Professional, knowledgeable, innovative, friendly, supportive.
WNW Design are proud to announce the launch of the new Roberts Warr website.
Roberts Warr, the long-term WNW Design client, and Sunny UK have been joined into one website with a full products list and using Mazurka software.
Please browse the website http://www.robertswarr.com for more information.
Why is it that marketers struggle to blend offline and online marketing efforts? It can be very effective if done right. Take for example, using direct mail to drive online traffic.
According to ExactTarget’s 2009 Channel Preference Study, 76 percent of all consumers have been directly influenced to purchase a product or service online. As the video on the left points out, this statistic proves that direct mail is not old-fashioned and is, actually, very useful.
To use direct mail to drive traffic, you need to, first of all, make a compelling offer. Marketers need to give users a reason to want to visit their site. For instance, they could use seminars, coupons, samples, or a free trial of a product or service. Each of these methods would give users an incentive to visit.
Secondly, marketers need to have a readable URL. In addition, it should be memorable in order for users to type it easily. It needs to be something that will stick in users’ minds.
A third way to drive traffic through direct mail is through personalization. Marketers could personalize through teasers, headlines, URLs, and more. This tactic enables consumers to be engaged.
There is a potential downside to personalization since it could be perceived as a sweepstake. For this reason, marketers should use it with caution.
Delivering a clear call to action is a fourth method for driving online traffic through direct mail. Often times, marketers place their call to action in a teaser or tagline, which could cause consumers to miss it. Instead, marketers need to be direct with consumers and tell them exactly where to go and what to do.
Fifthly, marketers should include a deadline. By giving consumers a timeframe, it applies a sense of urgency that encourages them to act. Incidentally, the deadline should be clear and located near the call to action.
Building a unique landing page is another way to drive online traffic. This is important because consumers are often confused or distracted when sent to a website’s homepage. It could, ultimately, result in consumers leaving the site without taking action, since they didn’t know what to do.
On the other hand, a landing page gives marketers the ability to control the message, track response, and collect valuable information for follow up.
Lastly, marketers should try to collect their consumers’ contact information. Marketers could do this on the landing page. This information is not only valuable for future communication via direct mail, but it is also very valuable for other campaigns.
So, does direct mail seem like a powerful marketing channel now? Marketers often get caught up in email, social media, and online advertising campaigns for driving traffic online. While these campaigns are effective, marketers should not quickly rule out offline channels like direct mail.
About the Author:
Abby Johnson is a Video Reporter/Anchor for SmallBusinessNewz.
As you sit down to write a blog you need to ask yourself – who is going to be reading this and how can I help them? As I have mentioned in several of my blog posts the trick is not to create something with the intent to “make” it go viral. The trick is to create a blog that contains valuable information and is well written and then it will go viral. This same principle applies when looking to add to your readers’ interaction. Interaction increases continued readership.
Target Your Audience
I have a good fríend who owns a helicopter flight school and when he sits down to blog he is communicating to an entirely different audience than you or I may be intending to communicate with.
With this in mind make sure that you are targeting the correct audience. If your blog is geared toward an audience looking for information on kite building, you won’t want to write a post that directs most of its attention to model airplane building. You may want to write a blog comparing the similarities and differences between the two, but the main goal of the blog post should be appealing to your readers’ main interests.
You may want to write down some questions that you would be interested to know the answers to if you were new to the niche which you are blogging in and answer those in a blog post or two. Make sure that your blog posts do not wander from the main subject. The more on target your posts are, the more likely your readers are to return to your blog and share it with others they know. Blogs are meant to be dedicated to one subject such as professional networking, vintage car restoration or triathlon training.
I would like to leave you with one last thought when targeting your audience in your blog posts. It is a good idea to re-read your blog posts from the perspective of a reader while in the editing process. Make sure that it captures your attention. You want to be sure to give complete thoughts in your writing. Give your readers some food for thought to spark their own ideas and comments on your blog.
Give Them Your Best Information
Your reader needs to be motivated to be engaged with your blog post. After reading your blog post the visitor should have the desire to comment and share your blog. Why? Because it had valuable information. It was not a sales pitch and it was well written. I am an advocate of giving some of your best content away for nothing. If you have captured your readers’ attention and have given them some quality information, they are much more likely to share your content.
Have you discovered something incredible in your niche lately? Your reader will probably want to know about this information as well. Consider what you would want to get out of reading a blog and make sure that those goals are met in your writing. If you are giving great information in your blogs, your readers will literally beg for more. Getting your readers to ask you for more is the goal of writing in the first place and a validation that you are writing something that they want to read and are actively seeking.
I recently read a blog from Brian Solis called 21 Rules of Engagement. It was a summary of part of his new book, Engage. Not only did I feel like I was getting quality information and a great preview of his book, but it also made me want to go out and purchase his book immediately. I thought that this information he was giving away for nothing was already valuable so I should go and find what else he has to offír. This is an excellent strategy and very effective to create continued readership whether the future readings are free or not.
Do Something About It
At the end of each blog post use a call to action. Ask your readers to comment on what they think about the specific topic. You can even reward them for doing so. For example another buddy of mine posted on Facebook that whoever commented on a blog post he had just posted on his MyMark profile page would get a fríe copy of his e-book. I am sure he had people read his blog that normally may not have, but with this kind of reward they took the time. The blog needs to be good enough that they are happy they spent the time reading it; if this happens they will come back again and again. Even without a specific reward being offered, the reward has now become the quality information you are giving them.
One of the most valuable parts of a blog is the comment section. Usually if one person has a question so do many others. This is a great place for readers to ask questions, answer questions and provide their own tips and tricks that you may not have had time to cover in your blog. You should be asking or telling your readers to leave their comments and make sure that the call to action invites more than just, “great blog.” It’s nice to be validated, but it’s more important to provide readers with further information.
Finally, when leaving a call to action make sure that you act on it as well. If you told your readers to go find something new to learn and write about it in the comments make sure that you are doing this as well. Make sure that you are responding to comments and not just reading them. Continue the interaction in your comment section so that your readers will feel like you are offering two-way communication rather than just talking at them. Any webinar presenter will tell you that one of the most valuable parts of every webinar is the questions and comments part at the end of the webinar. Don’t skip this step. It will likely ensure your success as a blogger and a brand builder.
About The Author
For this and other articles by Brad Hess, please go to www.mymark.com/articles. MyMark, LLC is a media rich professional social networking website that gives you the tools to use social media optimization to enhance your search engine optimization and generate revenue. Visit www.mymark.com today to set up your free account!
When you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you provide? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!
What Is BlindWebsititis?
BlindWebsititis is what happens to websites when those in charge of their content don’t come right out and say exactly what every page is all about. Instead, they use only corporate jargon, non-descriptive copy, or – in acute cases – no copy at all. It’s a horrible condition that affects hundreds of thousands of websites every year. Sadly, the pain of BlindWebsititis goes well beyond the hurt to the website itself; it often spreads to site visitors who have to try to guess what the company offers.
Even search engines aren’t spared from BlindWebsititis. Their symptoms include the miscategorization of the afflicted websites because there’s no way for them to assign relevant keywords.
Rather than dealing with the pain of BlindWebsititis, many users move away from infected sites as quickly as possible, in search of healthier ones that clearly say what they’re offering.
Causes of BlindWebsititis
This condition is so widespread that intensive research has gone into determining the possible causes. One major cause is the proprietary prose that companies use internally to discuss their offerings. While using company jargon within the walls of a business is not unhealthy in and of itself, when it makes its way to the website, it often turns into BlindWebsititis. Companies tend to forget that for every person who knows exactly what they do, there may be 20 others who don’t.
BlindWebsititis Immunity
While BlindWebsititis has been spreading like the flu, research finds that some websites are immune. What gives them this immunity? These companies are interested only in visitors who seek them out by brand name. It turns out that search engines use a special “immunized algorithm” that protects branded searches from coming down with the condition.
The Worst Cases
Sadly, companies who seek to gain new customers from the search engines – that is, people looking for their type of product or service who don’t already know that the company exists – are hurt the most by BlindWebsititis. These companies often stop growing, and in many cases premature death is inevitable.
The Cure
For critical cases of BlindWebsititis, companies must immediately take action! The first step is to let people who haven’t heard of them know that they’re in the right place. Because it’s widely accepted that people using search engines are generally searching for stuff, they are typically pleased when they find their information quickly and easily. The cure with the fewest number of side effects is to display this information as clearly and succinctly as possible.
The Recovery
Research into BlindWebsititis has shown that clarity on every page results in the best recovery rate because there is no beginning, middle, or end to any website. Because each page is a gateway to the rest of the site, when one page is afflicted, the rest are too. Adding clear content to all pages tells users that they’ve found what they’re looking for, which leaves BlindWebsititis with no further mode of attack. In fact, it’s been found that just adding a short, descriptive summary to the top of every page can cure BlindWebsititis immediately. (However, the cure has a longer recovery period for search engines if they have to re-index the previously afflicted pages.)
The Active Ingredients
Best results have been noted when the site creator uses keyword phrases in the most natural manner possible. This means users don’t have to think too hard, which boosts their own immune response to the affliction. Descriptive web writing provides complete information to search engine visitors who don’t know anything about the company or its products and services.
Beware of a Relapse!
While BlindWebsititis may seem to be cured on websites when a paragraph of text is added below the fold (rather than at the top), the affliction still exists, albeit in a dormant state. It may not affect search engines in this form, but because users often don’t look below the fold, they continue to feel the pain. Their suffering often takes the form of scratching their heads in wonderment. The resulting itchiness can become acute if the copy at the bottom of the page is keyword stuffed or slightly hidden with gray text and is suddenly noticed by the user.
Is Your Website Afflicted?
To see if your website has BlindWebsititis, take a look at it with fresh eyes. Perform usability tests with people who are not already familiar with your company and see if they can tell what you provide within a short amount of time. If they are confused or have to clíck around to your About Us page, then you have some work to do. Luckily, you’ll see great benefits when you completely cure BlindWebsititis by clearly describing your products and services. Benefits include increased search engine rankings, more targeted visitors, a decreased bounce rate, and higher conversions and sales.
About The Author
Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.
Actually, getting in the #1 spot is best, but I will settle for the top 5 or even anywhere on the first page for very competitive keywords. Obtaining those top rankings for your targeted keywords in Google will obviously be very important to achieving your online goals.
I don’t have some magic formula, just marketing online stuff that works. Very simple stuff that everybody can do to get those top rankings. Here are some of the tactics/things I do:
– article marketing through the free article directories
– create videos on my niche products
– make blog posts in my niche areas
– do press releases for my targeted products
– create free ebook guides on my subject areas
– build separate lists for each major niche market with follow-up emails
– participate in online forums with my sig links added
– make regular tweets about any new content
– find out my competitors’ main backlinks and duplicate them
– create Google Alerts for my major keywords and add comments/links to the ones I like
– keep adding fresh content pages to my sites keyworded to phrases used by buyers
Now on second thought, some of those are not so simple, but they can be easily done by most webmasters. Or, you can get someone to do them for you. For example, I get my videos done for me since I simply don’t have the time or expertise to do them myself. If you’re poor at writing or have little time, you can even get someone to write your articles for you as well. Same goes for your web content, but you have to be careful and make sure it is of the highest standard.
Still, these tactics are fairly basic marketing stuff which anyone can do to get those higher rankings. Perhaps, what many webmasters fail to realize is that getting and keeping your keywords on the first page of Google does take a lot of work and time. For very competitive keywords, I usually put in a year’s work to get to those top spots. It sometimes takes a lot less if your content (an article or video) becomes viral and lands on a lot of sites. That does happen, but for me it is mostly building steady one-way quality links back to the page or site I want ranked high.
However, it is this time factor which DEFEATS most people. They don’t have the patience or the resources to wait it out. After a couple of months they throw up their hands and come away believing all this Internet marketing stuff is for the birds.
Don’t get the wrong idea, there are probably programs and systems out there which will give you instant success on the web. I just haven’t found them yet, nor am I really looking since I have figured out how to get those top rankings and earn money on the web. However, the catch is, it usually takes around a year or two of hard work before the serious money starts flowing.
There are exceptions. If you’re good at writing articles, you can get immediate traffic and a few sales. Same goes if you’re into making videos and they become popular and featured in Google… you will make some sales.
However, for steady traffic which flows regularly and keeps the sales coming each day; you will need to keep those top rankings in the search engines for your keywords, especially in Google. Once you get those top rankings, I find you have to maintain them by continuing to build links by writing articles, making posts, creating videos… and so on.
My goals are very modest. I am doing affiliate marketing or sales where I usually get from 2% to 5% since I am promoting high-end electronics which provide low commissions. I also do some ClickBank type info products where the commission rates are much higher – 50% or more.
I also concentrate most of my time on products/services which give me a recurring income – make one sale and earn a percentage for years to come. The trick here is to promote services where once clients sign up they tend to stay with these services for years… services like web hosting, autoresponder services, telephone services, internet services and so on.
If you have yóur own products, your daily earnings will be much higher. Same thing if you do drop-shipping… but that also brings in other complications and worries. I like affiliate marketing because it suits my lifestyle. I refer the sales or clients and the merchant does all the rest.
Now, I have also found if you target longer keyword phrases which have little traffic but also much less competition, you can bring in sales in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. This “long tail marketing” as it’s called, goes faster, but you have to cover a lot of ground to be successful.
I prefer picking “mid-range” keywords that have competition, but if you put in the work, you will land on the first page of Google. I usually stick to keywords which have around 1,000 – 10,000 searches a month. Highly popular keywords which get hundreds of thousands or millions of searches I don’t bother with because I know I just can’t compéte with multi-national companies getting most of this traffic.
So it is a matter of picking the keyword battles which you have a good chance of triumphing. You do need to do a lot of research to see who is ranking for these keywords, what kind of backlinks they have and what kind of resources they’re pouring into obtaining/keeping those rankings.
I also check to see who owns the domains in the top five spots or on the first page. If one person or company owns 4 or 5 of these sites, it means you’re going to have your hands full trying to grapple for the top spots.
One simple strategy for getting those top spots in Google is to create two or three keyworded domains competing for the top spot. Link these together and one or, in most cases, all of them will land in the top three or four positions. For lucrative keywords, this can prove very profitable because your sites are receiving the majority of the web traffíc for those keywords.
Keep in mind, however, that in many niche markets major companies are now hiring writers, SEO services and webmasters to get those top spots.
It sometimes can be unnerving. Imagine you’re a small webmaster operating in a niche for years and suddenly you have four or five top brand multi-billion dollar companies competing with you for the same keywords in the search engines. This happened to me and to Google’s behalf, small webmasters still have a chance to keep their spots on the first page.
How long before these small webmasters are totally wiped out is anyone’s guess, but I believe for very lucrative keywords, it is only a matter of time before big companies throw so much advertising revenue and SEO resources at getting those top spots that the little guys will have a very slim chance of holding their keywords.
Fortunately, there are countless small niche markets and products that an online marketer can target and rank well for in Google with just a little hard work and patience. Using some of the tactics listed above will get you to those Top 5 spots in Google – just give them and yourself some time to reach your goals.
About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: internet marketing tools Everybody is Profiting from Google, are you? Find out how here: Google Cash File Copyright Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
When it comes to website styles, there are too many to list so for this article so we’ll discuss the most popular styles on the Internet today.
Since the invention of the World Wide Web in the nineties, the Internet has become a market place for anyone aspiring to make money on-line by building a website and selling a product or service.
After the Dot Com crash around 2000, Internet entrepreneurs have been reinventing themselves. The Internet still produces millionaires, just not at the same rate as the nineties.
These Internet pioneers have done so based on billions of dollars in sales that are generated each year by way of the Internet and there is no end in sight. If you have a product or service, the world is your oyster and you can also participate in the post dot com market. Websites are going up at rates too difficult to put an actual number on.
Beginners try their hand at building websites and often find themselves getting stuck with how to get a site up and running. The first step is to find the style of website that fits the product or service you offer. Once you have figured out the style of website you want to build, make sure the product or service you offer is something that is in demand.
Technically, you can turn any website into a site that generates sales if you understand the basic needs of consumers. The most popular reasons people buy products on the Internet are simple. They want to be happy, healthy, wealthy and sexy. Keep these motivating factors in mind as you build your profitable website.
Your website must satisfy the needs of consumers. This will require you do market research to see if your product or service is in demand. You can find out by searching the web to see how many people are already searching for what you’re selling. If the numbers are high, you have a good chance of experiencing success.
The big quest for information has opened up a plethora of websites that sell self help EBooks. EBooks can be found on just about any subject you can imagine. People have strong desires to consume information that will help them improve their lives.
The word Infopreneur is a play on the word entrepreneur. An Infopreneur style website has become popular due to authors selling eBooks on how to do things yourself.
eBay on-line stores were made popular when people found out they had merchandise stored in their garage that other people would pay money for; such as old bicycles, shoes, clothes and just about anything you can think of.
Affiliate marketing websites are extremely popular nowadays also. Major companies pay a percentage from sales of their product if the sale of the product was initiated from your website. There is an art to this type of website that must be studied before you try it.
A personal website is tougher to sell from depending on who you are. The famous Kardashian’s are able to sell products from their personal websites mostly because of their fame and notoriety.
Google AdSense websites have made a few website owners wealthy. AskTheBuilder.com is a good example of a successful Google AdSense website. This style of website must be about a popular product or subject and get tons of traffic.
Ecommerce websites can be lucrative and definitely provide a service for the public such as eBay, Walmart, Target and many others. Ecommerce websites usually have a multitude of products and a huge warehouse to store them.
Last but now least is the Review website style. This website model can also be lucrative because it provides a service in the form of sharing a personal experience you had with the product.
You love it so much that you write a review about it and share it with the world. You also highly recommend that consumers buy it based on your experience. Because you recommend the product and help facilitate the sale of it through your website, you get a percentage of the sale.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of website styles to look at. As you surf the net you’ll see hundreds more. As you look to decide on the type of website you want to build to make money, always keep the goals of the consumer in mind.
My Top Three Tips for Building a Successful Website.
1. Discover the style of website you want to build.
2. Understand consumers are driven to be happy, healthy, wealth and sexy.
3. Sell products and services that solve problems for consumers.
About the Author: Wendell Harvey – For more comprehensive info on website styles visit my website at CreateAWebsitePlan.com where you will also find articles on domain registration names, website story boarding, and how to get past road blocks when building websites.
There have been a lot of stories in the media lately about cyber-stalking and privacy issues on the Internet. It seems to be a knee jerk reaction to the tsunami of social networking that has occurred in the past few years. Or is it? Are the media over-reacting? Or have we forgotten what privacy is in the age of the World Wide Web?
The Rise of Oversharing
Back in the late 1990′s, many people didn’t even use their real names on the Internet. Email addresses were usually aliases or nicknames in an attempt to retain as much privacy as possible. But with the rise in popularity of social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace has come a rise in online confidence.
The new Internet generation doesn’t seem to have the privacy hang ups or suspicions their parents had about sharing information with strangers over the net. In fact, this younger generation of cyber savvy has an alarmingly high comfort level when it comes to communicating personal information about their lives on the Web.
The premise is that everybody in your social circle not only wants to know but NEEDS to know when you are buying that tall frappuccino from @starbucks. That they need to know precisely where you are and what you are doing every minute of the day. This new phenomenon is called oversharing and it has privacy experts worried.
“People put data up on the web and they just don’t realize the implications of this data” says Martin Cocker, Executive Director of NetSafe, a non-profit organization that promotes safe and responsible use of Cyberspace.
Location Based Oversharing
It’s not just our increasingly high comfort level with a lack of online privacy, but the way people are sharing and socializing online that has changed dramatically, particularly in the past 12 months.
Services like Gowalla and FourSquare focus on location-based social networking. Using your phone or mobile Internet device, you log into these sites and announce where in the world you are and what you are doing there e.g. “Kalena is at City Fitness Gym taking a Zumba class.”
The process is called *checking in.* You can check in from parks, bars, museums, restaurants, libraries or anywhere you care to create a location. The idea is to let your online friends know where you are and you earn points, badges and rewards (both tangible and intangible) based on your activity.
Sounds like harmless fun, right? But there’s a seedier side to location-based social networks. Not only does it encourage stalking by your exes, your boss and your mother, but it opens you up to the very real possibility of a criminal attack. How?
Gowalla, FourSquare and other location-based social sites post your exact geographical location including the precise GPS co-ordinates of your current location. Some naive users of these social sites actually register their home address as a *place* and then *check in* when they arrive at the location of their homes.
If you are particularly obsessive about posting your location status on either of these sites, ANYONE with an Internet connection can track your movements at all times of the day – when you leave home, what time you arrive at work, where you decide to grab lunch, etc.
Many people also cross-link their location status updates with their Facebook and Twitter accounts, sharing their whereabouts with an ever-widening public circle. Not only could stalkers have a field day with this information, but it can make it very easy for cyber criminals and hackers to steal your identity.
Unfortunately, it’s not just your identity that can be stolen.
The Perfect Storm for Crime
If you are a regular user of location-based social networking sites, it’s child’s play for criminals to know when you leave your house unattended. Match this with an overshare on Twitter about your recent iPad or flat screen TV purchase and you’ve got the perfect storm for a break and enter.
To point out how simple it is for criminals to take advantage of our silly oversharing nature, programming students Frank Groeneveld, Barry Borsboom, Boy van Amstel set up Please Rob Me in February this year. The site consisted of a live stream of tweets from people who were *checking in* at locations other than their Home address on FourSquare and cross-posting the information to Twitter.
The site included a location-based filter and would-be burglars were encouraged (tongue-in-cheek) to view *recent empty homes* and *new opportunities.* When asked why they built such a site, Groeneveld, Orsboom and van Amstel responded:
“These new technologies make it increasingly easy to share potentially sensitive personal information, like your exact location. The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home…”
Reaction to the site was enormous and angry. Groeneveld, Orsboom and van Amstel discussed the logic behind the site in their recent guest post for the Center for Democracy and Technology:
“Our intention is not, and nevér has been, to have people burgled… The goal of the website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Gowalla, BrightKite, Twitter, Google Buzz etc. Everybody can get this information.”
How Easy Is It?
David Farrier, a journalist for TV3 in New Zealand decided to find out how vulnerable users of location-based social networks are. He researched profiles on FourSquare and Facebook and found a couple of people in his geographical area of Auckland. They had willingly published their photos and home co-ordinates as public *places* on Foursquare so with the help of his in-car GPS, he went to visit them at their homes, keen to share with them all the information he had learned about them online, like the fact they had been out for dinner 14 times in the past month and enjoyed listening to the band Pet Shop Boys. Naturally they were freaked out and didn’t let him in, but as he pointed out, “It’s a bit weird, I don’t know why they wouldn’t let me in, they had made ALL this information available to complete strangers on the Internet.”
Photo Tracking
So this is all a bit confronting. But did you know that you may be sharing your location even if you don’t use location-based social sites? Photos you take with smart phones and upload to the web are automatically embedded with GPS tracking data that can easily be deciphered to provide precise location co-ordinates.
So that Twitpic of your brand new Mercedes convertible might be admired by a car thief who now has the exact GPS co-ordinates of your driveway. Or the snapshot I tweeted last week of All Blacks rugby legend Dan Carter working out at my gym can pinpoint his exact whereabouts to anyone with photo decoding software. Anyone coming across the photo on the Web could track Dan’s physical location down and start stalking (sorry Dan).
The Disappearance of Online Privacy
An organization in the US called the Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed a white paper on the potential dangers of exposing our locational privacy. Authors Andrew Blumberg and Peter Eckersley write:
About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
Until recently, it has been a legal standard that publications are not liable for the bad behavior of their advertisers. While some print publications do require that advertising conforms to certain standards or follows guidelines that they set, this is almost always based on community sensibility and the personal preferences of the publishers. When it comes to the content, the legitimacy of the claims being made by an advertiser; there usually is no responsibility for a publication in the United States to determine if the claims are true or valid. However, the relationships between the publisher, the advertising network, and the advertiser has changed enormously and everybody should be aware of what this means.
The relationship between the advertiser and the publication in all areas requires that the publisher be independent of any decisions regarding the claims and content of the advertising. Publishers, while they can obviously ask for changes based on esthetics, principles and general guidelines generally do not comment or ask for changes based on the legitimacy of the product.
If an advertiser claims that “this product will guarantee to make you lose 50 lbs a week,” it is nevér the responsibility of the publisher, to check this claim and ensure the legitimacy of it. The publication, whether it is print, internet or mobile is just taking the content and placing it within the publication. As Bennet G. Kelley of the Internet Law Center explained to in a brief conversation about this topic, once a publisher gets more involved “there is a potential for greater liability. The greater role one takes the greater risk they take.”
When the dynamic changes, therein lies the problem. Advertising networks on the internet, for example, are sometimes becoming more and more involved with the creative process and the actual selling of the product.
For example, there is more than one major display network that also makes creatives for their clients and changes them so that they perform better. In doing this, the display network is no longer just “placing ads” but is actually becoming part of the creation process. Often the reason to be involved is simple: the advertising pays based on a clíck or conversion and, if there is a better advertisement, the network will be paid more.
An advertisement that once claimed that “you can lose weíght” on this product, might have been changed by the network to “you can lose weight while watching TV”. The actual claim is being made by the advertising network since they made the advertisement.
“It is the difference between being passive,” says Kelley “and being an active participant in the process. Once you get involved in the decision making of what the advertisement says you open yourself up to liability.” Kelley mentions an example where a housing website has been sued for violation of fair housing laws because they created the website in a way that one could in the process of creating the ad for listing, include screening of people based on race. They at that point opened themselves to liability.
Similarly, there should be a real concern about any company that receives money based on a commission, cost per lead, cost per action. Affiliate networks have already learned that they are not immune from the bad actions of their affiliates and many of them embroiled in the ACAI and other fraud suits know too well that they can be sued based on the actions of their client.
An “Affiliate” or “CPA network” is no longer an advertising network that just places advertising. Most of them are involved from the ground up with almost every aspect of how the market is created and have little or no defense to the bad-actions and claims of the advertisers anymore. Even without this, there is now a relationship based on commission, based on the performance of the advertisement that goes beyond a simple placing of an advertisement. The affiliate network makes money only if the advertising makes money and there is a real argument that they are no longer acting as a publisher, but as an independent sales person pushing a product.
This should concern publishers who are involved with these programs as well. As the FTC starts to examine the practices of advertisers and their actions, they are going to start examining the relationship of the publishers to those advertisers.
If you getting paid on a Cost-Per-Performance model, your liability is suddenly much greater. Putting a link in your blog that reads “This product can do this” suddenly goes beyond a recommendation or advertisement. You are in fact yourself making that claim and getting paid based on the result of that claim. No longer are you just a publisher with an advertiser, but you’ve become an agent, a salesperson, a product pitcher that could be responsible for your statements and actions. Kelley mentioned that the FTC is closely examining everybody in the chain and what their role is.
Michael H. Sproule, of the firm Akabas and Sproule, explained that in order to determine liability there is often a two prong process. “Endorsement required two things: First the publisher received an economic benefit from the advertisement and secondly a reader would think the publisher was recommending the product. Both prongs must be met.”
He says that any website that recommends a product based on a CPA needs to be careful. “Here both prongs are present: payment to the reviewer, plus a recommendation. On its face, this traditional test could apply to Cost per Sale (Affiliate) advertising without any difference. If the commission was seen merely as analogous to a traditional payment for placement, then there is no difference. The first prong, economic benefit to the publisher is met, but there would be no liability unless placement made the ad appear to be a recommendation.”
Thus a link to a product without a review or recommendation might be okay, but as soon as you recommend the product, or make claims, there lies the liability.
What can be learned from this? If you are engaged in any product marketing where you are doing anything besides just putting an advertisement up for a set cost, you need to examine what you are selling. If a product makes a claim and you are expressing that same claim in anything you do, whether it be posts in your blog or your personally created banner you need to do some research about those claims. Ask the person involved what studies have been done to show them, ask what proof they have.
Perhaps it’s also time to retain an attorney, if you don’t already have one, to look over these relationships. I know it’s hard for publishers to spend the money in this economy, but the possibility of getting sued for millions based on one poorly worded banner or recommendation might be enough to scare you into doing it.
About The Author
In perhaps the fastest growing industry ever, one person has made a name for himself as a leader and innovator. Pace Lattin, the publisher of the top newsletters in new media and online advertising, is one of the inventors of many of the technologies and methods that have become standards in the industry. He has been called many things, including a rabble-rouser, a guru, an innovator and a watchdog — but one thing stays the same: he is one of the most interesting leaders and commentators in the online advertising industry. Marketing Sherpa, a leading marketing research publication called him the most influential journalist in online media for a reason. IndustryPace.com
In the early, exciting stages of starting and running a business it’s often a case of head down and just doing stuff, marketing, selling, manufacturing, accounting etc. and you pretty much know where the business is because you are the one doing everything.
Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPI) seems pointless at this stage. However, often as the business grows this lack of information continues and management rely on “gut feeling” or a sense that “I started my business and I know how it works” to make decisions.
But perception and reality can be deceiving. What can seem rewarding and profitable can, when subjected to analysis, prove an expensive waste of time. For example a client who is fun to work with, who calls you regularly for advice and pleasant chats may appear to be your best client. When you track the hours spent against money received, often with late payments, your “best client” can rapidly drop to the bottom of the list!
The best time to develop systems for tracking the KPI is right at the very beginning, what is important in your business? Typical numbers on the sales and marketing side include Cost Per Lead, Cost per Sale, number of 1st and 2nd appointments, number of sales, value of sales, average sales value and Lifetime Value of a Client. Depending on your business you should be tracking some, all or variations on this theme on a regular basis.
I would even go so far as to argue that the more often and the more accurately you track these KPI the more successful your sales and marketing will be. For example, I used to take a stand at a high profile local exhibition. Each year we returned with a big pile of contacts, many who had expressed interest in our services. We always ended up making sales. Fantastic!
Of course we tracked the number of leads each year, monitored the source of appointments and always logged where sales came from. The exhibition was a huge success each year, generating leads, sales activity and new clients.
After a few years I did a closer examination of the cost of the stand, including the cost of manning the stand, the leads we collected and the number of sales we achieved. Then we looked at the Lifetime Value of the Clients we had obtained. This is where the reality and perception collided.
The Cost Per Lead and the Cost of Sale were higher than other marketing methods and the Lifetime Value of the Client from that particular exhibition was much lower than average. Not a bit lower, much lower. With the odd exception the quality was very poor. Suffice to say we have not exhibited there since.
So track all your KPI as soon as you start your business and track it in detail. You may not spot trends immediately but the fact you have that information means that eventually patterns will arise and decisions can be made on hard empirical evidence.
I have focused on sales and marketing in this article but does not mean it is not important to track KPI in other areas of the business, all areas should be under the microscope all the time. As the business grows this becomes the single most important factor in running a successful enterprise. So spend time to work out what your KPI are, track them religiously and watch your profits grow.
About The Author: Nigel Wilkinson is Managing Director at WNW Design and has recently launched a new business www.nican.co.uk . In addition to his business interests, Nigel is married to Yoga Dance teacher Michelle, the father of teenage twins, Chairman of Exmouth Chamber of Commerce, an avid Networker, a Social Media commentator, a keen golfer and football supporter. You can follow him on Twitter @nigelwnw, email at nigel@wnwdesign.co.uk or telephone on 08456 588310. You can also find WNW Design on Facebook here.
An article from Wired caught a lot of attention this week when it proclaimed that the Web is dead. Obviously, this is a sensational headline and a perfect example of linkbait, but it worked. It received the attention it was looking for, and it is still an interesting and thought-provoking read, though the web is far from dead.
A lot of the criticism over the article deals with a traffic chart it presents, and how misleading it is, but I don’t want to focus on that. That’s been ripped apart enough. look at some of the things author Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff say.
The article says, “Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting.”
This to me is more a declaration that search is dead or dying, which it is not. There will never be enough “getting” to eliminate all searching. There will always be specific needs that arise, which will require searching, and while the apps we use to do that search may be becoming more diversified, there will still be a need for that one all-encompassing gateway to search (which happens to currently be Google for the majority of people). Not to mention the fact that we’ll need to search for the apps themselves.
I’ve talked about this diversification of search numerous times. What it boils down to is that people will not stop using search engines, they will just use them less for certain kinds of searches if they have an app that they like for that particular kind of information. This is already happening.
The article says, “Ecommerce continues to thrive on the Web, and no company is going to shut its Web site as an information resource. More important, the great virtue of today’s Web is that so much of it is noncommercial. The wide-open Web of peer production, the so-called generative Web where everyone is free to create what they want, continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary incentives of expression, attention, reputation, and the like. But the notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery is now in doubt.”
I would say, not really. How long has search been that “ultimate marketplace”? Isn’t this again, basically saying that search (not the web) is dying (which again it’s not)?
It comes down to access points and how we get our information, which threatens to reduce time spent with search, but will not eliminate it. That reduced time, is perhaps why Google really needs this “Google Me” thing to work (though we still don’t really know what this will consist of). The more apps or access points that connect you to a Google profile, the more Google can make up for that reduced time you spend searching It makes a case for that newfound interest in social games), and it certainly makes a case for why Google provides mobile ads across third-party apps.
This is all something that businesses really need to consider. If all of your eggs are in the search marketing basket, you better really start thinking about mobile and apps. Google is still a major factor here. In fact, this is very connected to Google’s recent emphasis on Places, which it has effectively turned into its own mobile app. Notice that other Google features have their own apps as well.
All of that said, search itself will always be an app. In fact it’s usually more than that. Search is its own hard key on your phone – maybe as important an app as the browser.
A Web of Links
Clearly apps are becoming a bigger part of our lives, and may continue to dominate more of our web access, but we’re still connecting with the greater web, and the browser is certainly far from dead.
Many of the apps we use are just different ways of presenting the web’s information, and ultimately utilize links to other parts of the web. Sometimes, they even take us out of the apps and into the browser. Think about links from feed readers, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. If you read a blog post, starting from some feed-reading app, and you click on a link to another post from that original post, you’re clicking through one of the web’s many paths. As long as content is connected to other content through links, the web will remain alive and well. Many of the most popular apps strongly depend on links to outside content to keep user interest. How popular do you think Facebook or Twitter would be if you couldn’t link to outside content?
We will see more convergence of the browser and the OS (iOS, Android, Chrome OS, etc.), particularly as data moves more into the cloud, but this is all just the evolution of browsing the web. Never mind the fact that the majority of PCs are far from coming with a web-based operating system at this point. This could change one day, but even then, see the above points. Desktop versions (aka: websites) of many of the apps we use are far more efficient and feature-rich than their mobile app counterparts, which is why people will continue to use those as well.
The article says, “Openness is a wonderful thing in the nonmonetary economy of peer production. But eventually our tolerance for the delirious chaos of infinite competition finds its limits. Much as we love freedom and choice, we also love things that just work, reliably and seamlessly. And if we have to pay for what we love, well, that increasingly seems OK.” To that same point, it also says, “As much as we intellectually appreciate openness, at the end of the day we favor the easiest path. We’ll pay for convenience and reliability, which is why iTunes can sell songs for 99 cents despite the fact that they are out there, somewhere, in some form, for free.”
There is some truth to this, which certainly lends to the fact that apps are indeed popular channels for accessing content. However, that by no means eliminates the web browser for accessing content that apps simply don’t cater to. The web browser is an app, and probably the app that trumps all other apps because of that openness and freedom of choice. When you don’t want to pay for convenience, the web browser will often come through. When there isn’t a known app for what you want, the web browser will often come through.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch makes another great point: “Apps are great on mobile phones with small screens. But they are a pain to install and keep synchronized. Eventually having less local software will make sense on phones, too. All you really need is that browser virtual machine and you can pull everything else from the cloud. This is obvious.”
In fact, the article itself says, “If a standard Web browser can act like an app, offering the sort of clean interface and seamless interactivity that iPad users want, perhaps users will resist the trend to the paid, closed, and proprietary.”
It’s entirely possible that these mobile apps are the “shiny objects” of the moment, and eventually users will find that they just have too many of them to keep track of on their phones, and rather than fill up their storage, will just access more of them through their web versions via the web browser.
About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237
