| Dear Reseller,
Less than a day to go for The Big Birthday Bash and the .COM @ $6.99 promo to come to an end! These promos will end on the 31st of March, 2010 at 12:30 UTC and we hope they have helped you increase both profits and volumes. Free Email with Every Domain – From 1st April, 2010
As announced earlier, we will be offering 1 Free Email Account with every Domain registered from the 1st of April, 2010. Features: Activation and Other Important Details:
SuperSite and PartnerSite Changes: We will be making a couple changes to the SuperSite and PartnerSite to highlight this free Product. If you have already modified any of the below listed files, you will need to update them on 1st of April to ensure that Free Email is highlighted on your SuperSite/PartnerSite. SuperSite: Common.css – Manage Theme » CSS » Common » Common.css Domainblurb.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Homepage » Includes » Domainblurb.html Free_services_blurb.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Products » Common » Free_services_blurb.html Free_services.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Products » Features » Free_services » Free_services.html Sidebar_free_services.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Sidebars » Includes » Sidebar_free_services.html PartnerSite: Fdns-style.css – Manage Theme » CSS » Common » Fdns-styles.css Free_services.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Products » Features » Free_services » Free_services.html Sidebar_free_services.html – Manage Site » Edit/Translate Content Pages » Sidebars » Includes » Sidebar_free_services.html Impact on the API: There will be no impact on the API as part of this launch. Do pass on this information to your Resellers to ensure that they prepared for this launch. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact your Account Manager or simply write in to us at Sales@Gossimer.com. Best Regards, Blog.Gossimer.com |
Archive for March 30, 2010
Free Email with Every Domain – 1st April, 2010!
More People Watch TV When Surfing Web
This is what The Nielsen Company has recently revealed in it’s the Three Screens Report. In the report it was found that 59% of Americans watches television while surfing web. It is a 2.7% year-on-year growth over December 2008 data. The same study conducted in June 2009 found that simultaneous use of TV and web has dropped to 56.9 from 57.5% in December 2008. In volume terms, 134,056 Americans have used television and the Internet simultaneously.
There has been a significant rise in time spent on simultaneous viewing. Time spent by a person on simultaneously viewing television and surfing net has grown by 34.5% to reach 3 hours and 30 minutes. In December 2008, the time spent on simultaneous usage as 2 hours and 36 minutes only, which rose slightly in June 2009. In the said period, simultaneous viewing of TV and web was done by an individual for 2 hours and 39 minutes (See image for complete data).
How to Get Tons of Traffic for Your Blog
I don’t know what you know about blogging, or what your mom told you about it. But, if anyone told you that anything is more important than traffic the person was entirely wrong. It is the traffic for which we do everything. If traffic were free then we wouldn’t have created quality content, nor did we have done any kind of promotion. Getting traffic is the ultimate goal. Let’s examine 3 sources from where you can get unlimited traffic.
3 sources of unlimited traffic
Search Engines
Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc., are classic sources of sending traffic to your website. Search engines are the most used method of pulling traffic to one’s website. Everyone either uses it or hopes to use it, and almost all the websites are optimized to that end as well. People put lots of money in optimizing their websites so that the websites could be found in the search engine. Optimizing your blog is not very big deal, at least not the basic optimization. You can read SEO Simplified series that I wrote to get idea about search engine optimization (SEO).
Social bookmarking sites
If this is not your first day on the Internet then you must have heard about Digg, StumpleUpon, reditt, mixx, flocked, and other social bookmarking sites. As they say it getting on the top page of digg for one day is more valuable than being on the New York Times best selling list for one month. I know this is a bit of exaggeration, but you got the idea. Digg, and StumbleUpon are two social networking websites that sends a huge amount of traffic provided you have quality content. You must bookmark your articles on as many social networking websites as you can without being addicted to it.
Twitter
Twitter is the new black. There is nothing like twitter. It has the power to overthrow Google in its own market—search. Some folks claim twitter sends them more traffic then they get from Google, the big daddy of search engine industry. Twitter has become a staple in any marketing plan constructed across the globe. Getting follower is very easy on twitter, but getting quality follower is very difficult. You need to provide quality content for that. Twitter followers only convert if you get good quality content to them.
This brings us to the end of our discussion on traffic getting sources. We will continue this discussion in the next blog post. Send me your suggestion and feedback on this blog post.
Want a Loyal Customer? Give Them a Smart Phone
In the first go, this may sound like a crazy business idea, but if you look closely, it will not sound such. In a recent study conducted by the Nielsen Company, it was found that in the last 6 months, around 77% of Smartphone buyers remained loyal to their cell phone service providers, whereas, around 18% switched to get new Smartphone. (see image for the details). This is a piece of good news for cell phone service providers. They can use Smartphone as a customer retention tool.
I think, operators should subsidies the price of the gadget even further, if the users promise to stay longer with the company. As a marketing tool, a company needs to show its users that should they stay with the company in question for so and so months or years the phone they are carrying will virtually become free for them. Or maybe they will get another Smartphone free at the end of the tenure.
Let’s see how operators take the result of the study, and what changes do they make in their marketing strategy. Or, possibly there will not be any change. Time will see to it, you go and see the result of the study in the image below.
Americans Account for Almost Half of the Soc Net Users
Americans are the third most active users of the social networking sites. On an average they spend 6 hours, 2 minutes and 34 seconds on these sites, which is higher than the global average of 5 hours 27 minutes 33 seconds. It was found in a study conducted by The Nielsen Company in February 2010. The study also found that American also form 47.3% of the total global traffic to social networking websites.
The number of unique users grew to 314.5 million in February 2010 from 244.2 million in February 2009, which is a 30% increase in the total number of global social networking site users. In the same period, the number of American social networking users grew from 115 million to 149 million, which is a rise of 22.8%. (See image for complete data).
Time Spent on Social Networks Doubled in Feb 2010
Social networking has become a huge force, and the naysayers and doomsters have packed their bags and left searching for a hideout. They said social networking will go on Dot Com way. The bubble will burst again, which never happened, and now average time spent on a social networking site by anyone in this world has touched 5 hours 27 minutes 33 seconds mark. As found by The Nielsen Company in a study conducted for February 2010. In the same month in 2009, people spent only around 3 hours and some minutes, on an average.
Who spent most time?
In terms of time spent on social networking sites, Italians are at number one followed by Australians and Americans. On an average Italian spend 6 hours, 27 minutes and 53 seconds on social networking sites, whereas Australians spend 6 hours, 25 minutes and 21 seconds, and American devotes 6 hours, 2 minutes and 34 seconds.
These three countries have outperformed the global average. Who is at number four and five? See the image below to get the rest of the data.
Product Life Cycle 101
Product life cycle (PLC) is an important marketing matrix that tells you about the status of your product and actions needed to be taken. According to PLC matrix, the life of a product can be divided into four stages.
- Introduction
- Growth
- Maturity
- Decline
Let’s examine each one of them one by one.
Introduction
This is the phase when the product is introduced to the market after successful market testing. In this stage demand tends to be low because of low awareness in the market. Promotion spending is high, and distribution is not very deep.
Growth
Growth follows introduction. In this phase the demand for the product or category rises. Awareness of the brand is high, and you need to maintain the promotion budget to maintain the top of mind recall. This is the ideal phase for a product. The longer a product lives in this phase the profitable it become. Distribution is comparatively deeper. One should strive to make the product available at as many places as one can.
Maturity
This is the third phase in the product life cycle, which every product and category has to pass through. This is the stage in which the demand for a product is not rising. Either everyone already has the product or they have tried it already. A surge in product sales is not possible. The company needs to maintain the momentum until the new product design and development team comes up with an innovation.
Decline
This is the final stage. The demand of the product in this stage is almost zero. The company cuts down on advertising expenditure to save the cost. Due to falling demand distributors have started dropping the product. This may happen because of the changed needs or product substitute or improved competitor’s products, etc.
What after decline?
Your product will either die in the dark alley of oblivion, or it will get reinvented. This depends upon the approach management of the company takes. A product not necessarily dies. Many get reinvented.
Business Blogging – 3 More Groups to Satisfy
It is not just your customers, employees, and investors you need to satisfy with your business blog. There are at least 3 more groups that need significant information about your company before they can proclaim any kind of allegiance with your company. Who are they and what they need? This is what I will talk about in this blog post.
Future employees
Every company needs qualified work force and person who is good or very good in his field does not tend to apply for a job in a company that has dodgy reputation or that does not have any proven track record. These people research the company for the past record, growth opportunity, and the company’s work culture. You need to provide them with the information they need. Talk about the work culture, ethics, and how employees in the past have made it big. Tell them how conducive your organization is for development and innovation.
Clients and Prospective clients
If the nature of your business is B2B then your clients need to know about the development in your company and its operation. Your clients’ decision to continue with you as well as your prospective clients’ decision to give you their business will depend a lot about the things that happen inside your company. Instead of giving grapevine communication void to fill in, you should open up a channel to communicate, and what could be more efficient than a blog in this. A blog will also help in B2C market if you sale high-involvement products for which customers need research.
Vendors
The decision made within the four walls of your company is going to affect your vendors as well, so they want to keep themselves abreast with the changes in your corporate policy. Communicating with vendors also become easier when done through the blog, you will not require sending out e-mail alerts to your vendors informing them of every small or big changes of general nature. For specific purposes, you still need to talk directly.
These three groups of people are also as important as are those we talked about in the previous post. Whom else do you think a business blog should appeal to?
Business Blogging – 3 Groups to Satisfy
Despite everything being same, business blogging differs from general blogging in at least one important way—the target audience. The target audience of a business blog falls in three distinct categories, each with different need, wants, and desire. All of which needs to be fulfilled should your business blog wants to succeed. In this blog post, I will focus my attention not on how part of satisfaction (how to satisfy), but on whom part (whom to satisfy).
In anything you do, knowledge of your target audience will take you a long way.
Customers
Customer is king, and his satisfaction is paramount. Whatever we do that passes for corporate or marketing communication should be attuned to satisfying customers’ need. Your blog should also serve to this end. Your blog will open a direct channel for them to communicate directly with decision makers in your organization. Keep this in mind and write accordingly. Tell everything worth your customers’ while on your blog and ask for feedback as well. Your goal is to connect and communicate with your customers.
Employees
Employees are your internal customer and their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your organization will directly result in the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of your customers because they are the ones that create and deliver value. Think for a moment—how profitable your organization will be if the value creation and delivery engine (employees) of your organization stops functioning properly? You need to keep your employees in the know of everything that’s going on in your company. They need to know about the recent changes in your HR policy, the clients that you have acquired, clients you have stopped serving, people you have hired, and people who are star among equals. You can also ask your employees to drop feedback on the stuffs that are happening to your organization. Keep them informed and make them feel insider. This will go a long way.
Investor
How can you not inform people who put their money in your company about the internal affair of your company? Do not do that and you guarantee distrust and withdrawal of fund. Investors are important for your business, and knowledge about your company is important for them. Provide them what they need and they will give you what you need—money. To be certain of return on their investment investors need to have information about your company. Use your blog to serve them information. Keep them abreast with every important update in your company.
With this, the post comes to an end. In the next post, I will talk about 3 more customer groups that you may like to target with your blog.
Business Blogging – What, Why, and How?
What is Business Blogging?
Let’s begin the discussion by defining what it is that we call business blogging. This will set the scene of rest of the blog post. A business blog is a tool used by corporate to connect, communicate, and share knowledge, updates, and expertise with customers, employees, and investors.
Why?
To inform your stakeholders of the things they want to know.
For customers
You can use your blog to tell your customers about your products, services, recent updates in your service terms, even ask for feedback on your products. You can also use your blog to promote your philosophy, social awareness campaigns, initiatives, etc.
For employees
You can use your blog to keep employees informed about recent development inside the company, change in HR policy, forthcoming events, etc. You can also use your blog to showcase the work of your top employees. This will be a big morale booster for everyone in your company. Start doing it and soon you will see people vying to get their names listed on your blog in the top employee column. You can also use your blog to talk directly to your employees, without any intermediary channel. You can even ask questions, seek suggestions, and request feedback. Your blog will also work as an information center for your future employees. By going through your blog, they will come to know about your corporate culture.
For Investors
It is not possible to release a report, or issue a press release every time something happens in your company that will interest investors. Even if you do issue press releases often, there is no guarantee that they will get picked. Too many press releases too soon may backfire. You run the risk of facing resistance for really newsworthy things. Therefore, you need to write about the small changes in your company on your blog. This way you will be able to inform your investors about your company without running the risk of getting ignored by the journalists.
How?
Do not ever think of running a business blog on a shared host like livejournal.com, wordpress.com, blogspot.com, etc. This will reflect badly on your company’s image. You should buy a domain name on the name of your business, if you do not already have one, and start blog.yourbusiness.com or yourbusiness.com/blog blog.
Start with a basic blog. You can always come back and add, subtract, or edit whatever you need.