Teknowerkz Blog

August 10, 2010

July 28, 2010

Two Tip’s for Selecting a Reputable Marketing Vendor

Filed under: Bing,Google,Marketing,Search Engine,Yahoo! — Tom Kingsley @ 12:45 pm

Last month we discussed How Well Do You Know Your Marketing Vendor. This month we will briefly focus selecting a reputable marketing vendor.

1. Do your homework and ask for a reference list of companies that shows the company soliciting your business actually has clients. If they refuse walk away. No reputable company would refuse the opportunity to brag about how good their service is.

2. Check the reference list. This means make contact with the referenced companies to see how good the relationship is. Is the reference currently using the soliciting company? If not currently, will they use them again in the future? This is an opportunity to learn how your relationship will most likely be with the soliciting company. Also, do not take it personally if the reference company does not have time to take a phone call on the spur of the moment. After all they are running a business, but who knows, play your cards right, and you might just make a new business contact.

I know these two tips are rudimentary, but there are an awful lot of people working for companies and small businesses out there who really do not understand basic legalities and logistics of marketing. They simply think that they can send their information out to whomever, whenever, and however they want, when in reality this is simply not true. There are laws that must marketers must abide by and having the right company telling the world about your product, place, or service can make a difference in your company’s future.

When you are ready, the next step is to figure out what marketing medium you will use to promote your message; perhaps it will be a combination.

Examples of marketing vendor types:

Traditional:

Direct Mail
Billboard
Television
Terrestrial and Satellite Radio

Interactive Technology:

Digital Television
Mobile Phone
Email
Keyword
Banner

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June 28, 2010

How Well Do You Know Your Marketing Vendor

Filed under: Bing,Google,Marketing,Search Engine,Yahoo! — Tom Kingsley @ 12:37 pm

A couple weeks back a client contacted me with a question about a email communication they received from a company stating they can help increase their online visibility and so one. I will refer to as the “Bad Company” not because of competition – I welcome it, but because they use unethical marketing tactics to market their clients, and for this reason, I am not stating their name.

We have all received the emails. Guaranteed Number 1 positing on top search engines. My advice is to simply walk away. Absolutely nobody can guarantee positioning or listing on Google or any other engine for that matter.

Sure Bad Company is telling you can do paid advertisements and be guaranteed positioning – sort of yes, but this is not really true. I know, logically thinking if you outbid everyone you will own the top position. Quick history lesson; It started out this way, but quickly changed because it did not generate enough revenue for the search engines because the small companies could not compete with the big corporations who has lots of money for marketing.

Google has many metrics that is uses to make a determination regarding your paid advertisement positing. Your advertisement and website content and speed actually affects the rate that you pay and the positing. This is the high level of it – there are dozens of factors that Google uses to make a determination on ad rates. So long story short, when a company like the Bad Company makes the promise of position – it really is a company who is participating in scamming everyone, the new customer who pays for illegal and unethical services that never really materialize and the search engine.

The end result for their client is a damaged reputation and a potential lawsuit for not following marketing guidelines set fourth by the federal government, for example, the CAN-SPAM Act, and not to mention also the serious possibility of being blacklisted on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. How well do you thing your website perform when it does not show up anymore? The equation I use is: blacklisted website + no visibility + no customers = no revenue. Companies like Bad Company do not care. They simply set up a new hosting account under a new name with a new IP Address and simply keep looking for new potential marks to swindle money from.

Next Month I will tell you Two Tip’s for Selecting a Reputable Marketing Vendor

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May 10, 2010

Deep Web Search Engine

Filed under: Deep Web,Statistics — Tom Kingsley @ 11:10 pm

The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet it has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines. Here is a way to search for people and companies using the deep web engine called PIPL

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April 3, 2010

Website Analytics – Measuring Website Success

Filed under: Analytics,Marketing,Search Engine — Tom Kingsley @ 3:29 am

Every now and then we must revisit the basics. In this case, I am doing this for the people who are interested in learning a little about website analytics. Please note, this information is fundamental; if you are interested in gaining a deeper understanding, please contact us directly.

First, ask yourself, do you know how many visitors are coming to your website each month? Do you know how they get there? How many different pages they looked at? Did they make a purchase? If not, where did you lose them? These are just a few basic questions that your online marketer should be able to answer. More importantly, they should be communicating this information and much more along with recommendations on how to improve your online business objectives.

Why Are Analytics Important?
While analytics collect and quantify user activity, they provide detailed information as to how well the website is functioning. The data that is collected provides marketers the means to make educated decisions to help the business achieve the intended objective of the website.

For this article, I broke Analytics down into four fundamental categories and sub-categories.

Website Metrics
- Visits
- Unique Visits
- Bounce Rate
- Top URLs
- Referring Sites
- Exit Page

Geographic Data
- What is Geographic data?

Demographics
- What are demographics?

Financial Data
- Number of Sales
- Average Sale
- Conversion
- Cost Per Action (CPA
- Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
- Return On Investment (ROI)

Website Metrics

Visits
The number of visits your site receives is the most basic measure of how effectively you promote your site.

Note:
This metric is most often confused with “Hits.” I am sure you heard someone say they had 1 million hits on their website yesterday, or last month. This may be true, but it is far less impressive than visits, or unique visits and here is why.

“Hits” refer to the “number of files downloaded”. Every time you visit a website you are downloading files to your local computer in the form of webpage’s, buttons, images, and so on. Look at the 3 examples and learn how this works.

Example 1:
A blank webpage counts as 1 hit.

Example 2:
A webpage with 1 image counts as 2 hits.

The webpage generates 1 hit, and the image generates 1 hit for a total of 2 hits.

1 webpage + 1 image = 2 hits

Example 3:
A webpage with 44 thumbnail images and 5 buttons will count as 50 hits

The page generates 1 hit, the 44 thumbnails generate 44 hits, and the 5 buttons generate 5 hits for a total of 50 hits.

1 webpage + 44 thumbnail images + 5 buttons = 50 hits

Now that you understand what a “Hit” is, you can imagine how quickly they ad up because Hits are generated by every webpage. Now 1 million Hits is not so impressive after all.

So what is the importance of a hit?
Hits are for geeks, and since I have a background in network engineering this stuff makes sense to me. This is it in a nutshell: A well-tuned cache can help your backend during peak times and this coincides with load balancing.

Unique Visits
How many people came to your site? This is not to be confused with Visits. (See visits for definition)

Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.

Top URLs
The TOP URLs are the most commonly viewed pages on your site. A high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it. A high Time on Page may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors.

Referring Sites
Referring sites show how referred people from other sites compare to the “average” visitor to your website?

Observing this report on a monthly basis can help identify trends in your web site’s referrals from other domains.

NOTE:
Traffic Sources referrals are tracked only when a user’s browser allows us to, therefore the true number of referrals from these domains may actually be higher than what is reported.

Exit Page
Exit pages simply show what pages people were on when the left the website. There are many reasons why people leave websites. For example, a large number of exits from a non-goal page (from a funnel page) may indicate that the consumer completed the visit, or the page is confusing, or the visitor simply did not find enough relevant information, or worse, it generates user errors.

Geographic Data
Geographic data looks at the origins of website traffic. This can be looked in a number of ways like a continental view of drilling down to the city for a more detailed view.

Demographics
Demographics are the statistical characteristics of human populations (gender, age, income, ethnicity and educational attainment) used especially to identify markets

Financial Data
Number of Sales
This is simply the number of sales that were produced for a period of time.

Example:
If you had two visits on your website and one person made a purchase, this would be one sale.

Average Sale
This is the average value of your online sales.

Calculation:
Total Sales Value / Total Number of Sales = Average Sale

Conversion
This is the number of people who visit your website and take action. This is usually associated with visitors making purchases, but it can also be associated with other actions that you want to track.

Calculation:
Number of Sales / Visits = Conversion

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
CPA is average cost of acquiring leads or customers.

Calculation:
Ad Cost / Number of Sales = CPA

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS represents the dollars earned per dollars spent on the corresponding advertising.

Calculation:
Ad Profit / Ad Spend = ROAS

Return On Investment (ROI)
ROI is the percentage yield from an investment.

Calculation:
(Revenue – Ad Cost) / Ad Cost = ROI

For more information please contact us.

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March 23, 2010

Color Marketing, What the Hues Mean – Psychologically Speaking

Filed under: Color Marketing,Marketing — Tom Kingsley @ 1:51 am

The human eye is estimated to see between one million and ten million colors (depending on your reference). I must also note that the perception of color varies from one person to another, therefore there is no single number that is true for everyone. In addition, color is often mistaken as a property of light when it is actually a property of the brain when we are talking about how it affects humans psychologically. Knowing this allows us to understand that the human brain uses emotion to process color. Certain colors create a calming effect like soft pink and soft blue (both of which are in the pastel family) while other colors such as red influence emotions in other ways like excitement. For this reason, color is studied for the purpose of marketing products and services. Color is simply another tool to help generate revenue by grabbing ones attention visually.

Fact:
The human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color and for this reason green is used for night vision goggles.

What do the colors mean?

Black
Black is the color of authority, power, and strength. It is a high-contrast color and can evoke strong emotions.

White
Whit implies sophistication or formality (wedding dresses, doctors in white coats). It is used for high-end price points, especially when tone on tone is presented.

Red
Red draws attention and is associated with movement and excitement. It is the color of energy. Blue-based reds like “raspberry” are used for more expensive products. Yellow-based reds like “tomato red” are used to downplay pricing.

Blue
Implies confidence and safety. This is a great for the financial and medical businesses.

Green
Green is used to convey opportunity and optimism.

Yellow
This is the first color the eye sees when used with a dark color like black. It is used for high-contrast and becomes more powerful and more easily read. It is also cheerful color that is associated with happiness and good times, but yellow can be quickly overpowering if over-used.

Orange
Used to play up affordability. It is also associated with ambition.

Purple
Associated with wealth and prosperity. This color stimulates the brain activity used in problem solving.

The bottom line:
Color is a powerful tool and knowing how to use it makes it an even more powerful tool. When used correctly, it can have a dramatic impact on the perception of products and services and can ultimately lead to increased revenue.

Next time you decide to market your product or service via eblast, website, pay-per-click, banner advertisement or any traditional method; choose your colors wisely and remember, different colors means different things around world. For example, in the United States black can be associated with mourning while brown can be associated with mourning in India. It is all about using color intelligently.

For more information please contact us.

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February 6, 2010

January 23, 2010

Google and People’s Republic of China | Chinese Internet Censorshiop

Filed under: Bing,Google,Marketing,Search Engine,Statistics,Yahoo! — Tom Kingsley @ 2:06 am

Google China is choosing to not censor search results in favor of the democratic ideal of free speech. This raises the question, is this really a good business decision?

According to Internet World Stats, China has 738,257,230 internet users which accounts for 42.6% of global users, while Europe follows with 418,029,796 Internet users (24.1% globally), and finally North America appears with 252,908,000 Internet users (14.6% globally). It is hard to argue that this must be a bad decision when looking at the internet population numbers.

To get the whole picture, we need to dig deeper. The United States has ranked number one during the past two years for conducted searches with 22.7 million searches in December of 2009 alone, while China sustained a number two position with 13.3 million searches. To dig even further, December 2009 generated 131 billion global searches, which equates into a 46 percent increase in global search activity from the same time the previous year. On an annual scale, this equates into about 1.5 trillion conducted searches.

When looking at the individual search engines to see who is producing, the numbers really start to pinpoint who is doing what. Google handled 67 percent of global search while Yahoo! handled 7 percent, Baidu handled 5.2 percent, and Bing handled 2.9 percent. Focusing on Google and Baidu: Google’s Asian search market share increased 4.3 percent to 35.6 percent and Baidu’s Asian market share dropped 10.7 percent to 58.6 percent during the past three months.

The final result is that the search marketing industry is still rapidly changing. On an international basis, there are many cultural and legal differences to consider. We simply cannot take our Western ways of thinking and impose them onto other countries simply because we think our way is the correct way just because because we disagree with the differences in their society. Part of being a good international diplomat for any business is learning to understand the cultural differences, to make the most of the relationship at hand. In time, the parties can learn about each other and take small steps to open up. We must keep in mind that the Unites States is only 234 years old (measuring from Declaration of Independence, 1776) and China has over 5,000 years of written history and only 61 years of history being the Peoples Republic of China. It will take time to cultivate a more open relationship with China, but the internet is definitely the vehicle that is most likely to make it happen.

The bottom line is that if you want to run a successful international marketing campaign, perhaps it is best to learn to play by the rules of the neighborhood in which the game is being played and focus on the objective of doing business. For example, when marketing in China, one merely needs to have a domain registered and hosting in China. At this point we can take the same proactive action with the Asian search engines just as we would with any other country. The focus is your business and it’s revenue stream.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

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December 8, 2009

Number of People Who Use The Internet

Filed under: Marketing,Statistics — Tom Kingsley @ 8:13 pm

If you ever had a doubt regarding the potential of the Internet, then take a hard look at these numbers that were just published. The final estimate represents data collected up to September 30, 2009 by Internet World Stats. These numbers show that approximately one in every four people in the world (25.6%), are Internet users.

World Internet Statistics
Country	Internet Users	Penetration (% Population)	Growth 2000-2009
Africa	67,371,700	6.8%	1392.4%
Asia	738,257,230	19.4%	545.9%
Europe	418,029,796	52.0%	297.8%
Middle East	57,425,046	28.3%	1648.2%
North America	252,908,000	74.2%	134.0%
Latin America	179,031,479	30.5%	890.8%
Oceania/Australia	20,970,490	60.4%	175.2%
World Totals	1,733,993,741	25.6%	380.3%

I have said time and time again “The Internet is the most cost effective vehicle for advertising in comparison to traditional advertising models such as radio, television, and print” and I stand by my statement. However, I must point out that I am a believer that a company should communicate to their audience on a variety of marketing channels if the budget permits.

The bottom line of any marketing initiative comes down to three things: Budget, Creativity, and Experience. There are ways to get a little free publicity but the ugly truth about advertising is that it cost money and other times it costs lots of money. It simply depends on the marketing channel, time, and location that determine the cost of the physical advertisement. However, another a factor called Experience plays a key role in the cost of advertising that is above and beyond “marketing channels, time, and location”. This is because an experienced marketer can better target the audience that will produce more of the desired results that a business is looking for “more customers that generate more revenue at a lower cost per acquisition”.

What to take home:

Your marketer should:

Conduct market research to better understand the client’s needs and audience.
Understand the significance of technologies and propose the best approach(s) with the client’s interest in mind and not what will generate the most revenue for the advertising agency. It’s called developing a long term relationship.
Utilize standardized metrics to establish the success of a campaign.
Communicate the bottom line otherwise known as Profit & Loss and leave the fluff out.

For more information please contact us.

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November 5, 2009

Email / Eblast Marketing Statistics

Filed under: Bing,Email - eCRM,Google,Marketing,Statistics,Yahoo! — Tom Kingsley @ 2:34 pm

The next time you want to do a little email marketing, you might want to ask your marketing company about bout a few things beyond “delivery and open rates” and here’s why. Your marketing company should be taking the time to get to know your business and more importantly, getting to know your clientele and what makes them “purchase” your services; after all your hiring experts to help you make more money, right?

For starters does your marketing company know the toughest inboxes to reach? If not, my graph below will show you.

Non-delivery Rates by ISP in the United States

Non-delivery Rates by ISP

Source: ReturnPath, Deliverability Benchmark Report, July 2009

Percentage of Non-delivery Rates in the United States by ISP

Cox 8%

USA.net 11%

RoadRunner 12%

BellSouth (AT&T) 14%

NetZero 14%

Yahoo! 15%

AOL 16%

Comcast 17%

MSN / Bing 20%

Hotmail 20%

Gmail 23%

Here are three fundamental things to always keep in mind.

1. Know Your Cliental

You have lots of data but you must make it work for you in order to be successful. Every time you make contact with a client you must take the opportunity to learn a little more about them so you can continually refine your future messages to create more proactive and personalized interactions in the future. When you think about it, there really might be a reason to send an eblast targeting a specific country, state, zip code, age, and education or income level. Remember that demographics can be sliced and diced hundreds of ways. You are simply relying upon the experience of your marketer. Less experience will most likely mean more mistakes that equates into costing you money because you are spending money marketing to an audience that might fit your demographics are even care about your products or services.

2. A/B Slit Testing

This allows you to increase conversion rates, challenge assumptions, and solve problems.

How does it work?

You take a database of people that you want to send information to and split them into two groups: Group A and Group B. Then you send each group a message that is slightly different from the other so that you can see which message creates a more positive reaction. When done on a regular basis, this will tell you how to better communicate with your customers and more importantly, what you need to do to get them to make additional purchases.

3. Manage Relevance

When sending email to clients, prioritize the information and be careful that you don’t inundate your customers with insignificant communication. Make sure it serves a real purpose.

For more information contact Teknowerkz, were the people gets it and the same people who will put this to work for you.

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