Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Is your Business taking full advantage of Video Marketing?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Video is the one element of the Internet that has everyone’s attention. A majority of Internet users watch video as a preferred choice and it is an area that holds many advantages for small and medium businesses, whatever your business is. 82% of people in the US watched an average of 9.7 hours of online video in August 2009 with consumption in the UK just as high (source *comscore) We recently helped an International Restaurant Chain deliver video by email for their latest offers and events which had great feedback and a very high open rate.
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The advantages? Firstly video allows viewers to see you and connect with you as a person and works much better than words on a page and provokes a much better result. It can also be syndicated across many different video platforms, giving you additional search engine results whereby your video thumbnail may appear in the middle of search results which makes it an altogether much more tempting option to click as opposed to all those word based results. There are over 75 million videos on YouTube with around 150k being added every day. And did you know YouTube is now the #2 search engine used after Google? Google, closely followed by other search engines, integrated their databases several years ago to include video, images and news in what was called universal search. Another great use of video for your business is video testimonials. A very powerful trust factor and a lot more convincing than text quotes, video testimonials can convey great endorsements from your customers and clients.

Google Local Search can Boost Your Business

Monday, October 26th, 2009
Trying to get your business heard amongst the online noise? It is still really tight out there for many small and mid-sized businesses and they need to find new customers fast! It’s a common problem for many local businesses when it comes to online search, especially on Google and with so many people now searching for services and products using the Google search engine. So it is vital to have as wide a presence on the big ‘G’ as you possibly can. Google loves content, so the more of that you have online the better, preferably well written, optimised with your target keywords and well. Code 9 are specialists in working with you to gain greater exposure in the organic natural search results through search engine marketing, as well as sponsored methods. Google Local Search We’ve helped many of our clients crowd out the competition using a variety of web properties that appear in results such as press releases, online blogs, videos as well as focusing on boosting and cementing your main website up to higher rankings. Think about it. If your prospect is searching on Google and you keep coming up time and time again they will begin to recognise you as the authority in your market and feel more comfortable about making contact with you. If you want to have a no obligation chat about how your business can properly use Google and increase results through our integrated design, digital and marketing expertise call Jerry Now on 0750 248 6012 or Contact Us

Why your business needs New Media Marketing Now

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Online marketing has developed way beyond using Google adwords to drive traffic to your website, although still an effective strategy, it by all means is not the only one. Your business will need to adapt if it is to survive in the glut of online competition, keeping ahead of the curve is not just another marketing strategy, it is an essential strategy. Once your business is online you need to drive targeted traffic, prospects and ultimately sales for your product or service to survive. New online entities such as video, podcasting and social media give a new and in my opinion welcome, dimension to the basic need for the lifeblood of the web, traffic. Let’s start with Google, the most popular starting point of your customers. How do you get to the top of Google? Unfortunately if you are in a highly competitive business area this can be a mammoth task on its’ own. Google has traditionally ranked sites based on many different elements such as age, domain age, incoming links, location of web host, structured silos of your website, popularity and many many other factors. Google has re-structured its’ algorithms to include their ‘other’ databases. The Google search engine consists of many separate databases of content. These are Google Images, Google News, Google Video, Google Local, Google Base, Google Blogs, Google Books and Google Code. But the vast majority of users simply did not use these databases of information. Universal search solves this problem by taking the results from these other databases, also known as ‘verticals’ and includes them in the main search results. By integrating these elements into your overall strategy you stand to get your website visited via the backdoor through video, podcasts, images, blogs, satellite sites and many other pockets of sub-content. Social media also plays an increasingly important part – no it’s not just for teenagers – businesses and entrepreneurs and using it to network with their counterparts and their customers and their customers are starting to expect it! Satellite content sites such as wetpaint, squidoo and hubpages all provide powerful backdoors to your main sales hub, providing it’s done right, as well as powerful back links in the eyes of Google. When you have your website online and revving to go the work remember this the work has actually only just begun.

The power of RSS Feeds

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Real Simple Syndication or RSS is the powerful web tool of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ revolution that all Internet marketers and Webmasters should be using right now. RSS and Blogs are revolutionising the distribution of information to consumers, whether it is HTML, Flash or streaming video. This distribution channel provides a fantastic opportunity for marketers to connect directly and build bridges of trust and loyalty with their audience. Many attribute the success of blogs to the technologies of RSS and Atom which enables subscribers to receive constantly updating feeds piped to their desktops via RSS readers, websites or applications. This form of distribution has an advantage over newsletters since it is not blocked by spam filters or lost in a sea of junk. The use of RSS, mostly used today by the web savvy and businesses, is about to hot up with the new update of Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. IE7 will alert readers when RSS feeds are available and automate the subscription process, as Safari and Firefox do now. Microsoft’s endorsement of RSS could make it a mass-market technology within a few years making feed subscriptions as relied on as search engines. A business effectively using RSS can bring new site visitors, increase search engine positioning, and generate product interest. As consumers become comfortable signing up to feeds from blog and news services, they are more likely to be comfortable with buying from these sources also. Although RSS has been around for several years, it is still in the nursery phase, so business and commerce concepts, such as advertising inserted in RSS feeds or charging for subscriptions are just now starting to appear. Google and Yahoo are in the testing phase of pushing advertising through RSS that has excited marketing people, but horrified RSS purists, who feel that adverts clogging up these distribution channels are not the way to go. Wherever the dust settles, consumer expectation will drive businesses that are slow to adopt. It is certain that RSS will become a standard, like email addresses and websites are now a “must” for businesses. RSS feeds will join their ranks. The big consumer benefit to RSS is that consumers opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.