Practical Wisdom

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Practical Wisdom

• 30 lessons from the frontline of
  e-marketingAndy Redfern and Ben Mawhinney

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Introduction

• Andy Redfern, CEO, EthicalSuperstore.com
• Ben Mawhinney, Head of Online Marketing,
  EthicalSuperstore.com
• EthicalSuperstore.com is the leading ethical
  online retailer based in the North East of
  England.
• We
• Have 150,000 customers
• Sell 8000 different products
• Have a 400,000 unique visitors a month
• Run shops for Natural Collection, Cancer
  Research, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the
  Green Party, the Guardian Eco Store, Divine
  Chocolate and many more

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What we will talk about

• Paid e-marketing techniques
• When you pay someone else to drive traffic and
  conversions to your site
• Unpaid e-marketing techniques
• Those times when it just your personal blood,
  sweat and tears that get people coming (and
  hopefully coming back) to your site

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Paid Google Adwords

• No Goal tracking or Conversion Tracking? Dont
  bother.
• To agency or not to agency?
• Green Kettles, Easter Eggs and Christmas
  Stockings
• Keep it simple. Make sure all your URLs
  terminate in the right place! Send people to the
  destination that theyre expecting. Youll get
  better conversion rates.

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Paid the rest

• Dont even think about MSN, Yahoo and the rest if
  your Google Adwords strategy is incomplete.
  (Apart from Brand. Protect your brand).
• Dont buy traffic. Dont get involved in paid
  link exchanges.
• Unless your selling dating or pranks dont even
  think of social media banners.

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Paid Affiliate traffic

• Affiliate recruitment
• Set a low barrier to entry for anyone
• Headhunt the best
• Make sure your affiliate model works for repeat
  purchasers
• Make them feel the love
• Keep banners, feed and programmes up to date

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Paid Comparison and Review sites

• Maintaining an accurate product feed optimised
  sensibly for humans and search
• Google Products its free so why wouldnt you?
• ROI, ROI and ROI
• No site is worth it for branding so cut if it
  doesnt perform

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Paid the dross

• Link Exchanges
• Maybe but usually no
• Well get you visitors
• Definitely no
• Buying mailing lists
• Usually no

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Unpaid Search Engine Optimisation

• Its a whole organisation task
• Every department is involved!
• Identify your most important keywords and key
  phrases
• Google emulates people so best to write for
  people first!

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Unpaid Twitter, Facebook et al

• Minimum protect the brand
• Fan page, Twitter account, cause page, myspace,
  Bebo
• Tweet, tweet and more tweets
• Opted in comms with people willing to be
  contacted several times a DAY where else can
  you do that?
• Devolve, decentralise and empower
• Zappos has several hundred Twitterers

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Unpaid Bloggers, RSS and News

• Make sure you submit your blog to BlogCatalog,
  technorati, etc. and make it easy for readers to
  share your content
• Make friends with everyone who blogs about your
  space
• send them stuff for review
• 50 of something small is better than 0
  something big
• Engage, comment and add value
• Sticky content e.g twitter directory

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Unpaid Email

• Get them to open the email compelling subject
  lines
• Get them to click through to your site
  competitions, surveys, offers, feedback, reviews
• Test the offer AB mailings, segment for
  different geographies, buying and profile, think
  carefully about frequency

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Unpaid Free stuff

• ePR article submissions
• Works best with relevant content and no more than
  2 links
• Directory submissions
• DMOZ\Google Directory still relevant but hard to
  get listed submit but dont stress
• Focus on specialists for your space that deliver
  value
• Use whitepapers or other virtual freebies for
  gathering opted in lists

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Final thought...

• Social media is like sex. Its fun to talk about
  and read about, but you cant truly comprehend
  unless you do it.
• George Colony, CEO, Forrester research

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Thank you!