Online marketing news and resources.

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.

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.

It is fairly common knowledge amongst many of the website design and marketing agencies, there have been recent changes to Google’s algorithm, influencing optimised content, link building, and ultimately, visitor search results. In short, Google looks at site pages for signals of human activity in the form of regular, fresh content of relevance, influence and authority.

After two decades, the web resembles Mount Everest. Countless explorers have visited, leaving behind a detritus littered landscape. There are simply thousands upon thousands of dead or automated websites left unattended or simply not being looked after and updated on a regular basis.

This begs the question of how much – or how little – online marketing the site owner companies are actually doing? What would be the incentive, value and interest for a return visit? Aside from an eCommerce business alerting their database via an email marketing newsletter to a few price changes, the content remains unaltered, and means visitors will not be staying at the site to engage further. In other words, a brand identity is formed of a price–driven attitude, which offers potential customers nothing further in terms of added content value.

Google is always changing, and some important changes are now more evident than ever before. Relevant back linking from niche market sites is now more important and valuable, even if the sites are lower ranked. It had always been assumed that the top ranking factor voted by Google was always keyword-focused, anchor text from external links. (more…)

Website design constantly adapts to the needs of consumer search – or so you would think! It’s remarkable how still many businesses online still view their sites as little no more than a virtual brochure with a visitor enquiries and info capture page.

For a website to succeed today and attract and retain regular traffic, it must offer multiple compelling content as a self publishing portal of niche industry sector news, information, interactive visitor engagement and social media conversation sharing.

A web based business or eCommerce website needs to be simply more than products or service selling. Search visitors primarily look to the web as an information resource. A site needs to offer two types of web page: a sales page and a content page, often referred to as the ‘squeeze’ or landing page and the article page.

The two different formats enable both online marketing and email marketing campaigns to be sharply focused on drawing visitor segments with their known areas of interest to the relevant site pages. Targeted organic SEO and its essential link building process aim to drive visitor traffic and raise search engine ranking.

Businesses may readily understand the purpose of a landing or sales page. It is to either sell a product or encourage visitors to opt in to a mailing list or preferably both! This page will dedicated strictly to achieving either or both of these aims and will not include any other type of content that would likely to distract a visitor from its purpose.

The main function of an ‘article’ page is to add fresh, valuable written content, which will be of genuine interest to their target market. They should be original and as unique as possible to obtain higher ranking. Today’s search engine algorithms seek out decisive and relevant content – not just voting on SEO terms alone – to index and return site pages to visitor search.

Content pages can be linked to all the other pages on a website, making it easy and straightforward for visitors to navigate and comfortably explore products and services on offer. Keyword phrases which describe the purpose of the target page can of course be hyperlinked. It’s important to always include links to the most recent blogs, articles and news updates as well as the products/services sales pages.

In addition, info sharing buttons via the social messaging networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as bookmarking sites, are now expected to be found not only on the homepage but accompanying key content throughout an entire website.

SMEs are not the only businesses who focus on niche markets in localised areas. Established online firms will segment and identify regional needs and target known demographics. Finding and building brand identity with a community in close proximity is key to social marketing strategies.

It’s obviously, somewhat optimistic to assume that just being on the web means your business reach goes global! You may get some overseas enquiries but the reality is that your business online is most likely to engage with specific groups and areas. Knowing the region where you are based will precisely shape both your online marketing and offline advertising activities.

Raising your company profile to drive localised traffic is equally competitive but being local means you have a ready-made network, with whom, your social media messaging can immediately engage.

The importance of Google Places (formerly Google Maps Local Business Centre), is essential and your first priority. Add to this Bing Local Listing and Yahoo Local. The rise of iPhone, mobile apps and mobile maps in general, means for your business to get returned at all on a local area search, you have to be listed – with an information rich profile! Search engines will index all your info and ensure you will rank highly in a map search.

Google maps enables you to be placed under a total of five categories so you have the opportunity to optimise your website in different ways for localised/regional area visitor search traffic, e.g. Cheshire Website Design, Online Marketing Cheshire, Website Design Manchester, Cheshire Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Cheshire, etc

Accompanying organic SEO link building, social media engagement is today’s leading edge to traffic driving and potential visitor to customer conversion. Designed to reveal the human face behind your company and thus, encourage confidence and repeat visits, b2c Twitter conversations are commonly accepted.

Local businesses often start their own online groups, rather than just rely on a Facebook page, and which can also be promoted through Twitter. Likewise, try using Twitter to offer promotions and ask group members for feedback. Remember – the focus is on involvement! The more you get them talking the more they’ll be likely to visit you and your site and add links to their own sites.

A company blog, updated at least a couple of times a week with genuinely newsworthy content of real interest to your targeted niche is now an established format. Google algorithms love great content and will rank highly. However, writing content for today’s savvy readership and satisfying SEO needs, takes time and skill!

By becoming adept at local level exposure to drive traffic and build online credibility, creates a proven track record, scalable to different applications. After all, going ‘national’ depends on knowing how to engage with the different needs of the different regions. Learning with your local area is a great foundation to build upon!

Nope!

Seems the message has not been getting through! A new 2010 study finds that nearly half of the UK’s SME websites contain little or no SEO, are not indexed with search engines and thus, fail to make any visible impact on driving visitor traffic, whatsoever!

According to a recent State of UK Business Websites Study, of a sample 1,000 SME websites analysed, around 47 per cent contained little or no SEO content.

It beggars belief that nearly twenty years since the start of the web, in today’s highly sophisticated online marketing environment, fast forwarding into mobile internet and social media led customer engagement, a staggering half of business websites defeat the purpose of their existence in the first place.

Why bother having a website if you are not prepared to invest in it’s growth and development? Learn to understand how it should properly function to enable it to perform properly so your business brand identity stands a chance of succeeding online? (more…)

Does this week’s railing against the free web by Prince, quickly following on the heels  of the paywall now firmly in place around the Times and Sunday Times, seem to be heralding a new era of two-tier online engagement between paying for original quality content/news and free access to all other common sources?

It’s possible that the assumptions of whole generations of users who have grown up to believe that the essential web, websites and content is grown, run and consumed in a so-called ‘no overheads’ Garden of Eden, are about to be challenged.

A common myth seems now to be woven into the general understanding of online as automatically being cheaper than offline. This may have been briefly thought to be the case in the early days of the web but the business of creating today’s web design and online marketing for operating a visible, successful eCommerce presence is a grown up sophisticated operation indeed.

It simply isn’t the case, as some business owners tend to assume, that because there appears to be less material costs involved in constructing a purposeful website, developing its functionality, creating powerful content and going ‘live’ than opening a high street or retail park outlet, that it follows that there is a corresponding downsizing of cost ratio to value. (more…)

The web 2.0 principle of informal social media engagement is established. The mobile internet is well underway. Yet a recent web study finds that the websites of many brands and businesses still do little to engage with visitors and potential customers.

This is unlikely to be the fault of their website design and marketing agency team, who would, no doubt, have presented the possibilities for today’s approach to online marketing and developing brand identity visibility. Beyond simple transaction and price comparison, the message is that a company’s  potential niche audience market needs to be attracted to online engagement or their longer term interest is diverted elsewhere.

The adoption of social interaction via email marketing newsletters, Blogs, Forums, Twitter, Facebook and site community groups tends to be reflected by market sector and possibly one sided perception of demand. For some businesses, the extent of their attempt to reach out to their potential audience may be no more than the odd newsletter once a quarterly or the one time setting up of a newspage or blog that is soon neglected and only updated a few times a year, if that!

For most SMEs, forays into PPC gobble up nearly all their available ‘advertising’ budget, generating modest response and disappointment in the short term, and thus, lack of interest in exploring much beyond basic SEO tweaking of the home page. (more…)