With video sharing website like Youtube that’s barely 18 month old going for $1.65 B to Google and Facebook which is a social site for students mainly, recently rejected offers up to $1B reportedly from Yahoo. Heard of Second Life? Large MNCs are building virtual worlds in there to test market their branding and projects to target online demographics.

What does this have to do with regular businesses and individual marketers ? Plenty. The smarter marketers are now building out channels of community to reach their target audience and create a relationship. Whilst most people are accustomed to using the Internet to serve up information from the search engines unilaterally, social sites now allow people to participate in rating content and discuss. If you content sucks or you are not deem serving that community’s interest (e. g if you just keep spammng or send offers to that group), you’d be voted down.

The effect is that people are starting to use sites like Stumbe Upon to search for stuff and reading ratings and reviews. People have reported that using sites like Stumble Upon actually becomes more fun, informative and efficient for their own search.

Let me know below how you or some small businesses you know are taking advantage of this and getting incredible results.

We have had many conversations with business owners who are

1. overwhelmed with the technicalities of online marketing that they think it’s not for their traditional business
2. frustrated that their website is not producing results and wondering how to revamp
3. not seeing results from their online marketing efforts and think that online marketing doesn’t work

I would like to share some of the insights on the common mistakes and causes of businesses who are jumping the gun in revamping their online presence and doubting the effectiveness of their new media marketing.

Trap #1

“I think our website looks dated and the last designer didn’t do a good job. We need to revamp it with better look and feel”.  And invariably, the result is not much improvement.  Why?

Launching into a redesign of your site blindly without knowing how to meaure the effects on conversion is a waste of time and money. 

We actually had a customer that we measured their site using heatmaps and conversion tracking to see where the hotspots were and it turned up a surprise for them that a particular area that they had spent so much time to design did not produce any clicks.  It looked good to them but did not produce any result. And they didn’t know because they didn’t know how to measure.  We helped them redesign their site based on the tracking we have done and measured where the hot areas were and it increased traction in 1 month of launch.

Trap #2

Abandoning online advertising (Pay Per Click or Placement Ads) because it is getting too expensive and jumping onto the seemingly ‘free’ Search Engine Optimization promise.

You have just been outmarketed and jumping into the fire.

Many companies are suckered into advertisements of  “Get Free Traffic by SEO’ing Your Site to first page” . Some firms promising the heavens  and that they can get your keywords to number in x months.  SEO is a longer process and it doesn’t guarantee sales. Many businesses make that mistake thinking SEO (for first page on their keywords) is the end game. It’s not.

Key questions we ask before we even do SEO : 

• What keywords do you know you have to optimize for ?
• Are they the ones bringing you the business?
• Are you tracking conversion from the beginning of the conversation i.e ad copy , keyword phrase to landing page to offer and conversion?

We have seen companies who paid thousands of dollars to advertise a month but can’t tell which keyword brings them the sale. All they know is traffic has gone up and they are getting more sales but over time , it tapers off as competitors come in.  Most don’t know how to track the conversion down to the entire chain of events and hence are unable to dump the keywords or sources that aren’t producing and move their budget to areas that are making sales.

Their online advertising managers only manage the budget and look at increase in traffic and that their ads appear on first page!  Knowing how to track, what tools to use and what questions to ask makes the difference.  If you have no idea of how to read those reports or have a feeling you aren’t getting the right interpretation on your data,  schedule a call with us. A trained eye of an experienced specialist can see things that may be missed easily by a generalist.

Trap #3

“Let’s design a bunch of variations of design tests and see what sticks.”
And  track wrong goals that ignore conversion outside of the click or just measuring clicks on ads. 

Our view is profit per visitor is what we are after.  Knowing how to combine multiple disciplines from copywriting, design, market research , buyer psychology to testing methodologies, online ad technology management makes a huge difference in being able to properly analyze and improve a marketing channel and marketing funnel.  It’s not a one dimensional game where one skill or one tool does the trick.

If you are facing the above issues, take a step back and regroup your data. Then give us a call just to have another pair of eyes to look through and work with you on identifying gaps that you might have missed.

“Marketing Mojo With Radical Results”

Just a quick 30 second collage of the results we’ve accomplished with our clients.

Hope you like the video. Contact us for a free consultation to see what we can do with you.

The local search which shows ten results has now been shrunk to top 7,

A thru J became A thru G.

We are seeing company phone numbers disappearing from the top 7 Local Search results

Top Google Map listings are now ‘paid’ listings in some local markets.

Android 2.0 has made its debut, and it’s making a big impact on “Local Search” !

We have every reason to believe these changes are only the beginning. If you are doing some online marketing (or relying on your web presence as a source) for your business, these changes will impact you. You need to know how to deal with it because there IS a science to it but alas, many marketers or companies aren’t even aware of these changes and happily (or unknowingly) rely on traditional SEO that they did a while ago one time.

I demonstrated this at a seminar that I gave recently at Association of Small Business Enterprise (ASME) of Singapore to about 80 business owners. One company did what I taught and had great results in 48 hours!

Couple this with the fact that Local Search is primed to eclipse the importance of Yellow Pages (if it hasn’t already for many businesses).

EVERY business with a phone number already knows the marketing importance of Yellow Pages, historically speaking, and  it’s easy to conclude these very same businesses are awakening to a monstrous PROBLEM… They are fast realizing that a good listing on Google Maps and Local Search is becoming MORE important than their Yellow Page listing!

…and they have no choice but to pay somebody to manage their Search Listings just like they do their Yellow Page Listing.

Getting a local business well listed, getting them properly verified, and building an arsenal of favorable reviews takes a fair amount of expertise that exceeds what most business owners are willing or able to gain. The Local Search wave is cresting…and it’s about to crush the Yellow Pages…which is destined to drown in a rip current of change and drag down any business that doesn’t make an orchestrated switch from Phone Book to Google Maps.

Ok, I might have been a little dramatic but the numbers are showing this to be true.

I’ve talked to businesses which have spent thousands on Yellow Pages and are not able to track or see the results. Are you?

With the omnipresent internet and access cost dropping, many are turning to their PC, Smartphones, netbooks and Ipads/tablets to look up a business instead of the yellow pages. A little island of Singapore has seen recent trend of 1 in 5 phones purchased are smartphones. That means, more people are searching from their phone.

And in online search, Google is king and then the other 2 big search engines Bing and Yahoo take the rest.

Local search , classified sites and directories are fighting for the pie in Singapore e.g Rednano, Mocca, InSing, AsiaOne and in this game, Yellow Pages is not a dominant force.

If you aren’t already looking at putting your business on local search or don’t know how,  you’re losing out on a wave of consumers that are looking for their solution and businesses there.  Here’s a video to get you started if you aren’t already listed. (Many SEO companies charge for his but we like to think our kind of customers are smart enough to do this easily without being ripped off. I included a step by step and some things to look out for.  So here you go FREE of Charge).

There’s more you can do to enhance this to rank it higher in a competitive niche which takes more time and effort. I might cover that in another upcoming workshop for business owners that we are doing and we have a system that we do this for customers.

Contact us for a free consultation and we’d be happy to share some tips with you too.

I came across this ad from none other than Google and it was a moving story , simple and emotional.

It is very effective in delivering the message of how Google is an integral part of a young person’s life.

I watched it a few times and this is great emotional advertising for a product that is not sexy and there’s no need for distracting models and such. It’s about a story.

We help our customer’s pull out their stories and deliver their message , straight from the heart. More often than not, it’s unpolished and raw. I am often moved when we do this exercise successfully.  You can feel the passion ignited, the original values surfaced and the WHY comes out powerfully.  Nothing pretentious or highly polished.

We help our clients find their voice in their presentations, videos, email, sales copy and social media communications. A voice that connects with their target customers powerfully.

And guess what, it’s way more powerful than a contrived ‘branding’ kind of ad.

Talk to us if you think you’ll like to think out of the ‘corporate’ box and explore a more direct and effective way of relating with your customer.  We’ve benchmarked improvements of 300% just on email communications alone.  It’s time to get real.

Our current education is preparing students for jobs that Don’t Yet exist.

The explosion of information is accelerating and it demands new ways to thinking and solving problems.

For businesses, it represents a phenomenal opportunity (or challenge for those who are stuck to old ways) to gain new markets , acquire customers , speed transactions on a global basis with new channels that are instantaneous, far reaching and probably didn’t exist few years ago.

Have a look at this video that showcase progression of information technology, researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman which is intriguing and mindblowing.

As you view it, think about what it could mean for you and your business. We at ThinkAccelerator keep ahead of the curve and help our customer ride the wave and use the best tools and channels to achieve accelerated results.

So much theories have been bandied about and I thought this video provides some good insights from the horse’s mouth.

Here’s the latest from Google Chief Economist that sheds some light on this puzzling issue.

Just a short story about one interesting chap I met. He has been doing a killer job at Adwords and is pretty much underground, heck he is called X as his handle. Whilst he keeps underground , he  kicks the butt of pro marketers and ad agencies. I met him in Florida and he has some killer strategies and unconventional thinking that makes him top of the game. He recently wrote a book and sharing his strategies on a monthly basis on his site. Check it out at Affiliate Black Book

It is a culmination of his experience as marketer and a merchant, so he has seen tricks from both sides. Fascinating story. Often I find the entrepreneurial marketers are at the cutting edge and more nimble than the Agencies.  Hence, we keep updated with these marketers and the strategies to ensure we can compete effectively and bring out the best ROI in the shortest time.

Just when you think a person doesn’t have what it takes, it’s takes a moment for you to discover the richness of talent that goes beyond what we see and perceive.

Reminds me to give people a chance to shine through and not be judgemental too quickly. You just need to match the right platform to the talent. Awesome.

Don’t mind the silly face, Mark Joyner (certainly knows how to stand out and have fun). He is considered by many the Father of Online Marketing and Guerrilla marketing.

He has put all his effort into building a new brand and company called Simpleology. I asked him what inspired him to start this company and its content. His reply definitely hit home with me and also people I have coached and other marketers I have met.

The answer was this. In his years of coaching and providing marketing consultancy to small businesses and corporates, the most common problem is not the knowhow or the tactics/strategies that people are suffering from. It’s that many people are locked in their limitations of their potential greatness and complicate their minds on what is it they need to do to be successful.

He actually developed a process for his high end coaching clients to unclutter their mind and allow them to see through what was important and what they could do to unlock their great potential.

That is what I have been through in starting my business and in many others that I have helped and talked with. To have Mark build a company based on principle of simplifying one’s mind and processes just showed me how prevalent and deep this issue is.

So, if feel overwhelmed or seem to be running in circles in their business, check his new book out.

www.simpleology.com/simplebook.htm

I think having a brain defrag and reboot everynow and then certainly helps.Mark has put it down into a process. (you can tell he needs some head sorting himself from the picture above.) He’s having fun building his multimillion dollar business. Are you?

The two hot tools are Keyword Spy and Google Cash Detective.

It basically allow users to monitor who’s making money on the advertising side and more so , if they are affiliates doing it. Then you can reverse engineer what keywords they use, what campaigns they put up and even swipe their ads. Ouch for those who have been doing old Googlecash style promotions with direct linking.

Many people are using it and having profitable campaigns within 1-2 months. To the unsuspecting affiliate who has been advertising using their affiliate links, they will suddenly notice a drop in their traffic. I have already seen such instances by new unsuspecting marketers who’s campaign’s been swiped and wondering what happened. It’s not difficult to do and the data is out there.

For the more sophisticated marketer, this represents a acceleration in identifying profitable programs and reverse engineering those models. Chris Carpenter’s videos showed a great example of how a seemingly unprofitable campaign on the surface actually makes money on the backend and how hewas able to take that apart and duplicate it and be profitable.

One other site that came up is spyfu.com. You can see what a site is advertising, keywords optimized for and how much they pay for adverts. All you got to do is copy and improve on that plus reegineer the sales funnel and you got yourself an instant business that is very likely to be profitable.

The world of affiliate marketing especially with paid advertising (PPC) just got a lot more competitive and exciting. Whether you like it or not, the time for the lazy/Bum marketing types are up. In fact, many companies are overpaying for Pay Per Click advertising simply because they aren’t measuring their ROI down the keyword and through the conversion process.

I have done a few case studies that I share with clients to show them the right way to do it and the reaction has been very positive. Usually shocked.

I’ll talk more about tracking, sales funnel and backends in uture . That’s where the difference is going to be made for those who’s going to make  positive ROI in their online marketing.

It’s not about just one thing or tactic or tool. It’s the sales chain.