Let’s have a look at the political campaigns in the US:
At SEM Days 2012, Lucian DESPOIU (Kondiment) suggested these tools to for great reputation management: Google should be the main channel. Facebook and YouTube should also be taken into account. Why is this? Google is the most visited web site on the planet. Google is the most known brand on the Internet. Google is the most used search engine. Facebook is the place where people spend most time on the Internet. Facebook is the biggest social network. YouTube is the second search engine. YouTube is the largest channel for video. Sure, there are other channels to take into account: Less important general channels (there are other search engines than Google, there are other places where people spend their time online) – LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo!, Bing, the list can go on. Local channels (country-specific, zone-specific, area-specific) – Trilulilu, Xing, hi5. Niche channels (channels which appeal only to a specific set of people in your community) – Pinterest, Last FM, SlideShare, Instagram, Flickr.
At SEM Days 2012, Lucian DESPOIU (Kondiment) gave this idea on an approach on how to do reputation management: when you do reputation management (RM), focus on the positive things. So: When you endorse / like / appreciate something online, do it for a positive reason. Rather than „I hate it that there are so many bad roads in Romania”, say it like „We appreciate those who strive to make the roads better in Romania”. Rather than „stray dogs are bad thing in major cities”, say it like „what solutions can we find for the stray dogs problem?”. Be constructive and focus on the positive when you associate with a cause which isn’t yours. Keep the same rule (be positive) for messages which are yours. So, if you have a message, formulate it and make it a positive one. Fight for win, avoid fighting to prevent a loss. Aim to get somewhere, rather than avoiding getting in bad place. Quite nice. :)
At SEM Days 2012, Lucian DESPOIU (Kondiment) gave this idea on an approach on how to do reputation management: rather than openly talk about a subject online, take the discussion outside. The argument goes like this: Avoid chatting in public about the problem. People will only remember „Oh, there was a fight / argument between the brand and the customer”. People will not remember who won the fight. It’s irrelevant who wins the fight. On the other hand, do try and give a basic solution online. Something like „Sure, we’ll solve this problem by … I suggest we continue the discussion via …”. As a side note, it’s usually great if you handle the situation yourself. Avoid having other people talk about your brand online.
At SEM Days 2012, Lucian DESPOIU (Kondiment) gave this idea on an approach on how to do reputation management: over-optimize a web site.
At SEM Days 2012, Paul ROUKE, Head of Usability & Conversion, PRWD emphasized that most marketers ignore this: ROI of marketing acquisition. This should be, in his opinion, a very important aspect of a marketing campaign. Think about it – is PPC expensive? Is SEO expensive? Is banner advertising expensive? The only way to measure this is to compare „how much we invested” with „how much profit did we make after using this media”. That’s the whole business. Does it have a good return of investment? Well, it should!
At SEM Days 2012, Lucian DESPOIU (Kondiment) presented his feed-back on what is the future of reputation management (RM) on the Internet.
At SEM Days 2012, Paul ROUKE, Head of Usability & Conversion, PRWD talked about filters in an e-commerce stores.
Filtering is a way of reducing the number of products in a product listing. Users choose which criteria are important to them and view only relevant products. For example, price-conscious users may choose to view only products for under £10 (thereby filtering out all products over £10). (says here – Filter & sort: Improving ecommerce product findability)
At SEM Days 2012, Paul ROUKE, Head of Usability & Conversion, PRWD talked about the USP bar.
What’s USP?
The Unique Selling Proposition (a.k.a. Unique Selling Point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects. (source)
In other words, a USP differentiates you from a competitor. It’s what you have unique.
So, if you’re a brand, where to put it?
I think there are four options to offering discounts: Never offer a discount. There are luxury stores who offer this. Offer a discount only when there is a good reason for it (when Apple launches the new iPad, the older version gets cheaper. When new fashion clothing appears, the old one gets cheaper). Offer discounts to some products – eMAG does this. So do most online stores in Romania. Everything is a discount – Amazon does this. All of their products have something like this: What’s my recommendation? If you’re luxury, go for the first option. If you’re not luxury, go for the second or the last option. I tend to buy nothing from eMAG, if they don’t have a discount. If you do practice eMAG’s policy, offer good products with big discounts, and offer no discounts for products which, if someone is interested in them, gets them from you since that person has no alternative. eMAG does this (sort of) – for the top selling products, they generally have discounts. Not so popular? OK, then pay a premium and have no discounts.