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IncrediMail has provided business owners an incredible lesson as to why you should not place all your eggs in one basket. This occurred last week when they discovered that their AdSense privileges had been banned. This resulted in their stock dropping over 45% to a new year low. While IncrediMail does claim to generate revenue by selling software products, offering subscriptions to their content database, and by selling paid advertising on their Web site and e-mail client, they did admit that search revenues powered by Google's AdSense program made a significant contribution to their results in 2006 and 2007. The lesson to be learned here by any business is to not place all of your eggs in one basket.
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This is one of the reasons why I don't use GMAIL - "Google Accidentally Bans Hundreds of Users from Gmail" - Search Engine Roundtable. Barry Schwartz reports on a Google Groups thread where many users have complained that their Gmail accounts were all of a sudden disabled. The problem began late on December 5th. The following day, Gmail Guide replied saying that this was an error on Google's side and they are fixing it.
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I have written before that we use CopySentry to find and monitor occurrences of copy theft and infringement regarding content on our site. Today, I discovered a story on TechCrunch about a company called Attributor which offers a service very similar to CopySentry but with many added features. Attributor, which is a startup in Redwood City, California, says it can monitor the Web for copied content no matter where it may be, help publishers and media companies track it all, and provide them more options about how to handle it. I am already intrigued.
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In today's socially connected online world, reputation management is becoming more and more a concern for any business. Sure, most companies are able to secure the number one spot in the organic search results for their brand via their company web site. However, what about the remaining first page real estate and even that of the second and third pages? What is an effective means for companies, especially small to medium sized business to control that real estate without necessarily deploying multiple company web sites? The answer - social media.
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If you are Sprint Nextel, when they become customer service nightmares. While watching the local newscast last night, a story caught my attention about cellular phone provider Sprint "firing" customers for abusing customer service. I followed up with it online and found Fox News covering the story. Apparently they are disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers for calling their customer service lines too often and making what the company called "unreasonable requests."
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Word of mouth marketing, where consumers tell others how much they like or dislike your products and services, is on the rise. In fact, eMarketer reports that 65 million adults in the U.S. are talking about products and services they encounter. What is significant is that 27 million of them are doing it online via forums, blogs, consumer review sites, social media sites and the like. That trend is only going to increase.
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I spent all last week visiting amusement parks in the New England area, which not only included riding roller coasters, but interviewing some of the owners and key people responsible for each park's existence and success. In reality, I am not doing the actual interviews, but rather my friend, Gary Kyriazi, who writes for Park World Magazine is conducting them. I am simply along for the ride. Out of four interviews, one stands out as a great example of how to practice customer relations the right way while another stands out as the wrong way to go about it.
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We get a handful of RFPs (request for proposal) each and every week, We actually call them "Request Free Quotes" (RFQs) as they typically come from potential customers submitting a form from our site. Receiving several RFQs each week not only requires a significant amount of time to respond to them in a timely manner, but requires a strategic follow-up plan to ensure that we give ourselves the best opportunity to secure the new business. I thought I'd write up a post on how we initially respond to them and our process of follow-up.
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In January, I wrote a post about how I was fed up with the Better Business's Bureau's Online Reliability program in which they force an additional fee on already paying members in order fro them to be able to display the BBB logo on their sites. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from one of their representatives congratulating me on my post, stating they also wanted to see the program done away with and that my post was helping to speed up that process. That's the good news. The bad news is that the program is still in effect, of which I just received a renewal bill. I'm refusing to pay.
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When talking to a potential customer, I can usually tell in a minute or less if they are going to be problematic. Call it intuition. Call it sixth sense. Or simply chalk it up to over ten years of experience. It usually starts with a gut feeling that tells you, "Don't take on this new client, it is going to be more trouble than its worth." It is then up to you to decide whether to listen to that still small voice or go against it and sell out for the money. Everytime I have done the latter, I have lived to regret it. Fortunately the longer I do this, I learn from past mistakes and pay more attention to the voice inside my head.
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Having worked with companies both large and small for almost a decade now, I have learned that there are fundamental principles that both parties must follow if they are going to have a successful SEO relationship. And that is what SEO truly is - a relationship or better yet, a partnership between the two parties. Like any partnership, there are do's and don'ts that each party must practice if the relationship is to be a success. While not a complete list, I have put together ten important things to practice in order to have a successful SEO relationship.
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Establishing trust with consumers is crucial to the success of any online business, especially those who are selling a product or service. This is oftentimes easier to do in the "real world" than it is on the Internet. For example, you as a consumer are in a brick and mortar storefront looking to buy a particular product. You can be comfortable with the atmosphere, enjoy the selection of merchandise they have to offer, and even be assured of their stability as a business because they have been around for some time. The sales person can also put you at ease if they are friendly and helpful to you. Web sites are a bit different in that they are not physical locations. Plus you are dealing with a digital medium as opposed to a real person.
So what are some steps web sites and ecommerce shops can take to establish trust with their users and ultimately convert them into a paying customer? Read on to find out.
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The BBBOnLine Reliability Program has bugged me for some time now. This is a program the Better Business Bureau (BBB) offers its members in which they can place a seal on their web site indicating they are a BBB member which then links to the company's online profile. It requires its own fees in addition to what a company pays to be a BBB member. The program discriminates against businesses who solely conduct business online. This bothers me to no end. Read on to find out why.
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I had a horrible customer service experience with a local body shop earlier this year when I took my son's 1968 Mustang for repair after a collision. I blogged about it and my post ended up positioning in the top three results at Google, Yahoo and MSN when you searched for their business name. In that post, I used the opportunity to examine their customer service and see what we in the search marketing industry could learn by it. As a follow up to that original incident, the owner finally discovered my original post and wanted to make things right. However making things right had a price tag and it was a pretty low one. In fact it was almost insulting.
Read on to find out what kind of a price tag this business owner places on their online reputation.
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Forums provide an awesome online venue to accomplish a variety of things - learn more information on a specific subject, collaborate with your peers, receive feedback on a marketing tactic, business technique, product or even a particular service, to become part of a community and of course... to market yourself.
Being consistently active on four different forums, I have enjoyed all the benefits mentioned above one time or another. However, the last benefit - marketing yourself, must be done discreetly. In other words, if one is to market themselves in a forum which is comprised of an active community, marketing one's self should be subtle. In reality the only true way to market yourself effectively is not to market yourself at all but rather to contribute quality to the forum. When you do that, you market yourself naturally.
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A recent Inc. 500 study reveals what many of us business owners already know and that is that word of mouth advertising is still King. What percentage constitutes kingship? How about 82%. WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) additional percentages extracts from the survey which asked CEOs on the Inc. 500 list how they advertise or market their products and services.
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What does Network Solutions, the original domain registrar and Danny's Family Carousel, a chain of car wash/oil & lube facilities have in common? They try to up sell you to the max. In other words, they not only want to sell you what you originally came in for but add on as many items as they can. Following is a comparison of two examples of where up selling gets to the point of absurdity.
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I have been practically living on Craigslist and eBay for the last couple of days searching for a couple of vehicles for my son and daughter. This experience has lead me to ask the question over and over again, "Do people really want to sell this?". They either do not provide enough information or do not include a way to contact them. If you are able to contact them, they don't follow through. It all makes me evaluate my own company and how we display our services as well as how we respond to existing and prospective clients. Do you really want to sell your products and services. Then read on to discover what not to do.
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We just re-designed our SearchRank site and as my father was looking it over, he brought to my attention that we had the clients list section improperly called"Client Rooster". He pointed out that it should be "Roster" not "Rooster" which is related to the male chicken. I immediately checked Webster’s and sure enough he was correct. Boy do we look stupid. Maybe people think we have roosters as clients?
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