Tracking The Rise In Online Marketing

While there’s been precious little to be positive about during this most brutal of recessions, one of the brighter lights in the retail environment has been the continued growth of online marketing. The platform itself may also have suffered during the 2007 to 2009 “great recession,” but it has continued to see growth during the entire period, quite unlike conventional or off-line marketing, which has actually seen a contraction.

It seems clear now as we start to emerge from the recession that internet marketing and online business is likely to lead the recovery forward. In fact, the recession has probably served to elevate the position of online marketing in the overall marketing sphere and many companies will now place much greater emphasis on this form of media and approach to their ongoing business model.

Unlike the original “dot com” boom and subsequent bust, Internet business is today much more mature and more grounded than its predecessor of the 80s. The fact that it has been able to weather the worst economic storm since the 1930s is testament to this position. Entrepreneurs are realizing that the consumer is turning in much larger numbers to online solutions in many areas of their lives. As the world gets more complicated, streamlining is the buzzword and it is much easier for consumers to interact with the Internet now than it was before, versus traditional methods of shopping.

Giant payment processor PayPal has just released its UK Online Retail Report. It suggests that a 137% rise in money spent online will take place during the next two years in Britain and £21.3b will be spent this way. Nine million adults already shop online every week and for every £14 that they spend, at least £1 will be spent on Internet purchases within the next two years.

These figures should give any organization that has not yet embraced internet marketing cause for concern. Major retailers will, however, be quick to reflect on the revenue that they have earned through online marketing during the recession and will surely start to redesign their business models accordingly as they push forward.

While marketing spends on traditional media may have been cut back and may indeed remain in remission, more emphasis is likely to be spent on online marketing as it produces a much stronger “bang for the buck.” It will become much harder to justify spend on the traditional media methods.

While people do not actually stop purchasing during a severe recession, they are more targeted with their pocket books. The severity of this latest recession seems likely to have ingrained any significant changes that consumers made and it is likely that online marketing has risen to a new position in the pecking order. This metamorphosis will undoubtedly result in significant online marketing growth going forward.

Have you seen a significant growth in online marketing?

Matthew Toren

Meet the New Tagging Feature on Facebook

Facebook continues to square off against Twitter in a battle for supremacy in the social media world as each stakes its claim within this unfolding universe. While Twitter may be known for its more distinct messaging mantra and Facebook retains perhaps more of a structured approach, each is in the business of linking like with like. As such, much attention has been paid to these media formats by the marketing environment as forward thinkers look for ways to reach existing audiences and new ones.

The strength of the Internet in general relies on the ability to link between pages and websites, between items of common interest and to build natural flows of information. If you link to another site or a site links to you, there is, or rather needs to be, good reason. Commercial websites may stand or fail based on their ability to link out and more especially retain back links to their site and to show that this method of handshaking adds strength and reasoning to their very existence.

While websites are busy linking within a commercial environment as they strive to sell their products or services to the consumer in general, social media sites are springing up and forming a bond between individual people, friends and acquaintances. Many social networking purists would advocate that those two activities should not meet and that social networking should be purely that, social. However, social media will invariably become a part of the marketing sphere over time, especially as the promoters of the major sites, Facebook, Twitter and others strive to develop a business model and earn more significant revenues.

Twitter has maintained a means of referencing other people within your “tweets” for some time now. By using the @ symbol, you can effectively tag other “tweeps” and create a form of hyperlink to these users. This form of tagging is a way of signaling that you are responding to another Twitter user.

Within Facebook, you have only recently been able to notify the world that you have an association of some kind with another Facebook user by tagging them in a photograph or video. Once you do this, their friends are notified of your tag and can view the situation or occasion and the result may be searched. Now, however, Facebook has introduced a new tagging feature that is sure to compete with the Twitter functionality. You can tag someone within a status update or post, creating a direct link between the content of your posts and that person’s Facebook page.

To tag someone in the new Facebook world, all you need to do is enter the @ symbol as you are typing and Facebook will automatically present to you a drop-down list of all your friends. By typing in the first couple of letters of your friend’s name it will automatically reduce the list and focus in for you. When you publish your post or status update, a reader may click on that person’s hyperlinked name and be transferred to their Facebook page.

It is not difficult to imagine that Facebook will expand this concept so you may tag events and other activities, creating additional awareness and social buzz.

Are you seeing a Facebook versus Twitter battle developing here?

Adam Toren

How E-mail and Social Media Can Work Hand In Hand

E-mail is at the same time a much loved and a much-maligned form of communication. It is one of the traditional methods of selling and has over the years produced great returns for marketers who seek to engage in a well thought out and structured communication strategy with highly targeted prospects. Social media, on the other hand, is an emerging infant in the world of marketing and is in many respects quite the opposite of e-mail as a communications tool. The concept of direct selling through social media channels is not acceptable. Those who try, find that they crash and burn rather quickly. Social media is a great way of getting your name, product, service or brand in front of the masses, but any attempt to directly sell is not appropriate.

If e-mail and social media are so far apart, how can we bring them together within our overall marketing philosophy and make each other complementary to our overall goal?

While it is true to say that the social media “infant” is barely out of the maternity ward, trends seem to point to its relegation to a soft marketing approach and it is very unlikely to replace e-mail or other marketing techniques as primary methods of communication. Social media can, however, be used to spread the word about the information that you are communicating via your e-mail newsletters.

We should remember that e-mail is essentially limited by the number of people who have opted in to receive your communications. This is permission-based marketing and we must ensure that we market only to those who wish to hear from us. On the other hand, we face no such limitation when it comes to making people aware of our existence through social media channels. Why not suggest to those to whom you are communicating via e-mail that they share your good content with their contacts through social media? You can use social media in this way to extend your reach.

For example, within your e-mail signature add your social network profiles. Don’t go overboard here and only include up to four profiles or run the risk of falling foul of spam filters. Incorporate those recognizable icons as links to your social media pages. Add links to all your social media profiles in all your e-mail newsletters.

There’s an emerging trend among e-mail service providers to include a sharing option within new program releases. Your e-mail subscribers will have the option to select a link within your e-mail message and share with their social media friends or followers. Thus, your informative content becomes the basis of a message displayed or sent directly from your subscriber on their own social media page. In turn, all their friends or followers will see your message and it has the potential to go viral.

Using the power of social media in this way should really enhance your e-mail communication initiatives.

Have you come up with any ingenious ways to link social media and e-mail?

Adam Toren

Kidpreneurs! Young Entrepreneurs with BIG ideas!

What’s necessary to become a truly successful young entrepreneur? The Brothers Adam and Matthew Toren, co-founders of YoungEntrepreneur.com, have stayed the course and prevailed in numerous business ventures throughout their lives. Together, they’ve consistently taken key steps leading to increasingly profitable paths in their highly successful careers, but surprisingly enough, it’s actually their early years of business which have inspired their most recent project: an entirely unexpected book on entrepreneurship written expressly for children! In this new book, the Toren brothers bring a candid, yet illuminative perspective to doing business in this remarkably original piece, Kidpreneurs.

There’s no need to be an adult to be driven towards an entrepreneurial dream, and there’s certainly no reason to wait until becoming an adult to learn - or at the very least to try out, the fundamental principles of business. It’s never too early to get started! Adam and Matthew invariably give their families the credit for continually encouraging all their business ideas from a very early age, and because of this incredible support they’ve received, they’re pursuing a means by which they can give back not only to their community, but to the youth around the world – the entrepreneurs of the future, this life-changing encouragement along with the practical knowledge to begin, expand, and succeed beyond their wildest dreams in their future business enterprises.

These two brothers have each invested several years of their lives researching and collating the very best practices in modern business, with the sole aim of teaching these valuable techniques and insights to others while nurturing their own ever-expanding empire of successful businesses. One of their favorite on-going accomplishments has been to assist struggling businesses by generously giving some of their own personal time to share pertinent details of their accumulated understanding. This entrepreneurial know-how, combined with a truly astounding altruistic nature, put the Torens on the path to found YoungEntrepreneur.com, the largest and most comprehensive social networking forum for young entrepreneurs anywhere.

The day Adam and Matthew decided to find a means for effectively passing on their collective savvy to their own children, the idea for Kidpreneurs began to take form. This book encourages a child’s desire to become involved with business early on by stoking their curiosity in uncomplicated, interesting and creative ways. It distills the complex concepts into the practical, creative, and ethical aspects of today’s business world; and with clear and expressive language, it conveys the crucial facts of modern business by using bright colorful illustrations, thought-provoking facts, exciting quizzes, and a variety of easy-to-understand sample business plans.

The fundamental philosophy that runs like a red thread throughout this book is simple: The future of our children, and all future generations for that matter, begins with us! Children of all walks of life have the right to have access to the skills and tools by which they might someday - through their own hard work and perseverance, obtain financial freedom.

If you’d to like begin an exhilarating business journey with your young children, pick up a copy of Kidpreneurs today!

We look forward to your orders, and if for any reason you’d like a particular copy signed or dedicated, please use the contact form located here kidpreneurs.org/contact and just let Adam & Matthew know!

If you personally know anybody with children 6-12 years old, Kidpreneurs would make an excellent gift - one which just keeps on giving! Please help us to tell others (via Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Your Blog etc) as now is the time to provide the leaders of tomorrow with the Entrepreneurial skills and know-how that’s available today!

Google’s New Micropayment System

An interesting development has come from a line of communication between the newspaper industry and the mighty Google. As we know, the traditional newspaper business model has been in sharp decline and the industry has been frantically looking for alternative means of collecting revenue within the digital age. Some newspapers have tried their own micro-payment systems, where they have implemented a fee-based platform for individual items of information, individual stories, access to news feeds or to a collection of individual media formats. Generally speaking, they have not been very successful. Processing fees have been a major stumbling block, including credit card fees, chargeback implications and so on.

Historically, Google has been viewed as one of the enemies of the newspaper industry, as it has been charged with the “crime” of presenting voluminous amounts of information, revenue-free. It is interesting to see that Google has engaged in this line of communication with the newspaper business and will be even more interesting to see whether anything fundamental emerges at the other end.

Google’s Checkout system has been in a state of constant development for the last few years. There is no secret that the goal is to equal and surpass PayPal, although they have a long way to go. The micro-payment system they are discussing would be effectively an extension of the Checkout platform. It could theoretically be possible to buy access to information pieces through payments ranging from “a penny to several dollars,” according to Google. It seems that Google will take responsibility for abuse and fraud, by assigning credit limits based on past purchasing behavior and by using their “proprietary risk engines.”

Google does point to existing and successful micropayment setups, such as featured within the popular iTunes app store, where you can download a 99 cent app for your smart phone, for example. Those promoters take a 30% cut of the associated revenue.

Doomsday proponents suggest that something bigger is at work here and that we could see a move towards a broader goal of taking micropayments for access to a wide variety of news-related content. Google however says that they “do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content.”

Expect the new micro-payment platform to be available within the next year, according to Google, which further outlines its “vision of a premium content ecosystem” by stressing that an open web does not necessarily have to mean free. Google recognizes the right of publishers to charge fees for access to their content and it seems that they now want to work to provide a usable micro-payment system for the future.

Do you think this has broader implications?

Matthew Toren

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