Archive for the ‘Business over Web’ Category

Interactive Travel Consulting: Is Tourism Industry Ready For It?

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Travelers have the full globe open for exploration. Alaska to Australia, Siberia to Sri Lanka… A traveler, who rides on his hunch and has wanderlust, is unstoppable. A large number of travelers do not plan their itinerary and stroll down to some of the most unconventional places.

This is the genre of tourist who may need consulting at any given time and at unusual places. And here is where the interactive travel counseling takes birth. Internet and mobiles are the two powerful and effective medium that can be a handy tool for interactive travel consulting.

Travel and tourism service sector still need to evolve in this aspect of tourism. Most of the agencies and tour operators often end up in drawing the tour schedule and arranging for stay and food. However, actual help may be needed in dire straits when no other source of information and guidance is available.

  • Travel and tourism sector must consider setting up toll free numbers that can be reached from anywhere in the world and at any time irrespective of the time and zone a tourist is in. Providing around the clock direct contact with the agency from where the tourist started, that too in his / her native language will ease many troubles of the tourist roaming thousands of miles away.
  • Making customized tourist plans and information available for internet access; and / or providing it on any portable medium like CDs and flash drives shall be very handy. Tourists can inform the agency in advance about their likely area of operation and seek maximum information about the same.

  • Tourism must also collect the tourists who are willing to share their travelling experiences. Their information about the common problems faced at various areas they have recently visited may prove to be very useful interactive travel consulting source. Availability of contact numbers of previous visitors to the places where a tourist is planning to visit may be useful in seeking information in the need of the hour.
  • Tour operators must also plan to setup consultation centers for the incoming tourists. Locals who had visited various places previously shall be made available to guide foreign tourists in solving problems and providing crucial information that common tour operators fail to give.

As more and more tourists are willing to trade the unbeaten path, interactive travel consulting is what is going to help them immensely. Tourism industry must gear up to for efficient interactive tourism consulting in near future.

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Facebook going for the ‘Top Kill’

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Wardrobe malfunction is always a great PR tactic and let’s not call it a malfunction anymore – its a PRFunction. So, does the ‘Quit Facebook  day’ really bothers the Zuckerbergs? If you have the statistics in front of you, you would be surprised by the silent mileage extracted by FB. The overnight anti-FB count read at 26521.  Now if you want to count the kill after this ‘Quit facebook movement’, you can do that at your own risk – particularly if you are in the MySpace camp. The wardrobe malfunction does pay, even if you are the president.

A couple of things went right for Facebook at the same time – First it got a much needed facelift – Second it was splashed all across the TV channels that it was banned Pakistan and Bangladesh for hurting the national sentiments – Now that’s called the perfect recipe for a ‘Top kill’ PR campaign. Google would pay billions to be in FB’s shoes at this time…

Remember Starbucks – the maverick marketing team that changed the way cappuccino cups can be used as billboards… Lets get a glimpse of Starbuck-facebook tango –

So, now you know why the book has a new face…Its the new billboard. If Coffee can be sold here, then why not Ski rentals? Take a look for yourself…That’s economics for you and we know that it works, no matter how many people are after your ass…

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Can You Go To Hell For Unethical Affiliate Marketing?

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

You have been a perfect husband, a good father and a decent provider for your family. In real life you have helped people, but still when you die, you are sent directly to hell. You ask God why? And he shows you the extent of damage and deaths that were done through your affiliate marketing.


Affiliate marketing is a premier automated internet business that is carried out by many reputed bloggers and reviewers. But most of the times, when people venture into affiliate marketing; they conveniently tend to ignore the ethics that is required to support it.

Before venturing into affiliate marketing there is a set of questions that you need to ask yourself.

  • Do the people, who on your trust would click on the link, would genuinely receive value to their money?
  • Do you know the depth of the product? Have you tested the product on yourself?
  • Would you give the suggestive medicine that you are marketing to your own children/family?
  • Would you feel happy seeing your testimony on the landing page?
  • Are you really sure of the product? Is there is any chance of it being harmful or a scam?

If any of the above questions represent a “no”, than you are doing unethical affiliate marketing. Ethics and business are cohesive factors for achieving success levels. If you have attained success due to unethical affiliate marketing, you would eventually fail; primarily due to two reasons, karma and loss of your brand name. The entire platform of trade is executed on the internet on just one word, and i.e. “trust”. If people who have been following you on your blogs and have been crediting your website as a good piece of work, then you are eventually demeaning yourself by being associated with unethical marketing.

Medicines are one of the prime examples that are being used in affiliate marketing in an unethical way. Drugs that have more side effects than curing the patient are being marketed aggressing by respected bloggers.  These drugs play with the consumer emotionally by promising them instant weight loss or overnight acne cures. Some drugs cause adverse side effects like seizures, nausea and loss of consciousness and in some cases even deaths.

People have debated that if every sales person would try the product they sell, than there would be no salespersons. Well if their assumption is true that there should be official salespersons for guns and dope as well. There is no harm in affiliate marketing as long as you are ethically comfortable with the product. You would not like to get associated with murderers and scam artists in real life, than why affiliate yourself to such products online. Work ethically for your affiliate marketing, and you will have a sure shot success as your product would be genuine and would definitely help your consumer, thus increasing your sales and reputation.

In the end I can only tell this “Ensure ethical marketing and save yourself from going to hell.”

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Buck Up B2B Marketers!

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Digital technology and social media has opened up the market scenarios and have enabled marketers to succeed at high levels. On one front where the B2C marketers are achieving never attained success levels; on the other, B2B marketers are failing to optimize online efforts.

When a survey was taken for researching on B2B success, it was analyzed that 50% of them never blogged. Social media like Twitter and Facebook was not touched by 42%, and about 25% did not utilize Linkedln. Many of these B2B marketers did use of Adwords and other marketing and SEO related resources.

B2B marketers are somehow loosing the ploy of optimizing the web for generation of leads and enhancing their presence for prospective clients. The reason why most B2B marketers are struggling to find success is because of their one track ideology of revenue generation. 40% of B2B marketers have indicated generating sales opportunities as a major strategy, while 39% of survey participants were keen on traditional lead generation. Somehow B2B marketers are comparing their success with B2C marketers but are failing to gain the right momentum in online marketing.

It has been evaluated that B2B marketers are encountering problems while incorporating change in online marketing strategies. The difference between successful B2B marketers and their failing compatriot is the amount of involvement in implementation. In the survey the failing patterns of B2B marketers were evaluated and it was analyzed that 41% of B2B marketers felt that their need ended on generation of leads. Over 58% of B2B marketers met their sales team just only once during a month. Also, surprisingly there was 8% segmented B2B marketers who never met their online sales teams yet expected results.

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Facebook Vs Google Advertisements: Which is apt for your business?

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Advertising on Facebook seem to be catching attention of internet marketers. Some predict it to give a real tough competition to Google’s advertisings. A lot more companies are reserving a part of their budget for Facebook ads. This trend has significantly started showing up ever since Microsoft announced its $240 million investment in Facebook.

Already there are many businesses who are trying to engage their consumers and potential customers by setting up fan pages on Facebook. The advertising on Facebook seems to be the next new big ‘IN’ thing.

But honestly are Facebook advertisements really worth all the hype they have created?
Here you can find both positive and negative arguments and enough data to support both the views. So instead of condemning one or the other, the best approach for a business would be to use both for targeting different specifics.

When to use Google and when to use Facebook advertisements?
If click-through is really important to your website, and you can see that more people are likely to reach your site by search engines or your business belongs to a certain niche, going for a Google ad campaign would be a better option. Facebook advertisements have not been successful for pulling in the traffic as yet. Also, many people have observed the irrelevancy factor in the ad placing of Facebook e.g. an advertisement to date singles in an area was shown on many married peoples profiles. This is sheer waste of the advertising money.

The USP of Facebook advertisements is the idea of “Engagement ads”. This means that the advertisement here is not just for display and getting clicks. These ads will allow the people to make comments, become a fan of the company’s fan page and also see how many from the friends list made comments on the page etc. The feature of thumbs up and thumbs down will also be available.

According to Facebook these advertisements will be better targeted e.g. a person whose status message mentions something about a burger may find ad of a local eatery selling pizzas and burgers. So this will be like a widget and help you collect business intelligence.

Traditionally the advertisements on social media site have had poor click-through rate but a better conversion ratio. So businesses should carefully strategize their goals and seek out a campaign that best serves to fulfill it.

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Go Green: Adapting Green Strategies for Marketing

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Marketing and advertising has always been a prime mover of economic activity. They create a huge direct and indirect employment, a flow of money and initiate consumer activity that is a lifeline of any economy.
Owing to the criticality and necessity in business and revenue generation, marketing activity has mindlessly taxed the precious resources to achieve its motives and targets. The resultant is visible in the form of ruthless ecological destruction, depleting resources and energy crisis. The global concern for sustainable development has highlighted the need for going green in every sphere of human life; and that includes marketing.

Green Marketing for better future
Green marketing means deploying resources in a manner that reduces adverse impact on the environment. It incorporates processes that take care of sustainable ecological development and advancements in technology simultaneously. Digital advent is effectively helping ‘greening’ of marketing activity by changing the very fundamental methods of marketing. Green marketing can be effectuated,
• By utilizing greener mediums of marketing like internet marketing. The internet has been the key-initiator creating paper redundancy. Hitherto traditional marketing methods relied heavily on paper that gobbled a chunk of our green cover.
• By using mobile phones and cellular network to send messages directly to prospective customers. It can do away with the need of circulating pamphlets, brochures and other printed material.
• By using solar, wind and other non-conventional energy resources for illumination. It can reduce our dependence on traditional energy resources that are generated by fossil fuels or natural resources.
• By doing away with the use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials used commonly in marketing and packaging. Internet marketing can, instead, reach consumers’ homes without depending on these.

Green marketing from the core
Other than these outwardly methods of going green, the campaign will be effective and successful in a true sense only if it is incorporated at the root of every process including designing, manufacturing, marketing and waste disposal.
Internet marketing has already affected the marketing methods and strategies. More and more companies are adopting this eco-friendly method that rides on advantages offered by the internet. Consumer awareness program shall also be crucial in this aspect. Eco-aware consumers can opt for the product and methods that are less taxing on the environment. Large consumer preference for greener products will compel the manufacturers to adopt eco-friendly practices.

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Search Budget Presentations

Monday, March 29th, 2010

I-informationGlobe-819x1024Times, when most marketers are having trouble getting the CEO’s understand and interested in search. Any CEO, in fact, would hardly be willing to care about search marketing, as the way he sees it are two separate subjects. SEM for him is a combination of marketing and technology, and few marketers are able to make them understand how searches are capable of affecting their business goals.

Marketers talking to CEO’s about brand awareness, search ranking and keywords hardly help, and end up as unable to break ice. Bang clear on target, and let him know and understand, if money isn’t spent here, there will be lesser products to sell and sales will eventually drop. Explain how search marketing brings in revenue at low costs, and how what you are doing will coincide with the growth of his business prospects. CEO’s are least interested in any kind of jingo, apart from the money if this can make. They need to see that searches are able to increase share holder value and help them make money.

Marketers having a direct marketing background effectively understand the relationship with sales. Search marketers will do better and help people understand and admit that the Web is the biggest direct-marketing opportunity of all time, where every move is traceable and constantly measured so that they can be improvised and optimized. This is e-commerce, you know the value of every new visitor, the conversion rates and revisit.

Most companies look at marketing as printing a brochure or going for a trade show. Make sure to help them understand that the virtual world has a concrete and a solid base, and you can look on how every person interacts on your web-site. Furthermore, make them see where they went next and how they bought from you. Let them have a direct view of this virtual exercise, and you have a perfect tool to justify every cent of the proposed marketing expenditure plan.

internet-marketingWhat every executive really wants to see is sales, leads and leads expecting to close. He is hoping to catch on the projected revenue targets at any costs, and any talk on brand awareness, positive sentiment, site traffic or ranking on search results will only put him off. If marketers can focus on relating touches that they have made to customers and sales will be the only way to persuade people to allocate funds. Set the map right so they are able to see clearly which route is more economical and valuable as well. After all, your budget level also requires sensible justification.

Web metrics systems, like the free Google Analytics to the expensive ones that help you understand the need to be passionately made use of. Search Marketing would come to be more useful if it were, eighty percent marketing and twenty percent search. If you don’t understand the marketing basis in SEM, it would be very difficult for you to show how effective your campaign would be.

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Does social media rely on traditional media?

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

images--2Every now and then, we hear about another nail being hit in the coffin of traditional media, especially newspapers. Recent findings have suggested that the print editions of some renowned newspapers have been victimized by some combination of blogs, free-online news and Twitter. In Canada, some Television channels have requested the government to implement a TV tax and issue funds to save the local TV.

Not many people would disagree that journalists and news publishers should be paid for their work. However, the advertisement supported model is not generating enough revenue to sustain the conventional news gathering infrastructure.

If you know the basics of Economics, then you would know that if ad-space (supply, in economic terms) is blasting on every social networking site, then without a similar increase in advertisers (demand, in economic terms) the price will drop down drastically. Considering this, we can only hope that a new model will soon come up. Some newspapers have taken initiatives to issue e-books instead of print versions as prospective models for the future.

Wall Street Journal editor, Robert Thompson, has mentioned in an article that some websites can be best described as lice in the intestines of the internet. He also says that readers have been socialized in a wrong way and that search engines like Google have profited from that wrong perception. He strongly feels that much of the content on the internet should be free.

images--1Today, significant parts of the stories we see on social networks, blogs and tweets, have originated from the traditional media. While this does not mean that the bloggers don’t provide original news content and commentary, the question is: If we need to pay more for news content that we used to get for free, then will it negatively impact the quantity or quality of social media discussions around those news items?

Time will definitely provide an answer sooner than we think.

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