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Harald Anderson is the director of search engine marketing at Clickbooth. He has been marketing online for over 10 years focusing on both organic traffic generation and paid search campaigns. He conducts regular educational webinars with top industry affiliates who share their experiences with online testing, conversion and powerful affiliate marketing tactics. He is a regular speaker and trainer at industry conferences and seminars. He advises search publishers at Clickbooth on cost effective traffic generation strategies.

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How To Not Fail, Flounder or Flop

Written on
August 21st 2008
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by Harald Anderson  |
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ads_have_value_small.jpgADOTAS — The language of the internet is slowly moving to audio and video. Will you resist the change or embrace it?

Recently a New York Times study reported that 52% of all online traffic is video related.

Have you ever noticed the battle that technology has to go through before it is accepted?
Today we are seeing incredible technological advances in audio, video mobile and text messaging as traffic generation alternatives.

New technological breakthroughs are always perceived as a threat. People unaware of the technology are slow to see the benefits of the new solution. Instead they usually look at the threat of loss the new innovation is creating.

One of the best cultural examples of this is the folk song “John Henry.” Although the legend of John Henry sounds like the ultimate urban legend, it is certainly based on historical evidence.

In order to build the railroads, companies hired thousands of “steel driving men” to smooth out geography and eliminate any obstacle that stood in the way of the proposed railroad plan. One such obstacle was the Big Bend Tunnel — more than a mile straight through a mountain in West Virginia. As the story goes, eager to reduce the cost of employees and to also speed up progress, some tunnel engineers were using steam drills to power their way into the rock.

According to the famous ballad, on hearing of the machine, John Henry challenged the steam drill to a contest. John Henry won, but died of exhaustion, his life cut short by his own determination and superhuman effort.

Man versus technology.

When the typewriter was invented all of the clerks who wrote manually were the ones who were responsible for resisting the change. So much so that they actually organized group protests and even attempted to burn down a typewriter manufacturing company.

The same is true for any new breakthrough technology. When the word processor entered the marketplace in the 1970’s it was the typists who most resisted the change. Old technology suppresses new technology. This is the age old truth through which I feel it is important to look at to better understand the core values of the eRevolution.

There is one word which very quickly summarizes what the eRevolution is all about.

People think it’s all about technology.

However, the word is “Accountability.”

The online businesses that are reaping the highest rewards follow one very simple formula that is at the heart of the eRevolution.

They want to know how many visitors are visiting their Web sites and from that amount how many are becoming customers.

This is referred to as their conversion rate. All prosperous online businesses live, eat and breathe their conversion rates.

All floundering businesses are unaware of this simple yardstick.

Success online is summarized by the mantra, ‘give the world something to click on,’ if you know your conversion rates you’ll enjoy the ride a lot more.

Text, Audio and video are all powerful traffic generation alternatives.

Promotion online can be done with text, audio and video and you have to know all three methods if you really want to prosper.

It is much easier than you think.

Newbies wrestle with technology thinking that the answer lies in technology.

Businesspeople worry about getting their message out into the world.

The difference is huge.

Text, audio and video are simply different layers of one another.

You are reading this message in a text based format.

If I turn on the tape recorder and read it…it becomes an audio based message…when I attach an rss feed to it, it becomes a podcast. Podcasting is one of the things that has made iTunes one of the top ranked sites in the world. Search Engine Spiders love podcasts.

If I turn on a video camera, or take graphic images and turn into into a slide show I have a video.

Videos are among the fastest way to get eyeballs.

The three components of successful marketing online are:

1) How much traffic are you getting?
2) What did that traffic cost you?
3) What is your conversion rate?

Use technology to always answer those questions and you can’t help but succeed.



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