| LED Digest 2282: The Importance of Strategy in Web Marketing |
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A useful post on how to incorporate strategic planning into your business vision. Also in this issue, how UCE erodes the usefulness of email, a discussion of click fraud and its influence on Web publishing, AJAX, and the Sweet 16. ================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. November 6, 2006 Issue no. 2282 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Who Wants Spam? ==-- ~ Bob Huntsman "The downside of spam is that it greatly devalues the usefulness of email..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== ClickFraud - What's a Valid Click? ==-- ~ Shaun Johnston "I am part of the problem since I run a directory for which I charge PPC." ~ Brad Waller "I have seen Google catch fraudulent clicks from sites that looked fine..." --== Strategic Web Marketing ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "...in my experience of my own clients, strategy is implemented by few..." --== The Sweet 16 ==-- ~ John Audette "I'm pleased that they still hold some water after all these years." ~ Joe Halbrook "Never take permission as carte blanche." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Hardware and Software ==-- ~ Kerry Branham <Moderator Comment> --== What are You Doing with AJAX? ==-- ~ Will Bontrager ========== NEW =================================== From: Bob Huntsman Subject: Who Wants Spam? > The problem with spam is quite simple. We all > want no spam. Except for the spam that we want! - John Smart, LED Digest 2280 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1300/55/ Speak for yourself. I want no spam, period. Do not encourage any potential spammmers. The downside of spam is that it greatly devalues the usefulness of email because any email communication necessarily includes the time cost of dealing with spam issues, no matter how good your anti-spam tools are. Although I consider all UCE's spam, there is a huge difference between a concern that sends out 100 emails and one that sends out 10,000-1,000,000. The second group is selfishly spending an enormous amount of internet resources that they don't pay for in hopes of making money while spending little of their own.. Bob Huntsman http://copyrightmywebpages.com led, bobhuntsman.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Shaun Johnston Subject: Click fraud > If we want a "solution" to click fraud, when need to > know what that looks like, and then go get it. So let's > hear some proactive ideas and means. Otherwise, > click fraud is just, IMHO, more noise... - Michael Motherwell, LED Digest 2280 I agree, click fraud is just one more source of noise. One way to deal with it is the same as any other source of noise: finding a way to identify signals and distinguishing between sources of visits on the ratio of signal to noise. I am part of the problem since I run a directory for which I charge PPC. Even after eliminating any non-Mozilla browsers and any browser with "bot" in the name, some long sessions have many intervals between page-accesses of less than 5 seconds. Clearly not a human being surfing. But this is a source of noise that I let through and charge for. My standard test for "signal" is average number of pages visited, or ratio of one-page visits to 3-to-8-page visits, something like that. It should be a standard part of web metrics services to rank sources by such tests, maybe also for number of less-than-5-seconds intervals between page-views. This would be a rough ROI test. Maybe some services already do, the one I use doesn't (Web Ceo). Click fraud could be expected to be all single-visits to home pages. Of course, as fraud evolves to mimic signals, web metrics tests would have to evolve too. No problem. When I analyze visits to customer's site I host, visits from my directory come out as averagely qualified, a little better than Google, not quite as good as MSN, better than most national directories, as good as most other local directories. Then I publish these figures on my directory. Of course, I'm not the best person to do this, since I'm one of the directories being tested, but at least that data gets published. Cheers, Shaun Johnston -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Click fraud > Much harder to detect, and much more prevalent I expect, > is site owners manually clicking ads on their own sites from > time to time. I doubt that can ever be stamped out, but I don't > really think it matters too much. - Barry Mills, LED Digest 2281 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1301/55/ Actually, Google is very active in detecting this type of activity. When we first signed up for AdSense years ago, I saw an ad for a service I was interested in on our site so I clicked. I got an email within a day informing me that they had detected this click and that I was not to click on any ad on my site, even if I was interested. I'm sure they use cookies and IP addresses to look at where the clicks are coming from, and the onky ones who can get away with fraud are the ones using sophisticated programs to spoof IP addresses and click at random intervals while also not having a steady CTR for the site. I have seen Google catch fraudulent clicks from sites that looked fine and did not show signs of fraud that I could detect (and we saw their site stats too). These sites had consistent (within a tenth of a percent) CTR rates, but the traffic seemingly came from all over and behaved pretty normally. As for Google fraud, I have done spot checks and I have never found a day where they charged me for more clicks than I got. Just yesterday I got 10% of my clicks for free. But looking at one keyword for October, I was charged for 391 clicks, but my stats show I got 681 visits. Another had charges for 427 clicks and I recorded 578 visits. This implies Google is not charging for all clicks, and I am assuming that these are the ones being screened for fraud. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Web Marketing - the Importance of Strategy > I like to summarize this by saying, "It's not WEB Marketing; > it's MARKETING on the Web." From that perspective, I state > a simple model of the five factors... Strategic Planning, > Content, Design, Technology and Promotion - Michael Linehan, LED Digest 2278 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1297/55/ Further on the power of strategy... The effectiveness of any planning is enormously increased by being truly strategic. But, in my experience of my own clients, strategy is implemented by few. The usual reasons lie somewhere in the area of, "We just don't have the time." Given the lack of planning in most companies, developing a powerful strategic goal and plan to get there can give you an enormous competitive advantage. Strategic goals, Strategies, Tactics, Opportunistic marketing, Outcome-focused planning. What do they all mean? Clear action to build your business comes from clear understanding. Given that, let's look at a simple model of strategy, in English that is as plain as possible. FOUR STEPS TO A STRATEGIC PLAN 1. Define what you want... What are the most positive, far reaching and exciting benefits you want to create for yourself by the ultimate growth and success of your business? Different motivations can COMPLETELY change the necessary shape and course of your business. 2. Who are you selling to? You need to intimately understand who you are selling to and what they want. Selling to different kinds of people can drastically alter your marketing. 3. Therefore, what kind of business do you need to build? Your business, as it will exist, is the vehicle that will deliver what you want, in relation to the particular people you are selling to. What you need to do for this step: Choose some arbitrary time --- not waaaay off in the future, but not next week. Maybe a year, maybe five. Close enough to create excitement and some pressure, but not so close that looking at it automatically makes you think, "I'll never do this. " Vividly picture your business as it will exist at that time in the future - fully successful and fully delivering what you want. Now, describe that business --- every aspect of what it does, how it relates to people, how it's marketing, how it is regarded, what people say about it, how many employees there are, what products and services you provide, etc., etc. Do not decide --- describe. When we "decide" we can only operate in the information we already "know". To "describe" can also invoke the power of your imagination, creativity and intuition. The distinction is critical and powerful. 4. Now write your plan to build that business... Your plan is a collection of many tactics; large, fine detail, long and short term. It's about your marketing messages, your channels of delivery, and who you are reaching. All your chosen tactics are integrated into one coherent, interlocked scheme that will be sequentially implemented to move you powerfully and effectively to that business, as it will exist in the future. With such a plan, you not only have a course charted; you also have a powerful and effective measuring stick for all the constant decision points. Asking, "Is this tactic/opportunity a good idea?" begs the questions, "Evaluated how? Relative to what?" A strategic plan provides the "how" and the "what". Every decision becomes enormously smoother, faster and easier. Plan well. The results may astound you. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: John Audette Subject: Sweet 16 - Aw Shucks Greetings... Interesting to follow the discussion about the Sweet 16. As many I-Salers who are on this list know, I wrote the Sweet 16 as Moderator's Comments in I-Sales over a period of a couple of years. I'm pleased that they still hold some water after all these years. Adam has been encouraging (goading) me to post here, and he finally got me after sending me the following comment from an LEDer: -------------------- "I used to read and participate in I-Sales when your Dad was the moderator. I noticed in todays LED people seemed to be talking about him in the past tense. Is he, uh, still with us?" -------------------- Well, I'm still kicking. As Adam mentioned, I'm pretty much consumed these days by my #1 vice -- old Porsches. I restore 'em, work on 'em, and drive 'em at the track. There's always more to learn about working on them and driving them, so it gives me an opportunity to keep on striving. My very best wishes to everyone on this list who is involved with shaping the Internet on a daily basis. What a great time to be alive! Your Striving Subscriber, John Audette P.S. It's still *early*. Comment? http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1286/174/ -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Joe Halbrook Subject: Sweet 16 > The misuse of mailing lists for the purpose of unsolicited bulk > emailing - aka spamming - remains as repugnant now as it was back > then. Just because it was 'successful' does NOT make it legitimate. - Trevor Johnson, LED Digest 2278 In my nearly 10 years of experience in the anti-spam industry, I have learned that each mailbox owner owns the right to individually define spam / UCE / unwanted email / whatever you want to call it. For example, am I offended when an approved sender of email (who currently resides in my whitelist) begins to send me unwanted promotional emails at the rate of one a week? Yes. You may not be offended until you get three unwanted emails per week. Adam may be offended at a rate of one per month. The same thing is true if I purchase a product on-line and I start receiving cross-sell promotional mailings. I immediately unsubscribe from their mailing list (so far, they have abided by their published policies and have actually removed me from their lists). I know who they are, and if I decide to make repeat purchases, I have their address. But, you may WANT those mailings, simply as reminders. What I would suggest is this: If you don't want to risk losing subscribers to your "main" bread-and-butter mailing lists, start a "promo" sub-list from your main list - complete with an courteous and informational introductory email that allows them to opt-out of the "promo" mailings. Remember the Work-a-raunt that Steak-n-Shake talked about? Don't make me unsubscribe, miss good things, then re-subscribe. Don't put the burden on the CUSTOMER. Accommodate them. We humans are peculiarly loyal and understanding. As Barry Mills stated recently in LED #2279, "Normal people WANT companies we deal with regularly to communicate with us, and we EXPECT them to do so." But, each one of us draws the line between abiding by our expressed permission and abusing that permission. If someone crosses the line and starts abusing that permission (from the "promo" mailings) then you or I may retract that permission for "promo" mailings, without retracting permission to receive mailings from the "main" list. See what I mean? Play it safe. Never take permission as carte blanche. If you consistently play by the rules, and are courteous in requesting and informing your recipients, agreeing on the rules as you go, you simply can't go wrong. Thus, each individual mailbox owner's definition of spam / UCE / unwanted email / whatever you want to call it - is upheld. Win / win. Joe Halbrook http://cleanmymailbox.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Kerry Branham Subject: Hardware and software As a piggy-back to Tom Aman's comment in LED Digest 2281, > First, regarding Win98 - I know that many, many > of you are still running Win98, mostly because > of all the "problems" reported with XP. I don't know what problems he is referring to, but in the 4 years I have been using XP, I have seen the fewest problems of any previous MS OS's other than 2000 Pro. Yes, 98SE was much more stable than earlier versions, and was leaps and bounds better than the horrendous Me, but I would highly recommend that if anyone is still using it to make the switch. Microsoft stopped supporting Win98 this past year, and you cannot run newer versions of IE, Media Player, etc. on 98. It means that you can no longer get critical updates for flaws in the system - not just Windows, but the peripheral software already mentioned. PC's are so cheap these days that you can upgrade your OS by getting a new PC almost as cheap as purchasing the OS on its own. Even if you go with Win XP Home instead of Pro it is still better than sticking with an old OS. There are not a lot of differences between XP Home and Pro - they're mostly related to networking features, remote access, and another level of security, but for most users they wouldn't know the difference. Just make sure you are updated to SP2, because that has the latest security features and fixes. Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not an employee of Microsoft, nor do I have family that works there or anything like that. In fact, I've considered many times trying out Linux, but for what I do I would not be able to find anywhere near enough software to run on Linux, so I stick with MS. Kerry Branham K-S Marketing kib[at]ksmnet.com <Moderator Comment> In case you're interested, here's a really useful table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software for Linux: http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html -Adam -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Ajax > What are you doing with Ajax, is it as good as the hype? - John Smart, LED Digest 2279 AJAX is a combination of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to accomplish a specific task -- silently get information and display it within an already loaded web page. AJAX has its uses. My first implementation of AJAX is available for all the world to see at URL http://bontragercgi.com/JS_Rollover_Generator.html Feel free to view the source code. It's a bare-bones implementation. Similar functionality could have been implemented with an iframe, for this particular generator. But I needed the practice at that point of my learning. Other things we're doing with AJAX include (a) a one-click upgrade installation from a control panel web page of our most popular software title, complete with progress bar, and (2), an automatic RSS feed URL grabber that fetches the blog's home page, scans the source code to find the feed URL, and fills in the relevant form field with the information, all while the user continues filling in the rest of the form. Here is a very short list of ideas for things that might be done with AJAX: A form user selects a state or province in a form drop-down box. AJAX then fetches a list of cities for that selection and presents them in a second dropdown. An account number in a cookie is used to fetch a site visitor's buying history, which shows the purchase of a guinea pig exercise wheel several months earlier. Then, message appears by the visitor's cursor: "John, a 6-month supply of guinea pig bedding is on sale at 20% off, $4 instead of $5. Click here to add to cart." Adding an item to a cart no longer requires a web page load or reload. The current shopping cart total, including shipping charges, is displayed in the left navigation area at all times, on all pages of the web site, complete with one-click purchase suggestions for items similar to those already in the cart. A site visitor looks at a certain product more than once, or looks at several similar products, A "Would you like help with that?" message pops up next to the cursor. Depressing the keyboard "y" or clicking on the message yields a comparison chart complete with prices, discounts, warranties, shipping weight, popularity, and other up-to-the-minute information that may be used to weigh the choices. Some of the above could be accomplished using information stored in cookies, with the limitation that cookies are not scalable beyond a certain point. With AJAX, cookies can be used merely as keys to entire records in databases on the server -- which could be as big as the available space on the hosting account. Will Bontrager http://willmaster.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time." - George Carlin |
