Video Drives Traffic
June 30, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Video is fast becoming the must have for your website or blog. Nearly every day of the week Gourmet Ads receives requests for online video advertising, i.e. either in unit video advertising, pre-roll or post roll advertising. Nearly every advertising agency we talk with these days asks the question of video.
Advertising aside, video can be a great traffic source. Sites like www.winelibrarytv.com gets literally thousands of people to the site every day just to see Gary Vaynerchuk’s daily wine video, where he reviews all types of wine that are available in his wine store in New Jersey. Wine Library has a massive following.
So what kind of video could you produce for your site? Ideas could be video recipes, wine reviews, visits to food markets, interviews with food producers, interviews with celebrity chefs or restaurant experiences. The ideas are endless.
So apart from using your own website, Youtube or Viddler where could you upload your videos? TubeMogul is a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.
Make sure whenever you setup an account on sites like Youtube or Viddler, that you add a link to your website or blog. Then whenever you upload a new video, make sure you put a link in the text accompanying the videos. This is key, as many video sites syndicate their content and you’ll get back links pointing to your site on places you’ve never knew existed.
Retargeting Strategy
June 30, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
We recently wrote a blog on Search Retargeting and how you use the search engines to find relevant users for your products then using display advertising retarget them with highly related advertising. Since the Search Retargeting blog, we’ve had a great deal of enquiry asking about more generalised Retargeting Strategies to help generate a high return on investment for your online campaigns.
If you’re selling products online, the most important thing is for you to develop some sort of Retargeting Strategy. The sooner you start serving cookies, the sooner you can start retargeting and generating sales.
So first off what is retargeting?
Retargeting is tactic used by online advertisers who target previous website visitors and serve them an advertisement encouraging them to revisit the site and complete a purchase. The advertisements which get served could be via a roadblock or sequential targeting and can offer the user a range of advertising messages in order to complete the sale. This is done by dropping a cookie on the user’s machine depending on behaviour targeting criteria which we’ll go into detail further.
Why would I want to use retargeting?
There is no doubt that consumers do a great deal of research online before making a purchase and for products with long purchasing cycles retargeting is a strategy to keep your brand or website top of mind with your target audience. Often when a user starts off researching a product to buy they will visit a wide range of sites looking for information on the product. At this time if you drop a cookie with some information on their behaviour you can target this later in the purchasing cycle.
Who do you target?
There are few options to consider.
- Everyone – you should begin immediately gathering data on who visits your site, particularly if you’re a smaller or niche ecommerce site. You can target these users with branding campaigns in the future.
- People who look at particular products. I’d personally mark any user that looks at a high margin product. It’s no good marking low margin products because you’ll eliminate the margin with the advertising cost. Just stick to high margin products. These sorts of people can be targeted with product specific advertising, drawing them back to the site in the future.
- People that don’t complete the shopping cart. These types of people are obviously ready to buy, but there was something in the way that stopped the transaction. It’s usually either comes down to price or shipping costs. If you can eliminate an obstacle and bring people back to complete their shopping cart with 20% off your order if you buy today or free shipping then your conversion rate increases and you get the sale.
- People that signup for a member or newsletter but don’t purchase. They are obviously interested in your products, but are not ready to buy. Could these people benefit from offering them a free catalogue or a discount coupon in order to buy?
What are some of the offers or messaging I could retarget my audience with?
Anything really, the ideas are endless. The key is running different retargeting creative which appeals to that audience demographic. Some ideas on retargeting campaigns could include;
- 24 hour sale (everything reduced)
- Discount Code or Coupon Code
- Specific discount on a particular product
- Become a member and get a catalogue or white paper
- Signup to the Newsletter
Where would the Retargeting Campaign run?
The campaign would be run back in the Gourmet Ads network traffic pool. Our systems will start locating your retargeting cookies the moment they leave your site. So if a user has had a cookie dropped on your site, then visits a site within our network, they’ll see retargeting campaigns straight away.
With a proper retargeting strategy, you can expose that consumer to specific ads as they surf and shop outside the walls of your site. For products with a longer purchase cycle, retargeting leverages sequential advertising to reinforce your message as the consumer goes through the research and consideration process prior to completing a purchase.
To learn more about developing a Retargeting Strategy for your site or ecommerce store, contact us for more information and we’ll prepare a proposal for your consideration.
Use Great Photography
June 29, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Yesterday we talked about publishing content all the time, today is an extension to that, it’s about always using photography in your content.
After publishing content on the internet for years, I am in no doubt that people engage written content longer when there is great photography related to the key theme of the article or blog. Think about it for yourself; are you going to be anywhere near as engaged in a recipe which doesn’t have a photo compared to a recipe that has got a great photo showing the final dish. Would cookbooks which don’t have photos sell anywhere near as well as cookbooks with photos? I doubt it.
When it comes to photography on your website or blog, you don’t have to be an award winning photographer to make an impact. I few years ago I wrote this article about Food Photography which broke down a few ideas for people who are taking photos of recipes.
Apart from taking your own photos, there are some great online resources which can be used to acquire the rights to photographs. We use istockphoto which we use for nearly every blog on the Gourmet Ads blog. Why? because we can get a related image within in a few minutes and the costs are more than reasonable. There are other stock photography sources out there.
If you’re not publishing an image with page of content then now is the time. Not only will your audience read more of your content, but they are more likely to click through to other pages increasing your time on the site, page impressions and more importantly your ad impressions.
Publish Content all the Time
June 28, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
One question I’m asked all the time is how often should I publish content? I think the publishing schedule for a commercially focused recipe site is going to be very different to that of a personal food blog. On the wine side a site that professes to review every bottle on earth will be different to a small wine site that reviews the odd wine from time to time. There’s no simple answer to how much you should exactly publish, but the key is to publish content all the time.
One question I’m asked all the time is how often should I publish content? I think the publishing schedule for a commercially focused recipe site is going to be very different to that of a personal food blog. On the wine side a site that professes to review every bottle on earth will be different to a small wine site that reviews the odd wine from time to time. There’s no simple answer to how much you should exactly publish, but the key is to publish content all the time.
Here at Gourmet Ads we try to publish a blog every weekday, but I read some marketing blogs that post 10-15 blogs per day and others that write a article once a week. You need to work out what works for you and more importantly what your audience prefers. Are you better to write a great post once a week or 7 average articles per week.
There is no doubt that websites and blogs that publish content all the time do better in the search engines. Add to this, as you push content our via RSS you’re exposing your audience to click on the links and come back to your site.
However depending on the format of your website or blog, do you and your team have to produce content? Could you allow your audience to produce content (user generated content) like recipes to the site. Could you let them do the hard work? Also it doesn’t have to be just written content to drive traffic; you might produce a daily video or podcast. There are lots of alternatives.
Newspaper and magazines (even web portals) establish a content plan to help decided when they’ll publish content. You should do the same, even if it’s a basic word file that you simply jot down ideas, you’ll always have a dozen or so ideas ready to go.
Finally here is a great guide which I found at about.com about publishing blogs.
- For maximum growth: post multiple times per day to drive the most traffic (3-5 times or more is considered best for power bloggers).
- For steady growth: post at least once per day.
- For slower growth: publish at least every 3 days or 2-3 times per week.
- For very slow growth: posting less frequently than 2-3 days per week is most appropriate for bloggers who maintain blogs as a hobby with no strategic plans for growth
Guest Blogging
June 27, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
For those with blogs and particularly food blogs, Guest Blogging can be a great way to not only increase traffic to your site, but leverage off the network and audience of the host blog. If the blog has a similar theme as yours then you gain access to a similar audience. It’s typical for a Guest blogger to be offered a simple bio at the end of the page together with a photo and link back to your own site.
There two ways that Guest Blogging can work for you.
You are the Guest Blogger.
This is where you write the blog and it’s published on another blog, similar to guest writer in a magazine. You need to make an impact here and grab the attention of the hard core bloggers who religiously read the host blog. Do well here and you can gain longer term benefits.
You invite Guest Bloggers to your Blog
This is when you invite bloggers from other blogs to write a guest blog on your site. These could be via invitation only or could be via bloggers contacting you asking to write a guest blog piece.
When I know I’ve been heading out of town for say a week I’ll open up my blog for guest bloggers to write blogs for the site. In my experience its best to have a conversation with Guest Bloggers prior to them writing the piece. This is because I have had times when I’ve approved a title to then be in the position where the blog is very different from the title and as such had to reject it.
Optimized Footer & Sitelinks
June 26, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
Footers can be a great way to send people to key areas of your site without requiring them to navigate through the existing navigation. Additionally and from a search engine optimization perspective, many believe that internal links such as the ones in footers can contribute to things like Google Sitelinks.
Google Sitelinks are regular listings in the Search Engines with additionally listed locations such as this search brings up for JetBlue;
Footers could have any of the follow areas, which in turn lists out content underneath;
- Featured Recipes
- Latest Recipes
- Latest Blogs
- Interesting Links
- Most Popular Articles
- Must Read Articles
- Latest Links
- Most Popular Tags
- Tag Cloud
If you’re looking for some ideas on Footer designs, here is a Footer Showcase worth looking at http://www.smileycat.com/design_elements/footers/
Create Great Content
June 25, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
This may sounds really stupid but when you write great content traffic increases. There are number of reasons why this happens but let’s start off discussing how to write great content before we discuss reasons for why great content brings in traffic.
First off before we look at some ways to create great content, can I recommend you have a word a file that you dump ideas into all the time. I think in my file at the moment there are over 150 ideas on blog and article ideas. As soon as I have an idea I make a record of it so when I am looking for ideas they are always there. When I am looking for ideas try and pick the best one.
Then spend some time exploring some of the blogs and content pages which become the most popular in the food and Drink section of the site Digg – http://digg.com/food_drink. Today the top ranking articles are one about the 10 best Grocery Coupon sites another about How to make the perfect French Fries. They become popular because they are quirky, unusual and unique. You could of course go down the path of writing a factual article, like the one I wrote a while called “How to Cook the Perfect Steak”. It’s a complete how to guide and stacks of people around the globe have referenced it over the time since I wrote it.
So by creating great content how do I get more traffic?
Links
First of all people will link to it and make reference to it if it’s a great article or blog. Not only will they discuss it on blogs, but they will discuss it in places like Facebook and Twitter.
Social Bookmarking
When people like your blog or article they will book mark it using popular tools like Digg, delicious, Yahoo Buzz and Stumbleupon. All these sites can have an amazing effect on traffic, there is even a name for getting too much traffic to your site called the Digg Effect. This is where being listed on Digg brings so much traffic to your site it melts your server.
Sharing
Although most people place links on sites, most of my close friends who share links with me actually share them through Skype, Email or some sort of instant messaging.
Subscriptions
An effect of bring a lot of new traffic to your site is the fact that most will never have been to your site before. So if they like the content they’ll either subscribe to the site then and there or they will take the RSS Feed to read your content as you publish it. Either way great content will increase subscriptions.
So if you blog every day and think you do a good job, could you do a better job if you just posted twice a week writing great content instead of just content.
Online Press Releases
June 24, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
When we launched Gourmet Ads in early 2008, we worked with a PR firm from New York who specialised in working with online businesses to develop a highly targeted press release to the media. Apart from gaining an exclusive article in a top advertising trade magazine they released an online version of the press release via Market Wire (www.marketwire.com).
Our press release got picked up by a raft of online news sites like Reuters, Yahoo News, Forbes and MSNBC. All together we gained over 700 back links to the site all with links back to the homepage in just a couple of days. We also got picked up in nearly every advertising trade magazine you could think of. Not a bad result. Traffic to the site exploded and since then we’ve grown from strength to strength.
If you’re sceptical about developing an Online Press Release consider how off line media has propelled the profile of many popular food blogs and recipe sites. Some have gone on to do deals with the newspapers, magazines, book deals and even TV deals. So don’t underestimate the value that a strategically developed online press release can have on your site.
If you can afford it I would work with a PR firm to “craft” the release. I am sure that if you’re site has been around for sometime they’ll help find possible angles to promote your content. It could be something related to a holiday or event. It could be something as simple as creating a collection of recipes and publishing a press release like “Ten Burgers for Summer” or “Ten non-traditional Christmas Dishes”.
If you can’t afford a PR firm, then that’s fine. But to get maximum effect from a online press release you need to have the following;
- A great story or angle of a story
- Use a quality distribution service like Market Wire or Business Wire.
- Use keyword rich phrases
- Include your homepage URL and any specific URLs
- Ensure you can provide images to support the release
- Contact details for an interview
Finally if you don’t want to undertake an online press release, can I suggest that you subscribe to Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help a Report Out) email newsletter. Twice a day Peter publishes a list of journalists that need interviews for a story they are working on. There is a lifestyle section which regularly has requests for recipes, food content or opinion.
Leverage Off Your Relationships
June 23, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
When ever I’ve launched new websites or even just microsites an important factor in gaining visibility on the web has been leveraging off my relationships with friends, associates and businesses that I work with. For example when I launched my personal site years ago, my lawyer at the time wrote a blog about my site and how my site had great recipes worth trying. Sure his site had a small audience, but it got people to my site and I know we converted some of them to receive our newsletter.
It may seem obvious, but your relationships with friends, associates and business partners could be your best ever marketing exercise. The first thing people forget to do, is to simply ask them if they could help. Most people will be thrilled to help. For you to best gain leverage off relationships there are a few thing that could be done which will help drive traffic back to your site or blog which you can suggest.
These are;
A blog or article profiling your site
Those with friends who have their own blogs should be able to encourage your friends to write a short blog post about your site. The ultimate result is a short piece including a screenshot, blurb and link to your site. If they are busy offer to write it for them!!
Email Newsletter
If you have friends or associates that have their own regular email newsletter than this could definitely help “launch your site”. Even just a short write-up with link would be a great result.
Endorsement via Social Networking
Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can have an enormous effect on the traffic to a site. Ask friends who have vast connections to write a comment on your site or blog launching. Alternative they could simply link to a location on your site that they think is great. Suggest #fridayfollow on Twitter as an idea.
Ask for a simple link
Nearly every website these days has a links page. Getting a link on a dozen or so link pages will help you long term. It won’t bring droves of traffic but it will help establish your PageRank. At a bare minimum you should be able to attain back links with your relationships.
What methods have you used to leverage off relationships in the name of traffic?
Bing
June 22, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
After we had locked away our 30 plus posts for the Gourmet Ads Traffic Booster program who would have thought that Microsoft would have launched a brand new search engine ?
Bing is not the sound your microwave makes when its finished cooking. Bing is Microsoft’s brand new search engine. Bing to me looks good but I am not so sure how many people will change Bing to be there default search engine. But it doesn’t matter. Why? Because as Microsoft rolls out Windows 7 you can bet that the default search tool becomes Bing and they’ll scrap Windows Live Search.
So how do you get into Bing? Well it does seem that if you were listed in Live Search then you’d be listed in Bing. But like all good search engines these days, they’ve included with the BETA release a webmaster tools section. When I logged into our account, it had all the settings for Live Search Webmaster.
Finally, since Bing has only been live for just a few days, we’re already seeing traffic coming from Bing.com on all our websites. Add to this Microsoft is reported to be spending $100 Million dollars a month to promote Bing. So make sure you login and setup your site with Bing now and reap the rewards of Microsoft’s massive advertising campaign, reported to be $100 million dollars per month.
To get started with Bind make sure your site is listed at www.bing.com/webmaster
You can follow the Bing Search Team on Twitter if you want www.twitter.com/bing
