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Archive for July, 2010
Reasons to Adopt Social Media Marketing
1 year ago
by admin
in Internet Marketing
In recent weeks I met with a B2B company to discuss marketing options. The topic of community and social media came up and I was reminded of how difficult it has been for the B2B segment of businesses to grasp a hold of the power in social media when one business is marketing to another. The value has still not been understood. They still view this type of marketing as not relating to them, when in actuality social marketing is becoming one of the most effective ways to market online.In today’s economy B2B companies are decreasing their marketing dollars and spending more online. A recent survey by B2B Magazine revealed that over 48% of those surveyed were increasing their online marketing spend.
Why is there such an effectiveness in social media?
Truth is, so many people are tired of “marketing speak.” Social media allows companies to relate to one another and bypass the fluff.
Let’s take a look at what the online definition of social media, I’ve chosen to use the definition from wikipedia since it is user generated.
Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.
The definition alone should reveal to you how important it is that B2B companies explore social media marketing channels.
In a recent study done by KnowledgeStorm of B2B technology decision makers the following statistics were revealed:
- 90% Participate in Video
- 80% Participate in Blogs
- 80% Participate in Wikis
- 69% Participate in Social Networks
- 53% Participate in Podcasts
In the same study it was shared that of 69% of B2B buyers use social networks “primarily for business networking and development.”
At a minimum B2B businesses should at least be involved in communities and social network where there customers already are. Explore the opportunity to reach out to key influencers in your target market and optimize your content and social media applications for syndication.
I know that stepping out into social media can feel somewhat daunting for more traditional marketing team, but it doesn’t have to be difficult to be successful. Chose a few initiatives that will work well for your company and gain you incremental success until you are more comfortable in really delving into the social media and applications.
Social media enables you to :
- Share your expertise and knowledge
- Tap into the wisdom of your consumers
- Enables customers helping customers
- Engages prospects through customer evangelism
Ongoing promotion tasks
1 year ago
by admin
in Search Engine
To improve site rankings and increase understanding of the listing process, there are many tasks that can be done on a regular or semi-regular basis. Optimizing rankings within the search engines is also to help ensure that a site attracts the right traffic.
Some of the monthly and weekly promotion tasks are:
Crunching and examining log files
Data contained in log files is an excellent resource for identifying which engines are sending the majority of traffic to a site. It can also show which key words or gateway pages are generating the strongest traffic and what are those visitors doing when they enter the site.
Searching the Search Engines
Conduct a search of the search engines to analyze where the highest rankings of the site have materialized and what keywords are generating the best rankings. Different search engines use different rules to rank pages. Individual gateway pages should be created based on the knowledge and interpretation of what each search engine is using to determine top rankings. Several pages can be tested out on one or more engines and the pages that have the most success can be kept, while the unsuccessful pages can be dumped or revised to achieve a higher ranking.
Learning more about how the search engines work
Each search engine uses different rules to determine how well a Web page matches a particular query. As a result, building a single page that gets a good score in all the major engines is just about impossible. Learning how each engine ranks pages is also hard, since the engines often keep this information as a closely guarded secret. However, with a little patience, some experimentation and reverse engineering, the way that many of the search engines work can be discovered.
Resubmitting the site
For engines that reject a site or don’t list it high enough, it is strongly recommended that more information is learned about the engine’s criteria before resubmitting. This information should then be incorporated into gateway pages or key word revisions in order to have greater success with subsequent submissions. Fine tune the page (or pages) make adjustments to TITLE tags and META tags, then after resubmitting the site, track the results to further learn about the engine’s criteria and which adjustments made an impact on the rankings. Don’t be afraid to experiment, take some risks and gather data as you proceed.
Checking log files for traffic being directed to erroneous pages on the site
This is good news!! Don’t dump these pages or remove them from the search engine as most people will do when they redesign their site. Any page with a high ranking is of value. If a page is bringing traffic to a site, leave that page on the search engine, don’t change it but rather redirect the traffic to valid pages in the site.
Advantages of outsourcing
1 year ago
by admin
in Outsourcing
Companies often get off-shore outsourcing offers from low income countries, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Romania and others. In the key European IT trade fairs companies from these countries also participate and try to sell their off-shore outsourcing services. Lately, we often hear from European companies that when they receive an outsourcing offer, they only get information on the positive aspects of off-shore outsourcing.
There are quite a number of advantages of offshore outsourcing:
Cost reduction and cost structure optimisation: is (still) one of the major driving force of outsourcing. In low income countries labor is cheap compared to wages in Europe or the United States. Companies often offer their services between € 5 – 35/hour. This, of course depends on a number of factors, such as the length and value of the project, number of people involved, qualifications, technology required and many others. Price is also influenced by marketing considerations or the potential of establishing a long term relationship. Beside labour, overhead costs are also often much lower in low income countries than in the USA or Europe. Further, by outsourcing IT processes, companies not only can lower but also re-engineer and optimise their cost structure. Certain fixed cost elements could be turned into variable costs, for instance. Outsourcing can also help to achieve more predictable cost levels.
Immediate access to technical staff: one of the advantages of off-shore outsourcing is the immediate availability of the required number of qualified technical staff. In the last couple of years in Europe we all had problems finding the right people at the right time … or keep them with the company. Low income (or developing) countries often have qualified, well educated technical staff in abundance. Most companies we have visited in the last couple of years for technical positions only employ people with university degrees. These people often have many years of experience in various technologies, project management methodologies or vertical business domains.
Immediate access to technology: technology changes rapidly. Following all the developments, even in one or two technology domains, is very time and resource consuming. Staff has to follow courses, learn the new technology, build libraries and gain experience before the newly introduced technology can be used efficiently. IT outsourcing can shorten the learning curve of new technologies and reduce cost spent on training.
Levels of Internet Marketing
1 year ago
by admin
in Internet Marketing
You can provide human interaction to potential Internet clients and customers so that you are able to move that client or customer through a successful sales process, but how?
You do this by following a five step process in your Internet marketing strategy that continually builds trust and confidence by meeting the psychological marketing needs of that visitor and potential customer while escorting that visitor through the selection and purchasing process.
Creating a successful online sales process can be accomplished by making sure that you represent and court your visitor through the five levels of the sales process on your site.
Anyone who has studied any marketing at all knows that there are psychological needs that must be met in order for a person to be persuaded to purchase a product or service.
If it’s a product you are selling are you representing that product to solve a specific problem or meet a specific need? If you are selling a service are you getting in touch with the pain of your potential client to draw their interest into what you are offering?
There are steps that you can take to effectively do that and in response witness the successful sales process over and over in the virtual world that is why an Internet marketing strategy is a necessity not an option.
The five levels of the sales process build on one another in many ways. An Internet Marketing Strategy that is done correctly will clearly define all five levels of the process and how they are represented through your site. The strategy will then assist you in setting realistic and attainable Internet marketing goals. It will also assist you in using each step to build and influence the others so that the process continually moves toward the successful close of the sale.
These five levels of the sales process are the core components that will move your website viewer from visitor to customer or client. By representing each level that is mentioned below and courting your potential client or customer through those levels you will have the power to move your site from failure to success.
- Marketing/Prospecting to your Target Market and Audience
- Build Credibility and Trust – (Your viewer needs this to move forward)
- Escort and Court the Buyer through the Process – (Meet their Needs 7 out of 10 want to buy!)
- Present the Product or Service that meets their needs
- Successfully Close the Sale
Good Web Design Features
One of the elements of good web design is a lack of the elements that make bad web design. If you stay away from everything listed on the page about dorky web pages, you’ve probably got a pretty nice web site. In addition, keep these concepts in mind:
Text
Background does not interrupt the text
Text is big enough to read, but not too big
The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear
Columns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen
Navigation
Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
Navigation is consistent throughout web site
Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of the site they are currently on
Frames, if used, are not obtrusive
A large site has an index or site map
Links
Link colors coordinate with page colors
Links are underlined so they are instantly clear to the visitor
Graphics
Buttons are not big and dorky
Every graphic has an alt label
Every graphic link has a matching text link
Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
Animated graphics turn off by themselves
General Design
Pages download quickly
First page and home page fit into 800 x 600 pixel space
All of the other pages have the immediate visual impact within 800 x 600 pixels
Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages
How to Ask for Referrals?
1 year ago
by admin
in Internet Marketing
How to Get Over Your Fear of Asking for Referrals
- Remember that most people like to help other people (if there is no negative cost to them).
- Remind yourself that the worst that can happen is that the client says, “No”. That’s not too terrible, is it?
- Make asking for a referral part of your project routine. With most projects, there’s a last meeting with the client, a perfect time to ask for a referral.
Tips for Asking for Referrals
- Referrals should always be asked for face-to-face. It’s not only more respectful of your clients but more successful. People will always be more likely to do something for someone else if the person is standing right in front of them. (It is acceptable to ask for referrals by email or phone if you work under conditions where face-to-face are not usual or very difficult. For instance, a website designer may create a website for a client on the other side of the country.)
- If at all possible, never ask for a referral when presenting a bill.
- The time that you’re asking for referrals is also an excellent time to ask a client for a testimonial, a short written endorsement of your company and/or your work that you can use on your website if you have one and in your other marketing materials such as brochures. (Don’t expect anyone to write a testimonial for you on the spot; either leave them a printed card or form that they can use or ask them to email it to you.)
Tips for Asking for Referrals
- Referrals should always be asked for face-to-face. It’s not only more respectful of your clients but more successful. People will always be more likely to do something for someone else if the person is standing right in front of them. (It is acceptable to ask for referrals by email or phone if you work under conditions where face-to-face are not usual or very difficult. For instance, a website designer may create a website for a client on the other side of the country.)
- If at all possible, never ask for a referral when presenting a bill.
- The time that you’re asking for referrals is also an excellent time to ask a client for a testimonial, a short written endorsement of your company and/or your work that you can use on your website if you have one and in your other marketing materials such as brochures. (Don’t expect anyone to write a testimonial for you on the spot; either leave them a printed card or form that they can use or ask them to email it to you.)
The More You Ask The More You’ll Get
Don’t let your own shyness or fear get in the way of building your business. Referrals will get you more clients. And the more referrals you ask for, the more referrals you’ll get – just because the customer knows that you want some. It’s a small effort for a great reward.
Advantages and Disadvantages on International Outsourcing
1 year ago
by admin
in Outsourcing
In 2007, Standard & Poor’s reports that companies spent some US$150 billion on international outsourcing. Market research firm IDC sees that amount rising 65% to $250 billion by 2012.
Technology-based outsourcing is one of the fastest growing trends in international trade. However, operational outsourcing involves tradeoffs between client cost-savings and loss of control on the outsourced activities or functions.
Advantages of International Outsourcing
An international outsourcing firm can save the high maintenance costs and the specialized attention demanded by back-office operations like electronic securities transaction processing. Freed from the ongoing burden of daily back-office tasks, clients are able to focus on core competencies such as sales and new business underwriting.
According to third-party systems provider Cyber Futuristics, companies that outsource non-core operations also enjoy the following advantages.
- Outsourcing specialists have the technological resources, expertise and mandate to invest in new technologies that would otherwise be much more costly and risky for a client company to continuously manage on its own.
- By outsourcing to a team of technology experts, client companies access skills and training expertise not internally available while saving on human resource costs. The latter ranges from recruitment, training and performance incentives to employee group benefits.
- Ideally, highly skilled outsourcers increase their client company’s productivity while lowering costs.
Disadvantages of International Outsourcing
One of the most publicized potential disadvantages to outsourcing is poor quality control. Case in point is last year’s melamine-laced pet food crisis, caused by a Chinese outsourcer overly focused on cost-savings.
Other disadvantages include:
- Lengthy bid and negotiation processes to find an appropriate outsourcer.
- Difficulty selecting the best outsourcer for specific business needs because differences among service providers are unclear.
- Outsourcers often demand longer term contracts, which can decrease company flexibility.
- Loss of strategic alignment with client company goals once operations are outsourced.
Within the client company, fear of losing jobs to outsourcers negatively affects employee attitudes. Employee morale and motivation falls, just as company loyalty decreases.
How to use links?
Don’t underline words if they’re not links.
On the web, something that’s underlined is supposed to be a link. If you underline gratuitously, readers will be annoyed when they try to click those underlined words only to discover that they’re not really links. If you want to emphasize something, use italics instead (or boldface, or another color).
Make links blue or underlined, or both.
Users expect links in body copy to be blue and underlined; because that’s the way they appear on 99% of other websites. If you use a different color then at least the underline is a clue that a link is a link. Likewise, if you remove the underline but keep the link blue, then the color is the clue that a link is a link. So it’s best to use both blue and underlined, but using at least one or the other is acceptable.
What’s wrong is doing neither – having links that aren’t blue and aren’t underlined. How are users supposed to know what’s a link at that point? I ran across one page (no longer up) whose main link is red with no underline. To make matters worse, elsewhere on the page they use blue text, which looks like a link, but which isn’t. So users had no clue that the link was actually a link, and there was other text that looked like a link, but wasn’t. (I tried to bring this to the attention of the site owner but he bragged that nobody else had ever complained.)
Links in menus don’t have to be blue or underlined, as long as they’re clearly menu items. The blue/underlined tip is for links that are in the middle of the page.
Explain what you’re linking to.
When you’re able to provide more information about what a link points to, do so. For example, if your site has a Links page, include a short description of each site you link to, say 1-5 sentences. That way visitors have an idea of what’s on those sites, which will help them make their decision on whether to visit those sites, and help them find what they’re looking for, while avoiding what they’re not looking for.
Nothing is less useful than a whole bunch of links to other sites when those links consist of nothing more than the names of those sites (or worse, the urls). Without any description of what you’re linking to, readers are forced to visit each and every site to get an idea of what’s there. Imagine 100 of your visitors all repeating that same laborious surfing, needlessly. You could have told them what’s on those sites, because you (presumably) visited those sites yourself, so you know what’s on them. Do your readers a favor and share your knowledge with them.
Don’t open internal links in a new window.
The owner of a site I just ran across thinks it’s a good idea to pop up a brand new window when a visitor clicks a link within his site, but that only annoys users when they suddenly have a gazillion windows open on their screen. Opening new windows for external links to other sites is fine, but links within a site should always open in the same window. Visitors can still get around your site just fine when links open in the same window, because you did include a good navigation menu at the top or the left of the page as in tip F1 above, right? Opening new windows means that after five clicks within your site, your visitor’s screen is cluttered with six different windows.
Use descriptive link text.
The text of a link should describe what’s being linked to. You should never, ever use words like “link” or “here” or “click here” as the link text. Readers prefer to scan web pages rather than read every word, and you make that impossible if you use generic, non-descriptive words as the link text.
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