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How every blogger can be a blagger

08 2008 Friday

By Mike Essex in Featured

Although my day job is working for design agency The Studio 4 (http://www.thestudio4.co.uk) I also have a secret pastime: I’m a ‘blagger’. Not a blogger, but a blagger, i.e someone who attempts to get products for free. The two may not seem linked but there’s no reason every webmaster can’t get something for free. This article explains how:

The Secret
First of all, shed your preconceptions; Companies do want you to have free stuff. Whether it be to increase brand loyalty, get closer to key decision makers or simply to one-up the competition. The trick is making them realise that you, and your site, offer something viable that makes it worth their while, and that key to doing that is your unique offer.

Mastering Your Unique Offer
Each webmaster has something about their site that they can offer a company simply by having a voice online. The simplest form of this is to run product reviews about anything you have an interest in. Make sure the content is honest to keep your readers loyal, but at the same time write about products that you currently use and enjoy to get you started. Then you can approach similar manufacturers for a free product.

Become a Source of News
If reviews aren’t your thing you can always go down the much easier option of reporting on news in the sector you want to ‘blag’ from. Ask a few companies for press releases, run each piece with a few edits of your own and before you know it you will have key contacts with companies in your target market. After this, work your way in to any press screenings or events they have, meet the key people in person and you’ll be fixed in their mind.

After that it’s a simple case of deciding on a feature you wish to run “Top five MP3 players, new beauty products for 2009″ etc and asking if they have anything you can try for the feature.

Use the Media
Likewise companies are desperate to try and understand new media options such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. So if you can find a way to leverage these tools as promotional outlets for your website, you then have the potential to encourage companies to send products for you to expose in this format. Run a video blog? Offer to showcase new products. Got a lot of Facebook friends? Set up a group praising a type of product. Like Flickr? Photograph products in unique settings.

Dr Pepper’s Cherry Chocolate Rain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2×2W12A8Qow ) and Blendtecs’ ‘Will it Blend’ series (http://www.willitblend.com/) are just two examples of the type of brand exposure you can carry out.

Become a Reporter
Anyone with a website is only seconds away from becoming a journalist. You don’t need a special qualification just the balls to brand yourself with such a title, and a website to write about products. Once you realise this you can talk to companies in a different way. Ring them up, brag about the stats on your website/ the products you’ve featured by their competitors and what you can offer them if they send you something. A product being featured on a website is no different to a newspaper so you should be able to command the same authority.

For an even quicker option use Peter Shankman’s HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/), an email list that connects journalists to sources, and market your site as a product portal. In doing this I received 23 product for free by simply writing a 50 word pitch.

Submit Articles
The last option is to establish yourself as an authority on a particular subject, and the best way to do this is to become a niche site. Look for gaps in the market and make a site focusing there. There’s a million video game review sites but none for ironing board covers. Set one up, and suddenly you have the authority to attract companies that need such an outlet.

With these ideas in mind you should now feel comfortable to leverage your site. Although there’s no such thing as “something for nothing”, if you are willing to give products a little bit of time on your site you can expect plenty in return.

Mike Essex is the author of “Blagman: Don’t Buy it, Blag it”, a guide to how just about anyone can get just about anything for free. He regularly shares tips from the book at Blagman.co.uk (www.blagman.co.uk) and has received everything from a diamond encrusted organiser to a kitchen sink for free.

Website Marketing: 4 Secrets to Making More Sales from Content Pages

08 2008 Friday

By Donna Gunter in Featured

Once you begin adding content, like your articles, to your website, an amazing thing starts to happen. Your traffic begins to increase, as visitors are finding your site based on keyword searches that they do that result in them landing on your content pages. As I’ve added more content pages to my site, I’ve discovered that about 60% of my traffic comes to my site via these kinds of searches.

Online Retail is booming even in the current economic climate

08 2008 Friday

By Dr. Philip Rhodes in Featured

Online retail is booming, even in the current economic climate, and has been growing significantly year after year for the past 6 years. However the online shopping landscape is changing, with declining customer loyalty; larger retailers focusing on price alone, severe price competition, the increase in cost comparison web sites and multibrand synergies.

Similarly consumers shopping behaviors are constantly evolving, with consumers now normally researching prior to purchases on multiple sites, often referring to comparison sites, and using search features within sites when looking for specific products. Sites must no longer just offer the best value for money (including price, service, mix of products, etc.), but they have to offer an exceptional user experience, which engages the consumer.

So what are today’s online consumers looking for?

Price is the most important factors for the majority of consumers. To ‘catch’ these consumers, key web pages have to stress savings, but just ‘shouting’ about the price is not enough, consumers must be able to find what they are looking for, once on a site, with ease. And they must feel that the site is providing the right type of product information.

Research conducted by fhios has continually shown that consumers look for the following ‘reassurances’ when deciding to buy from an online retailer. These are listed from most important:

That they are saving money or have value for money
Free shipping, rebates/coupons, sales, etc.
Privacy policies and guarantees, particularly early in the check-out process
Order tracking
Customer ratings and reviews
Customer service, including live help, in-store returns, etc.
Email alerts on promotions and offers

Interestingly, this prioritized list of ‘reassurances’ does change when considering ‘loyal’ consumers; once a relationship has been built between the consumer and the retailer some of the ‘reassurances’ are taken for guaranteed and other factors become more important. We have observed that customer ratings and customer satisfaction, as well as alerts are far more important for ‘loyal’ customers.

So in a changing online retail environment, there is the contradiction between ‘price hunters’ and ‘loyal followers’. To turn the ‘price hunters’ into ‘loyal followers’ is about ticking the primary needs of the consumer, and then ensuring the online experience goes beyond their expectations by building in loyalty programs to keep them interested.

To create an effective loyalty program, retailers need some kind of discount to lure customers into the program, but then they also need to create other means of locking the customers in (ensuring long-term loyalty) once they are part of the program. Retailers create these switching costs by moving beyond discounts to delivering an array of targeted benefits and services to their loyalty program members. Here are some guidelines we recommend to retailers:

Provide benefits that appeal to each targeted group’s unique needs and desires.
Focus on rewarding desired changes in behaviour, not just giving member’s benefits for taking actions they would have taken anyway.
Encourage members to unify their purchases by offering increasingly valuable rewards the more they spend.
Offer rewards that are cost-effective and provide both immediate and inspirational incentives.
Influence customers at multiple points in their purchase decision-making cycle (for example, at home, when they enter the store, while shopping online, etc.)

Different consumer segments will respond differently to different types of rewards, it is just a matter of identifying the needs of the individual customer groups and focusing the loyalty program for that group.

Loyalty programs have much to offer retailers in terms of increased customer insight, improved reputation, brand equity, etc, as well as decreasing price competition, increasing customer retention, decreasing marketing costs and allows a more comprehensive understanding of the customer.

Dr. Philip Rhodes, Ph.D., FRSA, fhios Director of Research. Philip holds a Ph.D. in Information Design from the University of Portsmouth. He has extensive research and teaching experience in hypermedia design and information architecture. He speaks fluent Portuguese, having lived and worked in Brazil. Before joining fhios, he worked with US solution providers Rare Medium and Sapient, as Director of Information Architecture. Specialising in offering user centric online solutions within the banking, education and telecommunications sectors. He also taught at several universities in Brazil and the UK, and has been widely published. Philip is the Director of Customer Experience Research & Design at fhios, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. (http://www.fhios.com/team.htm)