Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
Save on Pay Per Click Marketing. Get it for less guaranteed!
Welcome to the Internet Marketing Tools and Tricks website, a complete resource to put your online business on the fast track. We specialize in online marketing for independent lodging properties and vacation rental management companies. Pay per click internet based advertising is effective, and a quick way to jump start your internet marketing.
Internet marketing is not just search engine optimization (seo) or pay-per-click (ppc). Internet Marketing has become a complex field for any business. Internet Marketingby Moytura is particularly geared towards the new marketer, the small businessowner, those involved in network marketing, in email marketing in factanyone using the Internet to promote and market a business or organisation.
Internet Marketing by Moytura currently covers 14 different categories related to the promotion and marketing of your business through the Internet. Granted, this isn’t true for a monopoly, but that isn’t likely to happen online, The most likely scenario on the internet is finding a competitor, or two, or a hundred all competing for that number one spot.
It is the practice of using all facets of internet advertising to generate a response from your audience and ties together both the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and marketing. Are you ready to learn how to start your very own affiliate marketing business.
Big cash flooding to your bank account immediately with his “secret Internet shortcuts” with only a couple of hours of work a week. Looking for marketing resources that we currently don’t have available on our Web site.
Internet marketing can not be executed as a single event or detached process. Internet marketing is not just search engine optimization (seo) or pay-per-click (ppc). Internet marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click are all tools that can work together with your traditional marketing activities.
The online public relations campaign that positioned a client’s press release in the number one spot in both Google News and Yahoo. News for its most important keywords and resulted in dozens of online media pickups and follow up interviews from mainstream media outlets and influential bloggers.
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Want Traffic to Your Website Fast? Small Business Online PPC Marketing
Below is actual list of Free Internet Marketing Courses you can choose from. We specialize in online marketing for independent lodging properties and vacation rental management companies. Pay per click internet based advertising is effective, and a quick way to jump start your internet marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when someone else pays you a commission or a percentage of what you sell for them. Internet today undoubtedly is one of the best mediums for brand promotion and advertising. It is the practice of using all facets of internet advertising to generate a response from your audience and ties together both the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and marketing.
Internet Marketing by Moytura currently covers 14 different categories related to the promotion and marketing of your business through the Internet. Our Online Marketing Firm offers professional web design and development services, email marketing software and strategy, search engine marketing including pay per click advertising, impression based products and search engine optimization and marketing consulting and strategy.
It is the practice of using all facets of internet advertising to generate a response from your audience and ties together both the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising and marketing. MarketingScoop’s Internet marketing experts are here to help you succeed.
Inside every lesson of this course you’ll learn proven and effective methods that you can use to start and build a profitable affiliate marketing business. Looking for marketing resources that we currently don’t have available on our Web site.
Internet marketing can not be executed as a single event or detached process. Many businesses use the Internet effectively without actually taking money online.
The online public relations campaign that positioned a client’s press release in the number one spot in both Google News and Yahoo. News for its most important keywords and resulted in dozens of online media pickups and follow up interviews from mainstream media outlets and influential bloggers.
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Making a Profit by Blogging
In the several instances that you have browsed the net you have probably come across a blog or two. Blogs refer to online journals where people express their feelings through writing. They represent personal opinions of authors about certain topics. Blogs allow people to share ideas and their interests with people all over the world.
Blogs have become popular nowadays for a number of reasons. First, they are good for search engines. As long as you are making posts regularly, search engines spider them and index them often. Search engines love blogs because of the regularly updated, fresh content they present. Second, it’s the quickest way to build a website. Using blogs can be easier for you than making a website. You don’t need to create websites or any programming language. And third, blogging helps increase your marketing reach.
Even if you’re not a good writer, you can still always try blogging. When you become consistent with your blogging you will soon realize why it is important for internet marketers. Setting up a blog does not mean you’ll have a 100% boost in your income. A blog won’t give you any new ways to make money except with the following ways:
1. Sell advertising space. You can sell text links or banners on your blog. If your blog has a high page rank then this strategy might work for you.
2. Offer affiliate ads. You can offer visitors links or banners to your affiliate products or services just like with a website.
3. The simplest way to get money through your blogs is by having Adsense or any other ads in your blog. You make money when other people click on these ads.
Keep in mind that your competitors are probably using blogs so you must use one as well. If your competitors are blogging then they are perhaps reaching customers easily and effectively. You can publish information about your business quickly while keeping pace with the growth in the market, when you have your own blog.
Blogs are useful social and communication tools. The market is more organized and smarter. People would love to talk to you and would want to help in the development of your products. Blogs can allow this because readers can submit their comments to the author’s post if the author allows it.
Blogs will be around for a long time, so it would be wise to start blogging now.
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Market Research - Why Do it?
Market research is an essential element of any organization that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-
- Market research will help you better communicate - Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By consulting with the customer you not only show them that you care but you remove the guesswork out of customer services.
- Market research helps you identify opportunities – If a new service is planned and you want to know the attitudes people have then market research can help, not only by evaluating the potential for the new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be fine tuned.
- Market research will minimise risk - Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
- Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress - By establishing a benchmark you then have a useful reference to allow you to measure your progress – If you do not measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Early research can identify flaws in your service or areas where a product needs to be improved, by conducting regular market research it will identify if improvements are being made and, if positive, will in turn help motivate a development team.
Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few organizations invest sufficient resources to enable them to gather good intelligence that will help them improve their business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.
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Customer Satisfaction Surveys - Top Tips
Why bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.
Online customer satisfaction surveys will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.
Where do you start?
Objective - As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.
Analysis - Consider how you will analyze the answers having completed the survey.
Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A lot will depend on the expected volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.
Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.
After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to properly analyze the data allowing you to make informed decisions.
Then, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?
The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-
- Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
- Marketing - promote aspects of your business
- Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of
For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?
By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.
Warts and all – be prepared to accept criticism.
A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.
What should you ask?
Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.
Communication - What do you do to help your customers communicate with you?
When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.
If there are reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?
Use a customer satisfaction survey to confirm that all your staff are perceived by your customers as being helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.
Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?
Making it pleasant, making it easy - For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?
The right quality products – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.
Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.
Do your customers consider your business synonymous with value for money, if not, why not?
Speed and attention – No matter what the business, the majority of customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.
Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?
Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Customers appreciate attention but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.
Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?
The more knowledge you have of your customers the better you will be able to target your business.
Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details so that any problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.
What is next?
Having completed the survey analyse the results.
Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the customer service is failing.
Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?
Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?
If customer service training programs have been implemented have they improved the customer experience?
Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.
Do not squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.
Continuously Monitor - Make changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.
If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.
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Market Research - The Benefits
What are the things you can learn if you conduct effective market research?
Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.
Know your target market - Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age group? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?
Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your business and are you improving in the areas that customers demand?
Products and services - Do you have the products or services that people want? Is what you offer value for money? How do your services and products compare to that of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver?
Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there adequate advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?
Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?
Is your marketing message understood? Does your marketing material accurately reflect your brand? Are the right channels being used to advertise? Are you reaching the right people?
With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.
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A Website Survey Makes Sense
There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic allowing them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and even the length of time each visitor spends accessing the website.
However, despite the considerable data available what is missing is anything to tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they like or dislike the site? Was the layout clear or confusing? Was navigating the website easy and did they find the information they wanted?
A website may be generating sales but why are there some people that are visiting the website and not buying anything? Was the reason because they didn’t like what was being offered, or was it that they couldn’t find what they wanted even though it was there?
Using web based surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, there is no longer any need to guess, just ask the visitors directly how they arrived at the site and if they were able to find what they were looking for.
With an online survey webmasters can find out:-
- How often do people visit the website?
- How did they find the website?
- Is their interest in the website for reasons of business or pleasure?
- Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
- How easy was it for them to navigate the website?
- Would they be willing to recommend the website to others?
A good website survey will be short and to the point and gather good intelligence that once analysed will help improve the website.
An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. For example at the end of the registration process the visitor can be asked if they found the procedure quick and easy; after ordering an item they could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To avoid regular visitors from being asked every time they visit, the website can be configured so that they are only asked once.
Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.
To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey
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Writing Effective Surveys Top Tips
Designing surveys is easy; isn’t it? The truth is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is more difficult. The following tips will help you with your survey questionnaire design so you can write more effective surveys.
1. What is the survey’s purpose?
Questionnaires are conducted for many reasons. By correctly phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in many ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of the survey’s purpose.
2. Give the survey a good title
The survey title is key and an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so make them feel that their investment is worthwhile.
3. Don’t make the survey any longer than it needs to be
Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Pay attention to the ‘need to know’ questions and minimise ‘nice to know’ information.
4. Use plain English, maintain consistency, avoid jargon and acronyms and don’t ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers
Take care when wording a question. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least misleading.
5. Avoid having long questions
Use short sentences wherever possible. Long questions tend to cause respondents discomfort and can lead to a higher level of incidents where respondents abandon a survey.
6. Ask only one question at a time
Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like athletics and golf?’
7. Don’t influence the answer
Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell tobacco to children be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no value.
8. Make sure that the chosen answer format allows the respondent to answer the question being asked
Ensure that the respondent is able to answer how they really feel or they may be less inclined to complete the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.
9. At the same time that you compile the survey consider, when the survey is complete, how the compiled data is going be analysed
Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how answers can be grouped. For example “How long have you worked here?” - ‘less than 1 year’, ‘between 1 and 5 years’ and ‘more than 5′.
10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows
Group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.
11. Target your respondents carefully
You may want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t control who responds to your survey consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t fit your target profile.
12. Provide a channel for your respondents to expand on their answers or make comments
By allowing respondents to make additional comments you will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember though for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.
13. If the survey you are conducting is to be confidential ensure that you honour your pledge
If you have made guarantees to the respondents that the survey is confidential you need to ensure that the individual data is not shared with anyone or used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed once the survey has finished.
14. Weigh up the benefits of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable
If your respondents are to be anonymous then appreciate that you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. There are advantages to allowing people to remain anonymous for example it would allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.
15. Carefully consider what the best response format will be
Being consistent with the format used for responses is good practice. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analysing the data single selection radio buttons are easier to analyse than multiple selection check boxes. If a radio response can be used do not use a check box.
16. Inform the respondent as to how much time the survey will take to complete
If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop can increase. It is good practice to indicate how long the survey is likely to take so that the participants can choose the best time to complete the survey.
17. Advise the respondents of the survey end date
Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.
18. Trial the survey
Before publishing a live survey publish a small pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.
19. Before publishing the survey check the survey several times
Carefully check and then check again that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If practical get a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.
20. Thank your respondents
Respondents invest their time when completing surveys and should therefore be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as a prize draw or reward.
To get started there are numerous survey software websites to choose from.
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Quick, Easy, Cost Effective Marketing
It is a sunny morning and you are sitting in your office. With a cup of hot coffee by your side and memories of your last holiday still fresh in your mind, even if you say so yourself, today at least, life is sweet.
You take a sip of your morning coffee and then feel a breeze of cool air and from the corner of your eye a movement. In the blink of an eye there is now an smartly dressed stranger sitting in the chair opposite. Yes you are surprised; after all you didn’t hear anyone knock and before you can say anything he starts in a relaxed and measured voice.
‘Here’s the deal’
‘I will advertise your product on billboards at the busiest junctions of every city of the world.’
‘I will be able to tell you how many people see the advertisement, their gender, age group and nationality.’
‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are reading the billboard I will make it possible for them to view your website and, if they feel the urge, make a purchase.’
‘I can have all this setup in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement displayed in your favourite trade journal.’
He stops for just a second. ‘Interested?’
Okay you might be forgiven thinking that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up from a dream or maybe it really is time to get a lock on that office door.
But let’s just take time to reflect. If you are still reading this well I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.
The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard I’m offering is the much underrated online survey.
Take a fresh look and start to associate an online survey with ‘marketing’ and not with ‘market research’. Not any type of marketing but ‘Marketing’ with a capital ‘M’ and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is effective, quick, direct and low cost.
Publish an online survey and advertise it on a website, or via email, and like a billboard by the side of a major road junction, your message will appear in front of people. Unlike billboards where the number of people that see the advert has to be estimated an online survey records the number of times a survey is started.
Online surveys can ask demographic questions such as age, gender and nationality and in doing so allows you to collate metrics about the effectiveness of your promotion and confirm that you are interacting with the target respondent on a one-on-one level.
Unlike billboards where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with online surveys you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.
Using an online survey website it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.
Even if you offer a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey or use Pay Per Click advertising to capture a wider, or more focused audience you will still have low cost but effective marketing.
‘Okay then, tell me. Is it a deal?’
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Ten Reasons to Market to the Online Generation Using Surveys and Questionnaires
Customers are tough cookies. They are extremely media aware and increasingly cynical and it is a clever marketeer who can get through to them. Online surveys modernizes the traditional format and offer a unique way of interaction – all the benefits of the Internet without the programming. Here are ten reasons why they may be the silver bullet marketeers’ need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of Survey Galaxy - one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper
1. It’s cheap as buttons
Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish is minimal.
Information harvested from surveys can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.
2. It’s very easy
Anyone can create and design an online survey. Survey sites allow people who are interested in the benefits of surveys, rather than technicalities, to side-step the required programming skills and create relevant up-to-the-minute surveys, instantly – surveys that are even easier to complete than they are to make.
3. Anyone can play
Promoting an online survey can be via email (with a link enclosed), through a link from a website or as a referenced by other forms of advertising. Anyone who has the URL can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that’s convenient to them, 24×7.
4. We’ve all got an opinion – and we like to give it
Customers do not often view surveys as spam and the majority welcome the opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand. Online survey’s are an ideal way for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive manner and encourages employee participation. Online surveys ensures that the message reaches each individual and the feedback is compiled in a manageable form.
5. Get inside your respondents heads
You can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can’t make them read it. Surveys have the advantage of engaging each respondent, who thinks about the question before giving their response.
6. Build a relationship
It needn’t all end at the end of the survey – while you have their attention and are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making the most of the window when you have their interest.
7. If you like this, you’ll love…
Maximise the interest of those responding to your survey by referencing related information. By including links within the survey you are able to reinforce the marketing message.
8. Subtly does it
Surveys can be used to associate a product with positive attributes. By listing the features of a product and asking the respondent to say how important they are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.
9. Not just selling
A survey is an effective, easy and quick method to promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; for example a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme.
For example take a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. With a survey you have the opportunity to explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better frame of mind to appreciate an argument and be more positive in their response. Promoting the cause is just the start as you can then use the feedback you receive to fine tune the overall marketing strategy.
10. Fresh topics engage interest
Thinking laterally a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide the ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be targeted towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. A survey’s marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that the survey is being sponsored by brand name, or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product – something that is surprisingly easy and highly effective.
Attract traffic by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing questionnaires. Having a public survey notice board as part of a website is a low cost and automated method that helps to increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. No need for moderators as unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results can be displayed in summary form.
Customers do not often view surveys as spam and the majority welcome the opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand.
Many of the techniques and a few more are contained in the following Sample Marketing Survey.
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