mole in communities

Received an interesting post from the e-mint network:


Does everyone know about the marketing mole thing where people pretend to be ordinary chatters/members and drop product names all the time in their chats?

Let me tell you a story that is perhaps shocking, definitely sad but also true. No, I will not name names, sorry.

Some emarketing companies, primarily in the US, create phantom persona for the web. these 'individuals' then post comments, interact within communities, build reputation and presence etc. The funny thing is that they (the persona) seem to be at it all the time...soooo pervasive. Why? Becuase there is a TEAM of people pretending to be Jenny age 24, interested in horses and Playstation or whatever.

So this team pretending to be Jenny cover themselves pretty well. Do a whois and follow through on Jenny's cute little home page and you will be left enough crumbs to get a real address or phone number. Send a letter and Jenny will answer, she'll even send a photo. Make a call and Jenny's answer machine will kick in. Sadly Jenny is always busy and can never meet..
What's the point? Well, when Jenny eventually has enough clout and 'readership'....
Product endorsement.

Already large companies who would be lynched probably in the marketing press if it got out are employing such phantoms to say:
(this is jenny talking now..in a chat..on her homepage or wherever)
*hey I went to see that film, xyz, last week. Wicked. I loved the bit when...
need I say more?

Meanwhile back at phantom corporation an invoice is issued to film corporation Z
As an ethical marketer I find such tactics disturbing... but enormously fascinating too. The long term committment and resourceful employed in such activities demonstrates sharp thinking if nothing else.

I would hazard a guess at 100 Jennies worldwide but that could be way out.

e-mint - http://www.e-mint.org.uk

reciprocal link

you have got a nice site, and don't want to add reciprocal links on it - but still run exchange programs?

Just create a blog such as this one, and stick your link on it - a blog is not as much branded as a company website, and gives you more freedom regarding outbound links:

Here we, go, I stick one of them in this post:
Velnet Web Logo Design & Hosting UK
Velnet designs provides low cost website and logo design services.
Free domain name and web hosting with all web design project.

google is making the news...again

Google is developing an online payment system, different from eBay’s PayPal system.

Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) said that they were working on an online payment service, confirming press reports earlier in the week, which said the service was being developed under the codename ‘Google Wallet’.

However, Schmidt added that Google does not intend to offer a person-to-person stored-value payments system similar to that offered by PayPal.

PayPal allows consumers to make online payments by funding electronic accounts using their credit cards or checking accounts.

Schmidt told Reuters: “The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers."

There is no trace of such a technology in the patent they have released early this year. Really exciting to see what it will look like - google has proved to be very good at building features rich application easy to use. Waiting for the beta release ...

the form assembly - great site for forms

The Form Builder

The Form Builder is a tool for creating standard compliant web forms. It integrates the wForms extension and relies on a set of technologies like XML, XMLHttpRequest, XSLT and DOM (a.k.a Ajax) to provide a seamless single-screen experience.

This is one area where it is often difficult to get it right:
- usuability
- user experience
- compliance

This is perfectly handled by this form builder - great stuff.

welcome to open marketing!

there was open source - welcome to open Marketing - I find the idea brilliant:
running a marketing campaign for 12 weeks, focus on a specific product and deliver open results and analysis - http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6086.asp

Internet is an "open" market, and change the way we are thinking - the first industrial revolution was a new era for services. Internet bring a new revolutions - revolution of the information. Everybody has now access to extended information about everything, at very low cost. Experts cannot rely only on their knowledge to market themselves ... this knowledge is now available to anyone - instead, people will have to focus on their "savoir faire".

I look forward to seing how the experiment goes:
"
As such, we're going to be doing 11 different tests, divided into four phases.
Phase 1: Strategic Foundation
Phase 2: Tactical Drivers
Phase 3: Emotional Drivers
Phase 4: Extended Analysis
"

To follow this experiment as well, subsribe to imediaconnection newletter.

W3C compliance tool

Validation tool from W3C is only validating markups - if you want to validate accessibility guidelines, you need to use more sophisticated tools such as http://www.cynthiasays.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe

you can the list of validators on http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=65

managing your newsdletter

Newsletter cannot be ignored when you set up an online marketing strategy with your clients. What should you look for?

Cost.
You should check whether you are paying per email sent (prices start at around 0.5p per email), or per subscriber. Find out whether there is a discount for pre-paying up front, or for buying in bulk (for example per 5,000 emails), and whether there are any set-up costs.

An automated subscribe and unsubscribe service.
This will save you manually dealing with hundreds of sign-up emails, or emails that bounce due to an old or incorrect address.

Plain text or html.
Many services offer the ability to automatically send html or text versions of your newsletter, depending on your customer's preference.

Templates or wizards.
If you find creating emails in html difficult, look for a service which provides easy-to-use templates or wizards for you to use to create an eye-catching newsletter.

Statistics and reports.
You need to be able to track your subscribers, and find out who is subscribing, unsubscribing, and which emails bounce. The service should also track the number of email messages which have been opened or forwarded on to another person, and any click-through statistics from hyperlinks in your newsletter.

Getting past spam filters
Even if you use an email management system, getting your newsletter through the spam filters that many ISPs apply can prove difficult. The following tips will increase your chances of getting your newsletter to your subscriber:
- Don't overuse capital letters. Spam filters often view a sentence of all uppercase letters as 'shouting', and may block a newsletter that appears to have an excess of this. If your headings and subheadings are usually all capitalised, change to a mixture of cases
- Be aware of words that can trigger the filters. Obviously swearing will automatically set alarm bells ringing, but even innocuous sounding words such as 'free', 'sale', 'win' and even 'click' can be a problem. Check your text at the E-zine Check which scores it in terms of how many 'penalty' points it would potentially attract, and offers a free list of suggestions
- Set up a free email account with Hotmail or Yahoo and send your newsletter to this address to test whether it survives the filters
- Make the latest edition of your newsletter available online. You can then send a short teaser email to subscribers with a link to your web site.

Influence of Internet Advertising on Purchase Decisions by Search Engine Preference
(Source: BIGresearch, SIMM V, Dec '04, N=14,039)

1) Google
2) Yahoo!
3) MSN
4) AOL
6) Ask Jeeves

Electronics
23.8%
21.7%
19.0%
21.0%
15.8%
19.0%
Apparel/Clothing
13.0%
14.6%
12.9%
12.5%
9.7%
11.4%
Grocery (Food/Cleaning/Beauty)
6.9%
11.2%
10.1%
12.2%
7.4%
8.9%
Home Improvement
8.5%
10.%
9.8%
9.4%
5.5%
7.9%
Automobiles
10.4%
10.5%
7.3%
7.7%
3.8%
8.1%
Pharmaceutical
5.8%
6.3%
4.6%
4.7%
4.6%
4.9%
Travel
17.9%
16.9%
16.9%
16.5%
15.4%
14.5%

*The sum of the % totals may be greater than 100% because the respondents can select more than one answer.

These figures are for the american market, but what it shows is that google is great at driving traffic to your site, but in terms of influence, all the search engines are worth pretty much the same (at least the big other 2 - yahoo & msn).

conclusion: if you want to market a specific product, you have to consider all search engines, not only google.

If you take the example of grocery, clothing, or home improvement, Yahoo is actually better performing - this may be different in the UK or France, where the search market is different, but the conclusions are the same - Your product belongs has got its specific vertical markets, and betting on google only to bring you sales is not the best approach.








Source: BIGresearch, SIMM V, Dec '04, N=14,039

Google & Yahoo speak

Google & Yahoo have decided that it was time for weather reports (as requested by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineWatch.com), and deliver "official" insight of what is going on the search front.

GoogleGuy speak on webmasterworld here while yahoo has decided to launch a whole blog dedicated to "search weather reports".

outsource

If you think to outsource some of your work - here is a selection of sites:
- RentACoder
- Elance
- Smarter Work
- PHP Career
- Guru
- WorkAHolics4Hire
- FreeLanceWorkExchange
- FreeLance Writing