Search Engine Marketing or SEM is a means to increase the ‘visibility’ of your website within the search results of a targeted search engine. It involves selecting one or multiple plans sold by the search engine itself. These Search Engine Marketing plans could be Pay-per-click (PPC) Search Engine Marketing or special inclusion or position plans designed to give your website some advantage over other websites that are listed in the search engine results.

Is Search Engine Marketing a compulsory thing to do?

There is no compulsion to undertake any Search Engine Marketing. If your website has been indexed by the search engine that you are interested in, then your website will be part of the search engine results and whenever a customer searches for products or information using the keywords used on your website, then your website will be listed in the results along with other websites. So long as you have not done anything that is against the rules of that search engine, your website will be part of the search engine results. If inclusion within the search engine results is your target than you don’t have to undertake Search Engine Marketing.

The reason people undertake Search Engine Marketing is to enhance the position or visibility of their website within that list. Idea being, that the website should be listed on page one and as near to the top as possible or in a separate box prominently placed on page one. Such special treatment involves paying the search engines a fee. When you avail yourself of these paid services, you are undertaking Search Engine Marketing.

Will Search Engine Marketing guarantee results?

Yes, provided your website is ‘search engine and people friendly’. Search Engine Marketing will provide visibility to your website. Prospective customers will click on the link provided within the search engine results and arrive at your website. What happens once the customers arrive at your website depends on how good your website has been designed and put together whether the information and or products have been well organized and is easy to find and so on. Your customers must have a happy experience.

Is Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine marketing the same?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a series of steps you take at the website end to make it ‘search engine friendly’. These steps could include inserting properly formed meta tags, judicious use of keywords through out the page and website, ensuring the presence of hypertext links through out the website so that all pages that you want the customers to visit, are interlinked and entering appropriate descriptive titles for each page.

Search Engine Marketing on the other hand, is something you do at the search engine end and it usually includes making payment(s) to the search engine in return for enhanced listing or enhanced visibility. The usual procedure is to first undertake a Search Engine Optimization and then undertake Search Engine Marketing.

How will I know if the online business consulting strategy is bearing results?

Increased sales or increased footfalls. A sudden jump in the sales is the surest way to know that your Search Engine Marketing strategy is working. However most search engines provide you with a set of tools that can help you not only track the number of visitors to your website, but also gather information on their geographic l0cation.

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B2B or Business to business advertising is the marketing of products and services exclusively to bulk consumers such as business establishments, hospitals and other institutions and even government bodies. Although business to business advertising does include advertising to dealers and stockiest, when we refer to Business to business solutions, we generally exclude this category because wholesale dealers and stockiest are not consumers. Business to business solutions to wholesale dealers and stockiest is purely on the basis of the popularity of the product or its potential and profit margins for the wholesale dealers and stockiest for pushing the product to the retailers. Business to business advertising to wholesale dealers and stockiest therefore requires a different approach altogether.

The basic fundamentals of business to business advertising are the same as those used when advertising to small consumers. The difference is in the way the product or service is presented. For example, all business establishments require filing cabinets. Typically, they buy two types of filing cabinets – fire and burglar proof and ordinary cabinets that may simply have a lock. A business to business advertising for cabinets would not only need to be able to provide both types of cabinets but should be better priced than the nearest rival. Apart from that, the ability to provide the cabinets in custom sizes with the client’s business logo as well as the name of the department would be an additional incentive.

Business to business advertising therefore is advertisement that primarily offers two incentives; a more competitive price and customization of the product – the latter being offered without any additional costs to the client. You might wonder why the same is not offered to the small customers. The reason of course is the expected size of the order. While individual customers might buy one or two units, business establishments, hospitals and other institutions and government bodies would generally buy thousands of units. The profitability and size of order dictates the size and value of the offer.

Given the potential size of each business order, whenever you plan a Business to business advertising it obviously needs to be carefully put together. It needs to be racy, appealing and at the same time present a compelling reason for the business client to buy the product or service. When putting together Business to business advertising, you have to also remember that your business client will in all likelihood, be fully aware of your product or service as well as the competitors products and services. Business to business advertising can be carried out via newspapers, magazine, direct mail, catalogs, television adverts, F.M. radio marketing, special sales promotions, billboards and the internet. Business to business advertising is also often carried out at an individual level in social clubs. Indeed, it is often said that more sales is done through “old boy network” than through high profile business to business advertising. “Old boy network” refers to contacts and word of mouth references. Securing business orders oftentimes also involves paying commissions or giving gifts to the purchase managers.

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With fears of recession having now being laid to rest, business establishments have once again begun to spend on marketing their products and services to other business establishments i.e., business to business advertising is slowly looking up again. In fact, according to the latest Forrester report, manufacturers plan to spend 6.7% more on business to business advertising in 2011 than they did in the preceding year. Increasing business to business advertising spends is a vital indicator of business growth and potential.

The same Forrester report also mentions that in 2011 business to business advertising is aimed more at lead generation, product marketing, product management, and product branding. Manufacturers and service providers seem to have realized that in order to position themselves with potential corporate and institutional buyers they must position themselves in new interactive spaces as well.

A study conducted by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) indicated that roughly 69% of the business to business advertising will be through increased use of digital video advertising (DVA) because the manufacturers and service providers felt that business to business advertising via digital video advertising was more traceable and easier to target. Also, with new technologies available, digital video advertising was less expensive and hence more cost efficient.

The Forrester report further pointed out that tech service sector would increase their business advertising solutions by as much as 17% while Business and professional services would increase their business to business advertising spend by 4.3% and Finance and Insurance by 5.9% and manufacturers would increase their business to business advertising by 4.3%. The new statistics on business to business advertising is hardly surprising when considering that the tech industry was least affected by the recent recession. But increased ad spends by the other industries indicates a robust business recovery.

In all this we should not fail to notice that the Forrester report pointed out that a significant portion of the business to business advertising would be spent on product branding and despite being a young platform, as much as 7.4% of the business to business advertising money would be spent on community and social marketing. All in all, business to business advertising will definitely see a significant revival in 2011.

Small business establishments will continue to focus their business to business advertising using traditional media whereas the larger manufacturers and service providers are keen to try out non-traditional media including social networking and the internet. This too is along expected lines because small businesses have lesser margin for error and trying out new avenues of marketing and are therefore bound to stick to tried and tested methods of business to business advertising. Large manufacturers and service providers on the other hand have larger budgets and therefore enjoy a wider playing field. Large manufacturers and service providers can afford to allocate their business to business advertising budgets to traditional as well as non-traditional methods. In fact, if it weren’t for the large manufacturers and service providers, non traditional methods of business to business advertising might never have taken off.

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Web Content management system software – Past and Present
I still remember the crazy days (ended 7 years ago) when I used to send my material via email to the web team which would format the content and post it on to my website. In fact, if I wanted anything connected to the website to be done, I had to talk or send an email to the web team. Today, thanks to the web content management system software, I can pretty much do anything from adding pages, adding photos, graphics, products, text and even create a form and not just any form mind you, I can create a interactive form that authenticates data before accepting it. What more could I possibly want? For me, it was bye-bye web team, delays and costs, and hello web content management system software that does it all for me for just a onetime payment-and guess what, it doesn’t cost much either.

The advantage of Web Content management system software
If you have web content management system software installed, you don’t need a technical team to manage your website. You can pretty much do it on your own and that too, without any time lag. You also don’t need to know any technical stuff like HTML and Java scirpting and PHP and so on. The web content management system software is highly adoptive and all you need to do is login to it, create a new page, insert and arrange the graphics for the web page you are building and then add the individual elements (such as images, photos, text, forms etc). Hit the submit button and Viola – your web page is ready. The web content management system software handles all the HTML, Java scirpting, PHP, database and other technical stuff for you.

Ease of use of Content management system software
The web content management system software is pretty much like your image editor. If you need to paint a part of the picture red, you just need to select the color and use the paint brush and you’re pretty much done. You don’t need to know how the image editor does it – the technicalities are irrelevant. Ditto for the web content management system software – it just does whatever you need to get done. That said, the web content management system software of today is extremely sophisticated. The current web content management system software not only enables you to create webpage as you like, it also enables you to track sales, track stock, print invoices, send order details to your drop shipper or stockiest, handle re-stocking, inventories and even create a projected sales or profit graph.

Why use Content management system software
he web content management system software of today enables multi-logins. That is, various authorized personnel can login and add content or data to your web content management system. Your suppliers for example, can login and be granted access to one single form where they can enter details of stocks that have been dispatch to you. They can also be granted access to a page where they can view details of stocks required and so on. Every person who login into the web content management system software, can be granted access to certain parts of the web content management system and not to the entire website. So if you have been managing your website the old fashioned way – via a web management team, the time has come to switch over to the web content management system software. After all, if you no longer use a painter to paint your portrait, why should you use a human web editing team to manage your website – especially when there is a perfect customizable tool at hand?

Talk to us. RetailBizMD is one of the few companies that have all the skills (online brand marketing, Ecommerce web development, Small business marketing plan, social media as a marketing tool, Social media marketing plan, etc) required under one roof. We will be delighted to be a part of your success.

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Business to business advertising is no different from any other

Okay, first off, a business to business advertising is absolutely in no way different from any other advertisement. Because you were selling to corporate rather than direct consumers, a separate advertisement category called “business to business advertising” was created that’s all there is to it. A separate category does not entitle a different approach. When you sell luxury goods you are selling to them to a select category of people. In the case of business to business advertising, just think of the corporate group as a different bunch of people.

Spruce up your Business social media marketing

I have seen plenty of business to business advertising and most of it is dull and lack luster, as if people who make the decisions in business houses are not humans but some sort of robots. The common argument that the corporate decision makers simply go by hard facts rather than the sleek approach of the business to business advertising is totally out-dated and obsolete. When you sell a super luxury car to the CEO of a company will you prepare a dull pitch? If not, then why prepare a dull business to business advertising pitch when you sell him office security or whatever? After all, the person is the same in both cases.

Add some fire to your Internet business consultants

While I was working on a science project during my high school days, my dad once said to me “son, your teacher doesn’t care how much you know about the science behind the project until she knows how much you care about the project”. Over the years I came to realize that the same truth applies to advertising also – especially Social media campaigns. The corporate honchos sitting in front of you need to know and feel that you believe in your product. They need to see that enthusiasm in your eye and in your business to business advertising pitch. So for heaven’s sake, stop those dull ads that explain in detail how the darn thing works. Yea sure they want to know about that too, but not initially. They need to know the details only after they’ve been sold on the idea or product.

Treat your corporate customers to something nice

Take a look at all the business to business advertising ads you see out there. The ads are laid out as if you are teaching some school kid why your filing cabinet is better than the competitors. For God’s sake, the business to business advertising even has bullet points for advantages and highlights. Are the corporate decision makers not swayed by sleek movie presentations or sexy business to business advertising with racy music? Then why on Earth would you prepare business to business advertising with the dull bullet points? When it comes to business to business advertising, remember one simple rule – the people sitting in front of you are people i.e. humans who are easily swayed by sleek quality and also bored with dull presentations. So next times you are at an online business marketing plan meet breathe out some fire.

Talk to us. RetailBizMD is one of the few companies that have all the skills (ecommerce web site solutions, Ecommerce web development, small business consulting services, social media as a marketing tool, ecommerce internet marketing, etc) required under one roof. We will be delighted to be a part of your success.

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The humble telephone instrument has undergone a sea-change in the last 10 years. We’ve gone from pure analog to electronic to digital. We can now not only use the phone to talk but we can also talk to the phone and instruct it to dial or drop or add a contact. Phones now not only use land based wire and fiber optic cables, they also connect to your customer via the internet. But best of all is its evolution from a block of large plastic to block of slim rectangular 2 x 4 inch digital wonder that is small, rechargeable, wireless and light enough to be put in our pockets and carried around i.e. the mobile phone. Today everyone (well, almost everyone), carries a mobile or cell phone.

I love to be a bit dramatic hence the opening paragraph – I won’t bore you with more details except to make a point (and I’m sure you will agree), that the humble telephone has evolved dramatically into a slim featured packed ‘smart’ device that we cannot live without. If that is the case, why is it that very few companies use the mobile phone to connect with their customers?

The answer I guess probably was with the speed of development of the cell phone hardware and cell phone software i.e. the mobile phone applications. The development happened (and is still happening) so fast, that most company CEO’s only saw a blur and have yet to grasp the importance of that little electronic and digital genie out there. A rising number of customers have already begun using the mobile phone in place of plastic to pay for purchases. Indeed, they not only browse products using the cell phone applications, they also directly pay using digital wallets especially designed for the cell phone.

So as the CEO or marketing executive of a company, shouldn’t you also respond via the cell phone? When an order comes in your system should be able to recognize whether the order was delivered via the mobile phone and in turn send out a confirmation in the form of a text or multi-media message to that phone. Granted a separate detailed receipt should be sent via email but a primary acknowledgement should go out to the cell phone.

I would however caution about going overboard with embracing mobile applications. Customers view the mobile phone as a personal device. While they don’t mind using it to shop, they mind if you start sending advertisements to their cell phone. Also, cell phones are far from standardized. They have evolved so quickly that the neither manufacturers nor cell phone application developers have had time to pause and think about standards. For example, mobile phones manufactured and used in Japan mostly support only Japanese encodings. Those manufactured and used in the Middle East may only support Arabic encoding and so on. So a text message sent out in English might well end up as junk in a cell phone used by your Japanese client. While it is vital that mobile media be added as a means of contacting or responding to your customer, it would be prudent not to spend too much money on it – at least not until the technology is fairly standardized.

Talk to us. RetailBizMD is one of the few companies that have all the skills (SEO consulting services, Ecommerce web development, Ecommerce web hosting services, social media as a marketing tool, Facebook marketing campaign, etc) required under one roof. We will be delighted to be a part of your success.

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Without Ecommerce web site solutions, your investment in product or service retailing will come to nothing and you would be staring down the stark barrel of bankruptcy. Marketing can take many forms some of which I’m sure, you’re probably more than aware of. Over the past couple of years, newer types of marketing techniques have emerged – ones that you’re still not aware of.

Ever since man invented commerce, the word-of-mouth marketing technique was identified as the strongest and best way to sell a product or service. In the early stages of commercial evolution, word-of-mouth not only meant receiving information from your friends or family about a fabulous deal somewhere, advertisers were paid to stand at street corners and shout out the deal. Back then word-of-mouth was the only way to advertise. Today word-of-mouth is considered premium advertising. However, in the fast paced world of today, word-of-mouth is simply too slow. Over the years with every change in technology, new forms of social media as a marketing tool were invented. In fact, advertising and technology go hand-in-hand.

It is therefore but appropriate that the digital world we live in has created a new “digitalized” form of advertisement – blogs, tweets and comments by end-users and paid end-users. These are in essence, word-of-mouth reinvented for the digitalized world we live in.

Today advertisers, product managers and marketers are using Blogs, tweets and comments not just for creating those ‘pre-launch hypes’ but also for actively promoting products, SEO Richmond, internet marketing Richmond and Richmond it consulting. The recommended way is to first issue a press release online, wait for Google to pick it up (index it) and then create a viral network of information around the online press release cumulating with blogs, tweets and comments across social networking sites. Because the blogs, tweets and comments emanate from real (or perceived as real) end-users, the reader is led to believe in the authenticity of what he (or she) is reading and because a virtual or real relationship often already exists (online friend network, blog and tweet followers), a friendly advice or information is accepted more easily and taken more seriously than if they were to read an outright advertisement from the company or advertiser.

This form of online word-of-mouth advertising is taken so serious by alert and tech savvy marketers and advertisers, that they have created a new phrase for this kind of marketing arena – Blogosphere!

Recently a study conducted by ‘e-marketer’ indicated that companies in US have been steadily increasing their budgets for Blogosphere and online brand development influencing and given that social networking is still in its infancy, budgetary spends are only likely to go up in the years to come.

So if you have a product or service to sell or a brand to build and have yet to venture into Blogosphere, then you need to jump on to it now lest you be left so far behind that you get labeled as an obsolete company.

Talk to us. RetailBizMD is one of the few companies that have all the skills (Ecommerce web hosting services, Search Engine Marketing Consultants, ecommerce web hosting services, SEO consulting services, e-commerce trends, etc) required under one roof. We will be delighted to be a part of your success.

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“What do you think of Facebook? Should our company be a part of these social networking phenomena or is this just a teen fad?”

First off, the time to decide on whether your company should be a part of the social networking phenomena has long since elapsed. When I last checked, Facebook had crossed the 600 million active users of which, an astounding 50% log in every single day. Twitter is Social viral advertisement. Although relatively new, it already has over 110 million users and the list grows daily.

In terms of sheer ‘population’, these social networking sites are larger than a few countries out there and there is more ‘activity’ going on at these social networking sites than does in small countries. Today we need to be talking not on whether or not your company should be a part of social networking sites but on the extent of your company’s involvement in the social network and the richness of the interaction between your organization and the cyber-citizen.

Many of my corporate clients have set up teams of personnel who proactively engage this digital consumer. They are discovering new ways of receiving feedback and new methods of interacting with the customer. A major car dealer who is a client and a friend uses the internet marketing and consulting services to soft launch new cars to gauge the reaction of the market. The car details are released, and engine specifications dissected and scrutinized. Test runs are arranged and he says, more than 30% of these test runs result in a purchase. What is more, ever since the dealership has embraced the social networking site, sales of car accessories have jumped 280%.

If your company is still using the IVR and email method, you need to change and soon. IVR and email method is non personal and often frustrating. There’s simply too much time lag in these traditional methods.

When bosses of some companies simply refused to be a part of the social networks, I would often Google either their company name or one of their products. The results were always interesting. Often times, the bosses would be shocked (or sometimes delighted) at their customer comments on the state of customer service and these comments were made on the social media consulting services networks “so you see, whether you like it or not, your company already has a presence on the social media”.  My point being, why not channel that presence in a way that benefits your company? If customers are discussing your company or your product wouldn’t you like to have your PR present at such discussions? If your brand image is important to you, you simply can’t ignore the social media.

I have a large number of clients who have staff who call up the disgruntled customers and resolve any irritants quickly. The happy customer in turn tweets his happiness or comments favorably on the state of service which in turn is noticed by the customer’s friend network and often picked up on Google as well. So if you’re still not on Facebook or Tweeter, it’s high time you got on to it.

Talk to us. RetailBizMD is one of the few companies that have all the skills (internet business consulting, marketing consulting for small business, ecommerce web hosting services, ecommerce web site solutions, e-commerce trends, etc) required under one roof. We will be delighted to be a part of your success.

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