How come I am not getting any orders? Why my products are not selling? Instead of beating around the bush ask yourself what am I doing wrong, where is the actual ‘bottleneck’ and what I need to do to fix it. There has been a big paradigm shift in today’s business model. With the advent of information technology marketing has significantly drifted away from the ‘old school’ ways of doing marketing. The massive advancement of ‘competitive marketing tool’ along with availability of vast array of data information keep marketers on their toes and ahead of the competition.

Just having an idle website is not enough. You have to think it as a marketing tool instead of just website and capitalize on it. You have to. You got to. I have a sound web presence so that when your prospective customers do a search query can find you right there. Check your stance on the major search engines. Can major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live) recognize me and view my presence in the first few pages in an organic search and if not than you have a problem. You might have the best products or services in the market but unless you have a dominant web presence it will be a Herculean task to survive in the fierce competition of ‘sharing the piece of pie’. You must proactive and should have some kind of search strategy that will enunciate your competitive dominance in the market. Otherwise soon you will be wiped out from the game and putting your enterprise in dire straits by getting knocked our by your fellow competitors.

Now let’s take a glance to some vital competitive and keyword strategies that have been practiced by Design Dhaka Marketing Group.

1. Competitive Analysis- You should constantly have a hawk eye view on your top five competitors. Constantly monitor their game plan, business strategies in order to compete and stay ahead of the game. However, never underestimate the potential threats of your local competitors. You never know them could be eating up your market share
2. Volume of Keywords – Analyze your competitor’s spread of key word list. Mix and match your set of keys words with the competitors. Check whether you are using the right sets of keywords that relate to your product or services. Continuously filter, modify and update your sets of key words accordance to the target market’s search queries.
3. Common Keywords- Perform a ‘common keyword’ check to see the overlap between you and your competitor’s key word list. This helps to better understand your customer’s mindset and to track down which keywords they are using for their search.
4. Top 20 Analysis – It acts as a yardstick. It gives you a benchmark of where you are standing in relation to your competitors. Running these reports gives you valuable information about the much-sought 20 placements in Goggle. In-depth analysis of these reports will give you an idea when to bid big and when to cut back your cost.
5. AdWord Budget and Control – Using wrong and unproductive keywords will cost you both money and time. It is important to determine how much traffic is generating from the long tail and is it worthwhile spending on these keywords.
In other words is it bringing you the desired results? Sometimes wrong key words can eat up your allocated budget fast with zero results. So thorough scrutiny of keywords is very crucial for getting effective results

6. Creativity- This is where you can play and use your creative game-plan. With the phrase match reports and related keyword reports you can formulate a marketing campaign for your brand targeting towards your audience. The success of the campaign will determine the power of your brand, the effectiveness of your marketing promotions and keywords selection and last but not least will indicate the fluctuations and boost in your ROI, sales and profit margin.

7. Create SEO Worksheet- It’s a good practice to monitor and keep track of your SEO activates time to time like once a month or week. It is very important that you keep record these data and the changes you make over time. Here are few indicators that will help to better understanding of your SEO activities and results:

 Traffic from organic search – using web analytics tools you can see how
many clicks you generate from unpaid search rankings.
 Keyword diversity – thoroughly analyze your phrases and keywords which are driving traffic to your website.
 Incoming links and indexed pages from search engine – check the number of links reported by the major search engines and also the number of pages that are recognized by them. In addition, do not ignore the importance of establishing back links through article submission.
 Sales generated from organic search - record the number of clicks that are converting into actual sales generated from the natural search.

So if you can have a firm grasp of these above discussed concepts and somewhat can implement into practice then you will be well in control in the driver’s seat Soon you will hit the bull’s eye and great effective results are inevitable. To be in the Top 10 list and being in the first page of the major search engines is just a matter of time. So be positive and start your SEO marketing strategies from today as time is money. Keep up with your good work and GOOD LUCK on your endeavor!!

Testimonials are vital marketing tactics to boost up customer confidence on your products or services. Customers want to feel confident and assured that they are making the right purchasing decision. Nobody wants to go through the post purchase dissonance after buying a product. They want to be satisfied and confident on their purchase. Reviewing testimonials helps customers to make smart purchasing decision and better understanding of your products or services. Websites with enough reviews psychologically help customers to make purchase decision easy. In today’s competitive market place it is very important for business to have testimonials and feedback of the prior clientele for attracting the new potential customers.

As statistics shows that a satisfied customer will ‘word- of- mouth’ eight other customers when he/she is satisfy with the purchase. Testimonial is an effective viral marketing technique that helps to pass on the information from clientele to clientele very quickly. Testimonials and reviews can escalate customer confidence and accelerate sales.

Selecting the right testimonial is important. Not all testimonials will give the same impact of your products or services.  Therefore, companies should be careful in picking up the right testimonials and phrasing them properly. Testimonials should be streamlined in accordance to your product offering and corporate image.  Selecting irrelevant testimonials can ricochet negatively and can give a negative connotation on your offerings. So selecting the right testimonial is very crucial. All testimonials should be genuine and unbiased. Moreover, testimonials should be quantitative rather than qualitative. It should quantify the benefits and results rather than just a generic praise. For example instead of choosing the testimonial “ I am very satisfied with the product performance” choose the testimonial that says “The product helped me to loose 10lbs in 4 weeks. The later testimonial is far more informative and effective in building customer trust than the previous one. More testimonials you have, better for establishing your business credibility and reliability. Always encourage your prior loyal customers to write reviews about your product or service. Request them to write about their experience or how they got benefited from using your product or service. If possible add customer contacts, company name or logos, which will further reinforce potential customer’s confidence level on your product or services.

However, placement of the testimonials needs to be done very carefully. Testimonials should be placed in such a way that will grab viewers’ attention instantaneously and easy to locate. It should be eye-catching and interesting to read with full of information. The goal should be to get maximum outcome from your testimonials.  The most common way is to create a separate navigation button termed ‘Testimonials or Reviews” where potential customers can read all the comments and reviews of your past clients. Another way is to use Flash testimonials on the side of the tool bar on the home page along with the clients’ name, contacts, company information or logo. However, be careful so that too much flash exposure does not distract your customer form the main message that you are tying to convey. You can also combine  ‘Audio and Video” testimonials along with the regular ones for more effective results in enhancing your credibility to a greater extent.

Therefore, whatever techniques you use always keep it simple, concise and clear. Be honest and use both negative and positive testimonials otherwise potential clients will thing you are being dishonest and biased. Least but not last, your testimonials should be specific, credible and believable in order to strengthen customer confidence and reliability on your products or services.

It’s a jungle out there!! Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of commercials everyday. According to the studies, on average an individual is exposed to 3500 commercials messages a day. However, majority of them get filtered and cannot be recalled later. It seems as if they have a goldfish memory. It’s a Herculean task for marketers to get their message pass through their customer’s memory firewall so that it can be recalled later. Businesses are putting relentless effort to come up with innovative ideas and techniques in order to reach their target audience and make themselves visible. Only few can succeed and the rest perish.

Implementing database-marketing strategy like ‘One-to-one Communication’ is very effective and could be the key to the solution. Marketers can use one-to-one communication vehicles like direct email or pod casting to reach their target audiences where people will self initiate themselves to participate eagerly.

Every single customer is unique and his or her needs are different. Today, with the virtue of powerful state of art database warehouse marketers can pool immense data to perform ‘Geo-mapping and  ‘Cluster analysis’ to pinpoint their niche audience and communicate with them at a personal level. Marketers use Variable-data-printing (VDP) to communicate directly with their customer by customizing the message tailored to the customers’ specific needs. With the advent of the technology, marketers are using innovative marketing tools like  ‘Variable data and ‘Digital printing’ to retrieve customers’ personal preferences and interest. They are catering services and offering unique promotions more tailored to individual customers using right language text and pictures.

 Always choose media channels that will allow you to communicate with your target audience the way they prefer to be. Be unique and make your visual marketing stand out of the ordinary. Come up with innovative ideas to create interest and catch eyes of your customers dragging them to view your message. Play around with color, texture, fonts, size, formats, visuals, sounds, templates, clip arts and so on. Instead being a follower be a pioneer, be distinctive and rise above the crowd with your innovative ideas.

Simplicity is the best solution. Always keep your visuals clean and simple so that it looks uncluttered and approachable by the reader. Otherwise, people will zip through the ads if it is too cumbersome and complicated. Always less is more. Concise message will attract customers to dig through your message further. Whatever forms of media vehicle you use either it’s a website, email, brochure or pod cast less and simple is good. Convey your message in an easily digestible format and be specific. Most of the time consumers get overwhelmed with information overload and eventually ignore the message. A clear, simple and concise message always helps consumers to find what they are looking for.

Finally, be consistent with your format. Use similar typeface, colors, background, foreground, layout or jingles to communicate effectively with your clientele. Moreover, it will be ease for the prospective customers to navigate the site and will also personify your corporate identity and thus reinforce your brand image to a greater extent. Once you establish your visual identity successfully, it will be easy for consumers to recall your message and strengthen brand awareness. Every time they see the color or hear the jingle, will trigger your brand image and will help to associate with your brand strongly.

Beware! It’s coming! It’s there. The moment we click to our Internet browser a goblin like creature pops up and a sharp pain triggers our brain. In marketing and advertising term these goblins are known as ‘Pop-ups”. Everyday Internet users are bombarded with hundreds of these flashing dancing pop-ons making the consumers and users frustrated and irritated. By dumping these visually over-stimulated flashy ads, marketers are just wasting billion of dollars with zero or minimal results. So before investing mammoth amount of dollars in advertisement, think first what is your ‘Target” what you want to accomplish. Try to differentiate between good effective ads versus lousy useless ads that give no results. It’s a consumers’ market there. Today, consumers are smart and will not buy whatever the marketers will trying throw at them. Consumers want to have control on their buying decision not the seller anymore. They are in the driver’s seat now.

So what makes a good ‘Display’ ads versus bad ones? Banner ads, Skyscrapers and Pop-ins are viewed as good display ads and viewed positively by the consumers. However, because of the limitation of space marketers have to be innovative and show their expertise to capitalize maximum returns form these ads despite the limitation of space. They must be innovative and smart to catch consumers’ attention through these ads. Always, start with the basics. Keep the message and ads simple, concise and clear. Don’t let your ads make consumers irate bewildered. You don’t want consumers to avoid and zip through your ads in despair and disappointment. You want to attract and engage them to click to your ad as much as possible. Therefore your ad has to be catchy and interesting. Always, try to keep enough ‘White-space ‘ as possible in your web page. Avoid dumping too much information, pictures, animation and banners cluttering the webpage. This might cause ‘Banner Blindness’, a condition where consumers ignore and avoid banner ads. This is because human brain prefers openness and avoids clumsiness. Colors play a vital role in creating effective eye-catching ads.  Bold color contrasts and distinguishing between an image in the foreground and the background can create a dramatic outcome. Use standard size readable fonts and enough space between the lines so that its easy for the eyes to read.

Brand reinforcement is crucial for any brands or products. Human brain is constantly processing and screening our information in millionth of seconds. Our short-term memory does not retain everything it is exposed of but only those that leaves a mark or connotation.  So, the message should be repeated on and on and the logo should be prominent enough to create a distinction in the consumers mind. Sometimes only visual effect is not enough to grab viewers’ attention. A combination of sight and audio i.e. a jingle or tune is a smart way to make the brain remember your message. Location, location, location!! It is the key for any business to thrive. The same rule applies for Internet ads as well. Proper placement of display ad, can increase traffic and encourage consumer’s interest and to read an advertisement. Engaging people through Interactive advertisement is also a smart technique to increase consumer’s attention and to recall an advertisement if marketers can use it properly. For example Burger King uses Interactive Ads where the King’s face transforms in to the user face by using web cam.

Home page is the most important page of the entire website. It generally receives the most traffic and by utilizing the techniques of contextual advertising by placing ad on other websites of relevant business can generate a more targeted audience. Also, avoid unnecessary large pictures in your home page. This is because web crawlers only detect keywords not pictures. So, marketers should be vigilant that all the links of the webpage are working properly and ensure the links are taking the user to the right landing page. One of the most pet peeves of any users is a broken link. It is very frustrating and users can easily lose interest of your product and can be quick to turn away from ad if it is intrusive or disruptive. A good homepage should have well constructed and properly analyzed keywords. Navigation trail and page links should be well synchronized and easy to locate by the users.

A well constructed website should have combination of both ‘Search and Display” ads. This is because consumers use web either for specific search or browsing purposes.  Display ads are more of a “push” strategy, where search ads are “pull”. Meaning with search ads, consumers pull the information they need, versus display ads where advertisers push their products towards the consumer. Last but not least, appropriate measures must be taken to monitor the effectiveness of the advertisement. Therefore, appropriate performance tracking measures, like Goggle Analytics, need to be used to measure the effectiveness of a campaign.

Therefore a well constructed design with successful executive along with right placement of ads and zero distraction can draw targeted consumers’ attentions and spark interest to your products and services.  When appropriate design and execution are employed, as well as correct placement of an ad, this generally will spark increased consumer interest. A good display ad will create brand awareness and generate brand recognition among the target audience. Remember more a consumer spends time navigating the site higher the probability of closing a successful sale.