29 Aug 2006
Awe the lines are starting to blur and I like it. Using public relations is a critical tactic in generating awareness for many businesses, and online businesses should be no different. The irony is traditional PR tactics (media relations, ed cal tracking, by-lined articles, speaking opportunities) to drive awareness in the main stream media (MSM), are as foreign to an online business as RSS feeds and blogs are to a majority of offline businesses. Steven Van Yoder’s recent post titled “Why Online Businesses Should Embrace PR” provides excellent insights to using PR to drive traffic. To quote Steven, “They read newspapers, magazines and listen to the radio. To reach your market niche comprehensively, you need to explore ways to reach your prospects beyond the Internet. It will help you drive traffic to your web site.” We agree. Our experience has been that offline MSM coverage drives a tremendous amount of traffic…
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29 Aug 2006
One of the more common SEO problems we see with our client’s websites is that they target the same keyword phrase on multiple pages. Many people think that the more a keyword in placed on a website, the better the organic search results – wrong. SEOmoz recently referred to this as “Keyword Self-Cannibalization”, an appropriate term I think. They broke down 3 major issues with targeting the same keyword phrase on multiple pages: Forces the search engines to choose which page is the most “authoritative” or relevant to that subject on your site. Creates additional competition for rankings – you’re vying against yourself for position in the SERPs. Dilutes the potential ranking ability of a single phrase by spreading link power, keyword targeting, and anchor text on your site across multiple pages. Speaking of keywords, an interesting new service called HitTail was recently brought to my attention. This free service (for low…
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25 Aug 2006
I must say I was impressed to find that Constant Contactemploys a development director whose sole job is to travel around and offer free training on how to use the Constant Contact service and general strategies on how to run a successful email marketing campaign. I recently attended a one such seminar here in Boulder and found it to be quite informative. Overall the Constant Contact interface is easy to use and more intuitive compared to some other email services such as Aweber. They currently have 70k customers and are growing rapidly so they must be doing something right. Here are some interesting stats thrown out at the seminar: – It is 6-7 times more expensive to gain a customer than to retain a customer. – On average it takes 7 customer touches before a sale occurs. – The average email user receives 361 emails per week and they perceive 70%…
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25 Aug 2006
Recently I attended a free Constant Contact seminar here in boulder and here are some of my notes from the Creating a Winning Strategy in email marketing session: 1. Building your list – Put a subscribe button or link EVERYWHERE and give an incentive to subscribe. 2. Define your objective (motivate a purchase, enhance brand awareness etc…), write it out, and revisit while creating your HTML email. 3. Content Creation – Your content should be digestible, relevant, prompt readers to open and valuable enough for them to save. Make readers feel like they are part of a community, and special for opening your newsletter. 4. Call to Action – What you want the consumer or reader to do, why they should do it, and how to take the next step. Provide the same call to action in 3 different places in each email. Be sure to include a forward to a…
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