|
"Effective Use
Of Online Marketing"
-
GEORGE MATYJEWICZ is
Chief Marketing Officer of GAP Enterprises, LLC a management and marketing consulting firm
based in New York.
-
- George embraced the Internet in
1989 and the WWW when it first came into being, and has developed
e-commerce and marketing strategies for some of the top Internet
sites. He is an active member on over 130 discussion lists;
owner/moderator of
E-Tailer's
Digest, a discussion list for retailers in 49 countries (online
and in print); guest moderator of three other lists -- all geared to
keep finger on the pulse of the Internet.
-
- For the past five years, George
has had a column in Gifts & Decorative Accessories magazine, and is
widely quoted and featured in many publications. He has been writing
press releases for over 20 years, and, for the past four years has
been distributing them online via the firm's Automated Press Release
service which reaches over 10,000 media contacts (the largest and
most diverse on the Net).
-
- He has been a guest speaker at
over 400 conferences and business meetings since 1983.
-
- Contact information:
- George Matyjewicz
- GAP Enterprises, LLC
- Harmon Cove Towers
- Secaucus, NJ 07094
- Tel: (201) 866-8199
- Fax: (201) 221-7689
-
|
|
Is your site
marketable?
-
We
offer a service called
Marketing Your Web (MYWEB) where we analyze a client's
site to determine if it is marketable. We review every new
site that is announced at two of the "What's New" services
on the Net. It is shocking to see how poorly the sites
have been developed both technically - invalid URL's,
invalid e-mail addresses, broken links - and from a
marketing perspective. Why should visitors stop at your
site? What makes you different from anybody else? Why
should somebody buy a product or service from you? Is your
message clear? Does your site load slowly? Are there too
many meaningless graphics or "splash pages"? Are the
colors browser-safe?
Some
areas that we focus on are:
-
2.
Differentiation strategy
-
3.
"Elevator Speech"
-
4.
Benefits of doing business with you
-
5.
Your competition
-
6.
Targeted customers
-
7.
Products/services
-
8.
Territories
-
9.
Site organization
-
10.
Company information
-
11.
Which links to provide
Usage statistics
for marketing
The
traffic logs at your site can help you determine the
success of the campaigns and to determine where more
emphasis is required. Traffic logs can give a wealth
of information, like...
-
1.
Where visitors came from (which
URL)
-
2. Where
they go in your site
-
3. Where
they go when they leave your site
-
4. How
long they spend at your site and at each page
-
5. Who
refers you the most visitors
-
6. What
time of the day, and day of the week do you get
the most traffic
-
7. The
most active pages visited (this can surprise you)
-
8. From
which countries, states and cities visitors come
from
-
9. The
least requested pages
-
10. Analysis
of browsers used to visit your site
-
11. Organization
breakdown, i.e., commercial, education,
government, etc.
-
12. Visiting
spiders
-
13. Most
used platforms
-
With this information, you
can determine what needs to be changed at your site to
improve visibility. You may think a particular
service will generate activity, and you will be
surprised to see it doesn't, and another service does
generate traffic. Your choices then are to improve
the presentation of the service you want to promote,
or do more promotion for the service where you are
getting activity.
Each
piece of traffic information is critical for success.
For example, analyzing browsers used tells you how to
adapt your site for maximum exposure (browsers react
differently to the same information). Time of the day
is important if you want to take your site down for
maintenance.
These
traffic logs would be analogous to you knowing
everybody who read a newspaper, including which pages,
and how long they took to read each page.
Discussion lists
Discussion lists are a
method for folks to communicate on subjects that are
of interest to them. For example, you may be
interested in discussing marketing issues, or retail
or maybe child care. According to the list of lists
at http://www.liszt.com
there are 90,095 discussion lists online. In reality
there are many more, however, this is a good place to
start. Discussion lists are a great way to discuss
common issues and to let folks know about something
that you have that may be of interest.
You need to join a
discussion list before you can post to it. And you
should never send information to the list that is
commercial, unless an opportunity presents itself.
For example, on our E-Tailer's
Digest list http://www.gapent.com/etailer/
somebody asked if anybody knew of software to help
them run their store. That was an opportunity for
software vendors to present their wares to the group.
There are some discussion
lists that are for news distribution only, which means
you can distribute your press releases.
Is the Internet
really international?
It's
a very small world. Last year I was a keynote speaker
at a conference at the Javits Center in New York
City. In researching for the talk, I discovered a
survey that said that 51% of folks who surf the Net
shop locally. And there are many local sites for
distribution. I believe every state has it's own
.com, i.e., NJ.com, NY.com, etc (but not DC.com).
With discussion lists,
chat rooms and other methods of communication, the Net
becomes a small community. You will find you will
meet people online that you would have never even
known before the Net. And often you will meet in
face-to-face meetings. I try to meet somebody from
one of my
"communities"
whenever I
travel to a new city.
-
-
Q.
Are you saying I should get rid of that nice message
that says
"Welcome
to our site?"
A. Yes. It wastes four or
more valuable words for marketing to search engines. If
you want to use such a message, turn it into an image
(gif)
-
Q.
Our agency is a sub-group of a larger agency. There
are 11 sub groups. Should we use the agency's
logo and information, or should we create out own
brand?
A.. Yes
;-). Why not do both? Build your brand, and also show
the agency's
brand on the site. It can't
hurt.
Q
Should we lock up the higher level names that are now
available to assure we keep our URL name?
A. My
personal opinion is no. Everybody is comfortable with
edu, gov, com and I don't
believe these new higher level domain names will be as
popular. Then again, it only costs $35 to register, so
why not?
Q. How
do I get registered on search engines? Especially
Yahoo?
-
A.
At each search engine
there will be a section called
"submission"
which will allow you to enter your site. Follow the
instructions very clearly. Yahoo is very particular
about what they need, so be extra careful. Be sure
your description is very clear and concise. And, be
sure the categories that you choose are appropriate
for your site.
-
- ###
|
