Christmas is Coming, Whether you Like it or Not!
We’re not even a stone’s throw away from November which means Christmas is quite literally just around the corner.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly Christmas comes round once you’ve passed the age of receiving toys and when you actually have to start buying gifts for family members, who soon start to produce more members!
Christmas is paramount for every retailer that’s when the majority of them take the bulk of cash for the year and that’s when they need to sell the most. That’s why they have to use every part of the retail mix to ensure they maximise their revenue.
One of the easiest and most cost effective ways is through their affiliate marketing programmes and planning for Christmas means knowing what your key products are for the season – both in terms of gift buying and personal shopping for the party season – understanding who is buying them and giving them the help and encouragement to buy from you and ensuring your affiliates want to help you do well.
Happy affiliates mean a happy Christmas
Here are a few tips, they’re not mind blowingly groundbreaking just common-sense tips which we all should be following.
What are your top products?
You must know what your top sellers are, or at least what you expect them to be. Tell your affiliates. They aren’t working just for you and they don’t have access to all your stock information. Tell your affiliates why these are your top products and tell them what accessories, additional items they may want to push alongside these products. Affiliates aren’t stupid but they’re not mind readers either – give them the info they need to push your products.
What promotions are you running for customers?
Not everyone’s cup of tea but if you’re doing any promotions or offering special services for Christmas such as free delivery or returns or a special courier service which will allow them to order right up until the day before Christmas eve tell you affiliates. These guys give your brand and products so much more reach and will have new customers who might just try your product because of the service you are offering. If you want people to buy you have to tell them what you’re offering and this extends much further than your own site!
What are you doing to encourage your affiliates to push your site?
As we’ve said before, affiliates are working for more than just you and just like anything else they will work harder for the people that offer them the best deal. That doesn’t just mean the highest commission but the highest conversion, additional incentives such as competitions where they can win a prize or extra commission for improving their sales, or just giving them the tools they need to push your products as simply and easily as possible!
The point of all this – use all your channels effectively otherwise you are just wasting the money you spend on setting them up. As with everything in life, you only get out what you put in!
Google PageRank Finally Updates – Oct 09
At Last Google PageRank Has Updated
OK, I know I only posted yesterday but this is important.
For the past few weeks we have all been waiting anxiously on the PageRank update to kick in and now it has. As I only saw it a couple of hours ago I haven’t got too much info on it except that it looks like a biggie! Normally a new site wthl some links in it would open at a PR3 but sites I have seen have opened at a PR1 and blogs that I haven’t done any work on since the last PR update have been reduced to a PR1.
One site feeds the other...
It seems that Google are being less generous with the old green fairy dust than before. In saying that it’s not all bad because most of my clients have had a PR increases. I wonder if this has anything to do with Google giving more love to bigger brands?
I might need to do a PageRank explanation for the newbies…watch this space.
Google Webmaster Tools Needs Access Controls
Webmaster Tool Access Should Be like Google Analytics
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OK I’m not saying that we shouldn’t need a server request to get access but after you give access, as far as I have seen, you can’t take access away without changing server. This is an obvious pain in the ass and almost impossible for any large companies to do without a proper business case.
The problem with someone that no longer works with or for you having webmaster tools access is that they can drop your site out of the rankings with a click of a button. BIG problem is you have you have parted on bad terms.
In a less malicious way having webmaster tools access can allow an ex-employee/ agency exploit weaknesses in the companies website for financial gain or for in-depth competitor analysis. No one wants to be in the position where your old agency goes to pitch for your main competitor based on ‘we know what others don’t about your competitors’ get hired and then systematically take your natural search marketing apart.
What Should Google Do to Protect Webmaster
Google should tie Google Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics but only allow webmaster info to be seen if a server request has been completed. Not only would this allow you to control your users but I would suspect that it would increase the accuracy of Google Analytics tracking and allow particularly nerdy and analytical folk to figure out more accurate position CTR.
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SEO & Blogging
Recently celebrating its tenth anniversary, the blog combines as a key tool in Search Engine Optimisation. Writing blogs should be about fun and interaction and I am here to tell you that it is . Google needs bloggers to continue their work anyway, and they are a long way off perfecting their ranking system. The good news is SEO is here to stay!
Welcome To ChannelFreakers
Welcome to ChannelFreakers, we are warming up our blogging fingers. More posts to come.