SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING vs. ONLINE MARKETING vs. DIGITAL MARKETING

Recently we see a lot of confusion between terms “social media marketing“, “online marketing” and “digital marketing“. The tendency to confuse those terms and use them as synonyms is clearly seen in the job postings.
While there are lot of similarities, a job titled “Director of Social Media Marketing” (for example) is much less demanding expertise –wise than a job with a title “Director of Digital Marketing“.

If we go by the diagram Social media marketing is a term reserved for a relatively young area of Online marketing which is under the vast periphery of Digital Marketing.
What is the difference between Digital marketing and Internet marketing?
The big difference is in the type of marketing techniques used. Internet marketing, although using the digital Internet, focuses on every means of getting information to potential customers about products and services a merchant is offering using only the Internet. Digital marketing uses all the channels available in the digital media to get information to customers, and it does not limit itself to the Internet.

What is the difference between Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing?

Social media marketing is one of the components of digital marketing along with SEO, email marketing, PPV, PPC, banner advertising, mobile marketing and various forms of digital advertising – billboards, DTV (digital television), etc
The roots of confusion probably lie in the nature of media channels. Mobile networks are a mobile media in a sense that they provide the tools for information delivery and two-way communications. At the same time mobile gadgets could be used to connect to social media sites, and in this regards they serve as a medium for social marketing platforms.

Trends

If we look into the graph, we will see how the popularity of Internet Marketing is decreasing while Digital Marketing and social media marketing are increasing. Now why is that happening? Well, marketing has reached beyond the world of Internet and is now available not only on your computer, but also on your mobile phone, Tablets, TV and other means of communications. We mean Digital marketing is Internet marketing, but also much more, as it uses more channels to reach people. Social media marketing is comparatively younger than Digital marketing and Online marketing, but the steady growth in the graph leaves nothing to put in the picture about its success.

What does this mean to Internet Marketers? Well, they will be forced to become digital marketers in order to survive and Social media marketing has to be a must under Digital marketing.
Anyway, have another look at the graph (and cry, or laugh) and have a rethink about what you need to do to take advantage of this forthcoming opportunity.
Don’t waste your valuable time marketing your practices to acquire new clients. Hope you believe in the notion –“Time is money”. Connect to us to know how to get more of both.
You spend time focusing on your processes and practices, while we will be managing your marketing and real lead Acquisition.
We vary by not just providing a range of services, but hold a deeper philosophy to make sure your brand message works harder and better than ever.

Sell via Website

We create your sites in a way that help you sell.  Your Website will be a 24/7 conversion machine.

Your website can be your most powerful marketing tool to draw in your visitors, spark their interest in your products, and convince them to make a buying decision. And at times, if the sites we design turns out to be beautiful (which they are most of the time), that’s just one more reason for you to be proud of it.

Our proven direct selling techniques capture contact info from visitors to your site (so you can use them in your future marketing), using a rich blend of copy, graphics and technology to stimulate interest and demand, and ultimately to close the sale. Our developers and designers are all veteran online marketing professionals, and their work reflects their experience.

See what we mean to say is, there is no “rule of thumb” or secret set of laws of effective website design. You yourself cannot create a fabulous website without the help of designers and developers. But there are some tips you can always follow as a marketer, while designing your website.

Keep it simple
The more complicated the site, the less chance of conversion.  The more you fill the page the more you confuse the visitor. Animations, fancy graphics, innovative navigation and all the other bolt-ons may make a site look pretty but they are just distractions.
Provide visitors with a clean and simple design.

From the visitors’ point of view, the best site design is a pure text, without any advertisements or further content blocks matching exactly the query visitors used or the content they’ve been looking for. This is one of the reasons why a user-friendly print-version of web pages is essential for good user experience.

Don’t distract visitors

Covering the page with invitations to follow you on twitter, join your Facebook group, read your blogs and so on are all distractions, if your aim is to lead your visitors to your products or services. Some have discovered that talking presenters or videos keep their visitors on the site for longer but conversions decreased. Keep the site focused, don’t let your visitors get distracted and wander off.

Tell your visitors what they need to know

If you are trustworthy and offer your products or services in a clear and understandable manner then they are quite likely to convert. Don’t make them have to click on things to find out more.

All your visitors want to do is read the facts, look at the images or buy the products. Everything else is just padding.

Don’t make visitors think

According to Krug’s first law of usability, the web-page should be obvious and self-explanatory. When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks — the decisions users need to make consciously, considering pros, cons and alternatives.

A clear structure, moderate visual clues and easily recognizable links can help users to find their path to their aim.

Do some planning

Yes I know it sounds boring when it’s more fun to think about colors, images and cool layouts but unless you do some planning your website will end up a right old mess. The plan doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just a framework that covers:

• What you want to achieve
• Who your potential visitors are
• The needs of those visitors
• How you plan to convert the visitors into customers
• Your marketing strategy
• Having a plan means the site development stays on track.

Give less weight to layout

The colors, fonts, images, borders, background, layout and everything else really don’t matter. What you like is not what I like. What you think is cool I think is tacky. The way you navigate is not how I navigate.

You can fiddle with the layout once the site has been built and have done some user testing. It’s only then that you discover the subtle lilac theme you love so much has a bounce rate of 100%.

If a developer asks you to approve a layout before designing the site tell them to get stuffed. It’s impossible to know if a particular layout is going to work until everything else is in place and some real people have played with the site.

Treat your visitors like novice

For some reason people lose their common sense when using the Internet. If there isn’t big button that says ‘click here’ they won’t see it. If isn’t obvious how the buy a product or get in contact then their interest will rapidly wane. Make sure you put the important information, images and links right in front of them. Keep it simple (see rule 1).

Test the checkout process

Still one of the main problem areas for all websites, if the checkout process is clunky or awkward to use then you will lose sales. Keep it as simple as possible, don’t make me fill in any more form fields than absolutely necessary and if I have to go off site to your payment provider them warn me first.

Make it easy for the search engines

Building a search engine friendly site is the same as building a user-orientated site. This means use meaningful URLs, page titles, headers, image captions, anchor text and so on.

Ensure your keywords are prominent, write relevant titles, headers and provide keyword rich content. Make sure you have lots of internal text links for the robots to follow. And just before you publish, add relevant description and keyword metatags.

**Site Loading Time

Loading time of a site has become very important in today’s search engine optimization because Google and other search engines are giving better rank to those sites that have least loading time. From user point of view less loading time is always preferred. Loading time of a website can be optimized by a website designer by:

Minimizing use of flash, scripts and graphics because they increase the file size by a large extent.

Unwanted tags as well as unused scripts should be done away with by the designers. Thus, a website designer should optimize script code along with the HTML for optimizing the loading time of the site.

More and more Server Side Include (SSI) files should be used.

From the JavaScript and CSS files the line breaks, comments and spaces should be removed.

We differ by not just providing a range of services, but hold a deeper philosophy to make sure your brand message works harder and better than ever – from inside out.

SITE THAT AID YOU GO LIKE LIGHTNING – Google Site

As Gmail and Google Calendar, we have also come across other available Google Apps applications, such as Google Sites. Today Ontrack Systems has kept “Google Sites” under the limelight.

Let us build professional looking website within few minutes, collect all information in one place and then easily maintain it. And the best part is, we don’t even have to know a lick of HTML to do so.

Adopt the easiest way to make information available to the ones who need quick, up-to-date access. Together can be worked upon a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Calendar, Google Docs, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document and control is in our hand to decide whom do we want to grant access to view and edit. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer.

Quick facts

• With a single-click create a new page in Google site.
• No HTML required or no markup language to learn- just get started.
• With customization options give your google site your own look and feel- make it yours.
• Get started with growling list of webpage, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard and list- play with templates.
• Upload files and attachments .Use the file cabinet to upload files up to 10MB in size. Each Google Apps account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites. Google Apps Premier and Education editions get an additional 500MB for each user account.
• Insert videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars directly onto your Google Sites pages- make rich content.
• Work together and share. Control who can view and edit (just a few people, your entire organization, or the world).
• Search with Google You can search across Google Sites pages and content using powerful Google search technology. You’ll find specific pages and documents instantly, the same way you would on Google.com.

Google Sites can also be used as a knowledge base.  A portion of your Site can be devoted to past documentation, processes and projects (fittingly called the “Ancient Archive”).
Interdepartmental collaboration, procedural instructions and information repositories are just some of the ways Google Sites may be used from an administrative perspective. The possibilities are limitless.

You may not have a budget to pay for website development.

But, even without a budget or a lot of time, there are options for putting together a quality web presence. If you are ready to put some time and limited resources to programming you can create your site in Google Sites with an investment of $10 or so to register your domain for the year.

But please remember every organization has different needs from a website and resources for making it happen, so make sure you plan your site accordingly.

There’s much to love about Google Apps, and any organization that has adopted the Google Apps platform for any length of time has witnessed innumerable changes and improvements as Google cranks up its cluster of cloud apps for businesses, schools and non-profits.

Get a Flashback

Google Apps has come a long way since its introduction a few years ago, with nonstop improvements every week. Let’s take a look back to revisit key innovations of Google Apps. It’s like watching your children grow up; you don’t notice the changes from day to day, but look back at a photo from last year and the differences can be striking.
If we have to define Google Apps, it’s good to categorize it into four aspects: team collaboration, ease of use, mobile productivity and trustworthiness.
Designed for Teams
Google Apps makes working in teams easier. Gmail and Google Calendar support teamwork in ways that traditional applications just can’t offer. Give these features a try if they’re new to you, or take a fresh look if it’s been a while:

• When a contact isn’t online to chat, call their phone right from Gmail with your computer’s speakers and microphone.
• Have an instant message conversation right from your inbox, and once you’re chatting, switch to a voice, video or group chat. It all works in the browser, not in another application.
• Gmail helps you connect with the right people when you send traditional email messages, too, with full-fledged capabilities first tested as Labs features. By analyzing signals in your email, Gmail recommends recipients you might have forgotten, and displays a warning when you might have added the wrong person.
• Google Apps supports over 40 languages, and automatic translation can really help break down language barriers. Gmail’s message translation feature instantly converts foreign text to your native language. Translation bots provide real-time translation in chat, so you can even IM with people in other languages.
• Once you’ve started an email conversation, Gmail’s people widget shows how you’ve interacted with recipients recently over email, in meetings and through shared documents.
• Finding a good meeting time with a group of busy people can be a chore, so the smart rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs has been introduced. This tool automatically explores everyone’s schedule to find the best times when attendees can all get together.
• Appointment slots also simplifies meeting scheduling by letting you establish open meeting times that other people in your organization can sign themselves up for, like “office hours”.
• Once you’ve set up a meeting, Google Apps know there’s often meeting-related content to be shared with attendees. The event attachments Lab in Google Calendar lets you add Google Docs files to meetings, so everyone has the right information at their fingertips.
• And sometimes you just need help managing email, contacts and calendar, and that’s where account delegation comes into play. Gmail and Google Calendar allow you to designate others who can manage your email, appointments and contacts on your behalf.

Simple & Affordable
Google Apps built Gmail and Google Calendar to stay out of your way and help you handle tasks quickly. At $50 per user per year or $5 per month with no commitment, Google Apps packs a powerful punch in an intuitive package that anyone can use.

• With 25GB of email storage for every employee, the ability to handle attachments up to 25MB apiece and room for 25,000 contacts, Gmail is designed so you can stop worrying about account capacity and focus on more productive things.
• With all that space for email, you need a fast and reliable way to find old messages, and the power of Google search is essential. Gmail’s search options quickly tame even the largest message archives.
• Priority Inbox learns patterns in how you use email, and automatically filters incoming email to put the most important messages – email from your boss perhaps – right at the top. We found this feature alone saves people 6% of the time they spend on email.
• Keeping spam out of your inbox is another big productivity booster, and Gmail’s spam filters are continuously improved to weed out unsafe and unwanted messages.
• Like the great cilantro debate, some people like their email as threaded “conversations”, while others prefer a traditional inbox displaying individual messages. You can have it either way in Gmail now, threaded or unthreaded.
• Instead of downloading attachments and opening them with another application, Gmail lets you view over a dozen different attachment types right in your browser. It’s faster, safer and more affordable than opening attachments with other software.
• Beyond attachments, Gmail lets you preview other types of content without leaving your inbox, like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps locations and Picasa slideshows. You can even build custom content gadgets for other types of data residing in your existing business systems.
• Gmail also helps you avoid email snafus, like forgetting to add an attachment. You’ll see an attachment warning if it looks like you meant to send a file but didn’t add one.
• When you write a message and immediately have sender’s regret, just use the undo send tab to recall the message. This lets you edit and resend, or just discard the message.
• If working with a mouse just isn’t fast enough, try Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. You can power through your inbox faster than ever by learning a few simple keystroke combinations.
• Google Calendar helps frequent flyers manage their appointments with time zone auto-detect. This feature recognizes where in the world you are, and automatically adjusts your schedule to reflect local time.
• Last but not least, an oldie but a goodie: quick add in Google Calendar. Instead of filling out a form to create a new event, just summarize your event in natural language (like “Review budget with Clark next Tuesday at 2pm”), then click “Add”.

Productive Anywhere
The first thing that pops into mind when we consider using a cloud-based tool or service is “what happens when the cloud is not available?” Most of the attention on the cloud focuses on how you can access things from anywhere and everywhere because it’s just ‘out there’ on the Web, but fail to mention what happens when you can’t connect to the Internet.

• Thankfully, Google has a solution for the same in Gmail. You just have to click the gear icon in the upper right of the Gmail screen and go to Mail settings, then select Offline from the options across the top. Within these Offline settings, you can select Enable Offline Mail for this computer, and configure the options regarding just how much email should be downloaded, and any limitations you might want to place on the size of file attachments.
• On your computer, Gmail and Google Calendar run in the browser without any other specialized software, so you can be productive just as easily at work, at home or on the road from PCs, Macs, Linux computers and netbooks. Features like Priority Inbox even work when you’re on the go.
• With Android phones and tablets, just sign in with your Google Apps account, and your data automatically syncs to the Gmail, Calendar and Contacts apps on your device.
• Google Sync enables email, calendar and contacts synchronization on iOS, Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices.
• Push synchronization is also available for BlackBerry devices through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Pure & Proven Cloud
Glotzbach remarks, “People expect email to be as reliable as their phone’s dial tone, and our goal is to deliver that kind of always-on availability with our applications.
Not only Gmail and Google Calendar help boost productivity, they’re more reliable than traditional systems. Many customers also feel that their data is safer than ever with Google Apps.

• Over the course of 2010, Gmail was available 99.984% of the time, and so far in 2011 Google Apps is at 99.99%. That’s less than seven minutes of downtime per month, a 40-fold improvement over traditional systems.
• Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24×7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
• Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
• Gmail and Google Calendar have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal government’s FISMA certification.
• With default https connections, your messages are always encrypted as they travel from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
• Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

Email Marketing for Complex Buying Processes

We assure your effectiveness, by designing email marketing campaigns to handle this longer buying cycle. Ideally, the content of the campaign has to be customized at different stages in the buying process. And for each buying phase, the campaigns have to address the needs of different roles in the buyer’s organization: sales, marketing, CMOs, etc.
In traditional email marketing, you send messages when you have something relevant to say. In email marketing for the complex sale you need to send messages based on the buyer’s needs. Therefore, you have to design multi-step email sequences that follow leads along their buying path. We match up with your goal of setting up a lead nurturing process that turns new leads into sales-ready leads.
In a complex buying process, buyers will go through multiple stages. It starts with awareness of the type of solution that you offer, through research of possible solutions towards a final purchase decision. In your email marketing, you need to provide the right information for the right stage. For example, in the early stages you want to provide more educational information and thought leadership, while in the final phase, reference and analyst information is really important.
In addition to alignment with the stages in the buying process, it’s also important to tailor information to the different roles within the decision making unit. For example, the economic buyer will need different information from an end user.
The email campaigns for the complex sale need to be proactive and address buying stages and buying roles. This requires email sequences that cover at least the length of the sales cycle, and that adjust based on the needs of the recipient. We, with the help of automated tools and softwares, manage the process of starting and adjusting email campaigns.
Email marketing for the complex sales is very different from traditional “batch and blast” email campaigns. However, there are still several email marketing best practices that are unchanged. For any type of email marketing, our digital marketing team will provide you compelling content, create an attractive email layout, and ensure that email is delivered to the inbox.
Don’t waste your valuable time marketing your practices to acquire new clients. Hope you believe in the notion –“Time is money”. Connect to us to know how to get more of both.
You spend time focusing on your processes and practices, while we will be managing your marketing and real lead Acquisition.
We vary by not just providing a range of services, but hold a deeper philosophy to make sure your brand message works harder and better than ever.

Cloud computing is now ‘mainstream’

Google Apps attracts 3,000 new businesses a day, search giant claims

More than 3,000 companies around the world sign up to Google Apps each day, according to a Google chief.

Robert Whiteside, head of Google enterprise for UK, Ireland and Benelux, said that around three million businesses across the world use Google Apps, one million of which are based in EMEA.

“We have over 3,000 companies a day moving into the cloud and the adoption of cloud is accelerating,” Whiteside said, although he admitted that a large proportion of the customers are small and medium-sized businesses.

Furthermore, not all of these companies pay for the service, which was first released in February 2007.

Businesses with up to 10 users can use the free version of Google Apps, called Standard Edition, while those with more users have to sign up to the paid-for Google Apps for Business. It costs firms £33 a year per user, or £3.30 per user on a monthly basis.

Google Apps’ low price point is one of its appealing features, which has helped encourage the growth in cloud computing adoption.

“We have really seen cloud computing go mainstream. One of the great values of cloud computing is it’s very accessible,” said Whiteside.

However, he said that cost should not be the deciding factor for businesses.

“Most companies are attracted to cloud computing initially because of its ability to reduce costs.

“The reality is that the model of cloud computing transforms your working practices, [allowing employees to] collaborate with each other, connecting staff in different ways. The cloud allows you to solve new business problems.”

HOW TO MARKET VIA FACEBOOK???

Indian brands are now using Facebook as a leading advertising/PR & marketing platform, as Indians are migrating to Facebook. It would be exciting to see if some innovative work emerges from this division of the globe as the market matures. Perhaps in five years’ time or so, the rest of the world will be following Indian trends.

Ontrack Systems Limited, a Digital marketing company provides you with inventive and matchless Facebook Marketing Solutions to boost up your traffic by promoting your brand online within the target group and help you to grow leads and sales with maximum Return on Investment (ROI) for your business.

The ‘Cost’ of Facebook Marketing

Debates are numerous about whether the time and effort used upon Facebook marketing or brand encashment is worth it. Is it really fruitful when it comes to return on investment?

Let us sight you an interesting example of an ROI evaluation of an Indian brand’s community on Facebook. Suppose ABC Company’s Facebook community has around 120,000 fans.

1. A half page ad in a city tabloid (with a circulation of around 100,000 readers) costs around 200,000 rupees ($4,350). The “opportunity to see” as defined by the same tabloid is around 300,000 (100,000 multiplied by three, the average number of readers per household). In reality, only a fraction of readers actually see the advertisement.

2. The OTS of any message posted by an administrator of ABC Company’s community on Facebook is 18,000,000 (120,000 multiplied by 150, an average number of connections on a Facebook user page). Surely, this number is theoretical and will never happen. However, to whatever fraction you may want to discount this number, the final number of people who will see the message will still be much larger than the reach of an advertisement in print.

But the real ROI of the Facebook community, based on the parameters below, is very much positive when compared to other competing advertising media:

–Recurring Cost:

ABC Company will have to to pay for each new advertisement, to reach out to the same readers they reached earlier through print. When it comes to Facebook, it doesn’t charge them any money for a new message.

–Engagement Level:

Keeping your fan engage is the key. The class and amount of engagement on Facebook far surpasses the potential engagement opportunity in print. Link Facebook fan page with other social networking sites like Twitter, Orkut, hi5 etc. According to ABC Company, they can expect 0.5% to 1.5% of fans to engage with their message on Facebook. In the case of print, if they present an opportunity for readers to respond through an SMS, they can only expect 0.2% as the response rate. 

–Visibility:

In the case of Facebook, they have complete visibility of their audience’s profiles while they get negligible visibility through print which will help you to identify the specific needs of the target group. As a result special emphasis can be given on specific target groups.

–Virality:

No other fast and easy way to create awareness about your products/services. Get higher popularity of your brand and business. The opportunity of their existing Facebook fans bringing new fans or influencing other people’s decisions toward their brand almost doesn’t exist in the case of print but is exponential on Facebook.

These are thumb rules that can be applied to any business, small or large, while measuring or planning a Facebook presence in a marketing plan. Please keep on adding valuable info related to the same
.