Online Marketing Sydney, Internet Marketing Australia Freestyle Media

Google launched a new feature on its search engine that may completely change the way people search engine market their websites. First let me give you a crash course on what has happened:

1. Personalisation of search results - Google now allows you to modify the results to your liking. I.e. if you like a result you can move it up the rankings and if you don’t like a result you can remove it.
2. Commenting on results - Google now allows you to comment on Any page of results. So individually your competitors can comment on your results and you can comment on theirs. I have a feeling this is going to cause a good bit of slagging when it comes to some niches!

So users can view results of web searches how they want to view them. The main reason behind Google actually adding this feature was because 40% of people returned repeatedly to the same results page because they used it as a bookmarking tool. So google decided to favilitate that and allow people to mix up their results to their preference. Google has always wanted to provide the most relevant results for any search and personalising the results to users is just another step along that vision.

Important Note about the results manipulation
The results which are displayed are only seen when:

1. A particular user is signed into Google. If you are not signed into Google you see the normal results that the public sees.
2. Comments and suggested rankings changes by users are not shown before a user makes their own changes to a listing. They are also submitted only as coming from “searcher” it isnt George from Albury Vic.

Is it really the end of search marketing as we know it?
The big factor which is keeping search marketing a game about inbound links and clean code is that Googles normal results when you are not logged in are not being manipulated by users comments and rankings adjustments… (Yet!) So the game hasnt changed, just the way users can bookmark their websites has.

How leverage this for your search marketing

1. Comment on your own website and your competitors. You never know what might happen in the future with the display of public comments and rankings adjustments.
2. What this space as it is a real game changer if more changes occur. The main reason is that it won’t be just all about inbound links it will also be about providing maximum value to web visitors so that they leave you positive comments.

Myths and Speculations Revealed
Are Results determined by users manipulated rankings in Google?
Not yet. But watch this space.

Although I have an alternative theory. I believe Google tracks to time between a user clicking different results on a search listing. Example, imagine if a browser goes to a webpage and clicks on result and goes to that webpage. If that website is full of spam and adsense they will immediately leave and go back and click another Google listing. Since this time is quite short I believe Google will score the first result lower and the second one higher over time. The reason for this is that it has a lower bounce rate and the relevancy of the result is better.

Suggestions, regardless of if this is true
Add tools and valuable content for your web visitors to your website. It will decrease your bounce rate and perhaps (??) increase your Google rankings. Regardless of the rankings it will definately improve your traffic numbers with more visitors revisiting and referring people to your site.

Are you Serious about getting to the top of Google?

Give me a call 02 9339 6747 for a confidential discussion about your website. When you call, Dana will answer and transfer you to my personal line. If Dana doesnt answer keep calling as she is very busy, she will get to you and get your call put through to me.

An evening where you can hang out with fellow young entrepreneurs, hear from awesome speakers who will inspire you and give you tips that will impact your business positively straight away and where you will learn more about the Young Entrepreneurs’ Stepping Up Program and how you can get involved.
The evening is being organised by young entrepreneur group The Frank Team & supported by the NSW Department of State &Regional Development and Baulkham Hills Shire Council.
And all of this for FREE!
Plus we will be revealing a new Frank Team “young entrepreneurs only” service.
When: Thursday 13th November. Where: Baulkham Hills Shire Council Time: 6.30pm start
RSVP: anna@frankteam.com.au asap to secure your seat
For more info contact Anna@FrankTeam.com.au

You’re Invited

Wanna come and hang out with other young entrepreneurs just like you?

Wanna hear from some awesome speakers who will inspire you AND give you tips that will impact your business positively straight away?

Wanna learn more about the next Young Entrepreneurs Stepping UP Program (YESUP) and how you can get involved?

You can do all of that at The Frank Team’s Young Entrepreneurs Evening. Here is the vital info….

When: Thursday 13th November – yep that is really soon!
Where: Function Room, Baulkham Hills Shire Council - 129 Showground Road Castle Hill
What time? Arrive in time for a 6.30pm start.

Who will you hear from?

Stew Nicholls – Founder of EcoCar Wash will tell us all about setting up systems for their very first franchise & how those systems have then allowed him to create a global organisation.
Fred Schebesta, FreestyleMedia & Andrew Tucker, Customware – will let us in on their secrets to getting through tough financial times. You know those times when the cashflow is super tight and you are just not sure how you are going to manage it all?! Yep, these guys have been through exactly that and come out the other side. Learn from their experiences.
Ben, Vanessa, Melissa & Denise, YESUP Graduates – will share with everyone their experiences of The Frank Team’s YESUP and how it has benefited their businesses.

Plus we will be revealing a new Frank Team “young entrepreneurs only” service.

All of the YESUP graduates will be there receiving their certificates and celebrating their achievements over the program.  There will be networking games to ensure you are getting around and meeting all of the amazing people in the room. Representatives from DSRD will also be there.

Parking: There is plenty of free parking at this venue. Food: Snacks & drinks provided.
Cost: FREE
RSVP & Payment: anna@frankteam.com.au Ph: (02) 99664333 by Monday 10th November

Marketing is War

At 6:30am on the 6th of June 1944 the allied army focused its armies and landed on the Axis controlled European mainland for what would become the turning point of World War 2. Your marketing war will intensify when the customers dry up and your targets remain. Michael Kiely always said, “Marketing is War” and your battle is going to intensify.

How to fight in a downturned market

Focus
When the allied army landed they didn’t just send troops to all different parts of Europe, they focused their armies and boarded one spot. They did this because they needed to create one location which they definitively owned and controlled. A disparate attack would have resulted in scattered results. Just like the allies, focus your marketing efforts on a tighter group of prospects and refrain from combat in marginal areas.

Top 3 areas to focus your marketing

1. Current customers – Upsell, Resell and Service your customers.
2. Prospects who have contacted you – Remarket to existing prospects and convert them.
3. 80 / 20 rule – Focus on the responsive markets and ease up on trying to conquer new difficult markets. Give yourself a reality check on who your core customers are and focus on these. The easy way to figure this out is to: Profile your customers to determine their lifetime value and figure out which group you have the most of. Usually 20% of your customers will be making you 80% of your profit. Focus on attracting more of these with your limited campaigns.

Top 7 online marketing tactics that are performing in this current market

I can appreciate having a positioning is important although when it comes to marketing it and gaining customers we can’t just muck around with branding campaigns in this market. Performance marketing is required – Reallocate budget to activities which deliver results.

• Search engine marketing – Quality customers searching for things you have.
• Reuse templates – Reuse campaign creative which has already performed well. Just change the images and text slightly to save costs on production. The creative will be refreshed in this process and will probably continue to perform.
• Distressed inventory – Why pay rack rate? Negotiate for performance buys as most media publishers will start to flounder in meeting their targets. They will start offering very cheap rates in a response. Hold off on your schedules and wait for the pressure to be applied, resist the lie that you will miss bookings as there will be less competition for the spots you wish to buy.
• Existing customer databases – Continue and engage in meaningful conversations with your prospects. Since you do not need to spend huge amounts of time planning and managing extra campaigns, make the communications you are doing better quality by investing more time in them.
• Affiliate marketing – Pay only when someone sends you a customer. Share the risk of your marketing challenge with the publisher. The affiliate marketing industry is one of the most underutilised resource in a marketers toolbox. Call up an expert and ask for a consultation about this marketing channel and get involved.

The ultimate question is would the price of media be the same price if you didn’t put your logo on it? I wouldn’t be paying for branding in this market, I would just be paying to acquire a select focused set of customers.

How to win the war?

If you are cashed up you can try to win the war by buying your competitors out if they are struggling. The other alternative is to snatch market share from competitors with aggressive marketing in their niches. Buying them out is faster, marketing in their niches is cheaper.

I subscribe to a number of eNewsletters. A number of them demonstrate nicely that email marketing, while it seems straightforward, does require a certain level of understanding and skill (Howards Storage World being a case in point).

Just as driving a car may seem like a straight forward concept you still need to understand all the bits that actually go into driving.

Email marketing is a bit like driving a car – it may sound like an easy concept:

• Throw together some messages or offers (hands on steering wheel)
• Blast it out to the audience (keep your foot down)

But it’s actually more like:

• Strategically craft the message, call to action etc (hands at 10 and 2, keep an eye on what’s happening around you).

• Carefully select the audience (right foot accelerator and brake).

• Understand the limitations of your audience’s inbox (left foot clutch, left hand gear stick: start in first, accelerate into second, third, fourth etc).

• Make sure your email message and design adheres to relevant email standards, regulations and best practices (know the road rules and road etiquette – stop at the stop sign, merge like a zip, give someone a wave if they let you cut in).

• Test, test and test it on different email clients, with different preview pane settings etc (practise driving on some back roads before getting on the highway).

• Be aware of the fact that most of your subscribers will never see your email the way you do (assume most other drivers are out to kill you – thanks for that advice Mum).

• Monitor and track responses, fine tune your campaign (keep an eye on the dash so you don’t run out of fuel or oil or water or get a speeding fine).

The upshot?

Everyone starts out with L Plates, there’s no shame in that – but you really need an experienced driver guiding you through the first stage of getting your licence.

Email marketing is similar – you’ll have a much better success rate if you have access to someone who knows (and I mean really knows, not just thinks they know) the full capabilities and limitations of email marketing and how that fits into your overall marketing strategy.

I love Howards Storage world… a place for everything and everything in its
place. So, I signed up to their eNewsletter recently.

Therefore, it was with some excitement to see in my Inbox:

From: Howards Storage World

Subject: Spring Clean

Ignoring all of my other important emails, I clicked on this to bring the
message up in my preview pane (I use Outlook 2007 with my preview pane at the
bottom).

This is what I saw…

Frowning slightly at the fact that there was nothing of interest in the preview
pane and the it looked out of whack, I persevered and scrolled down to see what
I could see…

Not much more.

Now, getting a tad bit frustrated I decided to open it anyway just to check it
out…

Yes, that’s right about 1/3 of the email was about nothing – just images and
poorly aligned “stuff”.

You may ask, why is this a problem?

1. It’s generally accepted that around 40% of subscribers will have imagesturned off or their email clients don’t render images particularly well (one source says this is more like 65%). This means the email could have looked much worse to about 40% of Howards Storage World subscribers. They would have seen nasty red crosses for 1/3 of the email.
2. Moreover, if some of their audience has a preview pane to the right, it would have looked BLANK.
3. If someone without a wide screen had opened it, again it would have looked BLANK.
4. In addition, I had to scroll down TWICE to actually get to the offer – the only reason I persevered and didn’t delete it, is because I couldn’t believe they’d done this.
5. Heaven help them if a sizable portion of their audience gets their email on a handheld device…

The upshot:

1. Don’t assume that just because your email looks good in your Inbox when you test it then it will look the same for your subscribers.
2. Be aware of email design standards to allow for various email client settings (check out the email standards project: http://www.email-standards.org/).
3. Test your email across different email clients and with different settings before sending.
4. Don’t rely too heavily on images to tell your story.
5. Make sure your subscribers don’t have to go hunting for the offer – get it in front of them early on, not everyone reads to the bottom of an email.

Guest Writer Angela Schuster owns and runs Schuster Consulting Group www.schusterconsulting.com.au

If you don’t know who Gary halbert was he was a guru copywriter and self promoter and a pioneer of the direct marketing business. You can read his insightful newsletters that he posted for free at his website still.

The question:

Is this where Gary Halbert lived?

Checkout this google maps location from his letter

I will be away for 2 weeks getting married.

For more details see www.JessicaAndFred.com

I will return with new and invigorating ideas to supercharge your online marketing.

For many websites the Christmas/New Year period is a quiet time of year and most people managing them look back at how well they did in the last year.

Take advantage of this by looking forward. Try to predict upcoming trends for the new year and use these trends to build related content to attract visitors to your website.

For example the Simpsons movie was a big release in 2007.

As you can see above there were several important events for search trends about the Simpsons movie (source: Google Trends):

• A: First newspaper previews of the movie
• E: Movie released to theatres worldwide
• F: DVD released for sale

If you had a website with lots of movie related content the way to attract lots of visitors to your site would have been to be the first to publish a really indepth article about the Simpsons Movie, ideally several months before event A (newspaper previews).

Even if your article is mostly rumour and innuendo if it has:

• Plenty of often updated text content
• Using targeted keywords
• Images of Simpsons characters with proper alt attributes etc

Than being first to publish will mean your page will already be ranking well and be “reputable” to search engines by the time event A occurs and will still rank well compared to the big movie review sites when the movie and subsequent DVD’s are released.

Have you had success using Google Trends for content ideas?

On the 27th of July at 7:03am, Fred Schebesta gave Jessica Kiely this website.

And the answer was a “Yes”.

P.S. Going on a 3 week holiday with Jessica now. See you all back soon!

Update: The wedding festival website is live!

Give me some more Online marketing gold!

I have written a few new articles and they are on other websites right now. You can find them below:

Search Week » Blog Archive » Do those little blue ads down the right hand side work?:
“Google search marketing it very alluring when you first look at it but if you jump straight in people normally experience some of the following problems…

SmartCompany.com.au Win new online customers, influence existing visitors:
Do you feel disappointed when you look at your website stats and see that 5000 visitors looked at one page, then exited? ..