This extract provides some useful information about how you can make your company newsworthy and obtain free press coverage:

Help to fill all that space!

Editors and Producers alike have to fill their pages and air slots day after day and week after week - it's not always easy to fill all that space!

Therefore you can become their ally if you are perceived as being cooperative, articulate and most importantly, if you can present your company as being interested in serving the community, rather than merely trying to seek free publicity to increase profits.

Hold events not promotional activities

One of the easiest ways of becoming newsworthy is by holding an Event. The press know how to treat Events as news and as promotional calendar items.

So phrase your activity as an Event. For instance, don't just hold a Sale, but turn the Sale into something more newsworthy such as a 24 hour Charity Dance-A-Thon with reduced prices on dancing shoes and dancewear.

Further examples include, an appearance by a well-known celebrity who uses your product; an old shoes trade-in with 10 per cent off a new pair of shoes with the old pair being donated for charity; or a cooking demonstration to enable people to sample the fare with discounts on the ingredients used in the recipes.

Below are some other circumstances that can lead to free publicity:

• Organising an Event that is open to the public. For example, an annual Open Day or an opportunity for school children to visit your company and learn about your particular industry.

• Achieving accreditations, such as industry standard awards or other forms of recognition

• Performing an important service to the community.

• When offering apprenticeships, training, programs or business franchises.

• Teaching, lecturing or presenting at a professional conference.

• Moving business premises, staff promotions and job vacancies.

Respect deadlines

Know the Editors or Producers lead times and respect their deadlines.

For instance, a monthly magazine may typically have a lead-time of 2 to 3 months. Therefore it is important to plan ahead and make sure you release information in a timely manner.

If you are launching a new product or service in six months time, refusing to tell an Editor because of confidentiality issues will only result in it being written about a few months after the launch.

That's not ideal for either party, so ask Editors to sign NDA's to reduce your concerns about potential leaks.

Your database

Keep your database of Editors and Producers up to date because press releases that are sent to people who have left the company will be thrown away.

Likewise, do not upset them by spelling their name wrong or by using an incorrect job title. These are basic messages but they go a long way to start building a good working relationship.

Co-sponsorship

Enlist newspapers and broadcasting stations as co-sponsors of Events.

Typically in such a scenario, you will do all of the work and fund the Event and the broadcaster or newspaper gives you lots of free publicity, reports on the actual Event and perhaps broadcasts a portion of the Event itself.

The addressee

Know to whom you are writing and what they are looking for.

For example, it is going to be counter-productive to send press releases, about a fashion boutique you are opening, if the person you are writing to is the editor of a political column. So be prepared to filter your releases rather than sending it to everybody you have ever heard of.

The media kit

Create and continually update your Media Kit.

Media Kits are information packages that are sent out to reporters (also consider building an electronic Media Kit as well as a paper version). It should reflect the identity of your company and be easily customised for all of your future announcements.

The basic elements of a good media kit are as follows:

The actual Press Release about the Event / Announcement

• A one to two page fact sheet that provides an overview about the company (including a description of its products and services, a brief history, number of employees, key personnel, sales turnover and other notable facts such as how the contact person can be reached)

• A biography of key company personnel

• A list of products and services including how customers can buy the goods and/or services

• Photographs of key products, key people and the business premises

• A covering letter outlining the reason(s) for sending the Media Kit / Press Release

Writing the Press Release

When writing the actual Press Release remember:

he Headline will make your release stand out. Keep it short, active and descriptive. You should spend at least 80 per cent of your time getting this part of the release right. You only have 5 seconds to grab the attention of the Editor or Producer!

Put the important information at the beginning of the release. The reporter should be able to tell what the release is about from the first two paragraphs. So don't hide good information and remember to provide answers to Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

Avoid hype and unsubstantiated claims because a journalist can smell a sales pitch from 20,000 feet! Instead provide real and useful information with relevant quotes from customers and key personnel.

Use an active writing style that will excite the reader and keep the release to no more than two pages in length.

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20 ways to effectively use
customer & sales newsletters

This extract is intended to provide some suggestions about how Customer and Sales Newsletters can be used to market a company's products and services.

To build a brand loyalty

Control over pricing is one important advantage a branded product provides over a commodity.

The process of building brand status usually starts with some value-added feature, but once you add that value it is imperative that your customers know.

A Newsletter can provide critical communication to develop and reinforce brand loyalty. In fact some recent research has identified that newsletters have four times the readership of a traditional advertisement!

So, once your customers' perception and preference begins to change towards your products and/or services you can consider the implications of charging your customers a premium.

To deliver a consistent sales message

Companies are continually striving for consistency in all that they do.

An inconsistent message is an invisible force that reduces sales effectiveness. One sales person tells a customer one story, another sales person tells another. Or it may be one version of the same story in one sales department and another version in a different sales office or department.

This is particularly true in larger organisations. Quite simply, the physical size of a company sometimes makes it difficult to get the same information to the right people at the same time.

Newsletters can provide an official position and a consistent message to both customers and staff on such things as product performance, specification and warranty.

Consider printed or on line newsletters

Sales and Customer Newsletters will help your company to generate new business, to increase repeat sales, to improve customer loyalty and to boost referrals.

However, you should also consider the method of delivering the actual Newsletters.

With the Internet revolution upon us, it may be more effective to send Newsletters by e-mail, which will avoid print and postage costs and would generally be a faster way of delivering the message to your customers and sales people.

Dependant upon the target audience, the effectiveness of the Newsletter may be significantly improved by electronic publishing. It may send a signal to your customers that they are dealing with a progressive company who use the advancement of technology as an effective communication medium.

To generate new business opportunities

Quite often, sales people tend to focus on existing customers and existing business at the expense of prospecting new customers. Although this is not unusual, it may not be in the long-term interests of your company to allow this to happen.

A marketing Newsletter can be an effective solution.

By using contact lists prepared by your sales people, you can mail out your Newsletters and response forms.

Ask potential customers to register for ongoing copies and you are on your way to building a mailing list and an excellent target audience.

Prospects who show interest in the Newsletter, but with no immediate purchasing intention will then stay on the mailing list and receive future issues of your marketing Newsletter.

Likewise, you can attract more readers by featuring articles that give free and helpful tips related to your area of expertise.

For internal marketing

There is a strong argument that internal marketing is important to the success of a business.

Why not send copies of your Sales or Customer Newsletters to your own staff.

The logic being that everyone within your company should know about what you sell and why customers should buy from your company rather than competitors.

Features about your products and services in the Newsletter will also educate your own staff.

Also, ask sales people to leave Newsletters with potential customers when cold calling.

For quicker acceptance of new product launches

One of the challenges of a new product development is getting it accepted by your existing and potential customers.

Most products will go through a typical S-Curve on there way to adoption, but a Newsletter can help to move the product through this curve more quickly.

You can effectively prime customers in advance of your product launch, in order to inform them about the benefits of using the new product.

Add customer testimonials

A customer who's perception is that they did not get a good deal or did not obtain value for money will probably not return to make another purchase.

One way that you can make buyers feel better is by publishing testimonials from some of your well-known customers.

This approach makes customers feel that they are buying from a reputable and reliable company.

An example may be to feature a full-page case study about one of your satisfied clients. It would perhaps describe the whole sequence of events, from the initial concern through to problem resolution.

Promotional campaigns to balance sales demand

For some companies, especially those manufacturing seasonal or cyclical products, you can go some way to balance some of your production patterns by effectively using Newsletters.

Newsletters provide an excellent way of letting customers know the advantages of buying earlier or after the peak demand period. Whether your tactics are based upon price, delivery time or some other form of incentive, you can let customers know about the benefits via your Newsletter and level out some of your seasonal or cyclical demand.

The credibility factor

Readers find Newsletters to be a more believable than advertisements.

Publishing a Newsletter will establish your company as an authority in your business sector.

Remember, if used correctly, Newsletters are about a "soft" sell rather than being full of hype and propaganda.

There are also plenty of opportunities to give more in depth information about your product or service than an advertisement and they are more likely to be passed on to other co-workers.

To sell higher margin products & services

A Newsletter can emphasize higher margin products among both customers and employees.

For employees, it can reiterate the benefits for the company of selling products with higher margins.

And for customers, the Newsletter will let them know that the product or service exists, specify how to buy the product and stress the benefits of using them rather than an alternative.

To obtain customer feedback

To think of a Newsletter as only being a mechanism to push information outwards misses one of its most powerful possibilities. You should use a Newsletter to bring in customer complaints, compliments and suggestions.

For example, you can use a Newsletter to periodically survey your customers. A Newsletter is useful to set the tone of the replies that are being canvassed.

Respondents will better understand the purpose of your company's plans and by doing so your feedback will deliver better value in order to generate strategic action plans.

Some miscellaneous ways to use Customer & Sales Newsletters

• Generate sales in new territories

• Win back former customers

• Re-position old products and services

• To secure new franchisees

• Secure new distribution channels

• Protect your product reputation

• Promote special events or competitions

• Receive customer ideas for new products

• Report breaking news and industry trends

• Announce participation in local community projects

• Opening of new premises

• Place Newsletters in reception areas, retail stores and showrooms - Add back issues to your web site

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10 web site design hints

Single-pixel GIF

The single-pixel GIF trick allows you to control the layout of your web graphics.

Start by creating a single-pixel GIF file of the colours you need and then use them to create rectangular regions of any size.

This allows you to use very small files to span large regions on your web page.

Background sound

Only include background sound if it is absolutely imperative to your site.

If you do add music, have a clearly identified prompt for the user to turn it off!

The same music will become very annoying for customers who return to your site.

Also, sound increases the load time of your site that may loose you potential customers.

HTML

As you become accustomed to using advanced HTML, you should remember that not all browsers are capable of handling these advanced features.

If you use simple HTML you will reach more customers, but if you do decide to use advanced HTML you can deliver more impact from your web pages.

Your decision is dependant upon what you're trying to accomplish.

Frames

Frames allow multiple scrollable windows in a page document.

You can design a fixed frame with multiple sub-frames of dynamic content allowing you to assign unique URL's to each frame.

This will help with search engine positioning.

Think about colours

Remember that different colours represent different moods (see How to Create Your Own Company Identity).

A vivid all over background is normally not a good idea.

If you want a splash of colour to make your page more attractive, consider adding some well-spaced images.

Similarly, a black background creates a dark, confined and enclosed mood. This should be avoided on commercial web sites.

Fonts, typestyle & size

Text should be easily legible.

If it is too small or the colour doesn't contrast well with the background, then it will cause eyestrain and customers will exit your site.

Likewise if the text is too large users will become tired of scrolling and go somewhere else.

Avoid horizontal scroll

Both images and text should fit on the screen and within frames (if you use frames) without the user having to scroll horizontally. Scrolling vertically is taken for granted, but generally, users do not like to scroll and designers should consider making the visit as enjoyable as possible when laying out pages.

Transparent GIF images

Graphics are usually stored as rectangular images.

If you want to present a graphic image with an irregular outline shape, consider using transparent GIF images.

Most graphics packages support transparent GIF images and have an options dialog box for controlling the storage of the image.

When you use a transparent GIF image you can specify a single colour as the background colour.

When the web browser paints the image it does not paint any of the pixels of this colour.

The effect is that the web page background shows through and the image appears to float or be drawn on top of the page background.

Image maps

Image maps allow you to put hyperlinks into graphics images.

If your user clicks on the picture, the browser connects to another HTML page.

Image maps are often used for top-level indexes on homepages.

There are two kinds of image map techniques - server-side and client-side. Server-side image maps use CGI bin scripts that run on your Web server.

Client-side image maps are an HTML 3.0 feature, and they are implemented in newer browsers.

GIF or JPEG

Most browsers recognize graphics in GIF and JPEG formats.

So when should you use GIF and when should you use JPEG?

Both GIF and JPEG files are compressed.

GIF uses a lossless compression scheme that is optimised for images with regions of solid colour.

JPEG uses a lossy compression scheme that is optimised for images with many mixed colours (like photographs).

GIF files only require additional size when the colour of horizontally adjacent pixels changes.

In other words, a horizontal line of a single colour takes the same amount of space no matter how long it is. This makes GIF format ideal for solid colour images like logos, cartoons, and text stored as graphics.

JPEG files use a lossy compression technique (slightly adjusting the colours) to give a visually similar image that takes less space. You can choose how much compression (and colour change) you want.

For natural, photographic, or multi-colour images, JPEG's do a good job.

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Avoid the common web strategy mistakes

Below is a list of the most common mistakes companies make
that are new to Internet marketing:

Not optimising web sites before submitting to search engines

Over 75 per cent of Internet visitors use search engines to find web sites.

However, research has proven that only 2 per cent of sites are optimised, thus allowing them to be easily found by search engines.

Not submitting to search engines individually

Search engines use different logarithms to rank web sites and web pages. Consequently, in order to achieve high search engine rankings on all the major search engines such as Excite, AltaVista, MSN, AOL, Lycos and ODP, your submissions need to be designed to take account of how they spider and analyse your sites content.

Not considering how directories list and rank web sites

Logic tells you that if your web site does not appear on the first two pages of search engines then you are seriously jeopardising your changes of your site being visited.

The majority of directories (rather than search engines) list web sites in alphabetical order. Therefore, you should consider the domain name that you choose when listing in directories.

Not carrying out competitor analysis

The same principles apply to online marketing as they do to off line. Especially when it comes to customer relationship building, customer loyalty and customer retention.

You should continually analyse how competitors use the Internet to interact and communicate with their customers and how they are achieving high search engine placement.

Not using Management Information to improve your web presence

Fact based information should be readily available from your web site host.

You should use search engine placement reports, link popularity reports and visitor statistics to improve your Internet strategy.

The information that is available is extremely powerful and if used correctly will enable you to grow your market share.

Not giving adequate attention to domain name(s)

If your business does not have a strong brand presence you should consider not using your company name as your domain name.

In some circumstances the use of generic names will serve your needs much better.

Using Mac's rather than PC's to build your search engine friendly web site

This is a controversial point, but all the same, very true.

Mac's have limitations in terms of the number of characters that can be used to store URL title tags.

Consequently, optimising web sites can be carried out more successfully using PC's that have the ability to store an unlimited number of characters.

Not building an on line customer and prospect database

Not adding a quick and easy registration process or encouraging your visitors to join a free membership programme is a big mistake. By building a database of contact details you can develop powerful on line marketing programmes.

Not adding links to your web site before submitting to search engines

Search engines such as Google will not list sites if they do not have a link with an external web site.

If you do not recognise this fact, then you will be wasting time submitting your web site to many of the search engines.

This can be a costly and time-consuming mistake as some search engines take weeks if not months to spider your web site.

Not supplying free and relevant information for your target audience

The number one reason why people use the Internet is to obtain free information.

If you do not provide the information that your customers need then it is unlikely that they will revisit.

Not building link popularity to improve search engine rankings

Although meta tags are still important, title tags and link popularity are even more critical to high search engine placement.

The abuse of hidden meta-tag coding has forced search engines to reduce the weighting of them when ranking pages.

Instead, all other things being equal, higher rankings are being given to sites with a greater number of links.

Not keeping your site fresh, up to date and full of in vogue information

Visitors do not want to read the same information over and over again.

Adding topical and useful information that interests your target audience will keep them coming back.

Many companies who are new to the Internet tend to use their web site for publishing their own promotional sales brochure and do not consider building useful content.

Not developing a "community spirit" for like-minded people

In order to encourage on line customer retention and loyalty, your site should be informative and an enjoyable experience.

For example, the addition of chat rooms for customers with similar interests, where they can share experiences and problems; and pages full of information that adds value to visitors lives will help to create a village community spirit.

Not differentiating your product or service offerings

The www brings the corner shop to the global marketplace.

This brings new opportunities but sometimes increased competition. Differentiating your business will enable you to gain a competitive advantage and allow you to influence customer preferences.

Not monitoring changes in your customer base

With the on line reporting tools that are available, there should be no excuse for being ill informed.

From the most popular keyword searches used on the www to information about your least popular web pages, you should be analysing trend data to predict changes in customer satisfaction and preferences.

Not branding your web site correctly

The look, feel and personality of your site should match the personality of your products or services and your company identity.

Visitors also need to feel secure, believe that your company is trustworthy, have an enjoyable experience when visiting the site and to be made to feel important.

Hiring a company to "submit your site to 1000 search engines."

If you use this type of service be forewarned.

At first it may appear to be an attractive proposition, but over 95 per cent of your traffic will probably come from the Top10 search engines and directories (ask your host to provide you with the data). But more importantly, you should not be surprised to receive hundreds if not thousands of spam e-mails from all over the world telling you how you can become a multi-millionaire in less than 6 months!

Using a web designer to build you a web site that is not search engine friendly

You can have the best-looking web site in the world, but it will be of little use if nobody can find it!

So make sure that your webmaster fully understands your objectives and uses a systematic approach covering all of the key elements of building a successful online business.

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Electronic communication design

As the Internet revolution continues to grow at warp speed, the use of electronic communication (e-communication) is becoming more of an attractive proposition for assisting companies with their marketing and communication strategies.

Some of the advantages are very obvious, such as the use of e-mail that enables you to transmit data around the world in a speedy and cost effective manner.

Other marketing benefits are less obvious.

This article provides you with some useful suggestions on both the features and benefits of using electronic communication in order to compliment your own marketing and communication mix.

A cost effective method of communication.

In a fast moving environment, traditional forms of marketing materials such as hard copy sales brochures and cd-roms quickly become outdated and are often in need of a revamp.

This can be an expensive process that often involves re-designs,print and relatively high distribution costs.

With electronic publications, updates can take minutes rather than weeks thus allowing you to get your message out more quickly.

Avoids the need for your customers to have an installed CD-ROM or DVD on their computer.

Recently, companies have started to supply their customers with their company information on CD (an advance from the VHS tape!). However, the latest electronic design tools enable your customers to quickly receive your marketing message via an e-mail attachment.

No need for your customers to have the right hardware or software installed

The very latest technology enables any piece of e-communication to have the software as an integral part of the file in order to run the program.

This is a low cost innovation that significantly reduces the chances of your customers not being able to read your latest sales message.

A faster method of communication.

By sending your information electronically you avoid any delays incurred due to postage waiting times.

However, more significantly, you can also avoid your customers having to waste valuable time downloading your e-message.

Unlike many file formats, the latest technology will zip and compress your file size to make the download times much shorter.

E-Publishing enables you to deliver a consistent sales message.

Electronic brochures can be designed with not only pictures and text, but also with audio sound, animation and hyperlinks to your own web site.

The addition of these features will ensure that a consistent message is being delivered to your target audience.

E-Communication messages can be easily passed on without beng changed.

Once your customer receives your electronic message, they can easily forward it to other interested parties.

Unlike "physical" forms of communication material, e-communications allow your message to be distributed to an unlimited audience.

Electronic communication allows you to differentiate your business.

Using e-communication materials can give your business a competitive advantage over your competitors.

The use of leading edge technology (at no additional cost to traditional marketing and communication materials) can alter the perception your customers have about your business.

If used correctly, it can portray an image of your business being modern, progressive and understanding of how technology can make a difference.

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On line customer relationship
management (eCRM)

On line customer relationship management can significantly affect the performance of your Internet strategy.

This article outlines five key actions you can use to capture a leading e-business position.

Understand the real value of your most profitable customers.

In any business environment, focusing on your best customers is a key to success, but the Internet provides offers even greater opportunities.

It can provide you with a clear window on all purchases and other types of transactions.

Knowing which of your customers are profitable and their real value has two significant implications:

a) you will be able to establish who your core customers are and find ways to cater for their needs, such as modifying your web site to deliver the kind of features they are looking for, and

b) it allows you to determine what makes customers profitable, then encourage these behaviours in your current and potential customers.

NB Obviously customer behaviour will vary by product type or purchase, but this type of analyse should lead you to consider complimentary products or a cost reduction initiatives.

Optimise customer acquisition costs.

The key to optimising customer acquisition costs is for you to determine which marketing vehicles deliver the best and most profitable customers (see article on multi-channel marketng).

On line winners decide where to deploy their marketing and advertising budgets based on a good appreciation of customer acquisition costs, not simply on click-through rates.

Therefore it is essential that you understand the value and cost per customer to maximise the "productivity" of your on line advertising budget.

The end goal is for you to be able to attract high profit customers for a relatively low cost per customer.

Prioritise marketing actions.

Successful companies aggressively manage their customers through the complete customer cycle ie from attraction to engagement to conversion to retention.

However, you will not achieve the most value by trying to improve each stage of the cycle simultaneously.

For example, a 50 per cent in your number of web site hits may result in a 10 per cent improvement in profits, but the same profit improvement may be achieved by just a 20 per cent improvement in visitor conversion rates.

From this type of analysis you should then be able to determine what actions you take first ie those that deliver improved results,but at a lower acquisition cost.

Use visitor analysis to optimise your site for key customers.

The Internet provides a unique opportunity to observe customer dynamics.

You can determine how frequently visitors and customers come to your site, how long they stay, how they interact with your pages and how they transact business.

The ability for you to "watch" customers navigate your web site allows you to pinpoint needed site improvements.

Winners analyse site data to determine where visitors get hung up during site navigation and to better understand which content areas lead to customer conversion.

A simple example would be if 40 per cent of your visitors do not get beyond your home page you may need to make changes to your web site to improve site penetration and ultimately purchasing behaviour.

Drive conversion, cross selling and loyalty through customer segmentation.

Customer segmentation enables you to find groups of individuals, identify common characteristics among them and for you to develop targeted marketing programs to improve conversion rates.

By understanding customer behaviour on the Web, you can often improve cross-selling and retention.

Analysing this behaviour, based on a wealth of data available through the Internet, is usually sufficient for you to develop a set of marketing actions.

However, traditional off line customer research can also be useful in designing relevant offers and messages.

Likewise, the ability to monitor visitor behaviour provides you with a unique ability to use targeted messages and content to help clinch a sale.

Winning companies will track and capture the behaviour of visitors to determine which customers have the potential to be profitable. For example, you can identify visitors that do research at your site, but have yet to make a purchase, and tailor your marketing messages, pricing and other promotions to induce this group of visitor.

Alternatively, you mayt wish to track visitor frequency, duration and location to establish overall behavioural patterns.

By you developing a description of your different types of customers, together with the current and potential profitability of those segments, you can use this information to develop segment-specific marketing action plans and improve the performance of your Internet strategy..

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Search engine optimisation & positioning

This article takes a brief look at Search Engine Optimisation & Positioning (SEOP) and provides a useful math tool to determine if you should consider hiring a specialist to improve your search engine rankings and bottom line performance.

What is Search Engine Optimisation & Positioning

Search Engine Optimisation & Positioning is the art and science of ensuring that major search engines such as MSN, Google and Lycos, notice your website and add it to their listings.This involves a continous process of building, changing, and tweaking a website so that it will receive good rankings and in turn become more visible to the millions of Internet users.

Most companies have three main goals for search engine optimisation:

1) To make sure that people searching for your domain name can find it.

This is a relatively easy task because your domain name is unique to your company.

2) To help surfers find information within your website, such as products, services or articles.

In instances where you are marketing specific products or services, you will obviously want to ensure these are recognised by search engines.

This is a more difficult process because it requires more work (you may only have one domain, but many items within it).

If your website consists of mainly graphics or is flash-heavy, it becomes even harder because search engines have trouble picking up this type of content.

In addition, if your website contains products that also appear on competitors' sites, you will probably be competing for search engine attention for those duplicate product names.

3) To ensure that your website appears when people search by related terms or phrases.

More often than not, people don't search by product or company name, so it is imperative that your website to show up in the search results.

This is the most difficult element to manage because there can be many competing sites, and it requires a great deal of thought to figure out which terms or phrases people might use to search for your company.

Once you have identified these, you'll then need to know which ones are worth spending time and money to optimise!

How much is SEOP worth to your company

It is important to identify what your Return On Investment (ROI) will be if you hire a SEOP expert.

A simple method of calculating ROI is by using the following formula:

a) Identify the total number of times per month / year surfers use your terms and phrases that best describe you products or services .

b) Multiple the sum of the number identified in a) by a 10 per cent click through rate (research has identified 10 per cent as being a realistic click through rate for websites having well-written text listed in the top three search results). Now you have a forecast hit rate for you website.

c) Multiply this number by your average conversion rate (your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who convert by joining your mailing list, filling out an online form or buying something. This rate can easily be established using your management information results supplied by your website host) and finally

d) Multiply the quantity identified in c) by the average gross profit your business makes per conversion.

You now have the additional gross margin you can realistically expect to achieve by having a Top 3 search engine rankings.

What are you paying for when you hire a SEOP specialist

There are essentially four separate elements that make up SEOP:-

Site Optimisation

This involves working with your current website design, including meta tags, page title tags, headers and the actual visible site content.

NB This task should be completed before moving to the next steps! (see article on how to avoid the common web stategy mistakes).

Search Engine Submission

This means proactively submitting information about your site to search engines. The submission process is often more complicated than you may think. Not all search engines will take submissions; some only take them on a paid basis; and some only require payment for a rapid evaluation of your site.

Search Engine Positioning

This involves using a variety of methods such as creating doorway pages and improving link popularity to achieve high search engine positioning.

Search Engine Advertising

There are three types of search engine advertising, namely banner ads, text ads, and paying for high-ranking positions.

How can SEOP affect your bottom line

Multi channel marketing

The ability to master-multi channel marketing is becoming increasingly vital for companies determined to be leading players in the new economy.

Over the next few years both B2C and B2B sectors will be using multiple channels to buy products and services. These channels will include high street shops, telephones, ATM's, catalogues, the Web, WAP technology and interactive TV.

Although in the early stages of their evolution, those companies that determine which "bricks, flicks or clicks" processes are best fit for purpose will gain a leading market position.

In other words, companies who deliver innovative new benefits through integrated multi-channel solutions will grow market share, obtain improved shareholder value and gain a competitive advantage.

The key to successful multi-channel investments will be providing distinctive value propositions, such as time to market and supply chain visibility, to high-value customer segments.

There is little doubt that the need among companies for an effective multi-channel strategy will only intensify.

Those companies that provide cross channel benefits, such as giving customers the ability to check item availability, via the Internet, prior to visiting the retail store, will become successful marketers.

However, equally important is channel integration; managing the customers experience seamlessly (including a universal brand promise); and building capabilities to market a multi-channel enterprise.

"Bricks"

Some leading companies are now beginning to use retail outlets to not only to sell their latest product offerings, but also to significantly improve a customer's brand experience.

Examples include climate simulators for winter clothing and creating realistic sporting arenas, such as golf holes for selling golf equipment

"Flicks"

There is compelling evidence that people are far more likely to buy products and services via the Internet after flicking through a sales brochure or catalogue.

Consequently, companies are using direct mailing techniques as part of their marketing mix. Free catologues and magazines are understandably being used to build brand awareness and to communicate the advantages of using both retail outlets and online websites.

"Clicks"

Winning companies are now using their community websites for a variety of marketing opportunities.

For example, to optimise a customers' retail store experience and to sell old, liquidated or discontinued product lines.

Cross-Channel Benefits

There are substantial differences between strategies that simply provide multiple channels for shoppers and those that provide cross-channel benefits based on robust linkages across multiple channels.

The dilemma amongst marketers is the degree to which they will embrace new benefits sought after by high-value multi-channel customers.

The size of the market, profit potential, shopper convenience, the need for advice and actionable information and industry sector benefits are all factors that need to be evaluated.

Channel Integration

Many of today's multi-channel networks are a result of organic growth and incremental channel expansion.

This has often led to duplication of roles, capabilities and costs resulting in higher distribution costs and fragmented customer experience.

Explicitly defining a multi-channel architecture, namely, the core role(s) of each channel along with their functionality, formats, physical density, and how they will interact is critical to profitability. The key to this process is carefully mapping high-value customer usage and preferences against the existing network and cost base.

Managing customer experience & universal brand promise

It is important for marketers to align brand promise, value proposition and customer management to provide a seamless experience. In order to deliver these strategic marketing issues it will be necessary to make changes to organisational accountability, resource allocation / budgeting, marketing practices, KPI's and P&L's.

Further information regarding multi-channel marketing can be obtained by contacting us.

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