MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

I’m just messing about with some SEO and wondering if the SEO friendly URL’s on my forum about Marketing Tips would really make that much difference.

Looking at deep links in IBP may be worth a punt…

Did you know that loads of .uk sites are actually owned by comanies abroad like China and some are decidedly dodgy…

Checkout :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/business/8178959.stm

Google Insights appears to be a more focused version of Google Trends, the service that uses Google search data to produce visible graphic trends, and comparisons of trends for any terms you type in. Insights is intended to have much more of an actual commercial use, and is primarily aimed at anybody who needs to conduct research or advertise.

It uses the same data as Google Trends gathered from worldwide Google web searches. You can search as far back as January 2004, but Google only provides information for terms that have been searched for in numbers over a certain threshold. In other words, for some more obscure terms you’re unlikely to find the information you’re looking for.

Insights basically offers much more scope in how you can search, compare, and contrast information. Google gives examples of how Insights can be used e.g. to choose better advertising messages by checking how much interest there is in certain search terms, to gain valuable information when entering a new markets by looking at the popularity of the use of your product name in different geographical areas, or even to examine seasonal trends for key phrases. The hope for Google Insight seems to be to help you to make marketing decisions drawing on the considerable sample of data that Google has collected via its search engine, and it’s possible to see that this could be another good (free) value adding facet of Google’s services.

You can however only get the detailed figures associated with the graphs produced by using your Google account, so this is another way to keep you visiting and using Google Tools.

Extracting the information you require, and finding the best way to drill down the data is likely to take a few practice attempts. For example, there’s a search box with tips on how best to use it e.g. use a comma between terms to compare them, or a minus sign to exclude a term from a particular search .

You can compare information by items, locations and time ranges, and there are a series of drop-down menus for regions, the time period you’re interested in, and the type of search – image, news, product and web search. Google also offers some current examples of searches to click on.

Try Google Insights for yourself by going to http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

What is it?
As you’ll know by now, it is important to “touch” your customers and prospects regularly.
Whilst that statement might sound almost lewd, it carries a lot of weight.

Online, the obvious choice is email because it’s fast, free and extremely efficient. Yet it is important to remember that there are many ways to directly communicate with your market including faxes, telephone calls, letters and mailshots.

I have tried this myself and and confirm the countless studies that show that contacting people in multiple ways really does help your ramp up your conversion rate, customer retention and brand awareness.

For a site generating leads, a typical combination might be :

Step 1 Capture contact details via a contact form on the website.
Step 2 (Immediately after Step1): Email a Free Ebook, download, Quote etc.
Step 3 (Immediately After Step 2) : Post out a Welcome Pack.
Step 4 (3 Days After Step 3) : Send a Follow Up Email, offering a bonus.
Step 5 (4 Days after Step 4) : Follow up with a Phone Call
Step 6 Repeat sending emails & follow ups.

This is just an example and the variations of faxes, letters, calls, emails, mailings are almost infinite. Yet so many people simply have a website and a contact form and virtually no follow up system, which is crazy because that’ just leaving money on the table.

A lot of this you will know already because I keep harping on about how important it is to follow up. However, you might not realise how important it is to PERSONALISE your follow-ups or indeed how easy it is to do so OFFLINE as well as ONLINE.

How many more sales could you make if you sent your prospects a “Thank You” card with a personalised message inside it thanking them for their enquiry, perhaps with an offer or a coupon inside it?

I think that a lot of people don’t do this because they think it will be a lot of hassle but they don’t realise that it can all be automated. MKLINK offers this as a service

So you can have CD’s. DVD’s, flyers, mailshots, catalogues, samples, letters, cards and mailers of all descriptions posted automatically so you don’t even have to lift a finger. And each one can be personalised as much as you like.

By the way, personalised mailings out-strip non-personalised ones typically by 40%, often much more.

Obviously, what you send out is dictated by the profitability of the prospect or client. Someone interested in placing an order for a light aircraft would probably warrant more frequent and expensive mailings than someone considering buying stationery. (That said, don’t forget the LIFETIME value if the prospect or client)

How does this Link to The Internet?
The next dimension to personalising mailings is to link them in with personalised URL’s, or “PURLs” for short. So, if I sent a mailing to JohnSmith then I could ask John Smith in the mailing to have a look at www.mklink.com/JohnSmith for example.

All of a sudden, my conversion rate increases even higher and of course I can then track his activity online and personalise his experience even further and build a profile of him.

So the upshot of all this is that if you are not sending personalised mailings to your prospects and customers then you will most likely be missing a great opportunity.

It can be automated so that all you do it test the results and see the increase in conversion without any extra effort once the system is set up.

If you would like more information about this, just go to http://www.mklink.com/getstarted and start the ball rolling.

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips