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You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 3

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:34 +0000

This is a continuation of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed the Barriers to Entry and You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed Learning from Industry Leaders and Networking with the Competition.

Develop Your Own Style, Be Unique

As noted above, you should be a unique entry into that niche market. In case you haven’t noticed, there is already a ProBlogger, a Technorati, and an eBay, so why try to copy, or even emulate them closely? Sometimes there is a great need for improving a known business or product. Ask Overstock how that whole eBay competition thing is going? (Of course it doesn’t help for the CEO to be nominated and receive honorable mention in the “Worst executive of the year award” either.)

You don’t need to be an exact copy of something that already exists. There may be room for one more, but there might not be room for one more exact copy. Develop your own business style and don’t worry about being an exact copy, that will make things worse. You should know who the competition is, you should know generally how they operate, and then you should do your own thing and not worry about what they do.

Over the past 10-15 years I have developed a few new products and brought them from a thought in my head to a manufactured item that our company could sell. Part of product development is working to brand that product. What is the name going to be, the packaging, a logo and so on.

Because this particular product was going to be sold at conventions all across the country, it would be seen by attendees walking by a vendor’s booth in a crowded hall of sometimes 500-600 different vendors. So the packaging had to stand out. I took some squares of Astrobright paper (the neon colored papers) in all different colors and with my eyes shut, threw them on the floor.

When I opened my eyes I picked the very first color that I saw, a very bright neon yellow, and this became the trademark color buyers looked for when they walked the crowded floor. It stood out among a sea of browns and earth tones and even if a buyer didn’t know what the product was, it caught his or her eye and drew them into the booth.

Learn to develop your own style and you will be rewarded by standing out among a crowded field of earth tones.

Stay Focused and Be Positive

It can be very easy to get discouraged when entering a new field or niche market. The competition has been doing this a much longer time, they have developed relationships you don’t have, traffic you can’t generate, and revenue you only wish to achieve. Set some short term and long term goals and try to stick by them. Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t directly compete yet, that takes time.

Try to stay as positive as you can and focus on the job at hand. For those of us who are never satisfied with meritocracy, it can be a challenge to stay focused. Whatever short term goal we reach should have been higher and whenever we do reach that goal, we have already looked at why we didn’t reach the one above instead. (more…)

You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:26 +0000

This is a continuation of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 1 where I discussed the Barriers to Entry.

Learn From the Industry Leaders

The industry leaders got to be the leaders for various reasons, but one might be that they know what they are doing. It is really amazing how much you can learn in any particular niche market by how the leaders of that market run their businesses. Find out who these leaders are and how long they have been involved in the field of interest.

By no means should you ever just copy what they are doing and call that your business strategy (see be unique below). That may work for the white-labels in the grocery store but in the world of online business it can quickly make you the target of a more powerful entity, and your reputation will probably be a less favorable one in the long run.

Learn, but don’t copy. Make a study of these companies and find out everything you can (legally) about who they are and how they operate. This will give you further information about step number one above and you may find you really can’t compete, or it may reveal a vacancy that needs to be filled. It will also give you some insight on what to prepare for in the coming months.

Make a list and do some research. If you don’t do it on a spreadsheet, at least do it in your head. Find the top 10 or 20 companies you believe will be in direct competition with your plans. Write down what you think their strengths and weaknesses are and how you can improve on those weaknesses you find.

Do a Google or Yahoo search and find out what you can. Not just the normal rigmarole, find those advanced search features and do as in depth of a search as possible and add to your list. There are many good tools online to help with competition research. Compete is a great resource for comparing the traffic on several different sites at the same time, and Alexa has a similar comparison for traffic. For auction research, Terapeak is a good place to start, and if you want some good basic notices, try Google Alerts to stay up to date with what is going on in the trenches. (more…)

You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 1

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:13:14 +0000

Is your company or business in a competitive industry, is there any way not to be? Are you thinking about moving into a specific niche market that is already saturated? You don’t always have to just move on to something else if the field or topic you are interested in proves to be a very competitive arena.

You may have to do things better, be unique, and operate more efficiently than the competition, but you don’t have to automatically make the decision to leave for a less competitive area. Your business may have the talents and skills to run with the competition, survive, and be successful. Usually, at least in the free world markets, you already have competition because you have more than one entity providing the same product or service, so there is probably room for one more.

Keep in mind, success in a competitive market may not be the “number one” spot. Many retail businesses are successful and are not Wal-Mart, so be careful how you set your goals and measure your success. In this article we are going to look at a few ways to compete in an already competitive field.

What are the Barriers for Entry

Before you actually enter into a competitive field for the first time you really do need to look at what the barriers to entry might be for your company or website. Do a quick analysis of what it takes to get into a particular niche market, and be honest with yourself or your company about what you find. You might find that you really don’t want to take the time or energy required to be competitive in that market anyway. (more…)

Build Those Links!

mwolfe — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:59:50 +0000

Who doesn’t want better rankings in Google? Isn’t that the point? One of the most important parts of SEO and the surest way to see your site climb up the rankings is to get high quality links pointing back to your website.

But what constitutes a “high-quality link”? Links from sites that have a high value to the search engines are good sites to link back to your site. Search engines place value on the site by how much free and useful information it has on it. Sites of value have many sites pointing to it, telling the search engines that it is a relevant and important source of information.

Types of sites that produce high quality links

Reliable news sources
Educational Facilities (.edu websites)
Encyclopedias
Information Portals specific to your topic or industry
Forums
Blogs
Link Directories

The fastest and easiest way to get links back to your site is to submit to Directories. (more…)

Guaranteed Ways to Dump Money on PPC Ads

dwhite — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:48:41 +0000

PPC (pay per click) is almost the most efficient way for a small web based company to generate leads. Thanks to it’s unique ability’s to measure results precisely, target prospects in a narrow manor, and tightly manage your spending. That alone has made PPC one of the top lead generating tools ever.

However this technique does have it’s downside. Reason being is that PPC campaigns are so convenient, easy to set up and get started that the small business owner can easily spend upwards to thousand’s of dollars in just a period of weeks until they learn some hard lessons on what will be successful and what will bury you.

So here are some of the most common PPC mistakes, hopefully this is a useful outline on strategy that will start generating leads as quickly and efficiently as possible.

1. Problem: Using the home page as your landing page

There are many search engines that you can setup your PPC campaign with: Google, Yahoo, and others. It is your responsibility to decide where to direct the traffic that clicks on your ad. Most businesses send their traffic directly to the home page. Which seems to make sense since the home page is the equivalent to he store’s front door where you would think you would want to send your traffic. Right?

Wrong. Here is the dilemma in that. Most peoples home pages are so cluttered with information, and generally cover such a broad topic. It’s like pushing someone on to a site that contains the info. they need along with topics on totally unrelated issues. Good luck is what you mind as well say when they get to the home page. Obviously this will lead to a high frustration and failure rate.

Solution: Always take a clicker to a well crafted, easy to use and specific landing page. (more…)

Top 10 Landing Page Optimization Tactics

dwhite — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:01:48 +0000

If you are involved in PPC campaigns, landing pages are critical to your success. If you run email marketing campaigns, landing pages are critical.In fact, landing pages are imperative to organic search engine marketing, press releases and predominately any Internet marketing efforts. Internet experts know that it is well worth it to spend ample time in the developing of the landing page for it is the source of your information and recuperation.

Below I will give you my top 10 Landing Page Optimization Tactics

Keep it simple - In today’s “gimme it quick or I’m out of here” world you have to keep your landing page very focused and pretty simple. You all know how annoying sitting staring at your computer reading information that may or may not be pertinent. Everyone does too much of that anyways. Assist the visitor to your landing page so they may digest what you have to offer quickly and with ease. Use bullet points and short paragraphs
Tell visitors where they are - For example: when people click on an ad in a Readers Digest email newsletter or just a link in a solo email they are being transported from one medium to another via the web. Putting the heading at the top of the page for them to read first when they arrive is comforting to the user, so they know that the navigation was a success. That eliminates the first question that a visitor may have, “where am I?”
Don’t take over their computers - Some landing pages get too tricky trying to impress their visitor. This generally just frustrates them because they have lost control , and the easiest way for them to get it back is to just click on the browser window and close it. Then kiss that one goodbye. Also remember that many computers aren’t running the most up to date software, therefore they may not be able to view some of your brand imaging, thus not letting them view the site. Many computers and systems have firewalls that prevent those programs from running. Just keep it simple and you will please most everyone. (more…)

Lemonade Stand: Killer of MLM and Affiliate Marketing?

dwhite — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:07:24 +0000

A company known simply as Lemonade inc. has turned some heads recently with the launch of it’s ecommerce platform that absolutely anyone can sell from. Here is how this works: One can set up a “lemonade stand” on social sites such as facebook that sell numerous popular products by well known companies like Apple and Wal-mart.

My initial thought on this subject is that this is not a very good idea. I know that we already have to deal with offline business trying to sell us on overpriced MLM products and attempting to get us to come to their “parties” where it is expected of us to buy something. Now that concept is about to be online and in your face.

So I have a question- if I want to purchase a iPhone am I really going to buy from someone else, or am I going to try and get the best price? That is a simple answer and with that simple answer the most cost effective way for me to get that iPhone is to open my own “lemonade” stand and buy it from myself.

As ridiculous as this whole concept seems to me it very well may take off. This has all been revolutionized by the introduction of facebook and it’s many amenities.

The Lemonade Stand concept is just a part of a small but fast growing trend of retail in the Web 2.0 environment. I eventually expect that someone will figure how to sell in Web 2.0 and when they do that will be the end of MLM and affiliate marketing in their current forms. I will be baffled if the lemonade stand concept is the answer, it is just to primitive of a concept.

Anchors Aweigh

mwolfe — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:37:31 +0000

One of the most important elements to the SEO of a website is the anchor text. But what exactly is anchor text, and how is it optimally used? Just how important is anchor text?

Anchor Text is defined as the visible text of a hyperlink. For example, http://www.allinanchor.com is a hyperlink. Rather than displaying the link address we can use anchor text that is relative to the site or page the link is pointing to. So, rather than this: http://www.allinanchor.com we get this: killer SEO blog. Both links point to the same place, but the link containing the anchor texts helps to establish relevancy of the content on the page to the content of the page the link is pointing to.

As we know the search engines work primarily off the relevancy and importance of the content in a website. There was a time long ago when the search engines placed most of its importance in keywords. People would stuff content full of keywords that had nothing to do with the subject of the website. Now, the websites that have been around the longest, and have the most relevant content are the ones that are on top.

Anchor text optimization is the process of optimizing anchor text using relevant keywords to get higher rankings in search engines. Using keywords as anchor text to link to pages on the same topic helps the search engines establish relevancy of all the text contained in a website. All major search engines place huge level of importance to anchor text in comparison to simple hyperlinks.

(more…)

Google In-car Local Search

dwhite — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:53:43 +0000

This is the in-car feature that all you Google fans were waiting for. You can now buy a BMW with a built-in local search engine powered by Google. Why is this important you ask? It is so much better than the best navigation system simply because it is Google driven. On top of having all of your most important local information such as; address, phone numbers and distance.Upon finding what they are looking for the driver transfer the coordinates from Google’s search engine directly to the vehicle’s navigation system or telephone.

Google and BMW share the same vision of providing the user with more innovative and convenient services. The integration of Google’s mapping technology with BMW’s excellence in manufacturing innovative car models a partnership that will certainly achieve the vision.

The BMW ConnectedDrive is an innovative concept of model cars which intelligently integrates the driver,car and surroundings that contribute to the overall driving pleasure.

Lead Generation for Noobs

mwolfe — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:12:23 +0000

Many small to medium sized businesses are using their websites, not only to brand and create a corporate image, but as a source for sales lead generation. It makes sense to generate your own leads, because it is very expensive and not at all cost effective to purchase list after list of junk leads. You can spend the same amount of money to generate your own leads that close at a 10%-15% rate rather than a 1%-5%.

I love the people who think that they can just put a website on the internet with a basic html form and they are just magically going to start generating leads. And then they’re all, ‘why am I not getting traffic’, or, ‘why am I only getting leads touting the latest ED pill’. Obviously doing your own lead gen takes a considerable amount more work, but if you’re a geek like us, this work is fun and interesting.

The things you need to know as a lead gen noob: (more…)