» marketing

“Now available on computers…”

Alan — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:20:13 +0000

We often laugh at the spurious claims on the island from websites looking to generate advertising revenue. Some of the bullshit is quite ridiculous. Most of them we have a giggle at and then file them immediately in the recycle bin. But the most recent really deserved comment.

I’m not going to name names, as I have nothing against the business and they are reasonably good at what they do… However, in the bullshit stakes this is a total howler! I’m going to pick out a few phrases and elaborate on them with a bit of comment, just for fun!

xxx.com is now available on computers…

Ground-breaking progress! Well done guys!

..ultimate website, in three languages, Spanish, English and German it is truly an international site

Last time I looked I thought there were a few more languages than that. Truly international – I don’t think so…

Google rates it within the top million site of the world of the billions currently online

I may have missed something somewhere, but I’m not aware Google publish such a list. Chances are they got these figures from one of the two different listings they have on Alexa.com, where indeed they are listed at 619,017 on the most favourable of the two. Which I will quote from….

There are 619,016 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than xxx.com, and the site has a relatively good traffic rank in the city of Las Palmas (#504). About 90% of visits to this site are bounces (one pageview only)
Alexa.com

They go on to claim…

By linking with xxx.com you will automatically be at the top of the search engines

What for? Your own business name? Easily done for free… If they are talking about their site coming up in searches for “Lanzarote”, no, it’s not true. They are midway down page two – www.discoverlanzarote.com is, and has been for as long as I’ve been looking at it, number one in google.co.uk.

They claim an average stay onine of 7 minutes (cherry picked from the other of the two entries on Alexa – which incidentally ranked them at neared 2 million). The one I looked at stated….

…and the time spent in a typical visit to xxx.com is approximately three minutes, with two minutes spent on each pageview.
Alexa.com

Which, if the bounce rate of 90% is to believed makes their traffic pretty much worthless.

My personal favourite though is the strapline…!

The most visited site on the Canary Islands

A couple of points here…

There’s no way of knowing
If the Alexa figures are what they are using as evidence of their popularity bear in mind that discoverlanzarote.com is ranked at 6,726 as opposed to their 619,017. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist does it? There are MANY busier sites.

As I said, bear them no ill-will, nothing against them, for the most part it’s a very professional company. However, it’s a perfect example – as I have discussed before on here – just how some people get carried away with web statistics! Absolute twaddle – marketing bullshit!

Facebook

Alan — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:17:06 +0000

I’m a big fan of Facebook – I conduct much of my social life through it. However just lately I’ve noticed a couple of trends that really irritate me. It genuinely is a social thing for me – and the constant spam is beginning to really get on my nerves.

There’s plenty of people right now touting Social Networking as the next big thing in marketing – what happens every idiot takes the total shotgun approach and blasts their friends list with spam? The vast majority of these people do not have the faintest idea what they are doing. Used badly Social Network Marketing will damage your reputation rather than enhance it.

Let me just make it clear – and this is to my friends too… I will not ever add an inanimate object, business, entity or organization as a ‘friend’. For your information – setting up profiles that do not relate to ‘real people’ are a breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions. So, you’re going to be wasting your time building up a list of friends on these profiles as sooner or later Facebook is going to have a sort out. If it continues I am going to make it my mission to make sure they do!

Also, I don’t mind getting invites to events – but please don’t waste my time sending multiple invites to the same event with different titles – I will delete them…

I’m happy to ´like´the pages and groups (which are intended for commercial use) of friends , clients and local businesses to support them. But don’t be offended if I don’t. Facebook to me is a purely social thing and promoting other peoples businesses to my friends is a long way off being the main reason I use the site.

From this point forward, without exception I have decided to report every fake profile, and every status update spam. Enough is enough. Perhaps its time to start binning those friends on my list who serve no social value to me and whose only use of the site is self promotion.

If you want to keep up with what we are doing – voluntarily – without being hassled or having it rammed down your throat here are the links to the pages for Gandy-Draper, Lanzarote Relocation and my own blog. All of which adhere to Facebook rules!

The importance of marketing in the credit crunch…

Alan — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:07:48 +0000

I read an advert in a magazine recently. An ad stating why you should continue advertising during a recession… The key phrases used in the ad were;

The golden rule is to stay in touch with your customers
If you are inconsistent they won’t trust you
If they can’t find you they will go to your competitor
And if they forget who you are, you’ll have to start all over again

In principle I agree with what they are saying – but lets face it – it all sounds rather threatening… Realistically any advertising medium has as its first priority its own financial health. So many magazines are using this sort of approach at the moment.

If you are an advertiser you must put the interests of your own business first! Yes, it is absolutely crucial to maintain a presence – but all advertising should be judged on results – measure what responses you get, make a note of where they come from, and always assess how much each enquiry or sale is actually costing you.

Here my take on the above points;

Yes – absolutely, but if it’s your customers you are talking to there are plenty of other ways instead of paper advertising – email, direct mail, face to face (depending on your business), and of course your website
They trust you if you provide a consistent and quality service whether you are advertising or not
If you’ve done points 1 and 2 correctly your CUSTOMERS will return to you whether they see you in a magazine or not – though they do have a point when it comes to new prospects not finding you so easily – of course there are still alternatives to reaching those people to – it’s largely a case of applying a little imagination
If you’ve done point 1, 2 and 3 in the right way they haven’t forgotten!

Magazines, radio and the other old school advertising are not the be all and end all to marketing your business.

However, as I said ealier – marketing is critical in the bad times – absolutely critical, and with money tight you may have to cut your budget. If you are cutting back on your magazine, radio advertising find a way to replace it with something more cost effective – don’t just stop doing everything. If you do, they are right and your business will simply die.

Use the recession to assess what you are doing.

How cost-effective is your marketing?
Could you be getting better results for the same cost?
Are there alternative ways to reach your audience?
Could you generate more referrals?
What do you have in place that can be improved upon?

Now is not the time to panic – use it to learn – get smarter! And, take a long hard look at your business as a whole.

Are you a shopkeeper?

Alan — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:29:29 +0000

So, you’ve just got your new website and you are feeling pretty pleased with yourself. You’ve started adding it as your signature in forums, you’re looking for links and reciprocal links, and you’re starting to learn a bit about what Search Engine Optimization is, and realizing you can do a large part of it yourself. You’re doing everything right – but – Google isn’t picking you up (be patient, it doesn’t happen overnight), and you aren’t getting the hits you’d wish for… What have you missed?

Think of it this way – your website is like a shop front, at this moment in time you are in a back street. As with a real shop, few of us can afford a prime position on the high street. Irrespective of how good your site is, what gets prime position is the millions of pounds that the likes of, for instance EasyJet spend on billboard space, other conventional media, and Internet advertising on key sites.

Now, here’s the good news. Lanzarote is a small island, so a little bit of investment of time and money off-line can raise your profile considerably. Make sure your address is seen everywhere, put it on the ads you’ve placed in magazines (simple, but often forgotten), have a look at advertising on some of the key websites on the island too (we’re happy to advise if you aren’t sure what you are looking for – it’s all part of the service), make sure you post flyers on the notice boards around the island, make sure you have cards on you always, make sure your friends have cards to give out. Talk to people, it really is that simple.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit back and wait for people to come to you – it’s not going to happen. As with all businesses you have to have a great product and you have to let people know in as many ways as are available to you, on and off-line, what you have to offer.