| LED Digest 1500: Know Your Target Audience |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. January 21, 2003 Issue #1500 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Introducing Marketleap -=Cached Pages and Google=- ~ George Forder "I am receiving phone calls every week from customers refering to outdated pages they are seeing on the web." ==== CONTINUING ================= -=Froogle=- ~ Fabien Faceries "...a question about Froogle and prices it displays." -=Search Engine Optimization (SEO)=- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "A sound marketing plan...utilizes ALL ethical tools available." ~ Sara Griffith "...know your company, know your product, know your target audience..." -=Do's and Don'ts for Catalogs?=- ~ Yuwanda Black "Has anyone experimented with having clients call in their orders using a voice mail system?" ~ Yalanda Lattimore "...a catalog on CD is the best option economically." ~ Richard Stubbings "...where did you buy the goodie? From the catalog?" ===== GEEK TIPS ================== -=Email Web Page Code=- ~ Tom Anson ==== BILLBOARD =================== -=Web Viability for Wholesale Suppliers?=- ~ Rusty Park ====== NEW ======================================= <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, I'd like to take a moment to introduce this week's LED sponsor, Marketleap. Marketleap is an Internet marketing and consulting firm that specializes in SEO. In addition to its consulting practice, Marketleap is an authorized value-added reseller of Inktomi's popular paid inclusion search marketing programs: Inktomi Search Submit and Inktomi Index Connect. Inktomi paid inclusion guarantees that your website is being indexed and included in some of the world's leading portals. Marketleap recently received a Five Star Rating from the recent Buyer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms, a report from research group MarketingSherpa.com. Marketleap consultants are also regular speakers at Internet.com Search Engine Strategies conferences hosted by Danny Sullivan. Bottom line: you're in good hands with Marketleap, and we are proud to feature them as an advertiser all week in the LED! Please remember that these Key Sponsors enable us to continue offering the LED free of charge, and your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Adam Audette ------------------- From: George Forder Subject: New Topic - Old pages appearing With all the discussion on SEO recently, I have what appears to be the opposite problem. I am receiving phone calls every week from customers refering to outdated pages they are seeing on the web. Pages that were deleted as much as a year ago are still appearing somewhere on the Internet. I know that the Google bot crawled my site within the last few months, yet today I received a product request from a page that got removed in July 2002. Is this an ISP caching problem? How can I ensure that viewers receive up to date web content. Should I date each page and ask them to CTRL F5 if older than a certain period? Any advice suggestions? George Forder Spindrift International spindrift.co.za ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Fabien Faceries Subject: Froogle Hi, I do have a question about Froogle and prices it displays. If I search on Froogle for "agentwebranking", the results I get make no sense in term of price. Prices that are displaying are not the price we are selling our software for. Is this because Froogle is still in beta? Fabien Faceries Search engine ranking software http://www.agentwebranking.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: SEO Over and over, I'm seeing the main point being missed. A sound marketing plan encompasses MANY mediums (online and off) and utilizes ALL ethical tools available. SEO happens to be a very time consuming function that although profitable, takes away too much time from your core business as well as other marketing strategies. Unless you yourself are an optimizer or you enjoy little to no competition, congrats! If not, you'd better get a SEO. Of course this takes a lot of research and it can become very pricey so it's suggested that you go with a personal recommendation by a happy customer. Another word of advice, make sure your SEO can keep their customers happy throughout the whole process. The true test is ensuring that your SEO isn't spamming the search engines under their customer's web address and only time will expose this. An indication of a good SEO is many long-term customers enjoying positive results. The bottom line is you want to attract visitors and convert them into customers while making a profit. If SEO can help make this happen, by all means go for it! All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez cosmicbreath.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Sara Griffith Subject: SEO > ... we developed these sites purely as a > marketing tool, not to celebrate each location. > These sites did not exist until we suggested > this strategy to them. - Adam Dorfman, LED 1498 > That's where businesses can get into trouble. > The search engines themselves state that if you > are... utilizing a technique purely to boost search > engine visibility, then you are probably spamming. - Shari Thurow, LED 1499 What bothers me about this post is the total lack of understanding of the word "marketing tool," and the idea that a marketing tool is for search engine visibility and therefore spamming. Companies use "marketing tools" all the time in their advertising when they target their ads. A diverse company or one who operates in a variety of places has good reason to have separate sites that have absolutely nothing to do with search engine visibility and those doing SEO and the search engine gurus should know this, but apparently haven't got a clue. Whether advertising on the Internet via a website, or on TV, radio or the newspaper, different ads, i.e., websites, are not only good marketing tools, they are a given. If we are to take Ms. Thurow's advice, then General Motors should not have separate sites for employee information, Cadillac division, truck and bus division, etc. The military should not have separate sites for each branch of service as well as retiree benefits, etc. A national real estate company should dump all its advertising for Southern California into a site dealing with New England, etc. This is pure marketing lunacy. In marketing and advertising, companies target ads for the day of the week, the age or gender of the target audience, the location of the target, the income level of the target, even the political leanings of the target, plus a myriad of other target considerations. A business website is, at its simplest level, a targeted advertisement. My advice is "know your company, know your product, know your target audience." Make your decisions based on what is best for the end user, not what is best for some search engine guru. Think about how you do your own searches in the search engines. I personally skip all the first page and often the second page listings on the major engines because they are so vanilla and so non-targeted, the choices presented are useless to me as the end user. In the same LED, it is stated that Froogle eliminates branding. If you are looking for a particular brand, do you really want to have to go to each site to see if they carry that brand or would you rather search on the brand and get each site that sells it? If a company has various divisions for unrelated products, do you really want to wade through toys and gifts if you are looking for computers or video equipment or travel? Sara Griffith pal2pal.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Yuwanda Black Subject: Catalogs Adam: First, I want to sincerely thank all of those that responded to my post regarding catalogs. The detail with which my post was answered surprised me. Thank you can't begin to cover the valuable information we have gleaned. I wanted to clarify a couple of points and ask one more question (not to appear greedy, but the insights are just so darned good!). 1. We do offline (postcard) advertising. That's where most of the catalog requests are coming from. And, many have passed along the postcard to others who have requested a catalog. We will always do offline advertising, as I believe it's a must for success. 2. Our demographic research preliminarily indicates that our customers prefer catalog to online shopping. We are targeting African American homeowners, ages 34-55. This group is not quite comfortable using their credit cards online. 3. The catalog is more a brochure of private label products. It won't carry our entire online offering as we can't afford to produce a catalog of this magnitude. This brochure serves a double purpose: a) to keep our name/brand in front of the customer; and 2) to offer an alternative method for ordering for those who don't have access to a computer (even though it will carry limited products). 4. We are willing to be patient and build this business slowly, so we are not looking for a "quick fix," but a road that will eventually lead to profitability. We project full profitability (ie, to be able to take reasonable salaries) in three years. May of this year will be the one year mark. Now, my question: Has anyone experimented with having clients call in their orders using a voice mail system? We can't afford a call center service, and hiring someone at this point to answer the phone is just not a possibility. We currently have a live voice mail service, but they don't take orders. They will only direct the customer to leave a voice mail if they wish. To clarify, a customer would be able to leave their name, telephone number and the product # from the catalog, and then we would call them back within a limited time frame to get the credit card information? Again, thank you for your insightful responses. Yuwanda Black EthnicHomeDecor.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Yalanda Lattimore Subject: Catalogs I think sending a catalog on CD is the best option economically. We have to think in terms of computer capabilities of the average shopper and they are not all technically inclined. A CD will allow you to place a 700 MB website (if you will) in front of the customer without the expense of printing, extra graphic work, shipping cost or anything else associated with the development of producing a printed catalog. My business doesn't require a catalog, but I publish my website to CD each month just to be able to put it in someone's hand whenever they ask for my dot com. If you will remember, this is how the world wide web started in the beginning. Remember we started getting all those advertising CD's in the mail. I remember long time ago getting one from Volkswagen. Yalanda Lattimore DryerBuzz EZine & Interactive CD www.dryerbuzz.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Richard Stubbings Subject: Catalogs > But the catalog shows me stuff that I didn't even > know I wanted! ... The catalog bought out the impulse > shopper in me! - John Smart, LED 1499 Ah but where did you buy the goodie? From the catalog? Or did you first look for the same product on the cheaper site? Now you know it's out there, why not find it cheaper from the site you usually buy from? Richard Stubbings Kulture Shock http://www.kultureshock.co.uk ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Tom Anson Subject: "E-mail this page to a friend" code As a means of site promotion, I would like to include an "E-mail this page to a friend" link on my pages. I have never seen how to accomplish this in the texts on HTML I have, and looking at the code on other sites (Yahoo!, ect.), the whole thing looks very complicated and confusing. I am wondering if anyone on this list could off suggestions on how to accomplish this, with examples and explanations of the code. Looking at what I have seen, it appears that I would have to do a separate page for every page I want to have e-mailable. Is there a way to have one page that sends the e-mail, with a personal message from the sender to the recipient, but can be used for any page on the site? You see my problem; if you have a solution, I'd love to hear it (as, I'm sure, would many others.)Thanks. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Rusty Park Subject: Web viability for wholesale suppliers? As a novice, and as a health food wholesaler to the trade, I have wondered for some time if a web wholesale site is effective to gain new business. Does anyone have practical experience in this area? Thanx! Rusty Park ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" 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