Archive for the ‘Paid Search (PPC)’ Category

Corporate suicide or earth-shattering money making scheme?

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

newspaperMedia mogul Rupert Murdoch has been causing quite a stir recently by threatening to block Google from News Corp sites. The reason for doing so is that he believes search engines are effectively stealing his content by displaying headlines in search results.

However, according to Google they send news organisations “about 100,000 clicks every minute”, whilst Hitwise also claim that 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic is from Google, so can News Corp really afford to lose this huge source of traffic and revenue? According to Murdoch they can, and in a recent interview with Sky News he said:

“What’s the point of having someone come occasionally, who likes the headline they see in Google, come to us? Sure, we can go out and say we have so many millions of visitors, you’d better advertise, and so on. The fact is, there’s not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the web sites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our web sites but paying.”

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The holidays are coming: online marketing tips for Christmas

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

santaLet’s face it, we all love Christmas. It’s a great time of year where we reflect on the year just gone, eat mince pies, watch the Queen’s speech, listen to The Pogues on the wireless (oops DAB Digital Radio) and laugh at Grandad as he drops his false teeth in the dog’s food bowl and farts as he bends over to pick them up.

However, the build up to this festive event (Christmas, not Grandad’s farting), is a frenzy of activity for retailers as they fight for customers both on and off the high street.

Christmas shopping online is becoming a growing trend. I for one plan on buying most of my presents online from the comfort of my own warm home, away from the crazed masses on the wet and blustery high street. But with so much choice online, how am I supposed to choose one e-tailer over another?

Here’s a few tips to help online retailers stand out from the crowd and get those all important extra sales.

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Is this the end for last click wins?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

happychildFor years now, the success of online traffic sources has relied solely on the principle that the ‘last click wins’. This has been a major flaw in web analytics as customer journeys are often a lot more drawn out and complex that just one visit. In fact, leading web analytics company DC Storm, found that 70% of all sales consist of more than one traffic source.

Their research in December 2008 also revealed that there’s an average of 3.36 visits per sale. When creating reports and performing analysis, the winning emphasis is often solely with those last clicks, and so the remaining 70% are effectively ignored. But in reality, that 70% play a vital role in the customer journey and that ever important final conversion event.

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Getting personal with your customers

Monday, June 29th, 2009

girl_blue_skyWe are increasingly aware of how customers are looking to get the best price for the best product, but how can us online marketers ensure that we reach these potential purchasers and get under the skin of what really motivates their buying habits?

We need to go back to basics and forget about the traditional demographics which have influenced marketing campaigns for years. Of course age, sex, income and marital status are important but what you really need to think about is who are your target customers, what influences their spending decisions and which sites do they visit during their spending journey?

Its time to get personal and the answer lies in creating personas…

Personas are fictional characters. They take on identities and represent your customers by their buying trends and search habits. The persona will put a human face to data and create something that can seem real and familiar. Ideal online customers are no longer just ABC1’s, they are individuals sat in front of their computer, researching their next purchase.

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Useful tools to help kick start your search marketing campaigns

Friday, April 17th, 2009

search_marketingWhether your search marketing campaigns are managed in-house or outsourced to a specialist agency, there are many useful tools you should be aware of, some of which I will be exploring in this post.

Keyword research is the most important element to get right in your search strategy, way before looking at website architecture, internal linking or URL structure. Keywords are the foundation of your paid search campaign and key to natural search.

Below is a list of some keyword research tools you should be considering.

Keyword research tools

Google UK keyword research tool

Useful for determining the traffic volume for your target keywords, helping you decide which keywords to target. It also gives approximate search volumes for broad, phrase and exact match searches, volume trends and advertiser competition.

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Another great piece of online PR coverage for King & Allen on ‘how to dress in a recession’

Friday, March 20th, 2009

mens_suitPropellernet’s super-duper online PR team has done it again with another great piece of online PR work for one of our clients King & Allen (bespoke suit makers).

Seeing as the doom and gloom of the recession is all everyone is talking about at the moment, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to put a positive spin on it with an article and video interview appearing on the Telegraph’s online Business & Finance section about ‘how to dress for the recession’.

You no longer need to trek down to Savile Row for a bespoke suit which could cost you in excess of £2,000 when you could make your way down to King & Allen and get yourself a top quality, made to measure suit at a more affordable price.

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