TOP Must-Read Online Marketing Blogs

All in One Marketing Blogs


Unmarketing
This blog  shares the importance of  maintaining relationship in business.


Heidicohen
This blog render marketing associated brainstorms, grounded in digital  direct and social media marketing; it served  a creative gimmick  which simplifies the complex concepts behind today’s  business challenges into an easy to understand format .


Getelastic
 GetElastic blog is meant to share the best practices and better ways of managing  the digital relationships. It covers mobile, search, social, and multichannel marketing


Adobe Digital Marketing Blog
  It Covers advertising, analytics, social media, targeting, mobile, and more.

Econsultancy Digital Marketing Blog           

It includes topics like  digital marketing , ecommerce , analysis and opinion by the multi-award-winning team 

Direct E-Marketing VS Traditional Marketing

Direct E- marketing is here to stay and will stay for longer period. In today's world  many people are using email for  daily communications.Many companies use email to build up and beef up the connection between the company and customers, to maintain a good customer relationship.

According to me direct email marketing is more effective as compared to traditional marketing

HOW???

In both Advertising and marketing online and offline one thing is common – is to  be aware of the target audience.

Market segmentation is  important because no company want to lose its money  by sending the ads to someone who has no interest in it.

Cost/benefit

With direct email marketing  a company  can have one to one communication with the customers.With  award-winning email marketing a company can start creating  email marketing campaigns which is cheap as compare to TRADITIONAL MARKETING.

Using E-mail for your direct email marketing campaign company will be able to create limitless lists with limitless recipients in each market segmentation. So this will allow companies to send different emails to their clients, business partners, media etc.

On the other hand if we compare traditional marketing with direct email marketing traditional marketing is more expensive.If a company desire  to start a direct mail campaign company will have  to incur costs for printing  brochures and its delivery expenses.But in traditional marketing  it is much more expensive as  it takes much more time to create and implement any of the traditional marketing campaigns or offline advertising . 

Imagine that a company wants to announce its new software or hardware product. Company wants to inform its  partners , clients because  they will be interested in it. Now company has two choices: one to use email to notify them and 2nd to use traditional techniques like sending letters.

keys to Desegregated Digital Marketing

I believe that It is important for a company to speak with one voice(to express the same opinion) but as there are many online platforms available its quite hard for the companies to do it consistently and effectively...??

HOW it can be done..???

1.     A comprehensive approach , Review of the goals for the year and determining which online channels will help a company to achieve its goals.

2.    For every online channel company there should be develop  set of communication goals, company scheme must consider short-term goals  also allowing the long-term brand-building approach supported on the website.

 A desegregated approach creates a more cryptic brand experience and will bring more and better sales for a company. 

Monitoring Website !!

Website monitoring is the process of screening and assuring the interaction of users with a particular website or application. Website monitoring service is  used by businesses to be sure that their sites are responding as per the plan.

There are many Website monitoring companies that offers businesses to know the actions  of visitors to a website not only this they also send out warning signals when pages of a website dysfunction, are been hacked, blacklisted ,this facility allows the webmaster to even up the issues in a faster and efficient way.

Aim of website monitoring companies it to ensure that a website data is proper and it is available to users. Users are now days depended upon website for work or for pleasure  will get baffled and eventually they will stop  using the application if it is not working properly or available. Monitoring  covers many things like

•  How a web site needs to function 
• Networking,
• Database connectivity 
• Working of computer resources. 

Some of the free services for monitoring website's 

• Pingdom- offers a free service package which includes monitoring of one website or server and includes 20 free SMS alerts and also provide free email alerts after get a premiums A/c u can have more services.
• Uptime Robot-it provide better free services than PINGDOM you can add up to 50 websites and sites will be  monitor for free and same like pingdom you will get alerts by e-mail, SMS but also they will send notifications on Twitter, RSS , iPhone/iPad.
• Tag Beep-it allows you to monitor up to 50 sites without charging a single penny.Tag beep  has tools which checks your site every minute and same as others monitoring websites they also sends free email and SMS alerts to apprise you of errors. one facility which makes tag beep different from others is after detecting errors tag beep take a snapshot of the page and saves the HTML code of that page and saves the HTML.

How to create Better Sales & Marketing Relationship..!!

Whenever  you're investing your money  on  

• Rolling out a new ad campaign
• Launching a new website 
• or a new business transaction

you have to give importance to  your customers and your salespeople 

One of the way of making selling team of a enterprise effective is through Marketing and messaging. Why there is a need of a good sales team?? Simple because sales team is TOUCH POINT for customers.

steps which can help in getting sales team involved are as follows-

• First step a company should take is to Sit down with the whole sales team and together they should explore in  targeting customers situations and issues and Finding areas of improvement.
• By Applying  elements of the brand to guile specific messaging that can help in meeting the  unique sales challenges.It is improtant for the enterprise to fill  the missing pieces and to be sure about the consistency of all messaging.
• Third step is to take a feedback of new messages with the staff 
• Following up  

• By outfitting the sales team with lucid brand messaging will help in  creating  a better sales experience for both  company and  customers ,by making everything clear to sales team what company wants from them  will make it sure  that the company is able to maintain  better relationships.

Marketing Mix

The marketing mix and the 4 Ps of marketing are synonyms for each other.Understanding marketing mix is crucial because marketing mix  make organizations meet the needs and demands of the customers.This means the goods should be taken to the  places where consumers can find them easily, the goods should be promoted in correct way and they should have the correct prices.

"Marketing mix" is  used to describe the different kinds of choices an organization have to make in process of bringing a product or service to a particular market. The 4 Ps is one of the way consider as the best way of defining the marketing mix, and it was first conveyed in 1960 by E J McCarthy.

The 4Ps are

• Product (or Service)
• Place
• Price
• Promotion

So it means that the goods 

• Should  move to the correct places 
• Good promotion should be there  so that product and services offered can be known.
• Goods and services must satisfy  the customer needs and they should have correct prices tag.

According to me best way of understanding the 4 Ps is by the way asking  questions that you need to ask to define your marketing mix.Some of the questions that will help you understand and define each of the four elements are as follows

Product/Service

• What  customer wants from the product/service? What  kind of  needs consumer wants to satisfy?
• What kind of  features a product must have to meet the needs?
  • Is there any feature you've missed out?
  • Why  are you including  features that the customer won't actually use?
• How and where will the customer use it?
• How your product will look like? How will customers experience it?
• In what color(s),size(s) products will be available ?
• What is it to be called?
• How product will be branded?
• How much different your products will be from your competitors products?

Place

• Where buyers  can find your product or service?
• In what kind of store they should look your product ? In a supermarket, or a clumsy market or both Or online ???
• How are  you going to access the  distribution channels?
• What do you competitors do, and how you can learn from that or differentiate?

Price

• What will be the value of the product or service to the buyer?
• Is the customer price is sensitive or not ?If there is  small decrease in price ,can it help you to gain you extra market share? Or if there is  a small increase in price,can it help you to gain extra profit margin?
• How much and what kind of discounts should be offered to  customers?
•  Price comparision with your competitors

Promotion

• How you will reach to your audience??? options can be taken in mind are as follow advertising  on TV or radio or on billboards or by using direct marketing or by the help of Internet
• When will be the best time for promotion of your products or services? 
• How  your competitors are doing their promotions? And how much  influence they can have over your choice of promotional activity?

The 4Ps model is just one of the many marketing mix lists that have been formulated over the years. However the questions i have listed above can be taken as a  key to optimize your marketing mix.

REFERRED-

Managing Content Marketing

Robert Rose & Joe Pulizzi

Worthful Sharing

What great Ad Agencies have to say!!!

When you think about Marketing you do have to think about promotion and advertising stuff so was reading what Ad Agencies have in there mind and after reading it i  felt that its quite valuable so decided to share it 

"Managing an advertising agency isn't all beer and skittles. After fourteen years of it, I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work".......David Ogilvy 

"The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account"........David Ogilvy

"The work of an advertising agency is warmly and immediately human. It deals with human needs, wants, dreams and hopes. Its 'product' cannot be turned out on an assembly line".....Leo Burnett

"An advertising agency is 85% confusion and 15% commission".....Fred Allen

"Creativity is an advertising agency's most valuable asset, because it is the rarest"....Jef I Richards

Source: Thinkexist

Marketing Channels

Sharing of things does not means that ownership of that particular product is transfer but when  set of practices are used to transfer the possession of goods and to move goods  from the  production site to the  consumption site is know as Marketing Channels 

Marketing channels plays important role in linking produces with buyers,performs sales advertising and promotion activities,helps in determining the price of a commodity etc

Marketing channels are of many types and which type of marketing channel should be employed is depended upon the type of business model.

TYPES OF MARKETING CHANNELS

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1. Manufacturer to Consumer

 In this type channel there is no intercessor. Manufacturer is engaged in making goods and directly distributes those goods to consumers as simple as that,one of the example is a Farmer selling some products directly to customers or a Bakery shop selling cakes directly to customers.

2. Manufacturer to Retailer to Consumer

 Retailer is the mediator between manufacturer and consumer.  Purchases are done by the retailer from the manufacturer and then the retailer sells the goods to the consumer. This channel is used by manufacturers who are engaged in producing shopping goods. For example shoes, furniture and clothes etc. 

3. Manufacturer to Wholesaler to Retailer to Consumer 

In this channel, there are two option for consumers one is wholesaler and other is retailer.It follows like wholesaler will  buy goods @ large scale and sells to retailer and then retailer sells to consumer.

 4. Manufacturer to Wholesaler to Consumer 

Consumer’s can buy goods  directly from the wholesaler.Wholesaler breaks down bulk packages for selling purpose to the consumer. The wholesaler reduces purchase price in order to make the product cheaper for the consumer . For example, shopping at some of the warehouse clubs, the customer  have to buy a membership in  to buy goods directly from the wholesaler.

5. Manufacturer to agent to wholesaler to retailer to consumer 
Distribution of good  that involves more than one mediators ,involves agents called as middleman and that middleman assist with the sale of the goods and for performing the sales activities he receives a commission from the producer. Agents are very useful when products need to move quickly into the market soon after the order is placed.

Security on E-Government services..!!!

As i was learning more about E-Government one thing which clutch my attention is the security on E-Government services .There are many security issues on the services provided by the E-Government few of them are stated below

PASSWORD
Passwords are awkward and unequal for the transactions and communications that travels over the Internet. It is easy to break passwords because  we users write down passwords where we should not or share passwords, or store passwords , or forget them. In addition, there are many applications which requires unexampled passwords and ID's, it means for every new application new id and new password is required.However passwords cannot provide security  by themselves, they cannot guarantee the unity of stored or transmitted data.


Digital Certificates
Digital certificates are preferred over passwords and PINs for securing electronic transactions all over the world .Digital certificates dish up  as an  unique online credentials, manifesting the identity of each device or user.

 Smart Cards
Smart cards carry a microchip that stores data and applications. Smart cards hold more information than magnetic cards and can be programmed for a variety of applications. Multiple applications can lodge in single smart card, and applications can be added, deleted, or upgraded without reissuing the card.

Wireless Applications and Services
 Wireless applications  are changing and have changed the face of the Internet. Users are now  using  phones, personal digital devices to transfer money, approach medical records,attain  travel reservations, and more. But before engaging in to wireless transactions, its important for the uses   to be confident that they can reliably authenticate each other, as well as protect information from interception .

E-GOVERNMENT and Services provided in INDIA

E-Government stands for Electronic Government, when we say about  E-Government it means employing internet and world wide web for delivering information to the citizens of a country ,in more simple term using web based telecommunication for improving the condition of services delivered to the citizens by the government.As stated above that e-government is consider as  online government, However there are non-Internet electronic government technologies can be used in this context. Some non-Internet forms include landline phone ,SMS text messaging, fax, MMS, BLUETOOTH, CCTV, tracking systems,road traffic etc. 

There are many services provided to citizens of a country by government through electronic media.

Few services provided by the Indian Government are as follows

• Information on agriculture services 
• Issue of Passports 
• Issue of fresh driving licence 
• Issue of market value certificates
• Collection of tax & penalties
• Change of address in records
• Issue of birth certificates
• Issue of stamps     
• IRCTC

India E-Government also helps citizens to enjoy the service of E- Transactions.

E-Transaction stands for Electronic Transaction which means that any transaction which delivers services to the citizens of India through  Information Technology (IT)  and also satisfies the stated four conditions 

a. Service is requested through electronic means including mobile devices

b. Workflow/approval process is electronic

c. Database is electronic/digitised

d. Service delivery is electronic.

to improve access, enhance foil and reduce response time.

According to my understanding basic goal of the E-Government is to offer public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective way.Government transparency is important because it allows the public to be known about what policies government trying to implement.E-government allows tasks to be performed in a  efficient way with more convenience to individuals. E-government allows public to be more involved in political campaigns. It helps in increasing voter awareness,It is cost effective for businesses and it is beneficial for public because they will be getting easy access to the most of the information available without expending  more money and time on it.

I believe that  using electronic media has many advantages but it  has some serious disadvantages also ,one of the disadvantage is it loses the person to person interaction which is valued by lot of people.

In addition to this i  also feel that by providing technology based services it becomes easy to make excuses like server went down and blah blah!!

The implementation of an e-government does have certain constraints i.e Literacy of the users and the ability to use the computer, users who don't have any idea how to read and write would need assistance. An example for it is senior citizens,especially in developing countries senior citizens do not have much education and they would have to approach a customer service officer for assistance.

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**References- http://www.negp.gov.in/

                                        

SEO and Basic ways of Optimizing Websites

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization Whenever you enter a query in a search engine and hit 'enter' you get a list of web results that contain that  term. We normally  visit websites that are at the top of this list as it perceive to be more relevant to the query. Question is why some of these websites rank better than the others then for this  you must know  it is because of a  web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As an internet marketing strategy SEO considers what  individuals search for what search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines(google,yahoo etc) are preferred by their audience?????

Creating a website which can appeal both search engines like google, yahoo etc and  website visitors is a challenging job so the question is how to develop a website that pile both search engines and website visitors demand ?

According to me there are five basic ways for optimizing a website which can appeal search engines 

• Include Meta and title tags-search engines still use Meta Keyword, Meta Description and Title tags to rank Web pages. It is important to be sure that a proper title tag is placed at the top of each page to identify the document's. You should also write an accurate Meta description tag because it's often used by search engines to describe a site in there search results and its important to not to neglect  a Meta keyword tag to reveal the most important keywords for each page to search engine spiders. This is one Website optimization trick , Meta tags can be the key to getting "found" by search engines.

• Place keywords  in your content

• Inspect  website after any updating it,especially when tags are changed.

• Incoming or backlinks- good incoming or back links  plays an important role in increasing search engine ranking and traffic of particular website. Most major search engines rank Web pages based on the number and the quality of links that point to the Website (link popularity).

• Site Map page and link to it directly from your home page.  Site Map page place links to every other page in a website. This guarantees that every page on a website can be reached with a maximum of two mouse clicks EXAMPLE:
  
  
  

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Making MONEY ONLINE....!!!

The First step is very simple that you have to stop googling "how to make money online"
not because you should not but because the stuff you are going into may help you to lose money online... sort of asking  casino owners how to make money ...!!
Now the second step is to know the ways of making money online this is very important stuff because its simple if u dont know how to succeed then how u will spring up ??. So ways of making money online

• Sell Stock Photography-

Yuri Arcurs is the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an image every 8 seconds. He makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best at what he likes to do. There are many great photographers in the world and the barrier to entry is as low as possession of a camera, but the point is Arcurs has dealt in building a good image of him online..                                                                       
 If you're a professional photographer (or even just a hobbyist) you should consider the possibilities of selling stock images online.

•  Blog for Ad Revenues

One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and other revenue options. surprising thing is that, his blog is about the ways to making money online.

• Write an e Book 

26 year old self published writer, Amanda Hocking from Minnesota is making more than $2 Million a year from her ebook sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about vampires and zombies and  ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.

• Become A Mobile App Tester

People that have the time and desire to test iPhone apps and discover bugs can be rewarded payments for the efforts they have made. uTest is one of the application many Individuals have signed up they already have build some reputation on the basis of the testing they have done so far.

• Selling on eBay

Best way of converting waste into a money is something we all love and eBay is a great way to turn your unwanted things into  money, but it is not  a place to sell your old action figures toys. In fact, eBay’s global marketplace  which  offers a great way for  traders to buy and sell their products by making good profit. By purchasing wholesale you can trade anything  @ a good price. Even better, if you have the skills to make things people want to buy you could start your own home-based business.

As you can see, to make money online you don't have to be particularly skilled with computers and you don't have to be a  big businessman with millions of dollars to invest in success. If you have any kind of skills if you are creative you can easily turn it into profit.

In short, you should understand that the virtual world is just like real life. The same opportunities are there without any discrimination..!!

INTERNET MARKETING

Internet Marketing or  online advertising which  simply means  the marketing and promotion of products or services over the internet.There are many ways for promoting products and services but INTERNET MARKETING is something in which i am interested more  and i have my own reasons(common) for it.

When we talk about internet marketing many things come in our mind like how it started,what  benefits it has over traditional ways of marketing and as its a fact everything has its own merits and demerits so what are the demerits of internet marketing  ???

Online advertising began in 1994 when HotWired(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotWired) sold the first banner ads to several advertisers.The dot_com bust destroyed or weakened many of the early online advertising industry players and reduced the demand for online advertising and related services but in 2004 again online advertisement or internet marketing regain momentum as the business model for WEB 2.0 came together.
The portion of advertising that is done online is increasing significantly from time to  time as more devices such as mobile telephones and televisions are connected to the Internet and people spend more time on these devices.

One major benefit of online advertising over the traditional marketing ways is  releasing of information and content which is not limited by geography or time. 

Another benefit is the efficiency of the advertiser's investment. Online advertising allows  customization of advertisements, including content and posted websites. For example, AdWords,Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdSense enable ads to be shown on relevant web pages or alongside search results.

Internet Marketing has its own limitations also like consumers can't have tangible view of the products they are interested in,The seller will not be able to use personal interaction to influence the audience and spam offers 

Business Model?

To describe business model I decided to go with the basic objective: What are all the most important decisions you make when you design your business?

Developing a right commodity is hard. But there is something which is more harder and it is developing  a good business model. Luckily there is nothing sorcerous about a business model. It’s simply how a business plans to generate revenue and profits.

Business model is a reason or logic of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value which can be economic, social, cultural, or any other forms of value.

In theory and practices business model includes both formal and informal aspects of business i.e. purpose, offerings, strategies. Whenever a business is demonstrated, it hires a particular business model that explains the design of enterprise aspects in simple terms business model helps in understanding the manner by which the business enterprise delivers value to customers, tempts customers to devote for value and wins over those payments of profit.

Now after getting the idea about Business model it’s important to know popular types of business models  and they are as follows-

• E-BUSINESS MODEL -Dell and Apple are two of the examples which can be included in this category. They sell  PCs and other electronic goods directly online or through fully owned stores in case of Apple. The advantages include direct business-to-business or business-to-customer transaction processing that increases margins and help build the brand experience for the consumer
• Franchisee model- This is not a complete model, but dabs the business model of a flourishing business for doing business transactions. The businesses that follow this particular model are expected to pay fixed share on the revenues to the creator of the business model. Examples include Subway, McDonald's and range of other service providers.
• Advertisement based models for content- Most popular sites rely on this to build their revenues. Here the business creates content and displays an ad  with the content. The advertiser pays the business if the content is popular.

• Selling customer data- This is one of the modern models used by businesses that have large user base and plenty of useful information. Examples include Facebook . Facebook enables third parties to do highly targeted ads to understand the spending pattern and market the appropriate products to them