ONLINE MARKETING DICTIONARY ( K - Z)

16. Keyword --> Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine). Identifying appropriate keywords and using them on a web site is important for search engine optimization. Keywords can simply be words included in the body text of the document, or added to the header using meta tags to increase the number of keywords. Using keywords in the title tag is also important. Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences' use of the web when searching your product, is a critical marketing tactic.

17. Marginal Costs --> Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).

18. Marketing Mix --> A Marketing Mix is the combination of product offerings used to reach a target market for the organization. The marketing mix comprises the Product (what the actual offering comprises), Price (the value exchanged for that offering), Promotion (the means of communicating that offering to the target audience, promotional mix) and distribution (also known as Place, the means of having the product offering available to the target audience). The marketing mix is also known as the four P's.

19. Opportunity Costs --> Opportunity costs refer to the costs associated with giving up an opportunity. They are relevant in the marketing of digital products when one considers the value lost to the company when giving away a product for free. Since digital goods primarily consist of fixed costs and often have zero marginal costs then marketing strategy often dictates to give-away a version of the product to encourage consumers to upgrade at a later time (assuming lock-in etc.) The only cost incurred here would be the opportunity cost of the lost revenue from the consumers that would have paid for this version of the product in the first place. To avoid this situation, companies typically segment their markets, and offer a free product, with limited functionality (and no customer support or documentation) to a casual user group, and an upgraded version, at a price, with customer support etc. to a more sophisticated customer. The company will hope the casual users will upgrade to the upgraded version as they become more sophisticated users and more reliant on the product. They also assume the sophisticated user will not be satisfied with the free version, due to its lack of functionality. Eg: blogger and jot.

20. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) --> SEM comprises SEO and search engine advertising. Search engine advertising, in its current model, typically uses text-based advertisements that the marketer bids on based on the keywords the marketer wants to associate with the advertisement (contextual advertising). The business model is typically PPC. Goto.com pioneered the PPC model for search engine advertising. Goto.com was purchased by Overture which was ultimately purchased by Yahoo! Google's Google Adwords is the main competitor.
Both these networks supply advertisements for other sites.

21. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) --> SEO refers to the art of designing a web-site for better listings in search engines. This includes ensuring you have the appropriate keywords in the body text of the site, in the title tag and the meta tags. Google's PageRank algorithm also rewards sites that have inbound links, and even considers the anchor text of the inbound links. Search engines also reward sites with fresh content. Regularly updated blogs therefore serve as a good SEO tool.

22. Shopping Cart Abandonment --> Shopping Cart Abandonment refers to the loss of a customer who is going through the check-out process of an online transaction. Some statistics suggest that this can be as high as 75%. It is principally caused by poor usability of the site and the check-out process (too time consuming, too many clicks), and hidden shipping charges.

23. (Web) Spider --> A spider (also known as a crawler) is used by a search engine to
identify web pages in order to be cataloged in the database of the search engine (web site designers can also submit web pages to be cataloged in a search engine). Spiders therefore help search engines to keep up with the evolution of web content by crawling through the web seeking new sites. To control spiders in terms of cataloging a web site, a designer can include a robots.txt file that instructs a spider to exclude pages that are not to be cataloged.

24. Text Advertisements --> Text advertisements are text links that are paid for by the sponsors of the target page of the advertisement. They are a form of advertisement that can be considered more contextual (assuming the text link is relevant to the subject of the web page), and less obtrusive than other forms of advertising on the web. Text advertisements can also be used for affiliate advertising and the emerging search engine advertising programs from Google Adwords and Overture.

25. underdelivery --> delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.

26. Viral Marketing --> Is a marketing technique that takes advantage of a marketer's
customers in promoting the product. This technique was pioneered by Hotmail. Hotmail
launched its free web-based e-mail service with the tag line (at the bottom of each e-mail) "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail." As customers used this e-mail service, and were e-mailing others, they were effectively sending an advertisement for the product. This attracted new customers, who repeated the process. Once a critical mass of consumers were using Hotmail, a tipping point was reached, where the number of new users started to increase non-linearly. Hotmail soon became the fastest growing media company in history.

27. Web 2.0 --> Web 2.0 comprises technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasting and RSS. It is a term that tries to embrace a participatory web; a web where all can now participate in content creation and consumption. It thus presumes that Web 1.0 was a 'static' environment.

28. Web Analytics --> Web Analytics is the field of data mining the data that is generated from those navigating a web-site. Web Analytics allows a site designer to understand the flow of those going through a site, essentially measuring the behavior of the site's users. Which pages are most popular, which are the entry and exit points, and which are the referrer URLs. Metrics used include page views, hits, sessions and impressions. There are a number of software providers who provide web analytics tools, and a host should also provide this service to its clients.

29. Weblog (blog) --> A blog is a website that is updated frequently by its author, in a standard format, with the most recent entry at the top, and older entries archived. Each entry is a unique URL, a permalink. Entries also include trackbacks and the option for allowing comments. Blogging software (such as Blogger.com and typepad.com) allow anyone the opportunity to be a publisher on the web (no need to know html), thus truly democratizing the process of publishing information (a potential threat to traditional media organizations). Blogs are used to annotate and collect news sources across the web; used as personal journals and for sharing experiences; and used by businesses to reach out to their customers and engage in conversations.

30. Word of Mouth Marketing --> Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) refers to the marketing that can be gained by actively engaging customers to share insights with each other (create buzz that goes viral). WOMM has clearly been around since the inception of marketing, but has gained more prominence with the evolution of the internet, and the ease with which customers can share their stories. Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs and News Readers are enabling WOMM. Discussion Boards have helped customers form communities. Good WOMM relies on great products that customers willingly evangelize. Marketers have been prone to try to 'effect' this by incentivizing 'fake' customers to talk about their products. This can backfire.

WOMM

Well the most important question asked is, how to create BUZZ, or how to be in the market. There are many companies that are devoting a considerable amount of time and money to the creation and amplification of conversations concerning their products or services. This is one of the better means to create BUZZ in the market.
An example of a kind of WOMM advocated by a vodka company was to hire beautiful gals in the crowded bars and order the vodka of the company. This is one means of creating a BUZZ. This doesn't work in the B2B industry.
One of the simplest way to market the product or create BUZZ in the market is to allow the most satisfied customers to speak about the company and their range of products (be it home appliance or software suites or anything under the sun). We can achieve this by bidding more on the advertisements and brand the product in the beginning then carry on. An example to this is the main sponsor in a hosted show or a game then through regular marketing on Television, radio and of course the power house of all the information- the internet.

There are many people who adopt stealth marketing along with normal marketing by advertising through the media making it more popular to an extent that you name a product only that company name comes to your mind. The strength of the product and the market lies in the simplest way the product is explained to others (like colleagues and friends) and they come clicking at your website.

The other easy and better way to be on top of the internet market is, by paying more for their contents to be on top (many criteria's go into it). Many feel this as one of the better way to stay on top (who find it better to cut the competition and don't mind to pay money to stay on top), but there is other side to this. What if you were the leader till date using this technique and someone uses the same strategy to put you down and take the lead? There are limits to every thing in the market. By doing these types of marketing no company can stay on top for ever, unless they don't match their product quality with the kind of marketing that they are doing.

There are many cases where the WOMM and BUZZ gets created in the market about the product and its quality and service that it doesn't spend much on marketing, and this happens until the keep the quality to the satisfied level of the customers. Most important is to get new customers; more important is to retain old customers. Its these people who pull the crowd to us.

WOMM should work not by just advertising. it should be from the other side, that is: You create a product and when the need comes, all the manufacturers of that product comes to your mind (or to others), but which is the first one. This makes a lot of difference. This is what is the another form of WOMM; a healthy WOMM and a desired marketing.

There are many events where people are participating in open discussions on WOMM, as this will also help them in their strategies and plans. Off late ethical part of the contents are coming to picture.

B2B : beat round the bush

Quite often B2B search engine marketing involves more complex strategies and requires
marketers to think of strategies with the end in mind. The B2B selling process is more complex and the potential consumers buying cycle can be long and drawn out. As a result, B2B marketers are presented with unique challenges and need to continually build relationships with their consumers.
Establishing a relationship with the potential consumer is key, but understanding that there are different people with their own requirements is the real ticket to success.
While its true that there may be different people in the buying cycle who search using the same key phrases, the intention of each may be different. Each will have their own set of pre-determined keywords that they will use to search for. As a result the importance of revisiting keyword baskets is crucial. The end result of course is obtaining qualified traffic and thus qualified leads.

Here are some other challenges faced by B2B marketers:
• Longer, more Complex Selling Cycles
• Undetermined KPIs
• Need for "traffic filtering" to ensure qualified traffic is turned into qualified leads
• Understanding the Consumer's Buying Cycle
• Measuring success at various intervals of the selling cycle
• Ignoring secondary conversions and missing out on opportunities to intercept qualified traffic
• Tracking leads through sales
• Developing effective on-site conversions that lead to the bigger off-site conversions (ie. the sale).
B2B marketers need to be proactive in tackling these challenges.

WIDGET MARKETING: CAN WIDGETS BENEFIT B2B SITES?

There has been a lot of “buzz” about widgets and widget marketing recently as creative online marketers have discovered the use of widgets. Widgets are simply pieces of embeddable code that can be found on one site, and embedded in another that can be used to promote your own site or blog. Widgets have become popular with users of online communities as a result the business of marketing via widgets is a great way for site owners (including B2B sites)to promote their content and business.
Widget marketing is starting to catch on in the online marketing world. Today there was a great post by Nick Wilson over at Search Engine Land on link baiting for 2007. According to Nick, a major component of link baiting in 2007 will be “widget baiting”.

How Can Widgets Help B2B Sites?

Simply put, widgets are all about providing your users with the tools to promote your B2B business or any business/online property for that matter. For B2B marketers, widgets offer the potential to be a means of acquiring new customers at a minimal cost, promotion of your site’s presence out to the rest of the Web, and can provide a traffic source to help build your external link inventory.
Widgets are a great way for promoting your site and your content. For B2B sites, which are looking to create streaming media channels (combining audio, video, photos, text, and RSS feeds etc) and broadcast them live across their site’s pages or blog, widgets can help accomplish this. Sites like splashcast specialize in just that.

Top 10 Favorite Widget Sites for B2B Search Marketing
1. My Blog Log
2. Mashable.com
3. Widgetoko
4. Snipperoo
5. Reuters Widget
6. Widgipedia
7. Spring Widgets
8. Word Press Widgets
9. Poll Daddy
10. Business Week Widget

B2B MARKETING IN 2007 – EVANGELIZING YOUR CONSUMERS

Given the understanding that most B2B organizations offer high end products or services, we know that the time that it takes to qualify a lead, nurture the relationship and convert the lead into a sale can take months or even years. The thing is, there is one more step involved in this marketing process for B2B marketers to consider and that is to make your customer an evangelist for your organization.If you have done your job and provided a service/product that your consumer truly appreciates, and the consumer is sincerely pleased about the entire experience, the chance of making this consumer an evangelist for your company is great.
Consumer evangelism is simply the process of taking a customer who is thrilled about your product/service and their experience and getting them to become outspoken "evangelists" or glorified promoters for your company. These “greatly satisfied” consumers can become a powerful tool for marketing and growing your business in addition to other leads that you have.
Its all the customer who makes the market. Its not what we want we produce and customer takes. but its what the customer wants and it is he who chooses the vendor, who has offered the service he wanted. If we the selected ones, we are lucky, and cashing on this in the form of evangelizing may not be wrong. Its the advantage that has come your way. Use it.
The fact that they selected your organization means that they understand how your solution works and that it will work for them.Keep in mind that your solution has to provide an extraordinary experience for this to happen.
Having loyal customers is one thing, converting them into influential and enthusiastic evangelists for your organization is another. Loyal customer are not necessarily promoting you to others, consumer evangelists do. Consumer evangelism should be practiced by any B2B organizations that want to grow their company and make a real difference in their industry. It’s been reported that “organizations that focus on building word of mouth (WOMM) into full-fledged evangelism grow faster, are more profitable and have big-picture ideas that somehow change the world.” If this sounds too good to be true, it’s not.
• Consumer Evangelists purchase and believe in your product or service
• Consumer Evangelists passionately recommend you to friends, family and colleagues
• Consumer Evangelists provide unsolicited feedback or praise
• Consumer Evangelists forgive dips in service and quality
• Consumer Evangelists are not bought they “extol” your virtues freely
• Consumer Evangelists feel part of something bigger than themselves

WOMM

WOM is the act of people providing information and making honest recommendations to other
people about a brand, product or service. Today this is often performed by what we call
“influencers". Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) happens when marketers launch campaigns to influence and accelerate “organic” WOM. Unlike traditional offline and online marketing,
WOMM is not about how many people you reach, but how many people pass your message to
others. womm is about intense user engagement and primarily relies on finding and empowering “influencers,” opinion leaders who have extensive knowledge in a specific area, to spread
the word about a product or service. Although most WOMM still happens offline, online WOMM
is growing fast. online information includes blogs, online forums, videos and podcasts to
create consumer-generated media (CGM). online or offline, a successful WOMM campaign
involves true and passionate influencers who are willing spread the message.

Who are the influencers?
In general, influencers are typically the 10 percent of individuals who are influencing the
choices of the remaining 90 percent of the population.

Influencers are different from the general population in several ways:

* They are four times more likely to be associated with five or more organizations.
* They are four times more likely to be considered “experts” by others on a variety of
general topics or issues.
* They are well connected, and have about three times more knowledge than the average
person.
* They are twice as likely to recommend a product or service they like; and when they
do, they are four times more likely to tell nine or more people about it.
* They are typically well traveled and are activist-oriented.
* They are willing to inform with feedback, ideas and competitive information on a
consistent and regular basis.
* They do their research and uncover unethical programs and communications. For example,
72 percent double-checked the information they received with an offline source, and 69
percent with an online source (E-fluencials Study, 2001, Burson-Marsteller). n-Marsteller).

who are strong influencers?
individuals who feel strongly about your brand, The most passionate influencers are often
part of the current customer base, and can be located and engaged with the help of your
marketing, sales and customer support departments.

we have to see, who are all our listners, means who are all the favorable and most
influenced customers are. This can be done by monitoring blogs (Blog Pulse, Technorati),
news search alerts, online discussion forums, del.icio.us tag analysis, RSS feed monitoring
(PubSub, Technorati) and other methods.
Finding the right influencers for your WOMM campaign requires insight into their
backgrounds, passions, motivations and aspirations.

Choose the right influencer partnerships. The ideal relationship is mutually beneficial—collaboration always beats paid partners.

WOMM : Trusted Human Yellow Pages

We believe information we hear from other people, faster than we believe what is written in a brochure or seen on a TV ad, the stories we hear from each other, the hints and tips. We are trusted human yellow pages for each other.
There are a set of people, who want to extract information from the known and good resources. More than this, another inner secret is that, information from a well respected source is reliable and trustworthy, also that, these information are sometimes difficult to access, or hard-work is necessary to obtain the information, so this could be sometimes a kind of shortcut to get information, but it depends on the information, as always these information will not be authentic like a police informer’ as these are all a personal vision about the information. So, a person should also see the information he is getting is also from a person who is genuine, and no such hidden intension lies behind the information. The ultimate truth is that, man believes other’ talk more easily than any website or blog, because its human-nature that believes other person.
More important is the updation of the information. People get either irritated, or bored of stale and repeated information.
WOMM is a tool, that not only marketing and communications folks use, but it crosses all organizational lines including co-workers, neighbors, friends and family, customers and the general public. The important and main feature of WOMM is that, each time we communicate, we build on it, and is clearer on the topic.
What does our WOMM contain? Just what we have in us, or what we want? That’s not all, we must have patience to listen what others want to say, or what others want. It’s meaningless to have loads of information that’s not useful, or that’s not arranged in order that’ll come to use.
One more important thing that has to be kept in mind is that, the information we are getting is not a forced one, but the one, that has come naturally and true information. In today’ world, people have reduced believing in the ads, and a trend is getting set about the transfer of information, by e-mail (from known people, not spam), and blogs of famous people or organization. Transfer of information through direct contact, phone is always there in its place.
Here an important point that one has to keep in mind is that, we must not spread a message that has no personal touch of ours, or if it’s not intended to us.
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) defines WOMM as “giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, making it easer for that conversation to take place.” Luckily, WOMM isn’t only accomplished through product placement and name dropping in the right places. WOMM can evolve from a customer’s remarkable experience and the marketing message can reach potential customers in the form of referrals from satisfied customers. These positive referrals from existing customers are extremely valuable, and when encouraged by a company, are examples of WOMM at its best.
One of the more provocative ideas that came out of one of the previous week's WOMMA conference in San Francisco was the notion that there are two kinds of WOMM (word of mouth marketing): creationist and evolutionist. Each is legitimate but they spring from different philosophies.
To know more about this, you can go through the video below, and get to know the difference between a creationist and an evolutionist.

WOMM, and marketing defenitions

WOMM:

Is a process of recommendations or referrals, for brand-names, products and services. This is highly valued by advertisers, as it is believed to be a valuable source credibility. This is different than normal marketing, where they brand / market their product, whereas in WOMM a credible person / organization refers the product, which holds more weight-age. to do WOMM, they rely on publicly techniques and viral marketing. moreover, WOMM can be used to target the required people, than the entire mass, who may be or may not be interested in it.
a very successful WOMM creates buzz. a buzz is successful, if it creates an intense movement of information, that moves in a matrix format, than a linear one, because, the matter must keep circulating and not grow in one direction.

UNDERCOVER Marketing:

OR also called as stealth marketing. an indirect way to sell thing. like a famous personality endorsing the brand on his image, be it an actor, or a sports personality, or a social worker who is quite famous in the market and the brand matches his image and people go for those products.
An example to this that instead of marketing for a camera, the brand ambassador asks people to click his photo with his camera and see the difference, and then he explains the features to the people. he may also use the technical terms thats there in his area of work, like acting or sports. Thus a camera is introduced in style. Here the brand is sold on the image of the ambassador.

GUERILLA Marketing:

This is similar to undercover marketing. A cheap and low budget promotional marketing, where the audience does not feel targeted. Here obtaining publicity is more important both professionally and personally. here the goods must be delivered. Trust and rapport is important, by understanding customer' needs and deliver what is said. goods for small business, human psychology is predominant here, to experience and guess work.

VIRAL Marketing:

This is a method to spread entertaining message, usually through methods such as web, and e-mail, to large number of people.
methods: face to face communication, phone, text messages, online profile page, blogspot, email.

Creating Buzz - Word of Moth Marketing

Guys, here is a link to a PPT on WOMM. It’s very precise but extremely informative; it talks about the power of WOMM. Also it has compared the traditional marketing with WOMM, which tells us how much influence WOMM has on buyer’s decisions.

WOMM - things to Do and NOT to do

1) The WOMM concept is more to do with spreading the word and building brand rather than lead generation. It can be used for both, however, the processes and execution for them is entirely different.

2) Keep in mind that WOMM can adversely affect your campaign too. It needs to be used wisely and judiciously. When you have too many links running around 2 things will happen. Either you will get banned from the site or community or you will meet people like me, who will brand your product as what I would like to call Door to Door Spam and make sure I tell everyone about it.

3) Against all logic, when you start a conversation with someone about a product or service, people will also flame you. DO NOT REACT. It only means 1 thing, your product, service or whatever else you are pushing, as impacted them in such a way, that its brought out a reaction. Which is why if you get flamed.. its good.

4) Since flaming is good…it also works the other way around. If you don’t get any reaction, you suck. It simply means that, your content or product or service, has had no impact. (back to the drawing board)

5) One of the best methods of WOMM is BOOKMARK, BOOKMARK and BOOKMARK. Digg, Delicious, Public eye, Furl and all other spin-off-tounge-twister-social-bookmarks are good! Social bookmark like you have never done before!

6) Target Blogs – Blogs need to be targeted intelligently. You CANNOT go to a blog and post in his comments section telling him/her, that they have a cool blog.. and then drop a bomb with your URL. You probably think this is the best way right? Wrong, wrong wrong! You’re thinking broadcast in a relationship world. Bloggers, especially popular bloggers, can smell self promotion a mile away. They aren't the PR department for your business or blog. They want relevant value for their own audience. They want information that fits their blog and their voice. If you want their help promoting your ideas you need to know and understand their ideas. The best way to get bloggers on your side is to actually talk to them…tell them about how promoting your product or service can add value to their blog. They are a listening bunch and they will listen. It's not about broadcasting it's about relationships.

7) Always remember brand advocacy is more important than brand image or brand satisfaction

8) No Marketing fluff! No Hype! No Lies! Remember this. 3 core rules to a successful WOMM campaign. People are not idiots.

9) Target opinion leaders. They are your source of buzz. Not just source…THE source. They are the ones who will push your product or service into the buzz.

10) Research Research and Research before launching a campaign…you NEED to know how your industry works. Get down to basics, how does information flow in your industry, how to people interact online in your industry, where do people get their information from in your industry, who influences your industry (see? Full circle!)