Category: Internet Marketing

The bids on AdWords are soaring to new heights everyday. Some advertisers are even shelling out up to $10 per click. So, naturally the question arises – Is this complete madness or is there any logic behind such aggressive advertising? To me, it does make some sense to bid aggressively if you have the right strategy in place. And if you are bidding for the right keyword. It does not make sense to bid for “web design” if you offer web design service in Texas! In that case your keyword should be “web design texas”. Considering, you have done enough research, let us consider two scenarios: 1) Every client you acquire, on an average spends $15000 with you in a year. In this case, you do not mind spending 10% of the revenue as customer acquisition cost. Therefore you can comfortably bid $10 per click (provided you have a site which can convert 1 out of 150 visitors). Thus, looking at a lifetime value of a customer makes it a good investment. 2) If you have mastered the art of persuasion (or have hired a master of persuasion), and have come up with a website with converts well (visitor > customer conversion), every visitor you are driving to your website is equivalent to revenue :). So go ahead, rock the boat and bid out all your competitors. You will get more customers and will also have lower customer acquisition cost. What more do you want? So, expensive keywords bidding do work, if they are backed with high lifetime customer value and/or higher conversion on the website. And yes, those Internet marketing experts are not insane! In fact most of them are very smart. So bid smartly! And, if you need help, contact our SEO team. Reach them at info@submit2please.com!  

Recently, we have been discussing about an opportunity to work for a client on an interesting Internet Marketing project. The company currently has five different brands offering different of services. They also have a corporate website which is very new! Now they wish to merge all their brands together to make the composite corporate website so that they get a “big company” look. I have been discussing with my team to understand the pros and cons of this “merger of sites” from Internet Marketing perspective. This is what we have as of now. Feel free to contribute to the list: Pros: 1) Critical Mass: A new destination site quickly provides broad, market-spanning coverage that exudes an increased sense of scope and can make your competitors’ sites look ineffectual in comparison. 2) Access: Niche-specific content is represented, but customers have the opportunity to graze content where markets overlap. 3) No More Brand Silos: Corralling content under a broader brand elevates it to a level where more customers can congregate. Cons: 1) Brand Subordination & Confusion: Sites pulled together under one site may suffer brand dilution. It may also confuse the visitor as to the core service which the company provides. 2) More Work: The new gateway site will be a hungry beast, requiring the constant feeding of new daily content unique to the site. 3) Loss of SEO Advantage: Initially the website will not have a good organic ranking in search engine. We can try to retain current user base and hits as much as possible using permanent redirects and forwarding. This can also be compensated by proper pay-per-click management initially and then toning it down if required.  

Last week, during an informal discussion with one of my prospective client, an interesting question came up. To put it word-to-word, it was: How do we do branding on internet? Is it true that Internet is a global media which brings businesses at the same level playing field? If yes, then it should not cost “a lot” to build a brand online? How much will you charge me for my online branding efforts? My answer was: You are right. It does not cost an-arm-and-a-leg to create a brand on internet. If- you are innovative in designing your offering, present the offering in an easy-to-understand way, spread your message in a viral way, Innovation makes you stand out Most of the companies try to simply put the same “old offering” in a new bottle without any adding any value or adapting it to a particular niche market. This makes the product or service a “me too” type. The consumer do not need to really “remember” such a offering, as they can get it anywhere. Communication is the key! In my opinion, communicating the product/service benefits or not doing so, determines the success of any marketing campaign. Effective communication of the “very basic facts” can make you look much better than your competition. For example if the packaging on a loaf says – “Our breads are made in the best automated plants and are never touched by hands from start till end” – it does not mean that the other bakeries in town make breads with hand! However it will communicate to the consumer that one brand of bread is better than the other one, even if the process of making them is the same. Customers are the best viral marketers! Deliver the best to your customers and let them know that you will be extremely happy if they can recommend you to their friends as a token of appriciation. Your customers can be your brand ambassadoors. They can spread messages in minutes. However it is important that they spread the right “unique selling proposition” that you have associated with your product / service. On internet it is very easy to spread the word, as everyone is virtually connected and an email is more than enough to recommend a given business. So, if you are keeping up your “brand promise” to your customers, you can be rest assured that you are gaining a solid brand image in the given “niche market” for the “niche innovative product/service” that you are offering. I call it Internet branding on a shoe-string budget! Spending millions of dollars on advertising and not meeting your “brand promise” is a waste of money – something that caused the infamous dot com bust! Abhishek

Communication is all about getting your message across. There are five basic components of a communication process i.e. The Sender, The Message, The Encoding, The Medium and The Recipient. The sender creates a message which he wants to send to the recipient. The message is then encoded in a format that the recipient can understand. For example, if the recipient understands only French then the message is translated to French or The Enigma Machine encoded the message in a  Format that only Nazi’s could understand. Finally, a medium is selected. The medium can be email, phone call, face-to-face discussion, Fax or even Smoke Signals. A successful communication is said to have occurred when the recipient understands the message and send the feedback back to the sender.  The communication process if subjected to lot of different barriers which are called “noise”. Noise can occur at every level of communication process. It can be a poor phone line connection to inattentive recipient. There is so much to go wrong that the chances of a successful communication become fairly low. However, we want to focus on the noise that we can control directly and thus improve the chances of a successful communication. Too often people end up using words which distorts the message and does not coveys the meaning effectively.  How do you know that your sales are not suffering because your software license policy or returns policy requires a bunch of lawyers to interpret it?  Or Conversion is low on the website because people can’t seem to understand your product descriptions? As marketers, we have to communicate with highly diversified audience and hence it becomes important that we focus on “encoding” our messages in such a way that the meaning can be understood by a broad section of people without any effort. Here is why using Simple English makes sense: Effective Communications A message written in simple English is very effective as people can understand it the first time that they read it. Cost Savings As the meaning is clearly understood, it is not open to miscommunications and you do not have to incur administrative costs in having to clarify them or explain them. Thus, you do not have to incur customer service costs. More Sales People want to make informed decisions and using simple English builds confidence in the minds of the customer which results in better sales. Saves Time Using simple English ensures that you do not have to go through the pain of going through all the re-writing and explanations. Using simple English gives your organization a professional and friendly image and it builds your credibility as well. Thus, next time you are tempted to use a difficult to understand word – Think Again!

Take any marketing literature and you come across experts who are talking about finding a niche and exploiting it. They tell you that, one should create a new market for your business thus making the competition irrelevant.  But, the reality is that finding a niche will only work if you can fulfill three important criteria: 1) It should be profitable to serve that market 2) It should have enough number of buyers to make your business sustainable 3) The market should be growing so that you can continue meeting the demand for a long time. If the niche is not profitable then there is no incentive for you as a business owner to serve it, if the business is profitable but it has low number of buyers then you wont be able to sell to as many people to meet your financial goals and finally, if the market is not supposed to grow then one day there will be no more buyers to sell to. The theory of economics suggests, that if such a profitable, sustainable and growth-oriented niche market exist then sooner or later a large number of sellers will be attracted to it because of the profit potential. Then, the market will no longer remain niche and it will become “crowded”. Thus, the niche business theory sounds great buts it remains questionable as a long term business strategy. Moreover, with time it will become increasingly difficult to find niche areas and information technology will ensure that any niches will become competitive faster than ever. So, being optimistic about your business because its niche is not a good strategy at all! Although being a niche can be rewarding in short-term (1 to 3 years) but you should actually focus on superior value delivery and effective competitiveness in a longer-term. In order to remain a successful company you need to do the following: Control Costs ——————- You may be tempted into thinking that since the profits are high as you are playing in a niche market, you should be in plush offices and other things you don’t need. This is wrong! Soon, new sellers will create pressure on pricing and naturally, profitability will come down. Then, having a lower cost of operations will mean the difference between death and survival. Lowering cost does not only means cutting costs, but it also means having lower costs because of superior engineering skills. It a nutshell, you should make it impossible for your competitors to deliver the same product or service at lower cost. Deliver Great Customer Experience ———————————————- You need to look at every customer touch point in your business and see the kind of experience it delivers to your customers. Just making the customer happy does not ensure customers loyalty. The customer should have a great experience while interacting with your organization and should feel special. This will ensure that when the niche market gets crowded, you will get plenty of word of mouth and your existing customers won’t leave you. Be Different —————— Being different is not being in a niche. It means doing thing in way that is appreciated by your customers. You can be different in the way you handle Sales, Distribution, Manufacturing, Customer Service, Engineering, Branding etc. You have to ensure that this differentiation delivers more benefits at same costs as competitors or delivers the same benefits at lower cost. Keep your staff happy ——————————– Your people are your only niche which competitors cannot copy. Ultimately, it’s your motivated employees that deliver outstanding customer service and build your organization. Keep Changing for Better ———————————– You should encourage risk-taking, creativity and intrapreneurship in your organization.  Stressing too much on existing tools, processes and techniques stop the evolution process which is necessary to ensure growth.