Below is an except from Internet Retailer, you can read the full report on their site:

The 2009 holiday shopping season was perhaps the roughest in the history of online retailing. The wretched economy caused consumers to rein in spending and conduct more comparison shopping, hunting for the best deals.

Changing consumer behavior throughout 2009, in turn, caused retailers to try new selling and branding techniques, or augment existing ones. Three areas of change included the use of social networking, online video and streamlined purchasing, according to The E-tailing Group Inc.’s annual study of 100 online retailers.

60% of the retailers in the study featured on their e-commerce sites links to social network presences, notes Lauren Freedman, president of the research and consulting firm. Freedman will be speaking at the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference, Feb. 15-17 in Orlando, FL, in a session entitled Lessons from Holiday 2009.

Right now social is very top of mind for merchants, but it’s an R&D issue to understand how social works, what its role is in driving customer engagement and what it will deliver in return on investment,” Freedman says. “The biggest impact social will have will be on engagement with the brand. I am skeptical about its ability to deliver sales, which in the end is what marketing has to do.”

The study also found that 61% of retailers present video guides—for branding or how-to, for example—throughout their sites. This is up from 49% in 2008.

“Last year there was more use of video at the experiential level from a branding perspective like a fashion show or leveraging YouTube to show how to decorate your house for the holidays, as well as video on product pages,” Freedman says. “Video is a growth area. The customer likes it, it’s not expensive to produce and present, and it gives customers more confidence to buy.”

In conclusion: If you are not using Social Media as part of your online marketing arsenal you are being left behind, it’s not too late but you need to start doing something.  If you are already using Social Media, then now is the time to kick things up a gear and start dominating the search engine results for your market.

]]> http://searchmarketingrebel.com/retailers-turn-to-social-media/feed/ http://searchmarketingrebel.com/websites-are-dead-long-live-the-blog/ http://searchmarketingrebel.com/websites-are-dead-long-live-the-blog/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:41:18 +0000 Steve Wylie http://searchmarketingrebel.com/?p=47

Blogs Rule!

Gone are the days when blogs were just for geeks and places for people to rant about a topic or their life in general.

Nowadays it has become harder to tell if you are looking at a regular website built with HTML or a WordPress blog.  Blogs now look and feel like a regular website.

There are two main types of blogs:

Hosted Blogs - you, (or your webmaster), install blogging software like WordPress on a web hosting account.

Free Online Blogs - services like Blogger and BlogSpot offer the option of opening an online blogging account on their servers.

Hosted blogs actually have many advantages over traditional websites, here are a few of them:

• Much less expensive to set up than a traditional website
• Quicker to get up and running
• Users can maintain the blog without any technical knowledge (and without Web Designer costs)
• The search engines love blogs making your marketing efforts easier
• There are plenty of professionally design templates to make your blog stand out
• Adding regular content is a breeze and you can even schedule updates to occur on a regular basis

Ok, so traditional HTML based websites aren’t exactly dead, (in fact I still use them for my eCommerce sites that have thousands of products), but for the average small business that wants a web presence, a blog is certainly the way to go.

If I could show you how to raise your sales by fifty percent without enlarging your promoting budget, would you be interested? Naturally you would, what selling pro or entrepreneur would not be interested? When you’ve finished this article you may have worked out the best way to just do that. Take a couple of seconds and think about all of the inactive buyer files you have in your file cupboard. Entrepreneurs regularly make the pricey mistake of servicing a purchaser once then presuming “they’ll stay” as a shopper or customer without maintaining and growing that relationship. A year later that entrepreneur is wondering what’s happened to that client and where they went. Why haven’t they hear from them? Did they leave? If this is so why?

There are lots of reasons a buyer or client may leave you, but the ones you’ll hear most frequently are :

* They felt your pricing was rather high or bigoted.

* They’d an unresolved complaint.

* They took a rivals offer.

* They left because they felt you did not care.

When you remember the last 2 make up the bulk of why a customer or buyer won’t use your service or purchase your products - it could be a hard tablet to swallow. After all it means they’re an inactive customer because they felt you did not care about them and your competitor did.

This appears sensible when you factor in that clients frequently buy your product or service because they have developed a relationship with you, they owned another product or yours, or they were referred to you by a mate or associate. When faced with the above facts why is it firms spend eighty percent of their selling bucks going after new customers instead of nurturing, maintaining, and keeping up the customer relationships they already have? Before you use your time and cash going after new clients and customers you don’t now have a relationship with consider the following statistical data :

* Repeat consumers spend 33% more than new buyers.

* Referrals among repeat clients are 107% bigger than non-customers.

* It costs 6 times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that very same thing to a purchaser.

As you can see your selling bucks will go further if it’s used by you to build, nurture, and develop your shopper relations.

This is not as tricky as you suspect. Building these relations just means treating your clients as if they actually are your strategic partners and showing them that you actually care about them.

It is important to try and satisfy them with the right service and goods, supported by the right promotion and making it available at the right time and location. Purchasers can simply note indifference and hypocrisy and they just won’t put up with it. Long term customer and consumer fidelity is a long term challenge that you have to strive for each day and with each exchange regardless of how massive or little. While a growing business wishes to consistently capture new consumers, the focus and concern should be on pleasing your current consumer base. Firms that fail to nurture and keep their customer base finally fail.

You’ll also spend twice as much to get new clients as you’ll in sorting out your existing buyer base.You also will be limited in your capability to draw in new clients if you are unable to keep hold of and satisfy your present customers and clients. The final analysis is that one of the key parts in selling and business expansion is to spend the bulk of your effort and time nurturing shopper relations, so you get business from existing clients and purchasers. This is a method which will move you forward in skyrocketing your sales by fifty percent without inflating your financial position.

With 1.4 billion people online, the Internet has shown incredible potential for advertising opportunities like search marketing and other forms of online marketing.  This phenomenon has led many to believe that offline marketing strategies are no longer as useful as they once were.  What those same people do not realize is that online marketing and offline marketing are actually in cahoots, so to speak.  One influences the other, and vice versa. If one stops to think about it, the cyber-world relies on real-world observations and concepts.  In return, the real world is becoming increasingly reflective of concepts found on the World Wide Web, and is where many online ideas are actualized.  With so much going on between the two, it would be pretty much impossible to cover everything in detail.  This article will instead take the general view, and just hope that it can do justice to the wonders in our increasingly integrated online-offline world.

Flogging stuff online

The term search marketing refers to one of the most common methods of flogging stuff in the cyber-bazaar.  With so many products that can be sold to a large audience, the Internet has proven to be the best way to reach potential customers all over the world.  Unfortunately, it is becoming saturated, and due to the nature of commercial competition, there are many brands of any single given product.  By changing the way search engines work, it becomes possible to advertise as users search for items.  In fact, the very keywords submitted for lookup become the basis for offering various services or products, either in straightforward advertising sections on webpages, or subtly, sometimes flagrantly, modifying the search engine results.  Another way of marketing online is by endorsement, just like in the real world.  User testimonials would be attached to products in an effort to convince potential buyers to purchase and use these products.   The measurement that many people find the best in terms of determining a website’s or product’s value is the amount of traffic and buzz that it generates.  The Internet is incredibly alive with gossip and massive interpersonal contact, so word gets around extremely quickly.  This can be used to the marketer’s advantage, whether to promote offered products or services, or undermining the efforts of rival companies.

Creating a buzz and positioning a client or their business as the celebrity in their market is what Search Marketing the Rebel Way is all about. When someone searches for a product or service online and see’s that there are multiple listings on Google’s front page all about one company, it gives the searcher confidence that this must be a decent company.  It also reduces the chance of them clicking on anyone else as you’ve knocked most of the competition off the first page, and lets face it who wants to go the to the 2nd or 3rd page.

From cyberspace to the real world

Perhaps the most amazing thing about online marketing is how it can be used to involve the users in product development.  Some examples include a digital fashion design contest for a popular online game, the winning entry from which was translated into a real-life article of clothing, and a company that makes instant noodles taking flavor suggestions from customers and realizing them.  These user-defined products often sell very well, since they are already favored in the virtual online world.  Real-world marketing now often incorporates various concepts from the digital world.  As an example, consider the use of digital artwork in posters and print ads.  The pixilated look is also iconic and has found favor on the fashion market, plus it has potential as a device in advertising for things like cameras and such.  Photomanipulation, or the editing of pictures has advanced with the power of digital tools.  Many of the designs seen today were inspired by artwork from various digital artists posting their works on the Internet.  Some of these artists became so popular on the Internet that they were hired in real life to produce works for print.  Television ads and shows alike are increasingly making use of sophisticated animations and transitions, as popularized across cyberspace.  Plus, keeping track of trend on the World Wide Web can tip one off to what would prove popular to the youth, who are often recognized as the frequenters of the digital world.

In closing

What the Internet provides for the real world is a repository for information and a continuously renewing source of inspiration, not only for online marketing as well as offline marketing, but also in daily living.  It is a true reflection of our collective culture and consciousness, an invaluable resource and peerless medium of expression.  As the Internet becomes a part of everyone’s lives, only time will tell where it will all lead.  And for those on the cutting edge of Search Marketing, a lot of money is waiting to be made!

The problem with traditional SEO methods is that even if you get to page one of Google, your prospective clients still have the option of clicking on 9 other of your competitors on that page alone.  Obviously killer copywriting in your listings description will help to ensure you are the one that gets clicked first.

That’s great, but you could do better (just had a flashback to my school days then!):

Local Search Marketing… the Rebel Way!

What’s wrong with 2 listings on Google or 3 or maybe even 10?  Well if you talk to most SEO’s they will tell you that you have one website and therefore can only get one listing - BULL!

I admit I always want more, more dessert, more beer and you guessed it more listings.  When I go into a niche market I want to own it, not just be a part of it.  For my own sites and my clients sites I’m going to dominate Google for the search terms I’m going after.

Image you have a bookkeeping firm in Ardmore Oklahoma and someone types in “Bookkeeping Ardmore OK”, wouldn’t it be the coolest thing if they saw the following results:

Out of 10,200 competing pages, my client has multiple listings at the top of Google’s first page.

If anyone clicks on any of these top listings they all lead to my client… now that’s the Rebel Way!

Another client now has 23 of the top 30 listings on Google with 204,000 competing pages (actually they have a bunch more listings, but I don’t bother looking past the 3rd page - and neither will your customers!).

So what would you prefer?

- The SEO way: One Listing
- The Search Marketing Rebel Way: Multiple Listings and total Google Domination!

The problem is who is it there for?  Potential customers just get distracted or annoyed by it.  Search Engines… well don’t even get me started on Flash and the Search Engines - the long and short of it is they can not read Flash, so you get no benefit from using it on your site.

I’ve even had clients who have had a large web design company build their entire site using Flash (for lots of money as you always pay a premium when working with Flash).  12 months later I get a call asking for help as their site is not ranked anywhere… really?  I guess that’s another site that’s going to need to be rebuilt!

So why would anyone use Flash on their website?  I guess it boils down to the business owner’s ego.  It’s very aesthetically pleasing and it’s great when someone comments on how cool your website is.  Cool is great, but I’d rather take cold hard cash thanks.  Flash is not going to help me close a sale, so I don’t use.

My advice, steer clear of singing and dancing websites and concentrate on a clean easy to use website with loads of great content.  Your customers will thank you for it and search engines will eat it up.  The Results:

• Better Search Engine Rankings!
• Better Sales Conversions!
• More money in the Bank!

Howie Schwartz, Todd Spears, DK & DB (names protected as these are bad @ss underground marketers), all in one closed door meeting.  Did I learn anything?  How could I not!

We all know that marketing online is a constantly changing game, but what most people don’t realize is just how quickly it changes.  I remember the good old days when you could just stuff a web page with a bunch of keywords and rank.  The person that stuffed the most keywords, won the war at Google.  Obviously those days passed a long time ago, but Google changes it’s algorithym so frequently that what worked just a couple of weeks ago, may not work today.  If your online search marketing is not diverse and Google makes a change that effects the one tactic you are using you’re screwed!  That’s the main reason I always have an arsenal of tactics that I take to every market I go into.  If one thing stops working, I don’t care, I have all of my other strategies working for me!

Over the next couple of days I’m going to share some of the Search Marketing Techniques that are working today - not last month or last year like most of “Marketing Gurus” are still trying to push!

Driving traffic to your website is a much discussed and much misunderstood venture. There are a million
theories out there that claim to drive tons of new visitors to your site daily. There are services that say they will increase your traffic by an enormous percentage if you will only pay them their small fee over a period of fifty years. There are so-called experts who will place your pages on all the best search engines on the net. They claim that with this kind of blanket exposure, your traffic numbers will explode within days.

But the only sure-fire way to draw productive traffic to your website is through targeted marketing. The
important word to notice here is “productive.” You can draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to your site
every year by hosting a giveaway of some kind. Services that search the internet for freebies will have people clicking a link to your site like crazy. But these people are not there to buy anything from you… quite the opposite. They are empty clicks. There is nothing productive about this kind of traffic. People looking for free stuff will rarely make you any kind of money. And that’s what you’re after, right?

So target your marketing to the people who really want to buy what you have to offer. How? Start by trying
these basic steps…

* Hire an experienced copywriter.

The copy that is on your site makes a world of difference in the sales you garner from the internet. Most important to targeted marketing are the keywords found in your title and the metatags in the website’s code. An experienced copywriter will know how to determine the most effective keywords and place them strategically in your site’s copy. If you cannot afford a copywriter, do some research and talk to your web designer about inserting metatags.

* You can enroll in pay per click search engines.

Obviously, Google is one of these, but most of the most popular keywords are already taken. If you can
think of some original phrases that people use to search for your products or services, you can post your
ad next to the text that comes up when people search for that phrase. Every time someone clicks on your ad
to go to your site, you pay Google a nominal fee.

* Submit articles to free ezine sites.

This is especially helpful if you are a service provider. You can write, or hire someone to write, an article for you about your area of expertise. Give some free tips, offer your experience, and be accessible in the text.
Then at the bottom of the article, you get a link to your website advertising your services. Every time someone publishes your article in their ezine or newsletter, they must use your web address at the bottom.

These are just a few of the many ways to ensure you get “productive” traffic. Empty clicks are just that …
empty… and your wallet will stay that way, too!

• Web Design Company charged $3,500 to build client a website 18 months ago
• Client very happy as site looks great
• 18 months later - client gets no traffic to their shiny new website
• Client now very unhappy!

I hear this all the time.  Having a great looking website is not enough.  I get really mad when web design companies build a website for a business and do not explain that they will not get any visitors (and therefore no business), unless they market that website.

Having a website will NOT get you any business - Marketing your website WILL get you business!

Small businesses do not understand how Search Engine Marketing works.  In my opinion it’s the responsibility of the the company that builds their website to explain how to market their website online.  Here lies the problem… most web designers don’t know either!

Building a website and marketing a website are 2 different skill sets and it’s rare that you find someone with both.

Bottom line: If you have a website, you need to do the marketing to get your website ranking at the top of the search engines.  If you don’t, do not expect to get any business as no-one will be able to find your website.