E-book fever has well and truly gripped the publishing world, with national publishers forecasting that by 2020 50% of books will be read online. We are delighted to be now working with specialist book publishers to help turn the threats represented by the opportunities of the new digital era into tangible opportunities.

The digital revolution is not to be feared, but instead a key time to grow your business.

Threats

The threats are very obvious. With the growth of e-books, authors can bypass publishers completely, with Amazon offering authors 70% of royalties if they self-publish with them. Authors are demanding higher royalties. Martin Amis, amongst others, is backing a campaign for authors to get 75% of royalties.

But, ever pragmatic, as marketeers we consider these technology led opportunities. DisplaySearch predict that by 2018, the global revenue of e-book readers will reach 5.8 billion – a huge increase from just 264 million in 2008. There are clear opportunities for the publisher to become the author’s agent and increase revenues and sales with a greater range of titles, increased profit margins through direct online sales, and reader dialogue.

The shift from physical to digital publishing may be challenging, but, with the right tactics and a cunning strategy in place, we believe publishers are set to reap the rewards.

How Can We Help?

• Marketing strategy
• Brand and web development
• E-book stores
• Ebook publishing
• Author micro sites (with dedicated CMS systems)
• Reader forums and online participation
• Mobile Apps (inluding Blackberry and iphones)
• Results led search optimisation campaigns

During the election campaign, Cheltenham was blanketed with Conservative billboards, the result of significant financial targeting of this marginal seat by their Head Office, backed by Party donors. However, I for one was not surprised to see that the Liberal Democrat majority increased despite this advertising.

The electorate will not be told who to vote for. Billboards, in particular, give the impression of Big Brother politics and unless the posters are very clever in their subliminal messaging (and they were not), they will have little effect. In fact, I would dare to say the effect could be negative, if only to spur the very voters targeted to shore up the opposing party.

The reason I see the electorate wanting to witness cross party compromise and real and true policy reconciliation in Government is because of the value society now places on honest communication. In today’s politics, when the party differences are relatively slight as they all clamber for the mass of middle votes, ‘lion pit’ warring politics does not seem real or honest. Simply, it does not ‘stack up.’ Therefore, we have lost faith in our politics and politicians (I would dare to say the expenses row was more symptom than cause). Hearing politicians talk of near Armageddon should their opposition win power, and vice versa, becomes as tiresome as it is dishonest. The outlandish nature of the cross party bickering and exaggeration of claims becomes so ridiculous that we, the electorate, lose interest, faith and resopect.

Marketeers had adopted consensual marketing long before the politicians. Turn the word ‘electorate’ to ‘consumer’ and you see the quest for honesty as a parallel. I visited The Real Food Festival in London last week and it was truly inspiring and exciting to see how the industry for honest, natural food and drink is burgeoning. We want the truth behind the label, whether on our strawberries or our jumper. Websites empower consumers to rank, vote, interact and comment. Social networking sites spread truth like wildfire. Successful advertising has long jumped from preaching from its pulpit to interacting and engaging with its congregation. Today, empowered by technology, honesty and truth have become paramount demands of the Consumer. Underestimate them at your peril!

In this Election, the influence to change the election result from the vested interests of our national newsprint was diminished in favour of the more honest (and faster growing) video medium. The Leaders’ Debates ignited the nation’s interest and are a reflection of how critical video is becoming in today’s marketing mix. These debates may have been full of subliminal messaging (recited set pieces, choreographed posturing etc) but the electorate felt at last able to deduce their own conclusions. Indeed, video advertising is forecast to become a formidable force on mobiles and smartphones as it proves it can move products and heighten brand awareness in measurable ways.

Be honest and be real and, whether brand or politician, perhaps your most feared threats and opportunities may become your greatest marketing allies!

Matthew Rymer

Managing Director

As Kerrygold is owned by a cooperative of Irish dairy farmers, the company understands that by working together, great things can be achieved.  The Kerrygold Community Awards have been created to give away £1,000’s to local community projects.

The majority of winning projects are decided by the public who can visit the site, enter their Unique Reference Number (available on special packs and tubs of Kerrygold), and then cast their vote for the project they think deserves a share of the money.  Each time a consumer enters their unique reference number, 10p is added to the Kerrygold Community Fund.

Visit The Site
Our objective was to design and develop a fully interactive and searchable awards platform that is able to process entries and voting in real time, controlled with a full administration console. The site needed to be simple for the user to browse, search, vote and add entries and also easy to manage by administrators and the Kerrygold team. The site has three different phases according to which part of the competition is taking place and has been developed to accommodate an infinite number of entries and generate maximum search engine referrals.

The software build for such a site was complex, with key achievements from our team including:

• Successfully creating a voting system and a commenting system, allowing users to both vote and comment on any project
• Building a system for three different phases of the project, with each phase being activated according to set periods of time
• Designing a money pot counter which is added to each time someone enters a URN
• Ability to search projects based on various criteria
• Creating a powerful admin panel for projects management, comment management, cotes management, media library etc
• The site makes use of PHP, MySQL, Javascript/iQuery/AJAX and CSS

The whole team here at The Farm are very proud of the website so please purchase your pack or tub of Kerrygold butter, visit the website and add 10p to The Kerrygold Community Fund by entering your URN.  You can then cast your own vote for which project you feel deserves a share of The Kerrygold Community Fund!

As well as all this, Kerrygold are also giving away 5 prizes of £2,000 – just enter your URN to be in with the chance of instantly winning £2,000.

Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Taking an elevator all the way up to the top of the Eiffel Tower offers great views of the Sin city. But it also makes you realise that before Rafael Rivera set his foot in Las Vegas Valley, there was nothing but plain abandoned dessert. Only the discovery of water rich springs started bringing all this traffic to Nevada dessert to become a prime location for a shop facility and town. Now imagine that your website, without much traffic, is just like that dry piece of land 200 years ago.

The days of putting an advert in the Yellow Pages and waiting for the phone call are over. Simply registering your website to various search engines is just the beginning of the long journey. That’s when Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes and the sooner you get started, the faster your business will grow.

Did you know that about 36% of internet users consider a company listed among the top results on search engines to be a top one within its field and about 60% of users click on a website link within the first page of results? Being listed in the Top 10 of natural search results should be a key priority for every online business. About 85% of searchers click on natural results comparing to paid results that appear on the top or side of the search engine results pages and are only half are as visible to searchers and mostly less effective.

There are numerous SEO techniques you can use to improve your natural traffic. The best start is to optimise the website itself. However, the first and most important issue to start with is to know your competition, analyse it and learn from its strengths and weaknesses. Then put yourself in the skin of searcher who is looking for product or services related to your business. What keywords would he put in the search query box? What results would he be interested in seeing? Don’t forget about optimising images on your website to make them visible to search engine spiders who crawl your website to find information related to your search query. Pay attention to writing quality articles and avoid sloppy texts that are hard to read. Focus on link building with subscribing your site to related directories and communities.

And update, update, update…

Understanding how people use search and what they search for is crucial for website publishers and SEO practitioners. Retail is among the first most searched categories followed by entertainment. It is based on one simple assumption – people love shopping, they always have and they always will. The amount of money spent on online shopping has grown despite recession and that’s what your business should benefit from. Placing your advert on relevant websites or exchange links is the best way to do it. Just be careful because unlike Las Vegas you don’t want your website to be related to any gambling or sex links!

Since El Rancho Vegas became the first hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip in 1941, 35 million people visit Vegas year round thanks to its entertaining facilities built in the middle of the dessert.

With sophisticated SEO you can bring as much traffic to your website as you want, so it becomes The Las Vegas of the Web!

Author
Xenia Slosarcikova constructs and implements SEO campaigns for a wide variety of businesses. Please call her on +44(0)1242 222878 or email xenia@themarketingfarm.co.uk.

Google PageRank works just like that. It ranks websites on the scale 0 to 10 points depending on their popularity the same way those school kids would rank their schoolmates. The one with the most relevant links/connections is the winner. Now what would you do to make sure your website becomes next year’s most popular?

• The most important thing to do is to secure as many links pointing to your website as possible because Google PageRank ranks websites according to the number of links leading to your page. Every click on your page is akin to a vote. The more votes you get, the better ranking will be.

• Submitting to search engine directories is very important because many of them allow you to post free links to your website, which increases your opportunities to be listed higher. As it is going to be a free link it is an easier option compared to trying to gain links from other related websites which may either ignore your link or request payment.

• Joining forums and and publishing articles are other important means of how to help your search engine ranking. Always sign off articles and contributions with your website signature. Just remember to only join forums related to your website for maximum benefit. It may bring back more potential clients and be a good advertisement for your business.

• Create and distribute ezines linked to your website.

• Register with Google webmasters and create a site map for your business to make it entirely visible to Google.

The subject is far more complex, but following these basic tips should at least help your website attain a better score on the GoogleRank scale and bring more traffic to your pages. However, please note it takes consistent and constant activity to become and remain the most popular kid at school….

Please email me for information regarding our 12 month SEO packages. They offer exceptional value!

Author: Xenia Slosarcikova, Online Marketeer, The Marketing Farm Limited

An infection clamped beneath that molar with nowhere to go shakes the very foundations of your jaw and teeth. That innocent tooth, which has taken years to grow and countless tubes of toothpaste, will probably have to be removed. An infection at the core – at the nerve ending – can destroy all you have grown.

If your marketing strategy is infected with poor information, it will eventually destroy everything you proceed to develop. As any good dentist will say, prevention is better than cure. Although I believe my dentist, Malvern’s Chris Bocking, is the world’s best, I would not hesitate to agree!

Solid information provides sound roots from which a successful marketing campaign can grow. Without this, you risk infection and a costly extraction.

Decisions over potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programmes, marketing performance, and control should all be underpinned by market research.

These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution. Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies, competitor activity, and social and cultural changes.

As if this does not provide enough headaches, we need to add to the mix the complexity of consumers. Relevant information can at least help us more reliably predict consumers’ response to marketing initiatives.

I am not arguing that marketing is a complete science. I would not be so passionate about marketing if it was. However, these are essential questions to ask before committing to any marketing campaign:

Your Customers
What are their locations, age, gender, buying behaviours and motivations?

Competitor information
Do you know their identities, marketing strategies and customer relationships?

Product information
How do your customers talk about your brand, products and service and likely impact of technology developments?

Industry information
What is the big picture? What are the future demand and supply trends and patterns?

Competitive opportunities
What are the under-served consumer segments and unmet consumer needs?

Qualitative research using depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, field tests and observations, supported by primary research yielding new, relevant and specific information will answer the above questions.

The Value of The Smile
I write this from a hotel near our Romanian office where the staff appear friendly and smiling. Last week I stayed at London’s Soho Hotel (a converted multi storey carpark!) where the staff were also exceptionally happy. It seems a rarity in hotels these days, but smile and world smiles with you.  It costs nothing and is a great marketing tool! And lest we forget, a good smile requires healthy teeth!

Matthew Rymer, Managing Director, The Marketing Farm Limited

The Marketing Farm are preparing to double the capacity of The Software Farm in the next 12 months to meet the demands of existing and future projects. Plans will soon be unveiled to build offices to accommodate our continued expansion.

A website’s success is dependent on the quality and levels of visiting traffic. However, too many businesses fail to have an ongoing online promotional strategy in place, and far too many have been stung by the false promises of so called ‘SEO specialists’ who promise big and achieve little. In this context, we have launched low cost and fully inclusive Search Engine Optimization packages to provide the necessary monthly maintenance, adjustments and assessments to increase online traffic to client sites.

We offer a choice of 12 month packages to ensure a website is successful across all major search engine and social networking sites. All our retained SEO accounts are reviewed by our full marketing team and supplementary recommendations provided free of charge. For smaller businesses that are mostly focused on a local geographical area we will create customised local SEO plans targeting a particular area (town, city, state, country) depending upon objectives. Please contact us for further information and explanations.

Package 1 On Page Optimization

This is executed within the website itself.

• Website Content Analysis

• HTML Code Optimization
• Competitors Analysis - assessing the website’s strengths and weaknesses through deep competition analysis
• Meta Tag Optimization – to identify keyword tags, key phrases and description tags necessary for placing websited at the best position with monthly and seasonal rotations
• Alt Tag Optimization – image word rotation
• Page Title Placements – monthly rotations
• Broken And External Link Report – to make sure website doesn’t have any “dead links” or “broken links”
• Keywords And Key Phrases Research
• Image Optimization And Anchor Tag Optimization
• Robot File Maintenance
• Google Sitemap Maintenance
• Statistical Traffic Reporting And Analysis

Package 2: On Page And Off Page Promotion

These additional services are executed outside of the website.

• Social Networking and Bookmarking – creating and maintaining accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Subscribe To Communities
• Business Directory Submission – subscribe to available business directories to help keep businesses at the top search positions
• Article Creation And Submission
• Blog Commenting –posting links to and from blogs, sharing links
• Forum Posting
• RSS Feed Directories – creating  RSS feeds (blog entries, news headlines, audio, video)
• CSS Submission
• Blog Creation – starting and maintaining blogs

Advertising

The Media Farm can also advise on concepts, media planning, design and production for:

• Banner and skyscraper advertising

• Contextual advertising

• Behaviourial targeting

• Semantic advertising

• Floating, expanding and wallpaper advertisements

• Pop-ups and pop-unders

• Video advertisements

• Map advertisements (Google maps)

• Mobile advertisements (SMS texting)

We will analyse the very earth (or essence) of your brand proposition. We will recommend measures to prevent contamination, and offer fresh ideas for brand growth. These will be suited to the climate of your marketplace, the nutrients you have available, and the vast crop of marketing techniques and technologies now available.

We are delighted to announce that Xenia Slosarcikova has

With an MA in Marketing Communications and multinational experience in various online marketing roles, and with the support of our creative and software teams, Xenia is both qualified and able to help clients increase and maintain online traffic levels.