You are here: Home / Archives for online marketing
July 14, 2008 By

Google Lively – A Platform For Marketing?

Many of you may be aware that Google has launched a new service for websites called Google Lively – a lightweight competitor to Second Life.

As this popped up, many marketing bloggers online have begun talking about how this might be relevant for for marketing purposes. I can’t say I have ignored it. In fact, I want to know – do you have any ideas for marketing and branding on Lively?

While Lively creates a similar experience to Second Life, it uses websites as a platform rather than purpose built software.

What Google Lively is About

It’s a platform for people to interact with one another when they visit their favourite websites. I think Niniane Wang (the creator) sums it up best on the Google blog:

“…to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web.”

Can you imagine using your avatar in a 3D room to read the content of your favourite websites? This may be just one reality made possible with this new platform – and for those looking to connect with customers, it could be a dream come true.

Marketing on Google Lively

I’ve had a bit of a play around on it, and I’ve found a couple of features which I think could be very useful for any businesses looking to use this service. Currently you can:

In the future I suspect you will be able to:

  • Contribute Objects, Room Shells and Wardrobes
  • Put RSS Feeds into Rooms
  • Place Advertising in Rooms
  • Program Events to Run
  • Buy & Sell Objects, Clothes, Rooms and Shells

Could you imagine the worth of a room which attracts 10,000 people daily?

Are There More Marketing Applications?

Google is busy testing a number of initiatives to make the web into a more social place. Just take a look at what Google has under their belt:

With all these projects working together, I suspect Lively will become a lot more popular. Especially as it matures and Google opens the doors for innovation through APIs and what not.

What Marketing and Branding Opportunities Can You See on Lively? Discuss…

File under: Featured
May 12, 2008 By

Ten Website Conversion Tips

From my work, I notice a lot of businesses think that throwing money at advertising is what they need to get more customers. Sure it’ll help, but why waste your money when you can convert more leads for less cash? Out of the research I’ve done and my own experience, here are a few checkpoints that I work through to increase website conversion:

1. Be clear about what you do

If visitors don’t see your site as being relevant to them – they can leave in 3 seconds. So make sure you’re clear about what you do. Use strong headings in your content, add relevant photos and make use of dot points to cut through the clutter. A good copywriter can help achieve this through brevity. This will help keep visitors on your site, but only if you…

2. Receive Targeted Traffic

You have to be attracting the right sort of person to your site. For example, if you’re selling web hosting, you need to think about the sort of customer you want to attract. Where will you advertise? How is the performance of different keywords in your PPC campaigns? Is your ad copy over-promising? Make sure all of this is congruent with the sort of customer you’d like to attract and you’ll increase your conversion rate dramatically.

3. Direct Traffic to the Right Landing Page

So many businesses direct their ads and search marketing efforts at their homepage. If you have a lot of information and pages on your site, this can be really detrimental to conversion. Research shows, that if someone cannot find what they’re looking for on your site within 3 page views, you’ve lost them. Also, if you’re running AdWords on your site, a specialized landing page optimized for certain keywords will help you pay less. [Read more...]

File under: Marketing, SEO & SEM, Technology