Do humans really have a head for numbers?

Eight out of ten cat owners are wrong

Eight out of ten owners say their cats prefer Whiskas. (Other pet foods are available.) Do you remember this famous advertising slogan? Maybe Pedigree Pet Foods would have done better if they had said “80 per cent of cat owners” instead of “eight out of ten”. The reason, according to …

Read More

Popup

Annoying pop ups might actually boost sales

How annoyed do you get with those pop-ups that appear on websites? The chances are, when used badly, you get angry. Indeed, there are dozens of ways you can block pop-up windows from appearing and much online security software blocks these annoyances by default anyway. Of course, the pesky marketers …

Read More

Facebook

You must be visible online

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, may be young but he certainly knows a thing or two about getting his business noticed. There can hardly be a day that goes by where you do not hear someone talking about Facebook, or you see a Facebook “like” button on a  web …

Read More

Bargain

People want you to give them a deal online

People are always on the lookout for a bargain. Do you offer them? Prime Minister David Cameron and Business Secretary Vince Cable are in India right now doing deals. True, they are encouraging inwards investment in the UK from one of the world’s fastest growing economies, but while they are …

Read More

Vouchers

More evidence that online advertising does not work

Your online customers are really only interested in vouchers and special offers Social networkers are a savvy lot – that means you and me and you and all your customers and potential clients; everyone, in fact. According to a new study by LinkShare almost all forms of advertising fail to …

Read More

Healinghands

Feelings do not help boost online sales, but feeling does

The power of sensation is more important than we might realise online Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. British people of a certain age (my age…!) will remember those words fondly. They are the words used at the beginning of the children’s radio programme, “Listen With Mother“, which the …

Read More

Visible

Leave your office to market your website

Can people see you in the “real world”? if not they might not think so highly of your online business The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was cheered by troops in Afghanistan yesterday as he thanked them for the work they are doing. Of course, in reality, his policy is the …

Read More

Facebook

Advertising industry battles to prove it is useful to Facebook

Facebook faces financial conundrum Most Facebook users simply don’t see the advertising the site serves up to them. That’s a conclusion you can draw from a new study on “social advertising” – the fancy name given to placing an advert on a website…! Indeed, anyone running even the smallest business …

Read More

Romance

Make people think of sex and boost your marketing

Romantic or sexual imagery on your website can change the way your visitors think Do you remember those dreadful adverts that used to appear many years ago in newspaper columns and classified listings? They said things like: “SEX: Now that I’ve got your attention here’s our latest set of spanners …

Read More

Futurepast

Increase sales by concentrating on the present

Tonight’s historic “leaders debate” on ITV will probably be something of a let-down. The leaders are all over-rehearsed, knotted with nerves and fearful of making mistakes. Add to that the 76 rules of what can and cannot be done or said and you have a recipe for 90 minutes of …

Read More

Onlineads

Online advertisers fail to succeed

Most online advertisers are failing to gain anything as a result of their efforts. It has been known for some time that the average click-through rate of the typical display advert on a web page is around 0.2%. Now, a new study shows that Pay Per Click advertising, such as …

Read More

Bebo

Bye Bye Bebo…Bebo Bye Bye

If you don’t like the musical suggestion in the headline, here’s an alternative “Another one bites the dust”. Yet again, we’re seeing a major organisation – this time AOL – making a massive mess of things online. And you think they’d know better, considering they started out as an online …

Read More