace them with something else to see if that generates any more interest.
- While it’s great to know how much user activity there is on a given page, what may prove even more useful is checking the activity on a page the user clicks to. If nothing happens on a particular page, it may be that the user has hit a cyber dead end, so fixing that possible roadblock should be a priority, giving the user either product recommendations or fresh content.
A web site is a tricky balancing act between functionality and aesthetics, and your site should guide the user to the desired outcome. Providing too many options and you could leave users confused; providing too few could end up misleading users.
Using heat maps along with analytics can provide excellent insights as to what is and isn’t working on your internet business‘s web site, but making changes based on those insights doesn’t guarantee success. Your mantra should be “Test, test and re-test” and then “Monitor, monitor and monitor”.
A UK internet marketing service can give you guidance and advice on the best use of heat maps and analytics to optimise your web site.
