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Brand Research

April 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Online Brand Research – It’s addictive !

Everyone checks out the big brand name organizations from time to time – maybe they are a potential Customer? You are considering working for them? You are a potential Consumer?…or maybe you are a big hitting Marketing Exec who should know this stuff!


Brand Impressions is a new tool from “thinkinsights from Google” that you might want to check out. They claim it has addictive qualities and there is no doubt that you could happily lose yourself playing with it for a while. Is it a replacement for full and professional research and analytics?  – no, but to be fair they are positioning it as “Brand Visualization”, more of an impression than a thorough analysis. As such, it certainly pulls together a very visual summary that might just prompt some further investigation.

Brand Impressions

Have a play with the tool below and use the Visuals, Topics and Actions tabs to drill into the various sections. There is a timeline feature and some limited comparison of brands available. If you are interested in how it is all pulled together then just follow the “how it works” link below.

 

Filed Under: marketing, Research

Three Social Media Measurement Tools That Save Time, Money, and Heartburn.

March 22, 2012 By 2 Comments

Social media is an important component of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, with the services themselves consistently changing metrics on the back-end (like Facebook and YouTube) – how does an online marketer measure success in 2012? April Wilson, a featured blogger and CEO of Digital Analytics 101, is here to help understand how to measure, monitor, and optimize your social media marketing efforts.

First, know your limits.

I am constantly looking for new ways to cut down on the time I spend monitoring my social media. I run a start-up company and we are completely crunched for time, money, and resources. However, I play in the digital marketing space, so my online footprint should mirror that. I can’t say I’m a digital company and NOT have a Twitter or Facebook presence. Most importantly, that presence shouldn’t SUCK.

This narrows down my criteria for a tool set:

  1. I need as much information and functionality in one place as I can get. Having just one login and one interface to manage ALL my social channels is a baseline criteria.
  2. Whatever I use, it better be easy to figure it out intuitively. I budget my time at no more than one hour a day to manage social media.
  3. Finally, it has to be free or so cheap that I don’t give that line item on my credit card statement the hairy eyeball.

 

Second, I have yet to find ONE tool that does everything I want.

I know that my reality is going to be that I need to use multiple tools to do multiple functions, so the tools I use have to complement each other without too much overlapping.

This is not to say that there ISN’T a larger enterprise social media solution out there that will do what all three of my tools do. I just haven’t found it yet.

 Because there isn’t just one tool out there that does everything, I use three different tools with three different objectives:

1)      Content curation: I believe it is my job as a subject-matter expert to share research, tools, trends, and articles with my followers.

2)      Social Media Management: I measure, respond, and grow each of my social streams all in one interface with one dashboard. I don’t have time to log into 4 different accounts to get my work done.

3)      Monitoring: It’s important to understand who’s talking about your brand, and where they’re discussing you. Also, it’s important to know what your overall share is of the chatter for your industry, product, or service.

 

Step 1: Content generation.

My first priority is delivering interesting or valuable content to my followers. If I’m lucky enough to get them to follow me, then I want to make sure that I’m shooting them articles, news stories, blog posts, infographics, and op-ed pieces on whatever topic is relevant to that brand and their followers. As such, I subscribe to several industry newsletters and have a slew of Google Alerts emailed to me every day. I need to stay current on everything in my field, and so do my fans.

But I don’t want to overload them with tweets or Facebook posts. That’s a total rookie mistake – one that I am sad to say that I made once upon a time. It’s better to pace yourself and make every communication count.

Buffer is the tool to help you NOT be that annoying post-er.

I love Buffer for content curation and scheduling. It’s a beautiful thing. I mean it. The way that it works is that as you create or find content that is interesting, you click a little button (via a browser add-on) to add that content to your “buffer.” Your buffer is like a metered repository of content.

You then schedule posts to publish based on the BEST times for you. When you first set it up, it will default to 4 posts per day, scattered throughout the day, so that you aren’t over-posting and making your followers freak out. Over time, you can ask Buffer to adjust your posting schedule to optimize for the best times for YOUR audience. This enables you to publish content at the times when YOUR followers are most likely to a) see it and b) engage with it.

You can play around with the tool for free, linking 1 Twitter and 1 Facebook account. I feel in love in the first 24 hours and upgraded that same week. I pay for the “Pro” account which lets me buffer up to 50 articles at any given time across 5 social media accounts… and it’s only $10 a month which is well worth the value of the software.

 Screenshot of bufferapp analytics

(Click on image to see full size screenshot)

Step 2: Relationship Building

Now that I have interesting things to say to my fans and followers – and I’m communicating at a pace that doesn’t freak them out – it’s time to take the relationship to the next level. There are several things I want to be able to do at this stage in the game:

  1. Make sure I’m following back all of my new followers
  2. Thanking people for RT’s and follows
  3. Answering questions or leaving comments on stuff they put on my Facebook page
  4. Sharing content that THEY post that is relevant to my “tribe”
  5. Understanding the impact of social media on driving traffic back to my website
  6. Seeing all my metrics in one place, in aggregate, and by social channel
  7. Finally, monitoring chatter about key topics that interest me so I can find new fans and followers to follow and learn from – and hopefully add to my “tribe”

SproutSocial is my go-to social media management program for all of my brands.

They have a free 30-day trial – and I was hooked. I currently pay $49 a month for the service, mostly because I think it’s important to link my Google Analytics to my social streams. There’s a really nice review of the tool on Aaron Lee’s blog that goes through some of the features, and many of the things he didn’t like have been fixed in the latest release.

It meets all of the criteria on my list, and I spend about 30 minutes each morning drinking my coffee, and sorting through what’s going on with each of my brands. I communicate, measure, and monitor topics I care about for each brand, all in one happy place that has a simple user interface and kick-butt functionality.

 Screenshot of SproutSocial

Last, but not least, Step 3: Keep an eye on the competition


When I’m working for a client – even if I’m NOT managing their social media — I want to see what percentage of the conversation they’re actually getting. OR, conversely, if it’s normal for there to even BE buzz about their industry or product.

I’ve had the pleasure of using some of the enterprise monitoring tools in past jobs – tools like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, Lithium (aka Scout Labs), and Crimson Hexagon.

All of these are really nice tools, but I’m not an enterprise anymore. I’m cheap. For my purposes, Social Mention works just awesome – for free.

I can search for branded and non-branded keywords and phrases. I can filter. I can download the data and manipulate it myself. While it may not be perfect, NONE of the monitoring tools are perfect. I don’t let it bother me if, for example, my monitoring tool doesn’t pick up Twitter chatter so well – because when I’m doing an competitive analysis, it’s the same problem for any brand I’m searching. If SocialMention doesn’t pick up EVERYTHING for Lexus, it’s also not picking it up for BMW or Mercedes, so I’m not going to sweat over it.

 Screenshot of Social Mention

In sum, my core social media measurement toolkit is:

  • Content curation and scheduling: Buffer App
  • Social CRM:                                   SproutSocial
  • Competitive research:                   socialmention

I’d love to get your feedback if you’re a current user of these products… and I’m always looking for new products and services to try if you’re in love with your own solution.

Filed Under: analytics, business intelligence software, Facebook, free, internet marketing, marketing, social media, Social Networking, social search Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How Mind Mapping Your Niche Could Improve Your Marketing Output

February 24, 2012 By 3 Comments

Do you remember being sat at School doing mind maps? Mind maps were great ways of exploring topics, questions, subjects, events, characters and were great indicators of just how vast one simple idea or area could become.

These benefits of mind mapping shouldn’t have just stopped in those distant classroom days, in fact a simple mind map could be exactly what you need to improve your marketing output and start dominating your niche, and here’s why.

Why Should You Mind Map Your Niche?

Image of mindmap on bloggingMind maps are a great way to plan projects, events and more traditionally assignments, but mind maps could also be of great benefit to your marketing output.

When you consider your subject area be it plumbing, screen printing, fast food or whatever it might be, there is a wide array of topical content within that subject area that can discussed, published and broadcasted across the web.

For instance a branch off of video could be video distribution, which could encompass online and offline distribution, such as DVDs, USB sticks or video sharing sites. From just that one branch you could create an article or eBook on anything from the best DVDs to use for playable video or for storing video data files, to what the benefits are of hosting your video on a social media platform than on a video sharing site.

One branch from your primary subject area could generate reams of marketable content for your website, blog, webinar or conference. By sitting down with your team and thoroughly mind mapping out your niche you can create a multipurpose content marketing schedule that could dictate your marketing output for the entire year!

Mind Maps Create Great Content

The extent and depth you can map out your niche is incredible when you get down to it. The length and breadth of topics and angles you can take on those topics provides you with endless article titles and tips that you can market on and off the web.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks with creating great content worthy of marketing is coming up with an arsenal of marketable content to fuel a consistent and worthwhile marketing output, and mind mapping could be the answer to this problem.

Bloggers, businesses and brands will know all too well that coming up with content for infographics, webinars, videos or for industry conferences isn’t always easy, but by arming yourself with an almost limitless plethora of subjects to discuss and market through mind mapping you’ll never be stuck for remarkable content again.

Mind Maps Improve Social Shares

The extent of your mind maps will in some way reflect the array of keywords online users type into search engines everyday to find specific answers to their questions within your niche.

Typically only a handful of short-tail keywords related to your website, blog, YouTube Channel or social media profile may come up in the search results, and that handful of keywords may not answer the query online users are searching for. However, by creating in-depth content that explores every topic and area of your mind map, you’ll more than likely have created content that actually answers the online users query search.

By becoming one of the rare online sources to go into every possible branch of your niche, your content will be much more sharable to a social audience. Social media users will be grateful for your helpful content and share it with other online users who may have been trying to find a similar answer to their query.

When something is hard to find on the web online users are much more appreciative and ready to share content when they finally find the answer they were looking. If your mind map can truly encompass every possible subject, topic and angle in your niche, then your site will become that valuable and sharable source of information for online users.

Mind Maps Improve Search Engine Optimisation

All that super specific content you create in your niche will undoubtedly be of huge value to your SEO campaigns. Search engines like Google love similar keywords, and by creating great content that uses similar words to your keywords you’ll be vastly improving your SERPs for your main keywords.

For instance the word Film has similar keywords that include cinema, DVD, video, television, festival, premier, preview, trailer and release date. Those similar keywords all leave you with mini mind maps in which to branch off and explore to create exceptional and valuable content to boost your SEO. Not to mention those similar keywords will also have keywords to branch out from as well. The levels of similar keywords and the content you can create for those keywords are almost endless, and the SEO value generated from creating content for those keywords would be limitless.

Summary

It’s amazing how a simple idea taught to us from way back in those distant School days can become a powerful marketing tool today. Mind maps are a premise rich in simplicity, and an even richer one in marketing value. Mind maps help to really explore every topic in your niche, and those topics in turn create SEO keyword opportunities to boost your SERPs, and the great content you create for those purposes will see your social shares hit new exciting heights.

Filed Under: internet marketing, marketing, Tips

ecommerce 101

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In this series I want to give the benefit of my experiences as both a traditional and online retailer and laterally an ICT Specialist, who has worked with numerous ecommerce businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Getting started

So what is ecommerce?

A stupid place to start you may ask, however the definition of this term is wide and varied and whilst it has become to mean selling “things” (mainly products) electronically, in actuality it covers the whole gamut of online trading – from marketing, selling, delivering, managing and everything else besides (see Wikipedia who say it much better than I could). This is relevant because in my experience many potential businesses see the “selling” part as the be all and end all of ecommerce without due consideration for all that that entails (just think of any traditional “bricks & mortar” business – it’s so much more than just “selling stuff”).

Why go online?

The web opens up the opportunity for businesses to specialise in niche areas and find potential purchasers of that product from all over the world. It also provides the opportunity for more main stream businesses to gain customers from a wider catchment than just their traditional “bricks & mortar” outlets. They see the web as a relatively low cost way of doing this.

Is there a market?

Great ideas are subjective. As such making the decision to develop or source a product to sell online needs to be based on more than gut feel. The beauty of the web is that you can gather so much data to aid your decision making process. This market research is absolutely essential in order to validate your ‘gut feeling or convince you the idea is a no go.

So what sort of market research are we talking about – Proper digital market research

  •  Find out if there are  existing competitors selling related products- (this is actually a good sign – where there are competitors there are customers therefore there is money to be made). Specific tools will give you some real tangible data on how much certain companies are investing in Google Advertising spend.
  •  Find out how people are searching for these types of product or service and in what volume. Analysis of Google Data can reveal numbers of monthly searches on related topics, products, services etc – this tool can give you an indication – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  • Analyse competitors to see how well they rank for related keywords and phrases in this space. Specialist tools can analyse competitor sites to identify how much traffic your competitors are receiving. Further analysis can reveal the commercial value of that traffic by overlaying Google Pay Per Click commercial values etc.

Based on all of this tangible data you should be in a far better position to answer the key question – is there a market?

If it’s a completely new ideas, product, service and there is no competition online then it woudl be advisable to consider market testing before investing large amounts of money in a web build.

Think, Plan, Do, Review

Planning is key. This may be an extension of an existing business or it may be an entirely fresh venture – either way, having a plan with Goals, Targets and costs is key to success – as the old adage goes – “failing to plan is planning to fail”.

Have realistic expectations

“I expect to sell £1M of goods off of my new website but only want to spend £500 on a site and have no money for marketing”. A true story. Whilst there may be examples across the web where a business has managed to achieve this, it’s pretty rare. Whilst the cost of entry is considerably lower than more traditional retailing routes, there’s still a cost of acquisition.

Choose your route to market

Many business I meet who want to start trading online go straight for the bespoke ecommerce build or shopping cart plug-in, as it’s what their developer told them to do. Maybe as a way of testing the water you should look at selling your products through someone else’s site? Through Amazon? Through ebay? Or through one of the many Pay as You Go Cloud based ecommerce solutions. You don’t have to go down the full blown ecommerce platform from Day 1, particularly if cash is tight.

What products?

I come across businesses all the time that see great potential for their product, but haven’t properly researched the market eg selling fresh food products; selling alcohol outside of the UK, high value products sent through normal post, selling concrete ornaments over the web, where the carriage was twice the price of the product! You get the idea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do I set my price?

One of the areas I’ve seen considerable growth in since the recession is manufacturing businesses wanting to develop their own route to the customer as well as their traditional route of selling to the wholesaler/ retailer. This can be fraught with danger – you don’t want to upset your traditional market by under cutting them, in some instances you don’t want to sell the same products at the same price. Obviously not an issue for a retail only concern, however you still have to get your pricing right. Typical retail pricing in the UK market is cost (e.g. £10) x 2.4 to give you retail including VAT (£24) – i.e. 100% (from £10-£20) markup or a 50% margin. This is all well and good, but there’s a whole bunch of considerations:

  1. What price are other people selling at online?
  2. Does that include P&P or not?
  3. Is it a sensible retail price point?
  4. Can I offer discounts for multiple purchases or offer free delivery for a certain order value? 

Obviously different business areas work to different margins, typically online businesses work to lower margins – it just depends on the market you’re in, so lots of research is required!

How will I fulfil the orders?

Back to the £1M of turnover off of a £500 website example above. Even if you could manage to achieve this, do you have the infrastructure and personnel in place to fulfil? After all that’s a lot of infrastructure. It’s also an awful lot of traffic to the site which means serious investment in SEO and Social Media. In the example, it was a £20 product with an average anticipated spend of £50 – so that’s 20,000 orders – or 385 a week and with the seasonality of the product it could well have been that 10,000 of those orders came in the golden 8 weeks up to Christmas! That’s a lot of picking, packing, invoicing etc. And if you haven’t got the systems to handle this, it’s an impossible task! You could consider a fulfilment house, of which there are many, including Amazon fulfilment, who, for a fee, will handle it all for you. 

How will I generate the traffic?

Also, the traffic required to generate 20,000 orders, even at a very generous 5% conversion to sale (the average is 2% or less and for most ecommerce plays it’s under 1%), you’ll need to drive 400,000 visitors to the site per year (8000 a week) and that’s a lot of time and effort!

Next time, we’ll look at considerations when building and optimising your online presence.

Filed Under: Demographic, KPI, marketing, Return on Investment Tagged With:

Using Online Data to improve Offline Business

January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Are you potentially missing out by not using knowledge of your online/website visitors to improve your offline marketing success? (Offline could mean printed media, trade fairs, radio, in-store etc.)

Most businesses these days accept that having a website which reflects the business brand and which performs all the functions that a customer expects is an absolute requirement. The website (with access to even basic analytics) also offers business owners insights into customer behaviours and preferences. Compared to the information that can be gathered about online customers, the information gathered for offline customers often seems incomplete and subjective. 

However, there are some fairly simple techniques that can help. By incorporating online response mechanisms into your offline marketing activity the potential to use data to improve your offline marketing is increased.

How to improve the tracking of Offline Marketing Campaigns

There are ways to measure the success of offline marketing campaigns using website analytics! For example, create a landing page with a memorable URL, like yoursite.com/specialoffer or yoursite.com/radio, and direct campaign ads there. Tracking visitors and their “journey” from the landing page through your site will help quantify the success of your campaign. (Often the most effective way to achieve this is simply to create a new page within your site in an appropriate place, allowing you to tailor the content and ensure the appropriate “calls to action” are there along with explanatory text etc.)

A new landing page for each type of offline activity will also help you to track numbers and conversion rates for visitors attracted via each type of advertisement or offline activity. The difference between your website’s regular conversion rate and the conversion rate of your various landing pages will reveal the relative effectiveness of your marketing activies.

Using online analytics to influence offline marketing

Have you ever considered using all that information you can access about your online customers to help shape up your offline marketing efforts?

Take a simple example of a Cycle Store….Customers love the how-to section of websites. By tracking the most popular topics and articles in your how-to section, you can find potential new topics for in-store events. For example, a bicycle store owner may find one of his most popular articles involves basic maintenance tasks, like changing a tire or lubricating the chain. In this case, a basic bike maintenance clinic might help draw website customers into the store.

Most analytics track where people come from and where they go when they leave your online store. Again, this information could uncover a need your store can fill. In the bicycle store example above, you may find people are leaving to visit bicycle trail maps – perhaps organizing a group ride would help draw people to your store and help them find the best local cycling routes.

Segmentation of your customer base

Internet data (on your website or social sites) can give reasonable indications as to demographics and geography etc.  How can this sort of information be used offline? Could it for example inform decisions on placing your commercials during radio programs or perhaps trying a new mix of magazines to advertise in? Website and social site analytics can give some insight into “who” is shopping, not “who you expect” to be shopping.

Using website analytics to help your offline business takes a little imagination, but it can have a big pay off. By looking past the numbers at the customers beyond them, you can find solutions to drive traffic to your physical store, as well as track how your advertising and marketing campaigns are going. Whether you’re paying for your analytics or using one of many free services available, using your website analytics to help direct your offline spend could pay dividends.

Filed Under: marketing

Your Customers Know You, but Do They Trust You?

October 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”

So said the great 19th century Scottish poet George MacDonald, and one imagines he’d be pleased to know that in the 21st century, those are still words to live by.

Like any healthy relationship, consumers aren’t going to stick around for the long haul with a company unless trust is established and maintained.  Let’s examine a few methods for keeping the bond between you and your customers as strong as possible.

TRANSPARENCY
“Transparency” is the concept du jour of the marketing world, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s simply a passing a trend.  The truth is, transparent practices are a necessity for any online marketing  campaign to thrive.  In essence, transparency is based on a few simple, practical principles.  For starters, you should be able to meet the consumer’s expectations by delivering exactly what you promise. If you make a mistake, do what your mother told you to do: say you’re sorry.  Encourage feedback from consumers, and if you receive some salient negative input, share it publicly to keep the dialogue open.

BUILDING RAPPORT
How can you trust what you don’t know? Many consumers regard companies as faceless entities who prefer to talk “at” them, as opposed to engaging in a genuine human relationship. Social networks are a perfect venue to get friendly with your target audience and give them insight into the “personality” of your brand.  American Express does a good job of connecting with their customers via their Facebook page, engaging them in down-to-earth conversations as simple as “It’s hot out here! How are you & your Amex Card staying cool this weekend?” Those two sentences alone managed to generate over 600 “likes” and 430 comments.

GO THE EXTRA MILE
Remember the time you had a really bad cold and your best friend dropped by out of the blue with chicken soup and your favorite movie?  Thoughtful, unexpected gestures are never forgotten, and consumers love a company that treats their relationship with the respect and care it deserves.  Find small ways to let customers know how lucky you are to have them in your corner, and make sure you take the time to reward your most loyal supporters.  

FINAL THOUGHTS
You won’t find it on any stat sheet, and its qualities have always been frustratingly difficult to describe, yet trust remains the fundamental quality necessary to maintain a healthy, long-term relationship with your customers. By adopting policies built on transparency, direct connection and thoughtfulness, you can be confident that you’re creating a foundation for lasting trust.

Filed Under: marketing

How to Make Money from your Website

August 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the questions that I get asked just about every day is ‘How do I make money from my website?‘ and it’s the sort of question I could spend about a week trying to answer. Just like some of my other favorites like ’how do I get to the top of Google?’ or ‘how do I use social media to market my business’.  So sticking with ‘the make money from website’ question for now, this post attempts to explore this subject in some detail.

Obviously the route for commercialization of a site depends on a hundred different things from what you are actually doing online, the market you’re in, what you are selling (if anything), who your customer or audience is and so on. However brushing over all that trivial stuff for now :-) this post sets out to generally explore some of the ways you can make money from your content online. Please note this is not about straight ecommerce (plenty of that elsewhere on this site) but instead an exploration of how you can make money online without directly selling anything (or website monetization as it’s often called).

So by online content I could be referring to blogs to forums, information websites, video sites and so on but for the purposes of this post I will simply refer to it as a ‘website’. The information below should hopefully be relevant if you are trying to assess the value in your website or help you determine the best way to generate income if you are planning on developing an informational site, blog or forum.

Let’s discuss the principles of what gives any web property commercial value

 

1) Your Market – Subject Matter, Audience Demographic & motivation of your visitors
Some markets are more valuable than others & some audiences are more valuable than others. Consider the motivation of your online visitors. If someone is browsing the web looking for celebrity gossip and you have a celebrity news blog then chances are this visitor is not particularly valuable as they are just passing time, surfing the web, looking for gossip etc. However if someone is looking for answers to problem like ‘how to lose weight quickly’ or ‘ how to use Google Adwords’ then this visitor is far more commercial and answering their questions with your content also gives you an opportunity to place a relevant advert, an affiliate product sale and so on. These commercial placements are far more likely to convert to a click-through or sale because they are relevant to your content and relevant to the motivation of the visitor. There is a reason why health & beauty are such competitive spaces on the internet. Solving people’s problems can have real commercial value even if you are not directly selling any products.

2) Size & site Authority
The tactic of building focused mini sites (or micro sites) was popular a few years ago when search engines often favored these targeted focused little sites. This is no longer the case with Google now absolutely favoring large sites with lots of quality content, regular updates, lots of user interaction etc. These sites will have better search engine rankings, more traffic and in addition these authority sites have an incredible ability to rank very quickly for any new content that is published on them. A breaking story on CNN will rank on Google within the space of minutes because that site carries such authority with Google that it is constantly trawling the site and re-indexing content.

So commercially speaking more traffic means more commercial value but more targeted traffic means more value still. Greater user engagement also contributes to site value as this suggests visitors are there for a reason and not just finding the site by mistake (advertisers pay more to get their message in front of engaged visitors because it proves they are genuinely interested in a specific subject/market). The ability for new content to rank quickly on search engines is also very commercially valuable (consider being able to rank for the next Apple product on Google on its launch day), this type of power can be used for many commercial benefits.

One of the keys to becoming an authority site is to deliver great quality content that is engaging, presented in the right way, has the ability to generate interest and discussion and provides a vehicle to capture this (e.g blog comments, Facebook integration, forums etc.)

3) Relationships, list & interactions
Site visitors are one thing but the ability to strike up a relationship and communication channel with your site visitors can give you long term commercial value (relationship return on Investment). Building an email list of subscribers for example is a great way to continue to deliver more targeted content to a number of people. Continuing to find out more about your subscribers via surveys and list segmentation etc. will allow you to target segments of your mailing list with tailored content and incorporate some very relevant commercial ads, links etc. within your communications which should convert well if you get this right.

Social media has introduced the opportunity to take this communication and interaction a stage further with Twitter and Facebook creating more dynamic and interactive ways to deliver your content, and actually begin to interact with your subscribers/followers/fans etc.

How to Build Commercial value Online
So if these all things make a site commercial then to increase the commercial value of your site you should be thinking about identifying who your target audience is and making sure you reach this target audience through the web. This comes back to creating the right sort of quality content on your site, providing expert commentary on other things going in your subject area, employing good SEO tactics to give your content the best chance of ranking on Google (for what you know your audience is searching for) and starting to engage in off-site discussions in your subject area. In other words become an authority on your subject by taking about it a lot on your own site and on other relevant sites, forums, blogs and so on (and always linking back to your site from these places).

Continuing to build and grow your site & encouraging user interaction  (e.g. blog comments) and interaction with your social media presences (Facebook, Twitter etc.) can all contribute to your online growth & commercial value of your site.

How to find and access your market – content, keywords, seo, linking building referrals
See our video guide section on Digital Marketing Strategy Development to find out more about how to research your market online & target this market through best practice seo etc.

I get all this so What Next?
So assuming you have a site, a strategy and are working on all of the elements above. How do you actually plug in in the stuff that makes the money? What are the options for website monetization?

Some different ways to monetize your website

Sell Ad space on your site
You can look for companies who are willing to spend money to advertise on your site through banner ads, video ads etc. This approach can often get you better rates than the more automated routes of onsite advertising (discussed below) however it takes time, effort, management and a bit of a sales pitch.

To sell ad space you need to find advertisers who may be interested in the sort of traffic/audience your site is attracting. A few tips you can use to find these potential advertisers are as follows

  • Use Google: Simply search Google for some of the words, & phrases associated with your website content/ subject area and start to look at the Google ads (ads on right hand side of the Google search results). These companies are already paying Google for adverts on a pay per click basis so they recognize the value of online advertising. These companies may be worth targeting with a sales call or email offering them an opportunity to advertise through your website.
  • Another method is to use sites such as www.semrush.com and run a report on your site. It will give you back all sorts of information including a list of advertisers relevant to your site who may be prepared to buy advertising from you. www. alexa.com also has a mechanism to check for sites related to yours that you could target with your sales pitch.

You will want to create a compelling overview of the key metrics of your site in order to give potential advertisers more information on which to base a decision on. This is typically known as a rate card and it would include information such as monthly site visitors, unique site visitors, monthly page impressions and demographic information about your site visitors (you can use sites such as www.quantcast.com to get some of this data)

Monetize your site with Ad Networks
This is a massive topic I am not going to cover in any detail here. There are different tiers of ad networks but getting accepted to the more exclusive, higher paying networks requires your site to be of a certain size and authority. For this reason it’s often easier to start with some of the larger ad networks like Adbrite or Adsense.

One of the most popular ad networks is the Google ad network – Google Adsense. You can sign up as a publisher through https://www.google.com/adsense and effectively set up ad blocks within your website. By simply embedding these ad blocks within your site you can let Google do the hard work for you. Its algorithm establishes an understanding of your content and it dynamically populates these ad blocks with relevant ads from its advertisers (companies advertising through Google Adwords content network). Every time someone clicks through on these ads, Google earns revenue and shares this revenue with you.

Monetize your site with Affiliate marketing
What is Affiliate marketing? It’s basically a mechanism that allows web publishers to place links to merchants’ websites/products and get rewarded when their visitors click through these links and buy a product on the  merchant’s site. Many merchants run their own affiliate program, possibly the best example of this being the massively flexible and sophisticated Amazon Affiliate Program . However the easiest way to find and manage affiliate marketing is typically to go through an Affiliate Network which is acts like a “middle man” making the links between publishers and merchants and providing a management system which handles, reporting, tracking, payments etc.

There are lots of Affiliate Networks but two of the most popular networks are
www.cj.com
www.clickbank.com

There are also new smart tools/Networks which can be used for website Monetization through Affiliate Marketing. The www.skimlinks.com network has the capability to trawl the content of your site and automatically convert relevant links to affiliate links with merchants it is associated with (and there are thousands). This can be a very smart route to quickly commercialize your content without having to find individual affiliate offers, joining different networks, placing links and so on.

CPA Networks
CPA stand for Cost Per Action. So while an action in theory could be the sale of a product (just like affiliate marketing) CPA offers are usually about lead generation. So the ‘action’ would be something like signing up for a free trial or entering a competition. I have heard it referred to as ‘Affiliate marketing on steroids’ which isn’t a bad description. CPA offers change regularly as merchants promote new offers & deals so if you are a web publisher wishing to market CPA programmes you typically need lots of traffic, huge mailing lists or be exceptionally good at buying targeted traffic and converting the traffic to offer sign ups. It’s not for the faint hearted and very much a specialized form of online monetization.

There are lots of CPA networks around. The easiest way to get an overview of all the top networks and find CPA networks & offers relevant to your subject matter is to use the site http://www.offervault.com which allows you to search for CPA offers across multiple networks then apply directly to specific programmes.

Filed Under: adsense, Advertising, Google, marketing