Online marketing news and resources.

Too often businesses might think their website is a kind of magic bullet that just needs a polish up to boost monthly figures. Without a clear understanding of site design goals, the vague reasons given to refresh may be no more than a wasted opportunity.

There is always a compromise to be made between the look of a website and it’s practical function. Successful website design can skilfully combine the two into a powerful online presence that drives traffic, converts visitors and gains high PageRank. But the aim of breathing new life into a brand identity doesn’t happen simply because of rearranging furniture.

Implementing a website refresh should be planned carefully after thorough examination of website analytics in consultation with your website design and marketing team. A full and up-to-date diagnostic report on site performance should then be obtained. The data should pinpoint where the recorded visitor traffic and their precise behaviour is occurring, measured against expectation and site intentions.

Before embarking on a refresh, a company should truly understand the purpose of their website with direct reference to serving the updated, present needs of their particular customer niche.

In other words, two questions need to be asked: “What are the goals and what are you trying to achieve on the site? The answers need to be exactly formulated, e.g. increase general visitor traffic numbers or attract specific new customers from your existing market? Engage more closely with current database or reaching out to new market areas? The answers to specific questions will inform the direction and objectives of online marketing campaigns to desired website performance.

The call for a vague, and ill-defined partial site ‘spruce up’ as part of a spring clean or ‘back to school’ exercise, along with ordering in new waste paper baskets, can also often occur when there’s a change of management with the obligatory new broom sweeps clean approach. This may simply result in a new logo and bigger font sizes on the Home page!

Budget plays a governing role in decision-making but unfortunately, just tinkering with a site layout by moving a few text boxes around to ‘make it look good’ will only give the impression of a ‘work in progress’. Cheap but untidy add-ons put visitors off!

There is always a temptation for companies to partially play around with their site as a magic quick fix rather than address deeper business issues. Proper ongoing investment is the only real way to install a cohesive website refresh strategy, which will optimise performance, produce qualitative results and improve that bottom line!

The world of email marketing gets another hurdle to face as Google announce the launch of a ‘priority inbox’ for its Gmail. If you want to get your messages through and read then you need to know how the new system will sort the incoming mail.

Google algorithms have evolved over the years to become sophisticated learning mechanisms. The approach to evaluating Gmail will be not unlike the process the search engine spiders adopt to assess and index website content according to criteria based upon authenticity, importance, relevance and value.

The automatic capture and instant organisation of ‘important’ emails will demote other email in a process similar to spam filtering. This means that essentially, Gmail will operate by identifying the email that’s important to you, based upon what it has ‘learnt’ from analysing who you send email to the most, how often, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

For businesses, these indicators will be further essential items of information to carefully assess when compiling future email marketing campaigns and the focus on SEO keywords , even within general mail traffic, can only serve to reinforce their importance.

The upgraded system will highlight ‘starred’ messages, relegating all other mail to a third category called ‘everything else’. The ability for a message to make it to the ‘priority inbox’ will require considerable upping of the online marketing game where every word absolutely counts from the left hand side, demanding to be read!

The good news is that there are built-in manual controls to override and tune the system as well. If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, there are  +  −  buttons to correctly mark a conversation as ‘important’ or ‘not important’, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn current mail reading behaviour. Gmail allows you to toggle between the ‘priority view’ and the conventional ‘inbox view’, in chronological order – and the entire function can also be turned off!

The emphasis is again on adopting marketing strategies to put your brand identity in the best possible light by refraining from the monthly or quarterly mass email out by the lazy use of mail merge software that just simply personalises the intro line!

Today’s online engagement process is defined by social media and that means connecting or reconnecting with your niche audience so that they will ensure that your incoming mail messages or newsletter will be allowed access to priority inbox status.

It’s true to say that companies either ‘get’ Social Media or they don’t. As brows furrow over trying to define whether it should be budgeted under online marketing or PR, and who should be ‘looking after it’, eyebrows shoot upwards as questions of ROI become answers in KPI!

Business owners like straightforward definitions, preferably ones that translate to measurable traffic growth on SEO keywords, website conversions, sales figures and bottom lines!

The likelihood is that social media will be most understood as a combination of marketing and publicity rather than a ‘conversation’, or loose engagement whose principle aim is not to sell a product or service, but simply interact, offering freely shared info, ideas and data.

But this won’t wash with business owners and their Sales Directors who judge a successfully positioned brand identity by monthly sales enquiries and orders taken. After all, as often argued, if their PPC campaigns are already, successfully bringing in traffic -  with a readily measurable return – and email marketing newsletters are relatively low cost, where does social media fit in, and why bother with Twitter, etc??

However, social media is not just about Twitter! The quality content, link building value to both Google and human visitor alike, across all communication platforms, is now an important signifier of online presence. The success of harnessing social engagement is as much to do with defining purpose, i.e. what a company wants to achieve, and interacting with the appropriate channels to achieve realistic objectives.

The distinction between social media as marketing or PR should be made at the outset rather than just to lump in with sales and marketing because it can’t be readily assigned.

Social Media can be involved as marketing strategies if the purpose is to increase traffic and sales, brand exposure and product launches. Key is the online conversation, which builds up crucial feedback and ideas for product or business development and which will establish relationships and connections with potential customers (fans or followers).

If the aim is to use social media within PR campaigns, then this would include the posting of latest company news, blogs and articles, acting as an official source of company information and a “quick response” to any immediate customer comments and issues. The key here is to keep in touch with how the brand is being perceived and commented upon by a company’s audience segment.

Summer’s over, the fourth quarter’s arrived – it’s Sales meetings all this week! Time to step hard on the online marketing pedal. The MD is again demanding that he wants to be Google No.1 – can you double the number of marketing tweets every 10 minutes, blah, blah…!

Sometimes, integrating social media into a company’s everyday marketing strategies can be a long journey into understanding the new rules of customer engagement! The MD has become fixated with his shiny new social media toy, thinking it’s the latest internet fast-track to eCommerce nirvana now that the website has Twitter and Facebook buttons.

Too often the impatient desire for instant results from the instant social media take-up on a top heavy, one channel approach can lead to the hasty assumption that it doesn’t work because sales figures are unaffected.

As with organic website SEO and the long game of consistent quality link building, so too with social media engagement. Your niche market consumers must be exposed to your message multiple times before they notice you, let alone trust you enough to respond. Social media does not replace established channels such as email marketing or online newsletters. It is an interactive means to reach people by their various, preferred channels.You must learn how they wish to engage so they might truly focus on your message!

Directly seeing your company ad may barely register on their radar! But a thumbs up recommendation or retweet via a reader’s social network is the ‘quality referral’ link that operates like an offline introduction to opening up the doors of your brand identity to an intrigued enquirer.

Integrated marketing does not mean obsessing over using every single available channel but seeking those that are relevant, valuable and will work for your segment because you have an intuitive understanding of its’ reach and can consistently communicate naturally through the medium. Adoption of different techniques will invariably be based on whether you are a b2b or b2c company, and their key demographics. Different age groups opt to use different platforms for different applications.

Remember - a powerful CRM presence is one of the most cost efficient marketing tools to increase business. A loyal audience will themselves broadcast and share your intrinsic content value, thus performing invaluable marketing. By simply ensuring your message and brand are always recognisable from channel to channel, the connections can be made.

But most of all, the results of sustained quality endeavour will eventually yield positive feedback, increased traffic and the much desired PageRank elevation the MD now loves to check every morning alongside his emails.

Rumours that Google is looking to go into broadcasting have been leaking through online over the last few months, with Autumn set for the first appearance of Google TV-powered devices. The exciting crossover opportunities for businesses of all sizes and how website design and online marketing will be transformed, lies tantalisingly just weeks ahead.

According to the world’s No.1 search engine, Google TV will be an “open platform”, aiming to unite search and browse capabilities, integrating web search results and TV content, side by side. Google TV will support Flash and make the “full internet” available through set-top boxes and “integrated” TV screens.

Formatting website accessibility for the new channel could be an issue – the TV browser is Chrome – although Google TV is intended to work with existing TV screens but either TV or the set-top box will require an HDMI input or output, respectively.

Google TV ( GTV) will be built and remote controlled on the Android platform, not Chrome OS, and will run Android apps. Users will not require a cable TV subscription, although they will need WiFi in their home to access GTV and for those who simply wish to use Google TV to get internet content and web video as an alternative to paying for a cable subscription.

The present arrangements for advertising from traditional TV sources or existing internet sources/publishers/networks will continue but the likelihood of new and specific GTV ad formats to eventually be produced.

According to Google, there will be the same privacy options and controls as available for Chrome online and an indication that there will be tracking and data collection.

Partner companies involved, in addition to Adobe, will include amongst others, Intel (chip), Sony (TV) and Logitech (set-top box), Logitech says its box will have a remote which also integrates a keyboard. Google have yet to give any indication of pricing.

As and when Google TV finally hits a viewing screen, and we enter the next era of integrated online and broadcast interactive content, the possibilities for marketing strategies and optimising brand identity presence across the new interchangeable platform could be very attractive indeed!

Have you checked in to Foursquare yet? The likelihood is that you’ve come across the term on the web recently, understood it’s some kind of game but not quite sure what it’s all about and why you should bother with it. Two million have bothered and business users are finding Foursquare a new online marketing opportunity.

Foursquare is a location-based game, which allows you to tell your friends and colleagues where you are at any given time and also gives you the option to share this through social media messaging networks, Facebook and Twitter. You also do have the option to keep your whereabouts secret but still play the game to win points.

Starting the game on a clean slate, each time you check in at a venue, you are awarded points and compete throughout the week with other users in your city or just amongst friends to see who can accumulate the most points and collect unique badges for completing different tasks. A user can become the Mayor of a city if they have more check-ins over a 60 day period than anyone else.

Foursquare is one of the new location-based applications, which offers a powerful brand identity awareness opportunity to a company looking to increase their presence in the real world and on the web by combining offline customer activity directly with online social engagement.

Established just over 12 months ago, Foursquare is currently being embraced by hotels and restaurants, who have been quick to see the advantages of incorporating the application within their marketing strategies. Thus, latest offers and special deals are available to those who check in. In addition, user generated content means you can obtain tips and latest info from your social network.

The rapidly increasing use of mobile internet with mobile apps means that eCommerce business owners can use Foursquare to engage with their increasingly ‘mobile’ customers offering Foursquare “Specials,” which are discounts and prizes offered to loyal customers when they check in on Foursquare at their venue.

A free analytics programme will provide participating businesses valuable, detailed information on who is checking-in to their locations. This gives them the ability to communicate with visitors to deal with all manner of visitor feedback, and to help with providing a better customer experience. Customers love to be rewarded for simply frequenting their favourite places and businesses who aim to recognise their “regulars” can engage and encourage them to come again.

An established venue on Foursquare can check its real time stats on key visitor traffic, including, most recent and frequent visitors, the time of day people check in, total number of unique visitors, gender breakdown of customers and percentage Foursquare check-ins are broadcast to Twitter and Facebook.

Listening to what your website visitors have to say and the type of feedback they give is as much dependent on when you ask, how you ask and being trusted with a reply. Approaching at the right time in the right way is a crucial part of your online brand design.

Collecting visitor feedback is a delicate operation! Knowing how your visitors feel and respond to one or more aspects of the website experience offered is crucial. How they might view and possibly share their thoughts and feelings to their social media network communities can make or break perceptions of your brand identity – and consequent visitor traffic and ranking.

The number one action is to tell visitors immediately on arrival to your site that they are invited, if they wish to spend a few moments, to provide feedback after their visit. By inviting on arrival, you avoid interrupting visitors during their experience.

Under no circumstances interrupt potential customers in the middle of their visit with a request for feedback that was clearly triggered by some action they took.

Research shows that survey interruptions yield four to five times fewer replies than on-arrival invitations, and will significantly increase the annoyance among all of the visitors involved, whether they participate or not. On average, 2 to 6 percent of visitors will opt in to a well-branded, on-arrival invitation, with more than 90 percent of those who agree to take the survey, actually providing feedback at the end of their visit.

Inviting feedback during or at the end of a website visit has been proven to produce a more negative feedback. On-arrival invitations tend to provide a representative sample of both positive and negative feedback.

Remember - timing affects visitors’ motives to take the survey, and people are quicker to complain than they are to compliment!

To gain visitor confidence, it is vitally important that visitors understand immediately that a feedback request comes from your organisation only, i.e. as part of your online marketing,  and not by an outside source. The invitation should be branded to make it clear that you are the one conducting the survey and must have a clear and easy to use opt-out button.

The facts are that most visitors will not want to participate, and it is equally important to respect their decision, and avoid asking them again for at least three months.

It’s also important not to overdo the feedback requests. For most sites, 750-1,200 responses per month is enough to address most information needs, e.g. for 100,000 unique visitors per month, an invitation rate of three in 10 should be more than adequate to gather new and relevant information on an ongoing basis.

Some businesses still think that social media is just another selling tool! The ‘old skool’ proposition of really believing that by tweeting dozens of product messages at everyone on more platforms and channels everyday, they will increase enquiries! They don’t get social media, how to use it and what to expect from it!

There is a difference between marketing online and online marketing! Being online defines your activities rather than the other way around. The way to build brand identity and establish eCommerce viability through social media networking channels is to form credible, transparent and interactive relationships with your market audience niche.

Social media is a radically different proposition from other communication channels. Successful social engagement is essentially an outcome of what you do and say. It’s the quality and intrinsic value of the message content which drives an audience response, visitor growth, and propels conversation.

The key to successful social media engagement – is exactly that, engagement! Simples ! Become involved, enter into and develop trusted relationships.

Building a brand loyal audience is an outcome of thoughtful, useful, and interesting multimedia content, conversation, and meaningful offers. The authenticity and value of that content is related directly to its relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle desires. Social media is a way to engage potential consumers based on what the consumers care about, not what the vendor wants to sell!

By better understanding the abiding interest and concerns of their core consumers, it is possible to create soft marketing strategies in the form of real opportunities for both parties to engage and exchange meaningful feedback and conversation, leading to a real-need service supply.

A ‘follower’ community builds as a result of providing daily content which is consistently engaging and entertaining. Using a variety of multi-media tools from writing content which is info-rich for blogs, articles, Twitter /Facebook updates, videos, newsletters and customer forums.

Confidence to respond is more likely to occur when community followers are purposefully drawn into the conversation, questions asked and deliberately seeking their views, ideas, and opinions. Consumers want and expect quick responses to their questions. Speed matters, and being responsive is part of the assessment of how well a brand is perceived to perform – and ultimately survive – in the social media space.

For those businesses who view social media as little more than just a cheap, additional ‘sales and marketing’ avenue, to be measured in simplistic time/cost ROI formulas is to be stuck in the 1980s. The enterprises who truly understand and integrate social media platforms into their company’s total brand communication presence will be sustained online and see the fruits of their long term investment.

Are you optimising your website for search engines or for people who use search engines? Many businesses tend to think of search engine optimisation as simply keyword crampons levered in to place to scale the PageRanks of Google mountain! But in fact human friendly sites are equally key to driving traffic and page indexing.

The application of SEO to careful campaigns of PPC and link building around the sites, blogs and social networks is there for one reason only – to attract human traffic to click onto your site, build your brand identity and ultimately convert from search visitor to paying customer and regular subscriber /newsfeed reader.

Search engine ranking obviously helps greatly in the online marketing process, conferring both substantive authority and establishing long term value, but once a visitor lands at your site, the next crucial part of the conversion process has to immediately begin.

Search-engine friendly design is often talked of in terms of ‘crawlability’ or the ability for a search engine spider to crawl a site, and ‘indexation’, i.e. the ability for website’s most high-quality pages, videos, and images to be available to rank. But it is equally as important to be constantly aware of human site search goals, behaviours, and expectations, as registered by website analytics and monitored daily.

Established patterns of site navigation and positioning mean searchers have very clear mental models of how site pages should be constructed and where items should be placed. If those items are not in the right place or aren’t there at all, then the likelihood is that site visitors will be confused, very quickly lose patience and just leave. For eCommerce sites, this is clearly cyber suicide!

In the age of instant social media communication and rapidly evolving mobile apps and tablet readers, human ‘onDemand’ search results will not wait on issues of website accessibility.

SEO linking should be relevant, valuable and genuine – and take visitors to exactly to their expected destination.

Today, the proliferation of multiple search platforms means it is absolutely imperative that a website must be easy to navigate, and quickly arrive at the object of the search. Assuming that searchers will instinctively know what is clickable and what is not clickable on a site page layout is still a problematic issue, alongside unchecked, broken links.

Remember – if a website is confusing and difficult to navigate, visitors will not wish to subscribe or engage, traffic drops off, bookmarking ceases, and site content is no longer retweeted or linked to via social media.

The fear of leaving something out! The old problem of trying to say everything on a website will only show your visitor that screen skim and scan reading have not been understood! Faced with walls of print or a busy Home page, they will lose patience and promptly leave!

The art of website design is to successfully finish the online marketing process. Visitors have clicked on to your site Home page and expect to be able to see clearly how to navigate their way directly to one or more items of search interest, aided by clear ‘calls to action’. By removing non search urgent content, or demoting it to a much less prominent status, you focus visitors on what is important.

If you emphasise everything, then nothing will stand out as important. By including, or emphasising too many items on the page, a visitor may feel confused and overwhelmed; their ability to find key information is actually lessened and they will just not want to continue. For an eCommerce business, website accessibility is crucial to online survival and this kind of info overload must be urgently addressed.

The problem may simply have grown over time. More content is added, but nothing gets taken away! All sites need to be archiving content such as blog articles, news, videos, free downloads, product launches and services, as they are being regularly updated. An important item announced on a Home page should be automatically archived to its relevant category archive with a visible link for visitors to click onto.

Active website housekeeping should be constantly seen to be happening by the regular site readership who have opted to receive RSS feeds, Twitter updates and blog alerts. Remember – your online brand design directly informs the perception of your online brand identity. Readers and visitors who opt to engage can quickly opt to disengage too!

The purpose of the homepage is to focus on key conversion actions which have a measureable impact and thus, the true purpose of the homepage is to direct visitors quickly from the homepage to the relevant object of their search, if they did not arrive by a direct incoming link.

The homepage should act as a signpost to make visitors aware of the existence of important information or options for them to consider – and then should direct them deeper into the site towards more targeted content. The basic role of the home page should be to let people choose for themselves what your site wants them to accomplish.

The rule should be that unless the content or a graphic element directly supports a key conversion action, it should be removed or repositioned elsewhere on the site!