Category Archives: Marketing

Facebook Tweets Twitter: How do two biggest Social Networking Sites Make Money?

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Do They Make Any?

Facebook’s courtship with Twitter in the past few weeks has officially ended after Evan Williams, the founder and CEO of Twitter confirmed on Tuesday that there would be no marriage with Facebook. The web world has been abuzz with news recently about Twitter’s reported refusal for a $500 mostly stock offer from Facebook. Both social networking platforms are yet to turn profitable and this raises several questions about how viable these are as propositions for investors. There is certainly a point in a way Mr. Williams envisions Twitter’s prospects in the coming years. He has clearly stated that Twitter would be looking to monetise its platform before such an association and if his strategies to turn Twitter profitable work, then there could be a higher price tag on Twitter than what Facebook is currently offering.

Twitter, a simple micro-blogging platform built on Ruby-On-Rails, has been gaining popularity since early 2007. Started with a $20 million capital raised from Venture Capitalists, Twitter allows users to broadcast messages up to 140 characters through its platform. With an estimated 6 million global users, Twitter is fast catching up with some of the other popular social networking sites although it lags behind miles in comparison with the massive 120 million user base of Facebook. Moreover, of the 6 million estimated users, only a fraction of them tweet regularly. Despite a fairly decent subscriber base, Twitter like most social networking platforms, is struggling to translate its success into profits, although Mr. Williams foresees the opportunity to monetise the platform in the next couple of years. However, one of the first tasks Mr. Williams has identified is to stabilise and improve the Twitter platform.

Facebook has its own challenges to turn profitable. Despite having 120 million registered users and consumer data which is extremely valuable for marketing, Facebook has failed to achieve the desired levels of success. It offers a great platform for businesses to market themselves by leveraging the options of setting up free business pages to interact directly by fostering communities with the target base on a personal level. It also offers an opportunity for businesses to advertise for a fee, although businesses might find that Facebook offers little return on money spent on advertising.

Given the current economic climate, it’s a huge surprise that Facebook is throwing $500 million weight of stock and cash on a smart tool which has, for the moment, no revenue potential. The $15 billion valuation, when Microsoft bought into a piece of the Facebook pie, seems to be extremely overvalued. If Facebook’s stock were to be revalued now, Twitter would loose much of the value of the stock, considering bigger technology companies like Google and others have seen their stock values eroding in the recent past. And the biggest irony is, Twitter refusing such an offer! This, despite Mr. Williams’ assertion that there are no business people among Twitter’s 25 strong team, which could actually put it on the path to economic success.

If past successes are anything to go by, then Google certainly is a beacon of hope. As most of us would already be aware, the seeds to Google’s growth were sown back in 1998 when Google developed an incredible product – a better search engine. And for nearly two years, they ran from pillar to post trying to convince venture capitalists to invest in an idea which absolutely had no revenue channels. Of course, it did benefit from the dotcom boom and fortunately, their revenue potential was realised through another smart product – Adwords, which literally is the driving force behind Google today.

Undoubtedly, both Facebook and Twitter have been successful in capturing user attention. How successfully they translate this attention to bank balance is a matter of curiosity, which depends on efficient leadership and only time will tell this. One thing is certain. They might not make any money for their founders but it certainly does make you less productive in the workplace!

Obamania: The Marketing of a President

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I can’t remember who said it, but whoever did is certainly a major dude. I guess it must be John Lasetter, the CEO of Pixar in one of his interviews for Harvard Business Review in September. Not the exact words though:

“You give a good product to a mediocre team, they will mess it up, you give a mediocre product to a great team, then you are bound to succeed”

I am certainly not implying Obama’s mediocre…he’s superior (More about it later…), but he’s had an incredible marketing team. Too few words to describe, but probably, I will do a long post about this some time…

The Science of Marketing Apple

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Apple‘s approach to product innovation, marketing & branding is legendary. Despite having a minimalistic presence in the advertising Arena, the company evokes sufficient interest from people who matter the most, customers. Apple’s customers are usually early adopters and if you give a high quality, well designed product to early adopters, then you can certainly expect others to follow them, which has always played a central role in Apple’s success. It has done a wonderful job of creating an Apple culture, where people are waiting to take cues from the company and advertise repeatedly through the simplest forms of advertising – social marketing, in other words word-of-mouth.

For me I believe, social marketing is the most successful way to reach out to your audience. Even before a product’s purported launch, there are whispers in the market, prompting people to speculate about it, write and even review without getting their hands on to the product. There has always been speculations on every generation of iPods Apple has launched, there had been plenty of talk about an Apple phone, years before the iPhone was launched, and of course people have anticipated newer versions of each of Apple’s products, be it a G4, Macbook, iMac, Mini or even indigeous add ons such as the Time Machine and the Apple TV. On top of this, it also offers an incredible operating system and some clever applications such as the iTunes. The latest buzz among apple disciples is the launch of a new product code named “brick”. What exactly brick is, nobody knows for certain. But it has garnered significant marketing attention world wide, with bloggers making various conjectures about the product, which includes a newer version of Macbook, an all new Apple TV and even an updated Mac Mini. Some blogs even claim that Brick is a Dual Screen foldable Net Book.

A leading Apple community on the web quoting an unnamed resource has reported that “Brick” is not a product, but a radical new manufacturing process, which apparently will carve out the newer versions of Macbooks and Macbook Pros from a single aluminum block. However, Apple has put an end to all speculation by launching improved thinner version of Macbooks with faster graphics processors and an iPhone like all glass trackpad and an extended battery life. Of course the lower part of the new Apple chassis is made from single aluminum blocks. Whatever the product, it has created enough buzz already. People are certain to queue up in stores either to get their hands on to Apple’s new offering or to catch a glimpse of it.

So what is the secret of Apple’s success? The company has always relied on extending the customers digital lifestyle by offering products which reinvents the way people look at those products. Above all, the company’s business strategies are based on creating products as a support system to its core rather than exploding the market with a wide spectrum reinforcing the company’s brand perceptions. For a technology intensive industry in which Apple participates, keeping a fresh image is absolutely imperative as products evolve constantly. The Apple brand is leveraged in such a way that it can expand from computers to music players and phones because they are known for “thinking different” and therefore setting an expectation of originality. Consumers don’t just buy an Apple product; they buy the idea of what Apple stands for. It is a known fact over the years that much of the success of products or services derives from the effect consumers have on one another’s decisions. Apart from anticipating what features individual consumers might find desirable, Apple has adopted strategies that take social influence into account. Macbooks, IPods & iPhones have managed to get more exposure among average consumers, which could be attributed to social influence and these average consumers are more likely to consider other Apple products, which further enhances the brand image and values associated with the product. Unlike other companies, Apple has always created products which are add ons to its core product. An iPod or an iPhone needs iTunes, Apple TV needs needs an iPod, and of course for the related applications to work, you need an operating system and Apple again stands out with its offering. To run the operating system, you need hardware and for that you have a sleek range of iMacs, Macbooks and Minis.

Consider this, not many would have thought that iTunes would be product on its own. It is an application, which many would have believed was developed to support the iPod range of MP3 players. But today, it is a market place contributing handsomely to Apple’s profit share. The strategy here is simple. Sell an iPod worth £200 which holds 30, 000 songs and sell songs on iTunes for 79 pence. Ideally (If there’s no piracy) to fill up the 30000 capacity iPod you would need £23000 worth of songs and as of September 2007, 150 million iPods in different capacities have been sold worldwide. Consider the average iPod sold is of a 5GB capacity and do the numbers taking into account people buying music from other sources and downloading pirated music from the internet. Although conventional wisdom states that Apple is loosing money on iTunes which it is making up by selling iPods, at a 30 % margin on every song sold, the profits are still enormous. Not to forget that it is expected to increase its market share to 85 % this year. Here’s a company, which believes in designing and developing superior products with innovative industrial design and and markets it with a similar level of creativity to profit from it. It is an ideal example of marketing success.

Get Your Website Right For Driving Up Sales

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Online retailers often face a huge conundrum. Although their primary objective is to drive traffic to the site and ultimately sales, they have to battle with a variety of mediums to achieve this. From the site development and maintenance to user experience, occupying enviable spots on search engines, and reinforcing the companies presence on various forms of online media, is all a massive challenge particularly in a web 2.0 driven age. Despite the surge in internet users, online shopping is still a distinct experience from visiting a high street retailer.

Consumers Shopping online not only get a cost advantage, but they are also served with an incredible amount of information helping them make the right decision. With many price and product comparison sites, blogs, product reviews, feedbacks etc, online shoppers, usually are equipped with product knowledge prior to their purchase. However, despite a wealth of information, consumers often bank on search engines to help them make a purchase. This is where, a company’s approach to its online presence comes into play. User engagement plays an important role in the performance of a website, therefore emphasising the need to develop a site that aids consumers in making a right decision.

Arena Flowers has recently been used as a case study in a forth coming text on Internet Marketing. We are quite pleased with this new development and we feel that we are doing things right. However, there’s always room to improve and enhance customer engagement and we constantly strive to understand internet marketing in its entirety to achieve this. We do rely on customer suggestions and feedback to improve our offering. However, since we are being used as a case study in an internet marketing text, we feel that it would be wise to take suggestions from one of the authors of the text on improving our website. So we approached Dr. Dave Chaffey, a leading Internet Marketing consultant and trainer and the author of best selling books on online marketing for an interview and he gladly agreed. Watch this space for tips on optimising a website for better customer engagement.

Crafting a Green Business Strategy

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Going green seems to be the industry buzz word these days. Everyday I get many emails announcing the launch of eco-friendly, ethical, green websites and services. Clearly, green seems to be selling. Businesses are trying to cash in on this phenomenon. Not the Arena Flowers is lagging in terms of being green. From the beginning we have shaped a green, ethical outlook to our business. We are trying to differentiate our USP by being a green florist. However, there are still many areas where we could improve and we are working on this.

In the recent years, a company’s environmental emphasis has become one of the most important issues. Businesses across various sectors have discovered that a certain section of consumers will buy products, or avoid their purchase, based on the firm’s environmental performance. These consumers are more ethically aware and reach out to seek information on how a business responds to their environmental concerns. As this segment of environmentally aware, green consumers amplify in numbers, a green strategy beyond doubt becomes the way forward for businesses. Government legislation, reaction to competition and other dynamics within the industry is also driving organistions to etch a green commitment.

Businesses are being constantly monitored for their environmental performance by their stakeholders, more so in the flowers business as the industry has invited severe criticism for sourcing air freighted flowers from third world countries. Air freighted flowers in refrigerated units spells a heightened environmental concern due to the high level of CO2 emissions involved in the process. Also, the exploitation of workers in third world countries is another cause of worry although this seems to have been mitigated in the recent years through the presence of organisations such as Fair Trade which monitors the human as well as environmental concerns. However, there is a perennial debate about the ethical benefits of fair trade affiliation as a majority of producers governed by the Fair Trade code of conduct tend to be larger organisations relying on cheap labour.

Also, despite the popularity of green initiatives and a willingness by a section of environmentally motivated consumers to pay a premium for green products, such strategies might not yield the desired results yet. There is still a higher proportion of demographics which inspite of showing an ethical commitment, might place their self interests above the environment. After all, the fundamental principle businesses thrive on is to address consumer needs by creating a valued offering. There are a variety of aspects which could create these valued offerings and going green is one of them. Under these circumstances, it becomes comfusing to pursue a line of green strategy which is beneficial to organisations as well as the stakeholders and the environment.

There are many reasons for a business to think green. The external business environment in which a business operates in offers plenty of leads to begin with. The big retailers in the UK are a good example. Taking cue from each other, all big retailers are treading the green path. Waitrose, Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Asda etc have all adapted green initiatives. A good green marketing strategy could form the basis of a competitive advantage. Also, a business seeking to leverage a competitive advantage through a green strategy should be confident that such a strategy could be ingrained into the ethos of the company. Also, there are plenty of hurdles if a business adapts a green. I guess green businesses are subject to closer scrutiny by the public and media and the shortcomings are easily picked.

At Arena Flowers, we have realised that by being transparent with regard to our environmental policies including our production, packaging and disposal, we seem to evoke a higher interest among our customers, while we have strong foundations to contribute towards a clean and green environment. We believe that if given access to the right information, customers often make the right choice. For this reason, from the very beginning we have placed a special weight on how we respond to the environment.

The Power of Email Communication – How to Win People

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For a marketing professional, I am rather quiet and reserved, though I am aware that I need to be bit more outgoing to nudge ahead of my career. So for the past few days, I have been reading a few self-development books and one of the first ones I picked was the much celebrated self-help classic by Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People“. Although I believe that soft skills are often intrinsic, this book certainly has the right ingredients to change your approach towards people. Not that I have been conscious of how I have interacted with people, but it certainly is an interesting read. What makes it interesting is that I relate to the book more often now, particularly when people around me approach others.

A couple of days back, I got an email from an individual selling a affiliate services. Though I was least interested in pursuing it further, the email was so compelling that I decided to respond with a polite refusal. A couple of days later I got a reply pushing the service further without being imposing. The first section of Carnegie’s book which speaks about “Fundamental Techniques of Handling People” encourages readers to use a similar language which is sure to win people. In Carnegie’s terms it is important to “arouse in people an eager want”. Had it not been for our previous experience with companies offering similar services with a slightly different marketing language, his emails are extremely convincing.

Here’s our correspondence:

I hope that you don’t mind me emailing out of the blue – I have just ordered my second bunch of flowers from Arena, I love the quality of the products, and thus I sought out your contact details to see if my company could help you grow online sales even further.

I’m sure that you’re using an affiliate network at present, but my company “XXXX” is the “XXXX XXXX XXXX” and we have been winning many clients from the UK over the past 2 years.  I would love to have a quick conversation with you when you have 5 minutes to highlight a couple of differences that we can make, and also our experience in the flower sector.

Best number is always my mobile and I’ll look forward to hearing from you Adarsh.

For which I had replied that it isn’t feasible for us to join another network as it adds little value in terms of incremental sales. And I got another reply highlighting how the network could improve our sales. Also, there’s a catch. He wants us to consolidate our services with other companies to his company, which means that we have to terminate our existing contracts with the networks we already participate in.

Thanks for your reply, and I am indeed not surprised to hear that your additional networks have not provided an incremental increase in sales to warrant the additional resource.

This unfortunately is standard across affiliate networks in the UK market, and something that our clients experience before joining “XXXX”

We work very differently for our clients and being the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, our experience in the online florist sector I believe will interest you.  Perhaps though only if you were willing to consider consolidating your other two networks into “XXX”, I could showcase the strategy to provide the missing incremental increase in sales.

Is there a number that I can reach you on Adarsh, or a meeting that we can schedule for next week with your colleagues and co-decision makers to propose a solution?  I can only reiterate that I am a firm believer in the Arena service and see a clear opportunity to help you grow sales further.

On a personal note, the email is certainly baiting the recipient and I find it to be an incredible example for email marketing. It certainly livens Carnegie’s fundamental principles.

Social Media Marketing at Dell: Strategies for Success

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After a long hiatus owing to a few personal commitments which has kept me busy for a while, I have come back to continue my infrequent updating on the blog. It’s ironical that in the age of Social Media Marketing, actively pursued by individuals and corporates alike, Longhop has such long gaps between posts. Strangely, the current post focuses on highlighting how Social Media can contribute to the success of a business. Obviously, the inspiration to post on Social Media surges from the recent Online Marketing & Media event I attended at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

Dell LogoWe have had many opportunities in the past to attend marketing events, but owing to resources we have only managed to attend a few. Each event is a great experience and offers great insightful learning from businesses who share their experiences in such events. One such learning comes from arguably one of the biggest ecommerce businesses in the World, Dell. Internet, as with many online organizations is a part of Dell’s infrastructure. Dell has fully embraced the participatory phase of Social Media Marketing by being actively involved as a listening company. It has firmly believed that messages need to be dynamic and co-created rather than the company being the mouthpiece for all its products. Part of Dell’s initiatives comes from its previous experience of dealing with customers. Jeff Jarvis, a disgruntled Dell Customer and an American journalist launched a crusade against Dell terming his experience as “Dell Hell” and extensively chronicled his communication on his blog Buzzmachine here. Jeff’s outbursts resulted in spreading the negative word about Dell’s customer service and impacting its overall corporate reputation. True, there were hundreds of peevish customers who had experienced Dell Hell before, but it took one influencer like Jeff Jarvis to coalesce into a crowd. The collaborative influence of bloggers in denting Dell’s stronghold launched the company into frenzy and Dell responded by identifying the shift in power and began listening to customers.

So what exactly has Dell been doing? Head to Dell’s Community Website here, which provides a glimpse of Dell’s pursuits in the social marketing arena. It is evident that the company actively engages in an ongoing conversation with customers to learn their perceptions, and to ingrain those perceptions into Dell’s outreach.

  • Dell IdeaStorm LogoIdeaStorm: Dell launched IdeaStorm in 2007 to engage with customers and to understand their needs and preferences to develop products. It is an incredible market research initiative with an added personal touch. Users are invited to share their ideas and collaborate with each other. This gives a clear idea to Dell about what their potential customers seek and to share these ideas throughout the organization to gain further thoughts to translate these ideas into products. In essence, Dell has converted its customers, non-customers and potential customers into a massive product development team.

“The name is a take-off on the word “brainstorm” and it is our way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another. The goal is for you, the customer, to tell Dell what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas

Our commitment is to listen to your input and ideas to improve our products and services, and the way we do business. We will do our best to keep you posted on how Dell brings customer ideas to life.”

  • Direct2Dell: Direct2Dell is Dell’s corporate blog; it’s a wire service about Dell to the world.
  • Dell Forums: As the name suggests, it’s the community forum where users share their thoughts and
  • experiences with others.
  • Studio Dell: Dell uses videos and podcasts to educate users on various emerging technologies and also offers tips, tricks and support to get the best out of a Dell product. Studio Dell is an interactive communication tool, which also encourages users to post videos of them using Dell products.
  • Smart Business 360: A resource center for small businesses offering product support and advice
  • ReGeneration & Dell Earth: Websites on sustainable living to emphasize Dell’s environmental commitment, identified as a key strategy to future growth.

These are some of the prominent community initiatives at Dell. The company participates in other popular social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, etc., etc. Customers are no longer interested in a company’s business structure. They seek experiences. They want to be a part of the business, they want to be heard, understanding which can benefit the business itself. Through Dell’s Community Networking initiatives, the company responds positively to customer needs fomenting strong relationships.

Business FocusOne of the perennial debates in the ongoing marketing world is how does a company leverage commercial benefits by participating in social media marketing and how can such campaigns be measured? Dell employs about 40 individuals working on the community network, which includes hundreds of interactions with customers through blogging, forum posting, Yahoo answers, twittering, facebook etc. Is it really worthwhile? How does it benefit the company? Isn’t social media marketing hard to quantify? Firstly, Dell argues that it doesn’t put a cost on social media. Secondly, Dell has gained significant confidence with regard to customer service and customer satisfaction. Here’s a metric then. Dell claims half a million of sales came from Twitter participation last year. That’s just a spoonful in a bucket of water, but it counts nevertheless. Furthermore, traditional metrics such as traffic, click through rates and conversion rates give a skewed image of social media marketing. The best metrics are often those which show how many people are talking about the company positively in the blogosphere, the number of people who subscribe to the site’s content, the number of positive reviews of the companies products or services etc. The best metrics derive on how social media evolves and what companies seek from it. In traditional marketing sense you could call this brand building.

Social MediaSo should all businesses participate in social media? While participation is essential particularly for online businesses, it entirely depends on the organizational objectives as well. If sales and not brand is the driving factor, then social media marketing can be time consuming and resource heavy. This is particularly true for smaller organizations. It’s more like a long term vs. short term strategy. Social media is clearly long term as it helps in creating an everlasting brand awareness which is extremely important to the success and longevity of a business. However, there is a note of caution. Social media is here to stay and it is essential for businesses, small or large, to realign their marketing initiatives to create the fine balance to leverage success.

Trademark Bidding – Winners & Losers!!!

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It’s finally here! A few years after trialling in the US, Google has extended the controversial trademark bidding by opening up the auctioning process to all entities in the sponsored links space. While Google reaps the benefits of a new open space bidding process, this move could fundamentally shift the Search Marketing landscape.

Previously advertisers and brand owners had some sort of insulation to protect and limit their brand related keywords from being auctioned. However, since May 5th 2008, Google has radically changed its trademark policies to encourage competitors to bid on the keywords. The new policy, mirroring the Google’s trademark policy in the US, is certain to rake in plenty of moolah to the world’s biggest search engine.

However, it is the businesses which will suffer owing to inflated CPC prices for their own brand terms. Also, businesses which had previously kept away from internet marketing will be forced to allocate a budget to ensure that their customers aren’t wooed away by the competitors. At the same time, they also have to ensure that the competitors do not take complete liberty of promoting themselves at the cost of their business.

Your Ad HereIn the UK, some of the larger online businesses like Lastminute, Teletext etc., have already taken up the cause by filing a suit against Google. A few of the smaller companies which are benefiting from Google’s new policies are being bulldozed by their larger counter parts with legal threats.

It’s quite interesting to see how the search marketing industry pans out in the next few weeks.

To Pay or Not to Pay – Five Tips to Identify a Valuable Paid Backlink

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PageRankA couple of days back, I got an email from a friend of my colleague at work enquiring if I was interested in buying a link for from their site. The site in question is an old domain (about 9 years) and has a good PageRank on the homepage and even ranks well for some of the keywords in their area and has good consistent traffic. Moreover, it is a directory providing information on an area not particularly related to ours, although there are some similarities. The good people behind the site have put in some great effort in the recent days to redesign and to develop the site to make it more search friendly and appealing to the user. For a monthly payment, we will get a link back from a page which is two clicks away from the homepage and easily navigable for the user and it looks like we will be the first ones (and probably the only one) to get a link back from that page. Although the page has a PR0, I am aware of a previous page which had a good PR and it has been 301ed to redirect to this page. I am tempted to discuss our link with them and will do so in the next couple of days. However, the issue of buying a link, especially when Google has penalised link buyers and link sellers raises a thought.

Time and again Google has come down hard against paid linking which a majority of websites rely on to improve the quality of incoming links. Undoubtedly, organic links are more valuable to websites than paid links, but it is often difficult to get a quality organic link as Google discounts many of the proven tactics in sourcing such links. For example, reciprocal linking which used to be quite a huge hit among webmasters a few years ago is no longer a dependable strategy to build a quality backlink profile. The same applies to three way linking and many such techniques which were invented to circumvent Google’s crackdown. In fact, subsequent to the recent update, link exchange pages on many websites have been hit and they no longer have a good PageRank which used to be an indicator to the quality of links you could probably trade for.

Another way of sourcing one way links was through directory submissions. But the quality of links from directories has always been questionable as many of these directory sites link to spammy/low quality neighborhoods. Little wonder that Google penalised a good number of general directories due to low quality of filters for a website to be listed along with many other attributes including a bad backlink profile for the directory itself. However, there are a few recommended high quality directories which rank well with search engines. But the lists of these quality directories are few and the category pages where you can have your listing from don’t necessarily have a good PageRank. True, for quality directories, the PageRank of the home page funnels some power to the category pages, but the numbers of links on these pages mean you get a tiny benefit of such listings. Moreover, listing in such high quality directories are often paid (BOTW, About, Business etc) or the time frames for listing are extremely high (DMOZ).

Search Engines & Directories

Of course, there are many other ways to build links naturally by adding quality content to your site, blogging regularly, using articles as a link bait, press release, building cool tools related to your site, building applications and generating content for the Social Media, creating and distributing templates for blogs, directories etc. The number of opportunities the Web 2.0 (user generated web medium or social media as it is referred to) offers is infinite and deserves a post on its own (I will surely blog this in the coming weeks). But it definitely involves a certain level of creativity and persistence to generate high quality of links.

BacklinkIn many ways, the Search industry has evolved to adopt better ways to source that golden link which adds value to the website’s link profile. While building natural links is dominant strategy, acquiring quality paid links remains a focus for SEO Marketers. From link farms and paid directory listings to link brokers, every SEO marketer has explored one or all of these options to gather backlinks. However, are these paid links always valuable? How do you determine how much benefit a link adds to your search marketing efforts? Although in the beginning, I would rate anything with a good PageRank as a good backlink, over the last few weeks I have learnt to judge what page offers a better value for a website. Based on my experience, I have a defined five point criteria for link buying which am sure works for many industries.

1. The quality and authority of the domain.

  • The age of the domain (Whois lookup) and the traffic it generates (Alexa, Compete or from the site administrators).
  • The Authority for the domain among Search Engines. (I have always found Google’s Sitelinks to be useful in judging this)

2. The Quality of Backlinks to the Domain and the page

  • Using link:www.domain.com and link:www.domain.com/backlinkpage on Yahoo Site Explorer and Google
  • Although Google lists the links randomly with no particular order, Yahoo seems to show Quality/new links higher

3. Does the site and the page have information for users and is it related to your industry?

  • Do users benefit from the content? If they are looking for something in particular will they seek information from the pages?

4. Are there any other links on the Page? If there are, what is the quality of these links?

  • If there are far too many links on the page, it is unlikely that it will appeal to users and this is true in case of Search Engines too. Also, the quality of the outgoing links also matter to a great deal as too many spammy sites can turn off the users as well as Search Engines.

5. Will we benefit in terms of traffic generation from the page?

  • If a link doesn’t direct traffic to a website, then it’s probably a low quality page similar to those thousands of directories developed mainly for SEO purposes. I personally feel that a quality link always has a potential to generate and direct traffic.

My personal opinion is that if the linking page and domain satisfies these qualities, then it is definitely worth a link back and merits a small payment to leverage benefits. Although Google discounts paid links, if a link qualifies the aforementioned criteria, it is sure to escape the Google scanner.

Please feel free to post comments.

The Mysterious Consumer

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The Amber NectarLast weekend, I met up with a friend, who works in the Insurance industry. It was an exciting day with a tightly planned sports schedule, which included watching three great but distinct sporting encounters – a Premier League football match between Liverpool and Everton, a one off Twenty20 cricket match between India and Australia and a World Cup rugby final between England and South Africa in three different pubs.

Appam & Kadla CurryTo add to this, we managed to squeeze out time to scoff some Appams and Kadla Curry, a South Indian delicacy in an obscure Indian Restaurant in East London. Nevertheless, among our regular pub banter, he was explaining to me about typical profiles of consumers. His thoughts are based on the newly discovered topic in Economic Psychology – Identity based decision making.

Identity in economic psychology as academic scholars would define is an individual’s sense or self. In other words, it is the individual’s ability and proclivity to influence decision making. As such, people are generally classified into three different categories:

  • Aggregator
  • Maximiser
  • Satisficer

Aggregator is one, who aggregates the price of a product from several different sources before he chooses to buy the product from one of these sources. A maximiser is much similar to an aggregator, but is more deliberative due to his subjective evaluation of the sources. This often leads, maximisers to contact one of the many different sources they inquire with an intention to negotiate a price suitable to their expectations. Satisficers are individuals who have no intentions of optimising the opportunities and would settle for the first available option, if it meets their threshold criteria. Advantages and disadvantages of these traits are qualitatively different for each alternative.

Ruminating on which of these three psycho-economical profiles of decision making I would fit into, I realised that I am a bit of an aggregator, partly skewed towards a maximiser. But, subconsciously like every one else, I have experienced each of these different psycho-economic phases at some point. I recount the experience of buying my mobile phone as characterising the attribute of an aggregator. Every year, when my mobile phone contract is up for renewal, I check with various websites to see what they have on offer and find the best deal based on my threshold expectations and base my decisions on this. Cheeky me!

British AirwaysHowever, when I was planning my summer vacation in India, I checked with many travel websites to seek out the best price I could get for a return flight from London to Bangalore as I found the prices on Airline websites a bit too expensive in comparison. British Airways was offering considerably cheaper prices than other available airlines and one of the travel websites offered the lowest British Airways fare. But my maximising attitudes lead me to check for the same flight dates and times with British Airways website itself, where I saved £50 on my ticket. But there are certain disadvantages of being a maximiser, first and foremost of which is the time involved in decision making. Secondly, after their purchase if they spot a better deal elsewhere, it is sure to evoke a feeling of regret. However, maximisers have this uncanny ability of finding a way to return the product citing various reasons with an intention to buy the next best offer. Of course there is the inherent problem of too many choices which leads maximisers to be a bit insecure in their purchasing decisions. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t call up British Airways to claim refunds on my ticket for the simple reason of not finding a cheaper alternative. Hehe…

Sony VaioFinally, my experience of identifying my last psycho-economic profile relates to my recent purchase of a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21E Laptop for Shipra. I had a threshold on price, configuration and brand, walked straight into a Sony Store in Brent Cross, paid for the Laptop and am completely satisfied with my purchase (Well…until now). But if you search for the same model on Sony on the Internet, it is possible to buy the product for at least £60 cheaper (Damn it…why didn’t I switch profiles?). This is the portrait of a satisficer. The merit of these decisions is of course based on individual perceptions. However, identity based consumer profiling has spawned the growth of a variety of online services, from gadgets and groceries to financial products to cater to the aggregating and maximising community. For example, there are many price comparison sites such as Price Grabber, My Super Market, Travel Supermarket, Money Supermarket etc and many forums such as Money Expert, Money Saving Expert and Hot UK Deals (Am not at embarrassed to say I use some of these sites infrequently). Businesses have started taking notice of this kind of consumer profiling and am sure will have ramifications across many industries.

Arena FlowersReflecting on this, it would be interesting to seek out the profile of a typical flower buyer from our company, Arena Flowers. Not that we are unaware of who our customers are and their demographic profiles. It’s just a matter of thought on how the florist industry is different from an industry such as Insurance. Fresh flowers are unfinished and perishable products which needs the skills of an expert florist to make the arrangements attractive. Although you may find blooms of similar names with many florists, no bouquet is similar to each other, with prices and with the arrangement. As such, none of these price aggregating sites can offer comparison of flower arrangements. Fortunately for us, the aggregating and satisficing communities will have little impact on the florist industry, unless customers choose just flowers over the quality of flowers. However, it is the maximising community, which will benefit. For example, when an online florist runs a promotional campaign, it is sure to get picked up by forums which the maximisers are known to frequently visit. We have had a few instances already and it affects us negatively. Unfortunately, I cannot discuss this in much detail as I do not want to be sued by my company for letting our competitors read about what we do. But these issues do raise quite a few thoughts…

But as an individual, am happy to find cheaper deals to buy stuff!!!