Technorati Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing

Technorati Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing, Pay Per Click

Technorati Tags: accessible websites, internet marketing, web accessibility

Success in marketing - online or offline - is intrinsically linked with the ability to set goals and the motivation to achieve them. There are hundreds of self-help books and they are not new.  For years employers, teachers, coaches, parents and therapists have spent thousands and thousands of hours exploring the relationship between goal setting and motivation. Let’s look at some of the main themes that are involved in successful digital marketing.

The SMART goals acronym has become the standard in businesses and coaching situations. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. It is obvious that clear, concise goals produce the best results. 

Smart and Measurable - For example, saying “improve sales” or “work hard’ is less effective than saying “increase your conversion rate on the website by 1%”  or “increase sales revenue by 5%.”

Achievable and Realistic - People are sometimes urged to have “big dreams,” but “big” is a relative term. Goals, as stated by the SMART theory, should be realistic, achievable and measurable.  Losing 20 pounds in two weeks is certainly measurable, but it is not realistic and probably not attainable or advisable.

Time Bound - Time frame is crucial to goal setting. Setting a time frame for your goals requires you to take specific actions and monitor your progress. Your progress then becomes a form of feedback, which in turn enhances motivation.

The great thing about marketing on the internet for businesses using a structured digital marketing approach is that SMART goals can be much more easily set, measured and achieved.  In the online world, almost everything can be Specific, Measured and Timebound, eg,  unique visitors, clicks, engagement, buzz, open rates, conversions, demographics, branding and the time spent are just a few examples of the many available metrics.  The missing ingredients of Achievable and Realistic is where our digital marketing and general business consulting expertise at WSI can guide you.

Motivation to succeed is the one thing that you as a business owner or driver have to bring to the equation.  We work best with customers who are highly motivated to succeed.  Motivation is the vehicle by which goals are accomplished and by focussing your marketing on digital marketing methods, the visibility around the accomplishments and success by SMART principles helps to drive and enhance motivation

Motivation is often a function of need.  Psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke of the hierarchy of needs, which include physiological needs, safety needs, self esteem and self actualization. Motivation may either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is related to a person’s feelings of accomplishment and self actualization, whereas extrinsic motivation is based on the need to please others. Extrinsic motivation is often expressed in negative terms, such as, “if I don’t complete this project, my boss will fire me,” or, “if I don’t lose weight, my boyfriend will break up with me.”  Fear of failure is a very powerful motivational force.

Technorati Tags: digital economy, digital marketing, internet marketing

Some amazing digital statistics: 6.7 billion text messages every day, 350 million active Facebook users, 60 million LinkedIn business users (4 million in the UK) and 5 million tweets a day – all these elements not only change the way we interact with each other, but also the way we learn and we should provide learning.

The Digital Economy and Social Media is affecting every aspect of our lives and businesses.  A recent article posted on the BCS website describes how the UK is currently moving towards a skill and talent gap as the working population moves towards retirement age and fewer young people are around to fill these spaces. The artilcle points out that ‘Kids are consumers and the workforce of tomorrow,’ and emphasises that it is paramount for organisations to understand how to play and engage on their terms. ‘Social Media is essentially millions of conversations going on online,’ 

One of the key aspects of today’s digital society - and therefore a vital element when trying to understand and target Generation Y – is the fact that online, many products are available for free. The question posed in this article , therefore, is how can training companies embrace that and use it to their advantage?

You can read the full article from the BCS by following this link.

As Mike Pilbeam from Cisco points out in the article, for training organisations and all businesses it is still vital to measure on social networks. ‘Measure everything you can,’ says Mike. ‘For example, feedback, contributions, how people are performing against their peer group, or consumption. So for example, what do people consume, what is working, what is not and so on. It is all about taking advantage of the human nature.’

At WSI we are members of the BCS and it is an important stategic relationship for us to be associated with the the Chartered Institute for IT. As the article points out many of the new Web 2.0 or Social Media platforms are free to use but there is a cost to make sure that your organisation uses them in the most effective way.  At WSI we are digital marketing andsocial media experts, so feel free to comment or get in touch with our Digital Marketing Practice if you need our help.

Technorati Tags: digital economy, digital marketing, internet marketing

With Web Analytics organisations today have a new way to compete…

According to Wikipedia, “Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimising web usage”. Web Analytics, sometimes referred to as website traffic analysis, gives you information that you can leverage to better understand how visitors are interacting with your website.  It helps to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign and also provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc, to gauge the popularity of sites which helps with market research. 

To be effective, every website must have business goals and defined objectives. When customers achieve those goals, you have conversions. As the website owner, you can use Web Analytics data to encourage visitors to purchase, subscribe, register, make referrals, or accomplish other goals that can be both measured and optimised. Yes, it’s possible to funnel Web Analytics information directly to the bottom line and turn data into pounds. Learn how you can dramatically increase your customer conversion rates by working with our digital marketing team based in Etchingham, East Sussex. 

Use data effectively 

In the online world, almost everything can be measured: unique visitors, clicks, engagement, buzz, open rates, conversions, demographics, branding and time spent are just a few examples of the many available metrics. Marketers and business owners can embrace the very real potential of all this information – but often feel overwhelmed by mountains of data, or stymied by the technology that delivers the solutions and can find it difficult to answer the following questions:

• So how should you determine what to measure?
• How do you establish a data-centric company culture?
• How to make sense of all the data, charts and numbers at your fingertips?
• How can you then turn it into action?
• Can we measure across channels (even offline)?
• How can we forecast?
• How do you best evaluate your Web Analytics data?

Keep tabs on your industry and competition

Web Analytics isn’t just all about you but can provide competitive data on an “apples-to-apples” comparison of you to your online competitors and your industry.  WSI can help provide data that enables you to gauge:

• the percentage share of industry visitors to your site
• the campaigns competitors are running and how well they work
• benchmarking search marketing
• industry conversion rates
• etc

Web Analytics will help you get into your customer’s mind to gain greater profits

Web Analytics can teach you a great deal about who your visitors and how they interact with your website.  Web Analytics can tell you how they arrived at your site, which search engine they used, which link they followed, did they click on your pay-per-click ad, or type in your website address directly into their browser.  You can see the pages visited, l how long they stayed on each page, where they clicked, what pages they viewed as well as from which page they exited your site. 

Once you understand your visitors’ behaviour, you will be able to identify and eliminate conversion obstacles that slow down or prevent visitors from completing the conversion goal. The result will be an improved visitor experience encouraging more conversions.  Here at WSI in Etchingham, East Sussex, we are digital marketing experts and can show you a scientific, data centric and logically progressive way to make more money online using Web Analytics. Call your WSI Digital Marketing Consultant for a meeting today!

Technorati Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing

What exactly is Google Buzz?

Google, in their bid for world wide web control, have added an additional weapon to their arsenal in Google Buzz. Launched on 9 Feb 2010, it is effectively an effort by Google to become a lot more social, allowing Gmail account holders to share anything they discover intriguing, either widely for the world to see or privately with a select group of contacts within their Gmail address book. Characteristics include Google Buzz for mobile, which tags the location of the post, and to be able to integrate a Buzz with Twitter and Flickr.

Who is it for?

Seen by many as the Facebook and Twitter killer, Google Buzz works on the same fundamental principles as its rivals: share your own activities, follow other peoples’ activities and share content from around the web. Like Twitter, Google Buzz is an additional layer to our social skin, which makes it easy to locate intriguing info and permits friends and other people alike to have an insight straight into our lives.

Since it is built-in into Gmail accounts, over 175 million people will immediately get access to it. However, this does not ensure that it will be successful, particularly with brutal rivals like Facebook. With more than 400 million active users, Facebook’s popularity is flourishing and it is quickly turning into a replacement e-mail and instant messaging. Web-based email nonetheless, is becoming a digital passport which is needed to enter the different social worlds but is rapidly becoming an outdated approach to communication.

Google Buzz & business

Just like other media platforms, businesses have gradually discovered a place to promote their products, and social networking is no exception. Businesses have found methods to focus on particular audiences online for example Youtube, Facebook, Myspace and blog sites. Companies are gradually understanding to make use of Twitter as a marketing tool, with businesses financing numerous much talked about individuals to promote their own products or establishing their very own profiles to advertise themselves. This kind of product positioning is a result of Twitter to date fighting off the attraction associated with selling advertising on profile pages. Twitter does permit advertisers to target its users according to their own history of tweets, meaning a quick search of keywords and you’ve got a ready-made target audience.

The usage of location tagging on Buzz adds a fascinating perspective to messages and postings. Users may post details about the location that they’re in, creating an interesting read when looking at different locations and searching for interesting activities. It is foreseeable that businesses will use this feature heavily to promote their products, new shops, special events and special offers from their various locations. Marketing campaigns based on popular topics, user surveys and current events will also be utilised, much in the same way as they are used on Twitter.

A downside to Google Buzz is always that a user should be a Gmail account holder to make use of it. Most companies now possess their very own business email accounts and to change to an unsecured e-mail service provider would be a substantial impediment to businesses looking to make use of the particular service. Nevertheless, given Google’s speedyresponseto end user privacy needs a week ago, (Google was required to roll out a significant privacy update two days following on from the official launch), the development of a company app or an enterprise version in the next couple of months is likely.

The future

Despite having products in nearly every other internet platform, Google Buzz is possibly their boldest effort to assimilate  into the social media world. However, with users and companies having already invested countless hours of time and money into the more popular social sites, it remains to be seen if there is room for yet another social media site. Google Buzz is the Google approach to sharing. It will be interesting to see whether Facebook and the other giants of the social world are willing to share and that is another question!

Learn more about a specialised digital marketing strategy for your firm at http://www.wsionlinebiz.co.uk or give us a call at 01580 819529.

Technorati Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing

Banner Ads – Part Three of Three

Types of Banners Advertisements:

This is the final post on this digital marketing technique.  The previous post can be found here. Traditional banner ads were static in nature – usually a .gif or .jpeg image file. With advances in internet technology new modes of banner ads have appeared on the ad scene. The following are some of the popular modes of non-static banner ads:

Expanding – The banner gets bigger on clicking – often it will have a button labelled “Expand”. Rather than jumping to another website – these banners simply open up and reveal more information.

 Animated – I a very common mode of banner ad these days. However, too many images/messages may render such banners hopelessly large in size, slow and downright irritating. Exercise caution on banner design.

Drop-Down Menu – These have embedded HTML and allow the user to choose options from a drop-down menu. This mode of banner is ideal for co-op advertising where several businesses can advertise together.

Interstitial – These appear in a separate window as the website loads. These ads often contain large graphics, animation, and streaming presentations. Java, Flash, and Shockwave – These allow for rich media presentation including video and audio. Common browser toolbars such as Alexa, Google etc. suppress this type of banners Floating Ads and

DHTML – These banners float over the content a website and generally perceived as intrusive, although they do get a high click-through rate.

Unicast – These are just like little TV ads that run in a separate window.

 A simple checklist for Banner Designers:

Here are a few things to keep in mind while creating banner ads:

·         Keep them small –  preferably under 12K. This way the banner will be quick to load.

·         Keep it Simple – don’t get too complicated with heavy text and confusing colours.

·         Make them easy to read – always use ALT tags for text display on all images

·         Testing – verify that the banner clicks through to the right page on your website

·         Limit the use of animation  and include a call to action (e.g. Order Now, Visit Web-Site etc.)

·         Browsers – test your banners in different browsers at different screen resolutions.

·         Get professional help to create your banner ads for in a variety of standard sizes

The lack of professional targeting and overall visitor apathy are two major drawbacks of banner ad campaigns. Because of the large scale use or misuse many visitors today treat banners as a necessary evil and pay little attention. Some users see them as completely intrusive.

The CTR of banner ads is much lower compared to other forms of on-line advertisement such as targeted search engine marketing.  However, banner ads still have a place in a digital marketing strategy and are more effective in brand building and work very well when they are made attractive and the ad delivery systems can do some proper market targeting. 

If you would like advice on the best approach to take then call Anthony Burke on 01580 819529 or use the contact form on our webpage.

Technorati Tags: digital marketing, internet marketing

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