Internet Marketing Blog

Unique Features of a Successful eCommerce Website

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E-commerce websites are mainly designed to sell products and their success is very essential for better business results. When designing and developing an e-commerce website, a designer has to face so many challenges in order to deliver the best of all. Hence, it is very essential to analyze all the areas of the process to ensure delivery of a good product. E-commerce is a unique topic in online business with various beneficial features, including global audience reach, high standards, user interaction, valuable information, and customization.

There are a range of essential factors that influence the look and feel of e-commerce websites. The top features include quick & easy navigation, product related simple design for increased visibility of product, effective branding, specific product images, displaying related or recommended products, listing popular products, offers & discounts, simple checkout process, and complete website search option.  

The navigation of product pages should be carefully designed with more options for the users to locate the product easily.  This feature of the site requires thorough user experience testing to ensure all navigational issues are addressed properly. With the help of some simple design approaches, the site will give better visibility to the product, as selling is the key point of any e-commerce website. For better performance of the website, the design should be related to the style of products available and thus making a direct connection with the brand.

Your firm should include product specific photos, especially in different angles.  This will help the user get a feel of the product and to make an easy purchasing decision. They should also make use of the homepage and help the users to find something really interesting by adding offers, popular products, new arrivals and other discounts. Displaying a list of related products on the product details page to the user may result in increased sales of those products as well and serves as a promotional tool for similar products. Users may find it difficult to land with the particular product of their interest even with good navigation, so in order to avoid this and help them gain easy access to the product, it is advised to include search box with range of options.

In total, e-commerce websites with all the above good features provides advantages for small and medium businesses in developing countries reducing operational costs and increasing efficiency.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Offshore Outsourcing, Photography, Small Business, Website Design, eCommerce, web 2.0, web development | No Comments »
Tags: eCommerce, Internet Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, new york web development agency, small businesses, web analytics, web design, web development

Major Factors Influencing Mobile Advertising

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Mobile marketing and advertising has created plenty of opportunities to promote the products or services of any business. Nowadays, mobile as a new media channel offers a great reach that is highly relevant for the advertisers to target audiences. This form of advertising can prove to be an effective medium for businesses. A range of influential factors exist in this movement. Hence, there is a great need for completely analyzing the factors that largely influence the consumers to accept mobile devices as an advertising medium. Studies indicate that when compared to older generations, the younger people are more attracted towards mobile devices.  

The major factors that affect the use of mobile advertising include device, interface, purpose, media, content, message and the audience. Acceptance of mobile as an advertising medium among consumers is influenced by a wide range of factors that include purpose, personalization, control, privacy, protection, usage, specificity, psychological barriers and other regulations. When these factors that influence the consumer acceptance are analyzed properly, it will provide valuable insights about the role of mobile marketing and advertising in the near future. Quite a few non consumer centric variables exist, like advertising content and technology, when manipulated accordingly will create a positive response among the target audience.

So it is important for one to understand the consumers’ attitude towards mobile advertising and various factors influencing it, based on that a unique model can be defined and executed. One of the key elements for the success of a mobile advertising campaign is to understand both the user expectations as well as the differences in available mobile devices and keeping the users engaged in communication. A good number of businesses are now experiencing success using mobile advertising and marketing as a tool, because of less competition as of now when compared to internet marketing. Overall, mobile marketing is a great tool for lead generation and to build relationships with consumers if the so called factors that influence consumer acceptance are addressed properly.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Mobile Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Content Marketing, mobile advertising agency, Mobile Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, new york interactive marketing agency

The Impact of Mobile Marketing on Businesses

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Recent developments in technology created new media channels for advertising and marketing. The channels of communications used by marketers include SMS, MMS and email, etc. The new area of marketing is the form of marketing that targets mobile phone users in Mobile Marketing.  
Anywhere and at anytime, advertisers can reach their customers in order to promote their products or services through mobile devices. With the help of the consumer profile and their interests, the advertising companies can launch highly targeted campaigns. When devising a mobile marketing campaign, there are quite a few factors that need to be kept in mind which include but not limited to user acceptance, consumer responsiveness and the impact of the campaign on the purchase making decision.

The current format of mobile advertising or marketing does not have a major effect on the buying decision of the consumers and various studies reveal that the response of consumers towards this form of marketing fall in different categories which include a disruptive nature of the advertisements, a need for personalization of advertisements, and the advantages or use of mobile advertisements. The major advantage of this media as a tool of marketing is that it will improve the chances of reaching consumers directly with personalized content. On the other hand, most companies think of negative response from consumers and invasion of consumer privacy as main disadvantages.

Recent studies reveal that one third of Americans who have signed up for promotional alerts via mobile phones indicate that these marketing services make an impact on their buying decision. Placecast studies indicate that only 3% of women and 7% of men are interested in location based social networks.  The check-in services or the mobile optimized location based services of leading social networks has only a limited impact and the reach is still not measured properly.  Studies also reveal that the short messaging services as a new advertising medium can generate good responses as high as 40% compared to direct mail and banner advertisements.  Location based mobile advertising messages are having higher click through rates when compared to online advertising messages.

The key for success in mobile marketing is to maintain a certain level that will not disturb the mobile phone users. So for every marketer, it is very important to know the use of mobile marketing to make a clear impact on the buying decision of a consumer. Mobile media is considered to be more personal than any other traditional mode of communication and emails. It is highly recommended to follow a conceptual framework when defining a mobile marketing campaign using the permission based marketing strategy.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Mobile Marketing, blog | No Comments »
Tags: Content Marketing, internet marketing agency, mobile advertising, Mobile Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, Social Media Marketing

How To Measure Social Media Marketing

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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How do you measure social media marketing? This is the top question nowadays among web marketing professionals who also use social media as a tool, making a social media analytics plan highly recommended. Studies indicate that almost 50% of the marketers are not sure about the direct value or how to measure the impact of social media on business. It is important to analyze the data by creating a unique analytics plan so that you can make well informed decisions on your marketing efforts.  

First define your goal when you are planning to measure the social media performance metrics on your business. Then go ahead and define actionable performance indicators to effectively measure the results of your campaign and then adjust your marketing strategy accordingly. Social media analytics are all about measuring the results to understand your customers, opportunities for business development, and how you translate your conversations with prospects to make business decisions.

Plenty of great tools are available either paid or free to monitor your social media marketing strategies. Both the free and paid tools offer different features and benefits. IBM introduced one such tool named the IBM SPSS Modeler Professional that helps marketers to find insights of campaigns. You should find such a tool, monitor your customers or prospect’s online activity and their conversation about your products or services to learn how to enhance the social media campaigns further.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Public Relations, Small Business, Social Media Marketing, blog | No Comments »
Tags: Content Marketing, internet marketing agency, Mohamed Mohideen, Social Media Analysis, Social Media Marketing, social media optimization, web analytics

Facebook – Facebook Optimization – New SEO

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Facebook changed the way people use the internet to post and share information. Today one in every 14 people on Earth use the social networking website. Today, there are 12 million users in India, 6 million users in Brazil and these numbers are going to grow much faster in the near future. Facebook gained about 100 million new users since February of this year and now made half a billion users collectively.

Facts about Facebook:

1. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
2. Facebook has about 100 billion hits a day
3. 50 billion photos on Facebook and more than 3 billion photos uploaded each month
4. More than 3 million active pages on Facebook
5. More than 70 translations options available on the site
6. 1.5 million Local businesses have active pages on Facebook
7. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
8. 100 million active users are accessing Facebook through their mobile phones

So how do companies successfully use Facebook to market its products or services to large group of users? Facebook Optimization is the answer. Here are some key points that need to be followed on a Facebook Marketing Campaign includes: developing specific messages to target audience, paying appropriate attention to what is being discussed, and engaging in a good conversation. There are special tools that are specifically made for Facebook portal that help small businesses engage more and more deeply with the consumers and prospects. Facebook open graph tool help optimize your Facebook pages and with this tool, Facebook Optimization is now increasingly becoming the new SEO.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Interactive PR, Marketing Agencies, Mobile Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media Marketing, blog, online advertising | 1 Comment »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing, Interactive Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, online advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing

Pay Per Call Advertising from Skype

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Skype users are able to call, send text messages, or video chat with other Skype users for free.  They are charged with a small rate if a user makes a call to land lines or mobile phone numbers from their computers.  Skype is growing every day and has over half a billion registered users.  Now, Skype introduces a new technique to add revenue with the new pay per call ad unit.  This new type of advertising will turn phone numbers into small advertisements to about 560 million users of Skype service.

Click and call advertising service of Skype allows the users to make free calls to participating businesses found on any web page. This allows the advertisers to get easy access to the consumers or prospects.  Consumers can also call businesses free of cost using Skype. The advertisements will appear in blue, saying “Free call,” in addition to Skype numbers that appear in gray color. Skype offers this service in association with Marchex, which provides analytics for the services. Advertisers can plan a monthly budget based on the number of calls they would like to pay or they can pay based on the number of calls they receive via Skype.

A phone call is a much more valuable lead than a click on a hyperlink and can result in actual sales since the conversion rate is higher on a call. Users can see the free call button or the advertisements only if the Skype browser plug-in installed. This type of advertising is good for local businesses that don’t sell their products or services via online shopping but can generate good leads.

Donal Albert, General Manager of Skype Americas said, “It is an opportunity to tap into a large community of consumers that are initiating calls from their computers.”  Skype generated $550 million revenue in 2008, and its parent company eBay projects $1 billion in revenue by 2011. Skype estimates it currently accounts for 12% of all international call minutes. To find more information on Click & Call Advertising, check out the Skype website by clicking the logo.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Pay Per Click (PPC), Small Business, blog, online advertising, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing, Interactive Marketing, Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, online advertising, pay per click advertising

Permission-based Email Marketing for Businesses

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Email Marketing is one of the most popular tools used as part of direct response marketing campaigns in the United States. Email is being used primarily as a marketing tool by 35% of companies compared to 25% that use direct mail. The total spending for online advertising will grow twice as fast in 2011 with an increase in ad purchases over email marketing. Email marketing industry census by EConsultancy shows that 42% of organizations did not know the Return on Investment of their campaigns.

Email Marketing campaigns should be designed in such a way to influence the consumer’s behavior and it should address all the stages in a consumer’s buying process. An effective email campaign should identify the problem, provide information, evaluate alternatives, include options to make purchasing decisions, and address post purchase behavior with additional information. The concept of permission email marketing is one of the most important aspects of email marketing in today’s direct marketing world.

Permission-based email marketing ensures optimized deliverability, return on investment, and recipient’s trust. If you market to people who expressed their interest to receive emails about offers and promotions, you can see better results in terms of good response rate, better deliverability, increased brand awareness, and trust among the consumers. The CAN SPAM Act 2003 suggests opt-out email marketing with two major conditions. One of them states that emails sent to recipients without their consent must mention that the message is a promotional email and provide an unsubscribe option. After all, email marketing is about building relationships with your consumers or prospects, leading to good results.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, CRM, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, blog, web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing, Email Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, new york interactive marketing agency

Secretly Speak To Success

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Your company may have one of the dynamic, imaginative marketing teams.  Your publicist may have a Rolodex bigger than Wilt Chamberlin.  You tweet, digg, and like virally before and after night falls.  Some things never change, though, in achieving success.  In marketing, you simply need to do one thing:  tell your friends.  If your products and services are truly at a high level, you want your cohorts to know about them. They can be brought up casually in their ear, or at a networking soiree.  A piece on American Express’ OPEN Forum talks about Oscar De La Renta conversing with his good friend, Julio Iglesias, of a development proposal.  They had long wanted to be neighbors, and The Estates were created, consisting of four residential communities.  Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov joined soon after, and a resort named Punta Cana is born.

The story of De La Renta is just one to illustrate the necessity to speak about your product to those close to you.  They will add tremendous credibility and unique insight into your services.  They can also add a historical perspective to prospective buyers by extracting the highlights of your corporation.  One will see the value that your corporation adds to the community. Then in time, your continued innovation into future developments and ‘green’ technologies will generate goodwill, an invaluable reserve in the current marketplace.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing, online advertising | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, american express OPEN forum, Blueliner Marketing, green marketing agency, Interactive Media, interactive media agency, oscar de la renta punta cana, word of mouth marketing association

Interactive PR as part of your Internet Marketing Campaigns

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As we all know, commercial businesses, organizations, not-for-profit associations and other high profile individuals maintain their public images using the well-known field of Public Relations. PR is all about shaping the appropriate message to the public and it involves a lot of functions that include: crisis management, publicity and maintaining a steady relationship with customers, communities, employees, investors, media, government and others with the industry.

The internet is much more than just a channel of communication. In the present scenario, the internet has become the fastest and most convenient way to communicate and to spread the message to the public in a cost effective model. Often called Interactive PR, Online PR or Digital PR, this process is helpful for companies of any size as it is a two-way communication that aims to build better relationships. When compared to the traditional PR, this method helps organizations build reliability with the target audience directly.

VSS data shows that PR spending in the US grew by more than 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. Also PR spending in America is predicted to go beyond $8 billion in 2013 with increased usage of corporate blogs and social media.

The important components of Interactive PR include: distributing press releases online with relevant keywords and optimizing for search engine rankings, news wire services, defining a new blogging strategy to engage prospects and customers in conversation about the products or services, effective podcasting, organizing webinars, starting discussions and following up in forums, creating news and events page in the website to cover the old and latest information about the company.

There is a greater demand for Interactive PR services than in previous years and firms of all sizes are looking at the ways they communicate with their prospects and customers. There are companies that do not practice PR on its own and may request help or outsource their needs for Online PR activities. This way they can build an ongoing relationship with the public and the media in a very cost effective manner.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Interactive PR, Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Podcast Production, Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Digital PR, Interactive PR, Mohamed Mohideen, Online PR, Online Reputation Management, podcast marketing, Public Relations, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing

Social Media Marketing to Increase Sales

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Social Media Marketing is another internet marketing tool that is being widely used as part of many integrated marketing campaign to reach target audiences. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the web provides ample opportunities for people to build connections and share valuable information. Social media platforms can be easily accessed by anyone and thus can help organizations to create brand awareness of their products or services and to engage the audience in conversations.

The following are some of the benefits associated with Social Media Marketing, which include: Building exposure to businesses, higher rankings in search engines, increased traffic, qualified leads, new business development and relatively low expenditures. The top social media tools used commonly by marketers are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs.

Most companies are still trying to find the best ways to make use of social media platforms to market their products or services. An Omniture survey indicated that only 14% of businesses use mobile, video and social media marketing as part of their marketing programs. Recently, a number of companies have been outsourcing their social media marketing to specialized digital marketing agencies. Currently, about 25% of companies are outsourcing their social media programs in order to increase ROI and increase sales.

Charts from a CMO survey show that there is an increase of 60% in the overall social media marketing spending from 3.5% (August ’09) to 5.6% (February ’10). There has been significant growth in the field of social media marketing with a gradual increase in the budget allocation in recent years.

Blueliner Marketingis a full service internet marketing agency based in New York with offices in India and Bangladesh. Blueliner help clients place their products and services in front of their target audience through various social media marketing efforts that drive results.

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Interactive PR, Mobile Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, World, online advertising | 1 Comment »
Tags: Blog Marketing, blueliner india, Blueliner Marketing, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Interactive Marketing, Interactive PR, Internet Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, social media agency, Social Media Marketing, social media optimization, video marketing