Tracking Seasonality – Just Do It

With the majority of businesses, the passing of time causes a change in customer behavior. The laws of physics state that an object in motion will remain in motion, however without proper study, one cannot predict where that object will go or how it will act. The same applies to your customer base. If you don’t keep track of where your customers are coming from, what they are looking at, and where they end up, then you will not be able to accurately predict how they ultimately come to the decision to make a purchase.

In the world of online marketing, which encompasses Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click advertising, a business has every advantage they could possibly need. We can track what site a customer came from, what keywords they typed to get to your site, how long they stayed, what pages they went to. We can tell all sorts of things about your online customer base, but you HAVE to have tracking set up in order to know where to go next.

Seasonality is a big factor in the paid search world. If you are in the moving, storage, or real estate industries, your business may peak in the summer months when students are moving out of the dorms for the summer, or people are moving because the weather is more pleasant. If you do not have Google Analytics installed on your website you will never know exactly how big of a jump in traffic and conversions you get in May, and what a sharp decrease they take in September when the weather starts getting cooler.

If you haven’t set up Analytics on your site just yet, but would still like to know how seasonality affects your business, check your monthly or quarterly taxes for profit estimates. If you look over the course of 2-5 years, you will more than likely begin to see a pattern. Please take into consideration large events that may have taken place, such as a change in ownership, location, or large marketing promotions that may have been rolled out.

In addition to using Google Analytics to track your seasonality, install incoming call tracking to accurately report the volume of calls you receive during specific time periods. You can even screen call quality through these systems, as all your calls will be recorded. In some instances, you can track them down to the keyword that someone typed in to produce the ad in the first place. These tools are invaluable in assisting a business to accurately read their customer base and plan accordingly.

Once you have determined whether or not you have a peak season (winter, summer, etc.), month, week, day, or even time of day, adjust your goals accordingly. Last year during October you may have pulled in $55K in revenue, but this year in October, make a goal to surpass that by 35%. Adjust your budget allocation, ad copy, and bids according to your seasonality. Without goals, your business is a race horse with a blindfold, meandering down the track with no finish line in sight. Know where you have been, and where you want to go with your marketing ventures to better gauge the success of your campaigns.

The New Facebook Timeline: If You Can’t Beat Em’, Join Em’

As I am sure you are already aware, Facebook has once again forced us into a new version of the reining social media network. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg for influencing me to spend more time updating my Facebook timeline than trying to promote world peace. Facebook’s profile has now been replaced with the new layout called Facebook Timeline. Frankly, I was not thrilled about this change because I did not feel like going through the mundane task of updating my Facebook, however I have come to embrace this new concept. This new layout provides its users with a timeline of their Facebook history, from photos, events, apps, etc. arranged in the order in which they happened. Essentially making Facebook “stalking” much easier to manage.

And so it goes that with any new change, there is always hesitancy and the big question “how will this impact our business?” Well other than the fact that social media companies now need to put in the extra effort to update these changes for their clients, this new timeline proves to be advantageous for business users.

With change, come new opportunities. The new Facebook timeline gives businesses the chance to capitalize on their marketing campaigns and customize their timeline accordingly. My major hang up of this new timeline concept was what the heck I was going to use as my “cover photo”. So I chose a picture I had taken of a flower (I know, I know, so cliché). However cliché my photo might be, this cover photo in conjunction with the profile photo provides the opportunity for businesses to really advertise their brand and logo. As a billboard would show off the main product and point of the advertisement, so should your businesses cover photo. Make sure the photo grabs your follower’s attention and showcases what you are all about!

Captain Morgan has melded their logo into their cover photo to make one cohesive piece that clearly represents the product they are marketing for.

Another advantage to this new layout is it enables businesses to highlight the milestones of their business in an easy to view timeline. Photos now appear larger on the timeline, essentially overshadowing the text info. This can yield huge reward for businesses with catchy photos, because lets face it, people would rather look at a picture to sum something up than read a paragraph.  So promote away via your most market worthy photos!

Designer, Kate Spade, has also capitalized on showcasing their brand in the cover photo along with their tail tale logo.

Now to touch on posting, status updates and more goodies. The timeline displays the top 4 most used apps front and center beside the “about me” section. So choose the apps most important and essential to your customers, however the photos app will always appear first. One of the new features of Facebook, is the ability to post a story to your timeline. This story can be “starred” and made to either stay at the top of your page or it can be displayed along the width of your page, essentially making it pretty darn hard to miss. This is something businesses should take advantage of if they want their followers to acknowledge a new event or product.

So now you can sleep at night knowing your business is not in jeopardy from the new Facebook timeline. It’s here to stay (well at least for the next 6 months until they figure out a new way to frustrate us all over again) so embrace it and use it to your businesses advantage!

Attention Small Business Owners

We recently came across an article from American Express OPEN that discusses 5 ways your small business website might be failing. The items are listed below:

1. You don’t fill out your about us page
2. You don’t actually say what your business does
3. You don’t strut your stuff
4. You don’t capitalize on social media
5. You aren’t blogging (or not blogging enough)

As small business owners we are all busy working on our businesses and working in our businesses. There are a couple items in the list above that I know we are guilty of; social media, not blogging on a regular basis and not strutting our stuff. This article explains why it’s important to stay ahead of the game and get on a schedule or at least be aware so that you make a conscious effort to engage with the tools at your fingertips.

Read the Full Article

Advertising Tracking… Learn what works!

When your telephone rings do you know where the caller originated from? What campaign, what made them call and what is the probability they will purchase?

More than ever before, tracking advertising efforts has become incredibly important. In today’s economic times you do not have the ad budget to hope for the best. In general, advertising is very uncertain. You allocate funds where you *think* the best returns will be. However, you rarely know how many phone calls or website hits you receive from a single ad campaign.

New technology allows us to track our ad campaigns in a way that removes virtually ALL THE UNCERTAINTIES of advertising. If you know where your revenue is coming from you can better maximize the benefit from that ad campaign.

Imagine having a Google Pay-Per-Click campaign with 200 phrases. Your total budget is $1000 per month. You spend on average $4 per click and get about 250 clicks per month spread between 200 phrases. Currently you only know that the campaign gets clicks and brings traffic to your site – perhaps you track how many people submit email forms for more information. Ad Track allows you to accurately and effectively determine which of your 200 phrases are bringing the most phone calls that ultimately turn into sales.

After running the Ad Track system for a couple months you would have enough data to eliminate a portion of your 200 keyword list, freeing up more dollars for the phrases that produce sales. Imagine if your list went from 200 to 25 high producing phrases – you would now get almost 10 clicks per phrases (before you were getting 1.25 clicks per phrase). Where you were getting 1 phone call you could be getting 10.

What if you could track phone calls that originated from various Internet Marketing campaigns?

What if you could record the call to better anticipate and prepare for pre-sales questions, aid in sales training efforts and much more?

What if you knew 80% of calls from Google Organic lead to sales and 60% of calls from Google Pay-Per-Click lead to sales – or vice versa?

What if you knew phone book advertising only brings 10 calls per year and only 20% turn into sales?

We like to call it Advertising Accountability and Advertising Forensics.

The time is now to start strategically measuring the performance of virtually every advertising campaign you deploy.

Five Business Survival Tips During Recession

Economic difficulties are prevalent and no one is being spared. Everyone is feeling the ill effects of current market conditions. The housing market and oil prices skyrocketed countless times over the past several months. Most feel that the situation could get worse by 2009. Whether you are an employee or a top-ranking business leader, bare in mind that you may be unable to prevent recession from taking over for a while, but you are always able to look for ways to get by and stay sane long enough to see a brighter time. Here are some tips that can help you keep your boat afloat as you sail past that economic storm.

1. Tap emergency fund and not the fixed expenses allotment. College economic courses have taught you well enough that economies go through cycles of expansion and contraction. Theories however, are a lot easier to learn. Living actual business circumstances especially the agonizing ones, is another matter altogether. Economic depressions are both real and painful; anyone involved in business has to live though it. Start with accepting and managing that expectation and you have solved half the dilemma. Business people who understand that difficult economic events do happen allow for padding that they can touch when hard times come. In other words, these people prepare and are not rattled easily by news of contractions. Cutting corners is always an option though one has to be extremely careful in deciding which is fat and which is muscle.

    

2. Maintain (if unable to increase) your marketing dollars. Marketing expenses should be a fixed expense. Just like what oxygen is to your body, marketing is your business’s way to grow and expand. No matter what happens, decide against cutting marketing budgets. Slow market times are the best times to buy shares in their lowest prices while preserving the shares’ potential payoffs in the future.

    

3. Continue to give and upgrade the best possible product or service you could give to your loyal consumers. Cutting back on spending which could mean either lesser transactions or smaller purchases (or both) are oftentimes a customer’s answer to difficult times as a way to save every possible penny. Give your regulars good reasons (superior quality, excellent customer service, etc.) why they should cut back on everything else but your business.

    

4. Lower prices instead of giving discounts. If you believe that giving discounts will keep your business going, think again. Discounting your products whether in good times or bad, gives consumers the impression of inferior quality. In the 1990’s, McDonalds and Burger King placed their Big Macs and Whoppers on sale, and without intent, they trained their customers to never pay for the full price. The margin problem took years to recuperate. The same thing could happen to your business. If you must, lower the price instead of giving and saying the” d” word.

    

5. Ward off nervous ticks by setting a clear direction and expectation among your employees. Whether or not you tell your people about the bad times, they are bound to know because the news is delivered to them in a very personal manner each day when they buy food from the grocery or when they pay for gas.  The best thing that can be done is to come clean and talk to your employees openly about the situation. Educate them in terms of where the company is and what the plan will be. This will help alleviate their fear of the unknown and as a result allow them to continue performing, as they should.

    

Most importantly, despite the increasing prices of almost everything, remember that humans have needs and will always have to spend on their basic necessities, good times or bad. The only difference between the good and bad times is that it is during an economic crunch that consumers become more critical in letting go of their dollars. Only those who offer the best quality in products and services at the right price can thrive in and survive the neck-to-neck competition.

So What Exactly Is “Cloud Computing”?

Cloud computing using Google Apps was first patronized by only a handful of staff at Sanmina-SCI (SANM), a company with a $10.7 billion of revenue annually, using the applications to send emails, create documents, and schedule appointments and commitments. After six months, the handful went up to a thousand users of the electronics manufacturing company going online to use Google applications, shunting Microsoft tools to one side.

According to Manesh Patel, the chief information officer of Sanmina-SCI, the Google Apps make a difference between a poorly collaborated cluster and an organized, well-coordinated project teams. He even projected the Google Apps users to increase by 25% (totals 10,000) in the next three years.

Sanmina (which is based in San Jose, California) and Google spearhead a significant shift in the way organizations avail of software and computing capacity as well. Amazon, Salesforce.com, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft aid corporate clients in exploring the Internet from extra server space down to software which manages customer relationships more effectively.

 So What Exactly Is “Cloud Computing”? The computing tasks (referred to as "cloud computing") are assigned to a remote location rather than to the company’s own server. Cloud computing services are delivered all over the Internet depending on the demand from massive data centers. A million-dollar enterprise, Merrill Lynch’s estimate is that the annual international demand for cloud computing will be up to $95 billion. Based on May 2008 report, 12% of software market worldwide would choose cloud computing, in fact, IBM, DELL, and Hewlett Packard are looking to shift to cloud computing in the near future. Even IBM professes its willingness to spend $36-M to build cloud computing data center in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Michael Dell, DELL CEO, stresses that they’ve put together a new industry building custom products for customers with specific needs to address.  

Question of Reliability Some companies have qualms regarding the system’s reliability, but Daryl Plummer, managing vice-president of consulting firm Gartner, reasoned that technologies take some time to achieve that perfection which everyone might be looking for. Google Apps as an example might not offer the same features as Microsoft Office Professional, but is effective in maintaining collaborations among employees globally.   Dave Girouard, of Google, stressed that things are not expected to turn out as smoothly or as perfectly as one hopes to be but Patel of Sanmina said that in the long term, it shouldn’t pan out so badly. Girouard noted that more than half of the 500,000 organization use the free version of Google Apps.   Cloud computing might give HR a run for their money because the idea of moving attendance monitoring and expense reporting into Google Apps is something that is explored by Patel. Taking baby steps, as per Patel’s remark coupled with trying lower-priority applications will help them get the results they are aiming for. Cloud computing might not be applicable to storing financial and health records due to rules for security and privacy but a private cloud may be a possibility.   Generally, most feel that the system has to iron out things first before anyone adopts it on larger scale. An upswing in revenue is expected as more companies become more comfortable with the system. Google Apps will be provided for free, too. As Girouard at Google puts it, they intend to “generate millions of users for life”.

A Happy Face: Facebook Remains on Top

What makes for a good social networking website?   Is it the look and feel of the website, the ease of navigation, the tools and features?   For Facebook, it is the pleasant mixture of all three with a slightly more focus on technology-driven tools that has enabled it to overtake its close competitor, MySpace.  

The Beginning Ever since its birth in February 2004, Facebook, the privately owned and operated social networking website has been enticing and accumulating followers, being a free-access website where people from all walks of life can join networks (organized by cities, workplaces, schools, or regions) to interact with others, and to some extent, rekindle old friendships and reconnect past relationships.  

Beyond the Face Value Four years have passed and Facebook has managed to remain virtually on top while undergoing a lot of progress in terms of applications. Starting from an idea (the website’s name came from the “paper facebooks” illustrating members of a campus community that some American colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, or staff aiming to familiarize them with the other people inside the campus) of a then Harvard sophomore student, Mark Zuckerberg, the website turned out to be a major hit as a multi-million dollar enterprise.  

Bridging Gaps and Cultural Differences The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the impact of Facebook through a story about a group of young militants from Lebanon who have reconciled their views of Western culture by way of Facebook friendships. The story spoke of the free expression of ideas which the World Wide Web allows, thus making people rise above their cultural disparities.  

On Expansion and Language Translation Facebook has reached a great number of users, as it quickly expands to other regions, internationally. In fact, the website stands unruffled to the top as a global social network. The numbers released in August 12 by comScore says it all. There are about 132 million followers of Facebook, 63% of which are outside North America. It helped that the network has been translated to 20 languages such as French, Spanish, and Mandarin. Recently, it has added 69 more languages. The international manager of Facebook, Javier Olivan views this as more than just enabling everyone to understand one another. The translations, according to him, will jumpstart astronomical growth internationally.

Growing and Thriving To date, Facebook faces tough competition with MySpace and News Corp.’s to name a couple. They not only focus on their local markets, but are also meaning to saturate the global scene to amplify audience growth, thus making them very attractive to advertisers and prospective investors.   MySpace has spread out in 29 countries such as India and Korea. Based on a study from Pingdom, a Swedish website availability monitoring website; it is mostly frequented by users in US, Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain, and even in Asian countries such as Malaysia.   LinkedIn is another social network catering to professionals. According to Pingdom, it is popular in India, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and US.   Despite all these, a staggering 153% increase in new members last June has thrown other social networks off-balance, in terms of the website’s success through a purely user adoption.  

Tech-Savvy Socialization Facebook proved to have more ease conquering the international market through its technology-driven strategy. The social network boasts of translation tools, enabling users to take their existing sites and personalize them using their native tongue. The tools proved to offer very accurate translations, setting it apart from the other social network websites. The senior analyst of comScore, Andrew Lipsman, said that it is indeed, a very scalable process, with the audience’s number multiplying really fast.   MySpace on the other hand follows a different route. Facebook’s close rival opens offices in countries where ad dollars and friends are probable. This strategy definitely slows down their expansion internationally but this approach is deemed to be a surefire way to better reflect the cultures of new countries while racking up dollars from advertisers, too. Soon, according to Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, MySpace’s non-US users will cover half or 50 percent of the its total revenue.   Hi5 language translation tool applications strategy resembles that of Facebook’s, except that this social network from San Francisco initially hired a third-party service provider, Lionsbridge, to translate the social network to languages such as Japanese. This strategy increased its popularity, making the base users amount to a hefty 56 million. According to Pingdom, the site remains immensely popular in Latin America.  

More Possibilities The Facebook executives, though focused at present on the website’s tools, have not closed their doors on the possibility of opening offices in other countries to make their website more culturally-relevant, similar to the strategy employed by MySpace. Right now however, Olivan stresses that as long as there are users, advertisers will continue to create campaigns and put ads on their sites, making Facebook remain universal.

SportsFanLive: Not Your Ordinary Social Network

Former executive David Katz may have already left his post as the head of sports, entertainment and studios in Yahoo.com in 2006, but he never really left what he has always cared about and loved to do: write about sports and offer something relevant to sports enthusiasts.

A Healthy Competition At age 36, Katz will wage war against the other Internet powerhouses such as ESPN, Yahoo, Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, and AOL with his website, sportsfanlive.com. Sportsfanlive.com is looking to be released within the week, boasting of Katz’s versions of customized contents, social networking, and even fantasy games. Katz felt that the other competitors have become a lot more complicated and difficult to navigate, so sportsfanlive.com is what he thought would enjoy quite a good number of followers.

Everything But Traditional What sets sportsfanlive.com apart from the rest is that it is built for the next generation and with their evolving needs in mind. Katz stressed that the other sports websites have what he calls the “traditional media DNA”, fooling around with the site here and there but keeping them basically the same and generic.

Six months of planning in his Hollywood Hills abode have made him very positive and confident that the website is up to the challenge. The site’s features are naturally-flowing, allowing a visitor to create a community which is projected to have a viral growth. SportsFanLive is aimed to become the sports enthusiast’s Facebook, rather than connect to existing social networking websites.

Similar to MyESPN  and MyYahoo, the users can customize their site, mixing in together the teams they love and hate. Additionally, the users will receive news from 4500 aggregated sources which are regularly updated.

The Secret Sauce Katz believed that aggregation will be SportsFanLive’s secret weapon. Because unlike Google, which is definitely useful in searching for general needs of visitors, it has no clear perception of the specific sports needs of sports fans.

Through the FanFeed feature, sports-minded pals can easily share articles with one another or they can opt to use FanFinder application to alert their sports buddies to sports bars where they come together to cheer on their favorite teams. FanFinder is a zip code and map -based function which is a visual update of forums on rivals.com (which happens to be a Yahoo subsidiary).

A Sports Facebook Katz also commented that SportsFanLive aimed to be everyone else’s Facebook, at least for the sports enthusiasts, that is. According to him, without a doubt, Facebook is commendable for doing a really good job at connecting people all over the globe, but like Google, Facebook is not specifically geared towards sports-related matters. The site aims to be apart from the other social networking websites by keeping sports their focal point.

Traditional fantasy games are out of the question at this point as he feels that fans may not have a lot of time to tend to season-long fantasy games.

Gaming Features SportsFanLive offers gaming features that will enable them to challenge one another by posting or accepting wagers (this is akin to an online casino sports book which is user-generated) allowing them to either earn or lose Buxbets (SportsFanLive’s version of funny money). The feature is interesting (“they can compete on any topic they want against anyone at any time”) because he designed it based on the assumption that fans like to test their wits about anything they felt they know best.

Mouse Voting Jeff Price, Sports Illustrated Group president for digital, commented that Katz may very well understand and know sports fans’ hearts, but he has misgivings on how SportsFanLive can sustain traffic and engagements. Voting depends on a sports fan’s mouse. Price also noted how interesting it is the way people can embrace the games made available to them.

An analyst for Jupiter Research, Bobby Tulsiani remarked that if Katz succeeded in his plan, he would be similar to other new web entrants who will defy the pioneers in existing categories. The recent research on Internet sports users showed that evidence is yet to be confirmed regarding sports fans who wanted to switch to other online sports space.

Full of Hope Katz’s belief on his success remained unfazed. SportsFanLive may be self-funded for the time being, but then, he is positive that individual investors will be interested though he put off dropping a name for now. Samsung though, has already signed on as an early sponsor of Katz’s project.

He is happy to note that sports fans may not see it at present, but soon, they’ll realize that SportsFanLive is something they just have to use and will be unable to live without.  

Dare to Defy: Counterprogramming Works!

In an industry where it is a dog eats dog battle, it is crucial to come up with a marketing strategy that will make your wares sellable, if monopolizing a target market is not an option.

How does one set his products or services apart from the rest? Take a leaf out of Universal Pictures, Carl’s Jr., and Southwest Airlines’ book and try counterprogramming.

Counterprogramming operates under the assumption that a particular product or service has a target market. Rarely does one encounter a product that answers everyone’s needs. Therefore, there is always a need to fill and address, and with filling that void comes your target market.

Timing may also be a key. When a competitor launches a product or a service, a counter to that product or service may be presented, too. Consumers would always need an option and would welcome a refreshing one at that.

Starting for example with the case of Universal Pictures which chose to show Mamma Mia amidst the hype of Batman: The Dark Knight, Universal Pictures saw the possibility that the older, female demographic would not be as thrilled as the young, male audience to see Batman hurrying off to free Gotham. They would probably prefer Meryl Streep’s hilarity of having to solve the riddle of her daughter’s paternity (her daughter who is a would-be bride had three alleged fathers).

Counterprogramming is another avenue opened to competitors to offer an alternative when another competitor’s creation is less appealing.  For example, the proliferation of fast food fare coupled with Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary “Super Size Me”  gave McDonald a run for their money. To repair the damage, McDonald and Taco Bell started offering slightly healthier fare (not that any fast food is really healthy). Crusades against trans fat and fast food restaurants sprouted up faster than one can say “fast food”, causing a ban against them. Despite the growing resistance to the fast food way of life, there were still those who craved “real [fast] food”.

This made Carl Jr. tout its own sandwiches, in terms of size and sloppiness, to tap the once big market for fast food. The result is a 730-calorie, 47-fat-grams Monster Breakfast Sandwich, tagged as “Breakfast as Big as Our Burgers”. Up to this day, Carl Jr. continues to serve and feed the hungry stomachs of young men.

Southwest Airlines follows a different lead but with a similar tactic. While most airlines would charge for every single thing a passenger would ask for during a flight, Southwest Airlines is very proud to say that “Fees Don’t Fly with Us”. Never charging for second suitcase, snacks, a choice to sit in a window seat, pillows or blankets, bottles of water, and fuel (though most airlines would disguise it under the term “surcharge”), the airline racked up more dollars than those who do.

The bottom line of counterprogramming is to make your ware different so it would stand out. Put more items for consumption than frills. Sell to an untapped market (a market where there is only a few selection or  a narrow array of choices), allow for something (this really depends on your own considerations) that others will not allow. One man’s loss is another man’s gain anyway.

Going against the flow may just give you the sales that you are aiming for. If you like more risks, do not only take the road less traveled; instead, blaze new trails. You will never know what treasures you might unearth.

Shop From Your Cell Phone!

What other things besides communication and education can technology redefine? For Polo Ralph Lauren, it’s the word “shopping”.

Speaking of the “s” word, Polo Ralph Lauren plans to make it big this year, as the very first luxury retailer to revolutionize online shopping through a mobile e-commerce site. According to the retailer, the idea of buying train tickets and vending machine products for example, is not out of the ordinary in Japan. Ralph Lauren says phone shopping is not commonplace in the U.S., it’s something viewed to be only for people who are comfortable with technology, though not age-specific per say.

Why phone shopping, you might ask? Being first in the U.S. to launch the technology is one thing, keeping up with the trend as a fashion mogul is another. Anyone would probably agree that in addition to feeling the need to keep up; Polo Ralph Lauren discerns that technology-savvy fashionistas would appreciate the convenience that phone shopping can offer.

To counter the U.S. economy’s recession, a new-fangled inventory management system is definitely in order. The designer of the high-end apparel has thought of setting special codes in print ads, mailings, and store windows alongside the U.S. open tennis tournament beginning later this August. This means all the shoppers have to do is whip out their camera phones, download some special software, and use that to scan codes. Through this, they can access the Ralph Lauren website (which they have designed to be phone-friendly) to start shopping, read company profiles, or even watch tennis videos.

The question still remains as to how much Polo Ralph Lauren invested on this technology or how this will either make or break their projected sales. This opens up a possible demand for mobile phones with built-in code readers; these phones are anticipated to be out in the market within the year, as per the apparel-maker’s heads-up.

Phone shopping will definitely be groundbreaking; an event that will grace the morning papers and fashion magazines from here on.