ReviewScale

1000 hits from 1 blog article

Anup S — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:15:09 +0000

I am really surprised to see that one of our articles bring in over 1000 hits per month and it has to do with How to write a great testimonial.

Here is Google analytics pageview widget which I have shown below.

Since this article is in so much demand we have decided to enhance this a little more in the next couple of days.

Key Lead Indicators - Top 5 ways to increase chances of converting prospects to leads

Anup S — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:40:58 +0000

Yes we will take the credit for coining this word - ‘Key Lead Indicator’. The real reason behind the post is to formulate a process of how to identify leads with the highest probability of becoming a prospect.

The key things you would be looking for would be :

1. Prospects with needs which align to your offerings

If you already have a list of prospects, further identifying the ones who have needs to be fulfilled which your product or offering can meet is a major step in the process

2. Prospects you can reach out to

Physical proximity is an advantage, but most important is that your marketing message should be clear and understandable. If you are marketing to a North American audience, the message should be tailored accordingly. Producing communication with Message segmentation based on Prospect’s interests is key.

3. Prospects who buy similar services or products

If your service/product is complimentary or even better than a purchase the prospect made, your prospect gets a higher score especially if its something they have to buy or use frequently.

4. Prospects who are hesitating to buy because they dont have the information

If you can educate the prospect about a service or product, then you can also influence them in the buying decision

5. Prospects whose rationalizing approach to buying matches to your key differentiators

If prospects look for specific features or reasons why they need to buy something and if you have some way of demonstrating that , these are high scoring prospects who should probably be a lead.

Permission management Android

Anup S — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:37:06 +0000

Since we were finding simple solutions for lead generation and CRM for the smartphone market, we started with the Android platform. The first thing we came across was how Android’s OS handled permission management for applications build for the platform.

High-level permissions restricting access to entire components of the system or application can be applied through your AndroidManifest.xml. All that this requires is including an android:permission attribute on the desired component, naming the permission that will be used to control access to it.

Since our software needed access to the contacts on the phone, it was as simple as adding this to the manifest file for the application.

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Fluid Business model

Anup S — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:50:24 +0000

One of the key mistakes we made at ReviewScale after the first 6 months of launch is that that we didnot align the company’s strengths to solve real customer problems and also make money at the same time. We were losing money.

The business model which our consulting business friend suggested was to use a mix of consulting and use the product at the same time. Unfortunately the consulting proved to be too biased. Biased in the sense that we were trying to sell our review management system along with our consulting.

This proved to be more of a big software company eg : Oracle approach.

Unfortunately, we are not there yet from a cost effectiveness standpoint. Our billing rates were too high from a small business standpoint.

Another mistake we made was that we were competing with the Search Engine Consultants in North America. Lead generation is first about being found and then making the prospective customer take a suitable action. So now we were competing with the SEO consultants in the space. Not a very profitable industry considering the fact that the results were hard to predict.

What does this mean ?

We are listening more. We are still in the lead generation business. We might be pulling out of the the online reputation management business. We are not sure. We are going to be Fluid without a specific focus for some time.

I guess being unsure is ok as long as we continue on the path to evolve and adjust.

New needs

Our existing clients need a way to manage their leads and integrate with an existing CRM software through their most used phone - the cellphone. They were ready to buy a new phone - iPhone or an Android phone to handle this.

Our response

We will be spending the next little while focusing on solving this problem because we believe it is an industry wide problem.

Demographic Research and a Focus Strategy

Anup S — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:57:26 +0000

Landing pages, especially for a B2B marketing campaign has to pay special attention to the user demographics. The page is usually browsed not by the CEO of the company and instead by his or her private secretary/ assistant. The private secretary has been given clear instructions on ‘what to look for’. A decision is usually made in the first 30 secs on whether the services offered matches. For a B2B landing page to be effective it has to be aligned with the FOCUS strategy which the company has taken along with serving the page to your profiled ideal visitor. It is important to understand with high accuracy what your visitor is looking for and what offers work.

What is a FOCUS Strategy ?

A FOCUS STRATEGY may be the most sophisticated of the generic strategies, in that it is a more ‘intense’ form of either the cost leadership or differentiation strategy. It is designed to address a “focused” segment of the marketplace, product form or cost management process and is usually employed when it isn’t appropriate to attempt an ‘across the board’ application of cost leadership or differentiation. It is based on the concept of serving a particular target in such an exceptional manner, that others cannot compete. Usually this means addressing a substantially smaller market segment than others in the industry, but because of minimal competition, profit margins can be very high.

Using the right keywords for your Landing Page

Anup S — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:23:21 +0000

We realized pretty early on in the business of online marketing, the number of landing pages we create for clients is directly proportional to the top keywords used to find their business. On an average we create around 3 landing pages for our clients. Reinforcing the words a visitor has used in his search right on the landing page seems pretty obvious, but it’s not that simple. This is an iterative process where client involvement is important early on.

We are a firm believer of the concept that for online marketing to be effective, an automated tool to generate pages will not work. Page templates or finding keywords require tools but high marketing efficiency of the actual page can only be attained by involving the ‘human factor’.

Campaigns must be mapped to normal-sounding headlines. So, for example, any search containing

Business Metrics - Conversion Rates - January 2009

Anup S — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:51:05 +0000

Thanks to Fireclicks statistics for this year. It is very interesting to note a worldwide economic meltdown hasn’t affected the global conversion rates which is still between 0 - 4% worldwide.

Business Metrics	This Week	Last Week	% Change

Conversion Rate: Global	N/A	2.70%	N/A
Conversion Rate: First Time Visitors	N/A	2.40%	N/A
Conversion Rate: Repeat Visitors	N/A	3.00%	N/A
Cart Abandonment Rate	N/A	68.20%	N/A

Defining your conversion goal - is that a hard thing?

Anup S — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:42:09 +0000

When we work with people on their landing pages, they find it hard to define what their conversion goal is. We decided that is good to list the different types of landing page conversion goals.

- For a newspaper mailing list, the conversion goal is to get the website visitor’s email address into a form and click on Subscribe

- For a contact form, the conversion goal is to get the visitor’s contact information into a form and click on Submit

- For a qualifying form, the conversion goal is to get the visitor to go through a series of questions and answer them accordingly and then click on submit before showing them how they can contact you

Hope this helps our next client.

Marketing law of unintended consequences

Anup S — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:00:44 +0000

ReviewScale’s primary purpose is to help users improve their online reputation and thereby help with their marketing efforts. This increases the leads generated through their marketing efforts with the tools provided by ReviewScale.

What has happened in the last little while is what we call the marketing law of unintended consequences. Some of our paid users have used our tools to tarnish the image of some of their competitors which has lead to a flurry of emails our customer support personnel has had to deal with. Even though we are not liable for the authenticity of the content ( please read our Terms and conditions) , we have made the decision to stop hosting reviews on our main index page. But users can continue hosting their reviews on their web pages, domains and landing pages.

Google considers some of our content to be of high value and thereby started listing these reviews in their top search lists.

It is amazing how some people are adamant on bringing other people down just because they are not as successful as their competitors are. Since ReviewScale is in the business of helping with your marketing efforts, we would not like to negatively impact other people’s marketing efforts. This is fair and it makes online marketing a level field to play.

The next piece of the ReviewScale Jigsaw puzzle

Anup S — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:20:26 +0000

After some serious discussions with a new acquaintance of ours, we figured out that our subscribers are missing a major service offering with ReviewScale. Something which we were thinking of bundling in with our Web edition.

The question we asked ourselves were : -

-What do customers do after they see reviews or testimonials ?

-What is the next action which you want your customers to take ?

And the answer (which was obviously so easy that we overlooked it) was your potential customers should be able to Contact you. And contact you if they are qualified to contact you then and there.

How can ReviewScale help?

ReviewScale will be offering shortly ‘landing pages’ or ’squeeze pages’ which will again increase your online visibility and lead generation starting with our Web edition subscription.

Stay posted for further updates.