18 Jul 10 Why Should You Choose Social Media Marketing?

Social networking has witnessed the biggest boom in the last few years. It’s the biggest online activity today. Almost everyone has multiple social networking ids in sites like – Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Hi5, Orkut and many. Almost every person is there and has also roped in his family and friend too. In recent time social networking has created a buzz. People love to share their regular activities, thoughts, upcoming events, photographs, video – rather a slice of their life. People stay connected, even if it’s a virtual mode it’s no less than a real meeting. With growing popularity, especially among the youth numbers of social networking websites have increased by leaps and bounds. Online interaction has opened doors of opportunities for online marketers too.

Marketers can silently promote their website or blog by simply sharing a link (of his website or blog) on the social networking site. It’s a free marketing device. One can simply upload video or share a product link, which will take people to the desired page. Adding a caption or personalized message to the link or video makes it all the more probable to be clicked.

Marketer can also create free community or fan page of his product or service, dedicated to his customers and prospects. He can send community or fan page joining request to friends, present customers and the email addresses available with him. Best thing about social media marketing is that it comes for free. One has to pay nothing to get registered on these sites, to build a page for the company or to interact with the fans and promote the product. One can even share latest news, contests, launch of new products, achievements there besides flaunting the numbers of followers or fans. It definitely spreads like a fire.

Marketer can definitely advertise on the social media sites. One can definitely buy side panel ad spaces, and such advertisements reach the exact target audience, banging right on the point. Such ads are short and interesting. Advertisements on social networking sites also do not cost much.

Social media sites can be used to spread awareness, to raise support for a cause, inform people, motivate them, to raise charity. Its scope is ever growing and endless.

Unlike many believers social networking sites are actually biggest online platforms, and not wastage of time. Time has changed and our association with such sites has also changed. It’s the easiest way to get connected. Today, marketers count social networking sites as a big platform of marketing. It’s one great way to make your presence felt on the web and let the world worship your product or service.

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Tags: Ad Spaces, Advertisements, Boom, Buzz, email, Exact Target, Fan Page, Followers, Free Marketing, Interaction, Leaps And Bounds, Marketer, Myspace, Online Marketers, Popularity, Prospects, Social Networking Site, Target Audience, Upcoming Events, Virtual Mode

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11 Apr 10 3 Phases of Sales Process

Selling is a combination of art and science — the research part of selling is science, and the process of actual selling (negotiating, objection handing, and taking orders), is an art. And every sale passes through 3 distinctly marked stages, whether you like it or not; instead of leaving the process as it is, it is worthwhile to recognize each phase and manage it. Through this post, I will help you recognize each stage of the process.

Stage 1: Pre-sale

This is the stage that precedes actual sale. In this stage customer gauge her need and search for the product or services that will meet her specific need. In B2B (business to business) environment, it means creating a list of suspects and qualifying them to narrow down the list — we call it prospecting.

The idea in this stage is to provide as much credible information to prospects and customers as possible. Marketing communication vehicles that provide relevant information should be used in this stage.

Stage 2: Sale

This is the second stage in the process where the actual sale happens, and value changes hands — consumer gets product, and seller gets money. A novice marketer often equates this stage to total selling. For him, selling is nothing but this. Nothing can be more removed from the truth. This is just one of the 3 stages, and though consumer pays money in this stage, this is not the most important stage. It is the pre-sale stage that brings people to this one, and it is the post-sale stage (discussed later) that pushes people to repurchase the stuff.

Offers, discounts, and other incentives should be given to speed up the process.

Stage 3: Post- sale

This is the stage where people become victim post-purchase dissonance, particularly in the high-involvement products. It is not uncommon to find people feeling pang of regret after making a purchase. In this stage, the feeling of should have bought that or should have bargained more or have not purchased the best kicks.

A marketer needs to handle this if one wants customers to purchase again from him and talk good about the brand. Reassurance is required in this stage, so marketing message should be crafted as such.

You want it or not, your customer passes through all of these stages, so focusing solely on Stage 2 will not fetch you any result. You may give it more important, but you cannot ignore other two stages. You need to balance your marketing activity to get maximum result.

Tags: Art And Science, Business Environment, Communication Vehicles, Incentives, Marketer, Marketing Communication, Money, Novice, Objection, Pang, People, Post Purchase Dissonance, Prospects, Second Stage, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Truth

Filed in Marketing with 1 Comment

26 Nov 09 SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – IV

In the first part of SEO for e-commerce website, I talked about how to use keywords in your e-commerce website, in the second part, I dealt about the nuances of writing proper tags, and the third part talked about how to avoid duplicate content. This is the fourth part of the series, and in this part, I will talk about internal linking. I hope, you are applying these practical tips in your e-commerce website, if you are not then today is the day to start doing it.

Contextual linking

Navigation links do not tell any story to sooth the search engine crawlers’ pain caused by constantly crawling through the pages. It just says: here is page A and here is page B and road to both places goes from here. How can you expect to derive any value from this? You need to inject links to different pages in your website within the content to get link juice. This will build contextual link which will tell the search engine crawlers a story they will love.

Link in product description

Interlinking two products by placing links within the product descriptions of the product is a nice little way to make all the pages visible to search bots and it provides an opportunity to squeeze juices out of long tail keywords.

Avoid using “View” or “More” words as anchor text

This is most common mistake committed by most of the e-commerce websites. Many webmasters put a brief description on the product category page about various products and use “View”, “more”, “click here to read more”, etc., beneath every brief description to direct the users to the product pages.

Avoid using such generic terms, instead, use a proper keyword (or even a long tail keyword) to link every product pages with the product category page. This will inform your prospects as well as search bots about the content on the next page. This strategy will help you a lot in improving your website ranking.

Tags: Anchor Text, Brief Description, E Commerce Website, Generic Terms, Juices, Keywords, Lot, Mistake, Nuances, Product Category, Product Description, Product Descriptions, Proper Tags, Prospects, search engine, SEO, Webmasters, Website Content

Filed in SEO with 2 Comments

11 Apr 10 3 Phases of Sales Process

Stage 1: Pre-sale

Stage 2: Sale

Stage 3: Post- sale

26 Nov 09 SEO Tips – Optimize Your E-Commerce Website – IV

Contextual linking

Link in product description

Avoid using “View” or “More” words as anchor text

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