Australia is Highly Competitive
Competitors are numerous and aggressive in just about every sector of the Australian marketplace. Mid sized organisations competing in these markets are generally resource constrained and not “big” brands. Access to market is an ongoing challenge.
Business Development
Making a sale or generating leads in many cases relies on relationships and being in the right place at the right time, i.e. being there when the need is identified by the customer.
Unfortunately in most middle market organisations, resources just don’t exist to build numerous relationships in the hope of achieving trusted advisor status and getting the call should the need arise for your product or service.
In many cases, talking to existing business relationships and identifying potential needs might result in some interesting discussion and even a proposal but may not convert, if the issue is not a burning platform so to speak.
Larger corporates employ account managers or sales people to manage relationships, a go-to person who manages the client and drives sales from that client. Most mid market organisations cannot afford account managers and have sales people who in many cases react to opportunities as they arise. Mid market companies can also not afford expensive offline marketing campaigns that have a low ROI.
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Business online, Search Marketing
When speaking at Cebit in 2007 I proposed the linking commandments and winged a lot about the amount of link spam going on and that the Internet was becoming a quagmire of grey links. Anyway changes unbeknownst to me were afoot and things changed, spammers were uncovered and unranked, paid links became an issue and the 10 link commandments held true and were again used at the Cebit E Marketing conference in 2008. Here they are:
- Thou shalt do whatever the search engine with market share believes is right
- Thou shalt not spam
- Thou shalt focus on link quality, not quantity
- Thou shalt not buy links
- Thous shalt not use page rank for evil
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Thou shalt create unique, quality content others will link to
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Thou shalt not commit adultery (But if you have to, use a link condom)
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Thou shalt use link text wisely
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Thou shalt use links to create focus
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Thou shalt expend huge energy to manage and build links for SEO
So remember good net citizens, link spam and you rank for a day, link plan and you rank for a lifetime.
Search Marketing link commandments
While moderating at SMX Sydney this year, I introduced Gord Hotchkiss (Enquiro) and Danny Sullivan (Searchengineland) and I thought, hang on. These guys have been in search for years. They obviously havent found what they are looking for, but not only that, how long is too long in the world of search engine optimisation. There I go, cant help myself, inserting relevant keywords such as search engine optimisation above and lets not forget the abbreviation SEO. Anyway, back to Danny and Gord, hardened men of search:
What should you watch out for, to recognise that maybe you have been in search too long:
- Your wife tells you she is pregnant and you worry about duplicate content penalties
- Your kids misbehave and you threaten to take away their Page Rank
- You consider keyword usage when writing your Christmas cards
- You see your children as your sub domains
- You approach a detour and tell your passengers thats its just a 302 temporary redirect
- You get lost and stop a stranger to ask where you can find a sitemap
- You get spidered or crawled you are very happy about it
- You worry that wearing a t shirt with writing under a sweater might incur a spam penalty
- Your kids get expelled and you ask the principal if you can submit a reinclusion request
If you didnt understand a word of the above, email me and I will send you a proposal. You obviously need search consulting.
Search Marketing Search
Search Engine rankings and value
Search engines allow users to find products, services or information. This is also known as search based intent. Given search engines are around 24% of traffic to websites on average (Hitwise) this is valuable traffic to most websites.
Organic search engine rankings cannot be bought but rely on the quality of your website, website content and linking. To rank well for competitive terms can take some investment not only in internal resources but also external search engine optimisation consultants.
The potential return on this investment is high, as high search engine rankings for popular keywords will drive trafficwith the potnetial to convert. Search engine rankings thus have a value to the organisation. Not only do they provide ongoing traffic and potential customers, they also assist in the organisational branding and visibility, as good search engine rankings usually perceived as belonging to quality websites and organisations.
As with any asset, to maintain high search engine rankings requires maintenance. Like any asset, the rankings can be impacted by internal constraints, competitors and search engine algorithms. As with assets, they can become obsolete, damaged or destroyed by “Acts of God” or search engines.
So undeniably, there is effort, cost and knowledge development from which an asset results, which also results in ongoing benefits to the organisation. The asset, being search engine rankings and the ongoing benefit being traffic to the organisation website. So should the cost of achieving high search engine rankings be capitalised and considered as an asset in an entity’s balance sheet.
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Business online SEO accounting, SEO costs
Internet Marketing Trends
- Mobile: Developing a strategy including frameworks for future mobile media consumption and usage. Begin testing mobile products in narrow verticals, using existing content and media. Gain a foothold in the market, while minimising investment.
- Digital media content and the mapping of this content to Google vertical databases for relevant high traffic search terms. Increasing the presence of relevant digital media across the sites, including video, audio, images and other user generated content and structuring these correctly within the website.
- Development and use of widgets to solve real user needs. Widgets can be included in igoogle, various social networking sites and made available for download for inclusion on other websites.
- Deliver localised search results to key target markets
- Google Maps: Google maps believe around 80% of searches can have a geographic anchor and as a result maps will continue to grow. Maps are being rendered in Universal for certain searches.
Why these will be important?
As organisations grow in their online presence, those with traffic, quality content and relevant digital media will have the ability to develop a significant Internet footprint and to dominate certain categories. The law of economics will ensure less sophisticated organisations disappear.
Internet internet strategy, mobile
