Online contests are all the rave right now. Here are 10 reasons why you should give them a try and promote your brand online and on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

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If you are looking to promote your business, attract new customers, and retain loyal customers without necessarily making a huge upfront investment, coupons are definitively worth looking into.

You may not have noticed this, but recently, out of nowhere everyone seems to be crazy about coupons.

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Do you have an email marketing or newsletter strategy?
If you don’t, you’re seriously missing an opportunity to make more money.

Email marketing, or the science of sending out newsletters to your customers or audience, is one of the oldest online marketing tactics and remains to this day, the most rewarding initiative you can implement for your business or organisation. Read More

Hearing about or knowing how to use various online marketing tactics doesn’t deliver as much value as understanding the underlying dynamics of marketing and the tangible value these bring to a business or an organisation.

Whether online or in the traditional business world, the fundamental dynamics are the same for the most part. However online marketing has more affordable, and more important, measurable tools.

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Most business owners I meet are often dazzled by the array of platforms, tools and practices that are available today on the Internet to promote their products and services. Their concerns often revolve around making sure they’re doing the right thing. Should we have a blog? Should we be on Twitter? Have a Facebook page? Make podcasts? Use a location based service like Gowalla? Etc.

I often surprise them by saying: hey sure, you could do all these things but why? What benefits do you expect from them? What issues do you have that you expect them to solve?

I answer their questions with more questions hence confusing them even more. Read More

There has been quite a debate in the online marketing world around the topic of which tools or platforms to use to promote your business now that we’re in a world where Facebook has become ubiquitous.

You’ve probably seen it in the past year that more and more businesses, large and small, have a presence on Facebook through Facebook “Pages” (previously called Fan Pages). Most noticeable of course are the businesses your friends and contacts are involved with, and that they “Like”.

In the context of a difficult economy or just by being sensitive about your marketing resources (time and money), the following question then becomes very legitimate: does it still make sense to have a website or should I only have a Facebook Page to promote my business?

Let’s look at the pros and cons of owning a Facebook Page instead of a website. Read More

Massive adoption of social networking websites such as Facebook as well as the commonality of reading reviews and ratings on online shopping sites such as Amazon have transformed the Internet into a “Social Media” platform prone to enabling conversation between users.

In “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” published by the Harvard Business Press, Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff, both from Forrester Research, state that: Read More

Online Marketing is basically the adaptation of traditional marketing practices to the online media channel (i.e, the Web). As with any new communication channel there is a maturity curve through which businesses have to experiment and figure out how to get the best value for the time and money they invest in growing their presence in that space. But at the end of the day, beyond creating awareness and growing share of voice, organizations need to build trust.

I have come across Matt McGee’s simple and brilliant SEO Success Pyramid which was inspired by coach John Wooden Pyramid of Success. Read More

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it relates to the science of fine tuning a website and its content so that Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN can better analyze (or “crawl”) and rank the website in search results. Another aspect of SEO is to increase your online presence on other websites that would link back to your website – a concept called “link building”.

Having an eCommerce website is not enough. Customers must be able to find you in the galaxy of hundreds of online retailers. The better your website is ranked in search engines and referenced on other websites (such as blogs or social networks), the more traffic you will get, which will then lead to more sales conversions. Read More

Over the past decade the Internet has expanded its reach to an increasing number of people all over the world (1.32 billion Internet users in Dec 2007) and is almost as much a commodity as the telephone has become after it revolutionized the way we communicated with each other.

The Web as we knew it in its early stages brought us: email, online information, online shopping, online collaboration and an almost instant global reach. These applications are mainly software based and even though the Internet relies on heavy telecommunication infrastructures, our only experience of it comes through our Web Browser (Internet Explorer for example) and our Email Client (Outlook Express for example).

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It is very popular to come up with a host of predictions at the outset of a new year.

Here are 10 of the best predictions I have found relevant to eCommerce. Some of them have been adapted or inspired by other trends in the Web Industry.

1. Impact from a much feared recession in the US

The fluctuation of the dollar and the state of the economy in the USA will impact online retailers on both sides of the border.

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With Christmas around the corner, retailers should be gearing up to take advantage of the biggest seasonal buying rush of the year.

Here are a few statistics from the US Census Bureau on eCommerce during the fourth quarter of 2006. This gives an idea of the sales potential during the holiday season:

• $33.9 billion total U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the last quarter of 2006
• 32 % increase compared to the third quarter of 2006
• 25 % increase from the fourth quarter of 2005 while total retail sales increased 4.0 % in the same period
• eCommerce sales in Q4 of 2006 accounted for 3.3 % of total retail sales

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Many companies cannot afford to implement a fully functional eCommerce website. They either don’t have the financial resources immediately available or they haven’t made the organizational changes to support their strategy (changing workflow processes, training and/or hiring staff).

This doesn’t mean however, that their businesses can’t benefit from their websites while they’re gearing towards eCommerce. I suggest we take a look at the different “stages of maturity” of websites, at what they mean from a business perspective, and the benefits organizations can expect from them.

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For many companies, defining an online strategy is still very challenging. In order to be successful they need to fully understand how their businesses can benefit from eCommerce (or eBusiness for that matter) and to be able to assess what it takes to implement their strategy.

Companies are usually hesitant to move ahead because they don’t have all the information they require to measure the financial and organizational implications of eCommerce. It is critical for them to be able to evaluate the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their eCommerce architecture as well as the return on investment (ROI) for their business.

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There are many howtos, best practices, top 10 (or more) tips and techniques, and common sense advice out there on how you should develop your online business strategy.

I personally read a lot of them myself, often just to make sure that my assumptions are correct or just to see if there is anything new I could learn from them. My perspective though is that of an analyst and a consultant; of someone who needs to gather knowledge in order to adapt it to a specific context and be creative with it.

As with statistics, best practices and insightful advice are good indicators and they bring perspective to a situation. They often show the way and warn for pitfalls. Do they however draw a clear map of what everyone could or should follow?

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