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One of the major contributors to the growth of online marketing is the fact that it is very measurable. It is quickly possible to check your results, tweak, rinse and repeat. We’re used to analysing the data that is available to us, it’s a good habit to be in and it is great to be able to measure the total cost of ownership.

Unfortunately, this thirst for figures and information does not always transfer to the web site. We’re constantly amazed at how few businesses check their web logs, traffic status and information. Your web site log is a real time snapshot of the browsing habits of your prospects and customers. You can find out who they are, what they do and do not look at, how long they look at things and where they enter and leave your site. All of this information should be treated like gold dust. If you find out that a high percentage of your visitors leave on a certain page, that’s a pretty strong message that you need to work on the stickiness of that page.

If you’re used to applying key performance metrics to your marketing activity, it is easy to extend this to your web site. Access to the core data will explain where you are today in terms of targeted traffic, users, search terms etc and will enable you to set goals and success factors for the future. If you’re in the fortunate position of receiving all of your traffic via natural search engines, then you might want to consider alternative sources to drive additional traffic, such as pay per click or an email campaign.

If you have not got an email list, you might want to use your web site to capture your visitors details. This is a great objective for a web site and is a perfectly sensible way to increase your sales and opportunities. If the majority of your traffic is delivered via pay per click, then it is a very good time to look into ways that will increase your free natural search engine traffic.

The point is, even the very best web sites can be improved, there is always a little gem of information available to you that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your site. We would all love to double or treble our traffic, yet we know immediately that this is only beneficial to us if that traffic is targeted, if it stands a chance of being converted. Web site analytics provides us with that insight, it helps us to understand what types of phrases these people use to find us, it helps us to understand what pages they buy from or contact us. It provides us with the raw data to enable us to act, to do something that will improve the performance of our web site.

Our favourite story involving web analytics is about one of our customers who asked us to help them with their Internet Marketing Strategy; in particular increasing the effectiveness of their web site as they felt that they were not getting much value from it. Interestingly, this customer had never looked at their web logs or statistics, it never occurred to them that there was a wealth of information to look at.

We had a look at the logs and they were receiving a decent amount of traffic from a forum. Our customer is in the garden centre business and the forum was about gardening. The referring site in this case was a post from a user in answer to another user’s question about where one might find a certain type of rock for their landscaping.

This one link and referral from another user contributed to a good chunk of business, however it was done without the knowledge of our client. The reason that this link was so powerful was that it encouraged very targeted users to click through to their site and ultimately buy the rocks. Once the customer realised this, it was not long before we were sponsoring the forum, holding regular forum competitions, posting authority pieces, giving away vouchers and driving highly targeted traffic to their web site via the forum. Then it is a case of tweak, rinse and repeat, a perfect example of how using web site analytics can increase the effectiveness of your web site.

If you would like us to have a look at your web site or marketing plans, please contact one of our consultants today. You never know, we might unearth that hidden rock for you too.

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I don’t know about you but I was just getting my head around WEB 2.0 and I felt I was becoming pretty knowledgeable to what the meaning of web 2.0 was and what it could deliver for business.

Now I hear the rumblings of web 3.0 and feel like a small shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean waiting to be caught up again in a net of fear of the unknown! So I thought that I would investigate those rumblings and try and find out myself if it’s anything to be scared of or something to look forward to?

First things first I went straight to my trusted source Mr Wikipedia and sourced a description, it states: the term “Web 3.0? has been introduced to hypothesize about a future wave of Internet innovation. Views on the next stage of the World Wide Web’s evolution vary greatly, from the concept of emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web transforming the way the Web is used (and leading to new possibilities in artificial intelligence) to the observation that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, and advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web.

After reading Wikipedia and many different articles on Web 3.0 I am amazed by the different forms of technology that will go into making up what we’ll all know as Web 3.0 and I believe it is truly amazing. New languages, different platform, applications and graphics making what will be the nearest thing to AI (artificial intelligence) we have ever seen.

The way I think about it Web 1.0 was all about the creation of information for the user to consume however was predominately about the backend and how it developed. Web 2.0 was all about the front end and how the web presented information to the user and more importantly how the user reacted, introducing social media networks, blogs etc and an era when search really took off. And soon we’ll have 3.0 that will revert back to the backend of the web but take us all to a whole new different league. The ways we search, use and interact with the web will all become much smoother, accurate and slicker and I can’t wait.

And these comments are all coming from a traditionalist who converted a few years back from thinking of the web, to understanding it, learning to appreciate it to now marveling at the sheer brilliance of this progressive technology. Let’s learn to embrace the .0s and not shy away from the unknown.

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Search Marketing - The next battle ground for your brand?

In the UK just over 15% of of the total media spend is now spent on online advertising. This trend is set to continue with year on year growth expected at around 40%. By the end of this decade it is widely expected that online advertising will replace television as the leading advertising platform in this country.

The vast majority (nearly 60%) of the online budget is being spent on various forms of pay per click. The 800 pound gorilla in this market is obviously Google, other well know companies here include Yahoo and Microsoft. The attraction of pay per click as a tool for acquiring new customers or clicks to your site is incomparable. It may not be the most cost effective or scalable solution, however it certainly delivers the goods.

Currently, we believe that there is an opportunity for companies to reduce or compliment their pay per click campaigns with traditional search engine optimisation. We recognise that product launches and instant results can often only be accelerated with a pay per click strategy, however optimising for the search engines as well will reduce your customer acquisition costs, increase your branding, increase your traffic and hopefully positively impact your bottom line.

We’re starting to see the start of this trend now. Just this week MTV announced that they were going to concentrate on their search branding. They want to revamp their association with new and upcoming music and therefore improve their relationship with their core younger audience. They will do this by being associated in the search results for up and coming bands or via the names of their TV programmes. Basically, they want to increase their search engine presence as they have worked out that people who are searching for details of whatever new hip hop act is flavour of the day, do not use the search for MTV. This means there are hundreds and thousands of potential MTV clickers out there they currently do not reach.

Once this penny drops, companies will begin to leverage the natural search engine results and proactively try to influence them in different ways than today. Naturally, this could mean a slight reduction in the pay per click budget, however we think that the search budget will actually be increased and the pay per click budget will grow at a steady rate.

The great thing about search engine marketing is that in terms of cost it can be considerably lower than pay per click. Most if not all of it can be achieved in house if you had the right resources and skills. We run a number of Search Marketing Courses in the UK, our students tend to have the same skills requirements, below is a list of the most popular areas we cover:

- Do your keyword research, making sure you understand what your customers are using to search for you.
- Invest in your pages, have one for each product, service or solution that you have. Each of these pages can then be optimised. If you’re worried about how manageable your site might be, consider a web content management system.
- Make sure your site is search engine friendly, this is both on site and off site.
- Run monthly reports with your search engine consultants so that you can track the keyword success

If you do not want to take ownership of this inhouse, then you might want to work with an SEO consultancy. Naturally, we at Generate UK would be delighted to help, however this blog posting is not a pitch it is supposed to be a helpful guide. So we’ve listed below the key criteria that we use to help make our search engine marketing projects a success.

- Who owns the project. All projects require senior stakeholders and support, it is no different with search engine marketing and branding. If the project is supported, it can be strongly project managed.

- What are the objectives. This sounds like a no brainer but unfortunately often missed. This should involve; where you are and where you want to be.

- Target the right vehicle. By this we mean that you should focus on the search engine that means the most to you and offers the most potential to your business.

- Keywords and keyphrases. This is one of the areas we cover on our Internet Marketing course. our students will tell you how important we think keyword research is; without it, your project is doomed from the start.

- Content. The right content that is both search engine friendly, focused on your customer and includes the right number of keywords. It really is that simple!

- Pay per click. If you’re using pay per click make sure that you know what your bid prices are and have a budget. Agree beforehand what the maximum is that you will pay for a click.

- Landing Pages. If you’re spending lots of money on pay per click and search marketing, you have to make sure that your pages sell or capture or whatever it is that you decided was your objective.

- Analytics. One of the main reasons that online advertising spend will eclipse television is that it is immediately available to analyse, and it is very important you do.

- Was it worthwhile. Once you have analysed a campaign, you will be able to tell whether you had a decent return on investment.

- Review, review, review. Whatever campaign you send out, whatever keyword you are tracking and whatever new page you are creating it is vital that you have a culture of review. Constant tweaks and improvements can be the difference between sales and no sales.

As you can see, there is a real opportunity for companies to leverage the search engines in a different way to how they are currently doing it. It is a world of new prospects and branding opportunities, it is a world of proactive search management and a world that is still being defined.

We’d be delighted to hear from you if you have anything to add to this post, use the comments box below.

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When you think about the growth of the Internet it is absolutely amazing. Looking back to when I first developed a very simple web page, circa 95/96 it would have been impossible to look ahead and predict what would happen. Most of the improvements to usability of the Internet is to do with the speed of access, especially with high speed broadband and GSM.

Since we’re looking back with rose tinted glasses, we thought we’d use todays post to outline some facts that show just how much our lives are touched by the Internet.

1. 18-34 year olds are the biggest computer users, spending around 60 hours per month on their computer. Source Nielsen/Net ratings

2. The largest online group is the 35-44 age group. Source Hitwise

3. About 8.6m people in the UK and approximately 14% of the UK population are registered disabled with 2 million having a sight problem. Sources Disability Rights Commission & Royal National Institute of the Blind

4. Advertising expenditure in the UK passed £19 billion in 2006 and online accounted for £2,016 million which was a rise of 47% Source Advertising Association

5. In the UK search engine market Google has 79% of the market with the next nearest competitor being Yahoo! with 7% Source Hitwise April 2007

6. 77% of B2B companies regard the primary purpose of the website as a source of company and product/service information. Only 12% of B2B companies cited online sales as the primary objective of the website. B2B Marketing/IAB, April 2006

7. 65% of SMEs have websites Silicon.com/Yankee Group, July 2006

8. 7% of UK workers use the internet to frequently to carry out Internet searches in connection with their work. Vertical Search Report 2008 Convera

9. Ease of use was cited by 59% by customers as the reason for shopping online, compared to only 32% who cited low prices. Online Retail 2006 User Experience Benchmarks - Sales Logiq

10. 64% of companies believe that joined-up online and offline experiences are essential for engaging with their audience. However, some 60% of companies are either not very advanced at mapping customer experiences and identifying touch-points. Customer Engagement Report E-consultancy Nov 2006

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Online reputation management is all about protecting your brand and image online. Most companies go to great lengths to protect their reputation offline, unfortunately they are often slow to react to different pressures online. In this world of blogospheres and user generated feedback, one of the greatest challenges for services or product led companies is to manage unflattering or malicious listings in search results.

Imagine the scenario of Company A who have launched a new product. They spend a lot of money on above the line advertising, used their Internet Marketing Agency to create a successful viral campaign and even have a well thought out pay per click strategy. Everyone is happy with the progress and all is going well. That was until somebody spots a “review” of their new product on a search listing result. Unfortunately, the “review” is not a flattering one, in fact it is not very encouraging at all. More frustrating is that it ranks higher than you do for your product. What can you do about this?

This is a very real issue. Whilst, we would always recommend a proactive strategy for online reputation management, we also know that asking clients to spend money to prevent something from happening is very difficult. Remember the early days with virus protection, you only ever invested if you have had your fingers burned. So for this example, we’re assuming that most people do not proactive and do not as a part of their roles seek to protect their online footprint against unflattering results.

The challenge is a pretty simple one, how do you remove the unflattering listing from search results Or what strategy do you use to reduce its ranking and increase yours?

The first job to do is really understand what the unflattering page is all about. Is it from a competitor? a consumer? is it overtly malicious? Is there a case to report it to the search engines for breach of rules and therefore have it removed from the listings? (Keep in mind that this does not always work). Is it possible that you can encourage the page owner to remove the content? It’s important to know whether the page is being honest or whether the report is false, if so you might use your “right of reply” to set the record straight. Try to learn as much as possible about the keywords of the page and how it is ranking.

At Generate UK, we do not encourage or use any Black Hat methods. We appreciate that many of you might suggest one or two interesting alternatives to having the unflattering page removed. So for the purposes of this article, consider everything white hat.

If it is not possible to have the page removed, then unfortunately you are going to have to work with it. This is where your understanding of the page comes in. What you need to do is to rank higher and in larger numbers in order to move their page down the results. Again, there are a number of black hat methods to assist with this, however we will be using what is available to us, using white hat methods.

The key to this is to increase your footprint in the search results. If you understood what keywords the unflattering page is using and how it is coming up in the search results, then you must start to target those keywords.

We would look at the different social media options available and recommend a bespoke effort based upon the client in question. Using our new product example above, we would engage with sites such as YouTube, Digg and other elements of the Blogosphere. This might take the form of video content, new friendly reviews, how to guides and other complimentary information and content that will support the effort. We would also use search engine marketing PR and leverage the more well known news and media outlets.

By using the sites that already rank well in search results and doing your research, you’ll soon be able to list for the keywords and phrases that the original unflattering page targeted. A carefully tailored approach with the client will soon have that page away from the eyes of the masses who only click on one of the first three results.

Online reputation management is very important, ideally you will already have a proactive approach and be busy in this area already. If not, consider how you might react to negativity and how quickly you are able to address it. Then consider the brand and reputation damage you might receive for doing nothing.

We’re always interest in your views and feedback. If you have anything to contribute to this article, please contact us below.

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Speaking to clients and prospects recently (within last couple of months) its been really interesting to hear their concerns in relation to their business and the so called ‘credit crunch’. I’ve read and heard so much in the press that I though it was about time to voice my own opinion.

Yes, I agree that the market isn’t great and it’s certainly not how it was back in 2006. Food prices have increased significantly with Marks and Spencer’s this week reporting a 5% decrease in sales….wow a whole 5%! Due to the ridiculous increase in fuel prices we have lorry drivers driving their HGV’s through Westminster protesting outside the Houses of Commons. House prices have reach a plato and inflation is continuing to rise at a steady rate, so I do understand why people and business owners are, and rightly so, looking over their shoulders and waiting to see what happens next. However, with that said there are still plenty of business’s out there vying for, creating and driving good business and therefore reaping the rewards. The market I believe it still pretty strong, there is plenty to play for and it the dawdling and protractive companies that will be left behind!

Many companies I’ve spoke to have had a bumper 2008 and this is set to continue. I believe that you have to be conscious of what’s going in the economy but focus on what you can do to help drive your own business forward rather than waiting to see what happens. If this means buying a new piece of software or investing into an online advertising strategy then so be it, if it will provide you with a return then do it?

The hype and media surrounding the credit crunch I believe is a bit of farce and inevitably puts the willies up businesses looking to expand or invest. It makes them think twice which isn’t always a bad thing but can additionally then stiffle their business growth. If one Managing Director of a company who I spoke to on Tuesday is puting her marketing budget on hold for 3 months as she is worried about the economy, looking at the bigger picture there will be plenty more Managing Directors like her doing the same and the end result is FACT the the economy will suffer! A vicious economic circle built up by media hype!

Working in the digital marketing sector I feel blessed at times like these as it enables me to understand what’s happening on the ’shop floor’ as normally if things are tight the first area that business’s cut back on is their marketing budget, which has never made sense to me and is another story for another time! However Digital Marketing is different in the fact that everything you do is measurable, if you spend £100 on a PPC campaign and see a return of £200 then that’s good business. On top of this I sell our professional services which makes a huge difference. Service is critical to any business and often make you stand out from the competitors.

So when when I’m trying to close business and prospects mention the state of the economy and the so called ‘credit crunch’, I suggest to them that most of it is media hype, business growth is all about taking the initiative and focusing on seeing the end results. Sell your added value services, product features and core benefits, focus on that and I think people will soon start to see the wood through the trees and change their negative perception concerning the so called ‘credit crunch’!

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Have you already considered using Second Life to boost your business? Do you recognise the branding potential for your business by creating a virtual business in a virtual world? Or do you care less about what could be the latest fad and scorn at the many large companies who have set up virtual offices to cater to the virtual masses?

For the uninitiated, Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Research, Inc. It has been making noises for sometime now due to the large number of bricks and mortar companies that are setting up shop in this virtual world. As a digital sales and marketing agency, we are often asked by our clients whether they too should have a Second Life presence. Our response is the same for any new marketing campaign, what will it do for your business? And what are your objectives?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with experimenting with new media and technologies. Just by launching themselves on Second Life, many organisations have reaped the rewards of headlines and stories being written about them. These were the pioneers, the people who understood how to leverage the new technology and the PR behind it. However, it is fair to say that those opportunities no longer exist. An IT magazine hack or even the mainstream press are no longer interested in writing about the latest company to set up on Second Life. Therefore it is important to think about what the returns are for you and your business before embarking on this virtual world.

We would advise that if you are looking for a branding opportunity, Second Life might well be an option. One of our clients wanted to launch their new band, they did it on Second Life, mainly because it was a little bit different. It was funky, new and sat well with their target audience.
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