Invest NI Online Marketing Event 3rd March 2009

Well now I am really glad that I took the time to attend the event today - I feel really positive about my plans for Grow Sales Online and very motivated to get my own online marketing sorted rather than just worrying about everyone else!! Thought I'd just bring you up to speed on what you missed:

Key Note Address: George Wright, Blendtec
Despite the sound system letting him down George gave a very entertaining, engaging and informative address. He was really able to demonstrate that small regional / 'isolated' businesses are now able to reach global markets through the use of the internet. Blendtec's initial investment in their first online marketing strategy was only $50 - I think that we could all stretch to that size of a marketing budget!!
The points that really hit home with me in this address were that-
1. Just because the online marketing tools are out there, is doesn't mean you have to use them all. You should only use those that are best suited to your business.
2. Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter or Youtube the content MUST be real and honest, the online community is ruthless when it comes to authenticity and it can do real damage to your brand if (more likely when) you are caught out.
3. Content is the biggest cost - This is the thing that I think small businesses overlook is the value in the information that they have about their product, sector or industry. Nowadays, online sharing the expertise that you have is a very valuable commodity in terms of attracting business.

Susan Hallam - Hallam Communications
Susan covered SEO and Pay Per Click advertising.
She covered the basic's of SEO that I covered in the Craigavon seminars. She was very straight forward, and showed up some of our local 'big web design' companies that were in the audience - LOL!! She suggested the Yahoo Site Explorer tool - not one I have used but give it a go and see what you think. Something else that I wasn't aware of is that Google prefers older domain names than newer ones, and if you prepay your domain for a longer period than the standard Google will like this - I am definitely going to try this! On the Pay Per Click issue - I am generally not a big fan of PPC BUT after hearing Susan talking about it's uses especially in export markets, I could be convinced! For example if you want to market in France, we cannot buy a .fr domain name so SEO becomes a little difficult - you can however in the shorter term use a PPC to get you going. It gives an instant result where SEO can take time. She also suggested using a PPC to help you to pinpoint the key words you should be trying to optimise your site for - i.e the more fruitful the PPC for the key word the more likely it is that should be your key word or words. She said that searchers prefer 3-4 word phrases when searching in the likes of Google - so keep that in mind.

Andrew Maat - Tradedoubler
I was really looking forward to hearing Andrew talk today but was a little disappointed - maybe he didn't quite hit the right note for this particular audience - maybe we were all just starving by that time! I have heard really good things about him in the past and love what he does. The basics of Affiliate Marketing from a small businesses perspective are that you let other people act as sales men online for your business and you just pay them a commission. Tradedoubler and others like them are the agents in the middle co-ordinating the whole thing. The publishers advertise your business for you, through PPC, their blog or forum etc pushing traffic to your site. The agent company monitors where the traffic is coming from and the value of the sale, they invoice you for the commission and then pay the publisher their cut - Simple and worth considering.

Lunch - well you didn't really miss anything there, there was no where to sit down or even put your plate down. Eating lunch was so much hassle that networking was nearly impossible! Also just on the hotel issue - should Invest NI not be supporting a local hotelier rather than the Hilton? I know they may be stuck location and size - wise but I think they should really try harder on this front.

Then the 2 speakers I had been really looking forward to - and they were both worth the wait!
Niall McKeown - Ion
Niall had the hardest slot of the day - just after lunch when everyone is sleepy, but he was really entertaining. He talked about the Obama campaign online and how he raised 86% of his funding online, how he gave his subscribers all the tools they needed to market his campaign and how they all became a part of Team Obama. I think this is a brilliant idea - giving your customers the chance to get involved with your marketing - blendtec used this idea too letting fans suggest what should be blended next, Dell also do it asking people to suggest improvements or new product ideas. Niall talked about E-Mail marketing, the importance of the landing page, and also a 3 email rolling campaign for new subscribers - which is a brilliant idea. He feels that an effective campaign should be getting around a 30% click through rate. He said that conversations drive sales now not the old school marketing media, suggesting that people will listen to others peoples recommendations, even though they don't know them rather than our 'marketing material' i.e places like Tripadvisor. He also suggested that whatever you spent on your website should be 1/3 of the marketing budget with the other 2/3 being spent on promotion.

Tom Nixon Nixon McInnes - Social Networking for Business
Only 14% of people trust advertisements but 78% people trust other peoples recommendations. He talked about a shoe company called Zappos who actively encourage all their employee's to use twitter and engage with their customers. It is also a great place to find out what your customers want - what would improve your service? He gave an example of a coffee shop that used twitter to ask those lived locally to them what they would want from a coffee shop, and found that by simply twittering what the daily specials were they would get more people in through the door. So when thinking about how does twitter apply to your business don't just be thinking about making the sale, it has to go far deeper than that - Companies that provide really good products or services, customer service and are genuinely passionate about what they do will be rewarded online.

That has to be good news for all of us that run our own businesses and genuinely want to provide the best service that we possibly can and not just make the most money in the shortest possible time.

The event was filmed by Invest NI and they will be posting it on their website, so as soon as they do I will let you all know - it is definitely worth watching.