eSpire Marketing

The use of twitpics is generally designed to be used for fun purposes. To really emphasize what it is that you are doing at that moment in time and to share a little bit better who you are as a person and what your are involved in during your day to day life. I’ve used twitpics before and have had a great deal of fun using them. They break up content a little bit more along a person’s feed. So, as a marketer how can we use twitpics to our advantage, and what sorts of benefits might we gain from using them in our updates? Well that is what I want to take a look at right now and discuss a little further in depth.
Power Twitter is a cool tool to use for anyone who is a Firefox user and also a twitter user. What it does is it adds a search bar to your main twitter page and also uploads twitpics and video links directly on the person twitter feed. This is a great tool that I believe should be utilized by people who are advertising and attempting to sell through twitter.
Say you have an email blast that you are sending out. To this point you are only able to send this creative work inside the email campaign to the specific set of people on your email list. Now with twitpic you can take this technology to upload this photo and give everyone in your follower base the image that everyone else gets to see along with your promo.
This will do more than just add a pretty picture to your ads:

• It will bring attention more towards your tweet on a page. We all know how important it is to be able to attract the eyes of more people with your ad. That is 80% of the battle in marketing. Take advantage of this.
• Increase Click Through- These two things generally go hand in hand. The more eyes on your ad the higher the click through rate.
• Increase conversions – This isn’t rocket science everyone knows that all three of these things together work together to increase sales and increase conversions and revenue

Thus far it is not possible to take a Twitpic and make it directly clickable to a specific link. But you may add your advertisement information on that page and even a link to the original ads landing page. It is a basic principle but one that I have not seen this in use yet, and I think people are missing out on a great tool to use to their advantage.

Till next time…

eCommerce- That is the term more commonly used to describe an online retail store. There is one thing to remember when starting an online business, an idea that needs to be paid close attention to, and that is that your website still serves the consumer. It is easy to get lost in the numbers of how many visitors your site is getting, the bounce rate of your home page, your conversion rates, and the all important ROI. I understand why. It’s tough to see those visitors, conversions, and bounces as people. But that is precisely what they are, people.

Alright, I’ll get off my high horse now and explain what exactly it is that I mean. The internet and internet commerce are completely changing the way the retail world works. From the small mom and pop corner bakeries, to the large corporations with the branding and marketing teams, everyone needs to be on the internet to succeed anymore. Think about it, when a customer wants to learn about a new product or a new trend where do they go to? The internet. If their research leads them to your page then they are more likely to buy that product from you.

Comfort=Conversion. What do I mean by that? I’ve read a lot of great material on optimizing my website to get better rankings in the search engines, I’ve read countless numbers of blog articles talking about more targeted pay-per click campaigns, and I’ve seen a lot of information about getting noticed through social media and social networking. Those are all great things to implement and certainly very helpful in creating a strong customer base for your website. But when it comes down to it, none of that means a darn thing, if your customers don’t feel comfortable when they visit your site. Comfort, by the ease of navigation, the product knowledge, helpful suggestions, and most importantly by giving your visitors the comfort in knowing that your website is a legitimate place for them to buy a product.

When I talk to people about how to create the best eCommerce website they can I tell them one thing. I tell them that they need to give the customer the in-store feel on the Internet. I realize that it isn’t as simple as it sounds, but think of it like this: Say you are selling clothing. Most people buy clothing because it conveys a certain type of lifestyle. That lifestyle is apparent when you walk into a store and is apparent from the sales associates. To gain better sales online, especially in parts of the country where customers cannot go into a store, you must create that same in-store atmosphere on your website. Also you have to make them feel as if they can get as much, IF NOT MORE, information on the product they wish to purchase on your site than in the store with a salesperson.

This can be be done in many ways, from the way you display your products, to suggesting other products they might like, to giving as much information on the product as possible. All of this needs to be done, and all of this is much easier to talk about in a blog article, than it is to implement on a website.  I have not seen anything yet on any website that gives me that true in-store feel that I am looking for. But it is certainly something to strive for. So I will leave you with these words of wisdom, when you implement any new idea to your website ask yourself this one question, “Does this add to the comfort and/or usability that my customers expect on the internet?” Think about that in everything you do and you will do just fine.