A Marketing Blog by Marketing Journal

What Is The Average Bounce Rate?

2012-01-07T16:45:00.002+10:30

Many customers and people have asked me these questions before: “What is the average bounce rate of websites”? “Is my bounce rate good or bad”? In fact, I don’t really know what is the exact answer to the first question. First of all it really depends on what type of websites you have and the industry you are in. Also, where they are coming from and also what source or keywords they found you and enter your site. If it is brand keywords, then I would think most websites definitely have a bounce rate of less than 10%. If not, your brand is either a generic word, there are other companies with the same brand name or you have a serious problem with your brand. if it the source is broader or more generic, then a high bounce rate is definitely understandable. On average, I would think that a 30 to 40% bounce rate is acceptable across all sources.

Actually, what is exactly bounce rate? This is also one question that I have been asked many times before as well and I bet most people don’t exactly know what is bounce rate and how it is measured. Bounce rate as defined by Wikipedia is:

The percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

where

Rb = Bounce rate
Tv = Total number of visitors viewing one page only
Te = Total entries to page

A visitor may bounce by:

Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site
Closing an open window or tab
Typing a new URL
Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site
Session timeout

A commonly used session timeout value is 30 minutes. In this case, if a visitor views a page, doesn't look at another page, and leaves his or her browser idle for longer than 30 minutes, they will register as a bounce. If the visitor continues to navigate after this delay, a new session will occur.
The bounce rate for a single page is the number of visitors who enter the site at a page and leave within the specified timeout period without viewing another page, divided by the total number of visitors who entered the site at that page. In contrast, the bounce rate for a web site is the number of web site visitors who visit only a single page of a web site per session divided by the total number of web site visits.

Now back to the question again. What is the average bounce rate? Most online sources I have read have reported an average bounce rate of around 40%. There’s quite a lot of articles on Google that will tell you what is the average bounce rate. Kissmetrics report an average bounce rate of 40.5% and they’ve got a cool infographics and pdf regarding this topic. Enjoy.

Bring Outsourcing Back Home

2012-01-07T16:00:00.002+10:30

Why waste time on something that you are not good at? Outsourcing to many companies and executives definitely looks like a good idea. Outsourcing is a business practice where companies outsource/contract out selected or part of their business operations to other companies that specialise in those operations in order to lower cost and improve efficiency. Outsourcing can definitely help companies save time, money, space and also the need for training. Outsourcing as a business function was first formally introduced as a business strategy in 1989, this practice’s origins began in the aftermath of World War II. Today, countries such as India and China is the world’s leading outsourcing countries.

Many companies today are still utilising outsourcing for the above benefits. However like a coin, there’s always two sides to outsourcing, the good and the bad. On the bad side, outsourcing can bring about bad customer service and poor service or product quality. Many companies and executives today are finding that outsourcing does not really provide the cost and time savings they had hoped for. Many are finding that they are being burdened by the inflexibility of contracts as well as factors such as rising shipping and transportation costs. Most importantly, outsourcing ultimately hurts your economy back home where jobs back home are loss to foreign countries and this is a big and concerning issue in most countries today including back here in Australia.

This is why there’s been call and action by both people, governments as well as businesses to bring the jobs back home. Some have call this phenomenon as ‘backshoring’ and ‘reinsourcing’. To me, I think this is definitely a good idea as companies can provide better customer service, dedicated customer support and also better quality as well. And of course, we get to keep our jobs back home and ultimately, this benefits our economy!

How To Grow Your Brand & Market Share

2010-04-22T21:01:00.006+09:30

Marketers and CEOs, how do you grow your brand or your company's market share & sales volume? A few years ago, I posted on my blog titled 'what is your marketing iq?' which has all the answers. The answer is actually quite simple, so simple that most don't know the answer. Most company would think that the answer is to get existing customers to increase their purchase frequency i.e. buy more from you or by increasing customer loyalty. This is why so many companies allocate a substantial amount of their marketing budgets towards customer loyalty program. But in fact, this is not true. The answer to growth is to actually get more customers or buyers. This is not too hard to understand, imagine there are a 1000 people in your market and you have 700 people who are your customers. This is 70% of the market share and thus making you the market leader. Having 100 out of a 1000 people buying multiples times from you still doesn't change the fact that you only have 10% market share. Simple, isn't it?

If you are interested to know more how about brands grow, you need to visit this website or buy this book from Professor Byron Sharp titled 'How Brands Grow'. There are alot of marketing knowledge from this book where most marketers don't know:

1. Growth in market share comes by increasing popularity; that is by gaining more buyers (of all types), most of whom are light customers buying the brand only occasionally.
2. Brands, even though they are usually slightly differentiated, mainly compete as if they are near lookalikes; but they vary in popularity (and hence market share)
3. Brand competion and growth is largely about building two market based assets: physical availability and mental availability. Brands that are easier to buy - for more people, in more situations - have more market share. Innovation and differentiation (when they work) build market based assets, which last after competitors copy the innovation.

DIY Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2009-10-20T18:14:00.009+10:30

No need to pay SEO agencies big money to optimise your website or keep searching the internet on how to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) yourself. Google has now published its own SEO documentation which you can now Do It Yourself (DIY). What a better way to get a SEO documentation from Google instead of paying big bucks to SEO agencies where most of them give you the same kind of information/guidelines that are already widely available out on Google itself. I guess the money paid to agencies is at least they can project manage it for you and make sure that you are doing the right thing and you don't have to worry. This is the same as paying migration consultants where most if not all migration information is on the internet or the immigration government site but yet you want to have the peace of mind paying the expert to do the right thing for you so you don't have to worry about it. You can download Google's search engine optimization starter guide here or directly from www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf.

Cost Effectiveness of Search Advertising/Marketing

2009-06-08T20:10:00.004+09:30

Over the years, I have been selling search advertising/marketing and one of the ways necessary to better sell especially to businesses that are new to search is to prove that it is a far more cost effective way of advertising as compared to many other forms of advertising mediums. Not too long ago, I posted a short but important blog post on my company's blog that search advertising is the most cost effective method of advertising. The study done by Piper Jaffray shows that the cost per lead from the search engines is a fraction of the cost of email marketing, direct mail, online banners or yellow pages.

Google Local Business Optimization - How to Increase your Google Local Business Results / Listings

2009-01-16T22:11:00.004+10:30

Recently, I have been spending a lot of my time over the last few months, researching and experimenting, on how to get on the 1st page of the Google local business results. Many of my successful listings are through constant testing & experimentation.

Google’s local business listings is a great opportunity to get yourself up in the rankings of Google for your relevant geographical keywords much easier and quicker than Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the best thing of all, it is free!

Here are some proven techniques/ways that I have used to get many of my own and clients’ websites successfully on the local business listings:

1. Get as many free listings in the local directories as possible. One tip to find these local directories is to check the ‘web pages’ under the details of the local business listings. Sometimes these web pages will show you the local directories they are listed on.

2. Optimise the title/name in the local directories for the keyword you want, eg if you want to rank for ‘Sydney Widgets’, have this in your title/name.

3. Same with the above, optimise the company/organization name in the local business centre for your keyword. (I got a successful listing for a couple of keywords just by optimizing the name, of which these keywords ranking for don’t even have a website).

4. Under the address information in local business centre, make sure you have the city location chosen as the city you want listing for.

5. Under the description in the local business centre, optimise it for the keywords you want. Of course, don’t spam it!

6. Under the categories of the local business centre, choose the most relevant category. Also, you can add in manually the category. In this case, add in ‘Sydney Widgets’.

7. When you upload your photos, try to optimise it (name of the file) for the keyword as well (I guess all of what I have mentioned are some basics of Search engine optimization (SEO)

8. Make sure you enter in as many details as possible in the local business centre, example hours of operations, payment options, upload photos & videos if you have, and other additional details as well. The more details you put in, the more the Google local business centre’s algorithm will see you as a serious listing and therefore making your listing more successful.

9. Try to add coupons if you can as this will definitely help. As mentioned before, videos will also help a lot.

10. Reviews seem like one of the important criteria that Google looks at when assigning rankings on the local business ads results. Try to encourage reviews from your customers. Don’t fake it! Google can easily find out and you may get yourself booted out from your local map listings. I have seen in many successful listings where there are no reviews. However, try to encourage reviews anyway as reviews does help promote your site to other potential visitors/customers as well.

11. Obviously, example to be successful in the listings for ‘Sydney widgets’, your site content should be ‘Sydney widgets’ relevant.

12. Basics of SEO - optimise the title, meta description and keyword tags for your keywords.

13. There are occasions where your listing may disappear, log into your local business centre again and update it again (example, re-upload photos, re-edit your description etc) and it should come back up again in an hour or so (from my experience)

14. I do believe that part of the local business listings’ algorithm, Google does look at external links going to your site as well. Example, if you have other sites linking to you with the link text ‘Sydney widgets’, I am sure this will help as well.

Below are some other techniques which I have not used listed by others that have said to improve the local business results:

• Include your phone number whenever you write a description of your company on a third party website.
• Include your address and phone number at the bottom of every page.
• Include the name of your city and state in your website’s content, titles, descriptions and page headers (I reckon this is quite an important component, so try to do it although I haven’t done this)

I found these above points from leveltendesign.com & traffikd.com and they have some very good pointers on how to improve/increase your Google local business listings as well.

Google Local Business Ads

2008-12-16T21:00:00.002+10:30

My company e-channel is now no.1 under Google's local business listings for keywords such as: search engine marketing Adelaide, search engine optimisation Adelaide, search engine optimisation Sydney, search marketing agency Adelaide & Sydney. This is indeed some great positions to get in Google and an early Xmas present. After some testing and playing around, I have also managed to get my own home address listed in Google's LBA for the keyword search marketing agency Adelaide. Next posting, I will write up on how to get into the local business results and how to optimise for it after months of experimentations.

Google Brand Value of Search Marketing

2008-12-10T23:10:00.001+10:30

We now all know that there is brand increase by using Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This has been proven previously before a report titled brand lift of search conducted by Enquirosearch.com back in 2007. This year Google in April 2008 together with Media Screen has releases a study titled ' Brand Value of Search '. The study was done on the consumer packaged goods industry and proves that employing search marketing as an advertising vehicle will positively impact a brand's key metrics.

The key takeaways are: Search build brands

Brand presence anywhere on a search results page positively impacts key brand metrics

You have greater control over your message with paid search, especially on a generic search term SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Paid search as a branding vehicle: --Drives top of mind awareness for your brand and negatively impacts awareness for your competitive set. --Impressions provide “free” brand lift, without the CPC investment.

I do agree that most of its key takeaways are accurate except for the last point where impressions provide free brand lift. My reasoning for that is your ad might record an impression but it does not mean that the search user will see your ad. i.e. He/she might be looking at only the first 5 listings and if your ad is on the bottom 5; the searcher will not see your ad. Therefore, this impression recorded is not true. So if the searcher didn't see your ad, why would it provide free brand lift?

SEO Vs PPC

2008-04-11T17:57:00.001+09:30

While there are differences between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). There are in fact a lot of similarities between the both of them. I have come up with a comparison table below during my lunch break today on the similarities of SEO and PPC using Google as an example. It is interesting to see the relevance and the linkage Google is bringing to its natural search results and its adwords advertising program. If we look at the comparison table below and think about it. This will allow us to be better search engine marketers for both SEO and PPC.

The 20 Keys to Online Marketing

2008-02-19T22:29:00.000+10:30

Following are 20 keys to successfully marketing your product, service, and business online.

1. Have a professional, easy-to-navigate, quick-loading design. Hire a professional design firm or at least use a good site template.
2. Have lots of quality related content.
3. Build lots of links to your Web site.
4. Build credibility and rapport.
5. Start an e-mail newsletter with quality content and send it out at least once per month.
6. If you are selling a product, have an affiliate program.
7. Once you have an affiliate program, don't forget to promote it.
8. Do whatever you can do profitably to attract large affiliates and form key strategic alliances.
9. Position yourself advantageously in the search engines.
10. Use cost-per-click (CPC) engines, but make sure you know the lifetime value (LTV) of your customers and that you do return-on-investment (ROI) checks often.
11. Supplement your affiliate advertising with both online and traditional advertising, but track results and always do ROI checks.
12. Advertise using CPM channels to build brand recognition, but put profitability before brand recognition.
13. Offer yourself as a resource to the media as an expert in your niche.
14. Hire a great publicity firm or bring an experienced publicist in-house.
15. Use autoresponders to maintain constant contact with prospective customers.
16. Remember that business is all about relationships and communication. Always work to build more relationships, and once they are built, make sure you are in continuous contact with your prospects, customers, strategic alliances, suppliers, investors, and the media.
17. Encourage word of mouth among your customers.
18. Have superior customer service and have staff to answer all incoming e-mails within 24 hours.
19. Send out periodic e-mail follow-ups making sure your customers are happy and asking them for feedback on your product and the service your company has provided.
20. Blog frequently with quality content.

from the book Zero to One Million by Ryan P. Allis

HEMA website

2008-01-26T23:04:00.000+10:30

You gotta have a look at this Holland departmental store's website. Interesting and innovative web marketing. Take a look at HEMA's product page. wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. Don't scroll... the page moves itself...

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands. HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

This is a gimmicky promotional website and you probably be puzzle as to how you can view or buy their products. In fact, you can't do your shopping at this website. To do your shopping, you will have to go to its normal website at http://www.hema.nl/

Video Marketing via Video Sharing Sites

2008-01-22T22:10:00.000+10:30

Video sharing sites for example YouTube and Metacafe seems to be the biggest hits in town especially with the younger and modern generations. These video sharing sites have also become the next advertising medium for many marketers. Marketers have been producing commercial videos for the purpose of marketing and promoting their companies' brands and products/services. Google, Apple and many other small to large companies have ride on this wave of utilising this new form of advertising vehicle and most have found it to be an effective marketing tool as these video sharing sites have a phenomenal high traffic circulation. Internet Outsider reports that YouTube now accounts for 28% of total minutes spent on Google worldwide and an astounding 35% of global users; This is indeed an astounding level. The biggest success of video sites such as YouTube is because it 'empowers' users making them feel that they are content producers themselves. Below is a list of video sharing sites that are popular worldwide now.

Google Video
BrightCove
PhotoBucket
YouTube
DailyMotion
iFilm
Myspace
Vimeo
BuzzNet
Flixya
GoFish
Kwego
Lulu 6
MyHeavy
PutFile
StupidVideos
Vmix
ZippyVideos
CastPost
Dotv
Famster
MeraVideo
Porkolt
VideoWebTown
Vidmax
Metacafe
Blip.tv
Blinkx
GodTube
Ourmedia
Vimeo
Tudou.com (Chinese)

Brand Lift of Search

2008-01-15T17:19:00.000+10:30

For us marketers, we all do know or speak about as to how search marketing helps in increasing brand awareness or ‘lifting’ your brand. For the sales guys, this has been used constantly to get prospects to advertise in the search engines. However, there has never been any research to prove that “Yes, search marketing does lift your brand”. Finally, Enquiro has proven this last year. The research company ran an online survey and interact with a mocked up Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) in order to test the effects of branding through Search.

The results were staggering:

• A 16% increase in Unaided Brand Recall by having a brand presence in both the top sponsored and top organic listings of a SERP.

• Users are 5% more likely to recall your brand if you have a top sponsored listing in addition to your organic listing (for non-branded queries).

• The gap between your brand and a competitors grows if your brand is in both the top sponsored and organic positions and theirs is not.

• When the brand was in top sponsored, subjects spent 22% of their total sponsored fixations time on the brand.

• When the brand was in the top organic position, subjects spent 37% of their total organic fixations time on the brand.

• When a brand is in both the top sponsored and top organic listings a subject is 10% more likely to recall the brand when asked specifically whether or not they would consider it as a purchase.

• There is less brand lift from the top sponsored listing amongst subjects with a natural affinity for the brand; however, having the brand in the top sponsored listing garners a 10% lift over not having the brand anywhere on the SERP.

• There is a higher purchasing intent for the brand in the group with an affinity, by nearly 7% - and this gap is carried forward until the top sponsored listing is factored into the equation.

• A branded query seems to have a 50% brand lift effect - making the query itself the largest contributor to any brand lift via the SERP.

• There is no statistical difference between the brand recall - whether or not the brand was in both the top sponsored and top organic or top organic only - so long as the query is branded.

Advertising Frequency Part 2

2007-10-20T01:16:00.000+09:30

In my previous post, advertising frequency: how many times is it effective? I've discussed the number of times a user needs to see an ad before he/she will take action. In this case, the best action would be a purchase. 3 times, 7, 10 or 20 times? you debate. At marketing studies, they would argue/prove that consumers were, on the average, exposed to the ad creative 16.9 times (17) before making the purchase.

The study was for a 1 month period, which included advertising on 85+ web media and 50 different ad creatives. The campaign reach was 100,000+ internet users and standard IAB ad creative sizes were used (728x90px and 160x600px; static .jpg files).

In banner ad campaigns, it would take 17 times. What about search marketing campaigns?

10 secrets of the stinking rich

2007-07-18T22:57:00.000+09:30

Wanna get stinkin rich? SmartCompany.com.au has an article today telling you the 10 ways to get dirty stinkin' rich by learning from the some of Australia's richest entrepreneurs. SmartCompany is Australia's online magazine for entrepreneurs & SMEs and it's worth subscribing to their email newsletter.

Be prepared to work and work and work
The secret of most successful entrepreneurs is not that they are particularly smart or insightful. Rather, most have an incredible capacity for work. Most successful entrepreneurs still work seven days a week, even when they have made their millions. Gerry Harvey even turned his favorite holiday spot at Byron Bay into a luxury resort – money never rests.

Be a serial entrepreneur
Few of Australia's richest business people strike it lucky on their first try. Queensland billionaire Terry Peabody, who now runs waste management business Transpacific, has successfully floated three companies, including a cement business and a truck company.

Seven Network boss Kerry Stokes tried everything from trucking and property development before becoming a media mogul. Perth billionaire Stan Perron has tried his hand at earthmoving, ice rinks, airlines and car retailing.

Even when they find a particularly successful venture, the stinking rich always keep their fingers in a number of pies.

Be prepared to take at least one big risk
Every stinking rich person had at least one moment early in their career when everything was on the line – all their money, all the bank's money, their house, their reputation and their future.

Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond put everything into his first business, Mortgage Acceptance Group, and lost $10 million, his home and his marriage when it collapsed. He's now worth almost $600 million, which goes to show you can survive, and prosper, even if your big gamble fails.

Follow your passion and skills
Can't decide which type of billion-dollar business you want to be in? Start by thinking about the things that you really love. Love fashion? Then start a fashion label, just like Sass & Bide founders Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton did.
Bruce Gordon followed his love of entertainment (he was once a stage magician) into the film industry before building the WIN regional television empire. Tasmanian Allen Hansen loved diving for abalone, so he built one of Australia's largest seafood companies.
Cool, dispassionate analysis is important in building a business, but some good old-fashioned enthusiasm is also essential, particularly to get you through the tough times.

Build networks
It is incredible how many of Australia's most successful business people are old friends. John Singleton and Gerry Harvey? They backpacked together through Europe. Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox? Old friends. Jack Cowin and Brett Blundy? They know each other well and are co-investors in Sydney Harbour Bridge tourist attraction BridgeClimb.

Networking can sometimes be a time-consuming (and even boring) process, but having influential friends is always an asset.

Go it alone
When you are trying to grow your company quickly, there is a huge temptation to sell a slice of the business in order to fund expansion. Don't do it.

People like Richard Pratt, Lindsay Fox, David Hains and Harry Triguboff are billionaires because they have resisted the temptation to sell out to venture capitalists or investment bankers.

If you do have to float or sell shares in your business, make sure you keep a majority stake. The stinking rich don’t manage by committee.

Anticipate future trends
One of the richest men in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, built an empire by knowing what consumers want before they know themselves. The Australian business scene is full of similar examples.

"Crazy" John Ilhan picked the mobile phone boom better than anyone else. Paul and Andrew Bassat started the online job ads business Seek when the majority of employers were placing newspaper ads. Eddy Groves built Australia's first corporate child-care company, ABC Learning Centres, and now dominates the sector.

Sell when the price is right
Timing is everything, and if you want to get stinking rich, you've got to know when to cut and run. Retail king Solomon Lew is a genius at picking the top of the market and has recently locked in big profits on his stakes in Coles Group, Colorado and fashion chain Witchery.

In the 1990s, recruitment industry veterans Andrew Banks and Geoff Morgan sold their recruitment company for a big price and bought it back, netting them more than $100 million. Kerry Packer famously did the same with the Nine Network.

Go global
The Australian economy is relatively small and mature, so many local entrepreneurs have been forced to go overseas to build their empire. For money managers like hedge fund guru Michael Hintze (worth $600 million) being based in London means ready access to European clients and capital markets.

If Paul Stoddard tried to base his aircraft spare parts business in Australia, he simply wouldn't have enough customers, but over in Europe he has as much work as he can handle.

Get into mining or financial services
If you want to get rich quick, find a patch of dirt with some minerals in it and start digging. If that's not an option, start an investment bank or funds management business. Resources and financial services will continue to be the hottest sectors in the Australian economy.

Social Marketing – Marketing For Good (CSR)

2007-07-15T01:22:00.000+09:30

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in its marketing form is call social marketing. CSR is about doing all the good things for the good of the organisation. Looking at it this way, it is really another form of marketing where the organisation is marketing and conducting business for the social goods. Social marketing has 3 major components: proactive CSR activity, promoting charities and good causes, and encourage others to give support to charity as well as participate in projects, communities or group for the good of society and environment.

The emergence of social marketing comes about with the rapid increase of the global market and the increase in global competition. Marketers and businesses are finding harder and harder to find points of differentiations to distinguish their offerings. The difficult task of differentiating both products and services thus lead to the path in differentiating through CSR or social marketing. Social marketing allows an increase in its brand value as well as sustaining competitive advantage.

Social marketing works very well in today's societal conscious consumers. Consumers are trying and doing more good things for both society and environment. Organisations that actively does social marketing are thus able to 'engage' these consumers and achieve a higher brand share within its market.

Communication is Everything

2007-07-11T23:23:00.000+09:30

Bad communication is a problem. No communication is unforgivable.

Productive and long lasting client relationships are nourished through frequent client communications.

As an account/project manager like myself, communication is the only way to find out if you are doing a great job or if there are areas where you can improve. Remember that each and every you communicate with a client, you are doing essentially one of two things - increasing trust or decreasing trust.

Trust with a client can be very difficult to obtain, especially when things don't go exactly as planned during a project. But nevertheless communication with a client can be the easiest and smartest thing you can do to help you build the trust desired. First, always provide a periodic status update to the client. This can be as simple as a phone call, face to face meeting, or through an email. Even if there is no job progress, the client will be kept in the loop of where the project is at that point in time, increase the potential to build your trust with them.

Next, whenever there's an important meeting, do a recap of the conversation or meeting and then emailed to each person on the communication, to ensure everyone is on the same page and that you have not left anything uncovered. If you send some documentation, make sure to sit with them (in person or on the phone) and answer any of the questions they may have. Not only will they be able to garner the knowledge needed, but also will be building a trust with you.

Without communication, no relationship stands a chance in any aspects of our life and work.

*The above communication cartoon is taken from Grantland - communication comics. They have a great collection of communication related cartoons.*

Yahoo! SmartAds

2007-07-07T02:29:00.000+09:30

For too many years, Yahoo is always second, behind search giant Google. Yahoo has always been the follower of Google such as its successful adsense and adwords program. However, it looks like Yahoo is finally leading a new way in its recent launched of SmartAds, an advertising product that will allow marketers to offer custom and relevant advertisements on the fly based on a user's behaviour.

Here's how it works, for example, if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo Autos and had previously selected San Francisco as his or her default location in Yahoo Weather, Yahoo's SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time to showcase a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates.

Yahoo SmartAds will utilise demographic, geographic and behavioral targeting to create more relevant advertisements for the user. Using the new technology, ads will be created on the spot, utilising several known factors about a user, including recently-visited sites, location, age, and income. The search engine's recent $680 million acquisition of Right Media will allow SmartAds to appear on the ad provider's extensive advertising network

For a complete overview, visit the Yahoo! SmartAds web site and check out it's demo.

Here's Yahoo's Press Release on SmartAds.

Ambush (Guerilla) Marketing in Search Engine (Google)

2007-06-21T22:46:00.000+09:30

Ambush (Guerilla) marketing as defined by brandchannel.com is a term for when one brand pays to become an official sponsor of an event and another competing brand attempts to cleverly connect itself with the event, without paying the sponsorship fee and, more frustratingly, without breaking any laws.

Wikipedia has many good examples of famous Ambush marketing.

We've seen ambush marketing happened in events and games. Now see ambush marketing in the context of search engine marketing:

See Toyota's sponsored ads on the bottom right when you do a search in Google for the brand keyword' Holden'.

Megaglobe - a new search engine

2007-05-30T00:01:00.000+09:30

Search engine marketers, look out. There's a new international search engine that is going to be launched soon. It's call Megaglobe.

Megaglobe has developed the "Pay per valid click" technology and promise click fraud protection for its advertiser.

"After having advertised extensively on major search engines, I have personally experienced the scale of click fraud that occurs," says Naima Moore, CEO of Megaglobe. Megaglobe was born out of that experience, to offer advertisers the best value for their money.

Megaglobe will be Google's direct competitor, protecting its advertisers from fraudulent click frauds on their sponsored advertisements. Megaglobe will offer a revolutionary 0 per cent click fraud rate for sponsored ads. With click fraud accounting for at least 30% of all sponsored advertising costs, megaglobe's 0 click fraud promise will definitely be welcome by many advertisers. Advertisers will be able to verify clicks by comparing Megaglobe's online reporting with their own server logs. Megaglobe's sponsored listings will also be cheaper than Google adsense & Yahoo search marketing.

It also has its own unique ranking algorithm call "Megarank" and this ranking system evaluates the quality of a particular search result by analysing the quantity and quality of the pages that link to it. The search engine will also display relevant information about a web site without the user having to visit the site.

Sales People are the Voice of the Market

2007-05-24T22:09:00.000+09:30

Today I finally truly understand why salespeople in the sales department are always in conflict with the marketers within the marketing department. It's because one is out in the market and the latter is not. Sales people are the voice of the market, they are the one that truly understands what the market wants and needs. They are actively listening and have a full understanding of the market. It is this understanding that allows them to sell. In contrast, marketers are not out there. In many cases, they base their understanding from information gathered by their sales guys or from their market research team. When marketers truly think that they know the market inside out; no! often they are wrong. They only know from the outside. Put it this way, salespeople are the insiders and the marketing guys are the outsiders so to speak. Of course, I am not saying that marketers do not understand. All I am saying is that the really good marketers are the ones that listens and work together with their salespeople. It is those bad ones that will always have ever conflict because both do not think alike. Sales guys, don't get too cocky just because you can sell. You still need the marketers to provide you the marketing ammunitions to help you do your job. At the end of the day, its about integration and collaboration of both expertise.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

2007-05-19T13:32:00.000+09:30

The primary goal of any business is to make money and in today's world, it is not just about making money and profits. More and more large organisations are beginning to understand that there needs to be a good balance of both evil and good. Evil in the sense of making money and good where the organisation consider the interests of both environment and humanity.

Why CSR? Here are some benefits of CSR:

1. Enhanced reputation and brand image:

Reputation is an important sustainable competitive advantage, because it is very hard to build and cannot be easily mimicked by competitors. A organisation's reputation results from trust by its stakeholders. A strong reputation in ethical environmental and social responsibility can help a organisation build this trust. Several major brands, such as The Body Shop & the Co-operative Group are built on ethical values

2. Increased profit and customer loyalty:

Several academic studies have shown a direct correlation between socially responsible business practices and positive financial performance:

A 1997 DePaul University study found that organisations with a defined corporate commitment to ethical principles do better financially (based on annual sales/revenues) than organisations that don't.

An 11-year Harvard University study found that "stakeholder-balanced" organisations showed four times the growth rate and eight times the employment growth when compared to organisations that are shareholder-only focused.

According to the Millennium Poll on CSR, the majority of 25,000 people interviewed in 23 countries want organisations to contribute to society beyond making a profit.

Research has shown that there is a growing desire by consumers not only to buy good and safe products, but they also want to know that what they buy was produced in a socially and environmentally responsible way such as “sweatshop-free” and child-labor-free clothing, smaller environmental impact.

3. Creating new business opportunities:

Experience gained through addressing CSR challenges also provides opportunities for organisations to create new business opportunities.

4. Increased ability to attract and retain employees:

A organisation's dedication to CSR can be an important aid to recruitment and retention compared with competitors. People want to work for a organisation that is in accordance with their own values and beliefs.

78% of employees would rather work for an ethical and reputable organisation than receive a higher salary. (The Cherenson Group, www.csreurope.org)

In interviewing 150 top employees in 24 organizations, the UK consulting firm, Stanton Marris, learned that employer reputation was a key factor in accepting a job offer.

76% of those polled by the Cone/Roper Corporate Citizenship Study said a organisation's "commitment to causes" was an important consideration in deciding where to work.

5. Increased productivity and morale:

Committing CSR internally to improve working conditions, lessen environmental impacts can lead to increased productivity and staff morale where the workforce are more reliable, enthusiastic and efficient.

6. Attracting investors and business partners:

Organisations addressing ethical, social, and environmental responsibilities have easier access to capital through investors and better conditions for loans on international money markets. It is also easier to do merger/acquisition negotiations, finding business partners and suppliers as well as smoother workforce integration.

A 2001 study showed that 12% of total investment in the USA was of a socially responsible nature. Likewise, there are were 313 green, social and ethical funds operating in Europe in June 2003, showing a 12% increase in the last eighteen months.

6. Managing risk:

The more an organisation is committed to CSR, the better it is able to manage risk. Large corporations and well-known brands are the first target of litigation for CSR misconduct such as the highly publicised "Nike sweatshops". The consequences could be huge in terms of market share or capital loss. A tarnished reputation might require years to rebuild and cost a large sum of money.

7. Preferential government and regulatory treatment:

Governments and regulators are more lenient with organisations that are more committed to CSR. Preferential treatment may be given when applying for permits or permission to do something and less intervention in their business through taxation and regulations.
Some believe that CSR programmes are often undertaken in an effort to distract the public from the ethical questions posed by their core operations. Some that have been accused include British Petroleum (BP) and British American Tobacco (BAT).

8. Increased operational efficiency and reduced operating costs:

Operational efficiency can be increased by reducing waste production and operating costs can be reduced by less water usage, increasing energy efficiency and selling recycled materials. At a broader scale, such CSR actions can result in environmental, social and economic benefits.

9. Innovation in market through cooperation with local communities:

CSR requires cooperation with the local communities and relationships can be improved. This can help organisations in tailoring products and services as well as more rapid acceptance to local markets.

Now, how do you implement a CSR plan/model?

There a few things to think about before you begin a CSR plan. Begin with a big picture, can you do a better job in making our planet, its environment and its inhabitants a better world to live in? If yes, think about how your organisation can impact our world; its people and how you as an organisation can create a better, fair, just and compassionate world.

To achieve success, such ethical social and environmental values need to be embedded in your business culture: business practices, vision and plan which begin at the highest level.

To begin, you need to do a self assessment of what priority areas you need to implement based on your unique business strengths. Key stakeholders should be involved in the process where discussions can happen so that everybody can buy into the concept. First, identify any risk that may cause reputation and/or financial risk to your organisation. Second, identify those socially responsible initiatives that are the most cost effective to implement. Once you have developed your CSR priorities, you need to establish a code of principles conduct, clear value statement where the whole organisation needs to commit. You then need to develop policy to formalise and articulate this commitment, and create programs to implement this policy. To make the programs meaningful, organisations need to provide training and education, and plan visible, memorable activities. The CSR plan should be implemented across the organisation. It should be localised for different markets and it should have measurement techniques. Open communication with stakeholders (community, employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers and the environment) is also vital as they need to feel that they can respect and trust a company's values. Finally, report the success of the programs and measure the progress as your CSR investment needs to be justified to shareholders.

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2007-05-19T13:32:00.000+09:30

The Truth in Ad Sales

2007-03-26T22:43:00.000+09:30

You gotta have a look at this funny ad if you are in the advertising or marketing industry. It's all over the internet now and it's really hilarious.

The truth in ad sales - A day in the life of a media agency

Isn't it good if your customers pay on time?

2006-12-26T00:03:00.000+10:30

The best Christmas present for my company this season is the collection of a big amount of money from various projects which had been owed to us for quite some time. Some of these overdue have been more than 90 days. While the collection of this money has been a big cash present for us; there are still a couple of bad debts which had yet to be recovered.

As stated by the Australian credit management, there are typically 3 reasons why customers don’t pay.

• The customer can’t pay
• The debt is disputed
• The customer had no intention of paying

When you have customers like them, it will affect your cash flow and as we all know, cash flow is king. So what steps can you take to speed up the collection of your money and not to have bad paying customers?

1. First rule: Get payment first before you deliver. Get at least a portion or 50% up front before you start work.
2. Send out invoices/bills on time. The earlier you send it out, the sooner you can collect your money.
3. Monitor payments/receivables daily. Keep a close eye of this everyday; make sure you know which payments are overdue.
4. As soon as the invoices are overdue (our term is Net 7, which means it is overdue after 7 days), immediately send out reminders. The longer the invoice is not paid, the harder it is to get your money.
5. Call your customers or their accounts department to chase up the payment. The faster you get your money, the better your cash flow.
6. Extend customer payment if they can’t pay but you need them to commit to a formal payment plan.
7. As soon as you have identified a bad customer, stop sales to them and stop servicing them until they have paid or at least make a commitment to pay.
8. Get the professionals to collect your money. When it is way overdue and the customer is not paying, it is time to hire a debt collection agency.

Now I hope this will help you and myself to be better in collecting our money. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Google Click-to-Call

2006-12-09T18:45:00.000+10:30

My company recently tried out Google's new Click-to-Call advertising program and it turned out both a comedy and a disappointment.

3 phone calls were made at a cost of $81.46. This is almost $27 per phone call, bloody expensive! Well, hmm not really if the calls were actually sales leads. Now comes the funny part.

One of the calls was made by a guy who called just for fun. It's the first time he saw a click-to-call ad and keyed his number on our ad just to see how it works.

The second was made from Pizza Hut asking if we want to order a pizza!

Finally, the third call went missing in action. God knows, where the call went.