Search Engine Optimisation

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Search Engine Optimisation

Your digital marketing will fail if all you are trying to do is move an audience from one place to another rather than engaging with them where they are.

Friday, August 27th, 2010

I recently audited a new client’s digital marketing strategy and implementation.
They were frustrated with the results of their efforts so far and wanted some advice and guidance on how to get better return for their investment. Their budget was significant but the return was negligible. Having reviewed their digital activities, I was struck by a common theme in each of the channels they were using. All of their activities had one goal, drive traffic to their site. In trying to explain to them what was wrong with their digital marketing I told them about an Aunt of mine.

I have an aunt who insists that all parties in a house should happen in the kitchen.
She emigrated from Ireland 40 years ago and when she returned last Christmas she stayed with my family for our new year celebrations. She has fond memories of growing up in Ireland and all of her memories are of being with her family in the kitchen. She insists that any gathering or event in a house should take place in the kitchen. Invariably after a few glasses of wine she carves off one of the guests in the sitting room and works them slowly towards the kitchen. Which is always empty and cold.

Much digital marketing is wasted when all it tries to do is move the party.
We try to move people from where they are online to our empty websites. We expend all of our budget, energy and efforts trying to move the party, trying to move the audience from one site to our site. instead of just join the party where ever it is happening.

The solution? Join the party.
Your target audience is active and engaged on the internet. Your challenge is to meet them there.
Meet them where? Meet them where ever they are.
Despite the fact that there are hundreds of TV channels available to us, we all tend to gravitate around 4 or 5. Similarly on line we tend to gravitate around 4 or 5 websites. Trying to move people from one of their haunts or introduce a new haunt is a very expensive and often wasteful activity. Better to find out where the party is happening and interact with your audience where they are rather than expending effort and expense in trying to move them somewhere else.

Posted in Advertising, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, adwords campaign, digital marketing institute, facebook, social media, youtube | No Comments »

4 Tips for Successfully Building Email Marketing Lists

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Without a well-focused list of prospects and clients, your email marketing goes unseen. This article is all about how to go about building and maintaining your contact list so you can reach the people your business covets the most: loyal customers and members.

1. Ask in person

When your customers or members come into your place of business or attend one of your events, are you asking for their email address? Letting them walk out the door without asking is equivalent to losing a valuable asset. Why not ask?

You’ll be surprised that customers will give you their address more often than not. You just have to ask for it.

There are multiple ways to do so. One way is to give your team an incentive to ask. I recommend making it a contest to see how many email address one can collect over a given shift or time period. Everyone likes to win, so make a game of collecting email addresses.

You should also advertise the availability of your newsletter throughout your establishment or event venue. Put placards on tables, a signup book by the register, and signs on the walls. At your event, ask people when they check-in or register if they would like to be added to your email list.

2. Ask online

Asking online might be a little easier for some, since it removes the human fear of rejection. And there are multiple touch points where you can solicit your customers for their email address on the Web.

Add a Join My Mailing List box: Make the Join My Mailing List tab a key feature in your website’s template so that it appears prominently on just about every page. Through search engine queries, you never know where people will land on your site. Adding the JMML box to every page ensures that no matter how a visitor finds you, he or she will have an opportunity to join your list.
Link to your signup page: Going beyond your website, email marketers should put links to their newsletter signup page in their emails, both those sent through an email service provider such as Constant Contact and the signature of their personal email accounts. This way, every message a customer or member gets from you will have a subtle reminder to join your email list if they haven’t done so already. Also, add a join my mailing list link to your newsletter to help capture those folks that get your email forwarded to them from a friend, associate or other trusted source.
Promote upcoming issues of your newsletters via social media: Another way to get people to sign up for your mailing list is to provide a teaser for an upcoming mailing on your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. A quick “Want to know more about Topic X? Sign up for our newsletter” with a link to your signup page will lure people in.

3. Partner up

A neighboring or complimentary businesses can be a great resource for list building. You can advertise other people’s list to your own and recommend that people sign up for them, while your partners can make the same offer to their subscriber base about signing up for your list. It’s a great way to cross-promote like-minded businesses and organizations to a wider audience. Doing so also shows that you’re a part of a greater community and not just your own business or organization’s bottom line.

4. Set expectations

Whether you’re soliciting an email address face to face or online, it’s important to set expectations for the person signing up. Give people a visual so they can see what they’re signing up to receive. An easy way to accomplish this is to show customers a recent email, either with a color printout of your newsletter displayed next to your signup book or through links to your email newsletter archive.

When asking someone to join your list in person, phrase the question like this: “Would you like to sign up for our monthly newsletter about events and other promotions?” This sets the expectation that those signing up will receive something from you on a monthly basis that contains upcoming event information.

A similar effort should be made online to set expectations appropriately. Tell people when they’re signing up what exactly they will be getting and how often. This way, subscribers are not unpleasantly surprised when your first email arrives.

I also recommend that when you send a confirmation email to new subscribers that it thanks them for joining your list. The message should reiterate what the recipient has signed up for and can be used to provide a coupon or another “thank you” for being such a loyal customer.

Contacts are a valuable asset

Your list is not going to grow magically without any prodding. Make sure you engage your customers and members whenever or wherever you Read More

Posted in Email Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, digital marketing institute | Comments Off

The most successful websites are the ones that disappear!

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

If Charles Dickens will allow me I’ll hijack and invert a quote of his. Companies who are successful online are successful in different ways, whereas companies who fail, all fail in the same way.

I am asked regularly to audit organisation’s Digital Marketing Strategies and have noticed similar issues across most of the organisations who’s digital marketing strategies are stuttering or have plateaued.All of these organisations tend to make the same mistakes and these mistakes are conceptual as opposed to technical.

The first and most common mistake is a conceptual one in how people approach the medium in the first place. The web differs form the other media channels in one important and very significant manner. TV, Radio and Print are publication and presentation based media channels. The Internet on the other hand is an interactive medium. People do not go to the web to read, they go to interact, whether that’s with your business or with each other.

The web is not a presentation medium, its an interactive one. Campaigns and strategies that respect the manner in which customers use the medium are more likely to succeed as they understand that people are not a rapt audience in the same way that they are in the their sitting room in front of the TV or in their car listening to the radio. The Internet allows a level of user control that is unheard of and deeply important. And the number one thing people choose to do with that control is to interact with other people.

The most successful websites in the world are the ones that facilitate user control and allow and encourage user interaction. Think of EBay for example, i can sell what ever i want, when ever i want in any way shape format and ship it anywhere in the world and the number one way I express all of that user control control is by interacting with other people, ( i sell, they buy).

Similarly for Facebook. Its not just publishing photos videos, comments opinions and and anything else i want but its that fact that all this control is being expressed through interaction with other people. Think about it the only time facebook makes the news is when they change their terms and conditions or functionality in way that hampers user control and user interaction. So the most effective websites are the ones the ones that get out of the way of the user, in a sense the websites that win are the ones that disappear.

Tags: digital marketing course, online marketing training, Search Engine Optimisation
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, adverts, digital marketing institute, finding broken web site links, google adwords, google analytics, linked in, social networking training, social networks, webmasters | No Comments »

Gogle Founders Selling Shares- But will they Lose Control

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell five million Google shares each over the next five years, in a trading plan disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing.

The sales, if completed, would provide each of the founders $2.75 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $550.01.

Now, here’e the interesting thing … if you read the NY Times, they tell us that the lads would not lose control of the company that they founded. But if you read Techcentral.ie (an Irish basedtechnology news wire) they give a completely different spin.

New Yowy Times says …. “The sales would bring the founders’ combined voting rights to just below 50 percent, 48 percent to be precise. But for all practical purposes, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin would continue to have effective control of the company. What’s more, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, has an additional 10 percent of Google’s voting rights, giving the triumvirate absolute control over Google’s fate as long as they remain united.”

Techcentral.ie says …. “Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are to cede majority control of the company with a forthcoming share sell-off. The duo’s stake in the company will fall from 59% to 48% after the sale is completed over a period of five years. It will mean the pair lose majority voting rights, although given that CEO Eric Schmidt has 10% voting power, the company’s senior management will still remain firmly at the wheel.”

Either way, 48% is a pretty good chunck!

Comments?

Posted in Google Chrome, Online Marketing, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimisation, google adwords | No Comments »

We Are Hiring: Training Administrator

Monday, January 25th, 2010

The Digital Marketing Institute is Ireland’s leading provider of training and certification in all aspects of online Marketing. Our Organisation is expanding both in Ireland and overseas and we require a Training Administrator.

ROLE: Training Administrator

ROLE DESCRIPTION

Co-ordinate all administrative activities for course attendees
Telephone and email contact with attendees to complete application, booking and payment process
Prepare course materials and folders for students
Manage in-class Course Registration
Maintain and update course website and Membership database
Prepare and compile course marketing materials
Issue invoices and follow up on payments
Liaise with lecturers on class schedules and database
Book travel and accommodation for lecturers
Organise and manage training venues

SKILLS REQUIRED

Well presented and professional with a flexible approach to work
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Strong attention to detail
Ability to work on own initiative and unsupervised
Administrative Experience essential – minimum 2 years
Excellent PC skills, particularly Microsoft Powerpoint, Excel, and Word
Knowledge of basic HTML very desirable
Knowledge of Graphics package very desirable (Photoshop, PaintShopPro etc)
Good organisational skills and ability to meet deadlines

THE IDEAL INDIVIDUAL WILL

Be an experienced administrator with a minimum of 2 years experience – ideally in a fast paced organisation
Have a good level of business acumen, sound common sense and be able to demonstrate a genuine interest in the web industry
Be massively driven to succeed, hugely self motivated, be using (on a daily basis) Social Media networks, have a clear grasp of everything online and also be able to administer all of our courses!

LOCATION: Dun Laoghaire – Dublin

HOW TO APPLY:

Applications will only be accepted for this role by E-Mail.
Please send your CV by email only to ian@digitalmarketinginstitute.ie
Please note that at this stage in the process we are not able to take phone calls regarding this position
At this time we do not require the service of Recruitment Agencies.

Posted in Email Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, Sitemaps, Technology, Twitter, adwords, facebook, google analytics, social networks | No Comments »

Microsoft Bing Goes Down

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Early in December 3rd last Microsoft Bing went wallop!

The search engine (which claims to have up to 15% market share, depending on who you listen to, although we have yet to meet ANYONE in Ireland who uses the product – except for the nice people who work in Microsoft and therefore appear to have no choice!) went offline for about 30 minutes last week.

Microsoft has apologised for the outage, which had web surfers be greeted with an error message on the search engine’s site. Microsoft stated that a “configuration change” made to the site during testing was the cause of the outage.

This, it said, had “unfortunate and unintended consequences” which included making the site unavailable. The glitch led to people either being unable to find the site or having their queries returned unanswered, Satya Nadella, one of Microsoft’s senior vice-presidents in its Online Services Division, wrote on the Bing blog.

“As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behaviour,” wrote Nadella, who added that the problem was corrected in about 30 minutes.

Microsoft was looking into the root of the incident in order to take preventative measures to prevent such an incident from happening again, Nadella wrote.

You can read the blog posting (written by Microsoft) here.

Tags: Add new tag, Bing, microsoft, microsoft bing, search
Posted in Bing, Main Category, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimisation | No Comments »

Google Buys Teracent

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Most of Google’s business comes from search advertising (also called Pay per Click – PPC). This is the little adverts that appear at the top and to the right hand sid of the the search results. However, they are also, to a very small extent, in the display advertising business. To prove a point, Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2008, one of the leading players in the display advertising business.

Yesterday, Google announced that it was acquiring a company called Teracent, a dynamic ad serving and optimization startup company.

Teracent’s technology displays ads in real-time. Ad elements go in and Teracent’s technology figures out how they can be combined to produce the best results:

Teracent’s technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors. These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns. In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers web users better ads and more ad-funded web content.

Google’s announcement shows the product of a Teracent optimization:

The ad on the bottom is the product of Teracent picking and choosing ad elements using machine learning, and ostensibly converts better than the ad on the top.

Google believes that Teracent’s technology “has great potential to improve display advertising on the web” and once Teracent is in the Google fold, plans to make its technology available to DoubleClick and Google Content Network advertisers.

Click for more information from Google on the purchase

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