Changing Web Marketing Scenario

Almost everyone from interactive advertising agencies to any web advertising agency worth its salt to business owners who are looking to turn their online presence into a revenue-generating business venture has heard of "search engine optimization", although they all may have half baked ideas about what exactly it entails.

The earlier practice was to select some keywords, place them (or stuff them, as was the norm earlier) in the web content, throw in some meta tags (again stuffed with keywords), submit the website in directories and exchange of few links with other sites.
But that practice has for long been on its way out. Neither is it enough to make your website search friendly enough, not is it looked upon favorably by either the search engines or your customers.

Typical search engine optimization is not enough any more to established your online presence or your brand. With Web 2.0 firmly in and Web 3.0 peeping on the horizon, these are times to let people, the end users take the decision, take your message forward in so many shapes as Web-video, web-audio, web discussions, articles, blogs, forums, postings in social networking sites (SNS) and what not.

SEO in these times is about delivering the marketing message to the targeted audience, not just make it SE friendly. If latter is your choice, or you are still stuck in the old method of SEO, you will end up corrupting or distorting the message by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots. This way you will drive away real people who may actually be potential customers.
8 Milestones To Success

With Web 2.0, audio and video content have become very effective method of delivering marketing messages over the Web. But before you as a web
marketer jump on to the bandwagon, do go over following points to ponder:

(a) These multi media messages should not be cost prohibitive so that even small and medium-sized companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video. They are the real revenue earner for you.

(b) Remember the website design is about delivering the marketing message effectively and unequivocally and not just search engine optimization. This point is particularly important for web design firms who double as web advertising agencies.

(c) Professionally done Web-audio and Web-video requires more than just the ability to use a video camera. So avoid a rush job as professional multimedia story-telling requires a unique set of creative skills and technical ability.

(d) Make sure that all messages whether on the web or offline confirm to each other whether you have been developer of all these messages or not.

(e) Evaluate business opportunities in the broader sense of marketing. Build viable partnerships by sitting down and taking a hard look at how various factors might complement your message.

(f) Don’t ever forget that the web is used by 87% of Internet users today to research goods and services and that extra knowledge is not available anywhere else. So do give the visitor something worthwhile. Ask yourself while designing a website or any marketing campaign, what as a user am I getting and will it add value to my life, career, business, etc.

(g) Spend considerable time to analyze what the competitors are doing. If they are successful you would know why, and if they are not you would know what to avoid.

(h) Do spend time to make a beautiful web site that is attractive and add value to the visitor, but it will all be wasted effort if it does not make it easy for people to contact your client. Take time to build a site that lets people communicate with the client. Very fundamental, but equally necessary and ignored many a times.

All this sounds great but how and who can implement the strategies. Pay attention to what those old marketing warhorses are saying. Web or not, the fundamentals of marketing remains right there, and companies with experience in marketing and advertising along with providing web development services are best equipped to show you the right and time tested way to do things.
These guys may not flaunt the latest PDA or be rather old fashioned in their sense of fashion but they have years of experience building successful campaigns behind them.

The One Thing You Must Do To Skyrocket Your Fundraiser!

Every fundraiser group struggles with the impossible quest of finding the ultimate all-in-one fundraising idea. However, the best idea doesn't have to be too crafty. Actually it's very simple: just have fun! And let everybody else have fun as well. It doesn't matter what type of campaign you're running, as long as everybody is having fun success will become inevitable. The following 5 surefire ways to having fun during a fundraiser can be easily applied to any scenario:

- Reward your volunteers: If you offer attractive incentives and prizes to your contributing volunteers they might have more fun. The idea is to create a competitive but friendly environment. The prize doesn't have to be one million dollars; a simple gift such as a custom trophy is more than enough.

- Plan: Before even starting your campaign plan to have fun. Think about a day's fundraising activities and how you can make every part of the process enjoyable to work with. Always ask yourself the key question: How can I make this fun? It doesn't always have to be boring work.

- Show your appreciation: Constantly remember your contributors and volunteers you're grateful for their work with the words "thank you". Keep smiling all the way through and everyone else will smile back at you. Be sure to provide snacks and drinks to keep your supporters energetically in action.

- Make a movie: You can film an entertaining movie about your fundraising quest and have everybody appear on it. Make it a sort of a fun documentary in which everybody gets to tell their story and experience with the fundraiser. Give it a funny title related to the theme of your campaign. Then you can throw a party where everyone can watch the movie.

- Challenge your team: Promise you'll do something daring and funny if your team reaches a certain goal. For example doing the chicken dance or wearing a funny costume for a day. This will give your volunteers a very attractive incentive to do good work.

It's no secret that people perform better on their tasks while they're feeling good and having fun. As a leader, stimulating fun into your supporters has the potential of multiplying your group's rewards!

Persistent Advertising Will Do No Harm!

From my experience, I've been on many discussion groups and have spoken to many other like minded people. The one topic that always seems to arise is how to get massive sales right away.

From my experience, I've been on many discussion groups and have spoken to many other like minded people. The one topic that always seems to arise is how to get massive sales right away.

Not only massive sales but quick sales. Well let me clear something up for you. Creating MASSIVE sales takes much dedication, persistence and especially patience. Not to mention planning & money!

See the unfortunate part is that people give up. Not only do they give up but they usually give up right before they succeed. I have a friend who's tried 4 times to start a roofing business and keep it going. I asked him, what kind of marketing plan did you have?

He said "well none actually, I was trying to rely on word of mouth advertising to get me started and a few ads here and there".

Now, don't get me wrong, if you can get a fantastic "word or mouth" campaign going then you won't have any problems. See the problem wasn't that my friend couldn't do the work but that his "sphere of influence" was very small. Hence he was having problems getting word of mouth working for him!

So I suggested to him that he place a very small ad in the newspaper around the surrounding area. It turned out that he had already tried an ad in the paper but, he had placed a one time ad almost the size of the whole newspaper and hardly got any business out of it. Which never mind cost him a fortune.

I explained to him that persistence is the key, yes a lot of people will see the ad, but as soon as they are done reading it, they will forget it ever existed. So I said to him, grab a small 15-20 word ad and put it there for the rest of the year!

So moving on a little, his ad started off small but then grew more and more profitable! See it takes about 21 times for your visitors to see your ad until you make a sale.

21 times Martin???

Yes about that... we are so saturated with ads it has to be imprinted in our minds before we can even remember just one specific one. So the reason for having my friend put out a small ad instead of one massive full page ad was to allow his potential clients to get used to the fact that he wasn't going anywhere and his business seemed legitimate and profitable.

It's all about getting into your prospects sub-conscious and staying there until they are ready to buy!

So just remember when you're trying to decide between a one time shot that might cover coast to coast or a smaller ad that will cover coast to coast 12 months a year, always stay with persistent advertising!