Being an Effective Marketer, Both Online and Offline from WebProNews Video

Being an Effective Marketer, Both Online and Offline:

The term “marketing” gets used a lot and, sometimes, it’s used rather loosely in search and social media circles.
 
“Not all, but a lot of the search industry tends to be kind of search geeks who are trying to figure out what marketing is,” says Bill Leake of Apogee Results, formerly Apogee Search.

To make a long-term difference in customers, he believes effective marketing is key. Factors such as determining what the customer wants to do, how you can make it happen, and how you can transfer business objectives into strategies that can be implemented, are all instrumental aspects of marketing. He goes on to say that search is just one area of marketing that is important, but it works best when used with the other aspects.

Some people focus heavily on search, since it is easily measured. Other challenges of marketing could result from all the departments in companies and, particularly, within marketing itself. Due to the lack of communication these departments create, many opportunities are missed. As online marketing increases in awareness, there is also the danger of neglecting offline channels.

Online marketing is very valuable for businesses involved largely in the consumer space and B2B. On the other hand, online isn’t as valuable when reaching enterprise level companies and government agencies. Essentially, Leake says businesses need to market wherever their customers are, whether it be online, offline, or both.

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Tips for Conversion Rate Optimization from WebProNews Video

How do you approach conversion rate optimization? Khalid Saleh of Invesp tells WebProNews that many people make the mistake of taking an approach that is too simplistic. Although it’s easy to do with large sites, Saleh says it could be problematic since “[it] doesn’t mimic how visitors react or act on your website.”

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Alternatively, he suggests looking at analytics to find the primary areas of focus. Once these areas are determined, think about the customer and what he or she wants instead of simply making uncalculated changes.

Although changes will vary from site to site, Saleh recommends taking things such ad spend into account. In addition, he advises people to look at their analytics to see the navigational path users take. This not only helps site owners understand where the customers are going, but it also could identify any areas that they themselves need to modify.

By taking these factors into consideration, Saleh says people could see meaningful increases in conversion rates. Are you paying attention to these areas?

Global Marketing: What You Need to Know - WebProNews Video

The Web has provided numerous opportunities for businesses including the ability to have global reach. But with that opportunity comes many challenges such as marketing on a global scale. To learn more about global marketing, WebProNews caught up with Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink and Joblr and Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing.

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As Kennedy points out, a big SEO challenge is language. However, she believes the biggest challenge is enculturation in matters such as finding the right keyword set for a different country. This could be a problem since it may not translate directly. For instance, soccer cleats in the U.S. are called football boots in the UK and something completely different in France.

It’s also important to think about these cultural matters in regards to content, link building, graphic design, and more. Although localization and enculturation are the most important areas, Kennedy says understanding the language barrier is the first step in getting these areas right.

Although Nordic eMarketing is based in Iceland, Mar Hauksson says it has found ways to market its products in a multilingual environment. He also points out that the company understands the impact of culture and realizes that not everyone speaks and uses English.
“When you understand that, you have a much bigger market that you can market towards,” says Mar Hauksson.

At the time of the recording of this interview, Google had recently made the move to stop censoring its search results on Google.cn and was redirecting visitors to Google.com.hk, which it does not censor. While some developments have occurred since that time, it is far from being over. Just last week, Google reported that its operations in China were partially blocked and that Chinese officials were allegedly reviewing its application to operate in the country.

Today, the company released this statement, “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.”

Both Kennedy and Mar Hauksson believe it is important to pay attention to the Google/China situation from both a SEO and marketing standpoint.

Kennedy also offers some tips for doing social media globally. Just as understanding culture is critical to SEO, it is also critical to social media. She says marketers need to be aware of what social networks are popular in each country and how the people use and interact with them.

“Social media, by its very definition, depends on the nature of the society where it’s doing business,” explains Kennedy.
Are you embracing marketing on a global level?

Building an Effective Social Media Strategy - WebProNews Video

As marketers, what goals do you have with social media? Most marketers use social for efforts such as branding, promotion, and visibility. Interestingly, marketers do not usually consider the benefits that search and social provide together...

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According to Rebecca Lieb of Econsultancy, most marketers aren’t aware of how closely the two are tied. For instance, when a user signs into Google and searches for a query, he can see real-time social search results in addition to the other results. Specifically, he can see a live Twitter feed and anything that people within his social circle are saying, related to his query.

While still talking about social media, Lieb brings up two areas that marketers have not fully grasped. They are: strategy and execution. So many marketers are jumping on the social media bandwagon with a FacebookTwitter account to simply keep up with the times. However, this is not the way that people succeed in social media. page or

As part of a social media strategy, marketers need to know what they want to accomplish, who they are trying to reach, how they are going to communicate with the target, and more. Many people perceive social as something that is free, but as Lieb points out, nothing is free.

To be truthful, social media takes lots of time and resources. If marketers calculate these factors into their strategy, their chances for social success will increase.

On a different note, Lieb also tells WebProNews that she is encouraged by current developments taking place regarding net neutrality.  She believes the U.S. is on the right track to improve the necessity of high-speed and open Web access.