June 1st, 2009
Develop an online marketing plan with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as your starting point, comparatively to other lead generation channels, such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), affiliate marketing, email marketing or media buys.
SEO, for all the newbies out there, is the organic listings that appear on the left-side of Google’s search results. It is free to appear in Google’s organic listings, which is how 75% of online users will find content. Also, 85% of Google Search users tend to click on organic listings compared to paid advertising links that appear at either the top or right-side of Google’s results. Although free to appear, it is not easy to get your website listed on the first page of the organic search, which is primarily where you want to appear, since most people tend not to go past the 1st page of the listings. So, how do you begin to make your site SEO-friendly?
Start with the title of the web pages. Name the title tags with 3-4 keywords that are relevant to the information on the page. Next, make sure that your information on the web pages are specific to the keywords. Lastly, get as many external links that go to your website. The more links you have, the more it will help in the popularity of your site, which will drive your site up in the rankings of the organic search.
Tags: affiliate marketing, email marketing, Google Search, lead generation, media buys, online lead strategy, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO
Posted in SEO, Search, online marketing | 3 Comments »
May 11th, 2009
Small businesses traditionally don’t have a big marketing budget, so the best way to compete to acquire new customers for your business, is to tap into your current database. How?
1. Offer incentives to your current customers for making a new referral to your business through Refer-a-Colleague programs
2. Contact your partners or business associates to participate in a co-op advertising program. This allows you to advertise for half the cost and to get prime advertising space
3. Try Cause Marketing events with non-profits that can offer you free publicity and exposure to the community
Although, it may be hard to market with a small budget, there are many creative marketing programs that small businesses can utilize in their current business channels to increase customer acquisition.
Tags: alternative marketing programs, business incentives, cause marketing, co-op advertising, customer acquisition, marketing strategies for small businesses, offer incentives, Refer-a-Colleague, small business budgets, small marketing budgets, SMB marketing
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »
May 5th, 2009
Inside Out Marketing is how a company and brand starts from marketing from within itself and how it is reflected to the external. Many companies make the mistake of not decisively stating who and what the core values of the company are, which confuses how the employees view the company, which results in inconsistent brand marketing practices to the target audience. By having inconsistent brand marketing practices, can cause long-lasting damage to a company, its morale and ultimately the brand equity.
Take a look at Apple, one of the best brand marketers of the 21st century. Review how Apple has consistent messages, not only in their marketing collateral, but also in the people that work at their retail stores. The messaging is quite clear that the employees drink the Koolade.
Tags: Apple marketing, brand equity, brand marketing, inside out marketing
Posted in brand marketing | No Comments »
April 2nd, 2009
You’re getting tons of customers to your site, but you’re losing them just as fast as you are getting them, so what do you do? Don’t expect that just because you built it, they should stay. Building a good customer retention program is as important as creating a good customer acquisition program. Email marketing is a good and simple way to keep your customers informed with new items at your site, community happenings, announcements and making sure that your user base returns to the site. Here are some tips on what you can do to build a good email campaign:
1. Segment the Database - Do not send a mass email to all of the database. This will surely have a lot of opt-outs or low click through rate back to the site. Separate the database mailings by how you want to market to the user base, such as creating emails tarrgeted to either region, gender, age, or work title. Learn and understand what your customers want and mail to them accordingly.
2. Test Email Campaigns - Test different headlines, subject lines, graphics and body text to see what performs better. Test, test, test!
3. Email Blasts & Newsletters - Try sending weekly email blasts with specific product or service offerings to your segmented database. Send monthly newsletters that contain content that is more general and can appeal to a larger audience than the segmented email blasts. Monthly newsletters can contain content, such as news, third-party offerings, community happenings, and Refer-a-Friend programs. Make sure to be consistent about the newsletters delivery schedule to keep consistency. This will help build brand-equity of the company site.
4. Do Not Send Too Many Emails In A Short Period - This is a big no-no. The more emails that are sent in a short period will surely tire the customer base and ensure that your campaigns will be opt-out with more frequency. Think about how many emails do you get…what are the ones that you opt-out of?
For more information or help on your email marketing campaigns, please contact Ashley Hart on the ‘Contact Us’ tab of the homepage of www.AshleyHartMarketing.com
Tags: Ashley Hart, ashley hart marketing, customer retention, email, email blasts, email campaigns, email marketing, internet marketing, keeping customers, newsletters, online marketing, online newsletters, online traffic, returning customers to site, segment database
Posted in Ashley Hart, internet marketing, online marketing | No Comments »
March 10th, 2009
It’s tough times out there, including for the online industry, so how do we make sure that we are getting the most for our advertising buck? Take a look at your current online marketing strategy and see which channels are the most inefficient. Get rid of them! Yes, I know what you must be thinking, if it’s bringing me even one client, it’s worth it…but it’s not. Now is the time to really pay attention to your customer acquisition metrics and conversions and see where you can cut the fat, so you can move over money to the most efficient channels.
Also, pay more attention to your customer retention programs. This is where many marketers don’t take advantage of the database they already have. Make email and viral marketing your best friend. Offer promotions to drive the traffic back to your site. I will guarantee you, by creating unique retention programs, you will increase the LTV (Lifetime Value) of your customer and increase your ROI. This will also help you to decrease your marketing expenses, since its much cheaper to market to current clients than it is to acquire new ones.
Tags: advertising in a bad economy, customer acquisition, customer retention programs, efficient advertising, email marketing, internet advertising, internet marketing, lifetime value, LTV, online advertising, online industry, online marketing, return on investment, ROI, viral marketing
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »
January 27th, 2009
I can’t stress enough that, if you are running online marketing campaigns, you have to track them for measuring success. There is no excuse for any online marketer to not track their campaigns through either paid or free analytic software. Google Analytics (/www.google.com/analytics) is a free software that enables any marketer to see how well their Search campaign is going, as well as, other online campaigns. What’s great about this software is that you can place a simple tracking code, provided by Google Analytics, on your website to see how specific campaigns are converting at your site, how users are interacting with the site, and if you have an e-commerce site, how well sales are converting. Without knowing how new users and repeat users are interacting with your site, you won’t be able to know how to improve the user experience to increase registrant or sales conversions.
There is a down-side to Google Analytics, it has problems aggregating all of the traffic accurately for unique visitors and visits. For example, if you are running a Facebook advertising campaign, Google statistically will show less traffic to your site, than what Facebook reports, but hey, what do you expect from a free software.
For a more robust analytic software, try WebTrends. WebTrends can be customized to your needs and is very granular about its tracking. Keeping in mind, it is a paid software, but if you can afford it, I would highly recommend it. If you are running a Search campaign, you’ll be able to see, down to the keyword, if new registrants or sales can be accounted to those specific keywords.
Tags: analytic software, facebook ads, facebook advertising tracking, google analytics, internet marketing tracking, online analytics, online marketing, search engine marketing, search marketing, SEM, tracking online campaigns, tracking sales, webtrends, webtrends analytics
Posted in Search, internet marketing, online marketing | 1 Comment »
December 2nd, 2008
Is there a difference between Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) online marketing? Absolutely. Don’t let an inexperienced marketer tell you otherwise. B2B marketing tends to focus on providing targeted content, such as white papers, case studies and webinars to their target market, in exchange for the target markets’ contact information. Also, B2B marketers tend to focus more on customer acquisition, rather than customer retention, since attrition is much lower in the business market than in the consumer market. Online marketing channels tend to concentrate on SEM, SEO and related business information websites.
B2C marketing tends to focus equally on customer acquisition and retention marketing programs. Consumers are more price & service sensitive than businesses. Consumers visit more alternative online services, if they believe there is a better value for them testing out varied sites. Many good B2C online marketers will focus on creating customer retention programs that keep consumers coming back to their sites to extend their Life Time Value (LTV) of their online members…i.e. if the average of an online user is 2 months at a casual gaming site, then the marketer seeks to extend the LTV to 3-4 months. By extending the LTV of an online member, potentially increases online usage at the site and will increase overall ROI for revenues.
Online marketing channels for B2C online services tend to concentrate on SEM, SEO, direct marketing, email campaigns, blogs, viral and affiliate marketing.
Tags: affiliate marketing, b2b, b2c, business to business, business to consumer, case studies, customer acquisition, customer retention programs, direct advertising, direct marketing, email marketing, internet marketing, LTV, online market, online marketers, online marketing, SEM, SEO, viral marketing, webinar marketing, white papers
Posted in Media Buying, SEO, Search, internet marketing, online marketing | 1 Comment »
October 17th, 2008
You’ve launched your website, leads are contacting you through your online registration form successfully, but you can’t efficiently see how well your leads have sale closings. What should you do? Track them with CRM software. What is CRM software?
CRM is ‘Customer Relationship Management’ software that enables you to track customers thoroughly and see the cycle of prospect to lead to sale closings efficiently between your marketing and sales teams. Many entrepreneurs and small companies believe that since they are small, that they are efficient in communicating between their departments, but they are wrong. Small companies, sometime are worse that larger organizations in communicating, it’s just not as noticeable, until they start tracking for ROI growth and reviewing what direct marketing programs are working for lead generation programs.
To review clear sales user paths and improve customer satisfaction, check out a few CRM products.
Salesforce.com is one of the top CRM products on the market. Salesforce.com has a 30-day free trial and has a pricing plan for any size company. If you are interested in having the CRM work with your current Outlook contacts, check out Prophet 5.0 (www.Avidian.com) , which has a 30 day money back guarantee and can be up and running in only a few minutes. Another good option is Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM 4.0, which you can register for free to try the product.
Tags: 30 day money back gurantee, Avidian, CRM, CRM software, customer satisfaction, direct marketing, entrepreneur help for online, marketing help, Microsoft Dynamics, new websites, online marketing, ROI growth, sales closing, sales help, salesforce.com, tracking sales, website launch, websites
Posted in entrepreneurs, online marketing | No Comments »