Juan Smit - What a legend!
Entelligence recently made a donation to Bosom Buddies, a charity organization based in Somerset West, South Africa. Bosom Buddies helps single under priviledged moms through the challenging process of bring a child into this world without the support of a spouse.
This was an incredible opportunity to meet the Springbok coaching staff as well as some of the players. What an experience!
The Springbok Coaching Team
Sean & JP Pietersen
If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you’ll know by now that attaining traffic to your website is something that can be achieved relatively simply. But as we know, traffic doesn’t pay the bills – customers do. How do you go about converting your traffic into real customers? Read on..
The guidelines to converting traffic into customers are quite simple. However, there is also an element of experimentation and a willingness to adapt to lessons learnt.
Sing the same song
Ensure that your advertisements send the same message that your site sends. If your website promotes a 50% discount, make sure the landing page that the ad directs to reinforces this immediately. If your ads are targeting quality as a marketing strategy, don’t push price as the product differentiator on your website – stick to the original message. Remember that the landing page should reflect what your ad was selling – too many advertisers are still in the habit of simply directing ads to their homepage – this is very often not the most relevant page.
Keep the message clear and simple
Once visitors reach your site is it clear what you’re offering & what it costs? Test this on friends that have never seen your website. What does your company offer & is this explained in laymans terms?
Make it easy to become a customer
Does the signup process work & is it intuitive? Is it easy to pay? Can customers ask for support (and receive it quickly) if they get stuck?
Keep it original
Heat maps, demonstrating what users look at on a web page, have highlighted the fact that users don’t respond well to lots of text and have also become immune to stock photography. If you have your own in house photos of staff and products – use them. Users subconsciously associate your site with thousands of others (that possibly provided a poor experience) that used the same imagery.
Be willing to adapt
Make a hypothesis, implement it, and then learn from it. You may not get it right the first time, but continue to adapt to past performance.
by Sean Riley
YouTube and Social Networks offer companies the ability to reach huge audiences at negligible cost. Take VeriSign and their Cart Whisperer Campaign as a prime example of how a well thought out viral campaign online can trump big spend television advertising.
Early this year VeriSign invented a fictitious character named ‘The Cart Whisperer’; this red neck takes us on documentary -type journeys and talks us through his unique skill of ‘cart whispering’ – coaxing abandoned shopping carts into the back of his truck & returning them to their rightful homes.
The footage can be found by searching MySpace, FaceBook, or YouTube for ‘cart whisperer’. To date the various videos this character have been viewed over 4 million times. The videos are simply produced but cleverly done – I received links to this video from a couple of mates who thought it was a laugh.
Consider the production costs of (a) a simple video clip, (b) a subtly branded website that the video directs users to, and (c) a little bit of time to upload the footage to YouTube etc.. for 4 Million Views – this is branding at a steal.
Well done to VeriSign & their team. This is a brilliant peice of viral marketing!
by Sean Riley
Adobe & Yahoo have recently launched a joint initiative that enables advertisers to place ads in Adobe Acrobat documents. Publishers of PDF documents will share in the revenue earned from advertisements that are placed within the document.
Following traditional Pay Per Click models, advertisers only pay when the ads are actually clicked, and therefor publishers of PDF documents will only receive payments when their ads have been clicked, not just viewed.
Publishers – how to place Yahoo ads in your PDF documents
Create your PDF document, upload it to Yahoo, and relevant, contextual ads will automatically be matched to your document and inserted. Once you receive it back it is ready to distribute.
Start earning revenue from your PDF documents here.
Advertisers – how to advertise in PDF documents
Create your ad & bid on clicks. View the entire presentation here of how PDF advertising works.
If anyone can provide further input on where advertisers are expected to place their ads through (Adobe / yahoo?) that would be greate – this isn’t very clear at this time.!
by Sean Riley
OK, here’s my list of websites that I’m using regularly, that work, enrich, and deliver. Some are for personal & some are for business use.
(Unfortunately Entelligence is not involved in all of these – this is an unbiased list…)
Pushplay allows members to rent DVD’s online. Drop them off at boxes near you & get the next bunch in your order queue automatically sent to you. No fines, as you buy a contract that allows you a certain number of DVD’s at any time (I have 3) – so hold on to them for as long as you like – you pay a fixed monthly fee. The quicker you return them the quicker you get your next batch.
Trade shares online with PSG – probably the longest running & respected online brokerage in SA.
Recruit your own staff and don’t pay a % placement fee – a flat fee of R 300 advertises any job your company is seeking employees for.
Search engines not delivering basic info that you need, like a telephone number or address of a type of business in South Africa? Try Yellow Pages!
Proof that not all successful sites need to be state-of-the-art! Submit your photos online & get them printed onto canvas.
Still one of my alltime favourites – publish your own book, create a professional printed photo album for a friends’ wedding gift… get creative.
Does your home use pre-paid electricity? Buy it online instantly!
Beat the queues – book your movie ticket online.
Still the best online movie ticket booking option in SA.
Plan your holiday based on others’ experiences – and post your experience online here. A fun & easy way to share your holiday tales & pics with all your friends.
Please post a comment & tell me about your favourite websites.
by Sean Riley
