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Growing Business of Offshore Software Development at Global Level

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Growing Business of Offshore Software Development at Global Level

Growing Business of Offshore Software Development at Global Level

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Home Page > Computers > Software > Growing Business of Offshore Software Development at Global Level

Growing Business of Offshore Software Development at Global Level

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Posted: Aug 12, 2010 |Comments: 0
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In the business world software development for the offshore outsourcing has become very common and nobody can deny its usefulness. The business of developing software for the offshore outsourcing companies has taken rise for the last few years all over the world.

Software companies are developing software for feeding the growing demands of companies which are using software for their internal & external operations. As software solutions are available for the operations on web as well as internal operations of any company in form of web applications, desktop applications, etc. Active participation of numerous industries such as retail business industry, financial, health, real estate & many more and millions of the small & large companies related to these industries are using software solutions. Almost every company from each industry uses software solutions like software, websites, applications and other related products which are used for the development of business on the web.

Offshore software development is proving its presence as one of the successful business on the platform of domestic & international business. Rapid growth in usage of the software solutions at company level as well as individual level is the result of increasing demands of the customers. Various business models, business process, business strategies cannot be used appropriately without software solutions, almost every business model can be fully utilized with the help suitable software. Most of the business operations in the modern business world are operated through software solutions and web exposure to these operations.

Primarily, a software development company follows a procedural step in its approach to develop software applications. These systematic steps include,

•   Gathering Requirement Analysis that involves gathering information relating to the    proposed business solution
•   Analysis of the problem
•   Designing the software solution
•   Implementation of the software (also known as coding)
•   Testing the software
•   Deployment of the software
•   Regular maintenance and bug fixing

Global corporate business is witnessing new horizons of success and this is all possible because of outsourcing the software projects. In this new age of Information Technology, most of the major software companies are invariably depends on outsourcing of their work. Software development projects now can be done outside (often called as offshore) confines of a standard technical environment.

Offshore software service providers use to concentrate on providing customized services to outsourcing clients according to suitable budget, schedule and infrastructure. In the highly competitive market, offshore software development companies try to make healthy business relationships with clients and appreciate the concept of customer care at high level. With the development of knowledge base industry in developing nations, offshore web development companies possesses enough software developers and technical experts (IT engineers) to fulfill the demands in software development for outsourcing clients.

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About the Author:

This article is courtesy of John Irron – an executive at Hi-Tech ITO is a leading software development company. Hi-Tech ITO Company provides software development services at cost effective rates. Visit us at: http://www.hitechito.com or send your entire software development requirements at: info@hitechito.com

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To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

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Business, cores, extent, Level, Marketing, Media, Networks, OnSite, Social, Strategy, Tripink

To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

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Home Page > Marketing > Social Marketing > To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

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To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

By: John Ekambi

About the Author

(ArticlesBase SC #3145534)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – To what extent can Tripink Media use onsite marketing and social media networks as a cores strategy on a business to business level

1 Background and Objectives

Tripink Media

TriPink Media is a new Mobile Video Advertising company, using a pink 3-wheel eco-friendly truck equipped with 3 LCD video screens displaying commercials (TriPink, 2009).

As an outdoor advertising company, TriPink essentially targets marketing and event professionals but also:

- Local business owners

- Foundations, charities and NGOs

- Offices and shop managers.

Since the company has little experience with online marketing, I have been asked – due to my online marketing background – as an intern to help the company to reach its marketing objectives, which are:

- Evaluating and enhancing onsite marketing strategies for better viewers’ experience, increasing traffic and the number of information requests formulated by viewers.

- Defining and engaging in conversation with the targets through social media networks (SMN) (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube).

- Evaluating the impact of online marketing strategies.

Online marketing and social media

Originally built for military purposes in the 60’s, the internet is now affecting people’s everyday life ranging from leisure to business (Bagherjeiran, 2008).

A report provided by eT forecasts (2009) announces that there will be 1.7 billion internet users across the globe in 2010. This potential exposure is the reason why businesses should focus on the internet as a key element to engage conversation and build strong relationships with their consumers. (Gangadharbatla, 2008)

Because a company’s website is the central convergent spot of information, Lurie (2009) postulates that companies’ websites should apply certain strategies and techniques in terms of layout, design and optimization in order to be relevant and should provide easy end enjoyable access and experience for their customers and viewers. Ramanathan (2007) completes Lurie’s statement and explains that certain onsite techniques have to be used in order to retain viewers on a website and give them an incentive to come back at a later time.

Similarly, according to Grimes (2007) many companies start to be engaged with online marketing and SMN, short for social media networks, in order to increase people’s awareness of their brand and to improve the relationship with their consumers in addition to retaining viewers on their websites. Leskovic (2007) reinforces Grimes’ observation and adds that companies try to implement the latests online communication technologies in order to be at the same “pace” with their customers; hence this will facilitate a two-way form of communication using the same medium.

Lurie (2009) argues that a two-way form of communication is a new concept employed by SMNs. During the boom of the internet in 2000 people were talking about Web 1.0, which was a static, one-way form of using the internet. Since 2004, O’Reilly media (2005) has introduced the term Web 2.0 which is considered to be the new generation of the internet.

This report will then stress and evaluate the current website marketing strategies used by Tripink Media as well as the ones used in SMN. The project also aims at determining which strategies should be kept, implemented and enhanced.

Project choice rationale

I have chosen to write this report on online marketing and SMN for several reasons: First of all I have always been passionate about the online world and its application to businesses and the marketing role that it can play in the 21st century. Secondly it seems that with the internet, consumers are going through a shift of behaviour as far as the relationship they have with brands and businesses is concerned (Li,2009). As my professional objectives are highly related to online marketing, it seems logical for me to write this report.

1.1 Research questions

The following questions and objectives are based on the company’s objectives and have been used to design the literature review:

1) Which onsite strategies can be used by Tripink Media in order to retain viewers give them a reason to come back to the website, and increase the number of information requests formulated by them.

2) How can Tripink Media use social media networks as a marketing strategy to engage conversation with its targets?

3) Can Tripink Media fulfil the need of its targets by using online marketing strategies?

1.2 Research objectives

1) To critically evaluate and analyse the current onsite strategies used by the company and decide which ones should be kept, enhanced or implemented.

2) To critically evaluate which social media networks marketing strategies and tools are appropriate to be used by the company.

3) To critically evaluate the impact of online marketing strategies on the company’s different targets.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Online Marketing

According to Kawasaki (2009), online marketing “is the delivery of communication messages through websites”. Parsons (1998) explains that thanks to online marketing companies can have the possibility of integrating new forms of interactions and conversation with their clients: in addition to that Zeisser and Waitman (1998) and Yuan and Fresenmainer (2006) agree that online marketing success is based on:

“- Attracting customers with audience creation

- Engaging with interactive interface and content

- Retaining with dynamic content and online communities

- Learning about consumers’ behaviour

- Relating back to customers to provide customized interactions”.

In order to reach its online marketing objectives a company can make use of different formats of online advertising: On the one hand there are some that are called “paid advertising”, which include a range of tools such as “banner, pop up and sponsored links” (Roger, 2000) and on the other hand there is a wide range of tools which are free of charge such as “media content sharing”. These usually consist of sharing different types of content (pictures, music, videos) on SMN, “search engine optimization” which is the use of several techniques aiming at ameliorating ranking in search engines, “website marketing design” which is the use of techniques and strategies aiming to improve the effectiveness of a website in terms of marketing, and “social media networks” where companies try to engage “marketing” conversation with their potential clients (Lurie, 2009).

Studies carried out by Li (2009), Kawasaki (2009) and Bagherjnan (2008) state that independently of what kinds of tools are being used to advertise, online marketing aims at increasing brand recognition and is a great incentive for purchases. However, Clemons (2009) argue that online consumers “do not trust, watch, want or need” online marketing. Therefore the authors claimed that it was a waste of time for some companies to start online marketing strategies.

2.1.1 Online marketing effectiveness

In terms of online marketing effectiveness measurement, the “click through rate” (CTR) method was conventionally used. Rogers (2000) defined it as “the average number of clicks through per hundred ads impressions”. Pavlou and Steward (2000) add that online advertising has a direct effect on consumers and that therefore the best way to measure online marketing effectiveness is to use CTR methods.

However, research done by Rettie (2004) goes against the CTR method as the best way to measure online marketing effectiveness and proposed the theory of “post impressions”. This is a “visit to a website, after exposure to an internet advertisement without clicking through the advertisement”.

This theory is supported by Dréze and Hussherr (2003). Their research points out that viewers tend to avoid to look at banners, pop ups and sponsored links, however they might still notice them while their eyes are scanning a page. Moreover, research conducted by Dahlen (2001) shows that viewers with little knowledge of the internet will click on an online ad by chance more often than experienced users. The author also explains that advertisers shouldn’t be focusing on the number of clicks but the number of views, since as people are getting more used to the internet, the use of CTR as a way to measure online marketing effectiveness is becoming obsolete.

However, there is limited evidence that “post impression” increases brand recall. Kawasaki (2009) explains that it is hard to accurately evaluate brand recall by only using post impression measurement tools.

Lurie (2009) also criticises the CTR method because it only evaluates an “instantaneous” response to an ad and does not provide a “general overview of an ad effectiveness”. Studies by Bagherjeinan (2008) reinforce Lurie’s observation and completed it by emphasizing the fact that data such as number of viewers, subscribers and time spent on a web page are important factors that should be taken into consideration when evaluating online marketing effectiveness. Danaher’s findings (2003) are also oriented towards the impact of the time spent on a web page, and the author explained that the longer a user was viewing a page, the more likely the user will remember the advertising material on this page.

Regardless what method is being used to measure online marketing effectiveness, research conducted by Roger (2000), Rettie (2004) and Dahlen (2001) all state the fact that targeting is a key factor for online marketing effectiveness. In addition, Roger and Thomson ( 2000) propose a theory aiming at distinguishing two important viewers’ behavioural factors: Functional factors which are based on the viewers’ online activity: depending on what viewers do online, the impact of the advertising message will vary considerably. And structural factors which are focused on the format of the advertising messages, the layout, and the position on the screen.

2.1.2 Lack of research conducted

Although several studies have been conducted on paid online advertising, Burns and Lutz, (2006), Dahlem (2002) and on web site design Balidu (2004), Warner (2004), up to now, no previous study that concentrated on the use of free SMNs marketing for B2B and on the use of website design as a marketing strategic tool could be identified.

From my findings, I have noticed that some research dealt with the impact of website design on viewers and on paid online advertising. However, there is a certain lack of studies making the link between the use of website design as a marketing strategic tool and the use of free SMNs marketing.

Moreover, the few studies on SMNs advertising do not focus on B2B but only on B2C. This lack of research is due to the contemporary aspect of the topic, and this project proposed aims to fill this gap.

2.2 Website Marketing design

A company’s website has an important role in terms of marketing communication. Mc Crea’s (2005) studies points out that a website should provide information that the viewers are looking for, the navigation on the site has to be friendly, the design and layout should be selected with a marketing strategic purpose.

2.2.1 Gehrke and Turban’s Framework

Gehrke and Turban (1999) were the first to propose a “website marketing design framework”. They agree that websites can be turned into a marketing strategic tool if certain elements are being applied.

- Page loading speed:

When a viewer lands on a website which takes too long to load, it is most likely that the viewer will close the page and will go on another website. Therefore companies should reduce the use of heavy media content.

- Business content:

Content needs to provide right away clear relevant and desired information to the users.

The authors explained that within the first seconds the viewers need to know exactly what they will find on the site. If the content does not provide the answers the viewers are looking for, the viewers will switch to a different site.

- Text

The authors emphasized the importance of having a certain consistency in terms of font used to retain viewers online and increase the number of returning viewers.

- Contact information

The authors asserted that if it is easy for viewers to locate the company’s contact information, the viewers will be more likely to contact the company.

- Colour

It is important for a company’s website to use colours which are linked to the product or services offered by the company. Moreover, colours are of major importance in terms of branding (Kawasaki, 2009).

- FAQ’s

The authors’ research pointed out that “companies which create frequently asked questions will encourage the users’ interest in knowing what exactly is offered on the site”.

- User friendly fill in form

Forms should be short, easy to fill out and should not ask for unnecessary private information in order to retain viewers and give them an incentive to fill in the form.

2.2.2 Cox and Dale’s Framework

Cox and Dale’s framework (2002) ( Appendix 1) agree with Gehrke and Turban’s framework (1999) and complete it by focusing on the layout of the pages:

- Layout of the pages

The authors’ findings show that it is important to maintain consistency within pages. Moreover it is “decisive” to provide a visible and easy to find “home button” on each page of the website.

Lurie (2009) complete Cox and Dalle’s findings and explain that a “good layout needs to inspire visitors to take action”. A call to action should be displayed on every page, and in addition to that the author affirmed that the strategic placement of text, colours, images and call to action is crucial to “market a website”.

In terms of evaluation, the author recommends the use of a “heat map application” in order to know “what the visitors look at first, where they enter the website, and where their eyes go next”. This can help to figure out where to place a call to action or important information. Lurie (2009) also argues that viewers decide in four seconds if they want to stay or leave a website. For this reason, companies need to grab viewers’ attention right away.

In addition, the authors argue that pages should be short also with regards to the written text. It is not suitable to “force” the viewer to scroll down the pages to be able to read the content.

2.2.3 Lurie’s Framework

Finally, Lurie (2009) agrees with both aforementioned theories and added a few more elements:

- Tag lines and slogans

According to the author, these “convey important ideas to customers”. Moreover, they can help to strengthen the company’s branding image, and they are also supposed to give incentives to the viewers to stay longer on the website to learn more about what the company can offer.

- Adding high impact photos

It is important to use photos that give more than a simple description of a product or service and show an interactivity between the product or service and the expected outcome.

- Search engine optimization (SEO)

“SEO is the process of improving ranking in search engine results” (Lurie, 2009).

Several previous theories aiming at improving ranking are supported by Waiman (1998), Simeon (1999) and Jumba (1998). They principally focus on “bolding key phrases”, using “hidden text” and “high number of clicks on search listing”.

However, Lurie (2009) argues against those theories and proposed a new one explaining that SEO is essentially based on placing keywords in:

-Headings

-Paragraph copy

-Uniform resource locator (URL).

2.3 Social media networks

According to Goldhammer (2007) “Social media networks is the manifestation of the internet and is a social tool that allows media sharing with one another”. In addition to this, CPR (2006) adds that social media aim to build communities and engage “participation” and “sharing”.

Lurie (2009) goes further and argued that SMN brought a new communication model which is based on the notion of “conversation marketing”. The author explained that thanks to SMN companies and customers can talk to each other and the messages sent to the customers can easily be shared with the rest of the community. Thackeray (2008) also agrees that with SMNs, marketers have a new way to reach their targets and engage them in communicating with each other.

Li (2009) argues that a successful SMN marketing strategy has to start by determining and classifying an audience depending on their”profile” “participation” and “engagement”. The author argued that it is important to build an online community including “watchers”, users who watch, read and download content, “sharers”, users who share content online and “commenters”, users who rate and comment products and services. Hence it is essential to produce content and decide on which segment it is going to be primarily dedicated to. Berger (2009) completes Li’s theory and adds that companies using SMN should on a daily basis make their online communities grow to increase traffic to their websites. Moreover, the author argued that it is crucial for a company to be seen as an expert on its domain. To engage conversation with its target, businesses should avoid to only talk about what they do but they should focus on their target’s interest. This theory is also supported by Lurie (2009) and Kawasaki (2009). In addition, Clarke (2009) defends that in order to obtain substantial results from their marketing effort, companies should focus on the “Social media networks 3 C’s theory”:

- Crowd: It is crucial to know who the crowd is composed of (users profile, consumers, non-consumers, active, passive users). Therefore online content should be produced and shared according to the crowd’s interest.

- Community which is important to make grow.

- Conversation: Companies need to participate and get involved in “two-way” conversation with their communities’ members. The author affirms that the first step is to listen to what is said by the crowd and then engage in conversation. In order to achieve that companies can use tools such as “Twitter search” where they can type in keywords about their industry or interests and find out what is said online and who is engaging in conversation. Facebook and Youtube also offer a similar keyword search feature.

Facebook

With 200 million users and one million new users each week, Facebook is one of the most powerful SMN to be used by businesses (Chandler 2009).

Volpe (2009) argues that Facebook can be used to: “Get found, connect and engage, create a community and promote content”. In order to reach those objectives the author suggests that businesses should:

- Create powerful profiles using a “human name” and not a business name and give as much information as possible about the company including a “human picture”.

- Building a contact list by starting by connecting with people and businesses that the companies know. This can be done on a daily basis, business can extend their contact list by adding “friends of friends” sharing the same interests.

- Communicate with wall posts: allFacebook users have a “wall” where other users can post messages; businesses should use this opportunity to engage conversation.

- Updating status, when a new status is being posted, the online community can see it on their home page. Businesses should take this opportunity to show their expertise in their domain.

- Participating in groups: businesses should access groups sharing common interests where they can share information to show their authority, build their communities, engage conversation and direct traffic to their website.

Twitter

Twitter is a “micro-blogging platform” allowing users to post 140 characters messages called Tweets. It is currently used by 50 million users called “followers” (Brogan, 2009).

In terms of profile building, the same rule used for Facebook has to be applied. Kill (2009) affirms that companies using Twitter should follow leaders in their industry and professionals who can have an influence on their community. This influence can be measured by the number of followers they have. Moreover, the author states that businesses should “track” keywords and relevant topics and so become part of conversations and answer followers’ questions and solve their problems by offering solutions. Twitter can also be used as a PR tool, allowing businesses to announce their new products, services, or to discuss their new projects. Businesses should keep in mind asking their “followers” for feedback. On a more practical level the author suggests to post between two to five new updates per day and to follow 10 new users per day when a company starts to use Twitter.

Youtube

Youtube is a “video sharing site” with more than 100 million videos (Brogan 2009).

Evans (2009) argues that a complete company profile on Youtube makes a company more trustful. The author designed a list of nine strategies that companies should use with Youtube:

- Sharing presentation to confirm the company expertise

- Showing products or services in use and explain how they work

- Conducting video interviews with industry experts

- Engaging with the community by leaving comments, subscribing to channels and posting response videos

- Setting up a channel to reinforce branding

- Making use of testimonials to strengthen credibility

- Showing the outcomes obtained by a customer who used the products or services sold by the company

- Introducing staff to add authenticity

- Including information about the company and links to the website.

In terms of usage, Reichbach (2009), claims that SMN are especially used by people between 18-29 years old, they represent 82% of the global social networks users. The “subscribers” tend to mainly use them while they are not at work but most likely when they are at home. Furthermore, Wilson’s studies (2009) pointed out that 78,3% of SMN users use them for personal purposes, and only 21,7% use them for “work related” purposes.

According to Fodaghi (2007), in addition to sharing content with the community, SMN users can also recommend a brand, a product or a service to the rest of the community. Therefore it is important for brands to target this type of users.

Although much research as the one carried out by Li (2009), Kawasaki (2009) and Lurie (2009) agrees on the fact that SMN are an effective marketing tool, Riley (2007) claims that its effectiveness might simply create a “short-term awareness” and the retention level might be low. However, since the topic is really contemporary, there are no other theories backing up Riley’s findings.

Brogan (2009) and Lurie (2009) agree that in order to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing strategies used on SMN companies should focus on:

- The number of subscribers they have in their communities

- Whether or not messages or content are being shared with the rest of the community

- The traffic generated and directed to the company’s website

- The conversation they are engaged in with the “community”

- Finally, in order to grab the target’s attention, the content and messages posted online have to be relevant to the target in order to eventually be shared with the online community.

In order to complete this project, it was essential to go through the key literature on online marketing, online marketing effectiveness, website marketing design and social media networks as those topics were the fundamental themes of my project. The literature on online marketing was crucial in order to define online marketing and understand the way it works in a business world. The literature also helped to understand the different formats available and the purposes of using them. Regarding online marketing effectiveness, the literature covered the different strategies that companies can use to maximise the impact of online marketing strategies on their target. Concerning the literature on website marketing design, it provided me with clear and complete frameworks to reach marketing objectives in terms of giving incentives to viewers to stay longer and come back to websites and to increase interaction between viewers and businesses.

Finally, the literature covering social media networks has been useful to present the different social media networks marketing strategies that could be used by a company and the way they should be implemented. However, due to the fact that social media network marketing is a considerably new discipline, a certain lack of supported theories has been encountered, and more practical strategies were found.

2.4 Conceptual Framework

Users’online community

2-way communication including content

Sharing information and content

3 Research Methods

3.1 Perspective

In order to conduct this research, a realistic research philosophy has been used. Indeed, this research is aimed at understanding how internet viewers are impacted by Tipink Media’s online marketing strategies. Moreover, the research mainly focused on a philosophy of interpretivism. This perspective “gives the researcher an in-depth explanation for why people behave a certain way” (Weber, 2004). The study also aims at determining which onsite marketing strategies have to be used in order to retain viewers online.

A combination of quantitative and qualitative research was conducted using secondary and primary data collection such as: documentation, content analysis, frameworks, theories and questionnaires. For the aforementioned reasons, a deductive approach was taken, which has been essential in order to analyse the existing theories and frameworks related to the study area. Inductive approach has also been used on a smaller level. The findings from the data collection were worthwhile to determine which onsite strategies the company should be using and how some adjustments could have an impact on the viewers.

3.2 Research design

Byrman and Bell (2007:38) define five different types of research design: Experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal, case study and comparative. In order to complete this research the following types of design were used.

3.2.1 Case study

Daymon and Halloway (2002) explain that case studies tend to be “associated with an intensive investigation of a location, organization, campaign or strategy”. This statement is supported by Sekaran (2000) who adds that “it’s a problem solving technique and it involves in depth analyses of the situation”. The author also argues that case studies “increase knowledge about real contemporary communication events”. Finally, Saunders et al (2003) claims that case studies are the most appropriate methods to be used in order to “test” existing frameworks and theories. Indeed, in order to complete my research, I have integrated the company as an intern with the objectives to analyse the current online marketing strategies used and provide recommendations to ameliorate them. Although the case study helped to gather information, the fact that the results obtained couldn’t be generalized shows the limits of this method.

3.2.2 Cross Sectional

This design is suitable as it allows “the collection of data at some point in order to gather quantitative and qualitative data in relation with several variables” (e.g.: different website marketing strategies used, different SMNs used and different types of targets) in order to “detect patterns” which helped to answer the research questions.

3.3 Data Collection
3.3.1 Secondary data collection:Content analysis

Diverse secondary data were employed in order to complete this project. Indeed books which have contributed to the development of new online marketing strategies such as Conversation Marketing were used. Because the topic is really contemporary, journals such as the Journal of Interactive Advertising were used in order to have more up-to-date data, moreover reports on online marketing have also been accessed in order to collect relevant information on the topic .Those data allowed to have a work base in terms of relevant theories and frameworks. The Coventry University elibrary as well as several libraries and the internet allowed me to access those data.

Busch et al (2009) explains that “content analysis determines the presence of concepts within texts or set of texts”, moreover, it helps to identify a relation between the concepts used and the impact on the audience. The author claimed that the analysis can be “applied to any piece of writing”, furthermore, the analysis can be conducted by following “existing theories and frameworks”.

The first objective aimed at evaluating the current onsite marketing strategies used by the company and suggests ways to improve them. For this reason the company’s website and more particularly it’s content were used for the analysis and theories and frameworks proposed by Gehrje and Turban (1999), Lurie (2009) and Cox and Dale (2009) were applied.

In order to reach a high quality level of data collection, the secondary data used were selected based on the validity of the data, their reliability, currency and credibility. Indeed the data used were produced by recognized authors who have contributed to the development of online marketing strategy frameworks, moreover it has been important to use current data as it is a present day topic.

3.3.2 Primary data collection: Questionnaires and Interviews

Questionnaires

On the one hand the second objective aims at evaluating the company’s marketing effectiveness in terms of social media use and at understanding the users’ behaviour towards social media marketing, on the other hand the third research objective aims at evaluating the impact of online marketing on internet users. For those reasons questionnaires were the most appropriate way to obtain objective answers without influencing the respondents by my presence. The questionnaire was made on Survey Monkey and a link of the survey was sent by email to respondents and was also shared on Facebook (Appendix 2) to reach a greater number of respondents . Most of the questions revolved around social media in terms of knowledge, usage behaviour and motivation. As the information collected concerned several targets, a certain focus was on the primary company’s target.

It is important to state that some limitations linked to the use of questionnaires had to be faced regarding respondents profiles. Since the questionnaires were primarily aimed at the company’s target in order to obtain valuable data, for this matter, at the beginning of the questionnaires, the respondent is being identified by selecting the category he belongs to (local business owner, marketing professional, charities’ representative, or manager).

Interview

Semi-structured interviews ( Appendix 3) were a suitable way to collect more in-depth data aiming at explaining the viewer’s behaviour and giving eventual reasons justifying his or her attitude towards online marketing. Cohen (2006) states: “semi-structured interviews allow respondents the freedom to express their views in their own terms”. Five interviews of 30 minutes each were conducted to examine with great attention certain findings from the questionnaire. The interviewees were numbered: interviewee number one was a marketing executive, interviewee number two an event coordinator, interviewee number three a business owner, interviewee number four a coordinator in an NGO, and interviewee number five a shop manager. Those interviewees were selected because they are perfectly in line with the company’s target and it was appropriate to understand their behaviour to address objectives two and three. Although the five interviews were video recorded with the approval of the interviewees, four of them were conducted face to face in the company’s premises and one was conducted by webcam. Notwithstanding the fact that semi- structured interviews give a certain level of freedom to the respondents, the fact remains that they could have been influenced by the way the questions were asked. For this reason I had to remain objective in a certain way. In the interest of securing the relevance of the questionnaires and the interviews, both were piloted with friends, colleagues and other professionals.

3.4 Access and sample

In the interest of conducting this research, it was essential to address the questionnaires to the right targets. For this reason, I have used a contact list provided by the company’s owner. In addition to that the marketing manager gave me access to another list of contacts. I also had access to a list of contacts coming from Ideactif, which is the biggest event promotion company in Paris, a non-profit organization called UNOY also allowed me to access to some of their partners’ contact details. And finally my personal professional network has also been used to reach the respondents.

In terms of sampling, the non-probability sampling method was employed for both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The use of this technique was helpful in order to “generalize about the population” Saunders et al 2003). Purposive and snowball sampling were used in view of the fact that several specific targets were to be analysed. Furthermore snowball sampling was applied because I needed the respondents to recommend other people.

A sample sized of 100 marketing and event professionals and 150 other professionals based on the company’s target were requested to participate; and a 25% response rate was expected. Concerning the interviews, purposive sampling was used. It allowed to select business owners, managers, marketing professionals and charity representatives who were at the central point of this research.

3.5 Analysis of data

Concerning the content analysis, existing theories and frameworks were employed to evaluate the website marketing strategies effectiveness. In order to reach this objective, each variable from the frameworks and theories was studied with the aim to distinguish if it was currently used on the website and eventually to find out how well it was used. The analysis was supported by a website marketing design check list. (Appendix 4)

Responses from the questionnaires were analysed with Survey Monkey and with charts, graphs and Excel spreadsheet. A combination of descriptive and inferential analysis was employed. Moreover the findings were also analysed on two different levels:

- Univariate: which enabled me to “study one variable at a time”

- Bivariate: which permitted me to examine “two variables at a time” such as the marketing respondents and their expectation toward online marketing.

Regarding the interviews, a deductive inductive approach was used alongside with a template analysis containing several categories. The fact that the interviews were video taped allowed me to complete the template even after the interviews were conducted.

3.6 Research ethics and plagiarism

In order to respect the ethical standards set by Coventry University, this research has been conducted in compliance with the Coventry University’s BES guidelines. All the participants were free to accept or refuse to answer the questionnaire and to be interviewed. In addition, personal data were kept confidential.

As regard to plagiarism, I perfectly understand the meaning and consequences, for this reason all the referred work, data and quotes were referenced using the Coventry University Harvard referencing style.

4 Data collection, Presentation, findings & analysis

4.1 Content Analysis

The purpose of the website www.tripink.com is to raise awareness of Tripink Media, increase traffic, retaining viewers online and give them incentives to come back at a later time and to increase the number of information requests formulated by viewers.

Figure 4.1 Home Page (Source: http://www.tripink.com)

Page loading speed and Animation

Gehrke and Turban (1999) argued that the use of too much heavy media content (animation, videos, pictures) can slow down a website and increase viewers’ abandon. Tripink media has respected this principle, in order to make page loading faster, there is little use of heavy media material on the website. Therefore, based on the authors’ theory, viewers are most likely to stay longer on the website.

Colour

The company has met the Gherke and Turban (1999) standards. Indeed, a generous use of the colour pink can be noticed throughout the website. The background, the logo, the links and some titles are in pink; which is a great way to strengthen branding and create a certain enjoyable atmosphere on the site.

Adding high impact photos

Tripink’s website hasn’t really explored the potential of using high impact photos to illustrate how their pink truck could deliver advertising messages or what would be the impact on the target. Instead, a steady picture of the truck is displayed on every pages.

Layout

In terms of consistency, Tripink’s website has followed Cox and Dale’s (1999) principles. The website has been designed respecting a constant “style”, therefore it really creates a certain atmosphere for the viewer and it helps to provide a better experience and retain viewers online.

Although the authors agreed that it is “decisive” to have a visible and easy to find “home button” to direct viewers to the home page, the company hasn’t taken this factor into consideration. Despite the fact that the home button is displayed on every page, it is not relatively easy to be found. The button is smaller than the other tabs and it is displayed at an unusual location. Indeed Lurie (2009) explains that it is usually preferable to have a home button displayed at the same level as the other button. In the case of Tripink, the “home button” is located right above the horizontal menu and just underneath the “call to action”. There is absolutely no emphasis in terms of grabbing the viewers’ attention toward the home button. Therefore, while navigating through the website, the viewer can be frustrated by not finding the “home button”, which can considerably increase the number of abandons.

Concerning the “call to action”, the company has followed the authors’ concept and a fairly clear “call to action” is displayed at the upper right corner of every page where the viewers can read ” call today 877.305.PINK”. The objective here is to have viewers calling the company. However, the font used for “call today” is a lot smaller than the one used for the phone number.

Finally, Cox and Dale (2002) advise to have short pages on a website and eliminate the need to scroll them down to view the content. Although the company provides short pages on its website, the company fails to respect the authors’ theory with regards to the fact that viewers have to scroll down on every page of the website in order to view the content displayed. This lack of layout optimization can be unpleasant for the viewers and doesn’t give them an incentive to either stay on the website or come back at a later time.

Business content

According to the authors, in order to reduce abandon, the content has to instantaneously provide the information that the viewers want to access. On Tripink.com home page which is the central point of access to the website, the viewer has access to the most important information in terms of service offered (mobile video advertising with a pink truck), the features of the truck and a slide show on the right hand side providing information concerning the type of businesses which could take advantage of using “Tripink”. The fact that those information are displayed right away gives an incentive to the right target to stay on the site, to eventually open more pages and to learn more about the company.

Figure 4.2 Benefits (Source: http://www.tripink.com)

Text

According to Gehrke and Turban (1999), consistency in terms of the font used is critical to provide a better experience to the viewers. This principle hasn’t been followed by Tripink Media, which use six different fonts throughout the site. This element gives an amateurish aspect to the website and according to the authors this can be a reason why a viewer would leave the site.

Tag lines and slogans

The company has made a minor attempt to use tag lines and slogans. Lurie (2009) claims that “they can retain viewers on the website and convey important ideas”. But Tripink hasn’t explored the potential of using them. The company mainly uses generic titles with no visible aim to give any incentives to the viewer to learn more about the services offered.

Contact information

In order to make it easier for the viewers to contact the company, the company’s contact details are located at the bottom of every page of the website. In addition, the telephone number is also on every page in the upper right hand corner using different a font and colour in order to grab the viewer’s attention.

Frequently asked questions FAQ’s

Gehrke and Turban (1999) claim that it is important to have an “FAQ’s” section on the website in order to retain viewers. Tripink media hasn’t provided this feature, therefore the risk of viewers leaving the website is higher. It is important for a viewer to find answers to his questions on a website, otherwise, based on the authors’ findings, there are chances that he or she will go to another site to find answers.

Figure 4.3 Contact us (Source: http://www.tripink.com)

User friendly fill in form

The company has followed Gehrke and Turban’s (1999) concept regarding the fill in form. Indeed the form is short and only asks for relevant information. For this reason viewers will be most likely to fill in the form and contact the company.

Search engine optimization SEO

Although Lurie (2009) states that to improve SEO and page ranking in search engines and therefore increase traffic, relevant keywords should be placed in headings, paragraphs copy and URL. Tripink.com hasn’t optimized its website for search engines. By not optimizing its website, Tripink Media is missing out on a possibility of reaching out to certain businesses and professionals belonging to its target market.

4.2 Questionnaires

Before going through the analysis of the questionnaires, it is important to know that the company wasn’t using any defined strategies or techniques when it comes to SMNs. Occasionally, the company was posting new pictures and videos featuring the pink truck, but no serious attempt to engage conversation with a particular online community was made.

The sample

As explained in the methodology chapter, 100 questionnaires were sent to marketing professionals. Because they represent the primary target of the company, it was suggested by the owner to focus on this group. Subsequently, 150 questionnaires were then equally sent to business owners, foundations and managers. The total number of respondents who had taken the survey was 101 and 77 of them completed the survey entirely which corresponds to a 30.8% response rate which is in line with the expectation stated.

Figure 4.4 Demographic (Source: Survey Monkey)

As seen in figure 4.4 combining the age and the gender of the respondents 78 out of 100 respondents were of the age group of 18-29 of which 34 were male and 44 were female; this is in line with Reichback’s (2009) theory claiming that 70% of 18-29 years old have used a social media network.

Figure 4.5 Profession (Source: Survey Monkey)

As explained in the methodology chapter, focus was placed on marketing professionals because they are the primary target of the company and it was important to analyse their behaviour. Therefore, 46.5% of the respondents were marketing, advertising or event professionals, 25.7% worked with foundations, charities and NGO’s, 15.8% were office or shop managers and 11.9% were business owners.

Social media awareness

Figure 4.6 Social media network (Source: Survey Monkey)

The survey asked the respondents to choose from a list of SMNs the ones they used, they could select more than one and also suggest some SMN which weren’t included in the list. A total of 89 answers were received, 85 respondents used Facebook, 71 used Youtube, 17 used Twitter and 19 used other SMN. When the respondents were asked to name the other SMN that they used, most of them answered “Myspace and Dailymotion”. One of the reasons why Facebook and Youtube are mainly used is the fact that those two are really popular among the respondents, moreover, they are easy to use so the respondents feel comfortable using them. Regarding Twitter, since it was still relatively new, the respondents weren’t using it because of a lack of knowledge about it and because of the “fear” to have to deal with a new online account.

The survey included the ratings from the respondents concerning their knowledge about SMN. They could choose between really poor, poor, fair, advanced and expert. Regarding Facebook and Youtube, the majority of the respondents (62.8%) declared having an advanced level of usage, this is in line with the fact that those two networks were the most used by the respondents. Concerning Twitter, 41.3 % of the respondents confirmed having really poor knowledge of usage. This is due to the fact that the majority of the respondents weren’t familiar with Twitter.

The survey asked the respondents to evaluate how often they use Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. 47.1% of the respondents declared using Facebook 1 to 5 times per day, the same question was asked for Twitter and 70.7% of the respondents declared never using it. Finally, regarding Youtube, 28.2% of the respondents answered using it one to five times per week. The reasons why Facebook was more regularly used is linked to the fact that it was the most popular SMN among the respondents: moreover, the respondents found it really easy to use. Twitter on the other hand was predominantly not used because it remains really new and it would need to gain popularity among the respondents before they would consider using it.

The survey included a question asking the professionals whether they were using SMN at home or at work. 67.8% of the respondents affirmed using it at home and only 32.2% affirmed using it at work. A reason for this usage behaviour was that at home they had more time to spend on the internet or in some cases it wasn’t acceptable or feasible to use SMN at their working places (shop manager), therefore the only way for them to access it was after work.

A total of 89 responses were received on the ranking question that was aimed at determining for which purposes SMN were mostly used. 78.9% answered that the principal reason for them to use SMN was for personal purposes (keeping in touch with friends and family), 58.1% answered that entertainment was the second reason for them to use SMN, 59.3% answered that having access to news was the third reason. And finally, 53.4% answered that business purposes was the last reason for them to use SMN. Those results are in line with Wilson’s findings (2009) showing that the majority of SMN users use them for personal purposes and only a smaller portion of the users employ them for business purposes. One reason explaining that only a small percentage of the professionals used SMN for business is due to the fact that some professionals were not aware that businesses they were interested in were using SMN.

Brogan (2009), Lurie (2009) and Clarke (2009) claim that companies using SMN for business purposes should engage in conversation with their target. In order to analyse the respondents’ comments sharing behaviour, the latter have been asked to report who they were sharing comments with. 97.5% of the respondents answered sending comments to people from their online community, 24.9% answered sending comments to people outside their online community and only 19.8% answered sending comments to other professionals and businesses. A reason explaining this behaviour is the fact that respondents’ online communities are mainly composed of friends and family and they felt more comfortable engaging in conversation with members of their own online communities.

Brogan (2009) and Lurie (2009) agree that for better results the content posted by companies has to be viewed by the target. The survey asked the respondents whether they were viewing the content posted online. 92.8% answered viewing the content posted by people from their online communities and 38.6% answered viewing content posted by businesses and professionals. One reason explaining the fact that more respondents viewed professionals and businesses content than actually engaged in conversation with them was due to the fact that some respondents rather watched videos or read articles from other businesses. If they had to actually engage in conversation with them, they would feel pressured and scared that they will have to buy something. Moreover, viewing content online is less time-consuming.

The survey included a question asking respondents if they intentionally added businesses to their online communities or if they only accepted “friend” requests from businesses. 58.7% of the respondents only accepted friend requests and 43.3% added businesses on their own initiative. A reason explaining those results is the fact that respondents don’t necessarily have the time to engage, research and find out if businesses they are interested in are using SMN

Figure 4.7 Engagement with social media network (Source: Survey Monkey)

Fodaghi (2007) affirmes that in order to use SMN in a marketing effective way, companies need to identify and target the users who share content and who recommend brands or products to their online community. The survey included a question on the respondents engagement with SMN. Marketing professionals were the ones who were most engaged. 52.5% of them shared content with people posted by businesses, 55% shared content with professionals posted by other professionals, 77% recommended products and services to professionals and 50% of them answered going to a company’s website which had posted content on SMN. Reasons explaining these results are that marketing professionals are highly efficient in terms of SMN usage, they have large online communities and they are the ones using the most SMN for business purposes.

87.5% of business owners agreed that if they needed the services of an advertising agency, they would look for it on SMN, 78.9% of the marketing professionals, 70% of the foundations professionals and 75% of the managers also agreed on using SMN. Indeed, they were aware of the potential of SMN as a new way to communicate with businesses.

However, 23.1% of the respondents wouldn’t have used SMN if they needed the services of an advertising agency, the main reasons were the lack of reliability and trust of SMN and the fact that it would be easier to search on search engines such as Google.

Figure 4.8 Company’s information (advertising agency) (Source: Survey Monkey)

Moreover, the survey included a list of company information and the respondents were asked to select the ones they would like to have access to on SMN. 75% of the respondents would like to have information concerning the prices, 60% of the respondents have chosen information on the company’s background, 66.7% would like to see pictures of products and services offered and 65 % would like to see videos of products and services offered. Indeed, SMN users want to have information very quickly on the companies’ activities , and on the cost involved to use their services. These pieces of information will help the users to select an agency to work with.

Finally, the respondents were asked about the kind of interaction they would like to have with an advertising agency. 75% of the business owners would like to receive frequent updates on the agency’s other projects, 57.9% of the marketing professionals would like to have access to the same information. 55% of the foundation respondents would like to chat with their account executive via SMN and 75% of the managers would like to receive advertising advice via SMN. This shows that the different targets have different interests in terms of online interaction, their needs of information vary depending on their professional activities.

4.3 Interviews

The interview questions were partially similar to the ones used for the survey including additional questions aiming to understand the impact that SMN marketing strategies can have on the company target (Annex).

The interviewees were identified by number:

1: Marketing executive

2: Event coordinator

3: Business owner

4: Coordinator in a NGO

5: Shop manager

The majority of the respondents explained that the elements which make them stay on a website or make they want to come back on it are:

- A fast loading and easy navigation

- A clear layout including keywords and headlines to facilitate the navigation

- A strong link between the content and the pictures

- Short sentences and having the main information displayed right away

Additionally, elements such as dead links, lack of consistency in terms of fonts used on the website or the absence of a “contact us” link on the homepage will fail to retain the respondents online.

The most common keywords that the respondents would use to find a mobile video advertising company online without using the words “mobile videos” were:

moving advertising, vehicle advertising, outdoor advertising and scrolling billboards.

Concerning SMNs, Youtube and Facebook were mainly used by the respondents.

Those SMN were essentially used to stay connected with friends and family: however, respondent one used SMN to follow new trends on his industry and to find business related information. On a different level, respondents one, two, four and five used SMN to watch videos, and share relevant content with the community.

Moreover, respondents mainly use those SMN, because they are really popular and easy to use, furthermore, it is a fast way to find access to people sharing similar interests.

Respondents had an average of 70 members in their online community, and only respondents one and two had more than 100 members.

Respondents one, two and four affirmed to be members of online groups, they usually search for information in their industry and ask other professionals.

Except from respondents one and two, the respondents tended to use SMN at homebecause it was either not appropriate to use them at work or respondent five for instance didn’t have access to the internet during business hours. Respondents one and two claimed using SMN several times per hour at work.

Although the respondents’ online communities were mainly composed of friends and family members, the respondents one, two and four affirmed having businesses in their online community. They usually only accept invitation from businesses to join their networks and do not directly add businesses to their networks because they do not know which businesses use SMN. The respondents also explained that they accept invitation from businesses if they know what type of products or services they offer.

Respondents one, two and four affirmed viewing content posted online by companies if it grabs their attention usually with a powerful headline, or if they know that it will answer their questions or solve a problem. If the company shows its expertise on a certain domain, the respondents will most likely go on their website. Moreover, if the content posted is really original and informative, the respondents would share it with their community. Respondent four claimed that viewing content was easier and less time-consuming than engaging in conversation with companies, moreover it reduces the possible “pressure of the salesman”.

Videos were claimed to be the type of content that the respondents share the most. It is due to the fact that a video can clearly show and explain how a product or service can be used.

When companies engage in online conversation with the respondents, the latter expect to have a personalized approach, and have information on the company regarding the product, services, prices, pictures and videos .Moreover, the respondents would be most likely to engage online conversation with companies which propose special offers and discounts for its SMN community.

Respondents one, two and four affirmed that if they need the services of an advertising company they will first look on search engines such as google, however they would consider going on SMN such as Youtube and Facebook afterwards to watch videos of the projects and campaigns conducted by the company and to also follow and have frequent updates on the company’s new projects, new services and special offers.

5 Conclusion and Recommendations

5.1 Conclusion

Onsite marketing strategies

In terms of onsite marketing strategies used to retain internet users on the website, make them come back at a later time and increase information requests Tripink media has fully applied certain theories and strategies.

With regards to page loading speed, the company does not use too much heavy media material so that they achieve a fast page loading speed and increase the time spent on the website. The colour pink is used in an appropriate way to reinforce branding and provide a better online experience for users. Additionally, a clear and straightforward business content as well as a short and simple fill in form were employed to reduce viewers abandon and give them an incentive to come back to the website at a later time. Finally, an easy to find “contact us” tab was used to increase the number of information requests from the users.

On a different level, certain strategies have partly been employed by the company. Tripink Media does not use high impact photos and therefore the time spent on a website by the viewers is considerably reduce (Lurie, 2009). Although the company provides a consistent website in terms of general style, the lack of clarity regarding the location of the “home button”, the deficiency of emphasising the call to cation adds to the fact that users have to scroll down pages to read the content and is one reason why there is an increase of early abandon. Moreover, the aforementioned reasons aren’t favourable to create incentives for the viewers to contact the company. Finally, the use of generic titles instead of appropriate slogans and headlines reduces the viewers’ interest in reading the content and decreases their time spent on the website.

Finally, certain strategies and theories weren’t employed by the company. Tripink Media has been using three different types of fonts throughout the website which gives it an amateurish look and leads to an increase in the number of abandons.

The company does not provide any FAQs section on the website and therefore misses the opportunity to inform the viewers which can increase the risk of abandons (Gehrke and Turban, 1999). Finally, the company has not optimized its website in terms of SEOs or relevant used keywords to facilitate the search on search engines, hence, it reduces its chances of having repetitive visits to its website.

SMNs marketing strategies

Regarding the target profile, SMNs were primarily used by marketing, advertising and event professionals as well as foundations, charities and NGO’s professionals aged between 18-29.

Concerning SMN, Facebook and Youtube were predominantly used by the respondents, Twitter wasn’t particularly used because it wasn’t popular yet among the target. The professionals also declared having an advanced level of usage for Facebook and Youtube.

In terms of usage frequency, the professionals were using Facebook 1 to 5 times per day, in certain cases several times per hour and Youtube was mainly used 1 to 5 times per week. Although the respondents were essentially using SMNs at home, some marketing and NGO professionals declared that they accessed them at work.

Despite the fact that the first reason for using SMNs was to stay connected with friends and family,the second reason was to follow news and trends in a particular industry and access business related information.

In order to have more business related information, marketing and NGO professionals joined professional online groups where they can ask questions to other professionals.

The majority of the professionals (97.5%) only engaged in conversation and shared comments with the members of their online community, however, in order to engage in conversation with businesses, the respondents expect a personalized approach as well as having access to information regarding the company including pictures and videos. On a similar level, they also mainly viewed content posted by the members of their online community, generally the content was viewed if it grabbed their attention with a powerful headline or if it explained how to solve a problem. Ultimately, if the content is original and informative, marketing professionals were predominately the ones who would be willing to share it with the rest of their community. In addition, they were the ones who largely recommend product or services to other professionals. Moreover, videos appeared to be the type of content the most shared by the respondents.

Furthermore, the respondents generally accepted business invitations to join their online community if they knew what types of products or services were offered rather than adding businesses on their own initiative.

Finally, the majority of the respondents affirmed that if they needed the services of an advertising company, they would consider to add SMNs in their search process in order to watch videos of projects and campaigns conducted by the company and to also have frequent updates on company activities.

5.2 Recommendations

This research was conducted in order to decide which onsite marketing strategies used by the company should be kept, enhanced or implemented. Secondly, it aimed at evaluating which SMN

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Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

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Home Page > Computers > Information Technology > Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

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Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

By: Btucker

About the Author

Offshore outsourcing company india offers custom software application development services like PHP/MySQL & ASP.Net Application Framework. For more details please refer this URL www.offshore-outsourcing-company-india.com

(ArticlesBase SC #879452)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

In the business world software development for the offshore outsourcing has become very common and nobody can deny its usefulness. The business of developing software for the offshore outsourcing companies has taken rise for the last few years all over the world.

Software companies are developing software for feeding the rising demands of companies which are using software for their internal & external operations. As software solutions are available for the operations on web as well as internal operations of any company in form of web applications, desktop applications, etc. Active participation of numerous industries such as retail business industry, financial, health, real estate & many more and millions of the small & large companies related to these industries are using software solutions. Almost every company from each industry uses software solutions like software, websites, applications and other related products which are used for the development of business on the web.

Offshore software development is proving its presence as one of the successful business on the platform of domestic & international business. Rapid growth in usage of the software solutions at company level as well as individual level is the result of increasing demands of the customers. Various business models, business process, business strategies cannot be used appropriately without software solutions, almost every business model can be fully utilized with the help suitable software. Most of the business operations in the modern business world are operated through software solutions and web exposure to these operations.

Software developing companies all over the world are following various innovative strategies to raise the profit levels as well as to satisfy their offshore outsourcing clients. They are providing software development work on project basis as well as models of hiring individual dedicated software developers. Maximum software development companies are based in the developing nations which are providing quality software solutions to offshore outsourcing companies from developed nations. Software developing companies are using large variety of IT technologies for the software development to fulfill the customized demands of their offshore clients. Increasing need of web exposure to products & services have developed the big web market which requires a variety of software solutions.

Social & business interaction between masses world-wide through web has rapidly created the demand of software development. This boom in the software development market has made the software development business more significant on the platform of world business.

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Offshore outsourcing company india offers custom software application development services like PHP/MySQL & ASP.Net Application Framework. For more details please refer this URL www.offshore-outsourcing-company-india.com

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Advanced Keyword Research – Take Your Search Marketing To The Next Level

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Advanced Keyword Research – Take Your Search Marketing To The Next Level

As most search marketers know, conducting effective keyword research is crucial achieving PPC marketing and search engine optimization success. By researching keywords on an ongoing basis, you can continuously find quality, and action-producing keywords.

But to distinguish yourself from your competitors, you really need to take keyword research to the next level. That’s where advanced keyword research techniques can help separate you from the search engine marketing pack.

How to Conduct Traditional Keyword Research

Before I discuss advanced keyword research, let’s start by looking at some of the basic methods of traditional research.

Basic Methods for Researching Keywords

Some of the most popular methods for performing keyword research are also pretty basic and straightforward:

* Brainstorming – think up keywords that your customers would type into search engines to find your company website
* Keyword suggestion tool – you can get keyword suggestion ideas from a variety of free keyword tools on the Web
* Examining competitor sites – by checking a competitor’s on-page and off-page optimization efforts, you get a very good idea which keywords they’re targeting

The trouble with these approaches is they’re each intrinsically flawed.

First, by brainstorming, you’re guessing which keywords users will search on to find your site. There’s no actual search data to back you up. Secondly, keyword suggestion tools offer lists of keywords, which are based on estimates (not real searches) and available to everyone, so there’s no real competitive edge if everyone is using the same keywords. Finally, just because a competitor’s keywords are relevant to their website and business, doesn’t mean they’re relevant to yours. You can’t assume what works for one site will automatically work for another.

The Benefits of Advanced Keyword Researching

To gain the upper hand on the competition, you need to go beyond traditional research for keywords. Advanced research methods involve using keyword data from your own website data history and your own search log files. By conducting keyword research in this manner, you’re ensuring that your data is:

* Highly Relevant – the keywords users searched on to find your website are related specifically to the services or product your website offers.

* Totally Unique – unlike keyword tool data, your search log files are distinct to your particular website, they’re private and available to nobody else. This offers you a big advantage over your competitors.

* Always Fresh – people find your website through new searches every day. This data is collected in your server logs, and gives you a steady stream of fresh and proven keywords to target.

Putting Advanced Keyword Research into Action

So once you’ve discovered all these new keywords by mining your log files, what next? As you discover new keywords, the next step in the process is to take action by authoring narrowly-focused content around these proven keywords for your website. By doing this, you’re ensuring that the content on your website is fresh and supremely relevant to your audience. The result of combining advanced research with relevant content authoring around proven keywords will lead to better rankings in the search engines and more qualified visitors to your site.

Ken Lyons is a Marketing Manager for WordStream, Inc. WordStream provides a Keyword Research Tool that mines your site’s log files to conduct advanced keyword research and keyword discovery of SEO keywords for search engine marketing.

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Jul

24

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SEM Consulting: Take Your Online Presence To Next Level

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SEM Consulting: Take Your Online Presence To Next Level

Of late, the way things have been shaping up in the world of Internet, it is apparent that websites have been coming on the fore like anything. Even if they are devoid of substance or any valuable aspect that justifies their cause of existence, websites have been popping up on a regular basis. Sometimes, it is heartening to see that how this incredible medium is misunderstood by some people. Remember, by having a website and indulging in a few online promotional activities, you just cannot carve a niche in this highly competitive world of websites. This is where you need proper guidance and backup to make it work – the way you want. You can have a well designed website and quality content, but that is not enough at all. Here you can go for SEM consulting or search engine marketing. SEM on a broad scale involves marketing and optimization of websites, where innovative methods are applies to get quality traffic in a stipulated time period. Some people believe that by sticking to the basics they can yield big results, as the world of optimization has been involving regularly, but if you look into the details, it is quite evident that these strategies do make a big difference in making your online presence count – in a big way.

Gone are the days, when search engine marketing was limited to a few typecast tricks like stuffing of the right keywords. Modern search engine marketing elucidates an extensive program comprising of research and analysis, where you have to draft marketing strategy after scrutinizing the every related aspect. Here, you can acquire the services of a PPC consultant, who can guide you better while investing in PPC or Pay Per Click marketing. In a short span of time, PPC campaigns have emerged as a great way to advertise and popularize your business. This can bring great gains, if you indulge in it properly.

As far as marketing of your website is concerned, you need to make it viable by getting good rankings in search engines. Here, SEO consultants can design strategies and plans for you to make it happen – in the easiest possible way. Search engine optimization is not about keyword stuffing only, as it involves blog submission, directory submission and link building exercises. Make the right move at the right time to make it count in a longer run.

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Jul

16

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Business News Builds Up Confidence to a Great Level

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Business News Builds Up Confidence to a Great Level

Today, getting updated with business news is necessary as the existing market scenario has created panic in all sectors. If you are planning to invest money in the market, then it is vital for you to have a wide knowledge of business news and regularly get updated with latest updates in the finance of world. You are advised to search a reliable and dedicated web portal which can provide you all business news, current business updates, latest business news, small business news and corporate news at almost every second.

With round the clock coverage and the biggest names in financial market, www.in.com is the industry leader by providing all types of news, such as business news. The portal is popular for reports from the stock exchange and several programs which focus on business. No one can deny the fact that the portal is one of the recognized because of the quality of news made live by this portal is above excellent. In fact, the portal is backed by an excellent team of dedicated and qualified professionals who work hard day and night to simplify the very complex term ‘finance’ for their users.

Web portals are significant, especially for working people, as they can be browsed from their workplace without altering their professional schedule and hindering their work pace. Each and every news from the business world play very important role in the lives of people. There are a number of websites available in the internet providing you all the relevant and important business news that affects your life greatly. Most of the leading portals enhance your knowledge regarding the business news, the stock market news, the marketing news or the strategic consulting news.

Anybody who wants to get abreast with latest updates in the business world, he/she can visit www.in.com as the site takes him insight into the latest in the world of business. The internet has become icing on the cake for people who love to get updated with all current happenings in the world of finance. This is because, it is bombarded with a number of quality and dedicated portals.

7 Internet Marketing Tips To Take Your Home Business To The Next Level

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7 Internet Marketing Tips To Take Your Home Business To The Next Level

You have established your goals and you’re ready to proceed ahead. You want a career in Internet Marketing and you want to be successful. You have chosen your tightly concentrated niche and you have your web site set up and prepared to go with your selected domain name. Now you’ll need to take it to the next level. If you’re new to Internet Marketing you may not possess a clue on how to do that. Here are 7 internet marketing tips that will help you.

Internet Marketing Tips #1 – Develop a List

All successful internet marketers possess a list. It is the base that your success is going to be constructed upon. You need an email subscriber list that you simply can market your product or service as well. You want people to voluntarily sign up and then you want to develop trust with them.

Internet Marketing Tips #2 – Produce a squeeze page that works.

To effectively build a list you’ll need an superb squeeze or capture web page. This tells people what you’ve got to provide them with and why they should fork over their identity and e-mail to you. You need to offer them some thing solid, not junk. Make a clean uncluttered squeeze page whose only goals are to obtain people to opt-in.

Internet Marketing Tips #3 – Use the Correct Keywords

Make sure the keywords you’re targeting aren’t too broad. Don’t select cats and hope to rank #1 in Search engines for that. It’ll never occur. Choose a tighter focus such a blue cat collars. Go for lengthy tail keywords when possible.

Internet Marketing Tips #4 – Understand Basic Search engine optimization

So that you can provide traffic to your website you will need to rank in the search engines. You do this by having great search engine optimization in place. Once you know the keywords you would like you’ll need to understand where to place them on your website, in articles and when backlinking.

Internet Marketing Tips #5 – Learn to utilize Proper Tags

Should you don’t know who learn tips on how to write great meta tags for your website. This may be the stuff the robots understand when they spider your site. You need a great meta title with you keyword. Use the meta tag for description to more add punch. Utilizing the correct h1 and h2 tags is important as well. Search engines recognizes this to mean those words are important to your website.

Internet Marketing Tips #6 –Learn to Write Articles

Writing posts and submitting them to post sites is really a great method to drive visitors to your site. Google considers many post sites as authority website and likes the links from there. If you can’t write a lick outsource this to somebody who can write them for you personally.

Internet Marketing Tips #7 – Be Prepared to Work Hard

Internet marketing achievement does not occur overnight. And no matter how many get rich schemes you come across that tell you it does occur that quickly it merely isn’t correct. You have to work hard and be committed. Now the harder you work the quicker achievement will arrive but it does take commitment, dedication and plain old elbow grease to get the ball rolling.

So take advantage of these internet marketing tips to assist you get started getting your company to some new degree.

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Jul

4

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Tips for Multi Level Marketing or MLM Success

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Tips for Multi Level Marketing or MLM Success

If you’ve been involved in multi level marketing you know that you can have a lot of success with this, but that success isn’t guaranteed. There are some things you need to consider in order to have real, lasting multi level marketing or MLM success, and unfortunately many forget these simple tips when working MLM. They may assume that there isn’t much work involved in these types of business opportunities or may get plain lazy, or they may not understand how they work in the first place. In any event, you can have a measure of MLM success if you remember a few simple things. Let’s go over those simple things here so that you can be sure you’re making the most of your opportunity.

First, remember that MLM success is tied into your particular efforts. You can put up a website or have home parties to sell your products and this can have a snowball effect where you sell and recruit others, but you’ll have more MLM success if you put more work into it. If you have a website, you need to work to get visitors. This means submitting it to search engines, getting links to your site, and so on. You can also use social networking sites to chat about your product and your site. Even when you use Twitter you can talk about your product and get visitors there! You’ll have more MLM success if you really work to push your site and your product. The same can be said if you have home parties or sell in other ways. You need to network among friends and family in order to encourage your home parties and sales and then you’ll find everyone is happy to have more of them.

Another thing to remember about MLM success is that you want to be recruiting others to sell the product as well as the sales you’re generating on your own. This is an important part of multi level marketing. So you need to be sure that it’s very easy for visitors to your website to sign up to be a rep as well. Make sure they can navigate the site easily. You’ll have a lot less MLM success if visitors don’t know that they can rep the product and don’t know how and where to sign up.

The bottom line is that you can have some MLM success by just starting a site and networking among friends. If you’re representing a good product then it may sell itself. But as with many other things, you’ll get more out of your MLM success if you put more into it. The harder you work, the more rewards you’ll get. So don’t assume you can just walk away from your venture and have successful sales. If you keep working to network and sell your product, you’ll have the most MLM success. Keep up with it every day and on a regular basis, and you’ll see the profits!

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Jun

18

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Go Mobile! Take Your Social Media Marketing Efforts to a Higher Level

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Go Mobile! Take Your Social Media Marketing Efforts to a Higher Level

By now, most businesses know how vital social media marketing is for their bottom line. From keeping a pulse on your customersâ€™ experience to branding your company to promoting your products and services, social media marketing allows you to do so much for so little.

Yet, one of the main complaints businesses cite about staying on top of their social media marketing efforts is the time involved to do so. They feel that someone has to be tied to the computer 24/7 to make the effort effective. Fortunately, with todayâ€™s mobile applications and technology, social media marketing is being reborn as a mobile experience â€“ a mobile social media marketing initiative, so to speak.

As more people realize and embrace the fact that social media marketing is a real time experience rather than a â€œwait till I get to my computerâ€ experience, theyâ€™re taking advantage of the processing power todayâ€™s mobile phones have to offer. So while real time does mean you have to have your computer with you at all times, that computer is now your cell phone, not your laptop or desktop.

Why should businesses focus on mobile social media marketing? Consider this: Right now around the world, 1.1 billion people use the internet, 1.4 billion people watch television, and 2.2 billion people use mobile phones. So if we look at the power of social media going mobile, we quickly see that it has the potential to be more powerful than television watching, simply because itâ€™s interactive and with you at all times.

The Driving Forces

Both technology and people are driving the prevalence of mobile social media. One of the basic human needs since the dawn of time is to connect with others. Additionally, todayâ€™s increased processing power, bandwidth, and storage available on mobile devices enables people to have better audio and video capability on their phones. This means people can communicate with their phone more effectively, in a way that goes beyond your basic phone call. And any time technology allows you to communicate and connect better, you have a revolution. From smoke signals to telegraphs to telephones to cell phones to the mobile social media, all are evolutions that cause revolutions.

Other driving factors include globalization and localization. Globalization means you can now connect to the world with your phone. You donâ€™t need a laptop or a television to see news feeds from around the world. At the same time, itâ€™s local. You have access to local events and happenings. With permission, you can see where your friends or employees are at any given time. So your phone can deliver much more than just weather forecasts; you can also know whatâ€™s going on around you at all times.

The Case for Mobile Social Media

Because the phone was designed for two-way communication and social media marketing is a two-way dialogue, itâ€™s a natural extension to have cell phone applications for mobile social media â€“ programs for your cell phone that allow you to view and post to various social media sites.

With mobile social media, weâ€™re no longer just sharing information; weâ€™re disseminating knowledge in an organized way, getting feedback, and gaining additional knowledge to help us grow. Between text messages, tweets, blogs, and other social media posts, weâ€™re seeing a shift in how people discover, read, and share news, information, and content. Weâ€™re learning information in real time before the evening news or morning paper reports it.

If your company is using social media marketing but has not yet gone mobile with it, you must do so right away. Hereâ€™s why:

It expands your internet footprint. You can only monitor and respond to so many Facebook, Twitter, and other social media posts from your desk. However, when you can post from your phone, you can say whatâ€™s on your mind whenever you want. As such, you expand your internet footprint and make it easier for prospects to find you. It improves your search engine rankings. Each post you put out on the social media networks points back to you or your company. That increases your listings on search engine results. So where you might have been listed 1,000 times, youâ€™re now listed 3,000 times. It establishes you as the expert. When you can post your information and ideas at any time, it will happen more often, which builds your reputation and credibility. It improves communication and feedback. Many companies are monitoring peopleâ€™s tweets on Twitter and posts on Facebook. If they notice people who have problems with their company, products, or services, they find out about it right away and make changes in real time. This, in turn, builds positive relationships with customers. It drives a steady stream of prospects to your business. All of the social media sites are becoming business friendly, enabling you to create a business-oriented presence. As theyâ€™re becoming more business friendly, theyâ€™re going to be very mobile friendly. Itâ€™s the next iteration. It fuels content generation. Because youâ€™re micro-blogging and doing Facebook entries, youâ€™re creating content and getting it out there. And since content is king these days, you definitely need a way to keep your information flowing into your prospectsâ€™ and customersâ€™ hands. It supports decision-making. You can make better decisions if youâ€™re monitoring whatâ€™s going on in social media about your industry, marketplace, etc. And when you get these updates directly to your phone, you donâ€™t have to wait until Monday morning when you get to your office to make a big decision. You can make it and implement it in real time.

Go Mobile Today

In short, the mobile era takes all the benefits of social media marketing and puts them in your hands at all times. It also frees you from your computer so you have more time for other activities.

As the business world evolves, our ways of communicating with prospects and customers must evolve too. Remember, it used to be about distributing content; now itâ€™s about getting peopleâ€™s attention and engaging with them. It used to be about gaining shelf space; now itâ€™s about gaining mind share. It used to be about mass marketing; now itâ€™s about niche marketing. It used to be about trying to control your customers; now itâ€™s about using influence and reputation to generate desired results. When you incorporate your mobile device as a key way to achieve your business objectives and attain these benefits, you open your company up to a whole new world of sales and profits.

Taking Your Site to he Next Level with Inbound Links

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Inbound links can do amazing things for your website whether you buy high PR links or you get them through Link building Services . Most people just think of links in terms of traffic, but other considerations may be even more valuable. That is of inbound links distinguishing you as an expert, helping your search engine results, putting your product in front of visitor to create sales and generating sales.

When it comes to traffic, not all website can be blessed with top search engine results. That means traffic needs to be driven from links on other sites, this is why the Link building Services is in such great demand. The higher the amount of inbound links your site has, the more doorways to your products there are. So get all the links you can from directories (such as the AuthorityDirectory.com), link partners, forums and resource boxes in articles. These resources can drive traffic to your door.

A side effect of generating links to drive traffic is that it increases your link popularity. This can improve your rankings within the search engines, as inbound links are a sign of the quality and relevance of your website. The more popular your site is with inbound links this higher your search engine results will can be. Google highly values this and everyone wants to do well in Google.

By writing quality articles and submitting them for online publication you can not only create back links, but also an expert status. By writing articles with valuable content you set yourself up as an online resource for those topics. So in addition to receiving a couple initial links, you can generate and authority status for that topic and have the possibility for additional links.

Most URL’s do not give an indication of what a given site is about. For the search engines to see that we use something called anchor text in the link. The anchor text should be descriptive of the site and will tell the search engines the topics of your site. It will give relevance to your site for those keywords and boost your sites search results for those relevant topics.

When you achieve several pages of unique and valuable content other sites will start linking to your site. Those other sites will do this in a way of providing valuable content on their site. As other high-ranking sites do this, Search Engines will start to take notice. Those same Search Engines will start to view your site as an Authority Site and you will enjoy a surge in page rank and traffic.

As you can see inbound links to your site play a vital role in its success or failure. The benefits of them can play a huge role in your sites future success. Do not underestimate their value in generating revenue and your product visibility to consumers.

Author specializes in delivering the top quality Link Building Services and has shared some of his expert experince through this article.

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Rising Business of Software Development at Global Level

Advanced Keyword Research – Take Your Search Marketing To The Next Level

SEM Consulting: Take Your Online Presence To Next Level

Business News Builds Up Confidence to a Great Level

7 Internet Marketing Tips To Take Your Home Business To The Next Level

Tips for Multi Level Marketing or MLM Success

Go Mobile! Take Your Social Media Marketing Efforts to a Higher Level

Taking Your Site to he Next Level with Inbound Links

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