29
›› THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, IPHONE, ANDROID AND THE WEB GAVIN MERRIMAN E COMMERCE STRATEGY MASTERY WITH: The $18M Website MARCH 2012 MAXIMISE YOUR EMAIL CAMPAIGN PAGE 13 SMASHING PROMOTION HOMERUNS PAGE 16 RAISING VENTURE CAPITAL PAGE 19 MARKETING WITH PINTEREST PAGE 23 JOIN US ON FACEBOOK march 2012

Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Get the latest copy of Internet Marketing Magazine with your Free Internet Subscription. In this issue… Gavin Merriman: Ecommerce Strategy Mastery, Maximise Your Email Campaign, Smashing Promotion Homeruns, Raising Venture Capital, Marketing with Pinterest, The $18M Website & Much more…

Citation preview

Page 1: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

›› THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, IPHONE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

GAVINMERRIMAN

ECOMMERCE STRATEGY MASTERY WITH:

The$18M

Website

MARCH 2012

› MAXIMISE YOUR EMAIL

CAMPAIGNPAGE 13

› SMASHINGPROMOTIONHOMERUNS

PAGE 16

› RAISINGVENTURECAPITAL

PAGE 19

› MARKETING WITH

PINTERESTPAGE 23

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

march 2012

Page 2: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

2 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

TheSTATE OF THE INTERNET

› INTERNET UPDATE

The Upcoming Facebook IPO

Facebook is set to float its shares through an Ini-tial Public Offer (IPO). It hopes to raise 5 billion dollars through the IPO, to enable it expand its operations and consolidate its position as the world’s premier social media website. Analysts estimate the company to be valued at between 75 billion dollars and 100 billion dollars. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg could easily be worth $28 billion after the IPO.

The move would give the social network, whose sales almost doubled to US$3.71 billion last year, a pipeline of more than US$5 billion in possible borrow-ings. That compares with a re-ported US$3 billion credit line for Google Inc, the most valu-able US Internet company.

We believe that the demand for Facebook’s stock is going to be so high that most investors will not worry about the fundamentals of the stock be-cause of a want to own part of the Internet Pow-erhouse.

Facebook filed for the IPO last month, pursuing what may be the largest Internet offering on re-cord. This could place Facebook as the fourth largest IPO ever in the U.S., behind companies like Visa, General Motors and AT&T Wireless.

Facebook Launches Premium

Facebook’s new premium ads have been creating 5 to 10 times more click-throughs and a 3X ROI lift when compared to previous units after more than

two months of testing. Mike Hoefflinger, Face-book’s customer marketing director, disclosed the metrics while announcing his company’s premium ads upgrade - among other items - at the recent Facebook Marketing Conference.

“We are evolving from advertising to stories,” Hoefflinger said. “Ads are good, but stories are better.”

Katie O’Brien, Ben & Jer-ry’s Global Digital Market-ing Manager reported on a Facebook business channel video that they had expe-rienced a 4x increase in reach as a result in running Facebook Premium. She also advises interaction with ‘Likes’, ‘Comments’

and ‘Shares’ are up over two times. From a marketing mix analysis she report-ed that from every $1 they invested in Facebook they saw $3 in increased sales.

With new ‘Premium on Facebook’ ads, marketers can expand their reach on the social network by paying for a video, a coupon or other message to appear on the homepages of Facebook users, on the log-out screen and even within users’ news-feeds. Until now the newsfeed had been free of paid marketing messages.

“Our vision for marketing is that it is as good as any of the content you and I see on our newsfeed from a friend or family member,” Facebook Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson told roughly 1,000 guests in the audito-rium of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday.

ben and jerry’s facebook premium

Page 3: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

3internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Allowing paid company posts onto users’ news-feeds is a risk for Facebook because newsfeeds could get overwhelmed with advertising messag-es, Williamson added.

“Facebook advertising in the past was off to the side,” she said. “Now Facebook is taking the bold step of putting advertising right in the mix be-tween photos of babies and updates on trips to restaurants.”

When companies buy a “premium” ad, they are paying for their message to show up in several places on Facebook, including on the righthand side of a user’s homepage, when people log out and, potentially, in the newsfeed. Facebook’s algorithm determines whether or not an ad will show up in a user’s newsfeed, so there is no guar-antee for companies that it will.

Facebook’s Premium Ads, announced officially at Facebook’s “fMC” on February 29, combines the strengths of Facebook (where connections, conversations, and community flourish) with the triad of marketing disciplines (paid, earned, and owned media so central to every leading brand’s media strategy). Premium Ads not only puts a brand’s page and relevant post in front of the right audience, but it leverages an individual’s connections, i.e., “social context” to amplify its relevance and trust. The result, according to Facebook’s internal testing, is expected to de-light advertisers. Specifically, according to Face-book, Premium Ads are:

• 80 percent more likely to be remembered• Drive 40 percent higher engagement• Significantly increase purchase intent

There will be six types of premium ads: Photo, Video, Question, Status, Event, and Link.

Facebook Timeline for Businesses

Facebook also unveiled the new Timeline-styled Facebook Pages for brands, businesses, and or-ganizations this week. The pages allow brands to tell their stories going back to their founders – as

long as it’s not before the year 1800.

For instance, Coke’s Timeline begins in 1886. The new brand pages look and function like the user Timelines that have been rolling out for weeks.

I believe that the business timelines will have lit-tle to no effect on business ROI as it’s only a small percentage of consumers who are actively con-cerned about a companies history. Perhaps Face-book is missing the mark here as the consumers really care about their own ‘wants’ and ‘needs’, not a companies history, but time will tell.

The change will be available to all Facebook us-ers by the end of March, about 3 months after the feature was fully rolled out to personal accounts.

Magento’s eCommerce Platform Surpass-es 4 Million Downloads

Magento, the popular open-source e-commerce platform that debuted in 2007, recently surpassed 4 million downloads of its free Community edi-tion, Roy Rubin, founding chief executive advises.

Magento Clients range in size from merchants do-ing less than $1 million a year in sales to more than $100 million.

magento.com

Page 4: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

4 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Acquired by eBay in 2011, the platform is now taking aim at larger technology providers.

In many cases, companies and independent technology devel-opers start off with the free Community edition to explore Magento’s open-source technol-ogy before migrating to the En-terprise edition.

Amazon Lowers Prices for it’s Web-hosted Services

Amazon.com Web Services divi-sion announced yesterday that it is lowering the prices of its vari-ous web-hosted services any-where from about 10% to 42%.

The price reductions apply to the company’s Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon Elastic Map Reduce ser-vices. Users of the EC2 service, which allows users to tap into Amazon’s web-hosted servers for computing power and charg-es by the hour or on a contract basis, will see their rates drop depending on use and region.

“Some companies work hard to lower their costs so they can pocket more margin. That’s a strategy that a lot of the tra-ditional technology companies have employed for years, and it’s a reasonable business mod-el. It’s just not ours,” Amazon says. “We want customers of all sizes, from start-ups to enter-prises to government agencies, to be able to use AWS to lower their technology infrastruc-

ture.”Online Ad Spending to Sur-pass Print for First Time in 2012

For the first time in U.S. his-tory, marketers are projected to spend more on online advertis-ing than on advertising in print magazines and newspapers.

According to a recent study released by eMarketer, online advertising is expected to gen-erate $39.5 billion in sales this year — a 23.3% increase from 2011 — compared to a sum of

$33.8 billion on print.

Spending on TV, however, ap-pears largely unaffected by the growth of online. Spending on TV advertising still dwarfs online ad spending and looks set to still

do so for the next few years.

From the Desk of theEditor

You will notice a new ‘look and feel’ to Internet Market-ing Magazine this month. As our audience continues to grow and evolve we plan to grow and evolve with it. A special thanks goes out to Juanita Field for her exceptional design skills.

You will now find the new full Gavin Merriman eCommerce Strategy Interview audio in the ‘Audio Expert Interview’ section of the member’s area. Gavin’s knowledge and experience in the eCommerce area is amazing and is well worth a listen as well as a read. It’s free, so if you haven’t been sent your link to the member’s area please feel free to register for it today at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/

Keep a look out in next months issue for an eye opening session I recorded with Armand Morin on ‘Doubling Your Sales Online in 2012’, that you won’t want to miss.

Until next time… Wishing you the best of success online

Greg Cassar

Online ad spend eMarketer graph

Online ad spend tv eMarketer graph

GregCassarGreg CassarInternet Marketing Strategist& Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine

Page 6: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

6 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

GAVIN MERRIMANeCommerce Strategy Mastery

Gavin Merriman is a leading eCommerce strategist with over a decade of digital experience across various industry sectors for major brands in both the UK and now also Australia. Gavin has a proven history of growing visitors and sales, whilst improving user experience. Gavin is also a regular speaker/panellist at industry events around the globe. He is currently the Head of eCommerce of Universal Music Australia.

› EXPERT INTERVIEW

An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar

With a background in SEO in the mid 90’s Gavin went on to learn all parts of the eCommerce trade in the 2000’s through consulting roles in the UK with the search agency Stickyeyes and running major digital news sites at the Guardian Media Group.

Gavin then went on to be the Group Head of eCommerce Strategy for Shop Direct, which is the second biggest online retailer after Amazon in the UK with approximately $1.7 billion in revenue.

Greg: Gavin, when you were with the Stick-yeyes Consulting Group in the UK one of the things that really stood out for me was your great wins on the SEO and the traffic front. You took O2’s SEO uniques from 100,000 to 1.2 mil-lion in just 12 months, including rankings on the mobile phone type terms. What was your key learnings from that experience?

Gavin: The key learning for me was just proof of the value of making sure SEO was built into the actual fabric of the site itself.

Back then there were still a lot of the big brands who were trying to build SEO around their site instead of thinking about SEO into the heart of the site. So, they’d have their normal site or store and then, around the edges, they’d get an SEO agency to build content and generate links

but they wouldn’t actually want to change the homepage or change the layout of their site to have it so it’s search friendly.

Whereas what we were able to do with O2 is that they were going through re-development so they just followed the guidance in terms of the infor-mation architecture and the page structure and page titles. And, yes, they reaped the results. I think every major site now pretty much builds SEO into the heart of it. But for back then, it was proof that that was the way we should be doing it.

We really identified like some of the main terms, like mobile phone, making sure that they were in the hierarchy of the site, and that there was enough weight that had gone onto the decent folder structure, and making sure that the key-word frequency was correct on the site.

Also going for the long tail. So, instead of just focusing on the one or two big terms, optimising through the site for some smaller keywords, pick-ing up that long tail traffic really worked well.

Greg: Often that longer tail traffic can be key buying phrases, especially if they’re searching for the exact brand name of something or to the ex-tent of that. So, yes, that really can work well and convert better.

Page 7: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

7internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Greg: When I look at all the different things you’ve done in the past, the role of yours that interests me most was when you were working as the head of eCommerce strategy at the Shop Direct Group. There ob-viously were, under your cre-ative control, some massive eCommerce stores, includ-ing Woolworths.co.uk, little-woods.com, very.com, isme.com and, obviously, the list goes on. Like you said, second only to Amazon as far as sales in the UK. I know you’re very strong in the user experience area. How did you go about engineering a better user ex-perience for these site visitors and shoppers over time so that they enjoyed the site, wanted to stay longer and, ultimately purchased more?

Gavin: We already had a us-ability team in Shop Direct when I joined but they were con-stantly battling with creative because creative would want to create something that looked high fashion and impactful, with

loads of graphics. And then we were also battling with what the brand teams that wanted. They all shared the same ambitions but didn’t necessarily know the val- ue of the usability or UX.

So the key thing I did really was try and drive through a group wide creation of a digital board, which hadn’t existed before, where you’ve got all of the dif-ferent people, from the buying and merchandising teams to the strategy teams to the brand teams, to the creative teams, all together so that they then filtered in their requirements through this one group.

They were then prioritised and they would fall into usability testing. So once there were some prototypes created, they’d fall into some usability testing and then results would come back, so the customers were always put into the heart of it.

So instead of it being just us-ability test, it’s then also con-version testing to see what im-

pact the design has on sales. Ultimately, the customer does decide because the customer will determine which variant they like best and that’s the one which we go with. It really does let the customer decide what we do.

So starting with AB testing, we then move into the multi vari-ant testing after that, to try and refine down and, you know, make sure that all the variables convert nicely together.

It’s funny actually that often the thing that has the biggest differ-ence is something you wouldn’t expect at all, just like a slight difference in buttons or by dropping a little basket symbol onto the button or changing the colour of It. It’s the small things that seem to make the bigger impact. You can never second-guess what’s going to happen.

Greg: Personalisation - It’s not something that we’ve heard a lot about in the past but defi-nitely will hear more and more about in the near future. I know that it can have a mas-sive impact on the conversion of an eCommerce store. Have you had much success with personalisation over time?

Gavin: Yes, definitely. We, at Shop Direct, tried three dif-ferent personalisation engines. One of them was an in-house version, whereby it was home-made really by some pretty bright mass PHD types, and two other industry offerings.

isme.com

Page 8: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

8 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

We tested that against two others, one from ATG, which was obviously the eCommerce platform we were using, as well as one from another well known analytics company.

We then studied which performed best in terms of the sales generated from alternative products recommended on product page. We saw a big uplift actually. It was interesting. The analyt-ics one performed worse. The version that was the in-house version actually performed second best with ATG Recommends coming out on top. And that same engine then was used within email campaigns. So we sent personalisation of emails out, which had some huge impact on the sales and uptake that went from those emails.

Greg: So it remembers whether someone’s a male or a female and what sorts of products or services they’re interested in?

Gavin: Yes, exactly, and what products they’ve also bought, some collaborative filtering to look at other people who’ve bought similar products, their buying habits and perhaps even if you’ve got some information about family members.

I think the main thing for me is not so much how much evidence I’ve seen so far that personalisa-tion works. It’s more the potential of it and I think that’s still relatively untapped, even with some of the bigger eCommerce engines. There’s a lot more that can be done and will be done over time.

You very rarely see, for example, that much use

of social graph. I know people are trying it now but there’s so much rich information within social media about people’s likes and habits that could potentially be mined.

Product reviews are important also. For some people product reviews might be an absolutely essential part of their decision making process when buying, whereas for other people it might have very little to no impact. It might actually be seeing bigger, better product pictures and bigger product descriptions.

You probably haven’t got quite sophisticated enough solutions but once you start to map in things that monitor mouse position and where people’s focus is going and then you start to do some AB tests that layer that in then I think you get to really interesting sort of personalisation where it’s not just the products and promotions that are personalised. It’s the entire journey that’s personalised.

Greg: You said something there that I hadn’t really thought about before which was the inte-gration with the social graph. For those who are not familiar with what Gavin’s talking about, it’s for example within Facebook where there’s the new timeline and people are basically spelling out their whole life and everything that they’re into and not into and all that sort of stuff. It’s all information that can potentially be used and it looks like, from Facebook’s terms and service and privacy, you can pretty much

very.com

littlewoods.com

Page 9: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

9internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

have applications interact with that stuff with-out even the user’s permission. Is your under-standing that’s the way it works as well?

Gavin: Yes, they connect with you. So we obvi-ously want to encourage, and a big part of our so-cial strategy would be encouraging our customers to connect with us through Facebook. So, once they’ve done that connection, then we request their permission and, depending on how they re-spond to that, you can access more or less infor-mation about those customers and, if they allow you full permis-sion and you find a way of incentivis-ing that for them as well, then you have a lot more in-formation.

So, although some-one might not have signed up for our REM or our Lady Gaga or any other artist’s database and we don’t know that they’re inter-ested, we might be able to see that they’re actually a follower on Facebook or, that they’ve Tweeted something about one of those artists. So then we can use that to say, “Great. Okay, we know this person’s a fan, let’s personalise the products and promotions to make them more relevant to them”.

Greg: Yes, which ultimately is going to re-sult in more conversion. But you were talking about ATG before, which is obviously a technol-ogy that Oracle bought in the last year or two. The other really big players in the eCommerce space really would be IBM WebSphere and also Magento eCommerce, while not as big at the top end of town, certainly is a more cost ef-fective solution, I would say, for the majority of organisations. Have you got any particular preference as far as platforms that you really like or dislike?

Gavin: No, we used ATG at Shop Direct and it was an absolutely great solution. It did an aw-ful lot but then it comes with a really big price tag and I think the same is probably true with WebSphere, which I’ve never actually used, but I know a fair few friends who use WebSphere and they seem to share the same sort of opinion that I’ve got on ATG. Magento’s interesting, obviously because it’s like Wordpress but for eCommerce, being far more open source. And it looks like a very good solution.

Greg: Yes, we defi-nitely like Magento, their Enterprise Edition is $12k a year compared to liter-ally hundreds and thou-sands of dollars a year for the other solutions. I think if you’re building Amazon then, it might not be the right solution, but if you’ve got a brand name and you’re trans-forming your site from a normal site to an eCom-merce store then it’s a very, very good way to go and it seems quite robust. One thing we’ve found is

that laying out the design right from a server point of view is crucial so that you get your site performing well.

Greg: We were talking a little bit before about social media integration and social media definitely has matured and is very much main-stream now, especially following the massive growth of Facebook and, to a lesser extent, I guess, Twitter. For organisations that want to get into the social space and know that strategi-cally they need to do something there but they want to focus on what’s the 80/20 of it. When really thinking about ROI, what are some of the things that can be implemented that can be ef-fective?

Gavin: I guess it really depends on the brand. It’s going to be quite different for some fast mov-ing consumer goods than it will be necessarily for

Fcebook Sign

Page 10: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

10 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

us but I definitely think for retailers. If they’re operating in the space we are then, yes, the focus should be on ‘on site social’ and it’s often over-looked.

I think there’s a tendency to try and build Face-book likes and see Facebook likes as the be-all and the end-all whereas, actually, really, it’s en-gagement that’s important. It’s when you’ve got your advocates, your fans talking to each other across your Facebook page or across your plat-form that you’ve really sort of hit the bingo.

Our focus definitely in terms of the 80/20 where you get the most value is building ‘on site social’ and gamification so we can get our customers rat-ing the products and services and talking to other fans of artists - which really helps generate SEO as well and creates a sense of community. It’s not trying to build a social network like Facebook. It’s just trying to build user generated content and some of those tools to create a better shop-ping experience.

Greg: I notice you do a lot in the mobile space, and when you do designs from a mobile point of view, that you do very much two designs. So one is for the tablet format and one for the Smartphone for-mat. What sorts of technologies or design con-siderations do you really believe are key when nailing a mobile strategy for a site or a store?

Gavin: I think in terms of the technology, we’re using a rendering engine, which takes a product feed and site structure for the eCom-merce engine and creates a nice user experi-ence for each different device.

So for a mobile, obviously, it’s far smaller. You need to design some things like flat forms and just keep it really simple. It’s more important about what you’re taking out than what you’re

leaving. It’s about making sure you strip it down as much as possible.

For a tablet, you’ve obviously got far more space... and you’ve also got to think about the times these are likely to be used. For a mobile it’s far more likely to be dead time where some-one’s perhaps sitting on a bus and they thinks “I may as well utilise this to buy the CD I was think-ing about” whereas, with a tablet, they’re prob-ably more than likely sitting at home watching TV and think, “Okay, actually I want to buy.” You hear a track or something or you want to go and buy some clothes. So it’s you want a more plea-surable sort of shopping experience on a tablet device.

Greg: What can you tell us about the Get Music site and really it’s a plat-form, isn’t it, because it publishes music to other places, and how you’re going to grow that at Uni-versal because it really is an interesting project that one?

Gavin: Yes, it’s a music store where we sell and stock music from all art-ists, both digital and phys-ical. It’s really, the whole

ethos behind it is ‘it’s by music fans for music fans’ and it’s a place to get exclusive and deluxe products. So we’re not just trying to be JB Hi-Fi.

We’re trying to really appeal to the super fans and allow those super fans to connect with other fans. I think it’s about two years old now but I mean I’ve only just joined about four months ago. So we’re going through what is the brand position on it at the moment and inputting every bit of the strategy for rolling out, which includes all of the things we’ve talked about today – personali-sation, social, mobile, making sure we’ve got the right products – and hopefully we’re going to be able to create a really good brand there and a re-ally good site.

In terms of the 80/20 where you get the most value is building ‘on site social’ and gamification so we can get our customers rating the products and services and talking to other fans.

“ “

Page 11: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

11internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Greg: That’s an interesting project. I wish you the best of luck with that one. I see you’re a keynote speaker at the upcoming iMedia On-line Retail Summit in May. What will you be covering at that event?

Gavin: I think the core focus of it is going to be on talking about some results and what we’ve seen from our social media marketing and also mobile marketing. So by that point, we hopeful-ly would have launched our iPhone, our android apps, our mobile optimised site and Facebook store. So we’ll have some results to share about what impact that’s had and what return on in-vestment we’re seeing from it.

Also from the Shop Direct experience and what impacts we saw there but then as well as what direct results you can get from social and mo-bile and how they fit into the broader eCommerce strategy.

Greg: Thank you very much for your time. We really do appreciate it and wish you the best of luck with both the Get Music store that you’re relaunching and your career in the future online.

Gavin: Thank you very much. It’s been my pleasure, and it’s a pleasure to appear in Internet Marketing magazine.

getmusic.com.au

Page 13: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

13internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

The Day You ShouldNEVER SEND AN EMAIL

› EMAIL MARKETING

Most people worry about contacting their custom-ers too much. “I don’t want to annoy them” they say.

But the reality is... Virtually every business keeps in touch with their customers too little.

Having said that, there is a day when you should NEVER send an email. It’s not Monday. It’s not Tuesday. It’s not Thursday.

It’s any day when you wake up and say… I DON’T WANT TO MAKE ANY MONEY TODAY.

Think about it: your customers have subscribed to your service, whatever it is.

For instance, let’s say you run a beauty salon…Don’t you think your customers want to know all your different make-up tips to make them look more beautiful?

Don’t you think someone wanting to buy property in a particular area would want to know every-thing they could… if they were truly serious?

Of course, the caveat is...

You Must be Offering Great Value on a Daily Basis

Naturally, some won’t like it, and they’ll unsub-scribe. And that’s okay, because they were unlikely to buy anything anyway. What will happen is you’ll polarise your prospects. Some might hate you. But you’ll develop raving fans at the same time. And that’s what really matters, because these are the guys spending the money.

Oh, I know what you’re going to say... It’s too much. I couldn’t do that. My customers would hate it. That’s what I thought too. Until I started doing it.

Ok, let’s get down to the HOW...

How do you come up with ideas to send out DAILY. It’s very simple: You make a decision to do it and then you let this little device in your brain called a Reticular Activating System (RAS) go to work.

The RAS is the same thing that makes you notice a particular type of car after you’ve decided to purchase it. All of a sudden that car is everywhere, when it was nowhere before.

So if you’re selling an eBook on ‘How to Grow Or-ganic Food’ and you see the news talking about the new stop smoking ban...

That’s a reason for an email. A rant about why smoking is bad, which leads into the fact normal food is also bad (and why)... and why organic food is best.

Then show people how to get it inexpensively – YOUR PRODUCT.

Or you might hear a story about a celebrity eating organic food.

Page 14: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

14 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Or you might go to Google News, punch in organic gardening and come up with a dozen other ideas.

Or you might go out for dinner and get a nasty addition in your food, which triggers off a rant ask-ing the question: what other crap is in your food. Don’t fall for it – but organic.

This happens no matter what your business is in.

Ideas Begin to Come From Everywhere

And the more emails you write, the better and FASTER you get and the more it just... FLOWS.

You should be able to eventually punch out an email in 15 minutes. What’s more, after you’ve been doing it for a while you should have more ideas than you can poke a stick at.

Here’s a handful of email concepts I’ve used over the years:

• A rant about something that made me an-gry. • An idea / concept I got from a book which I’ve shared. • A nasty comment from a subscriber – i.e. your emails are crap. Explaining whythey are not and referencing all my recent emails which were delivering value. • Current News. i.e. relating to recent elec-tion, giving opinion and segueing it into the in-terest of your group. i.e. a fashion consultant could comment on the fashion mistakes made by those in the election, Golden Globes, etc. • Common question: send out a questionnaire to get to know what questions your customers have. Then answer them. • Throw in your opinion about industry gos-sip. • Interesting fact – find out an interesting fact and then use that to segue into your main point. For example, did you know the most dangerous month to fly is in December? Want to know why? You’ve gotta keep reading, don’t you? (and by the way, it’s true).

There’s a ton more, but that should get you start-ed.

Ok, let me give you 3 examples of openings that have worked extremely well:

Example #1

SUBJECT: 3 business decisions: Are You Making Them Based on Fear?Now I am not suggesting that you are in any way sitting around quaking in your boots, but if you are like me you have probably at some stage in your business...

1. Accepted staff that were performing below par, just because you were too scared to replace them (better the devil you know)2. Put up with vendors who were sloppy. 3. Or accepted clients that ate up too much of your time and weren’t worth the effort you put in, simply because you didn’t have enough deal flow.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all made this same mis-take at one time or another.

So what’s the answer?

Example #2

SUBJECT: How to Out-Earn Your Competitors: the #1 Secret

Let me ask you a question...

What’s the difference between you and a doctor? Why can he heal people and you can’t?

He knows something you don’t.

What’s the difference between you and an accoun-tant?

Why can he save people tax and you can’t?

He knows something you don’t.

What’s the difference between you and a lawyer? Why will people pay him / her $300+ per hour to defend them in court.

Because he knows something you don’t.

Page 15: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

15internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Here’s the bottom line when it comes to money:

Example #3

SUBJECT: Don’t be Played a Fool by Marketing Ex-perts: What You Must Know

I am currently reading a book by a guy called Gene Landrum who has studied some of the greatest entre-preneurs of all time.

One of the chapters is about the oil magnate J. Paul Getty and in it he talks about the importance of hav-ing the right information. Here is what he had to say...

“I learned that the one who had the most informa-tion was the one likely to get the most information in return... after my experiences in Tulsa I knew all the nuts and bolts of the oil industry.”

Let’s look at that quote a little more closely...

Take This Challenge

Sending regular emails can transform your business, because sales are made based on trust.

But first you’ve got to do it. So let me issue you with a challenge. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to:

• Write down 7 concepts for emails (go on, do it right now).• Create one a day for the next 7 days. (do it first thing in the morning).

Odds are, you probably won’t.

But if you do, you’ll build extraordinary relationships, sales and a solid business.

Oh, and if you don’t have an email list, master the conversion and traffic tricks in this publication... and get one.

Scott BywaterDo you want to learn the easiest way to get more customers fast? Leading advertising copywriter, Scott Bywater, has just completed his brand new guide “7 Ways to Get More Customers” where he outline everything so it’s as easy as 1, 2... 3. Download it for free by visitinghttp://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au

Page 16: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

16 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

The Secret Ingredient For Belting Out A

HOMERUN On Your Next PROMOTIONI was chatting to one of my copy-cub students this week. He was struggling with a piece of copy that wasn’t converting.

He couldn’t put his finger on it…

So he asked if I could run my masterful eye over it. He was hoping I could spot the leaking crack that flowed into the dark abyss of lost sales. Smart move.

So I checked it out. And there it was. Staring me in the face like a flashlight stunned Possum in the veggie patch.

You see… everything else in the copy was great. He tapped into the dominant emotion of the mar-ket with a crunching headline. Pulled them into a story from the get-go. Dug up all their objections, fears and desires. Transitioned into the solution like a seasoned pro. Drenched the piece with some undeniable proof to back it all up…

But just couldn’t drag them over the line…

So what was missing?

Here’s what the missing ingredient was

He didn’t show them an R.O.I (Return on Invest-ment).

Big mistake. Huge.

Showing your clients an R.O.I is a critical, power-ful weapon to use in your copy to close a sale. Don’t forget this.

Let me show you how. To drive the point home… I’ve even added in some examples from a couple

of winning sales letters that I’ve personally writ-ten.

So let’s kick it off…

Okay, before I get started, let me drill this into your mind one more time so it sticks. Remember this…

Anytime You Can Show Your Prospect A Return On Investment In Your Copy… DO IT

In fact, go the extra mile to show them. This is one of the most powerful “copy clicks” you can ever use. Period.

To prove it… The kingpin of direct response copy-writing, Dan Kennedy, rates the “ROI click” as one of his top five copy-clicks he uses every time he writes sales copy (as if you need any more con-vincing than that)

Think about the psychology behind it…

Keeping in mind that the majority of your pros-pects are secretly looking for reasons NOT to buy from you…

What do I mean? Well, let’s be honest here… Your prospects don’t spring out of bed in the morning looking to spend money with you, right?

Reality check:

If they can get the solution for free, they’ll take it every time, no question.

So you need to knuckle down and work harder in your copy if you want them to part with their money.

› COPY CORNER

Page 17: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

17internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Beware of the dangerous little voice in their head that whispers, “I don’t really need to spend mon-ey on this”. It’s your job to silence that voice.

Good news is… the ROI click can to-tally swing them around. If you can demonstrate (as simple as possible) how quickly and easy they can re-coup the money

they spend with you, then it could seal the deal.

That little voice will now say, “What have I got to lose? I’ll get my money back in X days/months, then I’ll be in front after that.”

NOTE: If you hear more then two voices at the same time, please see a doctor immediately or stop smoking those “special” hand-rolled cigarettes.

Moving on… Let me give you an example of a ROI click.

The first example is from an ebook sales letter.

If you’ve seen me present on stage before… or watched my free-gift-DVD “How to write a win-ning sales letter”… then you may remember this example from the ‘Dog Breeding’ letter.

Here’s how I used the “ROI click” for this $27 eB-ook.

How this $27 eBook can make you $30,000

“Then I got to thinking… now I know all the facts on dog breeding, and seeing that I LOVE the pro-cess… this little $27 eBook could make me some extra cash on the side. My calculations told me I could sell each puppy for around $1000 each, so

with a litter of 11, that’s $11,000 for doing some-thing I love.

Then my mind really started ticking over… I could do this several times per year and pocket around $30,000 and stay at home and enjoy life, in-stead of selling my soul to an unappreciative BOSS!”

That example is pretty short and sweet – Probably all that’s needed for a $27 eBook. In hindsight, if I had taken the time to create a visual graph or table showing the profits, then it would convert even more.

Please see another short example below. You may need to zoom in if it’s hard to read..

For more complicated sell processes or for high price tickets I put a lot more emphasis on dia-grams and tables to show the ROI.

Use the demonstration of ROI where you can. It works.

Till next time…

Think big. Be different.

Bret Thomson

ROI copy click Sample

Bret ThomsonIs a master copywriter and profit strategist. He is the one of Australia’s premier Copywriters, Entrepreneur and Speaker. Bret made $125,000 in his first 5 months copywriting alone.

You can get a free copy of Bret’s DVD ‘How to Write a Winning Sales Letter’ at BretThomson.com

ROI Cost-value Graph

Page 18: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

18 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012› ADVERTISEMENT

Page 19: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

19internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

The Lowdown on Raising

VENTURE CAPITALThis article is the 2nd in a series from Venture Capital Expert Tony McAuslan and follows on

from the first article in the February 2012 issue of Internet Marketing Magazine.

› FEATURED ARTICLE

Access to capital for growth has always been one of the major hurdles confronting a business Founder, and events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and an ongoing European market meltdown certainly don’t make it any easier. In last month’s issue, I wrote a piece explaining that there was still money to be had, and I highlighted the market ‘Hot Buttons’ that VC Fund investors were on the lookout for.

Since that time, I’ve had a num-ber of meetings with what I’d term ‘Top Tier’ Fund managers, and I can assure you that despite the current world situation, many of these funds are still awash with cash - and believe it or not, they’re telling me that the big-gest problem they have is finding suitable start-ups worth taking a punt on.

This month I’d like to talk about some of the tricks of the trade you can learn, that will give you at least a fighting chance to keep control of your own des-tiny, should you suddenly find yourself in a bare-knuckled fight with an interested inves-tor, who is probably doing his best to convince you why giving

up 35% of your company for the paltry $500k he is planning to invest is such a great deal.

But first, a quick snapshot of how your basic VC Fund works.

Most funds are set up as ‘Limit-ed Partnerships’, and therefore have a predetermined ‘Life’ re-garding how long the fund will run for (usually 10 years). The fund starts ticking once the final amount of money is raised and the round is ‘closed off’.

Money is raised from high net worth individuals, other invest-ment portfolios (think super-funds), some investment banks, and sometimes other Funds. The Board and Senior Management Team of the fund charge around 2.5% of the value of money held by the fund, as a management fee, and they are often further incentivized with bonuses for successful investment ‘exits’, i.e. a trade sale or market listing (IPO).

Most Funds have an objective to return at least 20% per annum, but given that about 80% of in-vested companies never make the big time, the other 20% of

their invested companies (that’s on 2 out of 8) need to return an annual compound growth of around 30% per annum. So in oth-er words, 8 out of 10 investments usually fail, but they are hoping for those other 2 to be sold at a multiple of around 10x and (if they’ve done their homework) maybe even get the odd sale at a 100x multiple.

Page 20: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

20 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

So that’s the prism through which a Venture Capital (VC) investor is looking at your company - can he:

A). Turn your fledgling company (or idea) into a booming business with enough critical mass to make it an attractive purchase for another larg-er company, or can he make it look good enough to enough ‘mum & dad’ investors to have them clambering for stock in the event of an IPO?

B). Do you, as the Founder, come across with suf-ficient drive, enthusiasm and product knowledge to warrant putting his reputation on the line to his Board, Investors and fellow Management Team members?

C). Is your Intellectual Property sufficiently locked down to ensure there will be no lawsuits along the way?

D.) Are you operating in a growth market sector?

E.) And most importantly, is your business/idea scalable across a global market to ensure that millions of people will want and be able to pur-chase your products?

Given that the answer to all off the above is a re-sounding YES!, then there’s a good chance your VC investor is considering reaching for his cheque book. BUT WAIT!

The (often unspoken) but primary objective for any VC is two-pronged - these being to

1.) Have as large a share as possible of your company AND2.) Have as much control of your company as possible

And therein lies the rub. While they want your company to grow exponentially, they also want to make sure that when that big pay day comes, they are sitting on as much of the equity as possible - in order to maximize their investment.

Secondly, their reasoning is that if they are going sink several million dollars into your great idea, they’re going to want as much ‘control’ as possible,

in order to make sure there are no sudden changes in direction or wobbly management decisions.

In terms of #1 - Maintaining their share, this issue is approached through the scramble for equity. Which is why they are so keen on you to give up as much equity as you’re willing to part with in their initial round of funding. And more importantly, why they usually put additional money into your company in further funding rounds - even at a higher valuation. Something you are unlikely to be able to do, i.e. have the cash to match them.

In terms of #2 - Gaining Control. This is in part dealt with by the equity issue. The greater the equity - the greater the voting rights you bring to the table. But is also usually approached from the ‘Manage-ment’ side, e.g. A VC will probably insist on at least one seat on the Board, and have also been known to install their own CEO on the premise of adding some “’experience” to the management team.

So, back to some tips for controlling your own des-tiny in the event of an investment offer. Here are some of my favorites:

• Hold on to as much of your equity as you can, for as long as you can. Giving away 30% of your company when you are only worth $1m doesn’t seem like a lot. But if you go on to be-come one of those 100x companies, 30% of $100m is suddenly a large chunk of cash.

• Make sure you have the same divestment rules as your VC. I have seen a number of Found-ers shocked to discover that at the next round of investment they are expected to give up another 20% of their equity, yet the VC has only got to give up 5% due to some tricky clause in the Term Sheet.

• Make sure you get all of the money prom-ised, upfront, and NOT paid in on the drip feed as you reach various ‘milestones’. This is also known as ‘Death by a thousand cuts’ - extremely painful.

Page 21: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

21internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

• On a similar theme, make sure that ALL of your equity is vested from Day 1, and not vest-ed over a period of years as you reach various targets and milestones.

• When it comes to Board appointments, in-sist on an ‘Independent’ Chairman (useful for breaking deadlocked votes) - and then make sure that this ‘independent’ Chairman is vetted by you, or even better, an associate of yours. Perhaps a former boss or mentor from within your industry. There’s nothing like being able to phone up the Chairman and asking him to help you ‘pre-sell’ an idea or radical change to the Board on your behalf.

• On the subject of Board meetings, make sure that either you, or someone you trust (your CFO?) is the person taking the minutes. This is the corporate version of the old Roman adage that ‘The victor writes the history’. Any slightly unclear points can be written to your advantage, and you also avoid that terrible mo-ment in every CEO’s life when you read the min-utes and see that you have somehow agreed to a whole raft of actions that you have absolutely no recollection of never having agreed to. Believe me, this happens a lot more than you may think.

• Finally, insist on any in-vestor providing you with a written business plan that indicates the type of chang-es to the business they are intending to implement, well BEFORE you agree to sign up for their terms.

• A well-written Term Sheet that sets out all of the terms of the investment is akin to a modern day ‘Pre-Nup’ that you put in the bot-tom draw, and hopefully nev-er have to refer to again.

Next month I will be giving you some insight on how to

value your business in the event that you are con-sidering raising some funds from an investor. In the meantime, thanks to all those readers out there who have taken the time to get in touch with me to discuss their fund raising adventures. There are some great success stories out there, as well as some badly burned entrepreneurs. Maybe we can share some case studies in a future issue!

Tony McAuslanis the epitome of a modern day ‘Entrepreneur’. After working for some of the world’s largest companies in Advertising and then Gaming, Tony launched his own start-up business in 2001. Starting from a base of only 3 staff, Tony raised over $25m in venture capital and grew his company to over 80 staff with offices in Sydney, Los Angeles and London. After exiting the company in 2005, Tony went on to work as a Business Development Manager for one of Europe’s largest private VC firms, where he helped raise over US$80m for a wide range of start-up ventures. He now splits his time between mentoring various start-up firms, and consulting for clients who are seeking venture capital funds. He is based in Sydney and can be contacted by email at [email protected]

Page 22: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

22 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

7. Always provide an affiliate program for any product or service you sell online. Without affiliates and JV partners (higher paid affiliates), I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Internet Marketing Done For You

Building Websites that Capture Leads & Sell!

Providing Traffic and Conversion Optimizationfor Increasing the Profitability of Mediumto Large Businesses and Enterprises.

‘Internet Marketing Done For You’ is the direct response marketing agency which is the secret weapon of many of the biggest marketers online.

Speak to the team at InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com today

WE CARE ABOUT

YOUR ROI””

› ADVERTISEMENT

Page 23: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

23internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Providing Traffic and Conversion Optimizationfor Increasing the Profitability of Mediumto Large Businesses and Enterprises.

‘Internet Marketing Done For You’ is the direct response marketing agency which is the secret weapon of many of the biggest marketers online.

Speak to the team at InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com today

5 WAYS TO LEVERAGEPINTEREST FOR YOUR BUSINESS

› PINTEREST MARKETING

Over the last few months a new site has taken the Internet by storm. Sending more referral traffic to websites than Google+ and LinkedIn combined! And racking up an astonishing 11 million unique visitors per month and counting.

This site is called Pinterest.

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard to organize and share the things you love. Pinterest can credit it’s rapid growth thanks to the help of mostly women, but more and more men are joining the site everyday.

While ‘Pinning’ is fun, businesses and marketers from around the world can benefit greatly from this monster of a site. After all, leveraging your re-sources is good practice when trying to grow your business and gain exposure to your offers.

But Pinterest is still brand new to some and many people have never even heard of it... so to help you get started on Pinterest, let’s focus on 5 ways to leverage Pinterest for your business.

The 5 Ways To Start Leveraging Pinterest

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Wheth-er you are an affiliate marketer, a digital informa-tion product creator or an offline brick and mortar business, you can use this plan to gain traction.

But you need to identify your market and their needs first. Be exact. The better you do this, the more results you will get.

So find some related images online (make sure you are not infringing any copyright laws) and get ready to start pinning.

#1 - Optimizing Your Pins For Search

Yes, you can actually rank your pins. It’s actually really simple to make sure your images are opti-mized correctly. There are a few things you need to do.

Page 24: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

24 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

First, you’ll need to know your keywords. I’m going to assume you know how to do your re-search for that. But you will need to know which keyword you’re going for.

Once you’ve got that you can op-timize your boards and pins.

• Make sure you pin your images in the correct category.

• Start with your broad ti-tle. When you go to name your board make sure you include your main keyword in the title.

• For your actual pin you need to insert your main keywords in the de-scription text.

• Also, if you have control over the name of the image file, name that image your main key-word.

• Don’t be afraid to point a few back links from other social networking sites to your image or interlink you pins together for a little more link juice. This will help push your pin to the top of Google.

• Ping your new pins.

#2 - Back links

Every online marketer with some type of content on the Internet knows the importance of us-ing back links for better rank-ings. Even though Google makes changes to its algorithm some 400 times a year, back links still hold weight and always will.

The Internet is quickly shifting into a social based space. Lucky for us, Pinterest is a social con-tent curation site. Currently, it has a page rank of 6 which is 3 times higher than the average website and has a root domain authority of 92.

Now, acquiring links from Pinter-est is very beneficial and they are super easy to get. You can acquire a link from a few plac-es and point them to anywhere you’d like, such as your compa-nies site or affiliate sites.

When pinning an image you can edit any pin on any board. You’ll want to do that for just about any image to make sure you are getting some link love.

First, when pinning an image and editing it you’ll want to put a link in the description (impor-tant) along with your main key-words.

Then, on the same pin you can enter a link in the URL field.

You can also acquire back links to your site when you actually pin an image from a site that you own. Pinterest will automatical-ly put a link to the source where

the image came from.

Next, you can click on the “edit profile” button in your account and leave a link in the ‘About’ and ‘Website’ box.

Last but not least, once the board has been created you can go back to that board and edit it. In that description you can also drop your link and a keyword for better optimization.

#3 - Get People In Your Niche To Follow You

As soon as you start with Pinterest and set up your account you will notice that a few people will start following you. This is fine but these people aren’t targeted. You want and need tar-geted followers.

And this all starts with interesting images. The

more interesting it is the more people will start to follow you or your board, ‘like’ your image and comment. The more interac-tion you can get the more people will start to see your stuff and follow you.

A great way to do this is with In-fographics. Infographics are all the rage right now.

When you can present informa-tion to people in a fun, unique way they are sure to pass it on...

Of course, there are other things you can do to position yourself in a way for others to find you.

Editing a Pinterest pin

Page 25: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

25internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Things like...

1. Find authority figures in you niche who are on Pinterest and follow them.2. Follow all the people who follow those authority figures.

a. Re-Pin other people’s pins. They will get a notifi-cation saying you re-pinned their stuff and hopefully they’ll follow you back.

#4 - Promote Your Videos On Pinterest

Not a whole lot of people actu-ally take advantage of this. Pin-ning your videos on Pinterest is a great way to increase your video views.

Now I say “views” loosely. We don’t want views on our videos from just anybody. That’s why it’s important to follow the right people and get the right people to follow you on Pinterest.

The total number of views on your video gives it more cred-ibility. People land on your video and say, “Hey - This video has a lot of views. It must be good”. This will help keep people on your video, watch it all the way through to the end and hopefully follow your call to action.

You can post videos to your boards from just about any-where, but with the most popu-lar being Youtube and your own sites. Videos get a lot of views, comments and likes from Pinter-

est users. Besides, videos are a great way to turn a cold visitor into an in-terested customer.

On a side note - Ever since Pin-terest became so popular there have been several other sites to follow in their footsteps. Specifically, a site called http://www.chill.com

Chill is a site just like Pinterest but for videos. It al-lows you to post videos to your ac-count from people you like. On the flip side, you could post your own vid-eos for more expo-

sure.

#5 - Consistency Creates Conversions

I see a lot of people make this mistake when it comes to mar-keting on Pinterest or any other social site for that matter... They get the ball rolling, post a bunch of stuff about their business, get a bunch of followers and then just stop.

This is a huge mistake!

You have to keep your posting and engagement consistent. If you start pinning images to your boards and stop, you can’t stay in front of your audience.

Examples of Infographics

Page 26: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

26 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Pinning images is very easy. You could easily pin something everyday and only take a minute or two out of your day to do it. This will keep your brand, product or name in front of people’s faces at all times.

You can’t let them forget about you. In today’s fast moving marketplace, people are constantly hammered by then next new shiny new thing. It’s cluttered to say the least. But consistency creates a following and ultimately conversions.

Pin something everyday. It doesn’t even have to be your images. In fact, I have a rule. This rule is simple. Don’t make every pin about you. Spread your pin to promotion ratio out. I only like to post something about my business or an affiliate pro-motion maybe twice a week. The rest of the time I am simply re-pinning things from other people or sites.

Even though, you need to stay consistent with your pinning, you don’t want it all about you. You can easily come across as a spammer of sorts. You don’t want that associated with your name. Be-come a part of the community and the conversions will come.

Other Things Worth Mentioning

I can’t stress this enough... When you are finding images to pin, make sure the site you are pinning from is cool with it. If you are using the “Pin It” button and a site has blocked access to it, don’t

manually upload the image. The site doesn’t want their stuff shared. Respect that or they may take some sort of legal action.

Install the “Pin It” button to make it easier to pin images from your site or things you like. This is a huge timesaver when you need to post some content for your followers.

If you sell anything online and have the ability to create and accept coupons, make a few and pin them to your boards. In times where the world’s economy is suffering, people love to save a dime on items that they want. Plus, coupons can spread virally like a wildfire. This works for both physical products and digital.

There you have it... Just a few ways you can le-verage Pinterest to help propel your business for-ward. And just a little FYI, there are way more than 5 ways to leverage Pinterest. You just have to get creative.

Bottom line... Pinterest is wide open for market-ers to leverage their business. If you’re not using Pinterest as a part of your overall strategy, you should be.

Derek Allenis a popular teacher in the Internet Marketing community, local business consultant, established affiliate marketer, software developer and a statistics maniac. With over 5 years of digital marketing experience Derek has been called an Internet Marketing innovator. He loves to help, teach, and coach. Derek has a website where he shares tons of valuable information at http://ultimateimclub.com

He also came out with the first official Pin-terest marketing course.

If you would like to learn more about using Pinterest to help build your business please feel free to check it out.

Pinterest.com

Page 27: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

27internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

The

$18 MILLION WEBSITE

› FEATURED ARTICLE

Luxury Hotels and Resorts brand ‘Four Seasons’ re-cently re-launched their FourSeasons.com web-site for an alleged $18 million.

While this seems like a lot of money for a site re-launch, it is an international brand with 84 hotels, and the $18m may cover more than just a rede-sign.

Let’s check it out with a quick site review to see how effective the new design is.

The imagery that you are hit with on the sliders the instant you hit the site is breath taking and luxurious as it scrolls through location after loca-tion of beautiful scenery and location shots.

If the intended audience are impulse buyers and are likely to see the imagery and then decide to choose a location and travel there based on what they have just seen then this strategy could work very well.

The primary desired course of action of the site is to ‘Make a Reservation’ with the secondary course of action is ‘Select Your Destination’. They’ve done a good job of making those buttons highly visible while still keeping a very classy look and feel to the site.

If the site visitor is using a smaller resolution screen display like 1280 x 800 as many of the older afflu-ent community may use, then the ‘Make a Reser-vation’ system does not work ideal because it is obscured off the bottom of the screen. The button can be seen but clicking the ‘Make a Reservation’ button makes the screen scroll up slightly but not

enough to seamlessly choose a location and order without having to scroll up and down several times to do it. The developers may have made a con-scious decision to not worry about these resolu-tions of screen because of the trend for higher and higher screen resolutions over time as technology develops.

For any screen resolution of 1080 or higher the site works perfectly and the primary courses of action of the screen can be seen without the need to scroll.

The individual hotel landing pages also sport that same widescreen, stunning photography. On these individual site pages the content goes down well below the fold: presumably the thinking is that once a customer gets to a specific hotel page, they are interested enough that they will scroll down for the info. Our heatmap testings in the past across many industry verticals show this is often not the case, but one would assume that they are testing this.

When making a booking if you select a room that is not available you are greeted with “Search exe-cuted but no availability returned”. This feels like more of a system error message than a customer service message as I would have expected a “sor-ry we do not have any rooms available for those dates” or similar customer centred response.

four seasons above the fold

four seasons primary courses of action

Page 28: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

28 internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

The mass affluent consumer is obviously a consum-er who is on the go and would make searches and site visits from mobile devices. Our testing from both the iPhone and iPad provided seamless per-fect user experiences for the mobile consumer with their mobile optimized sites.

From a traffic point of view the site is doing very well with 30 million site viewers in 2011 and domi-nant rankings in both SEO and Google Adwords for ‘Luxury Hotel’ searches.

The Yahoo and Bing Pay Per Click via Microsoft ad-Center seems to have been missed though, as dur-ing our site testing we were not able to find the luxury hotel brand by searches from those two

search engines except for organic results. Micro-soft adCenter reports that they have 78 million po-tential customers (searches) using Bing so it may be worth looking into. Would it be cheeky of me to offer to get them dominating in Yahoo and Bing PPC for a cool million? :)

Greg Cassaris Australia’s leading Internet Marketing Strategist. With InternetMarket ingDoneForYou.com he provides traffic and conversion optimization services for medium to large businesses and enterprises. You can follow Greg’s latest updates by subscribing to Internet Marketing Magazine at InternetMarketingMag.net for the new members area and the latest issue updates.

fourseasons.com

Page 29: Internet Marketing Magazine March 2012

29internet marketing magazinemarch 2012

Important: Become a member today and you will be notified the instant

new episodes of ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ become available...

You will also receive access to the Members Area for video training, expert interviews, eBooks, webinars and much more…

If you have enjoyed this edition of ‘Internet Marketing

Magazine’ please head along to http://www.facebook.com/

InternetMarketingMagazine and click ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ to share the message

with fellow switched on marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs

Experience the Benefits of the Internet Marketing Magazine in your life this year

Your Free 24 Month

Subscriptionis Valued at $311.88

& Now Includes Members Area Access

Register your details now at http://InternetMarketingMag.net to get access to

the Members Area, the Webinars, the Expert Interviews & all Back Issues’

› ADVERTISEMENT