August 23, 2010

Free Online Marketing Plan (Gambling-focussed)

I have created a marketing plan overview using a mind-mapping tool I’ve recently discovered and I thought I’d share it with the community. You can find it here.

As my interests lie in online gaming, my marketing plan focusses on growing an online bingo brand. It is (loosely) based on the SOSTAC framework, as used by renowned digital marketing trainer Dave Chaffey.

The SOSTAC model for digital marketing planning involves looking into:

  • Situational analysis (where are you know?, what’s worked?, what hasn’t worked?)
  • Objectives (where do you need to be? NB, objectives should be SMART)
  • Strategy (a summary of how you are going to get there)
  • Tactics (the details of the stratgy)
  • Actions (putting the plan into action. Who will do what? In what order? With which resources?)
  • Control (creating KPIs then measuring, reviewing and altering them to ensure you are moving towards your objectives)

    • Read the rest of this entry »

August 18, 2010

5 reasons why marketing projects fail

There are many reasons why an internet marketing campaign might not be successful. Here I’ll share with you my experiences, so hopefully you can avoid the same problems.

Lack of senior-level buy in
Almost anything you try to do within a small-medium business will fail if you do not have buy-in from your superiors. This failure can appear at different times throughout your project, from a lack of freedom to investigate the viability of a new initiative, to having budget pulled just when you are about to set everything live. Whenever it happens, it’ll have you pulling your hair out.

What to do about it:
You MUST have senior-level buy-in before you invest significant time on your projects. Believe me, any time you invest in getting your boss on-board will be worth it in the long run. Take time to create a document outlining:

* the potential benefits of your initiative,
* the risks involved (you are a conscientuous project manager after all, right? You know that not everything will go smoothly.),
* the costs (in terms of the three M’s of Manpower, Money and Minutes (time),
* industry stats or third party analysis on why others find this project to be worthwhile.

You might have to overcome specific objections here, so be prepared to fight for your cause. I have had to overcome the fears my FD had about PPC being ‘just too expensive’. Unless you have a worthwhile argument, your project might be on the back foot before it has even begun. Read the rest of this entry »

August 17, 2010

5 custom reports for Google Analytics and how they help

Custom reports in Google Analytics can give you some great data for beating your boss over the head with. Does he think that you only have one chance to convert your visitors before they head to a competitor? Does he think that brand keywords are the best thing since sliced bread and generics are only there to bump up your PPC spend? Does he assume that all your visitors are from the same place? Well this is your chance to set him right…! Oh, and they also give you some great insights for improving what you do, in general. Without the boss-bashing.

Below is a screenshot of some of my custom reports: Read the rest of this entry »

August 15, 2010

Review of Maxymiser, Conversion Rate Optimisation Provider

For those of you who don’t know, Maxymiser are a technology company based in London who focus on increasing the conversion rate of websites. My company hired Maxymiser, as we were convinced that we needed to improve our ratio of visitors to sign-ups.
Getting straight to the point, I would not say that our project with Maxymiser was a success, nor would I say that we received a positive ROI on over £40k invested in the project over 6 months. Perhaps I can shed a little light on why this was the case, which may also help prevent fellow marketers from making the same mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »

June 15, 2010

world cup odds – the long tail

I’m quite disappointed to see that only one bookmaker has made it into the top 10 Google positions for any of my 5 long-tail, world cup betting phrases:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 15, 2010

quick tip – bespoke affiliate landing pages

In trying to up the affiliate channel performance, I’ve decided to create bespoke landing pages on our site for our affiliates to drive traffic to.

We have hundreds of affiliates of all shapes and sizes, and focussing on many different areas, so I had to think of an efficient way to roll these landing pages out, without using up my designer’s time with dozens of completely different pages.

I decided that we would create a single template. Elements of this template could be altered individually, allowing us to create a bespoke page based on the type of affiliate, the affiliate’s core message about us, which games they were promoting etc. Read the rest of this entry »

February 28, 2010

poker.org goes for $1million. worth it?

So, the sale of poker.org for $1million broke the record for a .org domain. That’s all well and good for the .org domain family, but is the domain actually worth $1million?

It depends on what they do with it. Obviously if they sell poker chips then it won’t be, but lets assume that they’re either going to build a poker site or create a big-ass affiliate site.

It’s quite obvious that they’ve bought the domain with SEO in mind. Read the rest of this entry »

January 30, 2010

innovation i’d like to see in online gaming

I’ve been inspired to write this post after listening to PKR-founder, Jez San’s wonderful talk on Innovation in Gaming at the London Affiliate Conference.

I love when individuals have the balls to shake up an industry and it works out for them.

Whether I know the individuals or not, I often feel a strange sense of pride for them. It’s a weird feeling. I’m not a father, but it’s like how I’d imagine a dad feels when his son has just scored a 40-yard screamer for his country and sent everyone nuts. Only I’m not the dad of the individuals I’m proud of; I’ve never even met most of them!

I’m proud of Sacha Baron Cohen and how he’s created a new style of comedy that the whole world has embraced. Never met him, can’t really relate to him in any way, but I’m proud of him. Strange. Read the rest of this entry »

December 27, 2009

it’s all about search

Search is my favourite acquisition channel.

The key reason, in my book, that it trumps every other acquisition channel is a little thing called intent. In this modern world, where time is so precious and there are so many ways we can spend it, the time an individual takes to visit a search engine and look for products or services should be viewed as precious. Although Google’s servers take a micro-second to load and the average Joe can type-in the query in 3 seconds, it’s the realisation that this user – depending on the type of keyword he’s using – is willing to invest a few minutes looking at  multiple websites in order to find what he’s looking for that should have marketers clambering over one another for his attention. And of course they do – search is very competitive after all.

Depending on which industry the marketer finds himself in, this intent-effect can be multiplied. A user looking for help in planning their wedding is usually in it for the long haul. I’d know. Wedding planning bores me, so I only do it when I’m in the right frame of mind and I’m willing to invest a decent amount of time. The technical term is get-it-over-and-done-with-so-I-can-get-back-to-that-interesting-stuff. Wedding websites that are there when I’m looking for them will get my undivided attention. When I’m searching for the weather forecast though, I’m in and out like a shot. Did I notice the website’s *relevant* banners advertising their wares? Did I hell. Read the rest of this entry »