Marketing

[BREAKING NEWS] Google Canada Under Competition Bureau Scrutiny

2013-05-19 by James Burchill in Internet Marketing, Marketing, News, SEO, Technology | Leave a comment

Canada’s Competition Bureau is launching a formal inquiry into the business practices of Google’s Canadian operations. A formal notification has been sent to Google (based in California, USA) and Google has responded publicly that they plan to cooperate.

While the exact nature of the inquiry hasn’t been disclosed, it’s very likely to be regarding Google’s search and advertising practices, which have been scrutinized by governments globally. We may not know what, exactly, the Competition Bureau is looking at, since their inquiries are confidential until any prosecution takes place.

In the past, Google has been investigated by the Federal Trade Commission in the United States, by authorities in China, Japan, and Europe, and it has usually weathered these storms and either come out on top or paid a settlement and walked away. In the case of the U.S. inquiry, it lead to substantial agreements by Google to give more open access to some of its standard patents (mostly in mobile) and give advertisers more flexibility with rival search engines.

Google maintains that its search query algorithms are neutral, but many have alleged that they favor some services (specifically Google’s) over others.

This is late-breaking news, so information is scanty, but follows on the U.S. FTC’s look and in a current investigation by the European Union for similar competition reasons. Interestingly, the complaintants in many of these are businesses who themselves were once the subject of inquiries and investigations regarding monopolistic actions.

 

Big Changes at YouTube

2013-05-13 by James Burchill in News, Technology, Video Marketing | Leave a comment

YouTube sign in San Bruno, CAYouTube is the world’s largest video sharing service and the Google-owned company has been making waves ever since it first went live. Now, some big changes are coming to the site that may or may not make people happy.

First, if you’re using Google to market yourself, your products, or are interested in taking advantage of trends happening on the YouTube sharing sphere, then the developers at YouTube have something just for you. After that, you’ve probably heard that YouTube plans to launch a subscription-based video watching service for premium content (TV shows, movies, etc) that has been touted by the press as a “Hulu killer.” Well.. it won’t be.

YouTube Trends

One of the most-used services by those of us who try to capture the current meme to our own advantage is Google Trends. This shows the latest trends in search overall and lets you narrow down the information by topic, country, and more. It’s a very useful tool for Web marketing.

Now, the Google Team at YouTube has released something similar for the video service. It shows current trending videos by location, general topic, age of the average viewer, etc. It’s a great tool that can help many of us enhance our own use of YouTube for personal or professional purposes.

For example, if I just finished a short video talking about the latest news from Hollywood about Aston Kutcher abandoning his Twitter account (he didn’t, I’m making this up as an example), then I could use the Trends Map to find out who is talking about this most often and what age group they are, aiming my video for them by replying to their shares and posts. Used the other way around, it could be a good way to create topics based on trends as well.

That’s just one example. There are dozens of ways that creative people could take advantage of this new tool.

YouTube Won’t Be Killing Netflix or Hulu

The new YouTube Subscription service is due to roll out soon, but it won’t be anything like Netflix or Hulu. Instead, the YouTube service will continue to run advertising on videos and will be a way for publishers to YouTube to add an income stream to their videos rather than a way for YouTube to become just another on-demand movie provider.

One of the biggest complaints that video producers who put their content on YouTube (whether amateur or professional) is that there is a general lack of ad revenue from those videos. Further, since the producer has little control over the advertisements, some video content is not really appropriate for ads because of its intended audience (i.e. religious types or children).

The subscription service would be a way to allow those content producers who want to gain revenue but not deal with advertising headaches to produce and publish their content without those ads. In other words, if I created a video tutorial on how to set up a WordPress site, I could post it to YouTube as an ad-free video that requires viewers to buy a subscription or as an ad-supported video that plays advertisements as part of the video feed. I may also be possible to do both, in fact.

This should make the service much more useful to many content publishers on YouTube.

The changes coming to YouTube are all welcome ones and should enhance the use of the site for both business and personal users.

How to Guarantee Traffic to Your Trade Show Stand

2013-05-12 by James Burchill in Guest Post, Marketing | Leave a comment

by Display Wizard (UK)

Many small businesses are afraid of investing in a trade show presence for fear of walking away without a single fresh lead. It’s an understandable fear ñ after all, it’s far from cheap to book space at a trade show, prepare your exhibit, and train your staff to operate your stand.

However, with risk comes opportunity, and trade shows are rich with opportunities to expand your business and take on new customers. Trade show leads are some of the most valuable that you’ll ever generate, making it essential that your trade show booth is designed to attract as many visitors as possible.

These five tips will help you get more traffic to your trade show stand, allowing your sales and technical staff to get more leads, close more deals, and generate more new business than you’ve ever experienced.

1. Have a very clear message

There’s nothing worse than a trade show booth that doesn’t clearly define what it’s about. If you’re investing in an exhibition booth, banner stands, and sales material, it’s essential that passers-by understand exactly what you can offer as they see you.

Try to reduce your company’s core benefits to a short and simple phrase. If you’re a marketing company, try ëGet More Leads!’ If you’re a product supplier, try ëThe Best Quality, The Best Prices.’ Your marketing materials should immediately tell people what you do and how you’re better than the competition.

2. Staff your booth with knowledgeable, friendly people

Many companies avoid putting their technical staff in a trade show booth for fear of losing sales. Instead, they fill their booths with salespeople that, despite being great at closing deals, aren’t as knowledgeable on the fine details of their products.

The best way to generate great leads from trade shows is to staff your booth with friendly, knowledgeable staff. Avoid sacrificing technical knowledge for pure sales skills. After all, the goal here is to generate leads, not just close big deals in person.

3. Make your brand as visible as possible

Most trade show visitors are going to talk with several different companies offering similar services. As such, it’s important that your brand takes up a more prominent spot in their memory than those of your competitors.

As well as emphasizing your product or service’s core benefits in your display stand, try to incorporate your branding ñ your logo, your name, and even your mascot ñ as a major part of your booth. Google faces stiff competition in the mobile market, but it always makes an impression at events by displaying its famous Android mascot.

4. Advertise to your core audience before the event

Inc. Magazine’s Christine Lagorio makes an interesting point about trade shows: 70 percent of all attendees plan their meetings before they arrive. If your business isn’t on their ëto visit’ list, how can you expect to compete against businesses that are?

One of the best ways to encourage attendees to drop by your booth is by running a contest. Texas Instruments, the well-known technology company, used this strategy when it asked attendees to tweet a picture of themselves at the company’s booth at ESC Boston for the chance to win an iPod Nano.

5. Get your SWAG ready

No, not that type of swag. SWAG is stuff we all get and it’s a staple of successful trade show booths. From coupons to plush toys, having useful SWAG is a great way to give prospects a lasting reminder of what your business can do for them.

One of the best ways to capitalize on the word of mouth effects of SWAG is to offer a unique giveaway. Most companies stick to the basics ñ coffee cups, books, and other generic freebies. If you can offer something unique, you’ll generate huge amounts of word of mouth feedback amongst attendees.

A great example of this is marketing company AKMG’s Ad:Tech giveaway. Instead of boring SWAG, they gave attendees customized skateboards. The result: a surge of positive feedback on Twitter and popular advertising industry blogs.

ABOUT: This article was written by Display Wizard, one of the UK’s leading designers of display stands for hotels, retailers, and trade shows. Visit their website to learn more about the most effective ways to market your business at a trade show.

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