Ghosts exist in your marketing system. They are the subscribers and people on your email list who actually don't read what you send them; everything you provide goes into some kind of void, into the ether.

Clearly having ghosts in your machine for marketing is doing you no good. You think you have 1,000 subscribers, say, but many of these may be dead. Having people on your mailing list or RSS subscriber list that are not actually engaged with what you do is worthless. All that is being massaged is your ego - they are adding nothing to your bank balance. Indeed, if you use an email system for a newsletter, for instance, that charges by the number of subscribers, those dead email addresses are costing you dear.

So, how do you revive the dead? Should you trick them into waking up or provide them with a treat of some kind? Let's look at the possible reasons as to why people may be ignoring your emails or blog postings in RSS feeds.

Firstly, they may simply have too many other emails and feeds to read - yours just doesn't get the same amount of attention as it used to. Secondly, they may have become bored with what you write, but they hang on in the hope that you may return to the early wonder you gave them when they first decided to subscribe. Another possibility is that their spam filter may be blocking you, so they never actually get your messages in the first place.

Here's what to do. Send your list a message from a different email address (to avoid potential spam filter blacklisting). Make it short, snappy and give them a link to something where they will get a "treat", such as a free report on a current issue that faces your audience. Ensure your subject line is enticing, interesting and personalised so that you gain attention in a busy inbox.

Doing all this will revive interest in what you do - especially if your free report carries reminder messages of how useful your blog or emails can be to people. In other words, create a short promotional campaign to remind your list you exist. That way you'll wake the dead. Happy Halloween...!

Labels: internet marketing

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Bloggers who have built up a loyal following of readers could be set for rich rewards. According to Business Week magazine, several blogs are being eyed up by traditional publishers as potential take-over targets. Great news for the bloggers. However, there is a revealing comment, almost as a throw-away line, in the Business Week article.

It says that "Internet users would rather participate in the news than simply consume it" and that this is why blogging is so popular. But this is not startling news. As a young cub reporter on a local evening newspaper I remember my genial old editor reminding me to get the name of everyone who attended any event I wrote about.

"Why should I waste time doing that?" I asked. "Because," said the savvy editor, "if their name is in the paper they'll buy a copy."

In other words, local newspapers earn much of their income by involving the local people (their audience) in the news. Local newspapers already know that people would rather participate in the news than consume it. Once again, this latest blogging story shows us that if your blog is about the world that your readers inhabit - even if that is a narrow niche - you will succeed.

So does your blog publish stories and articles about yourself, or is it about your reader's world.

Oh, and one other thing - if you want to feature in my blog, here on this page, just comment below with your name and why you think I should mention you. Everyone who comments is guaranteed featuring within these pages. Fame at last...!

Labels: blogging

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At October 30, 2007 9:49 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

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Children in India have been making clothes for the retailer GAP, in spite of the company's well publicised policy on not using child labour. Now the company has launched an investigation into the incident. However, the company could have easily avoided this embarrassment with two simple pieces of technology - web cams in the factories where their clothes are manufactured and radio frequency chips (RFID) which identify specific items. Together, these two pieces of technology could prove to the bosses in the USA that a particular garment was made by the people they were watching on their computer screens back home.

Clearly, GAP did not invest in a technological solution. Instead, they appear to have assumed that the contracts they signed with suppliers in India will have been honoured. They assumed, it seems, that because their contracts forbid the use of child labour this would be the case. They did not appear to take into account that people might lie, that people will find loopholes and ways out of contractual obligations, or that people will act in their own self interest.

In other words, GAP appears to have got itself into trouble by concentrating on legal issues and policies rather than predicting the way people would behave. It made assumptions that everyone behaves the same way. Assumption is the enemy of success.

Online, businesses assume all sorts of things. Retailers assume that people use web sites the same way as they do physical shops. Email marketers assume that people read emails the same way as they read direct marketing letters. Web site owners assume that people are not interested in the price, only the "solution". Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions - and they all lead to poorer business results.

So if we can learn anything from the GAP difficulties, it is to never assume anything. Consider your online business from every angle - but particularly work out and find out what people will do with your web site. Don't assume they will do what you want them to do.

Oh - and one other thing - as a part time lecturer in childhood studies, it's clear to me what could well happen to those children in the GAP factories. They may be taken off the clothing production lines and made to work in far more dangerous situations, including child prostitution. Companies have a policy that pleases their customers back home because it seems immoral to have child workers. However, without putting in place alternatives for the economically destitute in the poorest parts of the world, these children face even more intolerable situations. Once again, GAP appears to have assumed that by banning their products from being made by children that the children will not work. The sad fact is that for many of these children they are much better off emotionally, physically and economically by making GAP's clothes. Even so, they are in a much, much worse position than they ought to be, of course. Sad, but true.

Labels: internet, shopping

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Futurist David Zach recently spoke to a group of business people and told them to drink more..! What he meant was to go out and drink more coffee at places where you can meet people who can help your business.

He is a clear advocate of the fact that business is based on people - and that your future success therefore depends on meeting as many people as possible. He emphasised the need for community in the future.

So what does this mean online? Community comes in all shapes and sizes. Take, for instance, the growing "virtual worlds" like Second Life. These thrive on community. But as the recent Virtual Worlds Forum discovered big audiences and therefore lots of money is being made by virtual communities coming together to play virtual games in a virtual world...! The only thing that is real is the cash.

Who would have predicted just five years ago that people would be making money out of made up "people" dong fictional things in a non-existent world? However, at the core of this is community. David Zach is right - your business needs a thriving community to succeed in the future. Create a community out of your customers and you will do well.

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Retailers with successful "bricks and mortar" stores are - once again - failing to capitalise on the Internet. That's the conclusion you can draw from the analysis of the annual WebCredible Ecommerce report.

The report looked at ten major retailers and got 1,000 people to score them for various aspects of their web site. The study looked at 20 essential aspects of a shopping web site. The findings show that the vast majority of the retailers fail to achieve anything like a good score. Only seven of the 20 online stores improved their web sites compared with the same time a year ago. There were 11 web sites that actually performed worse than last year

The Number One slot was taken by HMV who achieved a score of 70% - but last year they also scored 70% and only managed 5th place. What this shows is that all the online stores measured in this survey have worsened over the past 12 months.

Considering there has been endless reams written on how to improve ecommerce operations in that period - and there are more consultancy services available - it's remarkable that these major retailers have fallen so far. So what has happened?

It seems that all the sites have undergone a revamp in the past year - and this has focused on (you've guessed it) design. Once again, major companies are "sold" on the need to redesign their stores, rather than focusing on their customers.

Cast your mind back a few years. Marks and Spencer was in trouble with its "bricks and mortar" stores. So what did they do? The redesigned their stores. Their argument was that their stores were no longer looking modern, they were not in keeping with the 1990s. Millions spent on redesign - no impact for the company. So, in comes a new chief executive who - guess what - redesigns the stores (again). The change for Marks and Spencer's stores came when they started selling what people wanted to buy - focusing on their customers, not their stores.

Online, M&S and other major retailers appear to be focusing all their attention on the design of their online shop, rather than the customer. People do not browse online stores, in the way they do in "bricks and mortar" shops. This is a fundamental behavioural difference that the major retailers have yet to understand, it appears from this latest research. All the time they redesign their online stores to make it easy to browse they are chasing the wrong thing.

This recent ecommerce study of retailers shows us once again, that by focusing their attention on the web site, these companies are losing customers. This Christmas is expected to bring in an extra £3b in online shopping for British retailers alone. This report suggests most of that money is going to go to other ecommerce operators, rather than the main retailers. And what will their response be to that in January when they analyse their sales and see they didn't do as well online as they had hoped? Well, guess what, they'll commission a redesign of their web site.....!

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What does social networking mean to you? Probably, you think of things like Facebook, Ecademy, MySpace and so on. Do you also automatically think of teenagers? Well, the average age of people on Ecademy is mid-40s, for MySpace it's mid-30s. So, sometimes our views about who is using social networking can be cloudy.

Online there is plenty of fiction purporting to be fact. But none more so than from the British Government. For a start it's latest project from the Department of Work and Pensions is for "old people" which it seems is anyone "over 50". Now as someone who is not far from his 51st birthday, I'm not convinced I am old. And I suspect that Richard Branson and Bill Gates, who are both older than me, don't think they are old either. And Rupert Murdoch, the boss of MySpace - well he's in his late 70s (don't tell him he is ancient by British Government standards, the shock might be too much).

Clearly, Government definitions of being old are far from "real world". So it will come as no surprise that the Government is behind an "older persons" blog - for those over 50 - written by a chap from the Department for Work and Pensions who is clearly not over 50 from his photo. It's all part of a scheme for "older persons" to let the Government know their views on technologies such as social networking.

Well here's one view for our friends in the Government - stop calling us "older people" and you might get some positive views. And, find out some facts about the use of the Internet first; social networking is not as alien to us over 50s as you might think. In fact, some of the most avid social networkers I know are well into their 50s, some are in their 60s. Gosh, how can they cope with this internet thingy at such an advanced age?

But the Government appears, like many people online, to make assumptions about things - such as how the over 50s perceive themselves or how many of them use online social networks. And assumption is usually the enemy of success. So if you have any kind of online presence, don't make assumptions about the people you are connecting with - to do so will make you too much like the Government.

Labels: social networking

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Customers that you form long-term relationships with are what you want aren't they? A business usually wants a happy group of customers who keep coming back for more. But building such relationships can take time.

In the offline world, businesses use all sorts of devices, such as loyalty schemes, customer events and personalised promotions to establish and build relationships. Add in a drop or two of high quality customer service, friendly approachable staff and you are getting ever closer to that dream of loyal customers who may even turn into evangelists for your company.

A recent review of psychological research suggests that this may be easier to achieve online than in the "real world". The review looked at the "rise of the cyber-cheat" and was focused on online infedility. Some people, it seems, cheat on their partners by having affairs with friends they meet online, in chat rooms or social networking sites.

Studies that have looked at this growing phenomenon have revealed an interesting feature of online behaviour. It seems we are more ready to enter a deeper level of relationship with an online friend, faster than we do in the offline world. Relationships tend to start with us exposing only brief glimpses of our self to others. We talk about the weather and general inconsequential stuff for quite a while as we size each other up and get to know one another.

Then the relationship deepens as we open up. Online, however, the studies of cyber-affairs have shown that we enter into the deeper stages of relationships much faster than we do in the face-to-face world. Perhaps we would get too bored, too quickly if the conversation on chat rooms was just about the weather...!

Even so, what these studies tell us is the fact that we do behave somewhat differently online. Because we are more ready to enter into online relationships more quickly it means that your business should be offering opportunities for engagement with you at a much earlier stage in the normal sales cycle. Online, people are more likely to want to enter a deeper level of relationship with a supplier at an earlier phase than they would do for the same company offline. This means if your online business waits too long to provide a relationship building opportunity you will probably miss out to the competition that does do this.

Online you need devices that help build relationships right from the very start of someone's connection with your web site. So, using blog technology, for instance, to allow interaction is fundamental in that; so too is the ability for people to ask you questions without having to wade through pages of FAQs. Online, people are readier to connect with your business than they might be offline - so make it easy for them and your business will do well.

Labels: internet psychology

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Internet marketers are facing a significant change in the way they operate thanks to a deal between Facebook and Microsoft. The arrangement sees Microsoft as the provider of advertising on the Facebook site.

For the past few years Google has dominated the pay-per-click sector, with Yahoo running a late second place and Microsoft trailing behind. Now, if you advertise using pay-per-click, you are going to have to get to know and use Microsoft adCenter.

The reason is the popularity of Facebook. It is the 6th most visited web site in the world - and almost none of that traffic comes from Google or other search engines. Internet marketers can reach millions of people on Facebook now that it will carry advertising - but you are going to have to learn a new system, from Microsoft.

This deal squeezes out Yahoo's advertising system still further. Once called "Overture" this was the pay-per-click King of the Internet. Now it is being relegated to a comparatively tiny player. The popularity of Facebook is the key here. And the deal should tell Internet marketers a couple of things.

Firstly, you can get a highly lucrative deal (worth $240m to Facebook) if your site is popular with people - and you achieve that by letting your users contribute to your site. Secondly - and this is important to understand - you don't need Google or other search engines to be popular.

So, if you want big deals from substantial companies, become a popular site that has user-generated content and that becomes big as a result of word of mouth. Oh - and one other thing - how did Google become popular? Via word of mouth, not via search engines.

Do you think these things tell us something? So why is it that so many businesses concentrate on "search engine marketing"? Once again, many businesses owners are focusing on the wrong thing.

Labels: internet marketing

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Bloggers frequently put links in their blogs. Indeed, carrying links on any kind of web site is one of the ways in which the Internet works. In fact, the "hypertext" system of links was developed by Tim Berners-Lee (whoops I've put in a link) often known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. In fact without links, we have no Internet as we know it.

So perhaps we should pity the 26-year-old man from Cheltenham who has been arrested for including links in his web site. I jest not. The man was behind the TV-Links web site (whoops I've put in another link - prison here I come). The site (now taken down) was a listing of links to broadcast video. In other words, a useful site, that helped people find interesting bits of TV. You would have thought the broadcasters would be happy that the site, ranked 182 in the world by Alexa, was bringing them extra publicity.

But, oh no, the people whose links were carried by TV-Links were far from happy. Indeed, they have now claimed that the TV-Links site was breaching trademark law by carrying the links. Well, let's take a risk here, Microsoft (a registered trade mark) has never taken out criminal proceedings because I have linked to them. So, having done it again, there's a chance I'm going to be taken off in handcuffs. I await the blue flashing lights.

However, as Digital Lifestyles points out, the root of the problem is the slowness of the broadcasters who are only just waking up to the fact that you can watch video online. Of course, if the broadcasters had brought a case about copyright infringement it would be easier to understand. But trademarks? Barking up the wrong tree, I reckon. Or just plain barking.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but once again this case shows how big business and the brilliant legal brains of Britain fail to understand the Internet and its users. If links become trademarked goods, then virtually every site on the World Wide Web would grind to a halt - including your blog.

Labels: blogging, internet

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At October 24, 2007 12:54 PM  Mike Allan said…

At October 24, 2007 3:00 PM  Graham Jones said…

At October 24, 2007 6:38 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

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Online shoppers are clear about two things; they know exactly what they want and they also want the best quality at the lowest price. People do not "browse" online; they have a particular item they want or a specific purpose in mind. However, traditional retailers are used to browsers and impulse buys and they are clearly having a tough time online.

For instance, a new survey suggests that the main thing online retailers are looking for are "click throughs" to their adverts. Well, isn't that just fantastic? Advertisers are using clicks on adverts as a measure of success. It's like retailers measuring footfall - you can have millions of people walking into your shop, but if they don't buy anything so what? In other words measuring clicks is useless. Measuring sales is what matters.

However, as revealed in an interesting discussion on Ecademy, in most large businesses there is a separation between marketing and sales. As a result, marketing people cannot be measured on sales because that's someone else's responsibility. So, marketing campaigns have to be measured on other factors, such as click throughs. A marketer can say how brilliant they have been because they led to so many click throughs; meanwhile the sales team have to justify why they didn't capitalise on those clicks and sell something.

Maybe, it's because online the marketing people are actually doing a bad job. Take this example from Marks and Spencer. Type in "girls smocked dress" into Google and you get a Marks and Spencer advert on the right hand side. Now, at this point the online purchaser knows they want a girls smocked dress; they don't want anything else. So why does M&S serve them up a picture of a 10-year-old boy in a jacket and tie with the word "newborn" next to him? The page is also designed for browsers - and that's not what online shoppers do.

However, the independent retailer Pocoropa has an advert leading direct to a page of girls smocked dresses - exactly what the online buyer wants. Yet if the woman who runs Pocoropa were to attend a marketing seminar, guess which company would be held up as a great example? You guessed it, M&S...! Now it seems to me that it is M&S who should be going on the marketing workshops and learning from people like Pocoropa.

So what does this example tell us? It says that if you advertise online you need to measure sales, not click throughs. If your measure is merely click throughs, you end up being a lazy marketer which allows you to avoid focusing on what the online shopper really wants.

M&S will argue that they sell millions of pounds worth online. Just think how successful they could really be if they were any good at Internet marketing.

Labels: internet, internet marketing

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Eighty four dead bodies are being held in liquid nitrogen in a facility in Michigan, USA, with their families hoping that one day they can be brought back to life. These people have been subjected to cryonics, whereby their bodies have been frozen so that they can be revived in the future once a cure has been found for whatever caused their death.

Having your body frozen in perpetuity is a clear indication of our hope for permanent life. None of us like to think that our life will end. Indeed, some argue that one of the main psychological functions of religion is to provide us with immortality because "we have an afterlife" (for which, of course, there is no scientific evidence as yet).

Luckily, though, immortality will be with us, almost certainly within my lifetime - and I'm not in the first flush of youth. The Internet is coming to the rescue and - assuming we have electrical power - your life as you know it could continue.

Already it's fairly obvious that what you say online - in chat rooms, blogs or social networking sites - will be stored in perpetuity. In a few hundred years time, members of your family - indeed anyone - will be able to read every word you ever wrote online, providing a huge clue to your life and personality. Of course, not everyone's writing will live on like The Complete Works of Shakespeare, but even your comments in social networking sites will be there forever.

However, this is not immortality; we'd hardly say that Shakespeare is still with us. Immortality, surely, means that you know you are still alive - you are consciously aware of your existence. But biological connections to computerised technology are already with us. For example, disabled people can control robotic equipment using nerve stimulation. So, it is not going to be long before you will be able to connect your brain to the Internet.

That means it will be possible to back up your brain to some central web-based store. Already, we don't have to make much of an attempt to remember things as we can store great details of our lives on web-based services, using search facilities to find them. Until the development of these services we simply had to remember things; now we don't need to remember the details of that holiday snap as we can find it on our online photo storage with a couple of keywords, for instance.

But backing up your brain - perhaps even uploading your consciousness - means your brain will be able to live on after your death. And that means your "brain" will still know it's alive. And it will still be able to interact with other "brains" and living people connected to you via the Internet.

Reckon this all sounds far fetched? Well guess what - you would have said it would be far fetched for people to be able to make phone calls to each other without a telephone line. And you'd have said that about five years ago - yet now we have Skype.

Dumping your brain online and allowing it to live forever will make you immortal - and it will be a whole load cheaper than freezing your body in liquid nitrogen.

Labels: future, internet

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At October 22, 2007 8:48 AM  Aurelius Tjin said…

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Shoppers at Tesco have been promised that if there is one person in front of them and there are available tills, all they have to do is ask and a new checkout will be opened. The idea is that you should never have to queue - there will never be "one in front".

Tesco also knows that car park access is fundamental to its overall success. Queues to get in and out of the car park put off shoppers and they go elsewhere, to reduce the "hassle" of shopping. Of course, in the 21st Century the "hassle" of shopping is considerably less than the difficulties faced by our grandparents, when war time rationing took place. But, to us the mere sight of a queue is enough to put us off; these days we want "instant" shopping.

It's the same online. Vast numbers of online stores still require you to register before you can buy. Guess what, it puts off vast legions of shoppers who go elsewhere so they can buy more quickly. Then, other online shops put in place shopping baskets that take three or four steps to complete. Guess what - these businesses lose most of their potential customers halfway through the checkout process. People who had already made the decision to buy, simply give up because of the hassle of the "online queue".

What you need is an online store that has no queue - the same idea as Tesco's "one in front" campaign. That means the careful selection of shopping carts so that people can whizz through your buying process. But how do you know which of the myriad of shopping carts is the best? Easy. Select a shopping cart you like the look of and that works with your set up. Then ask for examples of sites that use the shopping cart and then buy something from them. You will then experience how the shopping cart works and whether or not it is causing any kind of queue. You'd be surprised how many businesses have never bought anything in their own shop, let alone using their own online shopping cart. In standard retail outlets and online, people give up if they have to wait. The selection of the right shopping cart is therefore essential.

Labels: internet marketing, shopping

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At October 25, 2007 4:17 PM  Anonymous said…

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Philip Calvert arrived at a recent NRG Business Networks lunch ready to deliver a killer blow for many businesses in the audience. Hitting the audience squarely between the eyes he told them that unless they were focusing on online social networking they were nowhere.

Social networking is so important, he said, that businesses that did not take it on board were likely to miss out. Indeed, he told the story of his son, now at Sheffield Hallam Univerity, whose first task upon arriving at his hall of residence was to set up a social networking group on Facebook for all his room-mates. Young people today think online social networking first. That means as today's graduates and school leavers enter the business world they will expect it to have inbuilt social networking capabilities. Fail to do that and you will not attract new staff.

Philip made the point that you need to include social networking as part of your business strategy. The very next day, Thomas Power gave a speech on social networking where he echoed Philip's views. Indeed, he was even stronger in his suggestions about social networking saying that unless you were on Ecademy, LinkedIn and Facebook, you were not going to succeed in the current business world.

Now, both Thomas and Philip agree on one thing for sure - get online, get involved and get networking. The future of your business depends upon online social networking they say. However, are they right? Or is there a flaw in their argument?

Yes, it's true, online social networking brings business rewards and those exploiting things like Ecademy and LinkedIn are doing well. However, the message that online social networking is essential could cause some business people to lose focus. They could spend much time - Thomas Power said a minimum of two hours per day - engaging in unproductive social networking online. This could divert some people from profit producing business activities or productive "offline" social networking.

So, what should you do? Yes, take Philip's and Thomas's advice and use online social networks to help build reputation, image, brand. But do not neglect offline social networks - even in the online world, most business deals are still done face to face. In other words you need to get the balance right. Interestingly, that's precisely what Philip and Thomas do themselves - they spend much of their time building relationships online and then they go and meet lots and lots of people in the "real world". Live, person to person contact is what has probably been more important for these two individuals than the online social networks they have built up - important as they are. As ever on the Internet, it's people first, technology second.

Labels: social networking

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People have perfect memories - or at least many psychologists reckon so. It seems we store everything that we sense, at least for a short while. The problem many of us have is getting that information back out of our brains.

What you want for your web site is an experience that is memorable - something that people will be able to talk about even if your web site is not in front of them. You need to "make it stick".

There are several reasons why people may forget your web site. These include:

Failure to encode - it never gets stored in the reader's brain properly in the first place. We don't need to store all the information about two cars, for instance, to distinguish between them. We only encode the differences, not the details. So, if your web site is "samey" people won't encode it effectively.

Motivated forgetting - sometimes we dislike things so much we actively stop them being recalled. People may dislike your web site enough to actively stop themselves trying to remember it.

Interference - this is where new memories interact and interfere with existing memories. So if your web site is modelled on someone else's web site, or you say the same as everyone else, there's a danger of memory interference.

So, how can you make your web site stand out and be remembered? Do something that makes encoding easy and which makes your web site not interfere with existing memories. To do that, take a different stance on your subject; don't always agree with everyone or everything - have a point of view. Don't "sit on the fence" on your subject - take up a position.

It's not what your web site looks like that makes the main difference - it's what your web site says that really helps ensure people remember you. So concentrate on stories and viewpoints that make it easy for people to recall you.

Labels: internet psychology

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