doublelinx:

I pride myself in being a bit of a contrarian.

When the ‘masses’ start taking to an idea in large numbers, I start to get suspicious. More and more people are accepting search engine optimization (SEO) as a way of life in business. The phrase is thrown around with reckless abandon amongst business people and there are literally thousands of new articles about the topic emerging on the market every single day (this article being one of them).

But, what difference is SEO really going to make to your business? What kind of results has SEO produced for other businesses? How well does it work for small to medium-sized business?

Well, I decided to find out.

The Biggest Market Ever

The Internet is the biggest market of consumers there ever was.

There are currently two billion Internet users around the world and that number is projected to jump to 2.7 billion by 2015. That’s more people than any other media source and makes up 40% of the world’s population.

That’s a figure that could make even the most self-restrained marketer salivate. All you need is to get the attention 0.000001% of this market and you’re on a major gravy train, right? Well, not exactly. The perils of working in market that big far outweigh the benefits.

There are approximately 634 million websites on the Internet – 51 million of which were added in 2012 alone. How do you stand out with so much competition?

That’s where SEO comes in…

Don’t operate in a vacuum

If your business doesn’t have a website, it doesn’t exist. In 2013, if your business website isn’t search engine optimized, it doesn’t matter either way.

The first thing most people do before they buy anything, even if it’s offline, is search the Internet. Approximately 89% of consumers look to websites like Google, Bing and Yahoo before making a buying decision. Search engines are the number one source of traffic, beating social media by 300%. For these reasons businesses work very hard to make friends with the likes of Google.

But, it’s not enough to be ranked on Google, if you want to have any kind of impact you’ll need to be on the first page because, and although as much as 61% of people look for products online, only 25% ever go beyond the first page of results.

Give The People What They Want

There are two main reasons people use the internet: To check their emails and to get information.

Although email marketing and search engine optimization is linked, the former is a huge field of study in its own right. SEO is more concerned with the second reason – giving people the information that they’re looking for.

Most of your customers go on the Internet to search for information on a certain topic, which is related to your product or service. They aren’t looking for your business, they aren’t even necessarily looking for products and services like the one you offer. However, if you can be the one to give them the information they’re looking for you’ve instantly proven yourself knowledgeable and reliable, which can be a doorway to a very profitable long-term relationship.

To answer the original question I posed in this article – yes, it really is that important. A good SEO marketing plan can mean the difference between a massive business success and operating with a vacuum.  

Need help with your SEO marketing plan? Try a few SEO services on Doublelinx.

doublelinx:

Video marketing can be intimidating for even the most hardened entrepreneur.

But for all the potential headaches it may present, the results can be phenomenal. Like in the case of the Dollar Shave Club.

The Dollar Shave Club is a business that delivers good quality affordable razor blades to its customers via the post– nothing spectacular right?

And yet one hour after they posted a particular video, the website crashed. In just 48 hours, they were recruiting family, friends and anyone they could pay to help them package 12,000 orders.

The video in question showed the company’s founder, Michael Dublin, making a few jokes and telling a few people to buy his razors. The video, launched in March 2012, has now been watched over 10 million times and launched the Dollar Shave Club into massive success virtually overnight.

I’m not telling you this for the sake of it. There are certain lessons hidden in the Dollar Shave Club story that can help anyone thinking about launching into video marketing.

Lesson One – “That’s showbiz, baby!”

The Dollar Shave Club video that went viral was, in essence, a comedy skit.

The people who watched and shared the now infamous video weren’t searching for affordable shaving solutions. They weren’t interested in how good the service was. They didn’t crave the convenience of having their shaving equipment sent in the mail.

They simply wanted to be entertained.

In the 21^st century everyone’s an entertainment junkie and that’s something you should always consider when making any form of video marketing you do for your business. Whether it’s a simple message from the executive, a how-to video or an elaborate online commercial – your customers want to be entertained. In fact, they demand it.

Of course, there are many different ways of being entertaining (comedy-skit versus documentary-style) but the point here is that if you want to get more bank for video marketing efforts, always give your customers some ‘pizzazz.’

Lesson Two – It’s a social, social world…

Your customers love to share information about their lives and their experiences that they think their friends will enjoy. Think about any email message you forwarded or any page that you’ve liked on Facebook. What you’re essentially doing there is saying “I think this awesome and I think you’ll enjoy it too.” What’s my Point?

The Dollar Shave Club video spread as fast as it did because of this same principle. When you make videos for your website (thinking of the potential of going viral) you need to keep in mind if the video is giving anything of value to your customer. It could be, like the Dollar Shave Club, entertainment value, or it could be valuable information they didn’t know (like in how-to videos), or it could even be a sense of becoming part of a community (like the Apple versus PC ads).

For most people it’s become virtually second nature to share everything they think is really great. Make your videos great too!

Lesson Three – The Power of video

There are certain things that are just expressed better in the form of video. Pictures, articles, social media simply can’t communicate a brand as succinctly and clearly as video can. When people watched the Dollar Shave Club video they didn’t just see what the product (razors) could do for them, they saw the businesses personality and identity which made it easier to buy into their brand.

When making videos for marketing purposes always remember to consistently represent your brand in how you choose to communicate with your customer and what you choose to say.

Get started today

Dollar Shave Club is an excellent example of the power of video marketing. This one video helped a little company with a weird business model become a household name. Imagine what it could do for your business.

Need help with your Video marketing? I’m sure one of our vendors can help you with that.

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Building an African Market: Solar Energy Entrepreneurs on the Rise

SolarAid is an NGO operating in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia that aims to catalyse the micro-solar market in Africa. Its ambitious goal is to eradicate the use of kerosene lamps by 2020. SolarAid has recently shifted its strategy from dependence on grant and donor funding, forming a new social enterprise called SunnyMoney which ultimately intends to be a distribution channel for high quality micro-solar products in Africa that is financially self-sustainable. This would mean not subsidising the products it imports, a move which can cause confusion as consumers may have come to routinely expect subsidised or free products.

Another aspect of the strategy shift is the increased efficiency needed to push sales and reduce operational costs. For example, a successful market awareness campaign launched in schools recently offered a low-cost non-subsidised solar lamp for students to study by. Sales were subsequently broadened to teachers and parents, who may be interested in higher capacity systems, at retail price. Dealers of a larger variety of products are then established in the area to serve all. Parents are motivated to buy their first solar light to help their children study, the use of which leads to increased trust in and awareness of solar products.

Both GVEP and SolarAid have the primary aim of making clean energy services available to people without access to it. Supporting local people to run related businesses is seen as a way to stimulate the supply chain and serve end users. SolarAid had already moved away from its initial NGO model of training organised community groups to assemble small solar kits. 

[…]

Coming to the question of an absence of consumer finance, this is still a problem but offering phone and battery charging at central locations is one way around it. At the same time, the large mobile phone uptake in Africa suggests that there is more willingness and ability to pay for products that meet lifestyle needs and desires than is sometimes estimated. Micro-solar lanterns have been specifically designed to make solar more widely affordable and sales strategies such as targeting an area just after its seasonal crop sales can further help overcome financial barriers.

Where such barriers remain, microfinance is possibly a solution but pay-as-you-go solar using SIM card technology may be a better one. Here again there could be an opportunity for donor and business-based hybrid approaches. As with any R&D, the up-front investment costs, high risks and long pay-back periods are less attractive to private companies, yet there is huge market potential.

[…]

SolarAid has now sold over 150,000 solar lights, with a rapid increase in sales figures since it established SunnyMoney. Demand for well designed energy products is truly apparent. Serving that demand does not have to rely on subsidies although NGOs can play a useful role in strengthening market infrastructure. As one example, GVEP International has witnessed significant sales growth amongst its 700 DEEP entrepreneurs, allowing an estimated 2.2 million additional people to benefit from energy products and services.

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Twelve years ago, Susan Zvacek published “Confessions of a Guerilla Technologist” in EDUCAUSE Quarterly. Zvacek argued that instructional technologists responsible for faculty professional development in higher education would do well to leverage tactics of the guerilla warrior—“not the bad guys who wreak havoc, but the ‘irregular’ forces for change.”

Though technology has evolved considerably over the last decade, Zvacek’s advice remains timeless. In fact, the idea of a “guerilla technologist” can be a practical frame of reference for instructional technologists, trainers, and other professionals in the field about how best to facilitate change.

Practical tactics

Given that these obstacles still exist and that new ones have emerged, including today’s rapid pace of technological change, it is timely to re-introduce Zvacek’s five “guerilla tactics” for facilitating technology adoption:

1. Move among the people: Guerilla warriors work like a “spreading puddle, rather than a stream running downhill.” Introduce change in a deliberate and continuous evolution of applications. Discard any us-versus-them viewpoints and learn the values of the group. Recognize that resistance may signal a need for additional education or some work with opinion leaders. Publicize exemplary work.
2. Use persuasive techniques: Create a favorable opinion and ensure longevity of the cause. “Winning over the locals” to challenge the status quo requires professional credibility and the ability to inspire confidence. For example, when promoting an innovative practice, present research findings and examples from other institutions and discuss how the strategy can complement jointly held values. Identify opinion leaders and build a cadre of respected faculty members who can support activities.
3. Be active constantly: Adopt an attitude of persistence. Saturate the faculty with helpful ideas, opportunities for training, and useful information on advantages of technology. As Zvacek writes, “the continual dripping of good ideas onto the rocks of tradition will eventually wear away the resistance.”
4. Make judicial use of retreat: Retreat doesn’t necessarily indicate surrender—it can provide a time to review strategy and reflect on successes. If earlier attempts to engage faculty have failed, analyze why. Distinguish between the “truly resistant” and those who may eventually come around. Consider that complete adoption may be unrealistic and unachievable.
5. Work with “regular” forces: Sometimes guerilla efforts can be most effective when combined with “traditionally trained and deployed units.” Guerilla technologists will sometimes need the support and resources of administrative entities before they can impact the status quo. This may mean participating on faculty interest committees and offering assistance on special technology projects.

via learningsolutionsmag