Content is King – for Conversion’s

We have all heard that “Content is King”, but why? Did you know that content can have a dramatic impact on conversions? The reality is that visitors to your website reside in an information gap that puts them in one of the four bands of the conversion funnel.  If they know you, your brand and your offerings then your job of moving them into action is easy.  If not, the prospect can get stuck in your conversion funnel. But, if you have a great content strategy it may be the key that pushes them down the funnel stirring up desire and moving them to action.  Content helps you build a relationship with your potential customers and establishes your company as a resource for the buyer during their information gathering phase.

 

Writing an article or blog post about your product or service provides a different level of engagement.  Consider your own buying habits or a recent purchase you made online.  If the website owner has put in the extra effort of telling a personal story or has painted the picture of the product or service at work, would you be more or less likely to purchase the product on their website?  More importantly, could you see yourself going back to that website if you were looking to get information on your next purchase?   Creating a dialog with your with your website visitors through content should be an important part of your business plan.

 

When creating content it is important to keep the conversion funnel in mind, as the message for someone at the awareness stage may be quite different from someone at the desire stage.  Features help create interest, benefits help create desire and the desire for the end result helps create action.  Also, do not forget to use SEO tactics and inject keywords into your content.  Take the opportunity to infuse keywords for the product or service you are writing about and provide links to other content on your site that support their information journey, pulling them deeper into your site.

 

If 2013 brings plans for a new or continued effort in online advertising we are confident that content creation will play a major role in making the most out of those clicks!

 

All the best for 2013!

 

Posted by: Greg Gossler

 

Image credit: http://iamtimothy.wordpress.com/

NTENT's Promise to Publishers, Advertisers and the Online Marketing Community.

 

To Business:

Nobody can absolutely promise that your business will be found at the top of the search results of the major Search Engines or that they can instantly increase your revenue. You should be cautious of doing business with companies who say that they can.

We promise to provide better, more accurate search and ad targeting to people seeking information, knowledge, products and/or services within their area of interest.  As dedicated partners we are committed to ensuring each and every dollar you spend is worth the results you get.  We promise to target each and every ad based on content and context on publisher pages throughout our vertical content network. We promise to align our efforts so that your advertisements’ appear in front of consumers whose interests are aligned with what you are selling.  To do so, we will leverage our proprietary semantic search technology which understands user intent better than traditional keyword-based search so that users, publishers, and marketers get better results and more accurate responses.

To Advertisers:

What we can promise you is that we will work hard on your behalf, utilizing the expertise of our team and our proprietary technology to provide you with the best value in Semantic Search and Semantic Ad Matching technology via NTENT.  As dedicated partners we are committed to ensuring that every dollar you spend is worth the results you get via impressions or cost-per-click.  We promise to target each and every ad based on content and context on publisher pages throughout our vertical content network. We promise to align our efforts so that your advertisements’ appear in front of consumers whose interest are aligned with what you are selling.  Finally, we promise to adhere best of breed advertising standards as a committed member to the IAB.

To Publishers:

What we can promise you is that we will work hard on your behalf, utilizing the expertise of our team and our proprietary technology to provide you with the best value in Semantic Search via NTENT Search™ and Semantic Ad Matching via NTENT.  We promise to provide you with an advertising platform that is complementary to the content on the pages so that your viewers see advertisements that align with their interests. We promise to provide you with state-of-the-art semantic search engine that will help you retain traffic overtime.  The goal of our two pronged approach is to ensure that we provide you with incremental revenue to your bottom line.

That is our promise and as CEO, it is my promise to you, our valued customers.

Colin Jeavons, CEO and co Founder. 

 

 

Let’s Get Started Today! First month fees are not refundable.

 

Entice Consumers with Appealing Web Design

As consumers, we all know how frustrating it can be to get to a website only to find ourselves lost or totally turned off from poor design and user interface. The reality is that you have less than :15 seconds to appeal to consumers or you risk loosing them for good.  If you are seeing good traffic but low conversions it might be worth spending some time in 2013 thinking about a site redesign.  

 

We loved this article on homepage design from HubSpot, “15 Examples of Brilliant Homepage Design”. If you need inspiration and a guide to creating an effective homepage we strongly suggest that you spend some time navigating through some of the websites they highlight.

 

Here’s a few of our favorites:

 

 

Take a look at how to  Improve your eCommerce Experience by Putting Consumers First.

posted by: Kerstin Recker

A little Insight into Best Buy Product Catalog via Semantic Endpoints

Best Buy recently announced Metis Alpha, an online catalog of their products. It contains half a million items available in RDF/XML format. Metis uses the GoodRelations vocabulary to describe each product as semantic end points. GoodRelations defines a common vocabulary to identify various attributes associated with a product (e.g. price, delivery). It is supported by Google, Yahoo and as many as 10,000 other businesses.

 

The group at Best Buy undertook a large effort to link their catalog with common concepts in GoodRelations such as payment methods, delivery methods and customer types. They offer several APIs to browse products and reviews from the catalog.

 

Unfortunately, the product description is lacking a lot of content. For example, the details of the album “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” which can be found under the “Details” tab on the web page cannot be found on Metis product description at the time of this writing. Some of the links still has a few issues, like pages containing invalid XML or some URI pointing to invalid RDF resources.

 

Initially, Best Buy’s catalog may not appeal to many developers other than those interested in selling Best Buy’s products. The metadata it exposes is fairly limited and the URI uses the store’s SKU as an identifier. If you don’t know Best Buy’s SKU for the product you are interested in, finding the product information programmatically can become very challenging.

 

It will be interesting to see how 3^rd parties decide to use this API, and what interesting application comes out of this effort, besides online catalogues of Best Buy products with process and availability.

 

Written by:  Gerald Burnand, NTENT CTO

 

References:

 

-          Product description: http://metis.bbyopen.com/product/id/sku/3339051

-          User Review: http://metis.bbyopen.com/reviews/id/sku/3339051

-          Sitemap index: http://metis.bbyopen.com/product/sitemap_index.xml

-          Best Buy Open API site: https://bbyopen.com/bbyopen-apis-overview

13 Paid Search Tips to Live By in 2013

The start of every New Year brings with it the opportunity for reflection and improvement.  Now is the perfect time for business owners and marketers to review effective strategies and new tactics so that your business is well positioned to increase performance in 2013. We’ve pulled together a list of 13 paid search tips that we believe will get your paid search campaigns headed down the right path.

1) Prepare for a Multi Screen Strategy – over 115 million Americans own a smart-phone today and that number will more than triple over the next two years. As such, the number of purchases made via a mobile device is trending upward on a parallel path. If your paid search strategy doesn’t include mobile devices, then you run the risk of losing money this year.

2) Plan Budgets Carefully and Review Them Daily – when you plan your budget this year take time to review trends in online spending within your industry and compare that to the ebbs and flows of purchases that your business received last year.  Once you’ve done that you can set daily and weekly budgets accordingly.

3) Create an Ad Testing Schedule – ad testing is essential to maximizing your ad effectiveness over time. So plan your tests ahead of time and set performance benchmarks against each individual test.

4) Expand Your Keyword References – expand your marketing messaging and keyword list this year to include tangential words that appeal to a users intent. For example: Plumbing businesses should expand their words to include – fix faucet leaks, broken water pipe, slow drainage.

5) Target Smarter – customers are going mobile and that means you need to include LOCAL into your targeting practices. But don’t stop there, dig into the data from 2012 and analyze it to help you create your customer profiles. Target based on age, gender and household income as well as geographic location.

6) Review Your Campaign Regularly – make a resolution to set aside 30 minutes every day to review your campaigns. At the end of each month analyze your data and make adjustments accordingly.

7) Conduct Ongoing Optimization – now that you’ve resolved to review your campaign regularly you’ll be in a better position to conduct ongoing optimization strategies to improve performance.

8) Give your Ads a Creative Audit – step back and reflect upon what attracts you to ads. What visual stimulation inspires you to click and learn more?  Once you’ve answered that question, apply it to your business and begin making changes to the images you use in your ads and the visual graphics you use on your landing pages.

9) Give Your Ads a Messaging Makeover – spend some time planning your messaging going beyond just creating messaging for seasonal promotional pushes. Develop compelling communications by tailoring messages to different segments of your target audience.

10) Matching Matters – make it a point to practice consistency from your ad campaigns to your landing pages and to your website. The message, branding and offerings all need to look the same across the board.

11) Improve your Landing Pages – clicks don’t matter if landing pages aren’t effective. Spend sometime thinking about the layout of your landing pages. Is your offer clearly stated above the fold? Is there one clear call to action? Do the visuals complement your product? Are prospective consumers able to easily navigate to your shopping cart?

12) Educate Yourself on Evolving Strategies – dedicate some time each week to educating yourself on the latest technologies and paid search tactics. The digital space is constantly changing. Properly educating yourself can make all the difference in the effectiveness of your campaign.

13) Don’t be Afraid to Try New Things – as the year moves from one month to the next make it a point to apply what you have learned to your campaign.

Happy New Year! May your 2013 paid search campaigns be filled with conversions!