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Here is a great video, posted on adwords blog, which explains the google ad auction process in a very simple way. A must watch for people who want to understand quality score as a function of CPC and ad position.

Google’s official mouthpiece on SEO, Matt Cutts, giving some good advice on how to increase visibility of your site on Google.

This is perhaps one of the best motivational speeches ever delivered. Many of you might have already seen it. However, I am posting it again here since I feel it is something which can be seen again and again. So, if you have not seen it yet, see it now and even if have seen it, you can see it again and get some instant motivation.

Since marketing budgets are reduced, an internet marketer should focus on getting more free traffic to site. Here are some tips that can be done in order to get the traffic on site for FREE:-

SEO – Search engine optimization is your best source of free traffic on internet. More and more people are searching on net & if you are a smart internet marketer you should take advantage of popularity of Search engines especially Google. Get your content as per keywords, build your links, correct your meta-tags, submit to all directories, release press releases on internet etc. SEO is a time consuming activity but this will be the best time to start if haven’t done already.
Blogs – Communicate your site or brand to the visitors or consumers. Involve them directly and add value to your site. Blogs should be appreciating your service like a jobs website should start a blog on how to make a resume. This will help them to prepare consumers for there bigger brand i.e. jobs.
YouTube and other Video Communities – Obama campaign has really used the power of youtube and every internet marketer should work on advertising there brand on youtube.com. So don’t wait and Open up a YouTube account today and start posting videos related to your niche with full information. Use your targeted keywords in the description field and mention your web address at the beginning of your description, including the “http://” so it can show up as a clickable link & will bring visitors to your site.
Link exchange – I know it is the most frustrating job of an internet marketer but we should do it as it is a need of the hour. It will be very easy if you can do the little homework on it. Prepare the list of all potential sites which are providing services related to your site but not directly as your competition. Like a loan site will be a good exchange site for a property classifieds. So, build your list, scratch the competition and start mailing.
Forums & Answers – Start joining forums and be an active player in that. Try to be wise and promote your brand carefully. People should believe you as a quality source and it will motivate them to land your website.
Social Networking Site applications – Yeah, they are not free but you can get it developed in house too. Think like a marketer and develop an interesting thought on the basis of providing provide fun to user and at the same will understand your site’s objective. SNS apps are the future of internet marketing as you are getting such a large amount of traffic for almost no bucks.

It is very evident that we are now in a economy meltdown, 90% of the times companies will go reduction in marketing budget. Now, in online marketing we can overcome this problem as we are on a very measurable market medium. So, with the help of web analytics we can still do our job at the desired level. As a internet marketer we are more focus on traffic but over main aim is always conversion, that’s the one metric which is being judged most times in online marketing. Since, there are so many web analytics tool available such as Google Analytics (free), Yahoo Web Analytics, Clicky etc. our job becomes much easier if we use them extensively. If you are not a fan of analytics than it is too bad for you and your organization because the analytics is need of the hour. Some tips to increase conversion are:-

1. First of all check bounce rate on landing pages (above 30% is bad)
2. Try google website optimizer (great tool)
3. A/B Testing (mostly ignored, but very effective)
4. Follow funnel model & try to reduce exit ratio at every stage of visitor navigation.
5. Do the all the 4 steps again and again.

Just remember since we can’t get more traffic due to reduced budget but if we are able to change our conversion ratio from let’s say X to 1.5X and eventually 3X than you are in great situation. Let’s get our basics right and buckle up to show that internet marketing is best ROI marketing in a recession.
Best of Luck!
Some great tips on web analytics can be found at http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Contributed By - Amit Gupta, Online Marketing Manager, TBSL 

Most people look at Google as an effective ROI engine and tend to agree that Google provides them best ROI. However, when it comes to branding,  most advertisers have some other ideas. They think Google is primarily a search engine and that there is negligible amount of branding attached to a small text ad.  While this may be debatable to a great extent and some past studies have also proved that there are branding benefits of a search impression. I would however not comment too much on it but will actually like to talk about something which most people and even google (I think) has ignored for years now. I think its a hidden gem and yes its called the Google content network.

Why I say its hidden is because most advertisers do not use it fearing the common perception that content network does not stand up anywhere close to the ROI that they get from Google search network. I don’t know from where did this perception emerged, but in my case I  have been able to get a great value from content network and in some cases it has even surpassed my ROI from search. The key to using content network effectively is the ability to show your ads to the right audience. Just as in search network you can control who sees your ad based on the keywords they searched, in content network too you need to control who sees your ad based on what type of content they are reading or what type of sites they are visiting.

Google Content Network Reach in India

As per Oct 2008 Com score data, the Google ad network as a whole reaches up to 80% people worldwide while it reaches around 70% Internet users in India. On the other hand Google content network reaches around 75% people globally and 63% Indian audience as per the same report. Clearly, there is huge scope here as the reach is impeccable compared to any other online ad network.

How to use content network as a branding tool?

Google content network today offers you the ability to serve text, images, flash and video ads. With reach as high as what is stated above, it can be and should be used as branding tool. The good thing to add here is CPC’s on the content network are really low and you don’t pay anything for impressions,  so its free branding in a way. In fact if you use video ads you don’t pay anything for a video impression(somebody seeing that video), you pay only when somebody clicks the URL in the video and goes to your site. A great opportunity for advertisers to exploit. It’s something like Click to call ads that google introduced some times back where an advertiser paid only if the call was received. Many smart advertisers exploited this feature and did not received the calls at their end, ultimately the callers used their display URL and copied it in their browsers to ultimately see their websites. So this was totally free traffic for the advertiser, without a single penny paid! This feature is still being exploited by people as click to call ads are still live on mobile searches.

Coming back to our main topic, I believe Google content network can be used as a great tool for branding.  I personally know some people who say a display banner on Yahoo is 10 times better than a display banner on Google content network.  I do not agree with this. I agree when they say a homepage banner on yahoo is better than a display banner on a small traffic website on the Google content network but then a display banner on certain low traffic page of yahoo is worse  than a homepage banner of a high traffic niche website of Google network. So I think it evens out more or less.

The most common word between publishers & advertisers of Indian Online Marketing is CPA (Cost Per Acquistion). The whole marketing conversation starts with it and of course ends with it too.

The big problem CPA creates is death of experimentation, analysis & marketing. Both sides of marketing just become dead and whether its right media, double click or even Google these days, the system becomes more powerful than the marketing. The Fact that CPA has become powerful in India is because of very less number of advertisers in the internet industry & dearth of quality online marketing professionals.

In the west or advance online marketing countries people mostly do CPC & CPM deals and than rely on marketing abilities to convert visitors into consumers. Online Marketing sounds simple but it has its own challenges. The biggest of all is that you have very little time to impress your targeted customer and bring it to your site.

If we are stuck with CPA deals, the internet marketing will not grow as more and more people will not learn the process of “optimization” in online marketing. I request both advertisers and publishers to start adopting deals other than CPA and let the industry grow rapidly. We are the world’s second largest population and soon we will have the largest number of internet users in the world. If we can market them properly, there will be huge load of money that we all can make in internet marketing in India.

Contributed By - Amit Gupta, Online Marketing Manager, TBSL

There are advantages of having your website hosted in the United States. If you are trying to rank well on Google.com it helps a little to have your website on a server hosted in the USA. One more major thing to consider is does the company offer cpanel web hosting. The cpanel control panel is the simplest to use and is feature packed. Even someone signing up for web hosting for the first time can easily login to their cpanel control panel and find information like web stats, databases, email accounts and much more.

Once you find good hosting then check out reviews from others that have had experiences with that specific web host. You can pretty much find reviews on any hosting company online. Let’s take McKremie, LLC for example, I will use them since I know the owner Stuart. You can see from WebHostingStuff.com that McKremie’s uptime is running 100% for the past few months, this is an excellent sign. If you search for reviews you can see a few of them and get an idea how their level of service is.

The important factors in choosing a web host are; cpanel, customer service and uptime. Another company that is US-based and seems to do a good job is Hostgator.com. HostGator also fits into the same category as McKremie as both are really good companies.

Landing page is perhaps the most ignored and neglected part of online marketing campaigns. Marketers spend million of dollars in trying to bring traffic to their websites but most of them do not spend any time on improving the quality of their landing page. Studies show that most people judge a website in the first 5-10 seconds of their visit and based on that judgement they abandon or continue surfing the website. This is where landing pages are important. Landing page is the element that provide users a first hand impression of your site. This further results in users sticking or leaving your website.

Designing a landing page that meets your objectives is a tedious process. It involves defining your requirements and having a clarity on what you want a visitor to do on the landing page. Getting a visitor to take an action is the basic prerequisite from any landing page. This is also known as a conversion in online marketing methodology. A conversion happens when a click on a ad leads to some valuable user action such as a lead, purchase, registration, signup, or view of a important page. But how do you make sure that a person visiting your landing page actually converts? There are a number of things online marketers can do to improve overall ROI from their landing pages. Following are 11 ways that will help you improve conversions from your landing pages:-

1. Call to action - There should be a definite call to action on your landing page. Call to action can be best compared to a roadsign, where the user is directed to perform an activity. Without a proper call to action phrase or buttons, the visitor tend to get confused and is not able to engage with the landing page, which distracts him from performing any activity on the landing page. Examples of call to action can be Register Today, Buy Now, Order Now etc.

2. Connect with creatives - You can choose to have a connect between your creatives and the landing page. For example, you can have the same look and feel of your creatives as the landing page. Use the same colors, fonts, pictures and most importantly similar call to action.

3. Information in points and bullets - Always present all information in points and bullets. People have a habit of not reading entire paragraphs on the Internet. They want to go through your content faster. Representing information in points and bullets help them to read important things while weeding out not so important info.

4. Use facts and figures - Facts and figures have always been a great idea to use on the landing page. People get impressed by facts and figures easily. If your brand is No.1 in a particular area, its important to tell it to your users. If you sell 1000 items daily, its a good idea to include it on your landing page. Similarly you can include other interesting trivia about your brand which actually helps you to convince your visitor about the quality of your brand.

5. Use pictures - There is a very old saying, A picture is worth a 1000 words. It holds true even in the case of a landing page. If you sell T-shirts, you would want to show your best T-shirts on the landing page. Pictures helps the user to understand your product. Even if you sell a book on the Internet, its important to show the book cover on your landing page. If you sell holiday packages, you should never mind showing a picturesque scenery on the landing page.

6. Testimonials - Testimonials helps you to connect your future customers with your existing customers. Most importantly it builds a trust factor for your brand. Before trying a new product many people often ask friends and relatives who are already using that product. Testimonials work similarly in the sense that they tell your would be customers that your existing customers are satisfied with your product. Moreover, your existing customers feel happy when you show their faces and comments on your landing page.

7. Maintain consistency in communication - Consistency is critical when it comes to landing page communication. You can not have two-three different communications on the same landing page. Asking the user to do more than one thing at a time is as good as asking him to do nothing. Therefore, the communication needs to be focussed and to the point.

9. Use analytics software - All modern online marketers should definitely think of using analytics software on their landing page. This help the marketers to understand user behaviour on the landing page. Things like bounce rate, time spent on landing page etc. are critical to any landing page success. Some of the analytics software that one can use for this purpose are webtrends, google analytics and clicktracks.

10. Use bookmark/forward to friend buttons - It’s not a bad idea to use bookmark and forward to friend buttons on your landing page. This way a user can engage with your landing page later whenever he has the time to do it. Also, forward to friend buttons help in spreading your landing page URL to new users. Thus, your landing page acts like a viral and you pay nothing to catch new users.

11. Ask the user to perform more actions after the thankyou page - This can be a little tough to implement but can act as a great idea for marketers with multiple or similar websites. Once a visitor reaches your thankyou page after performing the required action on your landing page, you can still ask the person to do more stuff on your website. This way you ensure that the visitor engage with your site from the first day. Also, if you have multiple websites, you can redirect the user to your 2nd website once the user has already made a conversion on your primary site. This will work best if you have two closely related websites.

These are some ways which have personally worked for me in the past. If you know any other ways for improving landing page conversions, please feel free to add those in comments section.

I was reading one of my MBA books recently and came across some beautiful lines which the author has included for the sake of motivating and inspiring people. I thought I should share them on my blog. So here it goes…

Do you have hard work to do? Do it Now!

Do you have a kind word to say? Say it Now!

If you have missed an opportunity in the past, it is not worth regretting, and it is unwise waiting for a future moment to do anything, for future cannot be trusted. Now is the time to act. Only Now in yours. Seize it and make full use of it.

If you have hard work to do,

Do it now,

Today the skies are clear and blue,

Tomorrow clouds may come in view,

Yesterday is not for you;

Do it Now!

If you have a song to sing,

Sing it now,

Let the tones of gladness ring

Clear as song of bird in spring,

Let each day some music bring;

Sing it Now!

If you have some kind words to say,

Say them now.

Tomorrow may not come your way,

Do a kindness while you may,

Loved ones will not always stay;

Say them Now!

If you have a smile to show,

Show it Now.

Make hearts happy, roses grow,

Let the friends around you know,

The love you have before they go;

Show it Now!

Work, for the night is coming,

Work through the sunny noon,

Fill brightest hours with labour,

Rest comes sure and soon,

Give every flying minute,

Something to keep in store,

Work for the night is coming,

When man works no more!!!