SEO and Jargons!

search spam
SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
natural language processing (NLP)
The Anchor Text of Link
Speed Bumps & Walls
Link Bait
black hat SEO
white hat SEO
Keyword Cannibalization
& many more to come!!
SEO Essentials: http://www.seomoz.org/

The Power of Direct Social Media Marketing

Acxiom’s Social Influencer platform brings consumer data intelligence to online social marketing, providing marketers with:

A unique, practical data-driven and measured approach to social marketing.
The capability to recognize and engage with socially active customers and prospects within online communities.
The potential to ignite and amplify marketing initiatives.
The ability to measure effectiveness of campaigns at the aggregate and individual level, utilizing traditional web metrics such as impressions, clicks, downloads, purchases, and traffic as well as social metrics such as uploads, posts, ratings, shares, conversational volume, trends and influence.

more @ http://www.acxiom.com/products_and_services/digital/social_media/Pages/Social_Influencer.aspx

Advertising, copywriting and some models

Think about it! writing a simple strategy or perhaps a basic business plan what are the questions that should go around your mind if not you will spontanously be asking the questions to yourself! No…not yet… here we go.. below are the questions that we should be asking ourselves while going through basic copy writing or business plan or perhaps targeting:

W5HM

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How Much?
• And let’s not forget WIIFM? (This is the most important question!)
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME???

Some Models that might help us doing so are as follows:

Effect sequential models: AIDA (19th Century)

Attention

Interest

Desire

Action

DAGMAR model (Colley, 1961)

Awareness
Comprehension
Conviction
Action

Customer Marketing Strategy (CMS)

5 stages to developing a strategy

1. Understanding value – analyzing the current context and situation regarding customer’s needs, value, the marketplace, the market position and internal capabilities.
2. Choosing value – which customers or prospects in which markets via which business model? Setting relevant objectives and measures.
3. Designing value – designing the proposition to customers. Outlining how the objectives will be achieved.
4. Creating value – preparing fully costed and detailed operational plans with precise timescales that spell out what will be done. Coordinating and supporting functional plans.
5. Ensuring value – determining the feedback, measurement and information systems that will ensure the strategy is on track: learning and adjusting to situational analysis.

Stages to writing a strategy

1. Executive Summary – brief overview of core proposition, perceived customer value, objectives and targets – customers and markets, opportunities and threats, core strategy and timings.
2. Situational Analysis – looking at internal and external environment – PEST, SWOT, competitor analysis, customer profile, segmentation, media choice, market research and analysis
3. Key issues
4. Set Objectives – Objectives should be SMART
5. Strategy – General, Market, Positioning, Branding, Product, Pricing, Promotional, communications (creative, contact), Service, Information and data, Research, Competitive
6. Operating Plan
7. Contingency Plan
8. Budget
9. Life Time Value Analysis
10. Assumptions

AIDCA

AIDCA EXPLORED!

• Attention
– Attract their attention—use style, shape, size, color & motion

• Interest
– Create Interest—use a question, graphic, or words that hook them

• Desire
– Create a desire—answer the question WIIFM?

• Convince/Conviction
– Convince them—offer them an opportunity, option, benefit or advantage.

• Action
– Involve them with action—use interactive media, have them call, sign up, or pick up tickets.

source:www.acui.org

CRM and Direct Marketing

“Knowledge is Power”, I guess we all know about this very common phrase thats been used by our parents, tutors and managers. It is such an universal truth which can equally be applied to Marketing! Customer relationship management is at the core of any modern and successful businesses but many of us still having problems understanding the term and its impact on Marketing.

CRM can be defined from different dimensions such as Process perspective, IT and Business and vision.

Process Perspective: CRM is a process that addresses all aspects of identifying customers, creating customer knowledge, building customer relationships and shaping their perceptions of the organization and its product. (Peleen)

IT and business: an IT enabled business strategy, the outcomes of which optimize profitability, revenue and customer satisfying behaviours and implementing customer-centric processes. (Gartner Group)

Vision: Building of an infrastructure which may be used to develop long-term customer-supplier relationships (McKenna)

Four cornerstones of CRM can be identified as follows:

Customer knowledge
Relationship strategy
Communication
Value proposition

TOP 5 errors at which customers take the most offence:
– Mistaken gender designation
– Incorrect company name
– Error in company name
– Not addressed to the proper person
– Last name spelled incorrectly

Its all about developing a single custome view by analysing different domains:

Customer knowledge domains

Database Domain:
-Identification
-Transactional data/history
-Media Use

Market Research Domain
-Customer profile
-User’s profile
-Human profile

A typcial CRM should be able to support Sales force automation, Market analysis, Customer service management, Campaign Management.

Source: pauravshukla.com

Stages of Retention and Acquisition

hmm… retention and acquisition perhaps some of the popular words used in Marketing of any sorts! Its hard to get them binded or summarized in a page or two… here is a catch… understanding stages of these might help marketers to apply them efficiently

The 6 stages of acquistion

1. Objectives
2. Profiling/analysis/research
3. Targeting
4. Media evaluation and selection
5. Communications
6. Programme analysis

The 5 stages of retention

1.Welcome
2.Up-sell
3.Cross-sell
4.Renewal/preventing inactivity
5.Re-activation of lapsed or inactive customers

Marketing Definitions

Was going through some revision for a professional exam that I have to sit for in next couple of weeks! I just thought it would be ideal to post it here…as I found some of the definitions to be very precise and meaningful!!!

Traditional Marketing

“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ requirements profitably” – C.I.M

“Marketing is the process of planning and executing the concept, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisations goals”
-A.M.A (American Marketing Association)

Direct Marketing

“The planned recording analysis and tracking of customers’ direct response behaviour over time. In order to develop future marketing strategies for long term customer loyalty and to ensure continued business growth”
- Holder and Woodcock

“Any activity that exploits a direct response from a customer” – Drayton Bird

4Ps of Traditional Marketing vs 4Es & 4Cs of IMC

Interesting to see how tradtional advertising/marketing activities blending into relatively new phenomenon Integrated Marketing Communications.

Just thought should write some notes on this transition or so called transcending of IMC with all the due respects to my fellow ads pro….:)

Traditional Marketing and 4Ps are not quite working well given the whole new scenario segregated consumer/customer base…..

Just a bit of background on 4Ps… usually stand for Price, product, promotion and place… though this is a shortened ring as the initial ring with 11 elements does not quite warm up the audience however… a marketer should know those 12 elements…! i.e. product planning, pricing, branding, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, personal selling, channels of distribution, physical handling, servicing and face finding /analysis…

Now lets have a look on IMC’s trademarks 4Es and 4Cs

4Es
Enhancing
Economical
efficient
effective

4Cs
Coherence
Consistency
Continuity
Complementary

I am not going to elaborate on these as these r pretty simple and self-explanatory rather… should u hv any probs understanding these plz look up at dictionary.com… that would do for nw…

Good day…

-immy

Stages in writing copy

Writing copy is an essential part of overall marketing communication. Perhaps its rather crucial as you are literally conveying your thoughts and product’s features to prospects which will finger cross provoke thoughts in their minds to buy into your products or services.

It said to be most copy writing can be divided into 4 categories:

1. Research & Reflection – 30%
2. Jotting down ideas – 20%
3. Drafting Copy – 20%
4. Revising Copy – 30%

It’s interesting to see the percentages of time we spend in each stage.