Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine  Marketing, also called SEM,  is generally identified as the paid marketing using search engines like, Google, Yahoo, MSN. Internet Marketing is blown over by consulting firms that claim to have expertise managing SEM for you. I would like to share a few insights from my understanding and interactions  with these consulting firms. But, first, would like to know your view point and if any specifics we can discuss here.

Feel free to leave a comment and we shall take the discussions in the following article.

Exploring Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing is growing. With more money pouring in the industry, corporates realizing the growing importance of Internet presence, we are in the fastest growing marketing segment.

One of the prime reasons we can identify is that marketing is all about grabbing attention and  influencing the decision. Marketing is not just fulfilling demand, its also about generating demand. Now we can see, internet occupies a lot of buyers time, marketing firms are targeting any and every online segment.

On of the prime development in Internet industry is vertical segmentation. giants like Google and Yahoo have identified the importance of providing users with various forms of searches like personalized search, image search, blog search, news search and so on and so forth. Why do we see these new developments since more marketing brains are getting in Internet, vertical marketing, targeted segmentation is growing weight.

Its more important to be present in platforms where your target audience visits then in any and every platform..

Latent Semantic Indexing

Alot of you guys might have seen a turn around in your rankings in Search Engines. However not many are aware of the fact that a new human touch is getting applied to search in the form of Latent Semantic Indexing. With this method search engines are giving more prominance to meanings of the terms rather than the exact match. For example when you are searching for “Search Engine”, results will relate to search engine marketing industry and not from automotive engines. This element also adds to more emphasis on one way linkings with similar related meaningful keyphrases.

Read more on seobook.com

Email Marketing: Strategic Planning

Now here is my question, what is e-mail marketing?  What’s the purpose of e-mail marketing? Who is the target?

According to what I understand, E-mail marketing is all about hitting the mail box of a internet user and telling him that here I am standing for you with this offer, click here and its all yours.

We try saying this in different ways, today we see many spam email hitting our mail boxes. I will try and list out a few concepts used now-a-days:

• E-mail with just a image that in turn links to their tracked webpage
• E-mail with promotional text and a images again linking to their tracked webpage
• E-mail with a gesture like “I found this, you also try, its good” kind of presentation with an affiliate tracking url attached to the link page.
• The best I liked was a simple email template with small 4 liner, to the point, conveying it all.

Maybe the idea of what type of e-mails do we sent has many factors to look into:

• Target audience
• Their behavior pattern
• Their age group
• Their buying power
• Is it B-to-B or B-to-C targeting

The template design inputs are more of influenced by these factors:

• The team leader’s mind set
• The target audience age group
• The target audience profile

Some profiles like to the point reading, its like scanning the text, some get influenced by colors, some like to have offers associated with it, some like free stuff.

All in all everyone dances on the same lines “WTIFM”. You would wonder now what do you mean by “WTIFM”?

Your current thoughts are very closely associated with the answer and that is “WHATS THERE IN FOR ME”.

When an e-mail template hits this target of any age group, any profile, any audience, any behavior pattern, you get that click.

Before pitching any e-mail, test it by mailing it to the ones you know and that fall into your target list profile criteria, take inputs, definitely you will come up with opinions you might have never thought of.

Its better to sent mails to 10000 id’s once every week after following the rights and getting 100 clicks through, than mailing 50000 every week and getting 50 clicks through. You save your bandwidth, you have less chances of termed a spammer and the resultant effect is more fruitful.

I shared my idea’s, do mail me yours at pankajvjain at gmail dot com

Cheers

Pankaj Jain

SEO

Microsoft again

In 1997 we all saw Microsoft investing (US)$150 million in Apple Computer, this could be said to be the revival of Apple. Now is the turn of Linux. You would wonder what is this news doing in Internet Marketing blog. We see Google moving ahead, introducing new tools, buying Youtube and stuff like that. Such news keep pouring in. All these news say that the search engine giant is moving ahead with the technology and spreading wings.

Well here let me be very honest, I don’t like google at all. MSN struggling to compete with google and Yahoo. With this move Microsoft is also spreading wings and looking forward to where the trend is moving towards i.e. open source.

Soon in coming years we will see this agreement playing an important role in LIVE.com. May be I am wrong and the chances are that I am foreseeing what lies beneath.

Google Search Feature “Google Co-op”

Hey,

Check this out and share your comments with me http://www.google.com/coop/

Pankaj Jain

First Corporate Blog Directory

For all corporate blog owners, finally a platform exclusively meant for them has evolved. iblogbusiness.com, first corporate blog directory also we can call it to be a corporate blog search engine.  click here for more…

 Pankaj Jain

SEO

Oral Search Engine

This could be a big leap in Internet Search Industry with a European research consortium recently getting €2.8 million boost from the EU’s research funding programme to develop a search engine that responds to questions asked orally. Once fully developed, the service will be multilingual with a focus on mobile applications so users can ask for and receive information on their mobile phones.  click here for more…

Pankaj Jain

SEO

Yahoo’s Ad Paltform known as Panama had gone live

The much awaited Yahoo’s Ad Paltform known as Panama had gone live finally. It seems to have new features added, the most important one is ad placement will not be just based on Bids, however also from CTR (click through rate), termed as ad quality.

New Indian Search Engine

So finally we have something that seems to stay for long coming from India. http://www.guruji.com

A search engine, seems preety friendly, lets see how long can it sustain.