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Competitive Pricing + Good Branding = Better Sales Results

Internet Success Hub — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:57:47 +0000

Over the years we have been constantly upgrading online expertise for our clients so that they are able to realize that its value is at par with what they do offline. Various factors like usability, packaging, pricing affect both in online and offline scenario.

Most often than not, it is widely assumed that price is the single most important factor that will tilt the customers’ decision in one’s favor. This may be true going by conventional thinking however customer behavior is equally impacted by the company’s brand and how trustworthy it is in the market. Our study across the websites on different verticals has brought to the fore that pricing is given extra weightage and other aspects are often underplayed.

How it affects the website is that visitors’ perception is limited to the cost benefit only but their implicit desire for a good brand is not met. This by and large does not reflect the totality of your product or service.

To ensure that this does not happen

Make your brand highly visible on your website
Highlight how your core company information is related to your target segments – emphasizing how your brand connects to their needs
Ensure that trust building factors like testimonials, awards, accreditations etc find a judicious place on their website
How you stack against your competition should also find strategic place on your website

The above points are only a fragment of what all can be done on the website for building a strong brand. The true value of this lies in how strategically you do it. An amateur approach only undermines the effectiveness of these on your website.

We at ATN honed this expertise using both our dedicated cross industry research and also by practical implementations of these for our clients. Our overall success encouraged us to share our product expertise across a broader market. We identify more with people who wish to go that extra mile for their website and we intent to help them or simply take this part for them and fix it optimally.

This article is published by The Web Strategy Company, the online resource for industry specific strategies and tactics. We publish articles on a daily basis that focus on using your online presence to address key business challenges including sales effectiveness, business growth and financial results. This website is a knowledge centre produced by AftertheNet, a leading global web strategy consulting company. We have worked with clients across the globe in many industries, bringing them ideas, process and expertise in making their online presence a strong pillar in addressing business challenges.

As a senior member of the team at The Web Strategy Company and its parent AftertheNet, Yan uses his diverse online industry experience to bring to you cutting edge ideas and strategies. These are not only easy to understand but also simple in implementation. You will readily identify with his articles and see these connecting to your day-to-day practical business challenges.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/competitive-pricing-good-branding-better-sales-results-1437296.html

The Paint By Numbers Guide To Artful Blogging

Internet Success Hub — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:03:44 +0000

A Guest Post by Greg Hayes from Live Fit Blog.

Do you subscribe to the idea that blogging is an art form? I do.

Britannica Online defines art as “The use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.”

If you’re a blogger, then by definition, you most certainly engage in the following activities during the creation of content:

Creative Writing
Web Page Design (Aesthetics)
Idea Development (Novelty)
Social Media (Shared Experiences)

When we start our blog, we read the A-list bloggers, and they repeat the mantra of blogging, “CON-tent, CON-tent, CON-tent!” Yet, its so easy to get caught up in the allure of unique visitors, page views, and keyword content. All the background noise distracts us from the core of what we do, which is, in reality, a form of art.

Creative Writing

Like all other forms of art, the gift of creative writing is enhanced through practice and study. Research into the habits of many successful authors shows that most are well-read people. Reading the work of others shapes your own creative writing skills. Being well read keeps ideas flowing, and prompts you to expand your skills.

In the online realm, read the works of Copyblogger, Write to Done, and Men With Pens. These are places to hone your writing skills. There are others as well. Seek them out.They are masters at the craft of writing, and just like any student, studying will hone your skills.

Web Page Design

The artistry of blog design can take many forms. For instance, what experience do you hope to provide for your readers. If you look at Zen Habits, you’ll find a very clean design, with a strong focus on core content. Leo Babauta’s page design clearly adheres to the theme of his content, which is minimalistic in nature.

By contrast, John Chow’s site is geared toward the process of making money online. Readers should expect to find more advertisements and promotional materials. This is consistent with the experience John Chow is attempting to create for his readers.

These are just two examples. The point here is to choose a blog design that is consistent with the experience you want to create for your reader. Within those constraints, the options are endless.

Idea Development

The odds of choosing a truly novel niche are slim. There are very few subjects around the net that haven’t been covered in some detail. But, the same holds true for painting. Paintings of women are a dime a dozen. But there is only one Mona Lisa.

The process of creating a work of art demands novelty. No matter how crowded your niche, the experience you provide for your readers is what will differentiate you from the crowd. So, whatever you do, DON’T try to copy the success of others. Instead, study the success of other artists. Learn from them. Then apply what you learn in your own unique way to provide something new and fresh for your audience.

Social Media

Works of art are meant to be shared with others. What value would the works of Van Gogh or da Vinci bring to the world if they were secreted away, never to be seen again? The same holds true for your blog. Get out there and socialize with others in the online community. Take advantage of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and all the others to share your work with the world. Revel in both the praise and critique of your works. It’s all part of the process.

Blogging is a unique art form. It blends aspects of creative design, writing, technical development, graphic media, and other skills to create something new and unique for readers around the world. It provides a novel, open platform for sharing new ideas. Take advantage and push the form to its limits. This is the essence of artistry.

About the author: Greg Hayes writes Live Fit Blog, a blog with tips about living a balanced lifestyle, fitness, what it means to be a father, friend, husband, and much more.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Paint By Numbers Guide To Artful Blogging

Thesis Theme for WordPress Upgrades to Version 1.6

Internet Success Hub — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:23:39 +0000

One of my favorite WordPress themes – Thesis – has in the last week released an update with some pretty cool features.

My strategy with blog design is like this. I generally aim towards a completely customized blog design that will give my blog a distinct look and brand – but before I work towards that I almost always start with a more affordable option because I like to test to see whether the blog is going to work or not.

As a result I’ve always been on the look out for great themes and when Chris Pearson and Brian Clark started DIYthemes and released the Thesis theme I was keen to test it.

I used Thesis as the first theme on TwiTip and have been very happy with it.

I’m actually about to release a complete overhaul of the design of that blog (completely custom) but in the year or so since TwiTip’s release I’ve been more than satisfied with Thesis. It’s been easy to use, it’s set up really well by default for Search Engine Optimization and it’s been easy to add extra things in (like advertising spots etc).

I never did much with changing much of the default design on TwiTip but many bloggers use Thesis as the basis for quite impressive customizations. You wouldn’t know it to look at but blogs like Chris Brogan, CopyBlogger, Laughing Squid and Rae Hoffman all use Thesis as the basis for their blog design.

The new update for Thesis (you get all these updates for free if you’ve already got it) takes the version up to 1.6. It includes new navigation menus with drop down menus and the ability to change colors throughout the themes without having to get into the code.

I’m told also that Thesis 2.0 is also being worked on and promises to be a fantastic update.

PS: here’s a cool video that shows just some of what Thesis is like to use – in it Chris Pearson plays around with changing the default layout in a number of ways to shot you how you can begin to customize it.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Thesis Theme for WordPress Upgrades to Version 1.6

PR People Getting Pushier with Bloggers Since the Recession

Internet Success Hub — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:29:58 +0000

A guest post by Krizia from Eat Smart Age Smart

I’ve been blogging since June 2007 when I launched my beauty site . In April 2009, I launched a healthy eating site with the encouragement of my Internet coach Yaro Starak and in the last few months I’ve noticed a shift in the way I deal with publicists.

When I first started blogging, I actually went out and bought beauty products to review them on the site.

During a conference, an exhibitor told me that in my position (promoting skincare and make-up brands on the Internet at no cost to the manufacturer), I should never have to pay for products and I should be getting them for free by contacting the companies.

I didn’t need to hear that twice. On the following Monday morning, I started calling and emailing skincare and make-up companies to get review samples.

I crafted an introduction letter with the most important points about my blog and the reason why I was asking for samples.

In very little time, I started received samples and before I knew it, I became inundated with products from the U.S., Canada and as far away as the U.K.

It got so bad, that the guys at my pick-up area (I rent a UPS address) started complaining about the number of parcels (I’ve received several thousand dollars worth of samples) I was receiving and they were threatening to seriously increase my yearly fee. Luckily I received a few samples I could share with them and they quickly forgot about the idea of increasing my fees.

The samples were taking over my home and I couldn’t give them to friends and reviewers fast enough. In order to keep up with the flood of samples, I started running contests on the blog in order to give away products to 1) clear my home 2) put my readers to work so they could write reviews that I could post on the blog 3) secure some sponsorship dollars from beauty companies to keep up with these contests.

In 2007 and 2008, publicists (who I dealt with to get these samples) would email me to let me know they would gladly send me the samples I requested and asked that I email them once the post was up on the blog.

In many cases, publicists liked the concept of the product review so much that they would recommend my site to their marketing departments for paid reviews or other paid advertisement opportunities that were incredibly lucrative to me.

I still remember that in 2008, I got a really incredible contract via my ad service company (I have a company that takes care of selling ads on my blog) with a large pharmaceutical company to write six posts for them to try educating readers on the benefits of their product. The deal was to net me $8,000 for those six articles and the only thing I had to do was to get the copy reviewed by the pharmaceutical company to ensure that I wasn’t using any medical words in the wrong way.

This was an exciting point in my blogging career since that type of contract is far more lucrative than running site ads or Google AdSense ads.

Everything came to a stop in October 2008. As the stock markets were tumbling, panic was setting in, real estate prices were falling, companies were laying off workers and hard copy magazines were folding, I received an email from my media company informing me that the pharmaceutical company was ceasing the campaign I had started and that they had to cut back on the fees I was supposed to get (I only got $1,600 in the end for three features).

It was a devastating moment for me, but I thought things would get back to normal soon. I don’t think at that time that I understood how things were going to change.

Life as a blogger since the recession and my relationship with publicists

It took me some time to realize that things where changing; but because I was so busy working, I had not noticed the signs of change.

It’s only spending 90 minutes in one day answering emails from publicists that it hit me.

>>> Here’s what I was observing:

1) I was getting at least two to three times the number of pitches to review products. I was spending a lot of time emailing back publicists asking them to send basic essentials like photos, a press releases and price information. Some of these emails from publicists contained only a few short lines “we love your blog, will you feature our product, here’s a link.”… that’s not much to work with.

2) I was getting more requests from non-bloggers looking for link exchanges. These requests were coming from companies that had sites which sold beauty and hair care products on the Internet. They wanted me to add them to the front page of my blog, while they would give me a link on their blog on a page that was almost impossible to find and not visible from the homepage. This happened a lot and it floored me that these companies didn’t get that I didn’t want to give them free publicity while my site was buried somewhere on their site.

3) I was no longer receiving ANY offers for sponsorship opportunities on my site.

4) The few requests for free samples that I had sent were returned to me with a long string of questions:

“How long have you been blogging?”
“What’s your PR rank?”
“Are you on Twitter?”
“Are you on Facebook?”
“How many unique users?”
“How many page views?”
“How fast can you get our review on your site?”
“Have you won any awards in the past?”
“Send us links to past reviews you’ve written.”
“What angle will you take with this feature?”
“I need all your company details before we release any samples to you.”
“Will you promote this on social media networks?”
“Are you going to shot a YouTube video like you did for other brands?”
“You said the review would be up last week, WHERE IS IT?” … etc.

As you can see, I’ve started dealing with really demanding publicists and in some cases rude and impatient publicists. I was never asked so many questions in the past when I requested samples.

>>> Samples are being denied or scaled back:

I’ve contacted companies that in the past had sent me boxes and boxes of samples (and I do mean full-size products) and when I contacted them recently, they would say “sorry, we’re not sending any samples right now, but if you want we can provide you with information for you to write a review on your site”. Well, it’s hard to be excited about a product you’ve not tried.

In some cases, companies were sending those ridiculously small samples you get at your department store and it’s still unclear to me how they expect me to write a review when I can only test the product for two days (we usually test products for two-to-three weeks before writing a review.

Here’s a photo of products I received the same week for review:

As you can see one company sent me the smallest possible size while the other company sent me full size products.

Maybe it had to do with the niche?

The interesting thing is that I launched a new blog on healthy eating and healthy lifestyles in April 2009 (www.EatSmartAgeSmart.com) and my relationship with publicists is vastly different from one niche to another. The blog tackles healthy eating, but I also focus on fitness. The fitness publicists have not been really easy to deal with during this recession.

One company (which manufactures supplements) that contacted me to send products for review also wanted to know how much it would cost to sponsor spots on my site. They actually wanted to pay to have banners on my site and not only receive a free review!

I remember that when I sent them the finished post I wrote for them, the publicist sent an email thanking me for getting their company circulating in the social media networks. They were thrilled and I was thrilled.

In contrast, I’ve contacted a number of fitness companies who have said “NO, we don’t send samples to bloggers. We only deal with major media. If you want to test the product, you’ll have to buy it”.

In the cases where a fitness company was willing to send me samples, I’d be subject to daily or weekly emails asking: “When will our review be up?” to “The client is getting nervous and impatient, WHERE IS THE REVIEW?” to “I saw the review and there are things that you wrote that are wrong.” to “We don’t like ‘this word’ you need to change it in the review NOW”.

Most fitness reviews have been received with a string of negativity, while my healthy eating reviews are usually quite well received and the publicists or owners of companies jump for joy at the idea that I’m helping get the word out.

So how am I dealing with publicists since the recession?

In the case of negative backlash, I’ve decided to ignore those publicists and not let them affect me or affect my work. I usually won’t work with that publicist anymore.
When I get praised for a review, I quickly email the publicist and company back and thank them and I’ll usually get my traffic assistant to take that link to more social media networks.
I’ve created an auto-reply that delivers an email with a link that takes publicist straight away to a PDF they can download that gives them all the requirements we need to write a post. If we don’t get all those elements, I will pass on the review and will not chase after publicists. This also has helped cut back on the number of follow-up emails I send publicists.
I’ve set clear expectations in that PDF and do make it clear that a review will take eight weeks before it’s featured on the site. And that once the review is up, I will send them a link.
I’ve said ‘no’ many times to publicists who had a burning deadline to meet if I couldn’t make it fit in my publishing calendar and if that would be adding to my stress level.
When I contact a company for samples, if I feel that getting samples is hard work and I’m being asked loads of questions and am given tons of excuses why they don’t release samples to smaller media outlets, I’ll usually walk away and find another product to review or another topic for my blog post.

I’m not the only one finding it hard dealing with publicists these days

I’ve spoken to other beauty bloggers and editors of magazines (who were not bloggers) and they’ve also found that more and more publicists are being quite pushy, demanding and sometimes rude.

They also feel things are quite different since the recession and they’ve found themselves having to put their foot down and ask the publicist to no longer contact them on a daily or weekly basis and tell them that once the review is ready, they will be contacted.

My theory is simple: Publicists and companies now know that bloggers have a lot of weight on the Web and with the recession hitting advertising budgets really hard, publicists are turning to bloggers to get the word out about their products and also as quick way to getting into social media networks without having to spend any money.

Manufacturers realize that buying a full page ad in a magazine that would costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars will affect their profits if they aren’t able to calculate the rate of return on investment, while hiring a PR firm to get a few samples (that costs very little to the company) out to thousands of bloggers and demanding quick turn around on the features is much cheaper.

They get their new launches to circulate all over the Internet and thousands of bloggers telling their readers to go out and buy the product, and they don’t even have to write a cheque to the bloggers.

This situation could be quite specific to lifestyle bloggers, but I’d love to know if other bloggers also feel more pressured when dealing with publicists since the beginning of the recession.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

PR People Getting Pushier with Bloggers Since the Recession