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| November 2006 »
From CNET News: Greg Sterling, managing editor at The Kelsey Group, said Google representatives told him several weeks ago that the company plans to let businesses add advertisements and logos to the mapping balloons that appear on Google Local.
"It's a harbinger of more things on maps," such as video, embedded chat and pay-per-call or click-to-call, he told CNET News.com at Kelsey's Drilling Down on Local conference here Monday. "Putting technology in the balloons can enable all kinds of interesting exchanges with merchants."
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang defended the Internet search engine's cooperation with Chinese censorship of the Web, saying it was necessary to reach out to new users.
US lawmakers have accused tech giants Yahoo, Google and Microsoft of helping sustain the so-called Great Firewall of China, which blocks searches of terms considered to be sensitive, such as "free speech" and "human rights."
But Yang said it was better to be in China than out.
"We have to think of a way in which the Internet phenomenon can continue to grow and reach more users and at the same time comply with local laws.
"In places like China and other places that have different political regimes I think you'll see them trying to react and potentially regulate these kinds of activities.
"But our observation is that it is inevitable that things will become more open and free flowing," Yang told reporters here ahead of the 10th anniversary of the search engine's Japanese site on April 1.
Yahoo came under fire last year for supplying information to the Chinese government which led to the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao.
Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for passing on a government censorship order through his Yahoo e-mail account.
According to information posted by Bambi Francisco at Market Watch, Google Inc. remains the public's favorite place to find answers online as the pace of its search-query volume more than doubled the growth rate for overall search-query volume in February.
Google's search-query volume rose 29.4% last month, nearly three times as fast as the 11% growth for the industry, according to comScore Networks. The rise in searches enabled Google to capture 42.3% of the market for all searches, up from a third a year ago.
Importantly, Google appears to be gaining ground at the expense of juggernauts Yahoo and MSN.Yahoo's market share dipped to 27.6% from 31%, and MSN dropped to 13.5% from 16.3%.
As reported at InternetRetailer.com: 51% of Internet users in the U.S. make purchases from opt-in e-mails and 44% make regular purchases from online ads, according to a recent report from Lyris Technologies.
39% of users said they make purchases from opt-in e-mails a few times a year. 10% said they make purchases a few times a month and 2%, a few times a day.
Of those making purchases from online ads, 37% make purchases a few times a year, 6% a few times a month, and 1% a few times a day, Lyris said.
“These poll results underscore the growing importance of the Internet as a sales channel,” says Dave Dabbah, director of sales and marketing. “For most companies, the best Internet marketing strategy employs a well-balanced mix of targeted e-mail campaigns and targeted on-line ads. Both vehicles are proving to be highly effective at converting readers into buyers.”
The poll also showed that users who make purchases from opt-in commercial e-mails are also likely to make purchases from online ads, and vice versa.
Lyris’ poll results were based on 126 responses from a nationally representative sample based on age, gender and income.
For many businesses, the best mailing list or customer database they will ever have is their own customer list. Yet time after time, we see businesses wasting this most valuable asset. They waste it by not keeping it in good shape, not mailing to it, not staying in communication with their current and former customers.
If you are in a business where you could be getting repeat business from former customers, and you are not contacting these people on some sort of regular schedule, then you are losing out on a lot of traffic and potential income. Failing to stay in communication with former clients, customers, patients, is a fatal flaw in far too many businesses and practices. Fact. And it's usually cheaper to get back an old customer than it is to create a new one. Of course, you need to create new customers and continue doing business with a good portion of the "old" ones if you really want to boost income and profits.
We sometimes hear from business owners that the positioning they would like to get in the minds of their customers has already been taken by another business. However, we often find that this is not true. In many cases that "other business" appears to "own" a certain position, when in fact it does not. How can this be? Because they are not capitalizing on their supposed position.
Preemptive positioning means that you preempt the position, even when others "appear" to be ensconced in that position already. Let's say that five business were competing in a certain geographical area for the same customers. And let's say those businesses all had online stores where people could place their orders over the internet. But what if none of those businesses were really pushing their online stores? They were just sort of up there online, with little or no traffic coming in.
One of those stores could decided to "own" the online position by really beefing up their online store, announcing their store loudly and clearly through their marketing and promotional efforts, and so on. They create a great online guarantee of customer satisfaction, make their website user-friendly and easy to navigate, provided useful information, on and on.
Bottom line, they end up owning the online "position," even though the other businesses also have online stores. The other businesses, if they eventually wake up and scramble to get their online act together will be perceived as "me-toos." Followers, not leaders.
Now this is a rather crude and off-the-top example of preemptive positioning. I'm sleepy this morning and it was the best I could come up with. But you get the idea. Before you decide that another business already "owns" a certain position in your industry that you wished you had, make sure that it's a fact that they do.
Sometimes you just assume it, because you know about certain aspects of their operations. Maybe they should own that position you covet, but, in fact, they don't because they are not capitalizing on it. You can then preempt them by grabbing that position and making it your own through effective marketing and PR channels.
If you can generate some publicity for your business through press releases and PR capers, you will often get an additional benefit from having other websites putting links to your website. Search engines tend to "view" incoming links to a website as a popularity vote for that website, which can help improve your rankings in the search engines results pages (SERPS). Serps are the list of websites you see coming up when you type in a search term at, say, Google.com or Yahoo, etc.
In business you have to attract attention. Publicity helps you do that. The links are an additional benefit. Some of the incoming links will be short-lived (newspapers, mags, etc.). But links from other sites (other businesses, blogs, etc.) can stay around for a long time. Use publicity to help create more incoming links to your site, in addition to the other obvious benefits gained from getting good publicity.
Why are we harping on this USP thing again? Because many business owners still don't get it. If you do not have a USP, you have nothing to differentiate yourself from other competitors or similar businesses. So you do not give your potential customers a good reason to deal with you instead of the other "me-too" businesses out there. If there's no difference, they might as well throw darts to decide who to give their business to.
You can read up on the USP at this link: http://www.fastf.com/usp.htm
Results from Google Base are now showing up in some of the results pages when internet surfers type in certain "keywords" (search terms) in the search box at google.com. Are you in Google Base? You should be if you depend on internet traffic for a portion of your leads or sales. Local businesses should definitely be uploading their basic business info to Google Base. Known as Google Local business locations bulk uploads, these files contain addresses, phone numbers, and operating hours for physical business locations. This makes it easy and handy for people in your area to find your busness when they are looking for the goods or services you have to offer.
You can find Google Base quickly simply by typing in "google base" in the search box on Google's home page.
An effective cost-per-click campaign (CPC) can help bring more traffic to your website, assist in your branding, and generate more online sales if you sell online.
Good online marketing requires a well-designed website that creates want and creates sales and is properly optimized for the search engines. In other words, it must be people-friendly (easy to navigate and functions well) and search engine friendly. With those two things in place you can now add cost-per-click campaigns to bring even more traffic and generate more sales.
We like to work with Google and Yahoo primarily. There are many other smaller search engines usually not worth messing with. Google's Adwords is well designed for creating a good online ad campaign and testing it on a continuing basis.
There is quite a bit to know in running a good CPC campaign. You can't just stick some ads up and hope for the best. That's a good way to waste money.
You need to research out the best search terms for your needs, create ads that pull, continue to test your ads and monitor your keywords and the amounts you are bidding for those terms.
But if you have something worthwhile to sell (including ideas), a good website that is properly optimized for the search engines, a solid CPC campaign and some effective online PR, you could take your internet marketing out the top!
If you don't have a product or service that enough people need or want to make it worthwhile (or could be made to want), you won't prosper.
If the costing and pricing of your goods or services is off, you won't prosper.
If you can't locate "suspects" to contact and promote to, in order to see if they are prospects, you won't prosper.
If you don't know what to say to suspects once you find them, so you can identify or isolate the prospects among them, you won't prosper.
If you can't respond properly when prospects identify themselves by expressing a reach or interest for what you offer, you won't prosper.
If you can't determine the actual needs & wants of your prospects, you won't prosper.
If you can't make a good sales presentation to prospects, you won't prosper.
If you can't overcome objections that prospects have, you won't prosper.
If you can't "close" prospects, you won't prosper.
If you can't or won't deliver what's promised after you close your prospects, you definitely won't prosper.
Your marketing programs, activities, events, methods and procedures are only as strong as the weakest link in your whole marketing "chain."
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