Christmas is coming: Black Friday arrives on November 25th

By Matthew Kinlin

This year, we will see Black Friday arrive on 25^th November and with it comes a wave of excited shoppers looking to grab a great bargain.

Black Friday is the annual date that marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, a huge amount of retailers will offer promotional sales and bargains to kick off the Christmas season.

The following week will see the start of the Christmas shopping period with shoppers flocking out to find the best presents for Christmas. The start of the week has been named ‘Mad Monday’ to announce the arrival of the crazy shopping season.

This means that shoppers will be able to find some great sales to start the season. They can pick up specific items for reduced prices and track down some bargains.

This will help to kick-start the shopping season. Buyers want to get in there early and find what they want whilst stock lasts. Reduced prices will encourage buyers to start looking early for Christmas.

Black Friday is the official launch for retailers. It marks the moment they will officially start pushing Christmas products. Offering reduced rates will get people in the shops and on their websites looking for what they want.

Large online retailers, like Amazon, are offering a ‘Black Friday Deals Week’. This will feature hundred of deals and millions of pounds of savings for online shoppers.

With the official launch of the Christmas season, online shopping will become a much busier place and just like in shopping centres, the internet should be well prepared for this huge influx of custom.

How do you pay for paid advertising?

By Jackie Yeadon

The traditional way to employ an online marketing agency to manage paid advertising (PPC) is to allocate a monthly budget for your campaigns and pay a percentage fee on top for the work it actually does. This tends to be around 15% but it can vary between agencies and reputations. Other activities, like content optimisation, link building and so on, are extra. There is usually a minimum-term contract, which can also vary between three and 12 months.

This is the model that Adrac Ltd was built on in the early days of paid advertising and online marketing. When it was acquired by Reach Global Ltd in 2003, this changed with incoming operations director Israr Sarwar.

Adrac Ltd research underlines that organic search complements SEO

Adrac’s analysis of internet campaign performances for its client websites underlines the importance of a wholistic approach to optimisation.

Natural or organic search positioning uses search term relevance to determine how high a website appears on a results page. Content, optimisation, search engine optimisation and link building all reinforce relevance.

Our recent research reveals how important it is to achieve a page one, top three position; some 95% of search engine users click page one results, and 70% click the top three positions.

- Position #1: 45.46% of all clicks
- Position #2: 15.69% of all clicks
- Position #3: 10.09% of all clicks

Improvements made following client campaigns led directly to quality traffic; in other words, high organic rankings increase their quality traffic thanks to Adrac’s management. Quality traffic offers the best conversion rate – these will be people who want to purchase what you are selling.

This is what we observed:

- A move from #2 to #1 saw a 25% increase in search traffic for the client’s top key term
- The increase in position also saw rise in direct traffic and brand related key terms
- Search traffic doubled when website shifts from bottom half of page one result to top half of page one result

In addition, the analysis revealed that organic search complements non-organic methods of search engine prominence and both are essential for maximum exposure – and a maximum return on investment.

Adrac Ltd has been managing organic search and PPC for clients since 2003. The team are certified Google Accredited Professionals, MSN Ad Excellence members (Bing) and Adrac is a Yahoo Network Certified Agency.

Adrac Ltd: size is no excuse – small businesses should assess the competition

If it seems like your competitors are having more success than you, it’s a safe bet to assume that some of them are. What’s their secret? Competitor analysis could hold the key.

Size, as the old adage goes, is no excuse: small or big, your company can make money via its online presence, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

Similarly, don’t ever use the excuse that you’re only a small company with a small budget and the competition is so-o-o-o-o-o much bigger and commands a fearsome marketing spend.

Even on a limited budget, certain essential groundwork can be laid that will strengthen a web presence and which can be built upon gradually over time. SEO is a long term plan, remember, not a sticky plaster. Competition analysis will arm you with valuable insight into what is making your competitor successful, what their Achilles Heel is and if there is wiggle room for your business.

That has to be information worth paying for.

Adrac’s competitor analysis, for example, looks at the success of your rivals on search engine rankings and goes on to deconstruct their online strategies and tactics. The final report also includes a detailed breakdown of link structures, the quality of search engine optimisation and – crucially – which keywords they are targeting and winning to get these results.

Internet marketing/SEO companies like Adrac will use this information to put together an individual, tailored package for your company – a strategy for success.

In these times of austerity, not every small business has the budget to do everything on the list. However, a good SEO company that wants to foster a relationship over time will be willing to negotiate – and perhaps even schedule – an SEO plan.

That possibility, in itself, has to be worth a phone call.

Practical blog writing tips – raising the benchmark by Jackie @ Adrac Ltd

This blog post is written in response to a Tweep who insisted that nobody reads past the first couple of paragraphs of any blog post.

It is a serious claim: is the entire blogosphere supported on the failure of unread blogs? Judging by my own personal blog perusing habits, I think not: there are some fabulous blogs that I consume greedily and want seconds; others that I might get half way down and skip to the end; sometimes I do click the back button after the first sentence.

The fact is that blogs do get read, at least in part. If they did not, then the blogosphere would not exist.

However, possible reasons why some blogs fail include:
- you have not spent time building a following;
- the blog posts ramble, do not deliver what the headline promises;
- poor spelling and grammar, limited vocabulary;
- boring introduction;
- obvious lack of authority on the subject, poor research;
- offering unoriginal, outdated advice;
- uninspiring design and presentation;
- because a well constructed news story will tell you at least twice, if not three times, what the post is about; no need to read it all unless it has excellent entertainment value.

Below is a list of insider tips from a qualified and experienced journalist, SEO copywriter and blogger. Some may sound simplistic and directed at new bloggers, but all are definitely aimed at raising the benchmark and enriching the blog experience.

- Plan: A rough list of points to cover is enough, but it keeps you on focus and cuts down the time you spend playing FarmVille while you meditate on your next paragraph. Social media is the Bermuda Triangle of your Working Day if you don’t discipline yourself. Your plan will include an intro, middle and conclusion.
- Story construction: your intro will hook your audience, with mystery or promise, and tell them what you are going to tell them. Your intro must be interesting, it should never contain hackneyed information they have read elsewhere, or that’s obvious – this will lose their interest pretty quickly. Your middle will expand on your points; your conclusion will remind your reader of your points and wrap them neatly for taking home.

- Learn to edit: ruthlessly, or enlist a co-blogger’s help. The first para of this story was originally the fourth or fifth in its first draft. Blogging lends itself to all kinds of rambling. By the third draft you should have eliminated (pretty much) all self-indulgent purple prose. Less is more.
- Title: optimised, snappy, an accurate reflection of the post itself. Titles are also a whole issue by themselves.
- Writing: spell check; do not include unnecessary adjectives or adverbs; expand your vocabulary but do not overuse your thesaurus; do, however, use a dictionary; use a style guide (try The Guardian); get a blogging friend to check your post through; read your post aloud – this will reveal clumsy sentences; did I mention a spell check?
- The law: you should have an idea of the fair use, far comment and best practice employed by journalists. Check out the editorial policies of your preferred newspapers (try The Guardian again) and also the guidelines of the Press Complaints Commission. At the very least, you should understand what libel and plagiarism are and how to properly cite or protect your sources. You also need to know your own rights regarding the free press and freedom of information.
- Audience: they are who you are writing for; do not forget this.
- Pimp, shamelessly: advertise your blog post via your Facebook Page, your Twitter account, link it to your website if you have one, put it in your signature when you comment on other blogs and forums.

If you got this far you will no doubt have noticed that I have broken or at the very least manhandled a few of these rules. My response? You need to know the rules in order to re-craft them to your bidding. After all, you are still reading.

Here’s to happy – and successful, inventive, quality – blogging!

Adrac Ltd: Who Tweets wins – Mashable Social Media Awards

The Mashable Social Media winners have been announced, and there are familiar faces on the roll of honour, as well as some surprise guests.

For example, Best Social Media Customer Service (award sponsored by Blackberry) was won by Eurail.com.

It is somewhat of a difficult concept for Brits, that train companies win awards for being good at something; they get a lot of bad press, after all.

However, Eurail.com has apparently used social media to look after customer needs.

The ecommerce site for Eurail train passes regularly updates and replies to customer queries using Twitter account, Facebook and other channels, said Mashable.

Also among the winners was World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) was Most Creative Social Media. Its desire to correct its image and reputation, it launched the Stand Up For WWE campaign and encouraged fans to support it via social media and with videos (presumably on YouTube).

Mashable reported that its also published facts about the WWE that were not particularly well known, and some of its supporters were very high profile.

There are many fascinating ways to utilise social media, but again and again success comes to those who focus the interactions, how they happen, what happens and when, around the needs of their audience – read, customers.

Another tip is to link all your information/customer service channels: Facebook, Twitter, your company blog, your company website. If the information you give out has value, visitors will return.

Adrac Ltd: Spam, tar, brush and good SEO copywriting

Good search engine optimisation is worth its weight in gold. Good SEO is not a rarity but it does involve experienced, qualified and honourable professionals. No, that is not an oxymoron when it is applied to SEO.

In the Guardian this week, Charles Arthur reported that Google has become a “tropical paradise for spammers and marketers” who are making it impossible to perform a useful search.

Spam is undesirable; it works because it tricks systems and people; it is allegedly clogging up the internet and wasting people’s time. Sadly, spam seems to be working significantly well for its perpetrators to continue to produce it.

On topic, search engine optimisation includes – but is not exclusively – keywords. Spam is a meaningless stream of words that tries to simulate quality and relevance; professional SEO copywriting uses keywords in a sensible way to enhance a website and is always, always written with the user in mind.

The job of the SEO copywriter is to enhance the website visitor’s experience of the company, service or product, to give them something useful, enjoyable and relevant.

Excellent copy – whether this be news, feature articles, blog entries, press releases or product and service information – attracts quality traffic, targeting the type of visitor who is more likely to spend money with your company.

This kind of service, offered by established accredited companies, is so far away from spam it is positively vegan. So do not let negative stories about internet marketing steer you away from enlisting the help of an SEO specialist.

Twitter trends, internet marketing and spontaneity by Jackie @ Adrac Ltd

Somewhere, I can’t remember exactly, the Tweet outcry of “I am Spartacus” was billed as the trend to launch a thousand blog posts.

Here’s number 1001. But in case you’ve been on a different planet for the last few days, the Twitter community’s use of the hashtag #IamSpartacus alongside exact repetitions of a “menacing” (so Judge Davies confirmed) tweet, which landed Paul Chambers with a £1,000 legal bill and lost him two jobs, trended on Twitter for around 48 hours in the UK and worldwide.

The British, eh? A nation of shopkeepers versus British bulldog and all that? Didn’t someone once accuse us of being a little bit on the boring side until roused by … well, apparently until a judicial decision threatens our right to be sarcastic. We are British: give us a moment to boil the kettle and steep them leaves, then watch us take over a major social network for two whole days to defend our right to place our tongues in our cheeks.

In the same weekend, another very British trend took the UK and the global tweeting community by storm. Quite compellingly, an account named @justsobritish garnered amazing respect for all things British, from the words we use to the tea we drink to the TV shows we watch. Ridiculously simple, completely addictive.

The trend #justsobritish caught on like the proverbial wildfire and Twitter was alive with foreigners telling our nation we are “just so cool”. Like we don’t know that already <<insert cheeky smiley emoticon with tongue hanging out here>> Oh. Oops. Is there an unblog button a delete button Oh, gosh

While there’s no doubt that structured internet marketing campaigns are behind some of the most successful viral campaigns on the internet, it’s also refreshing, and exciting, to witness what appears to be genuine spontaneity.

Why Schmidt reminds me to embrace grocery shopping, by Jackie @ Adrac

The prospect of humans being chipped to enhance their search experience is so bizarre that I actually checked my calendar didn’t say April 1st. I’m still not entirely sure that Google’s Eric Schmidt isn’t playing with us, even a little: perhaps it’s fun to wind us up and watch us hop madly.

Still, this is thought-consuming subject. I sat in my modern office at Adrac and imagined myself in an ultra-modern world like Minority Report; I am walking through a shopping centre mall and the advertising boards are asking me about my satisfaction with previous purchases and targeting my needs tastes preferences in their next sales pitch.

I reflected muchly on the fact that my pets are chipped, so if they get lost, I have a better chance of being reunited with them.

I also thought a little more about ID Cards in the UK and how the idea really raised our hackles: the British Bulldog has a fighting streak when it feels its freedom is being threatened.

Time is precious because we like to work hard and play hard in the 21st century: however, I’m prepared to shoulder the inconvenience of the grocery shopping trip navigated using a hastily scribbled list on the back of an old envelope; in return for knowing that, for at least some portion of the day – probably when I am asleep – I am not observed or data routinely collated about me and my life habits.

Though perhaps even the fact I am “not connected” is data in itself!

In this “always-connected” age where we have our mobiles on us all the time, it is sometimes difficult to remember what it is like to be able disconnect ourselves and enjoy our own company. One day, we might not have this luxury.