Welcome to the Escape Blog

Small, focused websites - sometimes called microsites or feeder sites - have been around for quite a while now, but it seems their importance is becoming realised for online marketing. Brands are actively embracing niche micro sites for products and there is no reason why you can’t do the same for your business.

This article at Livemint (via Bluhalo) focuses on the importance of brand websites for direct customer engagement with the “attitudinal shift from browsing to searching” (Ogilvy and Mather India’s executive director of digital services).

For me this also ties in with a recent report from Google that they say proves that search can have a big impact on branding. The research shows that coming top of an organic listing raised purchase consideration of a brand by 4%, coming top of paid listing, by 20% and combined 22%. (NMA 10.07.08).

So this is all very well but how does it fit your business? The chances of large scale domination of search is very hard and time consuming, but creating niche website offerings allows you to dominate smaller markets.

We have just delivered a feeder website design and build for a client who has seen a remarkable payback in terms of connecting with a specific audience and for them, it happened very quickly.

I’ve bought some niche domain names already for developing feeder sites this year for our business, very much focused on our local market. One for Escape client, TSBeauty, is a product named domain - Zeno Pro. This is driving traffic through to the shop and actually selling product.

Ideas for your micro site

Ideas then. What can you do? I would start with these simple ideas:

1. If you are in the service industry, why not set up a geographically local domain with lots of relevant advice to your business? Basingstoke marketing will do just this for The Escape over the next few months, offering real marketing advice for local companies.
2. Do you have a large amount of clients in one market? Vertical market websites are another great way to create specific market content based on what you sell. Housing Marketing is an example that we created two years ago (it needs some work but it still works well for us).

What may seem like the unnecessary investment of creating and managing additional websites can actually allow you to become noticed as a bigger fish in a smaller pond, by having a relevant message for a relevant audience. Not so much traffic perhaps, but a very engaged visitor when they find you.

We don’t all sell lifestyle products, I admit, but when you think a little differently, you can make anything fun… including automated pipette machines…

Thanks for the link Debbie.

Does your business have a website so that you can burn up your marketing budget to get rid of it? I hope not, but if you do have spare marketing cash, feel free to throw it my way!

The reason I ask is that I get the impression that clients almost don’t believe that they should expect sales leads, sign ups, etc. from a new website or a rebuild. Perhaps this is their experience talking, perpetuated by a relatively poor performing website in the past, I’m not sure, but I certainly don’t agree.

In fact, I can’t actually understand why return on investment on a marketing website shouldn’t be a necessity for any business. Many lazy marketers get around this by suggesting that their website is purely for ‘brand awareness’. Yeh, right.

Time and time again at The Escape, we have created websites that do actually deliver tangible results, so I know it is a realistic expectation with the right resources and focus.

So, how do you end up with a website that delivers results? Well, you start from the back… (more…)

From the horses mouth and a nice little updated refresher about duplicate content - on your domains, and others.

I am interested in this viewpoint about SEO from NextWeb and I have to say I agree with the cynacism. Google dominate and are pushing more and more traffic in their direction, as well as the need to charge for it in some way.

All of the knowledge for good website SEO is out there - at least enough for us to do what we need to do - and the playing field is as un-level as ever!

E-commerce is getting dominated by very big stores like Amazon, with the only options for smaller retailers being E-Bay or to go very niche. Arguably, the same is beginning to happen with B2B websites. The successful companies are already in place for the low hanging fruit - the rest of us will have to work harder - or smarter.

When I first took an interest in SEO, I thought it was a magic that I would never understand. After reading books, Blogs and opinion; two years later, I realised that it could be simplified down into some basic ideas (hence the SEO for small business book). I wasn’t trying to dominate keywords, etc. I just wanted some relevant traffic for my B2B and B2C websites.

That said, SEO, and SEM (search engine marketing) can be done. It’s a simple concept but not a simple thing to actually do. It takes hard work, but it does work when you have a focussed strategy.

Luckily, the older cring-worthy, and sometimes unethical, techniques of SEO are being replaced as quality websites with quality content begin to edge into the market.

The approach of ‘quality’ will become even more important for online marketers and the need to create articles and web pages that engage people. Either that, or spend big (with no guarantees) as described by NextWeb.

Most website owners recognise the value of good website content yet this appreciation can often occur when they are visiting websites other than their own.

So how does your website compare? Do you think you’ve got good website content?

To find out, ask yourself the following 5 questions:

1. Is your website content relevant and meaningful to your target audience or is it mainly spin and waffle?
2. Is your website content clear and digestible to your target audience or do they just switch off and go away?
3. Is your website content engaging and informative to your target audience or does it offer little emotional or educational value?
4. Is your website content too technical or complex for your target audience resulting in uncertainty or confusion?
5. Is your website content wedged between blocks of irrelevant or unrelated information making it difficult to find or understand?

If any of these questions describe the written content on your website, then perhaps you need to look at ways to make your information more accessible and more valuable to your audience.

Bear in mind that for your website content to carry greater weight for both site visitors and Web ‘bots, it’s all down to its MERIT.

In other words, make your website content Memorable, Engaging, Relevant, Informative and Targeted.

There are two very good reasons why viral marketing can work well for businesses of any size.

Firstly, people are less trusting of ads than they are of  their family, friends or members of on-line communities. And secondly, viral marketing is cheap since the cost is in the idea, not the promotion.

The key to viral marketing success lies fundamentally in the idea so the end product must therefore be something really worth talking about in order for your brand or products to be endorsed optimally.

Use the following as a guide to establishing a concept for your campaigns and for getting your message out.

1. You’ve got to laugh! Use humour in your campaigns as it has universal appeal, spreads very quickly and leaves a positive association.
2. Know your onions! Demonstrate your knowledge by being a resource that educates and informs.
3. Start a debate! Offer a friendly challenge. Done well, this can help gain respect for your brand, services or products.
4. The best things in life! Offer free things. Use caution here by only attracting ‘key influencers’ as this may impact your budget.
5. Fish where the fish are! Find out where your target market hangs out such as social networking sites, discussion forums and blogs.
6. Shout from the rooftops! Getting the word out (seeding) can be done initially by e-mailing family, friends and colleagues or by finding websites, forums and blogs related to your topic.
7. Tools for the job! Get ad space without buying an ad. For example, insert widgets on your blog or web pages that link to your videos on YouTube or your pictures on Flickr.

And finally. Remember that ideas spread because they are important to the spreader, not the originator.

Need some inspiration? See some top quality, big brand viral marketing videos.

Radiohead have fans - lots of them. They could have just released a new record, got some airplay and sold some records. But they allowed people to pay what they thought was a fair price for In Rainbows - marketed online and distributed online.

And today it’s Coldplays turn with the new single of their next album announced as a free download.

How much traditional marketing spend have they saved? You can bet the cost is less than the publicity this ’stunt’ will generate.

Let’s face it thought - it’s not even a marketing stunt. It’s just the way things are moving with cheaper distribution and the nature of a viral message and social tools (I just Twitter‘d it). It goes hand-in-hand with the thousands of un-signed bands on MySpace and YouTube.

Oh yes, did I mention that these people have fans? So, what’s so special about you?

Do vertical markets play a large part in your business marketing online? Perhaps you are interested in how you can leverage your specialist skills to your advantage for marketing?

You may be interested in this article just posted on our website - How To Appeal To Vertical Markets On The Web.

Nice White Paper here - Five Rules for PPC in B2B - from Velocity.

I like the idea of refocusing on what you are looking to get from pay per click, when someone actuall clicks-through, including what you focus you adverts on. After all, would someone buy from your B2B straight from a traditional print ad?