Be warned that this post is specifically targeted at ecommerce business that may already have Facebook fan pages, however the approach is very much useful to any other businesses with online presence that may want to consider targeting multiple territories without necessarily over complicating their existing site. With that said and with no further ado, I shall explain the concept in hand.

So we have established that you may be a successful retailer with growing sales and you have noticed an increasing number of sales and enquiries from overseas. Perhaps you have distributors or resellers in these territories, in that instance you have already considered expansion and spoken to your web development company. If you got that far I would have expected you to get a quote which might have made you fall off your chair. At this point you have probably decided not to proceed and, had you not, you would still need to consider other costs such as SEO, hosting, translation of your content and possibly PPC to get it off the ground.

With all that in mind why dive directly into a multilingual site?  Why not test the water and evaluate what the audience response to your product, service and brand on the designated territory might be?

So why not use a platform with existing global capabilities like Facebook? If you don’t already have presence this may be a daunting task, however Facebook can be a good entry point into the multilingual arena. A great example is Clarin’s Facebook page there you can see on the bottom left hand corner they have links to other Facebook pages specific to territories. On each regional page, as one would have expected, the content served is targeted to the native language of that territory, improving the overall local user experience. To encourage some more interaction without having to go down the road of immediate interaction (which would be required in the long term) with your localised page, you could also try using Facebook shopping. For those who are not aware of what  Facebook Shopping is, it may be worth a quick recap. Earlier this year Facebook began rolling out its ecommerce functionality onto Facebook pages, allowing fans of a given group/page to purchase products without having to leave Facebook. Some good examples include:

Livescribe (the only niggle here is that this one actually takes you to an external site)

ASOS (obviously the fashion giant has enabled the feature to buy straight from Facebook on the proviso that you become a fan first!)

The combination of these two techniques may make a very appealing business case towards multi-territorial expansion, especially when all you need to do once you have the product feeds is to structure the copy and tone to appeal to the local market. If that market doesn’t work you can take the learnings and try again. You can probably recycle the same templates and product feed; all you need to do is produce the localised version.

It may well be that we can say good bye to overly complicated multi-territorial projects and instead embrace the 2.0 technology to deliver the same result at half the cost.

Are you engaging on Facebook on other territories? Or are you using Facebook shopping? If so,  tell us what you like or dislike.

Facebook Ecommerce: The Perfect Platform For Global Sales is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun

Facebook is again at the forefront of savvy advertisers minds.  A new feature is being tested and speculated to be fully rolled out this year that is said to dramatically change how ads are being served to fellow Facebookers. The current model of advertising serves ads based on preferences set by the advertiser which match those of the target user’s profile preferences. For many, this was already in itself smarter than the Google AdWords targeting which was designed to be keyword focused. The only similarity between the two is the bidding system; Facebook’s ad bidding system is similar to Google’s in theory but not quite in practice. A key difference is that after clicking on a Facebook ad you can attribute an “I like” which gives a vote of confidence to the page where you ended up and effectively goes beyond bounce rate. On Google, things are changing and Google +1 is meant to deliver exactly the same functionality from the SERPs. More on that will come in a separate post from us.

Now back to Facebook, the purpose of this new feature is to expand on the Facebook marketing tactics available to advertisers as well as giving the same functionality that you are exposed to on Google products like Gmail. Most users don’t even notice these ads on Gmail because these areas have been used for so long that they suffer from ad burnout or blindness (at leastfor me that seems the case). The concept in itself makes sense, right? It’s a good way to hit users with relevant advertising right when they are using one of their favourite communication channels. The flaw has always been how relevant the ads really are. Lately you’d be forgiven for not noticing that no ads have been showing except when you read or reply to an email.  Currently, even Google are about to rollout better ads in Gmail to try and show more relevant ads to their users.

Facebook’s plan is to target users as they post their status updates using specific subject lines, rather than just based on Likes and demographic information within their profile. The feature will try to serve ads based on their real-time updates. This would enable travel companies to feature ads to users who are using words like “going on holiday” or “planning my holiday” to promote and push additional services like car rentals or a beach party if the location is shared. The potential is huge and moves a platform with already 500+ million active users to be leveraged more efficiently. Using real-time up to date information will always be better than using profile information which can more often than not be out of date.

Finally to all users considering Facebook ads, let’s face it they are here to stay! Last year Facebook ran 176 billion display ads in the U.S. in the first quarter, up from 70.7 billion a year earlier, according to research firm ComScore. Since then Facebook has more than doubled its ads team to assist clients using the platform.

So don’t fall behind. Get started. If you are using Facebook ads we would love to hear what you think. Do you have concerns on the new rollout? Comment below and let us know.

Facebook ads: Real-time ad serving is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun

To the amusement of many in online marketing this week, Sarah Palin has been caught out commenting and supporting her own posts and content on Facebook with a second, fake account. Needless to say, this is somewhat discrediting. Therefore, I write this post, partly for her so that she may learn and move on to greatness she is destined for. Ahem.

I attended the annual Search Engine Strategies meeting this week and was lucky enough to catch Liana “Li” Evans’ (@storyspinner)session Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics. She talked about how Facebook is not a search engine and rather a connectivity platform. She showed us an example of a search she did for a hotel called “The Mint”. For obvious reasons Facebook does not show the correct, or in this case; desired result.

She explained that the search engine is not like Google. The algorithm isn’t there; the key to finding what you are searching for is that hopefully your search is related and/or connected to someone you know and/or an event that you are connected to. These connections help the search serve you the so-called desired listing. Without such connections, it becomes highly inefficient.

Going back to Facebook and the potential, Li explained that it is key for you as a business to evaluate if this is the right channel. With that in mind, she ran through the steps to follow to squeeze extra value out of Facebook. This is mostly her but with some minor embellishments and examples by me:

Is your audience present and engaging?:

Find out if your audience is engaging in the platform. For example, a medical clinic may not get a lot of attention on Facebook as people don’t want to talk about their medical conditions socially.

Mediarun’s tip: You can use Facebook ads to understand the reach, i.e. how many people “like” football in the UK.

“Stickiness” is the key to engagement:

To get people hooked, create “stickiness”. In many cases games work really well. Games can appeal to specific demographics and create a customer base around the game really quickly.

The obvious advantage is reach; a much bigger audience than Twitter can be targeted with a successfully thought-through game. This assumption is based on the fact that only 20% of all Twitter accounts are active regularly. With that in mind, a good Facebook game example is Farmville, which has ~ 50 million active users. The success of this application has enabled Zynga to create a huge customer base and also create a lot of engagement around it.

Another technique can be the use of contests, e.g. the SES conference page on Facebook encourages everyone to participate by sharing a strategy tip for people to try out. The person supplying the best tip is selected to be featured on the fan page with their company logo. As an additional incentive the winner gets a book from one of the board members of SES. Li told us that there was very little to no engagement prior to the technique being rolled out.

So what are the outcomes of the above?

These come in a wide variety of options: the results could be engagement on your fan page, promoting further the page across the engager’s contacts. This activity could also help fill rooms at an event or in a hotel, for instance. By simply offering last minute discounts on their Facebook pages, an hotelier can get his rooms booked on those occasions where previous bookings were cancelled.

It can provide real time feedback on your content– i.e. likes or fans.

An example of a successful piece of content or in this case applications  is the Trip Advisor Facebook app, which is one of the most widely used app with 487, 583 active users worldwide.

The reason behind their success, Li explained, is that it adds value to groups. In order to keep that up, it is essential to ensure the sort of individuals that are engaging are they the right demographic, are they really tied to the subject matter?

Other distractions that can work to your advantage:

Use geo locations when sharing events and pictures, use of logos helps with brand visibility.

Use badges and placement of “cool” logos on your demographics profiles, always with caution and moderation as you don’t want to appear to be spamming. For example the lonely planet travel blog award.

Quizzes – what is relevant to your demographic? Make it fun and engaging – quizzes can be a great way to get the community to discuss and share on your fan page.

Another technique covered by Li is the use of tags. Tagging can force brand visibility- i.e. by tagging a high profile user on a relevant picture. The example she shows us is the NFL fan page where after the Superbowl a picture of Aaron Rodgers and the rest of the Green Bay Packers are featured. Had the NFL tagged Aaron Rodgers in the picture, the reference of the NFL fan page would have appeared on his fan page, giving further visibility to over 86,000 fans of Aaron himself.

The last point covered by Li was Facebook ads:

Why not target your audience via ads? Let’s face it; it’s not Google PPC, but:

• Avg users login 3x a day.
• They view an average of 12 pages a day.
• You therefore need to show ads more frequently whilst preventing ad burnout/ blindness.

In order to avoid ad burnout you will need to use many ad versions, use bright colours and images (if applicable).

If you are using Facebook ads then optimise your landing pages. It’s all well and good to have a good ad, but the user must land somewhere where they can get something out of it as per the ad. For example: “buy”, “enquire”, “like”, whatever engagement type are you looking for.

With all of that said, don’t be fooled! Facebook marketing does require time, effort, coordination and budget.

Make sure that you have not just created a Facebook fan page and that you push and connect it with your efforts via:

• Email
• Twitter
• Most importantly your website

Last but not least, set goals and KPI’s to ensure you are delivering results based on your objectives and don’t forget to innovate – contests can only entice users for so long…

Let us know if  you use Facebook to promote your business, if you think the above is useful or better still if you have any other tactics you would like to share.

The Facebook marketing tactics that Sarah Palin should have used is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun

Today I wanted to cover an old technique that many clients don’t seem to embrace enough. I am referring to split testing, if you are not familiar with it that’s okay. It’s the art of scientifically testing two or multiple items one against the other through a period of time.  In marketing the purpose of the tests can be very diverse from different wording in your content to trying different call to action buttons. The variables are endless and so are the tests.

So what does this all mean and why is it related to dating you may ask? Well let me tell you that this is the true story of a friend who happens to have used simple A/B testing whilst trying to find a date online. Our friend (who has requested to be kept anonymous) shared the story with us and we thought that it was really ingenious and funny as well as a great source of creativity and inspiration.

In this case our friend A.K.A Mr. D had created a bunch of profiles on several dating sites like The Guardian’s Soulmates and Lovestruck.com amongst others. He had pretty much the same information on all of them, bio, picture, interests etc. At this point he thought that he had done all that was required to get bombarded with requests for further information and consequently a date.  Sound familiar? Yet, Mr. D had made a crucial mistake. He picked the information and images himself without any additional feedback. Being somewhat unsuccessful on his first couple of months he started investigating what it was that was making his profile less appealing than he had hoped. The most obvious in this case was the profile picture; this is by far the most important aspect of a profile in this sector. We are very much led by first impressions so this was the first variable that needed to be looked at.

Mr.D had identified something that he wanted to change, so he asked his brother to take some more natural pictures of himself wearing some casual clothes in his back garden. He took several shots in a relaxed pose from from different situations – camera, clothes, lighting, background changed. Without much deliberation he handpicked a bunch of them that he wanted to take to the next round. You may notice that he has still picked a bunch of pictures himself, except this time he has some choice. Before he went ahead and change all profiles he wanted to ensure that he would use the best picture. Our  ever-creative friend being quite internet savvy thought of using the site Hot or Not to see what people thought of his current profile picture. (whilst I can’t display it, I can describe it. It was a picture of him at a wedding “boring” wearing a tuxedo. Not exactly your average Saturday evening outfit! 007), the issue with the picture is similar to that of many websites out there, it’s trying a hard sell and demonstrating little insight on what the target user may actually be looking for. He applied the same logic to his new pictures using Hot or Not to find the best one. After a few tests he found out which picture was the most successful based on his target demographic: women.  Success was easily measured by the site by knowing what percentage of people seeing the image though he was “hot” or “not”. Simple.

The next step was to get the picture on the different profiles and measure response rates. The effect was immediate; he started getting much better view statistics followed by many introductory messages and responses to his own attempts at contact. The first test to improve his profile was a success! Job done, right? Actually not quite, the next step was to try and match his profile with someone that would share his interests whilst also finding him attractive. That led to tweaking his bio and personal info.

In this instance he used close female friends to improve the copy and make it more appealing to his target market. With some subtle amends on one of his profiles he compared the performance vs his other profiles out there (not quite A/B but will do as an example). Once the most successful made its way he finally rolled it to his other profiles.

Result? He got a girl!yeah! As cheesy as it may sound he did! Our geeky little A/B tester worked hard but got his price.

So what can you learn besides how to pull online? PS: should you need further tips you may want to visit Ok Cupids Blog.

Use Google’s Website Optimizer to test your pages, its free and the A/B testing is the easiest way to try different variables.

Also try user testing, it can be inexpensive and can provide great feedback. If you don’t feel these online services are the key try getting a focus group or hiring a professional to help you.

What can you test? Everything! For example

• Copy wording
• Call to action buttons
• Contact forms placement
• Image composition
• Ad Design

My recommendation is start by trying to improve things that nag you or you think need changing.

Tell us if you want to know more, if you tried it or even better; if you are thinking about doing it.

How One Online Dater Proved the Value of Split Testing is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun

Normally everyone would think that it is okay except it is not! Here is why:

1. Google analytics only tracks the last click performed by a user as they arrive on a website and not the first (historically original) click. Therefore you can’t tell how a visitor originally found your site, making it difficult to prove conversions of non-brand traffic when users return via a brand keyword to finalise a purchase or make an enquiry.
2. There is no history on what the user had previously searched for or seen on the website.
3. There is no easy way of integrating a multi click solution

Typically the process of searching online depends on discovery of useful results. If for example you want to find out about a specific product or service like SEO but you are not familiar with vendors brand names supplying that specific service the logic would be to search using keywords that will describe what you are after like for example “SEO agency”.

This logic can be demonstrated with almost every SME that performs relatively well in search for their related generic keywords, if you look at your analytics you will see that a fair amount of your new customers will be gained via non-brand searches. Once a series of results are found the user will be prompt to click through and establish (or not) a purchasing desire which normally translates into a sale or enquiry depending on the nature of your product or service.  From then onwards the average user behaviour indicates that they would return by a brand term to complete the purchase. This is a common occurrence and a recognised issue that has been flagged by many industry experts. Some of these mentions include:

@econsultancy:

“One of the biggest challenges in paid search marketing is measuring the impact of generic keywords on your sales. We all believe generic keywords have a brand-building benefit….”

So is it worth going for the first click? I would have thought so but even then many experts like @avinash have suggested that:

“Giving all of the credit to the first click is “like giving all of the credit for marrying my wife to my first girlfriend.”

So is there no hope? Well there is but it can be labour intensive if you try to do it with Google analytics and if you have limited budgets or resources.

So multiple clicks tracking then? YES!

Ask B&Q about it, mentioned in NMA a couple of months ago for their investment in multiple click tracking technology provider Tagman they have been working hard to avoid common mistakes in that arena.

Off course everything is easier said than done but the key point though is that many of us are in the same boat and whilst I recommend embracing multiple click analytics I strongly suggest that you consider the skew in your data on your future marketing strategy decisions. Always bear in mind that an informed decision to discount the value of your generic keywords is just as bad as rash decision with no data.

Tell us if this is a problem you are facing as we are keen in unearthing this often forgotten issue.

First click, last click…what click? is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun

Boutiques.com homepage, the new fashion catalog by Google

Our fashionista experts flagged this to us and I have to say I had no idea this was going on. It’s very interesting to see Google expanding to such a niche market like fashion were the giant had never revealed any experience or involvement in the past.  What are we talking about? Well Boutiques.com, a platform for all fashionable clothes to be listed and categorised by designer, style or type.  The purpose of this platform is to change the way users shop for fashionable clothes online.

The platform follows a simple concept; it comprises of mini boutiques that have been created by industry insiders, celebrities and stylists. If you are a home grown fashionista don’t worry you can also go ahead and create your own.

So what does it sell? Nothing! All products belong to other retailers that provide boutiques.com with a product feed of the items that they want to sell or promote. Some of the brands and designers already featured include, Marc Jacobs, All Saints and Burberry amongst others.

The target market is obviously the female shoppers hence why all the products featured are for ladies. It is also worth noting that at the moment it seems to be focused to the US.

What if you are a stylist or retailer that wants to be part of it? It turns out it  is really straightforward, provided you sell online and target their dedicated female categories you can get yourself a spot here by getting in contact with the Google team.

Are you a fashion retailer? Have you heard about Boutiques or are you interested? Lets us know your views below.

Boutiques.com – Google’s online fashion catalogue is a post from: Response Marketing Blog - Search Engine Marketing by Mediarun