Web site direct visits yield greatest returns

A new study by San Diego-based search marketing firm, Engine Ready, found direct access — through directly typing in an URL or accessing a bookmark on a return visit — to a client’s web site yield better results than visits from e-mail, landing pages or organic and paid search results.

Visitors coming directly to a web site had a conversion rate of 3.3% — higher than any other visit type. The same direct visitors spent an average of 5.2 minutes on the site, viewing an average of six web pages during their visit. Referred traffic visitors converted 3.0% of the time and viewed just four web pages during an average stay of 4.1 minutes. Overall, search traffic had the lowest conversion rates — 1.4% for paid search and 1.2% for organic searches. Organic searches did tend to yield a high number of pages viewed — an average of five per visit.

Ready for mobile marketing? Here’s an interesting dilemma

For all of you thinking you’re barely able to get your hands around web-based marketing, the news out of the Apple camp — producer of the I-have-to-have-one-now iPhone — is that they’ve recently found themselves behind the eight ball when it comes to working with people and companies who want to produce software (read: custom applications) for their new creation. With over 100,000 requests to download the instruction manual on how to play nice with the iPhone, Apple clearly underestimated other’s people’s vision for what the sleek black and silver device is capable of.

What does this mean to you, Mr. Marketer?

Well, Apple predicts an additional 10,000,000 (yes, seven zeros) phones to be sold this year, topping out at about 12 to 13 million happy little sets of fingers tapping away. Think how your business could market to consumers who basically eat and sleep with these things just a few inches away and the possibilities are endless (or, at least, mesmerizing).

Twittering and Tweeting: A Simple Social Network Builds Trust And Friendships

Almost everyone is familiar with the term “blog” (you better be — you’re reading one right now!). Most companies and organizations have even embraced blogging — to different degrees — either on their own web site or via one of the many blogging web sites. Business and professional blogs or online journals are being established to give CEOs points of view, as marketing vehicles, to impart breaking news, evoke opinions in consumers, test new product ideas and even serve as a way to informally educate customers.

But what’s this whole Twitter thing about?

If you’re like me, Twitter is something that your kids probably know more about. To them, it’s a way to keep their friends up to date on what they’re doing (yes, eating breakfast, working on homework or even how the date they are on is going).

But leave it to us “older” kids to think up business uses of Twitter and its cousins, Jaiku (recently bought by Google), Tumblr and Plazes. BTW, really, who comes up with these names? It’s like they’re randomly drawn from a Scrabble game gone bad.

First, an introduction to the universe of Twittering (or “tweeting,” to be more specific). Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that allows registered users to send updates (called “tweets”) to the Twitter web site, via SMS, instant messaging or third-party applications. These tweets are then broadcasted to your list of subscribed friends via the method they prefer (so, they may receive an SMS, instant message, RSS or e-mail update of your recent post).

Oh, did we mention tweets are limited in length to being text only and a strict 140 characters maximum in length (which brings up the whole concept of a haiku-like tweet, made even more funny if you did a “haiku on jaiku!” But we digress).

Alright, so what are the practical uses of this? Well, consider that the Los Angeles Fire Department recently used this technology to communicate with victims of the October 2007 wildfires. Prominent U.S. Presidential candidates such as Ron Paul, John Edwards and Barack Obama also use tweets to keep their constituencies up to date.

Your company or organization might use Twitter — or at least the concept behind it — to communicate with attendees of a class, conference or event to keep them updated on changes or breaking news. There might also be a need for this in situations where someone is coming to meet you for an appointment and might be updated along the way or as a reminder (take note, healthcare, homebuilders and real estate clients!).

Looking for a consumer use? Maybe your automated home sends a text message to your phone when your kids are home or that UPS has left a package. Update colleagues or coworkers when you’ll be late to an appointment.

In the end, the idea of these social networks is innovative: repeated simple encounters (both in person and, these days, electronically) help develop trust and friendship. You’re building a cooperative network with a technology that too soon, our kids will already be well versed in using.

Online Monitoring: Know Your Virtual Reputation

An interesting question came up recently when we were meeting with a client about their web site and its search engine rankings. This client was well-versed on the somewhat “black box” methodologies of search engine rankings and knew that offsite linking was often a good way to enhance organic (or unpaid) listings. So they sprung the question, “Should we have an entry in Wikipedia on our organization?”

A good question indeed, and one we began hearing more and more. So we thought about this and began to see a greater need for what’s now called reputation management, often affected through the monitoring of online actions and opinions. In fact, the acclaimed Wikipedia defines reputation management as “…the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about these actions….”

In fact, smart marketers should definitely be monitoring — and managing — their reputations online, but not for the reason this client thought (although, yes, it could conceivably help out your search engine ranking depending on how frequently your entry here and elsewhere is visited). Online monitoring is valuable as it gives companies and organizations the ability to truly listen to the experiences, opinions and feedback of past, current and prospective customers.

You’ll get to hear first hand what your target market is thinking and experiencing — both the good and bad. And for those that pay attention to what is being said, how it is being communicated and under what circumstances, smart marketers can actually use these sources to reach out and engage these consumers, integrating themselves into the conversations (herein lies the “management” aspect).

It is important not to see every conversation about you as a crisis, but rather as an opportunity. An important obstacle in reputation management is certainly the time it takes to monitor, maintain and react to the conversations. But done smartly — and consistently — you’ll turn regular customers into evangelists as you show them you’ll go the extra mile to address their concerns or reward their loyalty.