I could not find the time to update my blog for the past one month.   Yesterday when I was going through articles and research findings I came across some important facts which I thought of sharing with you.

It looks like that  in the  year 2010 search engines are going to play a major role than  before.  Influence of search results is the major part of the purchase decision cycle. Based on research it was found that 68.3% of search was related to the consideration stage and almost  42.6% search came for decision stage.



When looking at the above graph it is also clear in the  recent past the money spent on online had taken high and had exceeded the other mediums. Also in the travel industry search engines are the game deciders. In year 2009 so far it has been noted that 66% of the travelers use internet to plan their travel arrangements, 56% made online reservation and 34% of the travelers visit search engines first when considering destinations. The trend looks amazing and it shows search engine marketing is going to be the high prominent marketing strategy for travel firms. (This is not only for tranvel but for other industries as well)

In the search engine market still Google remains as the market leader. Please see below the graph

But there are threats for Google as well because of the rise of Bing. Google has already lost its 1% market share and Bing starting to grow . Within just a 3 months it has gained the 0.4% market share which has high  travel technology as well. So in future it can be turned out as a major travel search engine. Let’s see what happens.

Now its time for e-marketers to look at the new search display trends. You need not consider just building web links. Now its time to think of videos, news articles, blog posts, images etc. Google algorithm also has changed accordingly. In simple it means SEO is not going to be the just tweaking the site. It is all about creating and optimizing whatever forms of content make sense for the business  industry. Now Google has changed the algorithm, which values the video content much as well. Also according to research, video marketing is the number one tactics that US marketers are focusing in 2009. Please see below the e-market source

So what are the recent changes in Google? It has recently announced (Oct 7, 2009) the search results now feature an option allowing users to view formatted PDFs from within the browser. Also Google introduced the new feature on Sep 23, 2009, to the Gooel toolbar that  allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web site. The more comments you have for your site the more value is  increased.

Google’s searchwiki, a major addition to its user interface that allows users to edit search results. When using searchwiki you can re-order, remove or add web pages to search results for any query. You can add any number of comments you want, but there are few criteria Google consider. The quality of the entry, the author and user contributed signals such as voting and flagging. But one thing I have noticed the old SEO mantra remains the same. Meta tags, title header, alt tags and content are the kings anyway.

Few travel insights

Social media integration like videos , photos , blogging and tweets are going to play a major part. In simple I can see that the role of Social media effort is to directly influence social communities  so that the social media pages show up in the search results.

Using the social media effectively is going to be the major factor in future. Measuring the ROI and taking proper actions are going to be critical. Based on e-marketer research 84% of Social Media Programs don’t measure ROI. They just do everything without having proper mechanism,

Please find below some measuirememnt of ROI you can use.

ROI is a function of the goals may not always be monetary, but people have to consider ROO(return on objectives) such as branding, awareness relationship and engagement.

Here are some cool tools I found when getting contents for my post.

Post Rank – Allows to enter a feed URL and returns statistics about its posts, including which are the most popular based on how many times they are shared on variety of social networking sites.

Xinu – Is a handy website where you can type in a URL and receive a load of useful statistics ranging from SEO to social bookmarking and more.

Google Trends – People can compare the world largest interest in favorite topics.

Also use Google analytics and feedburner, quancast and copmeptecom If you are running a small site you can use Clicky instead of analytics.

Although off line marketing trend is stronger now,   but it is time for every business circle to think of online marketing much stronger than before.

I read many people biography including Warren Buffett,Anthony Robbins, Richard Brandson etc. But the one I  read today was so impressive. It was written by Adam Khoo a young entrepreneur and a millionaire. The ideas, experience mentioned in the document are so good for people those who are continuously failing in life and seeking motivation to succeed.

“You have ALL the resources you need to become the success you deserve to be. And there is really NO EXCUSE for you not to succeed, if that’s what you truly desire”- Adam says.

It is worth reading it. Click here to download and read

Audi disclosed an updated logo that gave a new shine to the four interlocked rings. The new four interlocked rings  look more sophisticated and subtle. But i think it won’t give a high impact on the brand map.But i’m not happy with the change in the letter work. I doubt whether this logo will get positioned well in the Audi brand lovers mind set. Lets have a look at it below.

Generally in the real world scenario, each and every brand face hyper growth and when time comes competitors as warmongers( aggressive attackers) always give them big challenges. It is always a challenging task to defend the strong competition even though you are a market leader. People sometimes get annoyed when they see their favorite brand being pulled out from the market. Not only these changes in the market but also changes from the brand side such as repositioning, re-branding etc may also upset customers mind set. Yes I’m talking about Dialog telecom.

As a hard core loyalist to Dialog, my story of adaptation was interesting. My mobile life started with Celltel ( now Tigo), Mobitel and in early part of my University life, I used hutch and then ended up with Dialog. For more than 5 years I am using the same brand and I would say I’m a hard core loyal to Dialog. Although I changed my numbers very often, I stayed with Dialog. The reason was their excellence customer service, CSR, the awards, the corporate colour (green) and innovation kept me as a customer of Dialog. Not only me but also my friends, family members were seemed to be more towards Dialog.

But the situation changed rapidly after the entry of Airtel. In my point of view it was started to capture the market and most of the Dialog users switched to Airtel. My brother and many of my friends also changed accordingly. I was too worried those days but I got a shock when I saw the change in Dialog corporate colour which I couldn’t believe. Earlier Dialog corporate color was totally positioned well in the customers mind set. Where ever people see a green colour outboard they tend to think about Dialog brand ( even I am also the same, if I come across a green board automatically I think about a Dialog outlet) . These days daily I come across complaints and comments about Dialog. What had actually happened to them?

I list below the regular complaints I receive from my friends

1 – Changes of customer care contact and quality

2 – Change of their corporate colour. I doubt very much that the current colour will strongly position in the customers mind set.

3 – Less marketing communication about the rebranding

4 – Unattractive commercials

5 – Recent asset write off issues – see one of a blogger comment and question regarding this ( he is my friend as well)

6 – Share price reduction in the market

Anyway my total worry is about the colour change. As a marketer, I know the psychological impact of color. Color is one tool in our branding toolbox to help express brand attributes and create emotional connections with constituencies, because in the real scenario there are many global brands which created success stories by associating their brand with colour. Although IBM is connected with the most common corporate color, UPS chose one of the least-used colors brown to help it stand out from the pack. The brown uniforms and vans and the tagline “What can brown do for you?” are crucial and effective elements of the company’s brand communications strategy. Global brand very often think on changing their corporate colur because they knew the danger of it.

It is clear colour can do the changes in the following way

• Color supports differentiation – I cannot see many differences between Airtel colour and Dialog colour. For me both reflect in the same way.
• Color can have a double effect
• Color supports a renaissance

Even though there are many problems, I still like to continue my loyalty towards Dialog. I’m sure when times comes the new entrant will be taken out from the market because of their discount driven strategy and 0777 numbers always convey the professionalism. Although most of the people have switched to Airtel as their second usage still Dialog remains in the first position when it comes to professionalism. Let us wait and see the outcome in the future.

As a loyal customer I have given my views and comments and my only desire is to see Dialog in the first position as in the past.

Global brand heroes create success stories when they transform poorly performing brands. The best examples would be the transformation of Dove as a powerful brand, the shift of McDonald to healthier eating. Good brand renovate the brands before it become too late. But there are brand leaders who wait until the last time to renovate and fail in the market.

Good brands renovate their brands while they are very strong and growing continuously. They try to identify market dynamics and change those as opportunities before the dynamics converts into threat. At last they get a reward of faster profitable growth.

When going through some articles and success stories I came across the following tactics that can be used to renovate the brands across a range of markets.

1. Develop a holistic understanding of the brand
   A customer driven understanding of the brand and its vision are highly important, organization should consider the holistic view such as brand’s heritage, personality, its functional benefits, emotional benefits and the brand perceived value in the mind set of customers.

   It’s very important to understand how customers view the brand in their daily life, and compare it with other thing in their mind. This understanding will help the brand renovators to see opportunities in the market place.

2. Look for segment swings
   Proactive renovating brands spot the trends in early by following the segments where the collision of the change will more expected to happen and segment the customers in different ways to fit their business.
3. Distinguish the underlying issues
   Not only the brands face rivalry from direct competitors, but also from indirect rivals. Proactive brands will always try to set apart the differences between the threats and the issue and respond effectively. Brand Guru David Aaker a brand faces threat from changing customer dynamics , commoditization and  brand lethargy .
4. Apply the right strategies
   May marketers think that every brand problem can be solved with the help of advertising and promotional campaign. Highly proactive innovators always ensure that their brands communications spotlight and reflect the different strategies to cope with existing brand strategy, relevance and with differentiation

To be successful in the market the brand leaders must understand the brand by keeping them selves in the customer’s shoes. They have to think how these segments are changing, identify the new dynamics in the customer’s life and then link the brand with those.

When I attended my CIM graduation last week the CIM Sri Lankan Region Chairman mentioned in his keynote address that it’s the responsibility of marketers to promote Sri Lanka abroad.So as an e-marketer I think I can give some ideas here to promote Sri Lanka as a small miracle abroad.

Initially I would like to mention that your fullest support should be extended to SLTDA (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority ). They have requested volunteers to help them. You can be a student or can be a professional with spare time in hand. Please visit SLTDA web site if you want more information. Those who have an interest please send a mail to the email id which has been mentioned in the site.

So what are the other techniques people can use? You might be a student, or an undergraduate or a working professional. I would prefer you to allocate at least one hour per day in order to do the following tactics. I’m sure you must be browsing the Internet every day and it is not a big issue to allocate your one hour for the betterment of your country.

As a Sri Lankan you might have visited many places every month and it could be a business travel, a family trip, an educational trip or competition. When you are staying in a hotel with good surrounding do not forget to take photos and videos. Upload the photos and videos and then write a review about your stay. Try to spread it all over online. When writing the review, remember to mention the country at the very beginning. The most famous sites used by foreign tourists are -

1 – Tripadvisor

This site has millions of reviewers and it is a source of information tourist look when they decide a trip. Make sure when writing a review mention about the country, the location, nature and people then about the place you stayed.

2 – HolidayWathc Dog

Most popular among UK Travelers.

3 – Virtual Tourists

The above is another popular site among world travelers and most popular among US travelers. This is not only a review site but also can share your opinion with others. There are chances people look for travel advice, and they request preferred destinations to travel. Just register an account, update the reviews, upload photos and show them you are a real traveler. Tell them how beautiful is Sri Lanka and request them to view your photos and send sources to check about Sri Lankan tourism.

Following are also similar sites which you can consider on

4 – Travbuddy

5 – Lonelyplanet

6 – e-Travel Reviews

7 – Real Travel

Video Marketing – When ever you visit any part of Sri Lanka do not forget to catch your moments in videos. Try to spread the videos all over internet. Remember to upload the videos with an attractive description too. Here sometimes you can target at

• youtube

• tripfilms

• dailymotion

• Vimeo

• Viddler

You also can do the same in the review sites as well.

Blog Marketing – Start a blog and write about Sri Lankan places, beauty and Tourism. Always write your real experience. Add the embedded code of the videos and add photos too. Keep updating your blog every day or even post once in a week. For related keyword searches your blog post will come up. Make sure your blog posts are fair enough to attract the visitors. If they are planning a holiday they should be able to get convinced. ( wordpress blogs are always better)

Try to promote your blog in the blog directories and make sure your blog has high visibility in the search engines.

Forum Marketing – Take part in online travel forums. Try to answer travelers questions and then convince them about the country. If can send them your blogs and the other video channels which you have created it would give you good results

Twitter – Register an account with www.twitter.com, and try to follow people in abroad. Follow them, tweet country stories, if any updates try to tweet that as well. Send them personal message, search for people who are planning a trip or holiday, send them direct messages stating about the country. It is the better way to reach the target audience.

Facebook – Try to be friendly with people in other countries, once you get a set of good audience start communicating with them. Market the country through social media and create pages and group and update it regularly. Join in other travel social networks and make friends, be the country promoter

The other sites are

1 – WAYN

2 – Zoomandgo

3 – Trip Connect

4 – iExplore

5 – Bootnsall

Last – Now you might be having most of the pages created online and also your video channel but you have to increase their search engine visibility. Bookmarking is the best way to do it. So once everything is done go to www.socialmarker.com, get register with each social bookmarking sites and then start book marking the pages. Try to do this every time when you update a page, answer something, upload a video, tweet something etc.

I will update this post with some more tactics soon.

While reading seths blog post about “Welcome to Isalnd Marketing” I came across this Zappos.com. Zappos is an online shoes, handbags and purse seller which is famous for high end shoes Zappos Couture. It serves the niche shoe marketing and they has started to sell eyewear, appreal and watches as well as electronic devices.

Zappos is famous for its sales model. It totally focuses on loyalty and relationship marketing. The strong relationship marketing program helped the company to get more word of mouth recommendations and per year it gets over 60% repeat sales from the existing customers.. Zappos is famous for its service excellence and the main highlights are

• Free shipping

• A 365 days return policy

• A 24/7 call center

Anyway after reading their success story and their service excellence I tried to find out any complaints about them. But all are against their competitors and most of them recommended to use Zappos.com. See below the responses

“Stay away . . . use Zappos.com for shoes instead. Never had a problem with that company when buying shoes online. “

“If you have good customer service and treat your customers with respect, I will spend a lot of money (just ask Zappos.com!)” – an advice from a customer to Hands N Paws.

“I love Dogfunk.com, Moosejaw.com, CCS.com, Zappos.com and Ebay for all my gear. These companies are reputable, cheap and fast. I hope someone reads these complaints before they order and not after.”

It shows the customers are pretty happy with Zappos specially the employees. In marketing we call employees as our internal customers. Caring, training, rewarding them will make the business a success in the industry. Zappos emphasis more on its core value and company culture. It core value is to deliver “wow” through service. By suitable training programs Zappos makes sure that all employees love their job not the money.

But according to the recent news it was announced on July 22, 2009 that Amazon.com will buy Zappos for $940 million in a stock and cash deal. I hope it gets more strength from a global giant and will deliver a superior value to customers than ever before.

<a href=”http://www.blogged.com”>
<img src=”http://www.blogged.com/icons/vn_ragulant2_1471375.gif” border=”0″ alt=”Blogged.com” title=”Blogged.com” /></a>

Tagged: amozon.com, zappos, zappos and amazon, zappos marketing, zappos shoes, zappos.com ]]> http://ragulan.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/zappos-com-%e2%80%93-comfort-is-not-a-crime/feed/ 1 ragulan zappos http://ragulan.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/ring-tone-marketing/ http://ragulan.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/ring-tone-marketing/#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:43:13 +0000 ragulan http://ragulan.wordpress.com/?p=325 ]]>

Ringtone Marketing. Ok, this one might not be earth bursting, but it’s full of fun. Sound is a great way to build brand recognition – think about all the jingles over the years that people could not get out of the head.

Mobile phone ringtones have become big business for indy artists and record labels and in Sri Lanka Airtel used it at maximum. Why not come up with or adapt some musical branding element that would make a great ringtone and put it on your phone, the phones of your sales folks and maybe even offer it to clients and web site visitors. That way, your musical jingle can make its mark everywhere cell phones ring – like, everywhere.

Creating one these is not that tough. It’s basically an mp3 file, ideally about 15-20 seconds in length. Spread it all over the market like Airtel did in Sri Lanka in their official launch. If you think about a real Ringtone marketing you should read this post. (Written by our e-commerce Manager)

Download my Class Notes.

Marketing Glossary (Reference -CIM) – Download

Introduction to Marketing (Reference -P.Kotler) – Download

Company Orientation towards the Market Place (Reference -P.Kotler, CIM) – Download

SWOT Analysis ( Reference -P.Kotler (Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing and CIM) – Download

Analysing Consumer Market – Individual Buyer Behavior and Buyer decision Process ( Reference -P.Kotler (Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing and CIM) - Download

Analysing Business Markets – Organiational Buying Behavior ( Reference -P.Kotler (Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing and CIM) – Download

Segmentation ( Reference -P.Kotler (Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing and CIM) – Download
Download all notes here

Google UK, Ireland and Benelux marketing director Dan Cobley says to “The Marketer Online”, the downturn will see the survival of the fastest to adapt their customer offering

Will adaptation help Google stay ahead?

We’ve always had a philosophy that the best kind of market research is real usage by real users. We often launch as beta before products are fully ready, because the way consumers use things tells us what needs to be improved. We have an internal programme called Dog Food that tests everything with 20,000 Googlers first.

Can consumers keep up?

For big new releases we might do a small promotion on the homepage of the Google search engine itself. That gets in front of more than 20 million people a day in the UK. The other thing we rely on is the viral effect of word of mouth, because we’ve got happy and loyal users who love to discover the new things from Google first and pass them on to their friends.

What does Google stand for?

Google is still very much focused on doing what’s valuable to consumers but we’ve always had a dual focus of consumers and advertisers. If you do the right thing for the consumer then the advertising success follows.

We stand for organising the world’s information and making it universally useful and accessible. Sometimes the route that takes is surprising – when we first acquired the company that became Google Earth there were lots of comments about whether Google had lost its way, but now everyone realises that organising the world’s information in a geographical context is actually incredibly useful.

Are Street View and behavioural advertising an invasion of privacy?

Street View doesn’t publish anything online that you can’t see by walking down a public street.

We consulted widely with privacy groups and consumers and advertisers before launching a behaviour based targeting trial and we built a very clear consumer dashboard where users can opt out if they choose. Most users want to see advertising that is relevant to them and behaviour based targeting makes that easier.

Is paid search out of favour?

A number of the bigger companies are just cutting budget across all areas of marketing right now. We’re also seeing consumers buying less, even though they’re spending more time researching online. So there is less value for the advertisers, particularly for bigger companies. But that’s being offset by more shopping and retail as a whole going online.
We’re also seeing a record number of small businesses starting to use online advertising for the first time.

What will most help marketers in the downturn?

Web analytics. You’d think a company like Google would be good at that intuitively, but when we applied analytical conversion optimisation tools to our own web pages – sign up for Gmail for example – we saw 30 to 60 per cent improvements.