Category Archives: eMarketing

How Can I Optimize My Press Releases?

eMarketing, Publicity

Do you know of free (or low cost) software that scans your press release and tells you if it is optimized for search engines, or how to better optimize it for search engines? I believe the idea is that if your press release is optimized for the search engines, and then you submit it through the wires, that it is more likely to show up in Google News and such, giving your web site more traffic.

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Jay’s Answer: While it might seem to be a good idea to focus on your keyword density and the right keywords, I’m going to suggest that your focus on the value of the copy itself.

Yes, it’s a great idea to know what people are searching for. If you know that 1,000,000 people each month search for "new homes san diego", and there are 25,000 websites that already target these keywords, having your site rank well is likely to be a waste of your time (short-term).

Instead, focus on the "meat" of the press release. Remember a press release has a specific format. It’s not intended as a sales piece – it’s to announce something newsworthy. Make your PR newsworthy and you’ll get more than just search engines interested – you’ll get actual editors interested in giving you free space in their media.

If you had a SEO person, you could give them your high-value PR and let them tweak it slightly. But since you don’t, focus on what makes your company services interesting in the eyes of prospects.

How Can I Attract People To Our Sports Memorabilia Website?

eMarketing

My client is sells football memorabilia from around the world; signed and authentic high-quality products. We’ll be launching the website with e-commerce facility soon. In this sector, besides the usual SEO and PPC, what other methods would you recommend for attracting visitors to the site, increasing newsletter subscriptions, creating word-of-mouth and, obviously, increasing sales?

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Jay’s Answer: The #1 thing I’d suggest is getting a trusted 3rd party to authenticate/guarantee the memorabilia. That would be my first concern – Can I believe that the football is really signed by who you claim it is?

Make sure you have high-quality photos of each offering and lots of supporting text (for the search spiders).

Get listed on various memorabilia sites, such as:
http://sporting-goods.pricegrabber.com/football-memorabilia/p/1779/

Create an eBay store, list products on Amazon, etc.

If you have truly unique products, consider a press release.

If your products are from a limited number of sports teams, co-market with them.

Find memorabilia blogs and write about what’s special about your products.

Where Can We Promote Our Webinar For The Software Industry?

eMarketing, Publicity

We are hosting a webinar with a known author to show people in the software industry how to delivery surprisingly compelling demos in a virtual environment. The author is going to talk about the do’s and don’ts in demos to avoid boring ones. We are going to talk about some of our customer successes.

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Jay’s Answer: Focus on your target market: the software industry. Get even more specific: managers? programmers? web designers? CEOs? What type of software? For what audience?

Next, find where your target market goes online.

Finally, create a video of the webinar, and consider uploading it to Google Video, YouTube, etc. where it will eventually be found and get a lot of play. Make sure that the video clearly leads viewers back to your website for follow-up information, handouts, etc.

Does Having Resellers Help Or Hurt My Website Ranking?

eMarketing

We make and sell a line of alternative energy products directly to end users (customers). Historically, our web site gave info about the products and invited people to call and order. In addition, several online retailers buy the products from us at a discount and re-sell them for various prices; some identify the products as ours and some don’t. We recently entered the 21st century, up-dated our web site, and added the option to order the products online.

Now that we have the ability to sell on our web site, we’re more aware of the fact that our search engine ranking will affect how many people find our site first and buy from us directly rather than from one of the retailers. But that’s about all we know about SEO.

We’re batting this question around: Does it hurt or help our SEO that our products can be found on several sites? Some of the retailers use photos and text from our literature and/or web site- does this strengthen or weaken our SEO?

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Jay’s Answer: Ignoring the search engine ranking – do you want more dealers to be reselling your products? What is the profit you make when a dealer purchases it vs. a consumer (don’t forget to include customer service, billing, shipping, etc.).

Each of your dealers is actually doing you a huge favor – they’re sales reps for your products. You’ve basically been the manufacturer and didn’t have to deal with the public much. They’ve been doing the advertising and customer service.

If you attempt to compete with them, you may be cannibalizing your sales (taking from the dealer and selling direct). This may in turn reduce the number of dealers/resellers wanting to compete with you.

That said, you asked about SEO. What you really want are customers buying from your website. So what you need to first do is figure out are what keywords are people using to find your (and your competitors’) products? Ignore your resellers (unless you find that one of them is extremely good at getting traffic, in which case you’ll be learning from them). Once you know how people are looking for you, then provide a website full of information. Not just your existing pictures and text. Lots of descriptions of how the products have been used. White papers comparing energy saved (and money, too). Online calculators to compute time of payback. Make your site an authority on your type of product. Now, for the dealers that will cooperate, have them link to your site. Publish your articles in various article banks online. Submit them to various consumer journals.

SEO is a small piece of a bigger picture. Focus on your marketing strategy for attracting customers. Everything else will take care of itself organically.

How Can I Create Effective Web Site Content?

eMarketing

My client want to produce effective web site content and advertising materials suited for target audience. They also want to deeper understanding of what our target consumers are into, what they are thinking, what they like, what make them tick and so on to clearly communicate lifestyle tone, personality and slat of the Web brand. We are assigned to develop a package of market research to provide information for the objectives above. Could you advice me on this. Please note usability test is quite new in my country, and I look forward to get any your advice on this proposal.

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Jay’s Answer: It sounds like you need to understand more about your target audience first. With the proliferation of the Internet, you should be able to find a number of sites that cater to your audience. In addition to sales sites, look for forums where the audience talks about their problems and other offer solutions. Once you understand what they are talking about, then start asking questions of the group: ask for their input, etc. Offer to compile the responses to your questions and email them to everyone who’s interested.

Develop your website, and invite people from the forums to visit it and give your input. They are your beta testers, and they give you great feedback. However, they’ll only give you half the story – the other part is compelling content. Make sure your home page clearly identifies who you’re targeting and what problem of theirs your solving. Make sure to have a compelling call to action to get visitors interested. And use analytics (such as Google Analytics) to study what’s happening on your website.

10 Rules For Effective Home Pages

Creative Business Ideas, eMarketing

Home PagePeople make a split-second judgment of your website. Is it “talking to them?” Is it worth their time to continue reading it? Are you getting the traffic you want? Are visitors converting to customers?

Having reviewed hundreds of websites I wanted to share some rules to help improve your home page:

  1. Who’s the audience? Your home page must clearly identify who you’re talking to. This allows the reader to quickly pre-qualify them self.
  2. What’s the point? Every page in your website should have a primary goal – an action you want the reader to take. Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Buy something new? Create a “call to action” to encourage them to do what you want (“Get your copy of ‘Top 10 insider secrets’ by clicking here”).
  3. Title. The title is used for the window’s title as well as in the name of your site in search engines. Your home page title should at least contain your business name.
  4. Menu structure. Menus are generally horizontal (underneath the banner/logo) or vertical (left side). Having multiple ways to navigate is confusing. Put your menus in places where people look. Make sure to have a “Contact” and “About” page.
  5. Footer. Make sure your contact information is on every page. You don’t want your potential customer to have to work to find you.
  6. Scan-ability. People don’t read websites like they read books. Their eyes bounce around looking for “landmarks” to help them evaluate the site. Therefore, clearly use headings and subheadings to make it easy to find sections. Don’t write long paragraphs. Have lots of white space.
  7. Fonts. This is related to scan-ability – you want to create a natural scanning sequence. Use one (or two) font families (for example, Arial) at most. Make your general text easy to read for your demographic (for example, make it 14pt for older eyes) and headings at least 14pt. Use bold and italics to help draw the eye to specific words. Don’t use animated text. Use colors only for very important thoughts.
  8. Graphics & alt tags. Make sure your graphics reinforce your “message” and “look”. Graphics also can act like whitespace if used properly. Don’t forget that all your graphics should have alt-tags (it helps the search engines “read” your site).
  9. Columns (1 vs 2 vs 3). The more information you present, the harder it is to figure out what to read. For that reason, I prefer one-column or two-column (with special offers/information in the right column).
  10. Keywords. Use the right keywords to make it easy for people to find you using the search engines. What are the right keywords? The ones people use (for example, using Adwords).

Make sure that when you change your home page you measure its effectiveness. Are you getting more traffic with the new look/text? Are you getting less traffic but more sales? The best solution to effective home pages is the one that works for your business.

In addition to a careful eye, there are many free tools that can help analyze your website. Here’s one: Website Grader

Is Online Social Net-working?

Creative Business Ideas, eMarketing, Publicity

Online NetworkingMaybe you’re already a member of LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, or any one of the myriad of social networking websites. You’ve heard people talking about “Web 2.0” and how everyone is online. You clearly don’t want to miss the next wave.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the student artist who posted some of her pictures online, and the next thing you know she’s a millionaire, has hired her friends to help her market her art, and she’s the next “big thing”. When will it be your turn for online fame?

The key to networking effectively is to concentrate your effort to be part of the community. This means that you need to be involved: reading others’ postings, commenting, asking questions, and sharing information about yourself (or business).

Common Online Networking Mistakes

  1. Not showing up. Online, if you don’t write, you’re invisible. Make sure that your “voice” is heard (and you read others’ postings).
  2. Wrong network. Are you the proper demographic for the network (or are you targeting the right network)?
  3. Wasting time. Because the communities are so large, it’s easy to get distracted online. Focus on why you’re a member, and limit your time online to prioritize your activity.
  4. Self-importance. If you’re a member of MySpace, you’re 1 of 217 million. If you write online, will anyone care?
  5. Words are words. Online people communicate (mostly) by text. While you may try to intuit the mood or psyche of the writer, it’s just text. At an in-person networking event, you can at least watch the person’s body language during conversations.

Join a network if it appeals to you, but realize that becoming an expert in that network is hard. It’s even harder to make any money as one in a crowd. Instead, leverage your online marketing effort to improve your marketing message, and get people to contact you directly. It’s much better to have someone’s undivided attention.

You also might be interested in: I’m On LinkedIn – Now What??? and FaceBookAdvice.com for more tips on how to make better use of your social network.

How Can I Create An E-Marketing For Our Bank?

eMarketing, Services

I’m working in bank (in the middle east market) and we’re planing to create an e-marketing dept. We want to increase our sales in bank product (loans , cards, acounts, etc.)

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For eMarketing, you’ll need 3 things: a website (that allows prospects to enter their email contact information), web analytics (Google Analytics is free and great), and a contact manager (to send emails).

The goal is to have a set of email addresses for people that have opted-in (in the United States, this is paramount, but in other countries the laws may be different). Regularly send them useful information (i.e., an e-newsletter) about your services, testimonials, white papers, etc. You want people to trust your bank.

Using the contact manager (Constant Contact, etc.) you’ll notice which emails are invalid and which get opened (and by who). With the analytics, you’ll be able to track web visitors.

With these 3 things in place, you can then start on a pay-per-click (or other online) targeted marketing campaign. The goal is to get people to your website, to give you their contact information, and for you to follow up with them. The more information that you request in your contact form, the fewer the number of people will subscribe

How Can I Start Learning About Online Marketing?

eMarketing, Starting Out

When it comes to online marketing, where does a newbie marketer with no experience start?

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What’s your goal? Creating a website? Email blasts? Pay-Per-Click? SEO? Building traffic? E-commerce? Blogs?

Pick one thing, and play with it. Pretty much everything these days has free versions to experiment on. Lots of books, blogs, online tutorials, forums, and websites. Nothing is inherently hard to do – it takes time to become efficient at it and produce great results. In some cases there isn’t a science – it’s an art (so there’s multiple right “answers”). You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Read a lot. Try it out. Ask some questions. Have fun.

What URLs Should I Use For Global Marketing?

eMarketing

Our organization has a many international region websites based on the same core content. Many pages are localized for that region, but much content is the same for each region. So, we will have information about a service available at, for example:

www.companyname.com/productname (worldwide site)
www.companyname.com/us/en/productname (US)
www.companyname.com/ca/en/productname (Canada)
and so on for several English-speaking regions.

Without printing brochures specific for each region, how do most people direct customers to specific web content? Do you direct to the Worldwide content and mention there may be specific info on your regional site? Do you say ‘go to productname on the companyname web site’ and let them navigate to it? Do you say ‘go to companyname website and enter a keyword in the search box’? Or some other strategy?

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You don’t want to make the user “work” to get information. You want them to have an easy experience getting what they need quickly.

Here are some different techniques:

  1. Use subdomains that have an .htaccess file that forwards to the relevant page. canada.companyname.com/product would go to www.companyname.com/ca/en/productname
  2. Determine what country the user’s IP address is from as a clue and default to that country.
  3. Have on all product pages a popup (upper right of the page) that allows them to switch the country. This would be akin to changing languages.
  4. Buy more domain names: companyusa.com, companycanada.com, etc. The generic company.com website would ask (or default to, see #2) for the country of interest, then jump to the companycanada.com site. Bookmarks that the user would place would take them to the proper country.