 |
||||||
|
A Free eZine for Business Owners & Professionals by MediaPower & Mediastreams.ca March 2009 issue OR JUST COSTING MONEY? There are 3 critical aspects to a profitable Internet presence and you need to have ALL 3 in place before you'll see any returns on your investment. This is the key principles behind the science of 'Conversion' - more commonly referred to as... Turning Visitors into Customers! We hate spam as much as you do. If you have received this newsletter by mistake, please click here to be removed from our free information mailing list. |
||||||
|
Thought for the Month If you thought online video was just a nice way of whiling away an hour or two on YouTube, think again... Serious businesses are putting online video to work, using it for everything from marketing to recruiting. Want to know what it's like to work at Enterprise Rent-A-Car? Watch CEO Andy Taylor talk about how he started out behind a rental car counter, or check out one of the 12 other videos posted on the Enterprise site, that cover everything from company culture to employee diversity. On the marketing front, the viral effect of the Internet makes it possible for even a small company to post a low-budget video on the Web and reach millions of viewers in a short time. The playing field is now level - at last! |
in this issue...
|
|||||
| Static websites are a thing of the past & your business deserves to be right up there with the leaders, utilizing every available New Media technology to communicate your value in a way that boosts your bottom line. | ||||||
|
Feature Article Why Conversion is King |
||||||
|
Too many businesses make the mistake of spending money in ineffectual areas. Companies pump thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of dollars into driving more and more traffic to their website and yet nothing seems to happen! Now don't get me wrong - it's wonderful to get more traffic flowing to your site, but that is just the beginning. Now you need to persuade all that traffic to do something - and that is called conversion! What are the 3 areas critical to a website's success? 1. Traffic Of course that is no. 1 on the list! Without visitors coming to your site, no one will ever know that you exist and you may have the best product or service in the world, with the spiffiest website ever designed by man, but if no one sees it, it might as well never have existed! So what is the answer? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the one that immediately springs to mind, but there are many others. Word of mouth, Google Ad Words, registering with online directories and industry sites, link exchanges with relevant websites, affiliate programs, writing expert articles online, newsletters, etc. etc. etc. 2. The Engagement Factor So now you have thousands of hapless visitors being driven past your site. Your traffic strategy is working and some SEO experts have argued that its purely a numbers game - that for every 100 visitors there are bound to be 5-10% who will end up buying. WRONG! If the visitor arrives at your site and sees something that looks homemade, ineffectual, boring, or worse still - a scam, they'll waste no time in clicking out of there to the next site on their search list. As importantly, in this age of web surfers with the attention span of a flea, statistics have shown that if you fail to engage the visitor within 6 seconds of their arrival, they will jump to greener pastures. The solution? Show them immediately that you have something unique/interesting/eye-catching to offer. This could be in the form of a large, eye-catching headline, a promotional offer, a different look to other sites - or, most powerful these days - an online streaming video. It has been proven that sites with streaming video on their home pages have a greater chance of attracting and keeping viewers, than sites with the usual, dull and static appearance. 3. The Meat! Remember that old saying - "Content is King"? That's right, it still is! Once you've got your audience engaged (hooked) you need to give them what they are searching for - content. Make sure that your content - be it a product, information or news, is clearly visible without making the viewer hunt around to find it. There's another statistic that has shown that even the engaged visitor, will look for their content for an average of another 18 seconds and if they cannot find what they expect to find, once again - they're gone!!! The answer to this problem? Simple - keep your website simple, with the answers to their questions available quickly, clearly and concisely. Clear headlines of text, sub-headlines paraphrasing the content with details to follow. Once again, the premier method of disseminating content is (and has always been) multimedia - i.e. in this age - Streaming Video! If a picture is worth a thousand words, Video is worth a million! It can not only communicate an idea more clearly and in a much shorter timeframe, but is more powerful and as we have experienced ourselves in this age of advertising - far more persuasive. Simply put, website conversion is defined as the percentage of visitors who come to a website, follow through after clicking on the company's desired point of action and fill in a form, download a demo, make a purchase, etc. On an e-commerce site, many visitors may add items to their shopping carts, but only a smaller percentage will actually make the purchase. The percentage of visitors that complete the transaction signifies the conversion rate for the website. So the actual website conversion rate is the ratio of the number of people who actually convert to customers on your site versus the overall number of visitors to the site for any given period. If, for example, 4 out of every 100 visitors to your B2B site filled out a contact form (and that form was the only desired Point Of Action) your website conversion rate would be 4%.
Website conversion is
all about your visitors. Engage their interest, appeal
to their needs and follow-through with providing what
they need quickly, logically and concisely and you'll
see your rates improve together with your bottom line. 'Streaming Video - If You're Not Using It, You're Losing It!" |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Internet Marketing Bump Up Your Website Traffic Notwithstanding the rant in the previous article, website traffic certainly is essential. If no one walks by your storefront, no one is going to walk in either! Traffic is one of the key components of a successful website and is available in these 3 forms. 1. You can Buy It: You can buy traffic using what is known as Pay Per Click Advertising. The big names in this area are Google and their AdWords program and Yahoo Network Sponsored Search. There are many smaller ones around too, but they all follow the same system. You create an account (usually free), grab a bunch of keywords and create your ads. You can limit the amount you want to spend per click or per month, what geographical areas you want your Ads to display in and sometimes even at what times they should appear. Now when a searcher types one of your keywords into say Google, your Ad will show down the right hand side of the natural search results. If the searcher then chooses to click on your advert and gets forwarded to your website you will be charged for that click. The price you pay for each individual click depends on a variety of conditions such as how many other people are competing for that keyword. The more the competition, the higher the cost to be placed higher up in the ranks. Pay Per Click advertising can be very useful but it is essential that you do research into your chosen Pay Per Click vender and in the niche you are in. 2. You can Borrow It. This option is not for everyone, but in certain areas it can be very effective. The first method of borrowing traffic is what is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. This can be beneficial as you can get traffic from a more successful website reasonably quickly. However you want to be careful to limit these exchanges to legitimate business sites with relevant and related areas of interest, or you could even end up being blacklisted! Option #2 in the affiliate marketing world is called a joint venture or a JP. This is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. If they are interested they may send a mailing out to their list or put an entry in their blog alerting their visitors about you and your relevant products. The key things to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return. This can make it tricky when targeting very successful websites. 3. Or You can Create It... Creating your own traffic is one of the best ways to start bringing people into your website. There are literally hundreds of ways to start creating your traffic but I'm just going to tell you about two of the most popular. Articles are a great way of generating traffic. You can write your articles about your chosen niche, offering advice, definitions, explanations, news, reviews just to name a few. Once you have created your articles you can put them on your website or blog as content. You can also upload them to article directories or even assemble a few of them into a white paper or ebook to give away to visitors. Video is currently the big thing on the internet world. Everywhere you look there are videos for everything. 50% of all web traffic is video and YouTube alone receives 12.5% of all the traffic out there. YouTube has made it possible for anyone to upload their videos for the whole world to see. Just as you can create an article about anything you can do the same thing with video. The best option is to do both: Create it in print and create it in video.
|
||||||
|
Watch a fascinating interview with a leading expert in Social Media Marketing with Twitter
Click here to view the streaming video on our website Video courtesy of WebPro News |
||||||
|
New Media Advertising Do You Really Need a Reason to Put Streaming Video on Your Website? How about Three? If you are reasonably aware of what competitors in your industry are doing, you will have noticed that there's been a real explosion of streaming video on their websites over the last year or so. Some site prefer to keep it quite simple and use the video to deliver supplemental information, while others prefer to make it a main feature of their site and use streaming video to get their point across to the audience more powerfully. Putting video on a website is getting easier and easier and any business not already using this powerful medium is losing out in the race to snag market share. So take some time to check out these three main reasons why you should be harnessing the power of Streaming Video. 1. Make the connection If you know anything about marketing whether offline or online, you know that its imperative to make a connection with the visitor and you have to do it fast! There is a lot of information out there on presenting your text in the best possible light and in making your pictures really count. However, with video, you have the best of both worlds. You immediately grab the eye of the person that is looking at your material, and you, yourself can start talking to them directly. This is a great way to ensure that you make that vital personal connection instead of yet another mess of words on the screen! 2. Quick & Concise Information Transfer If you beat around the bush, your visitor or prospect will inevitably lose interest and drift away. Video is the best way to make sure you are giving them all the information they want, when they want it and in the shortest possible time. Its something that every visitor will appreciate and while not all of them will buy - the ones that want to make a purchase will not be driven away. There is evidence that attention spans of the Internet generation (and that includes old fogies like myself) are getting shorter and shorter, especially when it comes to looking at something new and unfamiliar and streaming video has been proven to overcome this obstacle to selling in the 21st. century.. 3. Its easy! Displaying video on a website is nowhere near as difficult as some might think. At the end of the day, it is a relatively minor investment in time, money or effort for something that provides a huge Return on Investment (ROI). You can display it in a player format that is pleasing to your audience and also gives them control over how they choose to watch it. Any business looking to do any serious business online needs to think about putting video on their website. These days its a tool one cannot afford to do without. |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tip of the Month Online Video Tips |
||||||
|
Video is a new medium for many companies, and there is plenty of room for error. For example, customer testimonials require proper lighting and sound. A good marketing campaign can live on almost indefinitely and a well produced video is a communication tool one should never ignore. Here's a brief guide to help get you started and avoid some of the pitfalls... Tell a story - From viral-marketing videos to customer testimonials, good corporate videos tell a story to keep viewers engaged. Keep it brief - anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. If you've got an hour's worth of content, break it up into small chunks so that viewers can easily find the topics most interesting to them. Do your homework There is no guarantee that a video-marketing campaign will become a viral success. Still, you can improve your chances by doing research on what customers want, just as you would with traditional marketing. Test & Measure - While some viral videos become extremely popular, it doesn't mean those viewers are your target audience. Don't Fake it even if you make it - Big corporate marketers who pretend to be gritty bloggers really risk alienating consumers if the truth comes to light. Experts say it's best to be honest about who you are, since authenticity is highly valued on the Web. Don't Script it too much - The best testimonial videos let customers tell their own stories somewhat in their own words. Don't forget about your brand - Marketing videos that are edgy and funny work well but if the video doesn't reinforce your product or service, you'll wind up with lots of viewers, few buyers, and confused consumers. Have a Call to Action at the End - if you don't ask, you'll never receive. |
||||||
|
Did You Know... The Difference between Hits & Visitors |
||||||
|
Ever hear someone say "We got 50,000 hits last month on our web site"? Is this information useful to gauging your marketing effectiveness? What is the difference between a hit and a visitor? A "hit" is not a visitor to the web site, but a hit on the web server. A hit on the web server can be someone accessing a graphic, a java applet, an html file, etc., but does not mean that someone has read a word of what's on your page. What this means is that if a site has 50 small clip art graphics on a page, every visitor to the site registers as 51 hits on the server (50 graphics plus 1 html page). So in the above claim, 50,000 hits translates to just 1,000 visitors! Web owners should not be concerned with hits to their site - they should be more concerned about the number of visitors. And we don't want to know about just the total number of visitors - we need to know about the number of unique visitors. After all, its important to know how many new visitors found our site, if we are to gauge the success of our SEO efforts. So if we can't count hits, can we use a "hit-counter"? Not really... The problem with using counters to track our visitors is they are set up to measure page views, not unique visitors. Every time someone views your page, whether it's the first time or the twentieth, that visitor is counted. And if the page times out for some reason and they "Reload," it counts them again. And if someone just wants to have fun with your counter, they can exit and enter the site several times and are counted as a visitor each time--even if they never looked at your product. So if you shouldn't just be counting hits and using a counter is totally inaccurate, how do we track traffic coming to our site? With a web traffic analysis program. These programs, typically supplied free with our hosting accounts, give vital information about traffic flowing to the site, including where visitors are coming from, which pages they view the most and which pages they typically exit from. So the next time someone brags about the number of 'Hits' they got on their site, remember to ask - "and how many of those were actual visitors?"
|
||||||
|
Featured Service |
||||||
|
LIVE EVENT VIDEOCASTING ON THE WEB with WebcastLive.Mediastreams.ca Extend Your Reach Allow audiences anywhere the chance to participate in your Event in Real Time & share your event "Live!" with anyone, anytime, anywhere...
While Webcasting your Event Live is often used to broadcast sports or music events to the world, it is also a very powerful tool for companies who may wish, for example, to reach shareholders or maybe to have more of their workforce involved in a meeting - but without wasted time, effort or travel costs. Live Event Streaming can send video and audio of any event being held Live - events like a company Annual General Meeting (AGM), weddings or just about any other event to viewers around the world, allowing them to watch it from the comfort of their own homes or offices. Anywhere you want to be, Streaming Media will help you broadcast successfully. You can now reach a much wider audience over a much larger geographic area anywhere in the world - an all this using a regular internet connection. Read All about it... |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Spring Promotional Discount on a Streaming "Walk-on Video" Get $100 OFF on any "Walk-on Video" for Your Website Offer expires on April 10th. 2009 Separate yourself from your competitors while providing information to your audience the way they like - briefly, concisely and powerfully!
Watch a Walk-on Video in action on our website and see how your business will convert more visitors into customers using this powerful multimedia tool.
Call 604.926.5805 for more information |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Featured Business
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Humour |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Helping People by Helping The Earth Let's all of us take some corporate responsibility to keep our world clean and help the underprivileged at the same time
Click here and donate your old electronics to a worthy cause |
||||||
|
Contact Us |
||||||
|
Mediastreams.ca is the Streaming Media division of MediaPower New Media Communications Call 604.926.5805 or Toll Free 877.936.8377 visit us at: www.mediastreams.ca Thank you for your interest in MediaStreams. We appreciate any feedback you can give us. Please do let us know how we can serve you better and if there are any specific areas of interest you would like us to cover, do give us the heads up - we will do our best to accommodate your requests. If you enjoy receiving this eNewsletter compliments of MediaPower, please feel free to forward it on to your friends and colleagues. Or if you have been sent this eNewsletter by a friend and would like to subscribe to it yourself, please click here. You have received this newsletter because you are on our email list of subscribers, an association member or a client. If for any reason you do not wish to receive it in future, you may Click here to unsubscribe |
||||||
