Internet Marketing

No matter what sort of business you run or the size of your profile, chances are that at some point it will be mentioned on the web.

When it is, will it be good or bad? Wouldn't it be great if you knew what people were saying immediately so that you could respond either way?

Google Alerts lets you monitor specific keywords in the Google search engine, and it will send you an email every day (or however often you choose) with links to new pages that match your search phrases.

This can be useful for people doing research, following a breaking news story or who are simply interested in a particular topic. But another key reason to set up an alert is to monitor your brand.

Recently a friend asked me to look at a website he's creating for a church organisation he's part of.

My friend is not a website designer by trade but he's done a fairly good job with the site. There were a few things I told him to change, but I went easy on him for the most part. One thing I was adamant he remove is the 'search the web using Google' box he had place in the header on the front page.

'But if I put it on there people will bookmark this page and use it regularly,' he said.

No, they won't.

People will use google.com if they want to search using Google. Why would you ever go to a site other than a search engine to perform a search?

If you want people to visit your website you need to offer them something unique, something they can't get elsewhere. It doesn't have to be complicated but it should be information or a service that people want.

The Google team are always introducing new features to their products, and the latest to receive major upgrades is Google Analytics, the powerful statistics tool that is used to track visitors to your website.

Yesterday Google announced seven new features in Analytics, some are improvements to existing features like goals while others allow new analysis like tracking mobile marketing.

The Announcement from Google

Read on to read the announcement from the Google team and then sign in to your account to try these features.

Expanded Goals and New Engagement Goals

You can now track even more conversions by creating up to 20 goals per profile. Measure user engagement and branding success on your site with Time on Site and Pages per Visit goals. Set up your first Engagement goal in minutes.

 ... read more »

Choc Chip recently completed a major website design and online marketing campaign for www.visitgreatoceanroad.org.au using the Drupal CMS (Content Management System).

GOT (Geelong Otway Tourism) contracted us to build the new website to provide tourism information and represent the tourism association members by giving them prominent pages on the site.

Site Build

As well as an attractive, dynamic design, this site includes a considered navigation structure and content targeted to attract site visitors and lead them to the member pages.

The challenge in building this site was to incorporate data for the tourism association members from two different external sources.

Google Maps results often appear above other listings for a location-based search in Google, so having your website shown on the map can give you a significant advantage over the other businesses that are only shown in the normal organic results.

So how do you get your business to appear in the Google Maps?

There are three basic actions you need to perform to get your listing to appear in Google Maps:

One of the most exciting things that your business website can do is increase the recognition and perception of your brand.

Branding

As a small to medium business, increasing your brand's fame is often one purpose among many in the marketing and advertising that you do both online and in other media.

"Branding" means making sure that people hear about your business in a consistent, positive way, and connect it with solutions or emotions that relate to your product or service.

This is very important for ongoing recognition and sales, so even if you are advertising a specific product or offer you should think about the lasting impression that your ad will leave with the viewer. Use every ad or public interaction to produce a positive impression or memory.

Email is a cheap way to reach large numbers of people. We suggest that every business should have an email list that they send to regularly as part of their online marketing strategy.

But when does sending email become spam?

Spam is essentially unwanted email. If you make sure your readers are recieving quality content, know who you are and have the opportunity to unsubscribe if they want to, then there will rarely be any problems.

The Spam Act 2003

In Australia the Spam Act 2003 makes it illegal to contact anyone by email without their prior consent - which means that any email you send to someone without asking them first could be considered a breach if interpreted strictly.

This article continues on from the first in this series where we learnt that the goal of your website is the most important factor in deciding how it will function and what it will look like.

One possible purpose for an online presence that is often overlooked by small businesses is the way in which having a website can save you money.

Think about banks for a perfect example.

Banks used to employ lots of staff to serve customers face-to-face, whereas now the majority of banking payments and transactions take place over the web using a secure banking site.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was orating in the town square long before he could check his email or tweet his thoughts, but what he understood about communication is still relevant today.

Aristotle taught that to be an effective communicator we need three attributes, which he named ethos, pathos and logia.

Ethos

Ethos means something like 'credibility' and is the Latin root for our word 'Ethical'. Aristotle taught that we must have a credible reputation so that people will listen to what we have to say. Become an authority on a subject, write about it and conduct yourself professionally both online and face to face. Ethos is yours.

I've said before that content is the most important thing to have on your website. Content is still King on the internet as long as it meets the desires of a new generation of readers. With good content you can attract visitors and keep them coming back.

So what sort of content should you have, and how can it work best for you?

To answer this question we need to think partly about the target audience your site is aimed at.

I'm looking here at internet users who have not heard of you before, people who come across your site as the result of a search or link, but who have no relationship with you already. One way we can think about these users is by identifying them as being in one of three categories based on their needs and behaviour: hunters, browsers and grazers.

I recently learned about social objects by following a link a friend sent me to Hugh MacLeod's 'gapingvoid' blog. The concept of these objects has become popular in marketing circles as businesses continue to grapple with social media and how to use it.

While I was studying I worked early mornings at a local bakery. I didn't have a lot in common with the bakers but I made a point of finding out who had won the football on the weekend so that I could talk about it with them. I'd never been interested in footy before, but for the two or three seasons that I worked there I enjoyed following it purely for the social aspect.

In this interaction, football acts as a social object. It's something that we talked about and shared with each other. It could have been anything, but the bakers liked football so I did too.

In the first part of this series I pointed out that the goal of your website is the most important principle to consider right from the start of your website project.

One of the most obvious purposes for your business website is to make sales.

The most classic sales site is a simple online store, an eCommerce website that sells products like books, computers or any other simple products.

Your website's place in your overall marketing is important, and I was reminded of this by an email I received recently from Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing.

While a website can be a very valuable and low-cost form of marketing, it is not a magic bullet. It requires planning, careful content creation and ongoing promotion through other media channels if it is to truly succeed.

A website is sometimes seen by business owners as a static asset rather than what it truly is: a tool that needs to be used and cared for to be most effective.

Here's the checklist that Levinson prepared to help you create a winning website. Consider the eight steps and ask yourself if you've paid enough attention to all eight.

If you're using video on YouTube to promote yourself, you need to know who is watching your videos. YouTube Insight is a tool that shows you statistics on when your video was viewed as well as demographic data on viewers, including location, age and gender.

Here's a video with an introduction by YouTube product manager Tracy Chan:

YouTube is the 4th largest web property on the internet and the number of searches performed on it is second only to Google. It attracts hundreds of millions of users a month, and 15 hours of new videos are uploaded every minute.

With that potential reach it's no wonder that many businesses large and small are trying their hand at reaching this audience. YouTube Product Manager Matt Liu recently shared some tips for using YouTube effectively at the Search Marketing Expo in the US.

Improve your ranking

Liu encourages users to "Take advantage of what YouTube has to offer" but admits that it can be difficult to get your video noticed amid the mass of new offerings uploaded every day. Some simple things that can improve your rankings include:

Your website can be one of your best assets but let's face it - for lots of people the money they spend on their website is wasted.

A friend of mine - let's call her Carol - is a classic example. She runs a furniture business. She told me, 'We got a website a few months ago, but it hasn't done anything for our sales.'

Her business primarily advertises though brochures and the local newspaper. Each ad includes their website address, but a visit to the site shows that it focuses more on the business than the products, provides very little useful information and doesn't engage customers. It's got some photos of bedroom suites and table settings, but Carol says most of those are out of date anyway.

What's the problem with this picture?

Answering a question this morning about how Google Analytics helps your website made me think about how important it is to target your perfect customers.

It's a fairly basic marketing principle: to create a persona of your ideal customer and then target your marketing to that person. It helps with all sorts of creative decisions, from content to colours, to think about what would appeal most to your ideal customer.

  Amid the doom and gloom talk of the current financial environment it is important that small businesses use their resources as carefully as possible. Follow these tips to evaluate your current site and make any improvements needed. With a professional website you'll attract more customers and from there more of them will make purchases or contact you - providing you an important competitive edge.

1. Clearly show people what you do

When a potential customer views your page it should be quick and easy for them to see what your company does. This means having a single, succinct phrase or short sentence as the main headline on your home page, with some brief, clear dot points and directions included below if necessary.

So, you've got Google Analytics installed on your website and you've figured your way around the interface as shown in one of my previous posts.

You can now produce reports and see lots of detailed statistics about who your website viewers are and what they're doing on your site. Great!

But what do all those statistics actually mean?

Sometimes Google Analytics' abundance of information can be a little overwhelming, and it's hard to know what figures are important and what's good or bad - especially if you've never run a website analysis like this before.

This video is part of a series produced by the Analytics team at Google, and it guides you through what the different statistics are and what they mean.

Google Analytics is a piece of software that tracks visitors to your website and then tells you about them.

It records an amazing array of data, including where the people are coming from, how long they stay on your site and which pages are the most popular. It also includes tools to drill down through the data in a variety of ways, so you can see detailed reports on specific keywords, visitors or cross-reference other demographic data.

Although Google Analytics is made by the same company as Google search it's a totally different product, so don't be confused by the name. It gets its data about your website using a small piece of code embedded on your pages that reports back to your analytics account, it doesn't actually track anything using Google search.

One of our clients Carl Ahlers from Prof Bunsen Science has recently used YouTube to promote one of his science toys, resulting in sales from across the globe.

Video is an exciting medium that is becoming one of the most popular communication tools on the web today, and YouTube and other video sharing sites like it allow the 'viral effect' to push your video in front of thousands, perhaps millions, of eyes.

Here's Carl's recent experience followed by four tips to help you build your own video content.

Over the last two years we have become increasingly involved in Internet Marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) as part of our follow-up service to web design clients. Often building a website isn't enough - once up and running, the site needs to be found by customers in order to perform correctly.

We have recently launched this service under its own banner, calling it 'Webmojo'. If you'd like your website to perform better for your business or if you'd like to know more about SEO and Internet Marketing, Webmojo is a great place to start.

There's three main ways a website can be found by potential customers: