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- 3. Notes and Ebook Copy of the presentation Slideshare.net Search “eskimosoup ecommerce” Free internet marketing ebook www.eskimosoup.co.uk/ecommerce
- 4. Success in ecommerce • Introduction: facts and figures • Choosing the right product or service • Options to enter the market • Creating your own ecommerce website • How to market your ecommerce website • Analytics • Introduction to mobile • Review the internet marketing system
- 5. “Ecommerce is the process of buying and selling products and services online”
- 6. Size of the market • In April 2000, estimated online expenditure in the UK was £87 million. By December of 2005, the figure had increased significantly to some £2.26 billion. • UK online shoppers spent £68bn in 2011, 16% more than the year before • The UK has the biggest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita http:// http:// www.imrg.org/IMRGWebSite/user/pages/homepage.aspx www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id =tcm:12-64183
- 7. Size of the market • Over three quarters of businesses have a website in 2010 (78.7 per cent). • While the majority of businesses have a website, a relatively small proportion of businesses use the website for selling (15.3 per cent). http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_245829.pdf
- 8. Choose Your Product: Research the Market • Gap in the market? – Locally – Nationally – Internationally • Reinvent the wheel? – Can you improve on an existing product or service? • Support offline businesses • Are you passionate about it?
- 11. What is a Purple Cow? Seth’s definition of being a Purple Cow is that ‘products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say’. Being a Purple Cow is not about being loud or quirky, but about being more outstanding and remarkable than your black and white spotted competitors.
- 12. Do this with Brand It’s everything you say and everything you do, but includes: – Visuals • Logo • Photos • Videos – Brand language • Anywhere you speak • Anywhere you display words – Branded materials • Stationery • Brochures • Website – Operational activities • How you send out invoices • How do you answer phones • Customer service • Smell of the office / shop / marketing material http://sensorydecisions.com/
- 17. Above the Aircon it says “not that kulula planes need it… they’re already cool”. overhead cabins – “VIP seating for you hand luggage”. “Black box which is actually orange” Fuel tanks – “the go-go juice”.
- 18. "Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants." "Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments." "Ladies and gentlemen, we have landed in Cape Town . Please take all your possessions. Anything left behind will be shared equally between staff. Please note we do not accept unwanted mothers-in-law or children." "Welcome to Johannesburg, if this is not where you were intending to go then you have a bit of a problem." "Me Tarzan, You on hold“ - when phoning Kulula and being put on hold. “Have you heard the latest Cabin Crew lingo? BOB (Best-On-Board)if you are a BOB – you are the best looking man/woman onboard” – facebook comment
- 27. Entering the market • Established market place – Ebay – Amazon – Not on the highstreet.com • Off the shelf ecommerce system • Bespoke ecommerce system
- 37. Your own online store Off the Shelf Vs Bespoke
- 40. Considerations • Still requires design • Integration of brand – Images – Video – Blogs – Social media • Programming to fit your business • Complicated back-end management system
- 41. Bespoke
- 43. Considerations • Can be considered the more expensive option • Requires providing a brief for agencies to tender for • Requires a leap of faith and trust
- 44. How Do I choose? Think about: • Your audience – Where do they “hang out”? – What experience would they expect? • Your market place – Do you want to always compete on price? – Will your business thrive with what Amazon etc can provide?
- 45. How Do I Choose? Be honest with yourself: • Do you have the skills to; – Design, build and manage an ecommerce website. There are a lot of skills required? • Consider the true cost of building an ecommerce website. – Will you save money buying an off the shelf solution? – Is there a lost opportunity cost? – Will you outgrow it / become frustrated with having work within the constraints of a one size fits all solution?
- 47. We Expect to Use the Internet Differently Now Information is being searched for in different ways: •We expect honest and transparent information (no spin) •We expect to comment and add to content •We expect to read comments, reviews and ratings •We expect to subscribe to information
- 48. Social Reviews
- 58. Search Marketing
- 59. Push Marketing
- 60. Pull Marketing
- 61. Search Engine Results Page PPC SEO
- 62. Three Pillars of SEM Success Supply Relevancy Demand
- 63. Supply Three Pillars of SEM Success Relevancy Demand
- 64. Three Pillars of Supply SEM Success Relevancy Demand Hot Tip – Search Google for ‘adwords keyword tool’
- 65. Three Pillars of Supply SEM Success Relevancy Demand
- 66. What Are We Looking For? 2. High demand 4. Relatively low supply 6. High relevancy
- 67. How PPC Works Geography Devices Languages Budget Campaign Search Engines Time of Day Max Click Cost Ad Group Share of Budget Adverts Text Message Trigger Words Keyword Keyword Keyword URL URL URL Landing Pages
- 68. Walk Through Campaign Ad Group “men’s work shoes” Advert Keyword Keyword Keyword URL URL URL
- 69. Walk Through Campaign Ad Group Advert Keyword Keyword Keyword URL URL URL
- 70. Walk Through Campaign Ad Group Advert Keyword Keyword Keyword URL URL URL
- 71. Walk Through Campaign Ad Group Advert Keyword Keyword Keyword URL URL URL
- 72. Landing Pages
- 73. Improving Your Adwords Campaign: Ad Extensions Review extensions: The review line stands out to the eye compared to competitors and increases click through rate.
- 74. Improving Your Adwords Campaign: Ad Extensions Local Extensions: Help nearby consumers find or call your nearest location
- 75. Improving Your Adwords Campaign: Ad Extensions Call extensions: Connect users to your business directly by phone
- 76. Improving Your Adwords Campaign: Ad Extensions Ad Sitelinks: Promote more pages within your site beyond your main ad landing page
- 77. How PPC Works: Benefits • It’s Fast – Typically brings traffic within an hour – Quickly get in and out of a market – Manipulate keywords that convert – Quickly change bid prices • It’s flexible – Turn on and off instantly – Can be run seasonally – Test new products in the market – Schedule campaigns if time sensitive – Change the ad messages instantly • Control – Over everything – Infinitely customisable • Rewards Well Managed Campaigns
- 78. How PPC Works: Drawbacks • Not as Easy as It Sounds • Paying for Every Visitor • Getting More Expensive • Only Attracts 10% of All Available Clicks
- 80. How Google Works Out What a Website Does?
- 81. What the Website Says About Itself: Onsite Optimisation
- 84. Onsite Optimisation: What a Website Says About Itself • The text on the page • How it's formatted • How non-text elements are described • How readable the pages are, both for humans and Search Engines
- 85. Onsite Optimisation The text on the page
- 86. Onsite Optimisation How non-text elements are described Images, headings, animations, videos etc
- 87. Onsite Navigation How readable the page is, both for humans and Search Engines <h1> <u><b><font size=“5”> Handmade Soy Candles Vs. Handmade Soy Candles </h1> </font></b></u> Hot Tip – Get the search engines inside information www.bing.com/webmaster http://www.google.com/webmasters/
- 89. OffSite Optimisation: What Other Web Pages Say About A Website
- 90. Offsite Navigation The main reason Google became the monopoly Another Another Web Page Web Page Another Another Web Page Web Page Your Web Page Hot Tip – Book ‘The Search by John Battelle’
- 91. Offsite Optimisation Navigation 3 Key Elements for Quality Links 1. Link source 2. Anchor text 3. Landing page Quality and theme matter far more than quantity
- 92. Google+
- 93. Avoiding SEO Disaster • Black Hat SEO • URL Penalties • Content Spamming • Link Spamming • Misleading Web Users • Don’t Optimise only for Search Engines • Lazy SEO and PPC Hot Tip – Search Google for ‘Google Guidelines’
- 94. Horses for Courses When to Use PPC When to use SEO • New Domains • Need Max ROI • Need Fast ROI • When Competition is • Need Flexible Volume High • Testing • When Demand is • Targeting High • When Sales Goals • Precision Control are High • Punch Above Your Weight
- 95. Choosing keywords Software Tools Existing Your Customers Goals Suppliers / Analytics Competitors Reports Social Media
- 96. Tools • Google AdWords Editor • Google Analytics • Google Trends • Google Webmaster Central • Google Places • Google Webmaster Guidelines • Google Merchant Centre • Web CEO* • Web Position* • Alexa.com • Dmoz.org
- 98. Email Marketing
- 99. What Email Marketing Is… • A 1st Class tool for – Nurturing relationships – Generating repeat business – Retaining customers
- 100. What Email Marketing Is Not... – A Customer acquisition tool – A replacement for direct mail campaigns – A cheap alternative – A tool for the lazy – As easy as it looks
- 101. 3 Pillars of Email Marketing Success Permission Persuasion Personalisation
- 102. Permission 3 Pillars of Email Success Persuasion Personalisation
- 103. Permission 3 Pillars of Email Success Persuasion Personalisation
- 104. Permission 3 Pillars of Email Success Persuasion Personalisation
- 105. Timing for Success: Choosing the Right Time to Send Businesses Consumers Wednesday Friday 3 PM
- 106. Your Audience is Varied: Segmentation Case Study: Fashion Hire Company Permission List Celebrity News New Products Special Offers Subscribers Subscribers Subscribers Persuasion Personalisation Permission Message New Product Seasonal / Celebrity News Announcements Exclusive Offers Persuasion Personalisation Permission News Page on New Products Target Offer Page Website / Blog Landing Page Persuasion Personalisation
- 107. Once a Month, a Week or every Day? How Often to Send • Depends on the situation / audience • Probably more often than you think • Once a month is likely too long
- 108. Test and Measure http://bit.ly/bdWAP7 - See average industry rates
- 109. Top Tips: Best Practice • Don’t use Outlook • Don’t use Word • Used an Approved Broadcasting Service – AWeber – MailChimp – Constant Contact • Only Send Messages of Value
- 110. Online Social Media
- 112. Dialogue between consumer and brand
- 113. Hot Tip – Search amazon for Seth Godin and Brian Halligan
- 114. Uses of Social Media •Customer acquisition • Customer retention (rewarding loyal customers) • Customer care • Research – listening and learning •Clients researching you •Customer research • Networking – building relationships of trust • Mass communication • Digital personality
- 115. Creating loyal communities of customers
- 116. More and more customers are blocking traditional marketing, psychologically and with the help of technology
- 117. We hang out in different places
- 118. SOCIAL MEDIA IS AN UMBRELLA TERM THAT DEFINES THE VARIOUS ACTIVITIES THAT INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL INTERACTION, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF WORDS, PICTURES, VIDEOS AND AUDIO
- 119. “Social media is people having conversations online.”
- 120. Use the tools that help you communicate to your audience better
- 121. Share slides and documents
- 122. 100m Videos 2nd largest search engine 79% have watched video content online Universal McCann: Power to the People Social Media Tracker, Wave 4 http://www.slideshare.net/Olivier.mermet/universal-mc-cann-wave4
- 123. 70% have uploaded photos Universal McCann: Power to the People Social Media Tracker, Wave 4 http://www.slideshare.net/Olivier.mermet/universal-mc-cann-wave4
- 125. 200,000,000 blogs
- 126. Online Social Networks 64% of us in the UK have joined
- 127. Micro-blogging We don’t always find information using Google
- 128. Social Reviews
- 129. 25% of search results for the worlds top 20 largest brands are links from user generated content June 8, 2009 article from Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine entitled: Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results, Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards and Xavier Lanier
- 130. Who influences whom? Will the brand site continue to be the first visit after they search Google or Bing?
- 131. The attraction of social media People trust “a person like me” more than authority figures or marketing messages from business and media Seeking ongoing dialogue, not a one way advertisement Trust, Transparency, openness, honesty
- 132. We are seeing a communication shift
- 133. The shift is from one way communication
- 134. Dialogue between consumer and brand
- 135. Dialogue between consumer and consumer
- 136. With or without you Conversations will happen online with or without you Choose to be a part of it Engage and embrace
- 137. Blogs The product is right The price is right But who am I buying from?
- 139. 70% trusts bloggers’ opinions on products and services People think more positively about a company that has a blog Universal McCann: Power to the People Social Media Tracker, Wave 3 http://www.slideshare.net/Tomuniversal/wave-3-social-media-tracker-presentation
- 140. The stage before committing to buy
- 142. Understanding your customer Choosing the right Social Network (Hang out where your customers hang out)
- 144. Profiles
- 145. A Reason to Socialise: The Social Object
- 146. Pages Hot Tip – to create a page visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?
- 147. Engaging - Listening and learning
- 148. Engaging – Customer service Hot Tip – use Tweetdeck and Google Alerts to monitor conversations
- 149. Engaging – Create a social object* •http://www.kyle.mathews2000.com/node/60
- 150. Engaging – Create a social object Hot Tip – http://storefrontsocial.com/
- 151. How do I promote my social media outlets?
- 152. Email Campaigns
- 153. Business card
- 154. Email Signature
- 155. Website
- 156. On Other Blogs
- 157. Direct Engagement
- 158. facebook advertising increase your exposure using highly targeted advertising. Target users by age, gender, location, interests, etc. Advertise an external website or a facebook page.
- 159. “Move your loyal customers from an expensive offline advertisement campaign to a cheaper, more efficient and engaging online campaign… Use the tools of social media”
- 160. Web Analytics
- 161. Google Analytics
- 162. Purpose “To enable us to take action based on the actual behaviour of website visitors” from ‘Actionable Web Analytics’
- 163. Analytics
- 164. Traffic Sources Search Referred Direct Google Yahoo Bing Facebook Yell Times Bookmarks Typed History Keyword 1 Keyword 5 Keyword 9 DealLocal.co.uk Keyword 2 Keyword 6 Keyword10 Keyword 3 Keyword 7 Keyword11 Keyword 4 Keyword 8 Keyword12
- 165. 3 Gems 1. Holding advertisers accountable 2. Monitoring local awareness 3. Monitoring website persuasiveness
- 172. Mobile
- 180. 7 out of 10 searchers expect a website to be as easy to navigate on a mobile device as it is on a desktop computer…
- 182. Only 21% of Google’s top advertisers have a mobile website
- 183. Having a website that does not perform well on a mobile device is like being closed on Thursday
- 184. The three biggest challenges faced by business are... • Finding more prospects • Closing more sales • Increasing repeat custom
- 185. Step By Step 1. Research your market 2. Choose a product / service that is in demand. Be passionate about it. 3. Be remarkable 4. Enter the market. Choose an ecommerce solution based on your customer expectations, your resources and aspirations 5. Market yourself to new customers 6. Market yourself to existing customers. Keep existing customers and use persuasion to promote positive word of mouth 7. Install and understand Google Analytics. Make improvements based on results. 8. Consider mobile.
Editor's Notes
- Scrumpled carrier bag anecdote
- http:// www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t =143648
- To mark ten years in business and a staggering 55 million kilometres flown (the distance between Earth and Mars) the airline has claimed a ten acre spot on Mars for future expansion. Part of the land will be given to staff and business partners as part of the birthday celebrations. kulula fans and customers can take part in a competition to win a plot within the kulula Mars base by suggesting a creative use for their plot. Visit http://www.facebook.com/iflykulula?sk=app_227728410594266
- Moose Jaw
- The internet has changed how we now search for answers to our questions and the internet itself is changing. When the internet as we now know made it to our homes in the mid 1990s we still used it as a traditional marketing tool (banners, pop up banners, brochure websites pushing corporate messages onto you). Now we have the tools that allows us to talk back on the internet, we for the first time have own printed presses and can now talk to the world. Information is being searched for in different ways because we don’t always want the type of information that is being pushed to us on a brochure corporate website that says our products are the best, we are the best you should buy from us and no one else. We don’t actually trust full corporate brand information and we are more often searching for more honest and transparent information. Think why you buy from Amazon is it because it is easy and cheap (maybe), but really? Is it because you get people like ranking, rating and commenting on the product you are thinking of buying. We now make our own informed decision to buy and not as we were so used to with traditional methods, be sold to. We don’t always go to the brand website anymore to get the information we really want. The information we really want is from ‘people like me’ who have used the product and service and can give me a real honest review of it. I can now search for this information on facebook, YouTube and blogs and not rely on google to give a link to the brand website, which will only give me a very biased view of the product. Lastly with the internet we expect to press a button when we find information we like and then get it sent to us without having to search again and again. We see this in RSS feeds and the join group or become a fan on facebook
- Reputation aggregators or social reviews allows us to search the through rankings and ratings of a product or service. Trip advisor does this for the holiday and trip market. Before deciding on a stay in a particular hotel you can go on trip advisor and read comments from people like you who have stayed there before. Not all comment will be positive, but not all negative comments are always negative some peoples idea of a mediocre stay is what you are happy with. You can make an informed decision to buy. A reputation aggregator would allow open comments meaning it gives the company to respond back to negative comments and do something about it. We are human we drop balls, what makes a good company is how we deal with these problems. Let me tell you a story which highlights this. A small bed and breakfast who relies on positive Trip Advisor feedback gets a pretty negative rating. Along the lines of ‘the room wasn’t as tidy as it could have been, the dinner came out late, friendly staff, but not up to the quality we had hoped’. This could be seen as a damning rating, however it gives the chance for the owner to write back and say ‘I know you are right I remember the day in questions, we had some illnesses, my wife was sick in bed and the cleaner couldn’t make it into work either, you did not get the service you should of deserved. We apologies and the next time you are in the area please come again then night is on us at no charge”. We drop the ball, but it is what we do when mistakes happen is what counts. As a consumer we know things go wrong, we want to deal with a company that is honest and sorts problems out.
- Product ratings and comments
- Example of Facebook integration to deal with product comments and customer questions.
- Internal comments and rating system
- Example of an ecommerce store focusing on specific product.
- Google rank pages higher that include videos. Videos are a great way to connect with your audience and to really sell your product.
- Question and answer system. Well used by customers. 80 comments on a simple protein product
- Discount codes to reward existing customers / to move slow moving stock.
- Think about word of mouth. Provide an incentive for you customers to recommend their friends and family.
- Quick bit of detail about the layout of a standard search result page, again a bit more foundation to make sure everyone’s got that grounding Pay per click advertisers on the right and at the very top Search engine optimisation results down the left You pay Google for the privilege of appearing in the red area while it’s free to be listed and appear in the blue area You may have noticed that because I have a Google account and am logged in these three icons appear next to each search result This is Google search Wiki NEXT SLIDE
- OK the three pillars of search engine marketing success If you can get your head around these, which shouldn’t be hard, you’ll be able to make much smarter decisions about where to focus your efforts I’m always trying to drill it into clients that there really is nothing new under the sun, which you will see So the three pillars are supply, demand and relevancy and we’ll go through each one of them in turn
- Supply in terms of search engines means how much information is being ‘supplied’ for any given topic In real terms this means the number of web pages on the internet that relate to that topic Here’s my recent search for ‘shoes’ on Google and we can see here there are 234 million web pages supplying information about shoes Now if there are that many pages supplying information about shoes, you’d suspect that they’d been attracted because there’s a significant amount of demand and you’d be right
- 68 million searches a month for the keyword ‘shoes’ So when we talk about demand, we mean the amount of people looking for information about that topic And as you can imagine the second most popular topic is ‘women’s shoes’ with 16.6 million searches a month (and that’s just my 3 sisters I’m sure of it) A hot tips for your notes. You can find out the amount of online demand in your industry. Search Google for ‘adwords keyword tool’ and you’ll be able to produce a table of information like this for your business Now these figures aren’t 100% accurate so don’t take them too seriously, but they’ll give you a good gauge as to whether there’s enough demand from search engines for your business at the present time
- The third and final pillar is relevancy Now say I own this online store here that specialises in products for ladies with large feet For me to be successful in marketing my business through search engines, I need to be specific about which keywords my website ranks well for ‘ Shoes’ as a keyword is no good because the majority of those people will never buy from me and because there’s such high competition for that keyword it’s not going to give me a good return on my Internet marketing investment It’s far better for me to focus on keywords with much lower demand that will be easier to rank for and have a high probability of creating a sale Remember what I said about search engines having a box that you can type in anything you want ? Well people do, and the phrase ‘large ladies shoes’ is search around 5,000 times a month
- So when we’re choosing keywords we’d ideally like keywords with high demand, low supply (aka competition) and be spot on 100% relevant to our business In the real world though we don’t really have control over the customers, all we can do is choose the best keywords based on the criteria of high demand, low supply relative to demand and as high relevancy as possible I say low supply is relative because you have to take it as a given that the areas of very high demand will be competitive, it just depends whether the prize is big enough to warrant the investment
- Hold on this slide while explaining the components of pay per click
- I add the keyword “mens work shoes” to my PPC campaign and link it to the page we just saw because that’s most likely the page the people searching for this keyword will be most interested in
- Finally I write a little text ad designed to persuade relevant customers to click on it and come to my website. This should also qualify people to a degree. In this example they’ve specified the starting price which is the same as saying “if you don’t want to pay at least £8.24 don’t bother clicking” because it’ll cost me some money
- There’s my ad appearing along side the Google search results for all to see
- Quick walk through then Say I own this Vizwear website that offers heavy duty work shoes I have a URL or web page that displays these products and I want to advertise it on the search engine result pages
- A quick recap of the benefits then When I say it rewards well managed campaigns I mean Google will charge you less per click if you meet certain quality criteria, that means you can end up with your advert appearing in position 1 while paying the least amount per click See page XXX of the ebook for details on how to achieve this
- There are some drawbacks to pay per click It’s not as easy as it sounds, without any experience you might setup a campaign, run it and then if it doesn’t produce results you will be need to know what to change in order to improve things You’re paying for every visitor, so there’s no equity in pay per click, like there is in SEO as you’ll see later Statistically speaking only 10% of people every click on a sponsored link, the other 90% use the natural search results So only focusing on pay per click could mean you’re missing out on 90% of the available customer base
- So the Google system, somehow has to work out when to show your website in the search results Now Google can’t call and interview you about your business and ask exactly what you do and don't do, what makes your business different from every other etc All it has to go on, it what it can find online Before Google, most search engines limited their gathering of information about a website to the website itself This lead to people doing all kinds of naughty things like repeating certain keywords hundreds of times on the same page in order to get a higher ranking, making text the same colour as the background so search engines would read it but people wouldn’t and so on Those kind of things are all now banned and if Google catches you doing them you’re likely to get a penalty on your record which will sink your website to down the search results no matter how much optimisation you do to try and stop it They key thing that Google brought to the table was considering not only what your own website says about you but what other web pages say about you The reason this is of value is because you can say what you like about yourself and it could be complete waffle, but it’s far less likely to be waffle coming from an independent source, kind of like word of mouth In fact Larry and Serge, the founders of Google are both engineers who were familiar with the prestige that comes from your research papers being referenced by others So they took this ‘referencing’ idea and applied it to web pages, they saw a link FROM one website to another to be similar to referencing that site and therefore giving it some more credibility
- First though lets deal with what your own web pages say about you Technically this is known as ‘onsite optimisation’ because the optimisation work goes on, on your actual website Search engines look at almost everything about a web page in an attempt to determine it’s meaning From the actual text on the page to how it’s formatted How you describe non-text elements and how easy your web page is to read both in human and search engine terms
- The main body of text content on the page is obviously the place a search engine is likely to find the majority of the meaning So when you are crafting the text content for any given page, it has to contain keywords chosen using the 3 pillars of search engine marketing success You wouldn’t believe how many requests we get to conduct search engine audits on websites, along with the clients most important keywords and those keywords aren’t actually present anywhere in the sites text Then they wonder why they’re not ranking at all on Google let alone ranking very high
- I mentioned that search engines gather the meaning of a web page from how your describe non-text elements Part of the optimisation process attaching labels to images, headings, animations and videos to describe what they are in text form Search technology isn’t yet smart enough to determine what a picture is actually of, what a sound file or video contains or what is happening in an animation These are things your brain interprets as shapes that have meaning but search engines compute text so we have to provide them with some that tells them ‘this is a picture of an aeroplane that was alleged to be involved in a bomb attempt in the US’ It can then take that into account along with everyone else it’s found on the page to determine it’s meaning
- I’m going to have to use a little techy bit here to demonstrate this point but it’s not complicated When we talk about how easy a web page is for a search engine to read, we’re not talking about the complexity of the words We’re talking about how much website code the text is wrapped in The search engines really want to text itself, but the tags that you wrap it in, not only determine how the text appears to the user but the search engines can use the tags to help it work out how important each bit of text is, relative to the whole Here I’ve written a heading that might appear on a specialist online shop “handmade soy candles” The example on the left shows the most optimised way of doing it, so this is the easiest for the search engine to read You see the words are surrounded by a h1 tag. This tells your web browser and Google that this word is a main heading, nothing more complicated than that Headings have a standardised font, text size, colour and so on, so simply by wrapping this “handmade soy candles” phrase in a h1 tag will cause it to appear on the web page is big bold text to look like a header This is also a clue to the search engines as to the overall theme of the content of the text that comes afterward Compare that with another way of formatting your text to look like a header On the right here we have the same phrase “handmade soy candles” except we’ve decided to format it manually The U tag creates an underline, the B tag makes the text bold and the font size tag makes the text size much larger Not only is this more difficult to maintain but it’s just more code that gets in the way of search engine reading the text bit that it wants In addition to that these messy tags don’t help the search engine work out whether this bit of text is important or not OK we’ve made it bold and underlined so that gives it some prominence but how’s the search engine going to differentiate it’s importance next to every other bit of bold, underlined text on the page? This stuff just comes down to best practice web design If you web design has strict quality standards then they’ll be doing this stuff as a matter of course Another hot top for you. In addition to putting these sign posts on your web pages to help direct the search engines, you can provide them with some inside information Each of the major search engines have control panels were you can register your site, provide specific descriptions directly to them and monitor how the search engine is treating your site This creates a kind of a two way dialogue between you the website owner and the Google system. This can give you the edge over people who just leave Google to work everything out for itself by reading your web pages
- In short Google want to rank a webpage / website high if it is genuinely a pleasure to be viewing by a human being. Two recent updates; Panda and Penguin aim to penalise any website that is trying to “game” Google. These updates are a giant leap towards rewarding well written, designed website that have great content.
- Now onto the other major piece of the puzzle What other web pages say about you or your websites reputation This is what’s known as ‘offsite optimisation’ because the work goes on away from your actual website
- Most search engines now consider offsite factors but before Google none of them really did Like I said the founders of Google used references from other websites or inbound links as a way of adding to the process of working out what a web page meant The formula Google came up with produced such superior search results that they very rapidly went from a university project to a worldwide search giant attracting millions of users per day You’ll hear different claims bounded around about the importance of onsite optimisation vs offsite I’ve heard anywhere from offsite optimisation being 50% of the game to being 80% of the game No one really knows to be perfectly honest other than Google’s boffins What we do know if that it’s definitely a major part of it and one that many neglect and then wonder why they can’t catch the competition
- From here on I’m going to stick to one way incoming links because we want to focus on search engine optimisation When establishing an incoming link, which you can do by creating a profile on a directory website or by requesting it from another website There are 3 key elements that will determine how powerful the link is Link source – that means the quality and relevance of the external web page the link is coming from Anchor text – that means the actual words that make up the clickable link (we saw on the previous slide, the anchor text for that link was “cosmetic surgery”) And finally the Landing page – that means the quality and relevance of the page that the link leads to The real power of a link is in it’s quality not the quantity that you build A quality link is one that the same theme running through all three elements on this slide So if we’re a golf club merchant then we want our links to be coming in from golf themed pages Then the link text that people will actually click on needs to be themed too. If the source page is discussing the benefits of a particular manufacturer of driver then the link text should be specific to this same topic while tying it to your search marketing strategy Finally the page the link leads to should contain content relating the benefits of a particular driver manufacturer but without plagiarising the page the link is coming from If you do that then in Google’s eyes there was no point in offering a link to another site By linking to another website you are saying ‘here’s some more information you will find valuable’ so it has to add value to what’s already been read A page where you can buy the particular golf club is fine because the person may want to buy what they just read about, but it’d be better to land the person on the specific golf club page rather than just sent them to the home page of a company selling golf products This is all to do with improving the user experience For a step by step guide on this see page XXX of the e-book
- If you do decide to take up your own search engine marketing then I have a few no go areas if you want to avoid doing more harm than good Firstly, black hat SEO includes some of the things I’ve touched on such as keyword spamming where you repeat the same phrase too often on a page. Another one is if you try and mislead visitors by getting them to a certain page which automatically redirects them to another and so on . URL penalties. If you’ve hired an SEO company in the past that used any black hat SEO techniques then there’s a possibility that your web address has an invisible black mark next to it meaning your position in the search index is being artificially reduced for bad practice. Once you remove whatever black hat SEO was done you can request your web address be reconsidered Content Spamming includes things like plagiarising other peoples content Link Spamming is the process of going out and establishing as many incoming links as you possible can from any site you find. There are plenty of free directories out there where you can list your web address for free in minutes. Listing your golf website in a health and beauty website directory isn’t adding value to that website, it’s user or your website Misleading web users goes back to what I mentioned about web pages that automatically redirect. You might write a page of information that Google reads, likes and rankings well only to find that the page was written only to get high rankings because when a real person browses to the page it flashes up and automatically redirects them to a product or offers page The key thing Google talks about a lot is focusing on users first. Don’t just optimise for search engines. Yes make your site easy for search engines to crawl and understand you’ll also get rewarded for a good user experience Finally, if you’re going to do your own search marketing then don’t be lazy or you’ll be wasting your time
- As a general set of guidelines... Go through the points and explain. No notes required
- A few tips on how to choose the keywords you will base your search marketing on You may think you know them already but I’d suggest you still do regular research as you are inside the business and likely to have some bias So use the software tools to find good keywords Keep your core business goals to hand so they can guide your choices Look at your website visitor reports to see what keywords drove traffic to your website. You may find Google has sent you visitors for search terms you would have never thought of Keep an eye of the social media activity in your industry. By scanning through the discussions that are going on means it shouldn’t take you long to see a recurring theme Ask your suppliers what other terms they use to describe your products and services Read through your competitors website and see what search terms they are coming up for And call and ask your existing customers, especially your best customers because you want to know what a company like that searches for them they are looking for the products and services they buy from you If you know what your ideal customers search for, that gives you a great edge
- A whole list of tools to help you in your search engine marketing can be found on page XXX of the ebook I wont go into them all right now because the information is all there for you A word of caution about the two tools here with the asterisk next to them These are software packages that will do things like automatic ranking checks where the you give the software a list of search terms and it automatically goes out to the search engines, conducts the searches for each one and then when it finds your site in the search results tells you what position it found you in Be careful with this kind of thing because Google does specifically say in it’s guidelines that you should avoid tools like this Google obviously doesn’t like this kind of thing because it greatly increases the demand on it’s servers compared to a normal web user and they have systems in place to block you if they suspect the searches are automated It can detect this kind of thing when it sees the same computer search over and over in a short period of time The software makers are clever enough to have built features into the tools so that it pauses for a while between each search so it looks more like a natural users which will reduce the chances of you getting blocked but they are not perfect so use them with caution
- My feeling is that Email should not be used to sent bulk emails out in an unsolicited way Unsolicited emails or spam as it’s commonly known, means you don’t have that persons permission to send marketing messages to them If you create a relationship with them, say by offering them something in exchange for their email address then they’ve given it voluntarily That relationship can then be nurtured through email marketing, to warm them up the point of buying from you Same applies to existing customers, once you’ve sold to them, you go back around the sales cycle again and email can help you get those repeat sales Finally, email marketing reduces the loyalty risk of being out of sight out of mind For online retailers it’s crucial because you’re not going to pass by every day on your way to work like you would with a brick and mortar retail shop
- Similarly to what I’ve just said Email marketing is not good as a customer acquisition tool, the exception to that is if a prospective buyer engages with you first Email marketing is not a replacement for direct mail but because emails don’t cost anything the temptation is there Email marketing is not a cheap alternative. It does work but like many areas of business very rarely can you pay a little and get a lot Email marketing is not a tool for the lazy. It requires planning, testing and effort to follow up. Again you’ll get out what you put in so if your email marketing consists of writing a quick text email and sending it out to all your Outlook contacts then you’ll most likely be dissatisfied with the results And email marketing is not as easy as it looks. Like most online marketing techniques, the principals are simple but there’s so many variables
- So we’ve had the 3 pillars of search engine marketing success Now for the 3 pillars of email marketing success Permission, personalisation and persuasion and if we get them all right, we can expect good results
- So let’s start with permission You must get permission from the people you’re going to be emailing You have to offer them something in return for surrendering their email address This screen shot came from the Action Coach website, I’m sure we’ve all heard of them Here they are offering a free business e-book on how coaching delivers more ROI than consulting The e-book is then automatically sent to you as a PDF and the email address is added to the mailing list There’s no such thing as a free lunch as they say
- Pillar number 2 is personalisation How personalised you can be very much depends on how much data you capture when they are added to the mailing list In the pervious example we only captured name and email so not a whole lot you can know about a person from that You can do something though which is to personalise the email with the persons name, you know Dear whatever their name is This screen shot is a bad example of personalisation. It was sent to me a site that I buy audio books from It’s not personalised at all I can tell you. None of the books in this email have anything to do with anything I’ve bought from them and I’ve been a customer for a while When I say they have nothing to do with my purchases I mean none by the same authors, none in the same categories, nothing Which creates friction with me as a customer because they’re wasting my time and piling on yet another email in my already spam filled inbox So put as much effort in as you can to send things that people will find valuable Audible should be doing what Amazon do which is to send me an email containing a few titles from my wish list, a few new releases in the categories I’ve already bought from etc Another trick Amazon could use is working out the average price I pay for a book and suggesting titles in that same price range
- And pillar number three is persuasion What do you want people to do after they’ve received your email message You need to have a goal otherwise you’ll just be sending out messages for the sake of it In most email marketing messages, there are links to certain web pages and it’s the job of those web pages to continue the persuasive momentum This one on the right here looks like it’s goal is to get people to sign up for a free trial for some presentation software
- A big question is when to sent out the email marketing message? The best way to find this out is to test and measure different days and times of the day But as a very general rule, if you’re emailing business to business send it on a Wednesday If you’re emailing consumers, send it on a Friday The theory behind these are that in business Wednesday is passed the initial new week blues and just before the weekend anticipation when people start looking focus With consumer products people general do most of their shopping on the weekends so if you can spike some interest on the Friday when they are already looking forward to the weekend then you’ll have a higher chance of success In terms of time of day, 3 PM generally is a good time to send your message out, in business you’re most likely to catch someone at their desk who’s looking for a distraction or a reason to procrastinate so your email could be just the ticket But again don’t take the easy route and only email on these days, your audience will respond in their own way so test and measure
- I’ve already mentioned that we want to put effort into making sure we sent out emails that subscribers are actually interested in Segmenting your list goes a long way to achieving this and it’s best done by the subscriber when they subscribe You can accomplish this by having the subscriber manually tick the mailing lists they want to be added to or you can do it based on what they’ve bought from you in the past I’ve used a Fashion Hire Company as an example because this was a project we actually worked on The company rents out designer clothes, sunglasses handbags and so on We created three mailing list segments and allowed website visitors and new customers to manually choose which lists they went on The strategy behind the Celebrity news list was to raid all the glamour magazines on a regular basis and then send out email with photographs showing which piece of designer gear their favourite celebrities was wearing now That dictated the content of the email messages that got sent out and ultimately which web pages we linked to in the email So we might have spotted Jordan carrying a new handbag we just got in stock, straight away we send out an email to all subscribers who subscribed to celebrity news and or even better all the people on a Jordan specific mailing list In this email is the news story and then an invitation to rent the bag in question by clicking on a link that takes the customer straight to the hire page for the specific bag in question And it’s a very similar process for other mailing list categories we have
- In terms of how often you should contact any given subscriber well that’s entirely subjective But it’s probably more often than you think Don’t be afraid of emailing more frequently than once a month Don’t be offended if people unsubscribe, we only want to be emailing people who are actually interested anyway Relationships are build on quantity and quality. Your friends will consciously or unconsciously see the frequency of communication you have with them as an indication of how valuable they to you Having said that though a daily email may be taking too far, there is an optimum point to be reached here
- That optimum point is simply a case of test and measure If you’ve got good website traffic then you should have a consistent stream of new subscribers to replace any you alienate through testing
- Just to finish up then a few points on best practice Please don’t use Outlook to send your emails or you’re putting yourself at risk not only of being flagged as a spammer but you’re being insensitive to your customers actual interests Please don’t use Word to compose your email marketing messages. Yes it’s temping because Word is familiar and easy to use but the buyer always has to come first and pasting a word document into an email is not going to yield good results. My recommendation is to either outsource your email marketing or use an approved broadcasting service. The two best one’s out there in my opinion are Constant Contact and Awebber. My personal recommendation is Constant Contact because it’s very easy to use and you can sign up in a few minutes for a free 60 day trial. Finally just to drill the point home, please carefully plan the message you are going to send and who you are going to send them to so you are as sure as you can be that the audience will find them valuable
- We no longer push our information onto people with a ‘like it or lump it’ approach we can now because of the new tools the internet have given us so we can now provide information and the consumer can now talk back to us.
- This is a whistle stop tour of social media marketing I recommend a couple of books to read. Permission Marketing talks about this ‘new’ approach of getting permission from your customers before marketing to them. Inbound Marketing takes you through the steps of social media marketing
- There are many uses of social media it is not just about customer acquisition.
- What we want to do is create a community of loyal customers who are actually interested in us and what we offer.
- We are not watching the TV as we used to and we are not listening to the radio as we used to either.
- Everything we do online using social media is exactly what we do in real life. If we demo a product in real life we demo online using video and YouTube, we network in real life so we network online. How do we network in real life? We introduce ourselves and we ask and answer questions, we built up rapport and if we need each others services we may give each other an opportunity to buy from each other. Think for a second what the traditional marketing approach would be like when networking in real life. “Hi my name is Chris do you want to buy my brilliant product”. It wouldn’t work in real life so it sure as eggs is eggs it won’t work online.
- We don’t need to worry about all the social network sites, what we want to do is hang out where our customers hang out and use the social media tools that are available to us that help us communicate better with them
- Tools for uploading presentations. Great place to host your presentations and a great place to find information on a new subject
- Great place to find video content it is full of great useful content besides all the entertainment stuff you also find there.
- Like YouTube this site specialises with its content in this case they specialise in photography
- People like to find information in a format that suits them podcasts are prerecorded sound, which you can listen to when the time and place suits you.
- There are lots of blogs out there they are a great place to be able to write personality driven honest content.
- Lots of us now understand and use online social networks and the population is getting older.
- Twitter is an incredibly fast communication tool that allows you to update what you are doing with 140 characters. You can direct message each other, you can include links to websites, 1 out of 300 website click throughs come from twitter, we don’t always find information from google. Twitter has produced $6.5 million in revenue (2009)
- Reputation aggregators or social reviews allows us to search the through rankings and ratings of a product or service. Trip advisor does this for the holiday and trip market. Before deciding on a stay in a particular hotel you can go on trip advisor and read comments from people like you who have stayed there before. Not all comment will be positive, but not all negative comments are always negative some peoples idea of a mediocre stay is what you are happy with. You can make an informed decision to buy. A reputation aggregator would allow open comments meaning it gives the company to respond back to negative comments and do something about it. We are human we drop balls, what makes a good company is how we deal with these problems. Let me tell you a story which highlights this. A small bed and breakfast who relies on positive Trip Advisor feedback gets a pretty negative rating. Along the lines of ‘the room wasn’t as tidy as it could have been, the dinner came out late, friendly staff, but not up to the quality we had hoped’. This could be seen as a damning rating, however it gives the chance for the owner to write back and say ‘I know you are right I remember the day in questions, we had some illnesses, my wife was sick in bed and the cleaner couldn’t make it into work either, you did not get the service you should of deserved. We apologies and the next time you are in the area please come again then night is on us at no charge”. We drop the ball, but it is what we do when mistakes happen is what counts. As a consumer we know things go wrong, we want to deal with a company that is honest and sorts problems out.
- In the old days if a company had a rubbish product they could market their way out of it. Now because millions of us now have voice if a product is not very good we can write about it and potentially all us can read this.
- Do we just compare apples for apples on a brands website or do we scratch passed the marketing veneer and get the real insight on a product and service by finding more transparent information on blogs, facebook and YouTube. Information written by people like you and more importantly people who have experience with the brands product or service and write about it honestly
- We pay more attention to a ‘person like me’ other than a person who gets paid to say a product or service is good. We want honest information, we want to ask questions and we want replies.
- We are no longer shouting at lots of people, most of which are not interesting on what we do, hoping that something sticks.
- We want to have a conversation with our audience not just shout at them
- We want our customers to talk to other potential customers passing on the positives experiences of being a part of our brand.
- We have three simple, but major decision to make when buy into something. Is the product / service right for me? Am I prepared to pay the asking price? Do I want to buy from this person / brand. The blog allows you to answer the third question really well. Why do we pay £2 for an innocent smoothie (70% of the UK smoothie market) when we could buy one for half the price. It is especially key when we choosing to buy a product or service where we have a longer relationship with the customer. A well written blog allows you to sell your personality and the more intangible reasons why people would want to buy from you.
- Conversations are the basis of socialising and are therefore the key to Social Media. A Social Object is the reason people converse on a profile and why they carry on having conversations on there. A company that organises parties, for example, already has a perfect Social Object in place, as people enjoy sharing photos, videos and words about their parties. If the product or service a company provides doesn't easily translate, then they need to examine their client-base or target demographics and create a Social Object based on their interests. You must be a part of that community, not just the facilitator. Should members of staff be lucky enough to lead exciting, attractive lives, look to use this to your advantage. Interesting or humorous extracts from their lives will be just as appealing as any other content and could attract comments; all the more so because it's personal and real life. Look for links between staff and target demographics. When a company's main audience is twenty something males, it may be a good idea to get the twenty something football fanatic intern, with the razor sharp wit, to contribute to the profile.
- facebook pages are free to open and they are a place for you to put your brand it does not link to your personal profile on the front end so don’t worry it is private and no one can see you Saturday night out photos. With a bit of techy and designer help you can personalise your pages just like Pizza Hut has done here. Now this is a big example, but the principles are the same and you can scale down. What is great here is Pizza hut has used to facebook, in such a creative way to engage with their fans.
- Pizza hut are asking their fans, which is topping is your all time fave? What are they doing… this is market research they are designing their new pizzas with this type of information. They are also getting feedback from new products (wings).
- pizzahut are using twitter to listen to anyone using the term Pizza Hut and when anyone makes a complaint they are doing something about it. In this instance they are saying sorry please tell us more using our customer service page on our Pizza Hut website
- The following are examples of moving people from expensive offline marketing. Examples schools may use are prospectus, big open days, radio adverts, printed material. You can still use these techniques, but make the most out of them and move them / integrate the offline approach with the social media communities you are building
- Web Analytics collects data as if it were a human visitor accessing the website through a web browser Doesn’t count misc server traffic, viruses, search engines etc Major difference is the data is stored in a relational database, which means it’s all cross referenced This enables you to write down a question on a piece of paper before you go to the system and it should be able to answer it for you
- This book Actionable Web Analytics continually makes the point about becoming a data driven organisation This means making decisions based on reality, not on any department head’s interpretation of reality Internet marketing is all about testing and measuring It’s all too common in companies of all sizes to discuss things to death when at the end of the day each argument is only the individual persons opinion It’s far better to just take action and then let the data tell the story Being data driven means everyone hangs up their egos, agrees they are all on the same team working towards the same goal and commits to letting the website visitors ‘vote with their feet’
- We could spend a whole day on this but since this is a crash course, one of the most important reports is the traffic sources report
- Search includes those many instances when people type your company name into Google and then click on your website in the search results This counts as a search engine visit The fact that the keyword used was the company name makes no difference Now there’s a couple of ways you can create your own reporting categories Like for example if you used a campaign specific web address Or by using the URL builder
- So as executives you haven’t got time to mess about looking at reports for hours on end One of the most valuable things analytics can do for you is to see if any of the companies you are advertising with are telling porky pies So you log into your Google analytics account, click on the view reports link under Traffic sources...
- Now you get the world map in different shades of green. The darker the green the more visits from that county The map is interactive so you can wave your mouse over the countries to get the actual numbers and there’s also a table at the bottom You can click on any of the countries to zoom in We click on the UK
- Now you get circles for each of the cities The bigger the circle the more visits came from there Again the data table is below and is more meaningful at this level So let’s click on ‘Birmingham’
- So we see here in the last month there have been 513 times when the goal has been achieved. This website only has 1 goal setup which is counting how many people viewed the contact page but it could be recording a sale or an enquiry. Now we click on the button next to where it says ‘Advanced Segments’ And we tick the boxes next to ‘Search Traffic’, ‘Direct Traffic’ and ‘Referred Traffic’ And then click Apply.
- This will now show us which type of traffic should get credit for producing results. Out of the 513 goals here, search engines were responsible for generating 420 of them 38 of them were the result of referred visitors
- Sectors 2 and 3: Persuading to the Point of Sales and Resale Website Platform . This forms the foundation of the whole system and is the technology platform that is chosen as the base. It has an active role in both persuading new customers to buy by providing them with any and all information they require to make a buying decision or a decision to make an enquiry in a situation where immediate purchase is not appropriate. Content Management (CMS) . Participates in sectors 2 and 3 and is built on top of the website platform. In sector 2, it allows the IMS owner to keep the website up to date with their marketing messages and in line with the markets they are currently targeting. The ability to quickly add content is key to influencing the purchasing decision, especially if there is a spike in demand due to some news event or new product. In sector 3 especially, a CMS can easily include an area for existing clients to log into, check their account or project status or download additional resources and request support, resulting in a great customer experience and opportunity to promote additional products and services. SEO / Accessibility . Although SEO is a traffic generator it’s too essential to be considered in isolation. SEO has to be incorporated into the core platform and strategy to be effective. Good SEO also means good accessibility for people with impairments and goes hand in hand with web standards compliance. Conversion Architecture . Another module that operates in both sectors 2 and 3. Conversion architecture ensures that the IMS caters to prospective customers, no matter what circumstance they are coming from and no matter what depth of knowledge they have about the industry, products and services. Conversion architecture guides the website navigation to ensure that prospective customers can quickly see if the company satisfies their buying criteria and ensures existing customers can get support, as well as finding out about ways in which they can extend the use of the product or service they purchased. Conversion architecture ensures that the website is structured to receive traffic from all the techniques employed in sector 1 in the most persuasive way, to maximise the chance of turning that traffic into revenue. E-Commerce . The e-commerce modules provide customers with an additional service. Once they’ve been persuaded that they have found what they want to buy, the e-commerce module ensures the close is closed while the opportunity is hot. Web Conversion Tools . This includes things like flash based product demonstrations, videos, virtual tours, page narration and live chat. All these tools give the prospective customer a richer experience and ensure as little friction as possible when looking for information. Social Media . Social Media is growing so rapidly that the diagram could quite easily be modified so that it touches every other module in the IMS. Social Media is no longer designed to solely help influence prospective customers to buy; it’s a multi-track, multi-directional flow of information between all parties from buyers to sellers to new and existing customers, manufacturers, product designers, right down to the supporters. While Social Media can be used for almost any of the 3 sectors, its application depends greatly of the item being promoted. Web Analytics . Web analytics is the final module and covers everything else. Its reach goes beyond Social Media even, because it must track that activity too. Web analytics records the entry points into the Internet marketing system, tracks the activity of prospects and customers within the system and tracks their exit in order to monitor performance of the whole system and optimise ROI.