Provoke Design

Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

A business without a blog means they’re sleeping like a log!

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Having a website is the absolute must-have for a business. You can have a blog instead of a website to command an online presence – but you, as a business person, need both!

Blog is a shortened version of ‘weblog’. People have been blogging since the Internet was still without its graphic interface – the World Wide Web – when there were bulletin boards and file-sharing services, which allowed the distribution of text files. The term, ‘weblog’, started with commenting on a kept log of items of interest found, when surfing the net.
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Max out on your email marketing – and you may lose your market! PART TWO

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Decline in click rate? Customers not opening your emails? Too much mailing out may mean your customers have been bailing out!

A steady decline in your average click rate is a sure sign that your content, and/or mail frequency needs to be urgently analysed. A sudden drop-off suggests something is going very wrong and you need to urgently find out the reason before your business is seriously affected.
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Max out on your email marketing – and you may lose your market! PART ONE

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Too little, too much ? How do you know if every email marketing campaign is getting it right just because one mailout was effective?

Email marketing continues to be the most cost-effective strategy for building and maintaining relationships with customers, but ramping up the frequency of emails may be the wrong way to go! If the return on traffic is noticeably less each time then you may have to rethink your online marketing campaigns.
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Steer your Brand to the Online Market!

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Brand identity and awareness is often taken as meaning logo, letterhead, comp slip and business card! A brand will only succeed on the web if properly integrated with an online marketing strategy.

Many medium-sized companies and SMEs are lagging behind in recognising how fast the marketing environment is changing in the digital age. Their understanding of brand identity can sometimes be still solely caught up in buying print based material and spot-colour logos, as cheaply as possible, at their local High Street printer!
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Email – now its just got personal!

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Two facts of life : 70% of human beings are water. 85% of email is spam! Getting your message through the spam–laden minefields on an email marketing campaign is achieved by correctly loading your weapons!

We have just been hearing about the ‘real time’ email revolution that is ‘GoogleWave’, which will be launching early next year. This will be a big boost to email use as it has been seriously challenged by the phenomenal rise of social media as a preferred communication channel for instant, fast and personalised messaging.
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Is PageRank no longer the watchdog its clicked up to be?

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Because Google only updates its Toolbar PageRank once every 2 to 3 months, what you are seeing today may be quite different from what the actual PageRank is!

We all know that the more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your PageRank will be. Link building is the very foundation of online marketing, and the reason for the existence of SEO and the PPC system. Your site’s life is given relevance based on ‘quantity’ as the number of links you have pointing to your site and ‘quality’ as the PageRank of those links.
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A Website Refresh is the Sign of Online Success!

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There is one sure method to show regular visitors, customers and competitors alike, that your online marketing strategies have been a success – update your entire site!

It’s bound to cause to a stir! Especially if you add some of the latest fast-trend, super widgets currently wowing the web community and your visitors will be well impressed – in fact you will need to organise serious email marketing to get them to check your wizzy new site out! To be seen as a company doing well, bucking the economic downturn, has to be a winning strategy!
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Converting Visitors to Buyers – How to do it! Part TWO

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The wary site visitor is looking to have his confidence in what you have to say confirmed by the way that you say it!

In Part ONE, we touched upon how the basic look of web design and site layout will affect the instinctive behaviour of a visitor, which determines whether they will click through, or be encouraged to stay and interact further. All your marketing strategies will be useless if your actual site does not work in the first place, let alone perform efficiently.
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Converting Visitors to Buyers – How to do it! Part ONE

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Thousands of site hits .. Positive visitor feedback .. Awesome Stats? But – NO SALES! If that sounds a bit like your situation, maybe you haven’t yet worked out what the problems are and how to fix them!

It’s simple, we all know it…so why do these problems persist with some business websites ? It may be they do know but won’t do anything about it because they’re afraid of what they imagine the cost might be! But more importantly – there are always TWO golden rules that must be observed if you want to succeed online – and we all know what they are:
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GoogleWave’s email launch adds to Social Media, not competes!

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Social Media is everywhere! It’s rapid adoption right across social and business life is a clear indication that traditional communications channels leave something to be desired.

From ‘talking at’ consumers, the emergence of Social Media has altered the balance of power, and now consumers have a significant say about company brands and the way goods and services are accessed and purchased.

Consumers are voting with their mouse! One click is all it takes to say whether you are getting it right or urgently need to talk with your website design company! An experienced and professional agency should be able to analyse, advise and build relevant, targeted results-driven online marketing strategies.
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SEO Vs PPC – how to choose what’s best for you!

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Many companies do both but some SMEs may only have a limited marketing campaign budget, then it can be a straight choice – so you need to know what’s going to work best for your business.

You have to attract and drive word search visitors to your website! This much you know. But you can’t afford to do everything all at once and you’ve heard or know that PPC campaigns can get great results – at a price! You think that SEO may be relatively inexpensive, and you could be right.
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Email Can Break Through Spam Mountain!

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Email is on the rise once more! Viewed in recent years as looking a rather tired and plodding shire horse, when compared to the frisky colts of iphone, Facebook and Twitter, recent surveys indicate that deliverability is not getting worse and email marketing spends are set to rise.

Most businesses know too well the perceived challenges of email as a medium for leading marketing strategies. But in fact, the overall volume of spam has ebbed and flowed over the past 12 months, due inasmuch, to the ability of ISP software developed to recognise the difference between a legitimate brand’s customer emails and spam.
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