This article was originally published on 27 October, 2011
A single highly-linkable article can attract tens – sometimes hundreds – of links from relevant and valuable sites. By making that article sell, you’ll potentially drive a similar number of leads that come pre-qualified and ready to talk business. How then do you merge the practice of creating linkable content and the strategies of content marketing to maximise the value of your publishing efforts?
The core task of appealing to your market with content is to understand its needs. Thinking about your market needs in terms of content, and not goods or services can sometimes prove difficult. In short, your content needs to:
• Help meet an aspect of your market’s needs through information or guidance;
• Always remain factual and helpful and engage with your potential audience;
• Target key stages of the buying cycle.
Relevant links from targeted sites
Addressing your market’s needs with informative content increases the likelihood that it will be “linkworthy”. Just because a piece is informative doesn’t mean it will be highly-linkable. It’s important that your content appeals to the most important and influential people in your market. This means you need to determine who these individuals are, and identify what gets them linking.
Content that creates leads
Creating linkable content that meets your market’s needs is a good start, but you must be sure to sell your company. This statement shouldn’t be taken as encouragement to pitch your products and services, but rather to write on topics that illustrate your professional competence, knowledge, or expertise along with the core values of your organisation. You may find that in the process of communicating the values that make your organisation unique you end up with content that’s more linkable and more likely to generate leads.
Link baiting
This is the sphere in which “link bait” (any content or feature within a website, designed to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website) often misses the mark. Especially when targeting the multitude of mass market distribution networks for attention acquisition. Building links with content that isn’t relevant to your target market can lead to brand confusion and ineffective visits. Though you’re unlikely to pick up links quickly, by creating and distributing content that appeals to your target market, you ensure an experience that resonates with your company’s brand, values and capacity for meeting your market’s needs.
The words you put on a web page have no life of their own until they get read. And those same words will not gain prominence in search engines until the words are linked to by relevant, authoritative sources. Creating compelling content is a long-term strategy that will add value to your overall goal of converting site visits into revenue.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Fans on social media networks more likely to purchase
This article was originally published on 10 November, 2011
In our e-newsletter last week, we featured an article about how Twitter and Facebook users who follow companies are more likely to buy from those brands, and in turn more likely to recommend them to their friends.
Although it didn’t come as a shock to us that a user is more likely to make a purchase from the brands they follow, the high level of brand loyalty was surprising. The study into the habits of Twitter users found that over half of men (55 per cent) and 45 per cent of women were more likely to purchase from a company they followed. Followers on Twitter are more likely to recommend a few (42 per cent) or many (18 per cent) of the brands they follow to their friends.
The reasons why Twitter users choose to follow a brand included the fact that they were already a customer (64 per cent), to receive brand information first (61 per cent), for discounts or promotions (48 per cent) or to receive exclusive content (36 per cent). The study also found that Twitter followers tended to be younger, with 26 per cent of users under the age of 35 following brands, compared with 17 per cent of those aged 35-49 and 13 per cent of those aged 50+.
These findings were mirrored in separate research into the Facebook habits of some 1,500 consumers. The research found that respondents were more likely to recommend companies to their friends after becoming fans themselves, and that they were more likely to purchase products or services from brands after becoming fans.
With the introduction of Google+ for brands this week, which is Google’s attempt to take on the dominance of Twitter and Facebook, there’s now another major player on the social network scene offering companies a new way to connect with fans of what they do – and potentially – turn those fans into loyal customers.
Social commerce is growing rapidly – nearly half of Twitter followers and a little under a third of Facebook users have been active for less than one year. Our own research indicates that users generally are getting more active with brands on social networks, with one third interacting with companies more this year than last.
What this tells us is that web users generally don’t mind being marketed to, providing that they have agreed to the nature of contact, and perhaps most importantly with any aspect of social commerce, the content is relevant to them.
In our e-newsletter last week, we featured an article about how Twitter and Facebook users who follow companies are more likely to buy from those brands, and in turn more likely to recommend them to their friends.
Although it didn’t come as a shock to us that a user is more likely to make a purchase from the brands they follow, the high level of brand loyalty was surprising. The study into the habits of Twitter users found that over half of men (55 per cent) and 45 per cent of women were more likely to purchase from a company they followed. Followers on Twitter are more likely to recommend a few (42 per cent) or many (18 per cent) of the brands they follow to their friends.
The reasons why Twitter users choose to follow a brand included the fact that they were already a customer (64 per cent), to receive brand information first (61 per cent), for discounts or promotions (48 per cent) or to receive exclusive content (36 per cent). The study also found that Twitter followers tended to be younger, with 26 per cent of users under the age of 35 following brands, compared with 17 per cent of those aged 35-49 and 13 per cent of those aged 50+.
These findings were mirrored in separate research into the Facebook habits of some 1,500 consumers. The research found that respondents were more likely to recommend companies to their friends after becoming fans themselves, and that they were more likely to purchase products or services from brands after becoming fans.
With the introduction of Google+ for brands this week, which is Google’s attempt to take on the dominance of Twitter and Facebook, there’s now another major player on the social network scene offering companies a new way to connect with fans of what they do – and potentially – turn those fans into loyal customers.
Social commerce is growing rapidly – nearly half of Twitter followers and a little under a third of Facebook users have been active for less than one year. Our own research indicates that users generally are getting more active with brands on social networks, with one third interacting with companies more this year than last.
What this tells us is that web users generally don’t mind being marketed to, providing that they have agreed to the nature of contact, and perhaps most importantly with any aspect of social commerce, the content is relevant to them.
Monday, 16 January 2012
Lots of traffic, little revenue? Five tips to turn visitors into buyers
This article was originally posted on 3 November, 2011
If you’re running an e-commerce website then chances are for your business, visitors are your potential customers. Undoubtedly, driving a lot of traffic to your site is a great thing. So, how do you better convert your current, thriving web audience into qualified sales leads or actual buyers? Five ways you can monetise your website more effectively include:
1. Make your special deals stand out
When you first set up your business, you probably attracted traffic by offering quality content. That’s a great start, but if you’re aiming to make sales, you need to get these people to take an action. One way of achieving this goal is to signpost visitors to your special deals and promotions by giving them added prominence on your home page or landing pages.
2. Limited offers create a sense of urgency
Reward your most frequent visitors by offering a special deal. By making these offers time, or quantity-restricted, you’re more likely to appeal to your frequent, rather than occasional visitor. Offering a series of exclusive deals is likely to get visitors excited about what’s coming next, and you can track the performance of these deals to help you run future promotions.
3. You don’t get anything unless you ask
You may find that your most loyal visitor simply likes what you’re doing, or appreciates the expertise you offer. Since they already like what you do, you could test asking your loyal followers for referrals. Consider giving a free gift to those who refer your business via social media or an affiliate programme to incentivise referrals. In the end, this technique will likely be worth the additional cost.
4. Offer premium content for paying subscribers
If you have a lot of subscribers, they clearly like something you’re doing. Offer premium content or a premium newsletter that only paying subscribers can get. Do not ask current subscribers to start paying for something you used to give away for free, but simply create something new that comes at a price.
5. ABT (that’s Always Be Testing!)
The biggest mistake you can make as a business is not taking the time to analyse how the visitor journey through your website can be improved. Be sure to check that once your visitors get to your e-commerce website they know where to go to make a purchase or sign up for a service. Test and refine these processes (particularly basket and checkout) until you find layouts which produce greater leads or revenue.
PureNet is an award-winning provider of e-commerce solutions, digital marketing and application development. Customers choose PureNet for its ability to design, build, manage, market and integrate business-led solutions that add significant competitive value to their day-to-day activities. You can follow PureNet on Twitter @PureNet, or find out more by visiting www.purenet.co.uk.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Boosting turnover by following up on abandoned baskets
This article was originally published on 1 September, 2011
Research shows a small percentage – just 7% – of UK ecommerce retailers are using abandoned basket emails – one of the most basic forms of behavioural email marketing. Yet this is proven to be one of the most effective ways to boost return on investment and generate incremental revenue.
Many marketers have indicated they will be exploring behavioural targeting in the coming 12 months, so the next question is how do they start using abandoned basket email effectively? It is a shift from traditional segmentation and needs to form part of the overall strategy, so marketing communications appear seamless and relevant to recipients.
A word of caution however; there is a fine line between what is viewed by your potential customer as “following up” and what is “intrusion”. The usual way to do this would be to capture the user’s details at registration and then detect the user via a cookie when they return to the site at a later date and retrieve their details from the database. If they abandon their basket, you can then contact them via email. Where it becomes intrusive is if you capture their email early in the process by getting them to opt-in and then target them via email, regardless of whether they placed an item in their basket and then abandoned it.
Tagging your site
To effectively collect behavioural data you need to tag your site correctly from the outset. Whether that’s via your email provider, or a third party, collected data is then combined with other data to drive behavioural emails. Getting this right is key to accurate data: you need to gather the right information about the visitor and what they are doing online and collect it correctly.
Also consider your objectives – ask yourself what data do I need to collect? If it’s just basic details, such as basket abandonment, you only need to tag the checkout pages. However if it’s more complex – looking at gathering browsing and customer information, you must tag more intelligently and consider segmenting data using customer profiles. For example, if some customers are browsing high value/high margin items, concentrate on following them up, rather than using the same amount of effort trying to convert those browsing low priced items.
Rules
Every organisation should have their own set of rules on communicating with customers. Agree the rules very carefully in advance – and make sure you stick to them. The segments should be agreed across the business well before the data starts coming through. Remember that it’s part of an overall strategy and applying intelligence to each part of the process can work wonders. If the system is sending behavioural emails to recipients based on basket or browsing information, you may not want to send them the standard weekly offers/newsletters at the same time. Don’t annoy customers – getting emails from you saying different things minutes apart does not reflect well on your organisation.
Offline and systems integration
Consider if you need to factor offline completions, as the online channel rarely sits in isolation. If customers phone your call centre to place orders, are you able to combine all the potential purchase channels into one? While it may be time consuming and not straightforward to set up, combining them into a single customer view is key. It’s also useful to know if you’re engaged with the customer in one medium and not another, plus it helps with channel preferences.
Tone
The tone of your message (sales as opposed to service) can make the difference between it being read and it being marked as spam – or perhaps worse – ignored altogether. Every communication should reflect your brand values and what you are about as a business. However if you are operating in a heavily price-orientated market, then the emails need to be selling hard; if it’s a more consultative/service-led, or high value proposition, they need a different tone. If emails are supporting your sales effort or focusing on service, rather than a direct sales channel in itself, it needs a softer approach. Don’t be seen badger your prospective customer into purchasing.
Creative
Creative is often the biggest hurdle to producing campaigns quickly, so it should be considered as early as possible in the planning cycle. When it comes to creative following up on basket abandonment, less is more. The text needs to be short and concise, and ideally in a postcard format, with a very clear message and strong call to action. Messages in other campaigns on the other hand, such as welcome emails, you will typically be using lots of creative, with messaging focusing on thanking them for signing up, and explaining what to expect from your organisation.
Getting the data correct
The key to achieving good results from behavioural email lies in the data; how you collect it, how you hold it and how you manage it. Without getting the basics right, your organisation will likely fail when it comes to behavioural techniques.
Behavioural targeting can only work effectively if the data is in one place and not moving between multiple databases. To expand beyond the basics, you’ll need a single database that is scalable and holds not just some basic site information, but a full view of online analytics – from the customer’s first click through to their repeat patterns on the site. To interpret the data, it’s critical for companies to spend time really understanding their customers’ habits.
Benchmarking
Benchmark the competition and see what they are doing. Learn from them, they may have already gone through the learning curve so you can catch up quicker. Ensure you don’t miss anything they are doing well, but then also identify the gaps and take the initiative. Along the way, look to learn what customers expect in terms of presentation, processes, products and services, in order to slot in with their patterns of behaviour.
Summary
Basket abandonment email consistently provides marketers with their most effective campaigns, giving the highest open and click rates and generating the greatest revenue. With around 85% of customers routinely abandoning retailers’ baskets, following up on just a small proportion of these means you could be seeing the results from otherwise lost sales in a very short space of time.
Research shows a small percentage – just 7% – of UK ecommerce retailers are using abandoned basket emails – one of the most basic forms of behavioural email marketing. Yet this is proven to be one of the most effective ways to boost return on investment and generate incremental revenue.
Many marketers have indicated they will be exploring behavioural targeting in the coming 12 months, so the next question is how do they start using abandoned basket email effectively? It is a shift from traditional segmentation and needs to form part of the overall strategy, so marketing communications appear seamless and relevant to recipients.
A word of caution however; there is a fine line between what is viewed by your potential customer as “following up” and what is “intrusion”. The usual way to do this would be to capture the user’s details at registration and then detect the user via a cookie when they return to the site at a later date and retrieve their details from the database. If they abandon their basket, you can then contact them via email. Where it becomes intrusive is if you capture their email early in the process by getting them to opt-in and then target them via email, regardless of whether they placed an item in their basket and then abandoned it.
Tagging your site
To effectively collect behavioural data you need to tag your site correctly from the outset. Whether that’s via your email provider, or a third party, collected data is then combined with other data to drive behavioural emails. Getting this right is key to accurate data: you need to gather the right information about the visitor and what they are doing online and collect it correctly.
Also consider your objectives – ask yourself what data do I need to collect? If it’s just basic details, such as basket abandonment, you only need to tag the checkout pages. However if it’s more complex – looking at gathering browsing and customer information, you must tag more intelligently and consider segmenting data using customer profiles. For example, if some customers are browsing high value/high margin items, concentrate on following them up, rather than using the same amount of effort trying to convert those browsing low priced items.
Rules
Every organisation should have their own set of rules on communicating with customers. Agree the rules very carefully in advance – and make sure you stick to them. The segments should be agreed across the business well before the data starts coming through. Remember that it’s part of an overall strategy and applying intelligence to each part of the process can work wonders. If the system is sending behavioural emails to recipients based on basket or browsing information, you may not want to send them the standard weekly offers/newsletters at the same time. Don’t annoy customers – getting emails from you saying different things minutes apart does not reflect well on your organisation.
Offline and systems integration
Consider if you need to factor offline completions, as the online channel rarely sits in isolation. If customers phone your call centre to place orders, are you able to combine all the potential purchase channels into one? While it may be time consuming and not straightforward to set up, combining them into a single customer view is key. It’s also useful to know if you’re engaged with the customer in one medium and not another, plus it helps with channel preferences.
Tone
The tone of your message (sales as opposed to service) can make the difference between it being read and it being marked as spam – or perhaps worse – ignored altogether. Every communication should reflect your brand values and what you are about as a business. However if you are operating in a heavily price-orientated market, then the emails need to be selling hard; if it’s a more consultative/service-led, or high value proposition, they need a different tone. If emails are supporting your sales effort or focusing on service, rather than a direct sales channel in itself, it needs a softer approach. Don’t be seen badger your prospective customer into purchasing.
Creative
Creative is often the biggest hurdle to producing campaigns quickly, so it should be considered as early as possible in the planning cycle. When it comes to creative following up on basket abandonment, less is more. The text needs to be short and concise, and ideally in a postcard format, with a very clear message and strong call to action. Messages in other campaigns on the other hand, such as welcome emails, you will typically be using lots of creative, with messaging focusing on thanking them for signing up, and explaining what to expect from your organisation.
Getting the data correct
The key to achieving good results from behavioural email lies in the data; how you collect it, how you hold it and how you manage it. Without getting the basics right, your organisation will likely fail when it comes to behavioural techniques.
Behavioural targeting can only work effectively if the data is in one place and not moving between multiple databases. To expand beyond the basics, you’ll need a single database that is scalable and holds not just some basic site information, but a full view of online analytics – from the customer’s first click through to their repeat patterns on the site. To interpret the data, it’s critical for companies to spend time really understanding their customers’ habits.
Benchmarking
Benchmark the competition and see what they are doing. Learn from them, they may have already gone through the learning curve so you can catch up quicker. Ensure you don’t miss anything they are doing well, but then also identify the gaps and take the initiative. Along the way, look to learn what customers expect in terms of presentation, processes, products and services, in order to slot in with their patterns of behaviour.
Summary
Basket abandonment email consistently provides marketers with their most effective campaigns, giving the highest open and click rates and generating the greatest revenue. With around 85% of customers routinely abandoning retailers’ baskets, following up on just a small proportion of these means you could be seeing the results from otherwise lost sales in a very short space of time.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Boxing Day was ‘UK’s biggest ever online shopping day’
We read this week that Boxing Day sales helped create the UK’s biggest ever day for internet retailing, according to figures from Experian.
Experian Hitwise’s analysis found that consumers made more than 96 million visits to online retailers in the UK, spending around 13m hours online collectively. That figure represents a 20 per cent increase on the same day last year, when around 80 million visits took place.
Interestingly, there were almost double the number of visits to multichannel retailers’ websites than to those who trade exclusively online. The figures did suggest however that the gap between the two types of retailer is reducing.
Traditionally, Boxing Day is the biggest retail day of the year, but this year’s figures indicate it was even more impressive with over 15 million more visits to retail websites than the same day last year.
Experian Hitwise’s analysis found that consumers made more than 96 million visits to online retailers in the UK, spending around 13m hours online collectively. That figure represents a 20 per cent increase on the same day last year, when around 80 million visits took place.
Interestingly, there were almost double the number of visits to multichannel retailers’ websites than to those who trade exclusively online. The figures did suggest however that the gap between the two types of retailer is reducing.
Traditionally, Boxing Day is the biggest retail day of the year, but this year’s figures indicate it was even more impressive with over 15 million more visits to retail websites than the same day last year.
Are spelling mistakes costing your business online sales?
This article was originally published on 8 September, 2011
It’s been reported that poor spelling and grammar could be costing the UK’s internet businesses millions of pounds in lost revenue. Sales figures suggest poor grammar – misspellings in particular – put off consumers, who as a result often end up questioning the credibility of an e-commerce website.
The concerns were raised by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and a leading entrepreneur, who suggested that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.
In an industry where selling and commercial messages take place the majority of the time via written content, these concerns highlight a worrying trend when considering that e-commerce sales in June 2011, were an estimated £560m.
When consumers already have concerns about online fraud and safety, getting the basics right is essential. Online businesses get about six seconds to capture the attention of the visitor. If the lingering impression they get within those six seconds is one of poor spelling, they’re more likely to bounce straight off to a competitor’s site.
William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, says that in some more “social” parts of the internet, such as Facebook, there is greater tolerance towards spelling and grammar errors.
“However, there are other aspects, such as a home page or commercial offering that are not among friends and which raise concerns over trust and credibility,” said Professor Dutton.
“In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue.”
Food for thought for every online retailer, we reckon.
It’s been reported that poor spelling and grammar could be costing the UK’s internet businesses millions of pounds in lost revenue. Sales figures suggest poor grammar – misspellings in particular – put off consumers, who as a result often end up questioning the credibility of an e-commerce website.
The concerns were raised by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and a leading entrepreneur, who suggested that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.
In an industry where selling and commercial messages take place the majority of the time via written content, these concerns highlight a worrying trend when considering that e-commerce sales in June 2011, were an estimated £560m.
When consumers already have concerns about online fraud and safety, getting the basics right is essential. Online businesses get about six seconds to capture the attention of the visitor. If the lingering impression they get within those six seconds is one of poor spelling, they’re more likely to bounce straight off to a competitor’s site.
William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, says that in some more “social” parts of the internet, such as Facebook, there is greater tolerance towards spelling and grammar errors.
“However, there are other aspects, such as a home page or commercial offering that are not among friends and which raise concerns over trust and credibility,” said Professor Dutton.
“In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue.”
Food for thought for every online retailer, we reckon.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
PureNet now on Blogger!
PureNet is bigger and Blogger than ever!
As well as bringing you an archive of all our best blog posts from the past year, we’ll be bringing you a new post every week. You lucky people!
PureNet is an award-winning provider of enterprise e-commerce solutions, digital marketing services and tailored web and mobile solutions. PureNet designs, builds, manages, markets and integrates business-led B2B and B2C solutions that add significant competitive value. We differentiate ourselves by offering a tailored service that helps grow profitable online and multi-channel businesses by focusing on a combination of e-commerce best practices, proven software technology, comprehensive digital marketing and a commitment to customer service.
Don't forget you can find PureNet on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or if you prefer, visit our website.
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