MBAInternetMarketingManager

Cantidad vs Calidad de trafico

2012-01-18T15:21:00.000+01:00

Es muy común escuchar sobre empresas online y bloggers que festejan al conseguir una gran cantidad de tráfico (número de visitas en su página web) como si su meta fuese simplemente recibir más y más visitas. Definitivamente el tráfico es un indicador importante (de muchos), sin embargo, ¿Cómo saber si esas visitas son de calidad? ¿Sirve o no sirve el tráfico que estoy captando? Primero deberíamos empezar por definir que es la CALIDAD del tráfico. Un tráfico de alta CALIDAD, es aquél que cumple con los objetivos de marketing de la empresa. Se sobreentiende aquí que si el área de marketing no define explícitamente qué objetivos busca de su página web, no podrá medirse la calidad del tráfico que se capte. Por ejemplo, para una tienda online, un tráfico de alta calidad será aquél que tiene un mayor ratio de compras por visita. Para un portal de noticias que no vende nada online, un tráfico de alta calidad será aquel que se queda más minutos y navega por más páginas en la web. Para todos los casos, un tráfico de mala calidad, será aquel que tiene una alta tasa de rebote, es decir, usuarios que llegan a una web y cierran el navegador o se van en la misma página en la que llegaron.Cuando explico este concepto en clases en la universidad, siempre utilizo el siguiente ejemplo. Hace muchos años, el centro comercial más importante del país tenía muchísimos visitantes. Sin embargo, muchos de los arrendatarios de los locales comerciales cerraban a los pocos meses de abrir porque no les era rentable. Sucede que la mayoría de esta gente no compraba nada, solo iban a ver las vitrinas y a pasear. El centro comercial había logrado incrementar mucho su tráfico… pero captaba tráfico de baja calidad porque sus tiendas no vendían más productos con el tráfico que iba “de paseo”. En su web sucede lo mismo. Si soy dueño de una tienda online ¿Me sirve incrementar el tráfico de mi web en 100% si mis ventas suben en 5%? Si soy una página web corporativa ¿Me sirve aumentar el tráfico en 50% si la mitad de estas visitas nuevas no permanecen en mi web más de 30 segundos? La respuesta es que obviamente no. Aumentar las visitas de una web por el solo hecho de aumentarlas no agrega ningún valor. El reto es aumentar el tráfico a la vez que se consiguen los objetivos de marketing deseados.Es muy importante que las empresas, sea cual sea su rubro y la razón por la que tienen una página web, empiecen a medir la CALIDAD del tráfico que captan. Solo así lograrán mejorar la eficiencia de su inversión en marketing.

Aquí la versión de este artículo publicada en el diario Gestion el día 18 de Enero de 2012

Marketing Social en Facebook - Somos Techo

2011-12-14T00:58:00.007+01:00

A mediados de 2011 se lanzó la campaña Somos Techo, la primera iniciativa de marketing social en Facebook realizadal Perú.

El portal inmobiliario AdondeVivir.com donaría y construiría con su propio personal 4 viviendas a familias necesitadas junto a la organización Un Techo para mi País. La mecánica del la aplicación Somos Techo era que se donaría 1 vivienda por cada 250,000 voluntpoints que acumulasen jugando en Facebook, entre todos los participantes.

Pasaron menos de 3 meses para que nuestros más de 10,000 fans lograsen el objetivo de alcanzar más de 1'000,000 de puntos !! Con lo que se cumplió el objetivo de donar las 4 viviendas a 4 familias necesitadas del Asentamiento Humano Mayobamba en San Juan de Lurigancho.

Puedes ver el resumen de la campaña y sus resultados aquí:

Dado el éxito obtenido en 2011, sin duda replicaremos "Somos Techo" en 2012 y esperamos lograr, con la colaboración de muchos más usuarios de Facebook, la donación de más viviendas para gente que hoy no tiene un lugar adonde vivir.

Mercado Inmobiliario en Internet

2011-10-24T17:48:00.005+02:00

En los últimos meses, el mercado inmobiliario ha venido migrando de forma acelerada al mundo online. En Países como USA, los ingresos de los diarios provenientes de anuncios clasificados inmobiliarios han caído un 92% en los últimos 10 años. Esta tendencia, actualmente una realidad en muchos países del mundo, también viene dándose en países como Perú, en donde los clásicos anuncios clasificados impresos, dan paso a portales inmobiliarios como AdondeVivir.com. Aquí un extracto de la entrevista que tuve al respecto el 20/10/2011 en WillaxTV.

La entrevista completa en el siguiente link: entrevista Pedro Neira

Somos Techo: 1era Campaña de Marketing Social en Redes Sociales

2011-07-25T19:32:00.009+02:00

"Somos Techo" es la 1era iniciativa de Marketing Social en Redes Sociales que se lleva a cabo en el Perú. Creada por el portal Inmobiliario AdondeVivir.com y la ONG Un Techo Para mi País.
En esencia, la campaña consiste en una aplicación desarrollada en Facebook (la pueden encontrar aquí SomosTecho) mediante la cual los usuarios van acumulando puntos. El objetivo es que los usuarios acumulen la mayor cantidad de puntos para que AdondeVivir.com done viviendas a aquellos peruanos que no tienen un lugar a donde vivir.
Mediante esta campaña se busca, aparte del objetivo tangible de la donación de 4 viviendas para gente que no las tiene, sensibilizar al púlbico en general acerca de la labor que realiza la ONG Un Techo para Mi País y darles una oportunidad de hacer algo al respecto mediante esta aplicación.
Aquí una presentación con el detalle yla explicación de la campaña.

Conferencia somos techo marketing social (v3)

View more presentations from Pedro Ferrand.

Redes Sociales en las Elecciones Peru 2011

2011-06-23T16:04:00.013+02:00

En esta presentación se hace un breve análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo del uso que dieron los candidatos a las redes sociales en las elecciones presidenciales en Perú 2011, sobre la base de información pública en cuanto a fans y followers de cada uno de los principales 5 candidatos presidenciales: Keiko Fujimori, Luis Castañeda, Ollanta Humala, Alejandro Toledo y Pedro Pablo Kuczynsky PPK. Como conclusión general, los candidatos presidenciales estuvieron de espaldas a lo que sucedía en las redes en estas elecciones, y no aprovecharon la enorme oportunidad que tenían en ellas, como medio de comunicación efectivo, bidireccional y altamente segmentable para transmitir sus ideas políticas. "Uso de las Redes Sociales en las elecciones presidenciales peruanas 2011" Se detalla con cifras concretas el uso de las redes sociales (Facebook y Twitter) por parte de cada uno de los principales partidos políticos y los hechos más relevantes que sucedieron en las redes sociales durante la campaña electoral como el movimiento "Anti" y el gran nivel de polarización que se vivió. Aqui la presentación:

Uso de Redes Sociales en las elecciones presidenciales Peru 2011

View more presentations from Pedro Ferrand

Si les interesó esta presentación, es posible que también les interesen los siguientes artículos:

Marketing Politico en Buscadores: Elecciones Peru 2011

Marketing Electoral Online: Elecciones Presidenciales Peru 2011

* Esta presentación fue elaborada con la valiosa colaboración de Cesar Hoshi

Entrevista en Mundo Empresarial - Canal N

2011-05-15T21:03:00.004+02:00

Aquí la entrevista que me hiciera Bruno Giuffra, conductor del programa "Mundo Empresarial" de Canal N. Tuvimos la oportunidad de conversar sobre las principales cifras de e-Holding, los logros en estos 2 años y medio de gestión y el mercado de la publicida digital en el Perú. Hablamos en mayor detalle sobre el mercado de clasificados inmobiliarios online (en el cual somos líderes de mercado con AdondeVivir) y clasificados de compra y venta de autos (en el cual estamos en el tercer lugar de mercado con Peruautos).

Aquí la entrevista:

Copyright by MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Marketing politico en buscadores: Elecciones Peru 2011

2011-04-26T16:00:00.008+02:00

Más de 3 millones de oportunidades al mes Pierden los Candidatos al No Mostrar sus Anuncios en buscadores

Mensualmente se producen más de 3 millones de búsquedas de temas relacionados a la presente campaña electoral. Ej: “Elecciones Perú” , “Candidatos presidenciales”, "ONPE", etc

Si bien las actuales campañas políticas de casi todos los candidatos están enfocadas primordialmente a publicidad tradicional, los miles de carteles, pancartas y afiches que decoran la ciudad han agotado visualmente al espectador. Por lo tanto, espacios como Internet se mantienen casi vírgenes; inexplorados por la gran mayoría de candidatos, a pesar que el peruano promedio pasa más de la quinta parte del tiempo que dedica al consumo de medios (el 22%) en Internet. Claramente, el formato de publicidad exterior está sobresaturado y ha perdido mucha efectividad. Hay enormes oportunidades en medios con menor saturación como los medios digitales.

Existe una gran oportunidad desaprovechada en este ámbito. En contraste con las campañas de marketing político nacional, la campaña del presidente Obama invirtió aproximadamente el 50% de su presupuesto a publicidad online y un 47% de esa inversión fue destinada a la publicidad en buscadores, en su gran mayoría a la herramienta de marketing en buscadores más popular del mundo: Google AdWords.

Sin embargo, la publicidad en buscadores, y en concreto a la publicidad en Google, el buscador más grande del mundo y el más usado en el Perú, tiene una característica muy particular y diferente a cualquier medio offline: la publicidad se muestra únicamente ante la búsqueda activa de un usuario sobre un tema específico. Por tal motivo, la publicidad se hace relevante y útil para la persona que realiza la búsqueda y por ende el mensaje publicitario se transmite con una mayor efectividad. Asimismo, la publicidad por este medio es de bajo costo y medible.

Estamos hablando de casi 3 millones de veces al mes en las que un candidato habría podido mostrar su anuncio, con cualquiera que fuese su mensaje político, y no lo está haciendo. En otras palabras: 3 millones de oportunidades desaprovechadas. Durante toda la presente investigación previa a la prmera vuelta, no encontramos 1 solo anuncio de ningún político relacionado a los términos de búsqueda de la presente muestra, más que por parte de un par de candidatos pocos días antes de la votación.

Ahora veamos: ¿Cuánto tendría que haber invertido un partido político para tener un impacto al menos significativo? Veamos qué habrian podido lograr con una inversión mínima de entre S/. 3,000 y S/. 15,000 al mes (entre US$ 1,000 y US$ 5,000). Tomemos los siguientes supuestos.

• Asumamos que de cada 100 personas que ve un anuncio en Google, 1 hace clic en él, es decir, una tasa de clic del 1% (más o menos un promedio de mercado conservador).
• Asumamos que el Costo por cada uno de esos Clics que habrá de pagar el anunciante a Google (más conocido como CPC) será de S/. 0.20 (Veinte céntimos de sol por clic, nuevamente un promedio de mercado conservador).

Con estos supuestos más que razonables, tendríamos que si un partido político hubiese invertido, digamos unos S/. 12,000 soles al mes (lo que le cuesta un panel publicitario en una avenida importante), habría obtenido los siguientes resultados:

Esto quiere decir que con una inversión de S/. 12,000, los estrategas de las campañas políticas habrían podido lograr que su anuncio se viese 6 millones de veces y que 60,000 personas hubiesen hecho clic para ver información en mayor detalle. Estas 60,000 personas estarían frente a su computadora con tiempo para ver en detalle sus propuestas políticas, plan de gobierno y mensajes de campaña. ¿Realmente no les parece ésta una mejor inversión que mostrar una foto + un símbolo en la calle al lado de 25 paneles más?

Ahora en segunda vuelta, los candidatos vuelven a dejar desaprovechado este nicho, ningún anuncio se muestra actualmente. Este medio se vuelve mucho más importante aún en esta etapa, ya que tanto Ollanta Humala como Keiko Fujimori tienen su fuerte en los sectores D/E y C/D respectivamente, y ambos tienen que convencer a los sectores A/B, en los cuales Internet constituye tal vez el principal medio de información y que votaron mayoritariamente por los tres candidatos que no pasaron a segunda vuelta.

Un indeciso no se convence con un panel publicitario en Javier Prado, se convence con información detallada y argumentos, algo que permite hacer Internet. La publicidad en buscadores es una forma efectiva de captar lectores a bajo costo.

Quedan algo más de 30 días de campaña para la segunda vuelta... ¿Habrá algún candidato que se dé cuenta de la oportunidad que está desaprovechando en publicidad en buscadores?

Si te interesó este artículo, tal vez te interese también un análisis del marketing politico en redes sociales que se hizo en una entrevista de Cecilia Valenzuela en Willax TV.

Sobre el Autor

Pedro Neira, gerente general de e-Holding, empresa dedicada a la operación y administración de diversos portales como http://www.adondevivir.com/ y http://www.peruautos.com/, y profesor de los Diplomados de Marketing Digital de la Universidad del Pacífico y la Universidad de Piura.

Copyright MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Marketing Electoral Online: Elecciones Presidenciales Peru 2011

2011-03-10T15:05:00.008+01:00

Elecciones presidenciales en Perú 2011 ¿Qué están haciendo los candidatos presidenciales en Facebook al 1 de Marzo de 2011? Aquí la entrevista que me realizó Cecilia Valenzuela en WillaxTV acerca del uso de las redes sociales en la campaña presidencial y en general, el marketing electoral online en el Perú. En general se puede ver con algunas cifras cómo los políticos han desaprovechado las oportunidades que ofrecen las redes sociales para el marketing político, incluso habiendo otros medios que ya están sobresaturados como la publicidad exterior.

Si te interesó este artículo, tal vez también te interese mi artículo sobre Marketing Político en Buscadores, y las oportunidades desaprovechadas por los políticos en la segunda vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales en Perú 2011

Internet Statistics Latin America

2011-02-02T23:57:00.004+01:00

Here you can find tha latest relevant stats of every country in Latin America. You'll be able to find the most important metrics related to the Internet Industry in Latin America for any country: broadband penetration, Credit Card penetration, number of PC's, population, GDP per capita, etc.

YOu can download the excel file here: Internet Stats Latin America

This is an extract of the Full Stydy conducted by America Economía for VISA in Excel File so you can use the data as you like. You can fin the complete study in PDF format here: e-Readines Latin America

Hope its useful for you

The Radio industry and Online Radio - Part 2

2010-07-16T23:29:00.004+02:00

In the previous article (The Future of the Radio Industry) we mentioned that the radio industry, with the arrival of the Internet will go through a process of Amazonization, and as a matter of fact, this process has already started but… What needs to happen to the radio industry so that Online radio completely takes over terrestrial radio and changes the game for good?

My simple answer is: Widespread broadband Internet Connection on cars

Internet Radio already has overtaken much of terrestrial radio market in offices and houses. According to eMarketer, the trend is clear:

Sure you can buy an Radio with Internet connection, but the reality is that we use a PC or a Lap Top to connect to Internet, and where we have a computer available we’ll have Internet Radio available. But what about your car? You usually don’t have a computer running on your car, and if you had it, you can’t use it while driving. So far, there’s no widespread technology that connects cars to Internet, either through a device that comes with the car or through a cell phone, plugin antenna, etc.

The answer is until cars come with standard equipment to connect its traditional radio to Internet, and this hasn’t happened yet. In urban areas of developed countries, nobody listens to radio at home anymore; the only place where it still holds is on cars.

Of course, Car audio equipment with Internet connection will be as common in 5 – 10 years as GPS’s are today. When this happens, that’s the moment that the radio industry will be changed for good. That’s the moment when a little town radio station will compete against the next “Amazon’s” of radio, online radios that will only exist to continually learn from your music taste and give YOU exactly what you want to hear.

The Future of the Radio industry and Online Radio

2010-06-06T19:53:00.004+02:00

Everybody knows what happened to the Newspaper industry all over the world, and the trend seems more or less clear… but What about radio? How the local/regional radios will be affected by the Internet? Will it be a positive or a negative effect?

Let’s start by taking a look back at what has happened to the Newspaper Industry, which is a vivid example of what’s gonna happen with Radio. The effect of the Internet on the Newspaper industry came from many directions:

1. Lower costs of content distribution

2. Lower prices (or free) to access content

3. Increased competition from smaller players. Nowadays everybody is a content/news generator (Social News Sites, Bloggers, Independent Journalists, etc)

4. Consumers demand more “Multi-media” (Text, Audio, Video) content... that obviously this can’t be delivered by the print edition

My take is that something very similar will start to happen in the near future (5-10 years) in the Radio Industry. Let’s take a look at theses aspects one by one.

Cost of Distribution

Traditional or terrestrial radios have had to invest considerable amounts of money in infrastructure, mainly lots of big and costly antennas spread geographically so your signal can reach the maximum number of listeners. With an Internet Radio the only infrastructure cost is a Server. Server capacity is usually scalable with demand, and now with cloud computing it’s even consumed on demand. On the other hand, the cost of running a server to reach a worldwide audience is negligible compared even with the cost of running a small local radio FM Network. What this means is a change of the game in the radio industry. 20 years ago, if you wanted to compete with a local radio, you had to physically invest in local infrastructure. Now that’s not the case anymore. A local radio Jazz Specialized radio will have to compete with Jazz Radios from all over the world.

Lower prices (or free) access to content

Radio content has always been free to the end user, so this is a big difference regarding content consumption between Radio and Newspaper. In this sense, the radio industry will not have to make such a big adjustment and won’t suffer the trauma that the newspaper is suffering now. Access to content (from the user’s perspective) is free in both traditional and online radio. One less thing to worry for Radio Broadcasters…

Increased competition from smaller players

Think of this in a similar way to what happened to Broadcast TV vs. Cable TV. 30 years ago, if you wanted to see a program related to “Fishing”, probably you had to wait until Saturdays at 6:00am when there was a one hour program on the subject. With Cable TV, all of a sudden you have a “Fishing Channel” running 24/7. With radio, it’s happening more or less the same. Traditional radios have a 2 hour weekly program on 80’s rock, a Jazz Special on Sundays, classical music on Saturdays, etc. Now with online radio your possibilities just got infinite. You can find a French Radio specialized in Classical Music, playing only Mozart 24/7, or a Chicago Blues Radio, a Salsa Radio, Music from Brazil… you name it. The big change is that local terrestrial radios, instead of having a couple of small local competitors, will have thousands of competitors of different sizes spread globally. How will I (Small Local Radio) attract listeners to my Saturday Jazz Special if my audience can get thousand of specialized Jazz radios from all over the world, any day at any time?

As tastes become more specialized, local radios will be unable to compete against global players with more resources and better technology. There will be a huge opportunity for Ad Networks (such as AdSense and the likes) to localize and segment radio advertising in this new setting. The Radio industry will go through a process of “Amazonization”, meaning long process of personalization, recommendations, custom made suggestions, etc. As a matter of fact, although still incipient, this trend of “Amazonization” of the radio industry has already started with online radios such as Pandora.com and Last.fm.

But… isn’t that already happening? Aren’t already online radios where you can personalize your tastes according to the kind of music you like (Jazz, Trance, Salsa, etc), the mood you’re in a particular moment (melancholic, excited, relaxed, etc) even music according to the colors you prefer or what your friends listen? Yes, all of that exists today but the big advertising budgets haven’t moved here yet. Local traditional radio broadcasters with their traditional business model still exist… The question is until when? …

Which will be the triggers for this change? More or less when will it happen? I’ll try to answer these and other questions in Part Two of The future of the Radio Industry.

Easy steps to find great keywords without Keyword Tools

2010-04-28T16:42:00.001+02:00

Most people use a keyword suggestion tool when they try to find new keywords for their campaigns. While keyword suggestion tools are good, they should not be the first step in your keyword research activities.

Before you use a keyword suggestion tool, ask yourself the following questions:

What problems can your product or your service solve?
Which questions do potential customers ask?
Can you offer unusual solutions?
Which products and services do you offer?

As you can see, the products and services that you offer are the least important. A person with a headache might not now that the Shiatsu that you offer will help them. They even might now know what Shiatsu is and if they know it, they might not be able to spell it properly. The same applies to all other services and industries.

For that reason, it is important that you focus on the first three points before using your products or services in the keywords.

1. What problems can your product or service solve?

In this example, the problem that your product or service can solve is a headache. Create a list of words that describe the problem:

headache, racking headache, migraine, vicious headache, splitting headache, megrim, constant headache, etc.

2. Which questions do potential customers ask?

People type different things in Google's search box when they try to find a solution to their problem. Here are some real queries that have been done on Google (use IBP's keyword suggestion tool to find keywords that are searched by real web surfers):

why does my head hurt
why does my head hurt when I cough
how to get rid of migraines without medication
how to get rid of migraines when pregnant
why can't i concentrate on anything
why am i so tired
etc.

The problem that your product solves creates certain circumstances (fatigue, temper, concentration problems). Address these circumstances in your keyword phrases.

The problem can also be connected to another factor (for example migraine and pregnancy). Create keyword phrases that are related to these factors.

3. Can you offer unusual solutions?

Most people will take a pill when they have a headache. In this example, you offer a solution that many people don't know about (Shiatsu). The following phrases would work for you:

get rid of migraines without medication
get rid of headache without pills

The unusual solutions that you offer can also be used in your AdWords ad copy and on your web pages. For example, you might create web pages around the following topics:

How to get rid of headaches without using Aspirin
An unusual way of healing migraine without medication
etc.

4. Which products or services do you offer?

Of course, you should also use the names of the products and services that you offer in your ads and SEO campaigns. In this example, this would be:

shiatsu, shiatsu massage, etc.

When you try to find new keywords, tell a short story that describes the problem and the solution: "A person has a racking headache. The person cannot concentrate because of that headache and the person is tired. Instead of taking a pill, there can be other solutions. That solution is my Shiatsu service."

By doing this, you'll find many keywords around which you can create new web pages and PPC ads. Of course, you can also combine this method with keyword suggestion tools.

"Copyright Axandra.com - Web site promotion software"

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Viral Marketing Key Success Factors

2010-03-09T01:42:00.004+01:00

Viral Marketing Key Success Factors

(This article is the third part of a series of posts dedicated to Viral Marketing. You can find the previous two post here:

From Mass Marketing to Viral Marketing and The Viral Marketing Mindset)

After having a clear idea of where Viral Marketing stands today my main concern was to try to answer the following questions:

What elements are needed to create a succesfull Viral Marketing Campaign ?
What do we need to take into account when trying to make Viral Marketing Hit?

Before getting into detail, let’s analyze a bit what are the characteristics that differentiate Viral Marketing from other forms of Marketing.

Like Word of Mouth Marketing (one type of Viral Marketing), Viral Marketing campaigns are:

1. Very difficult to control: The outcome is less certain and controllable than with regular mass media campaigns. For example, if you launch a Radio campaign, you control in which radio shows you want to put your ad on; you know the size of the audience of each show and you have historical data on average responses to radio advertising. More or less the only uncertainty is how good will the Ad itself be and how the audience will react to it, but the marketer is in control of all the other variables. In Viral Marketing you don’t control the size of the audience you want to reach, the channels where it’ll be transmitted nor the message itself.

2. Cheaper (…If successful). That’s a big “If”… but if you manage to get a Hit, your cost per reaching your potential market, compared to what it would have cost you to reach the same amount of people by traditional means will be much much lower.

3. The message will be distorted along the way: Since you relay on others to spread your message, there’s a high risk that the original message will mutate and be transformed along the way. This is the price you have to pay for not being the one directly transmitting the marketing message.

Now that we have a clear picture of Viral Marketing, let’s go straight to the point and answer What elements are needed to create a successful Viral Marketing campaign? What do we need to take into account when trying to make Viral Marketing Hit? …

In my opinion, if you’re considering to invest in a Viral Marketing campaign this is what you should take into account to increase your chances of success

Incentive system: Take your time to carefully design the incentive system of the campaign. This is where you have to invest more planning time. The simple question you have to answer Why on earth will someone pass my marketing message to someone else? And the answer should be 100% convincing. If the incentive it’s just fun, your message better be hilarious, otherwise people won’t pass it on considering the tons of messages a person receives a day. If your incentive is a sample, a lottery, discount or money, better be very clear on the procedures and as simple as possible.
Choose carefully your channel: Nowadays the most probable outcome is that if you want to viralize a marketing message, it’ll be done through multiple channels. People choose their own channels and they can choose Twitter, Blogs, Social Bookms, Social Networks, e-mailing, YouTube, etc. Nevertheless, you get to choose the original or preferred channel according to your marketing objectives. It’s not the same to base your campaign on an e-mail than on Twitter. Another important point is that your channel has to be closely linked with the incentive system you put in place. Example: If you have a Viral Campaign based on a YouTube video… How will you incentivize people for watching the video? How will you motivate people to share your video with their friends?
Opinion leaders: If the incentive system is what determines the total audience you might reach, Opinion Leaders determine the Speed at which your message will be spread. You can use Celebrities, influential blogger/twitterers, reputed journalist, or opinion leaders in your target segment to spread your message much faster than if you spread it only through regular people.
Monitor and take action along the way: We mentioned above that one of the key characteristics of Viral Marketing is very difficult to control. Most people interpret this as if you had no control at all over your campaign and can’t do nothing once your campaign is launched. That’s completely wrong. The risk of your campaign going the wrong way is high and that’s exactly the reason why you should monitor closely what’s going on. This will give you time to correct things before they get out of control, clarify points of your message that are confusing, respond directly to your market or… if it’s needed cutting off the campaign.

I’m sure there might be many more other important factors for a successful Viral Marketing campaing… I’d love to hear them. Comments are open !

The Viral Marketing Mindset

2010-02-23T18:47:00.006+01:00

(You can find the introduction to this article, in my
previous post From Mass Marketing to Viral Marketing)

Coming from more than 60 years of Mass Marketing, the mindset of a marketer has to make a big change from…

Designing ONE marketing message that, through mass media, will reach directly as many target customers as possible (and lot’s of non targets as well…), trying to convince them of buying or doing something. Most of the times, these messages were intrusive and not relevant; they got in the middle of a content you were interested and you were somehow “forced” to see it.

…to something completely different that is…

Design one marketing message addressed directly to few people. Create an incentive system for the message to be passed on to other people (it can be that the message it’s just very funny, very interesting content, it can be money, etc). Design a message that can mutate and be changed by the users in the process of recommendation. And finally the most difficult part of all: The message will have to be extremely relevant for its audience, otherwise people won’t see it and won’t recommend it.

The change in the mindset of a marketeer is the first step required to make the leap from mass marketing to viral marketing, but it's not the only thing needed. If we get into a campaign level, there are some tactical issues that need to be taken into account. All this analysis and the realization that the way marketing is done has changed for good, led me to the following questions:

What elements are needed to create a successful Viral Marketing campaign?
What do we need to take into account when trying to make Viral Marketing Hit?

I’ll discuss in part three of this series of posts dedicated to Viral Marketing: Viral Marketing Key Success Factors.

From Mass Marketing to Viral Marketing

2010-01-31T18:38:00.003+01:00

From Mass Marketing to Viral Marketing

The digital age has given us the tools to change the way we market products. But although the Internet and the huge growth of digital devices has been around now for 10-15 years, most marketers haven’t really began to understand its full potential. Why?...

50-100 years of mass marketing inertia is the answer.

Let’s take a closer look…

Viral marketing has been with us for more than 90 years. In the 20’s, although it later became illegal, the Ponzi Scheme was one of the first amazing examples of how successful a Viral Marketing campaign can get. With the arrival of mass media advertising (Radio in the 20’s – 30’s and TV in the 50’s – 60’s), viral marketing was left aside for a few decades but now in the digital era it has come again strongly. Internet and mobile devices speed up and facilitate enormously communications between people, creating a fertile ecosystem where the “Virus” of an intelligently designed marketing campaign can spread like never before. To get an idea of how fertile the terrain is for Viral Marketing campaigns, let’s take a look at some findings of an eMarketer Study on Viral Marketing:

89% of US adults share content by e-mail
25% share content daily
Only 5% of respondants would refuse to share content that contains a clear brand message

… And these data is from 2006 !! Before Twitter, Facebook and Social Media became popular !!

What this data is showing is that never before in the recent history of marketing, users were so eager to spread a marketing message, had so many tools available and at such low cost. This poses a great challenge to today’s marketers. We’re just starting to see the tip of the iceberg regarding Viral Marketing in the digital era. Even though online advertising has grown at consistently high rates (see how Online Advertising has overtaken TV advertising in UK) most of it is still mass marketing. Most marketers only shift budgets from TV or Radio to massive online advertising campaigns but don’t really take advantage of all the new features and possibilities this new media has. After many decades of marketers specialized in mass media channels (Newspapers, TV, Radio, etc), it’s gonna take some time, and probably require a generational change until we see Top Brands with regular viral campaigns, big budgets assigned to Viral Marketing and really specialized professionals in this field.

This is the first of a series of three posts dedicated to Viral Marketing. In the next post, we’ll take look at the Viral Marketing Mindset.

Google's statement: how Google ranks tweets

2010-01-22T01:04:00.001+01:00

Last month, Google started to display real-time results in addition to the regular top 10 pages on their search result pages. The real-time results are meant to offer web searchers access to brand new news items as fast as possible.

The main element of Google's real-time results are tweets. Tweets are the real-time messages that Twitter users post on Twitter.com. Google's Amit Singhal, who led the development of Google's real-time search, recently revealed how Google ranks tweets in the real-time results.

There's some kind of PageRank just for tweets

Google's PageRank algorithm looks at the link structure of a web page. The more websites link to a website and the more websites link to the linking websites the more relevant is the linked website.

Tweets are not about links but about followers. On Twitter.com, people "follow" the comments of other Twitter users. The more followers a Twitter user has, the more reputable are the tweets of that user. If Twitter users that have many followers follow another Twitter user then these users will have a larger impact on the reputation of that user.

"It is more than a popularity contest", said Google's Amit Singhal. "One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation.

As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."

There are additional filters and algorithms

The follower reputation rank is only one of Google's methods to rank tweets:

Hashtags

Twitter users often use "hashtags" in their comments. Hashtags are symbols that start with a # followed by a popular topic, for example #earthquake.

If such a hashtag is included in a tweet, the tweet will show up in the real-time results when other Twitter users click the hashtag's topic word elsewhere on the site.

Spam

While hashtags can be useful to maximize the exposure of a tweet, they are also often abused for spamming. The wrong hashtags can serve as a red flag that triggers Google's spam filters.

Amit Singhal didn't go into the details but he said that Google modeled the hashtagging behavior in ways that tend to reduce the exposure of low-quality tweets.

The signal in the noise

There can be thousands of tweets that contain a very popular word such as "Obama". To find the relevant tweets, Google looks for "signals in the noise". Such a signal can be an increasing number of tweets that mention other words near mentions of "Obama", for example "Cambridge police". The tweets with the signals will be chosen for the real-time results.

The problem with Google's real-time results is that they don't last. The time and efforts that you have to invest in getting listed in Google's real-time results is better spent on optimization for Google's regular results.

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My blog MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Google Caffeine: how will it affect the rankings of your web pages?

2009-12-09T20:38:00.001+01:00

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google's regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

What is going to change?

Of course, Google hasn't revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google's next index:

Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.

Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.

Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn't good for your rankings in Google's current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.

The over-all quality of your website: Google's new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It's not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.

You'll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google's new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google's new Caffeine index?

Although Google's Caffeine update hasn't been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google's new index:

Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.

Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders. You can test this with the search engine spider simulator in IBP (Select Tools > Search Engine Spider Simulator in IBP's main window).

Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google's current algorithm and that role might increase.

Check your links. You shouldn't link to websites that look like spammers. It's better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google's new index will be online.

Visit Axandra.com

My blog MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Does AdSense makes sense?

2009-11-13T21:59:00.004+01:00

This is the question for many of us working in online advertising.
No doubt AdSense is a great tool. It basically gives you money without doing practically no sales efforts. You just sit back and focus on your content or on traffic generation and AdSense will take care of your income.
That sound great for a good blog, a small magazine or a niche site, but of course... there's no free lunch. Some say the share Google gets from each dollar advertisers pay is as high as 50%. Other estimates put that between 20%-30%. In any case 20%-50% is big slice of the pie, specially if you have a lot of traffic and that's your revenue generation model.

What if your website has a million visitors per month?

What if you have 10 or 20 million banner impresions per week?

Then maybe AdSense is not that great anymore... or at least It's worth to re-think the way you use Google AdSense.

I'm the General Manager of a company called e-Holding. Our network of websites has around 3 million visits per month and I'm currently trying to answer the two questions posted above.
Of course we generate some money through AdSense but that's not what worries me. What worries me is how much money I'm leaving on the table (meaning giving it away to Google) by not selling that advertising space by my own salesforce.
I'm sure lots of other media companies have the same concerns. Although I still don't have a definitive answer, I think Advertisers in the same situation that I have could benefit from the following guidelines:

It's a gradual process: It's not about cutting 100% of Google AdSense and trying to sell all your Ad space through your salesforce. If you want to get more share of revenue, you can start by cutting AdSense from your premium Ad space and leaving it active on the less atracctive places.
Training of your salesforce: You can't cut AdSense if your salesforce does'nt have the capacity or skills to sell directly to clients. That takes time. In the meantime, you'll still generate marginal revenue by leaving AdSense, even on premium spots. As soon as your salesforce is ready, start by taking it out from your premium spots.
Block key Advertisers: If you approach some advertisers through your direct salesforce they'll usually respond: "Why will I buy from you directly if I can run Ads on your website through AdSense". The advertiser will probably pay more or less the same (maybe a little less through AdSense). The difference is that through a direct sale you as publisher get 100% of the revenues, while through AdSense you get between 20% and 50% less. AdSense has some tools for publishers that allow you to block specific advertisers. You can star here. This way you don't cut out completely your adsense income but at the same time give your salesforce mor chances to sell directly and generate higher revenues.

These are just some thoughts... I still don't have a definite answer about what to do with AdSense...Should I take it out completely? Why? Why not? What other criteria should I be taking into account?
Maybe you can help me a bit... comments are open

eBay vs Amazon: The buyer's perspesctive

2009-10-20T02:40:00.010+02:00

A while ago I wrote a couple of articles about Amazon vs. eBay focused on the seller’s perspective. Now, here’s my view on both marketplaces fron the other point of view: the end consumer; the buyer.

On a feature by feature analysis, this would be a very concise summary of the buying experience in both eBay and Amazon from my standpoint.

BUYERS Perspective	Amazon	eBay
Fees	WORSE Higher average fees translate to higher average prices	BETTER Lower average fees prices means lower prices for the end consumer
Format	FIXED Price Format	FIXED price + AUCTION
Average sale Price	HIGHER Amazon buyers tend to focus more on product condition than price.	LOWER eBay, by its nature, is competitive and draws buyers looking for the lowest possible prices.
Payment Methods	WORSE Only Credit / Debit cards or AMAZON payments	BETTER, MORE PAYMENT OPTIONS Besides credit and debit cards, eBay sellers can accept PayPal, money orders, cashier's checks or cash (in person)
Return Policy	BETTER “A-Z Guarantee” favors the Buyers	WORSE NO Buyer Guarantee, only a “Resolution Center” that works sometimes
Shipping	BETTER Buyer always knows the shipping cost (Amazon sets the shipping cost)	SLIGHTLY WORSE Variable shipping costs, dependant on sellers.
Web experience – Personalization tools	BETTER No doubt, Amazon is probably the best online store available	WORSE Doesn’t have as many personalization tools, cross selling, A/B testing methods, etc as Amazon. The buying experience is

Summing it up, Amazon is a better online experience for the buyer… but at higher average prices than eBay. Both are perfectly valid options for online shopping and just as in “brick and mortar” retail stores some prefer to buy at WalMart and some at Target, on Internet the different mix of service/price also gives consumers more options to choose from.
My personal favorite... Amazon. I don’t care if they’re cents more expensive on average. .. so far, no other online retailer has been able to create a better experience than Amazon.

Reciprocal links: Are they useful or not?

2009-09-23T18:09:00.002+02:00

Reciprocal links are discussed controversially among search engine marketers. Some think that reciprocal links are great, others think that they are a waste of time, another group thinks that reciprocal links work to some degree.

What do search engine marketers think about reciprocal links?

There are three main factions:

Group 1: reciprocal links have no effect at all on the position of a website in the search results on Google.

Group 2: reciprocal links work just like any other inbound links.

Group 3: there's a threshold value. For example, you shouldn't have more than 33% reciprocal inbound links.

Which group is right and should you use reciprocal links with your website or not?

Is there a threshold value for reciprocal links?

Webmasters in group 3 think that a high number of reciprocal links is a red flag for search engines. The idea behind this is that links should not be trusted if (for example) 100% of a site's inbound links are reciprocal.

However, this is not really a good indicator. If high quality websites do link to each other, they won't harm their rankings in any way.

For some sites, it is normal to have a high reciprocity percentage

Link building expert Eric Ward recently did a test. He found out that there are websites for which it is perfectly normal that they have almost 100% reciprocal links.

The more specific the topic of a website is, the more likely it is that it will have a high reciprocity percentage. As an example, Eric Ward used the website of "The Southeastern Bat Diversity Network", an organization with a goal to "conserve bats and their habitats in southeastern North America through collaborative research, education, and management."

The top sites in that subject are all linked back and forth to all other websites that write about bats. This is not surprising and it shows that a high number of reciprocal links can also be a sign of high quality. It depends on the topic of the website.

If the websites were about different topics, then the reciprocal links would look suspicious.

Should you use reciprocal links for your website or not?

You don't have to worry if a link is a reciprocal link or not. That does not matter. Reciprocal links are neither good nor bad. They are just links and it always depends on the individual link whether it is a good link or a bad link.

If a link comes from a website that is related to your website then it is a good link. If the other website is related to yours then you can link back and this won't cause any problems. As long as you make sure that the links make sense to your website visitors then everything is okay.

You can use IBP's link building tool to get links to your website. IBP can help you with one-way links, reciprocal links, links from blogs, links from related websites, links from Internet directories and much more. It is a spam-free link building tool that helps you to get high quality links.

MBA Internet Marketing Manager

5 Steps website layout design tutorial

2009-09-07T22:15:00.005+02:00

“You can find part one of this article in the following link “Website Architecture Tutorial: 5 steps to design a website””

3. Define “How”

Now It´s time to propose how’d you like all the “Whats” defined in step 2 to function.
For this step is very important to let go your imagination and creativity. Don’t think of costs, development time or anything else that could restrain your creative power. Just brainstorm with your peers and come up with as many creative ideas as you can.
The only restriction here is that you can only brainstorm about the things you defined in step 2, otherwise you’d end up losing focus.

4. Prioritize

This is the part of the process where you have to decide what are actually going to implement, what are you going to leave for version 2.0 and what are you going to discard.
You have to revise one by one all the suggestions made in step three and evaluate each one of them.
At this point is very important to have some thecnical staff in the decision making process, because the most important criteria to go ahead or discard a suggestion is a basic “Cost/Benefit” Analysis. You might have a clear idea about the benefits but to have an accurate estimation about development time, software/hardware costs, maintenance, etc, you need the technical staff advice.
In this step and the one before, it’s very important to separate the creative process from the analytic one. Starting to analyze your options too early, restrains creativity and you could end up with less alternatives or alternatives with lower quality if you do both processes at the same time.
Always be focused and doublecheck if what you are actually approving, is directly related to solve the problems defined in step 1.

5. Design

Finally… after all these steps, you design.
The objective here is to translate everything you’ve stated and prioritized so far into a graphic interface. It will not be very difficult because you already know What you need to include (and what not) and have an idea of How you want it to function.
Everything you’ve put into your design comes from a specific objective and solves a specific problem. There will be no “useless” features here, no ”wasted” screen space and no time invested in programming code that will not be used
Iteration. Check if your first layout is what you really need and you haven’t leave anything important out of it. If that’s the case, repeat steps 2 - 4 one or two more times until you’re comfortable with the end result.
After you have your basic layout (in a piece of paper or basic HTML), maybe the two or three most important screenshots, you call your programmers and design team and start developing your website/application

Website architecture tutorial: 5 steps do design a website

2009-08-19T17:39:00.004+02:00

What usually happens when someone starts to design a website is that you gather together some people from different areas (programmers, designers, salespeople, marketing, etc) and create a team in charge to come up with a website (an Intranet, a CRM or any other web based application). The meeting begins and everybody starts saying things they’d love the website to do:

SALES: “It’d be cool if the website sent an automated e-mail every time I need to visit a new customer”

FINANCE: ”It’d be great if I could have real time financial statements”

etc, etc.

With processes like that, companies usually end up losing focus on what’s really important for them. One single feature might end up consuming more programming resources than all the rest together, and if at the end it wasn’t so important… you just invested your limited resources inefficiently. Another possible outcome of website architecture like the one described above is that you might end up with a very complex and expensive application of which you just use 30-40% of its features…Well, You get the picture no? This way of coming up with a website is clearly inefficient.

The 5 step process proposed here is a simple, but organized procedure to be focused through the whole process and end up with a website or web application that addresses your needs. In some way or another we all do part of what’s described here, the only and most important thing to remember is just to be disciplined enough to stick to the process, step by step. You’ll feel the temptation to propose solutions or features from the beginning jump or skip one step, but if you don’t do it and stick to the whole tutorial, you’ll end up with a solution that answers you needs without overspending resources.

1. List the PROBLEMS that you want to solve and which GOALS you want to achieve with your website

Usually everybody jumps straight to layout decisions, functionalities without having clearly defined what are your goals, what problems are you trying to solve with your website. Having clearly defined problems and visible and measureable objectives is the key to stay focused through the whole design process. It’s very important that in this stage you:

Don’t propose solutions. Focus completely on defining the problems.

If you think of a cool feature or functionality, write it down in a piece of paper and set it aside until later in the process. This is not the time to think of solutions

Examples of PROBLEMS

I don’t know who my customers are

(for an Intranet) I can’t get company information in real time

Examples of OBJECTIVES

Decrease 10% in average marketing costs per sold item through online selling (vs traditional channels like retail and catalogue sales)

I want to increase awareness of my company in my potential market

Increase the satisfaction level of my Top 10% customers through better customer service

2. Define “WHAT” you need to do

Here the objective is to define in a bit more detail What does your website need to do in order to solve the problems listed in step 1. What is important here is Not to focus on HOW are you gonna do it, but to focus on detailing WHAT needs to be done.

Example

Step 1, Objective: Increase the daily average number of visits of my salesforce

Step 2, “What”: We need to create a web based calendar in our sales Intranet.

How you’ll do the calendar, which functionalities will it have and how the layout and colors will be DO NOT belong here at this point of the process. Remember: Just list what needs to be done, not how.

It’s also important NOT to list things to do that are not directly related to solve the problems (or the objectives) you defined in Step 1. This is how you identify and filter which functionalities you really need to do… and which others just “sound cool” or “would be nice to have” but aren’t really solving your central problems. After you finish the list, check one by one and think if what you’re proposing is really contributing to solve the problems/objectives mentioned in Step 1. If it’s not, erase it from the list.

The rest of the article will continue in my next post “Website architecture tutorial: 5 steps do design a website – Part 2”

PageRank sculpting and Google ranks: does it still help you to get higher rankings?

2009-07-22T16:59:00.003+02:00

Google has changed the way it processes the nofollow attribute. These changes have an impact on how you can use the nofollow attribute for PageRank sculpting on your website.

What is PageRank sculpting?

PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page of the same website. For example, when Google finds a website with three links then the link power is evenly passed to all three links:

Some webmasters thought that if a web page has a high PageRank of 8 then it shouldn't pass that PageRank power to "Terms of Service" or "Privacy Policy" pages.

For that reason, some webmasters started to use the rel=nofollow attribute for these links: Example

Links that are marked with the nofollow attribute shouldn't be followed by Google. That meant that the other links on the web page benefited more from the high PageRank of the page. It worked like that:

In this example, link 1 passes no link power while link 2 and 3 each pass half of the available link power to the target page. The result is that the linked pages have a higher chance of getting listed in the search results.

What has changed?

Google's Matt Cutts recently made a statement about the way Google now treats nofollow links:

Link 1 still doesn't pass any link power but the link power of that link is simply discarded.

What does this mean for your website?

The change means that PageRank sculpting with the nofollow attribute does not work anymore and that it now makes sense to remove any nofollow links that go to your own website. You're just wasting link power by using the attribute for links to your own pages.

Do not waste your time by trying to manipulate the links on your web pages. Better concentrate on a good user experience with good web page content and an easy to understand website navigation. Websites with a good user experience usually get more links from other websites.

TOP 7 Advice for first time Start-Up Managers. Tips for Online Start-Up Managers

2009-06-09T00:46:00.004+02:00

On my way to my third Internet Start-Up here are some of the things I’ve learned so far as an online entrepreneur. I hope they can be useful for your ventures…

1. Invest your time wisely: Do not invest your time in tasks that are NOT DIRECTLY RELATED TO GENERATE SALES or improve your bottom line results. Until you reach break even, nothing else matters. “Strategic” or “Long term Goals” are fine for mature companies in mature markets. Start-Ups must focus almost exclusively in reaching break even and reaffirming their survival. After that you can count to 10… take a deep breath… and start focusing on mid/long term strategy, corporate culture, board room structuring, your ERP, etc. But not before. You’ll be a dead company if you start focusing your energies in things other than financial independence.

2. Bet on People: I know this is the most used cliché in Business Jargon. Everybody says all the time that “people is the most important resource”. Believe me, In a Start-Up this is 10,000 times more important. ONLY if you manage to get the very best people at least for your key positions, you’ll be able to make it. Even if you do hire the best of the best, you still have a very high chance of failure… the thing is that if you don’t, your chance of failure becomes 100%. Don’t believe the old saying that Star-Ups must pay lower than average wages. Do what it takes to attract the people you need. If it’s a higher wage, a higher stock option or a higher variable pay, don’t hesitate, go for it. These people are the only reason that will make your company successful at the end, not the fact that you saved 10% or 15% on salaries.

3. Don’t be afraid to dilute: Percentages mean nothing, what matters is that your stake grows in dollar terms with every new investor. If you had 60% of a $100,000 company and you went to a 10% stake on a $1’000,000 company you did just great: you went from $60,000 worth of stock to $100,000 worth of stock. You made money. Dilution is necessary, otherwise is impossible to bring new people or investors on board. Helps a lot to plan from the beginning how much of your stock you’ll give away and at which price, but usually you’ll need to give up more. Don’t be afraid. Remember that “%’s” don’t buy things… “dollars” do.

4. Make all costs variable: Avoid fix costs as if they were the devil. When you start a new business, especially if it’s a little bit of a breakthrough and you don’t have solid benchmarks to compare with, you don’t know what will work and what won’t. You need to keep everything variable so you can get out of it if it doesn’t work. You try, and after a while when you know by experience (not by what says on the Business Plan) what works and what doesn’t, you can decide on investing on a longer term and make a variable cost fixed. Never at the beginning.

5. Raise serious money AFTER you have a prototype/dummy version: Ideas are worth nothing, companies do. How much would you pay me if I told you I have an Idea for the next Search Engine Application that will change the world? Nothing. How much would you pay me if I had that application already programmed and could show you how it works? A bit more Don’t you think?… You might have brilliant ideas, but is important that you know that Ideas can’t be patented, registered or sold. As hard as it may sound for you, it’s important that in real life, Ideas by themselves are worth nothing until they become something tangible, something you can show, in other words, until they are implemented. Investors know that and either they invest in your idea asking you a much higher premium if you don’t have a prototype or demo version… or they just don’t invest at all. Try to make a demo version with your own resources (use the 3 F’s to raise your initial funds: Friends, Fools and Family) and then go out to raise the serious money.

6. Be ready to flexible: It doesn’t matter how well you make your business plan, how expert the people on board you have, if you’re making an innovative business model YOUR BUSINESS WILL NEVER GO AS PLANNED. Don’t be afraid. Some things will go better than expected and usually more things will go worse than planned, but you have to be flexible enough to adjust quickly. Flexibility is your only advantage against more established companies, with more stable clients and more resources.

7. Be humble: This one goes especially for those High flying executives from technology firms that have been fired or want to leave the corporate world and start their own business. Here’s some important news: Most of your acquired knowledge and competences ARE NOT TRANSFERRABLE to the start-up environment. You might have been employee of the year ten times in a row, or had a meteoric corporate career, but most of what you needed to advance in your corporate world career, will be useless when setting up a Start-Up. Don’t think that because of your successful prior experience you’re qualified to set up a business… you’ll be wrong. It’s better to be humble and assume that this role requires you to learn a new set of skills, usually skills that you don’t have.

If you found this article useful, maybe you could find the following article interesting as well:

MBA's in the Internet Industry

Anchor text strategy: how does it work?

2009-05-29T02:45:00.001+02:00

One more important part of your linkbuilding strategy, closely related to your Keyword Strategy, is the Anchor Text of your inbound links. This is where your Keyword Strategy meets your Linkbuilding strategy. When talking about Keyword Strategy you have to choose with which keywords you want to position your website by taking into account basically three main criteria: Keyword search volume, keyword relevance and competition for the keyword. That’s the first step in any SEO strategy, once that’s decided, you can boost your search engine rankings for those selected keywords by using those same keywords as anchor text in the inbound links you get to your site. Why is that? Why does it work this way? When you enter a keyword string on Google’s search box, one of the things Google does is to look on its index how many links it has with that same keyword string and where do they point to. If lots of links with an anchor text similar or equal to what you entered in the search box point to the same URL, that page will show up on top results.

Let me explain again with a simple example. There are two websites that do exactly the same, both sell Cotton T-Shirts. Both are perfectly well optimized in Search Engine terms. Both have the same tags, age and number of inbound links. There are only two differences between both websites: their URL and the anchor text of their inbound links. One is called www.cottont-shirts.com and the other one is called www.555.com . Other things being equal when someone enters the keyword “Cotton T-shirts” in Google’s Search box, the website www.cottont-shirts.com would have to appear first, because as we explained before, it helps a lot that the keywords entered into the search box are contained in your URL. But is there a possibility that 555 could come up higher in the rankings? Could it beat cotton-shirts.com ? The answer is yes, if one is managing correctly the anchor text of its inbound links and the other not. Let’s imagine both sites have 20 inbound links, but their anchor texts are different.

The newbies and not so smart guys at www.cottont-shirts.com had the following text in all of it inbound links:

- “For the best deals in Cotton T-Shirts click here to visit our store”

o The link points to the URL www.cottont-shirts.com, but the anchor text is “Click here to visit our store”

On the other hand, the SEO savvy guys at 555.com had the following text for its inbound links:

- “You’ll find the best Cotton T-Shirts at 555. To visit our store click on the following link: Cotton T-Shirts ”

o The link points to the URL http://www.555.com , but the anchor text is “Cotton T-Shirts”

What will be the end result of this hypothetical example? When you type the words “Cotton T-Shirts” into Google’s search box Google will check its index and Think: “I have 20 different links with the Keywords Aluminum Furniture that point to the website www.555.com and none pointing to www.cottont-shirts.com . Therefore for these specific combination of words the website 555.com is more relevant (and will appear higher in the ranks), even though cottont-shirts.com contains the searched keywords on its URL.

This is where your Keyword Strategy meets your Linkbuilding strategy. You use the keywords you selected at the beginning, to be your anchor text in your inbound links and this is how you’ll improve dramatically you rankings on Search Engines. The more inbound links (with higher PR better) with a given anchor text that matches your selected keywords the better results you’ll have.