Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Is Your Web Site a Marketing Hub?

Published on February 28, 2011 in Internet Sales, Website Design and Website Online Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The history of the company web site began with the paper brochure that was handed out at trade shows and stuffed into envelopes for mailing to unsuspecting prospects.

When the Internet came into play, this same brochure was handed to a Web designer who turned it into a beautiful web site. This made sense at the time: brochures were static, the Web was new and mostly static, and companies had spent lots of money to have these brochures designed. However, having a “brochureware” web site is where the trouble starts for many businesses today.

If your web site is like many of the web sites we see, it is a one-to-many broadcast tool—think megaphone. We find that people visit these types of sites once, click around, and never return. Why? Because nothing on these sites—which arefilledwithsales-orientedmessages—compelthemto stay.

The Web was originally built to be a collaboration platform by Tim Berners-Lee in the 1980s and while it took a couple of decades to get there, the Web is now truly collaborative. Instead of broadcasting to their users with a megaphone, the top-ranked sites today have created communities where like-minded people can connect with each other. In order to take full advantage of this collaborative power, you must rethink your web site. Instead of “megaphone,” think, “hub.”

What we want you to do is to change the mode of your web site from a one-way sales message to a collaborative, living, breathing hub for your marketplace.

Who Moved My Customers?

Published on February 25, 2011 in Internet Sales and Website Online Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction. People now use the Internet to shop and gather information, but where on the Internet do they go—and how do they use the Internet for these activities? We can break the Internet down into three main areas.

People primarily shop and gather information through search engines, such as Google. The average information seeker conducts dozens of searches per day—and, rather than listen to a sales rep, read a spam message, watch a TV ad, or fly to a trade show, most people find it easier to sit at their desks and find the information online through Google.

In order to take advantage of this new reality, marketers need to change the way they think about marketing—from the ground up.

Another place people use to gather information is the blogosphere and its over 100 million blogs (as of this writing). Virtually every industry and consumer niche you can think of has a cadre of online pontificators, many of whom are quite good. Your target audience is no longer reading the trade publication, and instead is searching Google and subscribing to blogs written by the folks who used to write for the trade rag.

The third place people learn/shop is in the social mediasphere—the name for the collection of social “media” sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, YouTube and others. These sites started as niche techie sites, but are becoming mainstream.

To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products. And you do that by generating leads through inbound marketing.

Who uses Social Media?

Published on February 23, 2011 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

How many businesses are using social media today so that they have customers tomorrow? According to the State of Social Media report from MarketingProfs, corporations who responded to the survey reported the following usage of the top social media sites:

  • Corporate profile on Facebook: 48.2%
  • Corporate Twitter account: 42.8%
  • Corporate profile on LinkedIn: 39.1%
  • YouTube presence to promote the company’s products or services: 26.0%
  • MySpace presence to promote the company’s products or services: 8.0%

But research also indicates that individuals and businesses are taking a broader look at the variety of platforms that they can use to network via social media. As we’ve mentioned, social media is about more than just a handful of social media tools— it’s about a broad range of tools all implemented within a well thought-out strategy.

Sky Soft Consulting Indonesia

Published on February 21, 2011 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments Tags: .

During my recent visit to Indonesia, I had the opportunity to establish a new branch office in a beautiful part of West Jakarta.

I thank God for His grace, faithfulness and blessings. We cannot do this without Him.

Sky Soft Consulting Indonesia
Business Park Kebon Jeruk
Blok D2, No: 1, 3rd Floor
Jln Meruya Ilir No: 88
Jakarta Barat 11620, Indonesia
Phone: 081-222-18000

Sky Soft Consulting provides a premier and custom web-based solutions as well as online marketing strategies. We help our clients to improve their bottom-line, improve business efficiency, increase their brand awareness and increase their online presences through our solutions.

Are Prescriptions Drugs Tax Deductible?

Published on February 20, 2011 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

You can deduct prescription drugs, but only if they exceed 7.5 percent of your income, so this is rare unless you have significant medical costs. If you make $40,000 a year, for example, your annual prescription drug costs would have to exceed $3,000. Also, these costs could not be reimbursed, such as through a health insurance plan.

Launching our client NEW website soon: Memories in Crystal

Published on February 18, 2011 in Website Development Portfolio. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Memories In Crystal provides a unique and personal way to transform a loved one’s photo into a memorable keepsake that will never fade or deteriorate and last for generations. Each crystal keepsake amazingly captures every characteristic and detail of your loved one’s photo and laser engraves it into a beautiful stunning piece of crystal creating a lifetime treasure, a true celebration of life.

One of their products can be found here:

Stay tuned for the upcoming website that will be launched very soon!

Five Social Media Models

Published on February 16, 2011 in Branding, Customer Relationship, Internet Sales, Sales, Social Media, Website Online Marketing and Website Search Engine Optimization. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

It’s a good idea to know how others are using social media so you can incorporate those models into your own campaigns.

Here are five common social media models that are being used by most people (some of whom are our own clients):

Branding. Some companies use social media strictly as a branding tool. Typically, this means running a YouTube campaign that (hopefully) gets a lot of buzz around the water cooler. In our opinion, using social media simply as a branding tool is a twentieth century mindset. If you really want to supercharge your social media campaigns, you’ll incorporate one or all of the next four highly measurable approaches.

eCommerce. If you can sell your product or service online, then you’ll want to drive people to a landing page on your website where they can buy your goods. How can you accomplish this? Just do what Dell does—they Tweet about special promotions available only to the people who follow them on Twitter. The promotional links are easily tracked so they can see how many people went to the landing page and how many converted from a prospect to a customer. They generate millions of dollars in revenue each quarter by using this method.

Research. Many companies are using social media as a tool to do research. Sometimes, this involves building a website to track the results. Starbucks has done this famously with their MyStarbucksIdea.com website. Other times, using social media as a research tool can be as simple as doing a poll on LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey, or via email.

Customer Retention. A good rule of thumb is that it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Given that, wouldn’t it be smart to use social media as a tool to keep customers loyal and engaged? That’s what Comcast and Southwest Airlines do—they communicate via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to help solve customer service issues.

Lead Generation. What do you do if you can’t sell your product or service online? Then you’ll want to do what many B2B companies do—that is, to use social media to drive prospects to a website where they can download a whitepaper, listen to a Podcast, or watch a video. Once you’ve captured the prospect’s contact information, you can re-market to them via email, direct mail, or any number of other methods.