Marketing – Page 65

If You’re Marketing On Facebook, You Should Know This…

I confess, I was a little reluctant to write this post…

…because I’ve been somewhat sceptical of social media as a marketing channel.

And to be blunt, that scepticism has not been completely justified.

Social media can be a very effective marketing medium…

…when used correctly in the right business context.

But, it’s not necessarily the right thing for every business…

…and it’s certainly no panacea that’s magically going to make all your business problems go away.

There’s no doubt that Facebook has proved to be highly successful and is a dominant force in the social media arena.

To the extent that some marketers have suggested that you could run your business entirely from a Facebook fan page.

Big mistake in my view.

The most dangerous number in marketing is…

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Marketing And The Holy Groupon

Gee, is there any marketing problem that a Groupon promotion can’t solve?!?

As always, Tom Fishburne provides a light-hearted and thought-provoking insight into an aspect of contemporary marketing with his post “holy groupon”.

Here’s my take on how Groupon and it’s numerous competitors (I notice Google has a coupon program in beta right now) fit into your marketing mix, if at all…

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Better Website Conversion Tips – Part 6

Better Conversion Tip #6 – Use Google Analytics

Google offers a free conversion and traffic tracking tool that you should take advantage of, if you aren’t already. The tracking tool is comprised of a bit of Javascript code that you put at the bottom of your landing and “thank you” pages—really any page on your site you want metrics for. Now whenever someone lands on your site and orders your product, Google will track those conversions for you for free.

But Google Analytics goes way beyond simple conversion tracking. With it you can discover the answers to such questions as “what percent of my visitors read my privacy policy before ordering?”

Or “Of those who read my terms and conditions, what’s the spread between those who end up buying versus abandoning?”

One caveat: Google doesn’t update its stats in real time, but the tool is perfectly useful for checking your metrics with the last day or even from a few hours ago.

There’s much more that Google Analytics can do for you, so rather than repeat their well-written content and “how to” instructions, I recommend you read up on the latest version of Analytics and get started here:

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Looking Ahead – Marketing Calendar July 2011

Whoa…half of the year is almost gone…

…as I am sharply reminded by preparing this look ahead at upcoming events in July 2011.

Events, occasions and anniversaries, of course, that astute marketers can use as the basis for a campaign or promotion,

Starting with Australia…

…this is a pretty lean month.

It’s the start of the new financial year.

Also the start of the second half of the calendar year. I’ve used this as a reason to encourage people to review their goals, revisit plans and recommit.

It’s also the dead of winter.

Outside of that, you’ll need to rely on local events, company specific occasions or more off-beat anniversaries (see below for more ideas in that area).

In the wider world…

…in the northern hemisphere it’s summer, so scope for appropriate seasonal promotions.

In the USA, July 4 is Independence Day.

Other occasions to note…

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Better Website Conversion Tips – Part 5

Better Conversion Tip #5 – Create Redirect Links

If you’re promoting a product on your site, and your site is a database-driven shopping cart e-commerce system, then you probably have links like the following for each product page:

http://www.mysite.com/store/products.php?id=28475&desc=product%20description%20here&cat=980&refer=477840

Often times when sending a link out like that in an email, it gets chopped up. Then when the reader clicks on the link, they get a page not found error. Not a good thing to happen!

Or, if you have the link in an article or ezine, you could face similar problems.

Plus the link is just not intuitive enough.

It would be much, much better to have a link like this:

http://www.mysite.com/productname

Well, you can have this when you use server-side redirects.

Here’s how it works (if your site uses PHP):

[Read more…]

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