Tipp-Ex – Write and Re-write interactive YouTube campaign
Tippex has created a video where users get to engage and choose the ending. It contains a hunter that cannot shoot the bear and tipp-ex’s out the “shoots” and asks the viewer to write something else.
The ability to insert click functionality into a video means online advertisers can be incredibly creative, without resorting to lame intrusive formats. The Tipp-Ex ‘shoot a bear’ campaign has set the bar suitably high. It’s great fun, interactive and the execution is superb .The Tipp-Ex channel on YouTube has had more than 45m views. A massive win, at least as far as awareness and engagement is concerned.
Trend and Innovation Sites
Tip: Interesting sites to grasp inspiration and imagination from.
Ladies enjoy shopping but how do they feel about shopping for fashion online? Every woman deserves a good shopping spree so how can retailers improve the consumer experience online.
When purchasing clothes online you can never guarantee the fit or suit on the individual. The online fashion market is worth 4.27 billion in 2009 and is predicted to increase significantly between 2010-2013. With a large number of new comers to the online fashion market, the market place has become saturated. With this in mind it is vital that online fashion providers are satisfying the needs and wants of their consumers to gain a competitive advantage over others.
A strong insight into consumers buying habits with buying clothes online are more than half of Women feel they have to try items on, a third of them admitted that items have not met to their expectations when purchasing online according to Mintel (online fashion report 2010), suggesting not enough visualization of detail and imagination of how an item would look like on the consumer.
The new online feature trends that have been identified are outfit makers and virtual fitting rooms.
Retailers such as Boden and Oasis have examples such as ‘outfit maker’ and ‘fitting room’ on their websites. These features you simply dress the model to create outfits. Also catwalk videos are illustrating a better idea of the garment detail with the movement of the material on the model, which is becoming extremely popular with online retailers. Also catwalk videos are being used on a few online fashion retailers as they are grasping that consumers need the a better visual of the product.
Taking it one step further there are virtual fitting rooms where you can place items onto one self through webcams, upload a picture of yourself or type your measurements in where a mannequin is produced. Examples can be seen on knickerpicker.com and in this video. Also most recently a lot of other retailers are trailing and experimenting online; NIKEiD,Fit.me and MADE – get to personalise with also a better understanding of the product.
Google Places – Restaurants
diners search online before eating out.
Generating more local business
Restaurant Marketing with Google
As we know in our homes we all have a yellow pages. But how useful do we find it when it comes to searching for information. We find yellow pages more useful as a doorstop then its uninspiring thumb searching through lists and numbers when you can get all the information you need at a few clicks online.
With more people conducting online searches for finding there local locations, google maps are presented in the search results and are considered to be the key marketing tool that can be used to its advantage for promoting restaurant businesses to the locals.
Have more control over the restaurant listings on google and let your customer know what the restaurant is all about – signing up to google maps is important where customization creativity is applied. For example, add photos of the restaurant to the custom google maps, access to reviews. There are so many possibilities available for using google maps which can benefit opportunities for businesses locally.
Google maps is an excellent way of promoting restaurants as customers finding the menu and services, provided interesting can get the location and to know a lot about the restaurant before even stepping into the place. This is a strong AIDA marketing tool.
Attention: Make your restaurant aware of google maps – attracts the attention of customers
Interest: Show the business benefits and advantages – that the restaurant is local and menu is interesting
Desire: Convince the customer they want it and they will be satisfied – reviews, recommendations on the menu, photographs etc.
Act: Closing the purchase – contact details including telephone and website.
This makes the customer happy knowing about there local area and also businesses, making themselves recognized and presented well.
This is just one type of business Google Maps promotes. All businesses get involved with google maps and find yourself generating local business.
Keeping email seperate from your website and your domain
When companies get started with their first website there is a tendency to keep the hosting of the website, email and the domain name all on the same package. In order to make life simple in the future and lower your risk I would suggest splitting these 3 into separate locations. Having one supplier for all 3 is risky enough in itself. My suggested separation looks like this:
1. Use Google apps for your email. Offering Microsoft exchange features such as multi device sync and calender management, it is a great tool for email management and more. Combined with virtually permanent up time and the backing of a massive company like Google its difficult to argue against it, especially when it is free.
2. Use 123-reg.co.uk for your domain management. Not the cheapest domain name supplier but as I have said in a previous post you don’t end up paying for everything as an extra.
3. Pick your hosting provider. I don’t have any recommendations here, yet, I have tried a few with varying degrees of success and each has its pros and cons. Probably an ideal topic for another day.
If you need help setting any of these up then feel free to give me a call.
Michael Bates – Managing Director – MSI Commerce – Marketing driven ebusiness
Expensive PPC with no results
Being a small business owner means that you don’t have time to understand the detail behind everything. Its a shame when internet companies then take advantage of this.
A company I have been working with was offered some Pay per click (PPC) advertising, 8 keywords for a fixed fee of £100 a month. Wow all you can eat advertising for £100 a month.
That’s fine as long as the 8 keywords selected actually generated any traffic, they weren’t, so basically the company was making £100 a month for doing nothing and incurring no costs – no clicking – no pay.
The company in question could have had an account and the keywords setup in an hour. I could then have monitored for an hour a month/bi-monthly/once a quarter and saved the best part of £100 a month for advertising on worthwhile keywords.
If you are unsure about any aspect of internet marketing it is probably worth spending an hour on some consultancy, rather than wasting a fortune on nothing every month.
Michael Bates – MSI Commerce – Advice on all aspects of online marketing.
Reconsideration by Google
Well it took a while. In my previous post I mentioned the issues with outbound links. Having removed the offending item it should have been a swift journey back to the top of the search results.
Unfortunately we watched the the site move from 700+ to 800+.
Then the email we had been waiting for… Google saying we have reconsidered your site. Great. Then the site fell out of the top 1000.
I was left scratching my head.
However, now a week after the email the site is back to the top.
Finally.
Review your outbound links with Google Chrome
I have been completing some SEO work with an ecommerce company recently and during our work the site plummeted from position 1 to 600+ in Google SERP. ‘What the hell’ was my first comment. Especially as none of the other Search Engines were penalising the site at all.
Anyway, we went back through the basics just to make sure we hadn’t overstepped the mark. Removed some recently added products, just in case the balance of keywords had been thrown. And we waited … position 700+. Not good, we were moving backwards rapidly.
I had gone through and checked that each of the links from the home page connected to sensible content using Microsofts internet explorer. What I should have done, and as a tip to those focusing on Google, was to use Google Chrome browser to review the sites. It turns out that one of the links connected to a site containing malware links. Only when I opened the site through Google’s Chrome browser was a warning displayed regarding the problem.
Links are removed and a reconsideration submitted, just waiting for the Google bods now.
Michael Bates – Director – MSI Commerce for SEO
Purchasing a Domain Name
It is advisable when developing your business name to see if the domain name is available for purchase. If not you may have to be inventive. I recently started working with an SME who had already registered their domain name with www.uk2.net. At first glance they appear to be a cheaper than other domain name companies. With good reason. Once you get started you realise that they are a but like Ryan Air, everything is an extra.
Now if you own a domain name, I can guarantee that you will want to hook it up to a website. If the site is hosted somewhere else it appears that some domain name companies want to charge you for the privilege of pointing it to your website. Not just once either but every year and this is on top of your domain name registration fee.
There is a better way 123-reg.co.uk offer an all in price when you register the domain name. Unlimited updates and access to a host of other services. They might be £2 more expensive to register your domain name but it pays in the long run.
If you need assistance registering your domain name then do give me a call.
Michael Bates – Director – MSI Commerce, marketing driven e-business
Just beware of web design companies!!
It has been a while since I have added to the page, but a few things have changed recently so I have a bit more time to focus on the important aspects of ebusiness.
A recent call revealed that an acquaintance had been off and had a website developed. The company in question didn’t do search engine optimisation, which is a shame as this is critical in developing a site. I have said it before and will say it again there are a few key elements to a site which are vital from an SEO stand point.
1. Ensure that each page has appropriate titles and that they are not the same across the whole site. Google prefers that they are not the same, as this indicates that the content is the same across all the pages. Titles should be unique.
2. Please ensure that you have the ability, if they are not their already, to add tags to existing/new content. Specifically marking certain parts of the page with h1 tages is key.
3. If you are buying a site with a content management system (please do it will save you money in the long run) then ensure it has access to elements such as the page titles, meta keywords and meta description. The meta description is still the call to action from the search results page. If you can’t add something, then Google will randomly select some other stuff from the page which may not be an appropriate message for a potential customer.
How to sell more online?
I have recently been working with an affilate company, called Pennymix, to revamp their site. Having worked in the web industry for some time I was familiar with the whole concept but hadn’t been directly involved.
The concept is very simple really, a web site (probably ecommerce) will pay affiliate web sites for sending them traffic. Why? I here you ask.
Well the web is a massive place and someone like Amazon (Don’t worry if you are a little smaller than the big A this still applies) can never expect to reach the top position for every product they sell. In fact if you look at the web today, it is mainly the review and user generated content sites that reach the top. It therefore makes sense, rather than spending money on search engine marketing, to share some of your margin with those at the top. It will probably cost you less in the long run.
Plus it is not just one link to a product from one site, it could be hundreds of links from many sites. Similar to having a high street presence in every city… well in the world.
The really interesting part about Pennymix, is that it will pay you money back for clicking through the to ecommerce sites and making a purchase. What, what, what??? exactly. Well the margins are just cut further. Pennymix now takes some of the money it earns and gives it back to you for using its site as the launch pad into the retailer. Everyone wins so to speak. The retailer sells, Pennymix gets paid and you earn cash back on your shopping. Affiliate heaven.
This isn’t limited to the big boys (sorry persons), small retailers can provide an affiliate application form on their site. You may need to make it worth their while but it starts your expansion on to every high street in the world….