Seven tips to successfully offshore marketing operations

Several weeks ago, I met a senior marketing executive from one of the world's largest brands. She was discussing the possibility of offshoring their marketing operations to.

As we got into the discussion, it was clear that there were three key drivers for their decision to offshore marketing operations -

    The brand had been asked to reduce spend by at least 20 percent. To put this in context, various industry reports state that 2009 marketing budgets were, on average, cut by over 20 percent compared to pre-recessionary levels. And the number of companies that cut marketing budgets was 25 percent higher than predicted in January 2009.

         As brands go global, maintaining brand consistency across geographies is becoming a huge issue for marketers. Consistency is important not just from a customer experience standpoint but also from the perspective of marketing efficiency. If you create standardized brand "templates," the local geographies can respond faster to market/sales needs.

         The marketing function is under pressure to deliver ever ROI much faster than before. Management is asking tougher questions of its marketing teams; the focus on metrics has never been sharper.

     I realized that the company had gone after the usual cost reductions such as the elimination of travel, training, new hiring and new campaigns. However, they were looking to further reduce cost and increase efficiency. This triggered the idea of outsourcing/offshoring marketing operations.

If companies are interested in offshore their marketing operations, what can they do to ensure that their plan is well-thought out and effective? My counsel to this particular marketing executive was to keep seven mantras in mind:

    Secure a champion - Ensure that the company has an offshoring sponsor or champion who can evangelize the need for offshore delivery, address any issues that come up and resolve problems.

         Charge the CMO to drive adoption - Make sure that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is fully supportive of the offshoring plan. The CMO's approval should be communicated to all brand managers else to combat resistance from the brand managers. One trick that I have seen work is to have the CMO ask each CEO during their monthly/quarterly/annual marketing reviews how they have leveraged the offshore unit to deliver marketing efficiencies. This will ensure that all the brand managers see offshoring as a CMO priority.

         Be clear about what can and what cannot be offshored - Draw up a list of functions that can be delivered from an offshore center. For example, offshoring event management can be costly and ineffective because it requires much client intimacy in terms of planning and last minute exigencies like booth set-up and brochure placement among others. While the designing of the booth can be offshored the logistics needs to be managed onsite. Therefore, draw up a list of what can and what cannot be offshored.

         Start with the low-hanging fruit to build credibility - The list of activities to be offshored must have the highest probability of delivering on metrics of efficiency, time and cost. To be credible, the offshore unit must first deliver low-hanging fruit, and then gradually scale up to more complex tasks. For example - start with parts of email marketing such as database creation and validation, design layout of marketing collateral, making brand-consistent PowerPoint presentations, website/portal development and maintenance, among others. Once these reach a certain level of stability, start to look at more complex aspects of marketing such as campaign design, or content creation.

         Keep all delivery options open - Offshore centers can be set up in several forms. These include a fully owned captive center, outsourcing functions to a third party service provider, or creating a hybrid model where some parts of the operations are outsourced to a third party service provider and some are retained within the captive center.

         Set up a robust governance structure - This is probably one of the most important but least understood outsourcing issues. A documented governance framework that details every process and workflow will help the delivery teams by making the task “process-oriented”. It will also put in place strong review mechanisms through steering committees to address any issues that the center or its client users may face.

        Publicize the offshore center’s successes - The company must ensure that the offshore center's successes and any client accolades received are publicized amongst top management and the wider marketing team. Perception matters.

Marketers have outsourced creative, right-brained activities as early as the seventeenth century. That was the genesis of the advertising industry. Since then, companies have evolved to a stage today when marketers outsource a majority of their functions - be it direct marketing, advertising, events, media planning, and even analytics which was hitherto closely held within the “ivory tower." Some have outsourced more than others. But today, an even broader adoption of outsourcing is underway - that of entire marketing operations. Marketers need to embrace this change and make the most of it to drive greater value for their business.

Source:http://blogs.wns.com/Resources/Blogs/BlogTopics/tabid/93/Article/99/seven-tips-to-successfully-offshore-marketing-operations.aspx

Making Your Product Descriptions Ready For Business

How far would you have to go to find a poorly written product description or unclear, confusing content? There is a good chance that some of you need to go no further than your own website.

I guarantee that if you browse ecommerce sites selling multiple products, such as beauty items and electronics, you will find example after example of poorly written, confusing, unintelligible, even laughable descriptions of products.

Have you ever been confused by poorly written descriptions or bogged down in unintelligible information? The writers of this web content did not intend to confuse you. These writers no doubt intended to convey clear, interesting information. They simply did not have the skills to do so.

Your product descriptions should be written using what we call "product description grammar".

Don't worry, this grammar will be written in everyday English. Basically, you will find this grammar to be the same you learned in school, However, there are a few things removed to give it a professional business-like tone and style.

In addition to a business-like style, product description grammar also means the language in your description is:

• Crisp
• Clear
• Concise
• Accurate
• Appropriate for the intended audience

The grammar used in the descriptions of your products is basic and should be used for all your products.

When we start writing your product descriptions, it will be in a conversational tone. It is written as if you were telling a friend about the features and benefits that your products have and why a customer might want to purchase them from you. Since you are telling someone about your business and products that means your description is written in the first person.

Since your description is in the first person, the pronouns "I" and "we" will be the subject of most of your sentences. When the description is finished the first person pronouns, articles, helping verbs and being verbs are removed. You will find that your description will have a crisp business-like tone to it, all your tenses will be correct and you will have a great, readable version of your description. You will see that writing a description using this grammar will produce content that can be read and understood without effort.

Everyone marketing online needs content and anyone can make mistakes that lead to misunderstanding. Follow the rules of product description grammar eliminates most mistakes. Your descriptions will be clearer and you will prevent misunderstandings between the seller and the buyer.

First-rate product description copywriting is one of the most overlooked, underused and cost effective weapons in your online marketing arsenal. It has the power to stop you in your tracks or contribute to success beyond your wildest dreams. Have you considered a professional team? Maybe it's about time.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Making-Your-Product-Descriptions-Ready-For-Business&id=7412049

Social Media Marketing And What You Can Do To Get Help

Social media marketing gives an indicator of the most popular trends today. You have to understand how much success social media marketing but it's best to include it. The advice here should help you begin if you know nothing about social media marketing.

Widgets can help out your site's visibility of site.

Facebook makes it fairly simple for your followers to share your content. If somebody leaves a comment on a post, all their friends will see a mention of this in their feed.

These tools allow you find users who belong to your target audience as well as influential followers. You can subscribe to the users you find, and hope they will follow your updates too.

When you post your article, it appears automatically as a LinkedIn update. This helps to save time and you'll enjoy more exposure in the blogging community.

Be flexible with updating your page is updated. When you are promoting an important new product, your customers will want to be updated more frequently. If you frequently find that you have nothing to post, you may want to post less often.

Make it a habit to respond to all the comments that pop up on your social media pages. You should do this for negative comments also. If your followers know you care about what they say, they will be more likely to stay loyal to your brand. Always respond to customers as soon as you can so they don't feel ignored.

Be prepared for the negativity that goes along with social media. Social media is awesome when you get praise, but there is also a negative side to it.Do not ignore them but answer them and help those customers who are unhappy.

Keep checking on your competitors' activities. Find them on social media sites and pay attention to their methods. You could either use a similar method or think of something outside the box to outperform them.

Social media is a powerful way to help with company brand very recognizable. Your logo should serve as your avatar and/or background of all profiles. Keep the same color scheme among your various social media profiles. Be consistent and use branding to your business's advantage.

A photo contest is a fun way to increase excitement and exposure of your brand.Offer followers an appealing prize for the user that posts the most entertaining and creative picture including your products or logo. This will help others to see your page as the users post them, exposing you to new markets.

If you are thinking about creating a Facebook page for business promotion, you should take some time to investigate what other businesses similar to yours are doing. When you go over their pages, and what isn't, and what isn't going to work. Make your page appealing and appealing.

Marketing via social media can be quite easy once you really learn the ropes. The truth is, marketing through social media is a great method of offering a useful, interactive experience for your advertising audience. If you thoughtfully implement the above advice, you will enjoy fresh and continued success from your advertising efforts.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/imperiastructuresltdcomplaints/Business/Social-Media-Marketing-And-What-You-Can-Do-To-Get-Help-bid-s8IU6SOv3998351.html

Smarter Web scraping from Connotate

Connotate has significantly upgraded its technology with the introduction of Connotate4, which, the company explains, simplifies and streamlines the “Webdata” extraction process and ensures full coverage of a website. It adds that the key component of Connotate4 is a custom browser that uses the Webkit engine powering such browsers as Safari and Chrome.

Connotate states its core technology is based on visual abstraction techniques that allow machines to view Web pages as humans do, enabling high-volume extraction of data from Web pages to be automated through a point-and-click interface. Further, it says, because “agents” are not relying on HTML code to find the data to extract, they can easily adjust to moderate site changes without breaking.

In addition to the custom browser at the center of Connotate4, the company highlights the following capabilities:

    Inline data transformation within the agent development process is a powerful new capability that will ease data integration and customization.

    Enhanced change detection with highlighting can be requested during the agent development process via a point-and-click checkbox, enabling highlighted change detection that is illustrated at the character, word or phrase level.

    Parallel extraction tasks make it faster to complete tasks, allowing even more scalability for even larger extractions.

    Build-and-expand capabilities turn the act of reusing a single agent for related extraction tasks a one-click event, allowing for faster Agent creation.

    A simplified user interface enables simplified and faster Agent development.

The new release allows Connotate’s intelligent extraction Agents to access about 95 percent of Webdata. And the adaptive platform can quickly accommodate new Web properties and technologies as they emerge, providing the ability to scale far beyond the competitive landscape. Existing customers of Connotate’s hosted solution will not be affected by the introduction of this new platform. On-premises customers will be migrated on an as-needed basis.

Source: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News/Smarter-Web-scraping-from-Connotate-96637.aspx

Internet marking is the finest method of increment of popularity in commerce

In today’s world key to any business is right kind of marketing strategy that needs to be implemented for the success of any entrepreneurial project. One of the fastest growing ways is to get the listing of your company in top search engines. SEO is one of the ways which can help in increasing or diverting the traffic on any website. People should understand the search result of their website is displayed on the World Wide Web. Different search engines work in different ways by providing different ranking to websites according to the search of the people. This is why same website has different ranks on different search engines.

Basically, website owner provides the keywords to the SEO providers which are appropriate to their business. Business SEO providers make sure the owners are charged low and also providing correct information to search engines. Providing better SEO in Ottawa is the basic feature that service providers aim at, their main motive is to make these services available to all the common people so that they can benefit there business in a better way. A good SEO mostly uses popular sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yellow pages etc.

These SEO companies make sure that the listing of their clients is upgraded by repeated updating and also there ranking reaches top on search engines. Consultations with SEO service provider can be availed for free by the website owners. SEO companies carefully chooses keyword for their clients because it has to be unique and commonly used to make them reach at the top .They do so by carefully analyzing the owners website and competitors website and then the strategy is made to determine the perfect keyword for their clients. Owner should make sure that the prices charged to him are competitive according to market.

Consultation and Analysis are important because the keyword formation is directly dependent on these two parameters if the SEO service provider fails to submit the proper keyword it would result in failure of whole SEO services for the owner. SEO provider can re create and also modify the keywords for any website. If anyone specifically looking to create a new SEO website for him then the Looking internet marketing company in ottawa specialists can help them in determining a new domain that could be related to the business of the owner. Secondly, good hosting service is provided by them which help a website fast to access by any user. The biggest task for Internet marketing specialist is Link building because it represents more than 80% result of SEO.

For any website owner good SEO link building can be good in this competitive world because it attracts the people. A good SEO developer plays a pivotal role in developing a perfect keyword for the company. Ottawa SEO companies are very famous to deliver their services to the customers at very reasonable prices. SEO services are available online one can visit their websites see the list of services offered by them, read the testimonials of the existing and choose from them pay online and get started.

For further detail about Business seo service in Ottawa please visit the website.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/businessseo/Business/Internet-marking-is-the-finest-method-of-increment-of-popularity-in-commerce-bid-cf9206bx84461691.html

Collecting Data With Web Scrapers

There is a large amount of data available only through websites. However, as many people have found out, trying to copy data into a usable database or spreadsheet directly out of a website can be a tiring process. Data entry from internet sources can quickly become cost prohibitive as the required hours add up. Clearly, an automated method for collating information from HTML-based sites can offer huge management cost savings.

Web scrapers are programs that are able to aggregate information from the internet. They are capable of navigating the web, assessing the contents of a site, and then pulling data points and placing them into a structured, working database or spreadsheet. Many companies and services will use programs to web scrape, such as comparing prices, performing online research, or tracking changes to online content.

Let's take a look at how web scrapers can aid data collection and management for a variety of purposes.

Improving On Manual Entry Methods

Using a computer's copy and paste function or simply typing text from a site is extremely inefficient and costly. Web scrapers are able to navigate through a series of websites, make decisions on what is important data, and then copy the info into a structured database, spreadsheet, or other program. Software packages include the ability to record macros by having a user perform a routine once and then have the computer remember and automate those actions. Every user can effectively act as their own programmer to expand the capabilities to process websites. These applications can also interface with databases in order to automatically manage information as it is pulled from a website.

Aggregating Information

There are a number of instances where material stored in websites can be manipulated and stored. For example, a clothing company that is looking to bring their line of apparel to retailers can go online for the contact information of retailers in their area and then present that information to sales personnel to generate leads. Many businesses can perform market research on prices and product availability by analyzing online catalogues.

Data Management

Managing figures and numbers is best done through spreadsheets and databases; however, information on a website formatted with HTML is not readily accessible for such purposes. While websites are excellent for displaying facts and figures, they fall short when they need to be analyzed, sorted, or otherwise manipulated. Ultimately, web scrapers are able to take the output that is intended for display to a person and change it to numbers that can be used by a computer. Furthermore, by automating this process with software applications and macros, entry costs are severely reduced.

This type of data management is also effective at merging different information sources. If a company were to purchase research or statistical information, it could be scraped in order to format the information into a database. This is also highly effective at taking a legacy system's contents and incorporating them into today's systems.

Overall, a web scraper is a cost effective user tool for data manipulation and management.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Collecting-Data-With-Web-Scrapers&id=4223877

Screen scraping: how to stop the internet's invisible data leeches

Data is your business's most valuable asset, so it's never a good idea to let it slip into the hands of competitors.

Sometimes, however, that can be difficult to prevent due to an automated technique known as 'screen scraping' that has for years provided a way of extracting data from website pages to be indexed over time.

This poses two main problems: first, that data could be used to gain a business advantage - from undercutting prices (in the case of a price comparison website, for example) to obtaining information on product availability.

Persistent scraping can also grind down a website's performance, which recently happened to LinkedIn when hackers used automated software to register thousands of fake accounts in a bid to extract and copy data from member profile pages.

Ashley Stephenson, CEO of Corero Network Security, explains the origins behind the phenomenon, how it could be affecting your business right now and how to defend from it.

TechRadar Pro: What is screen scraping? Can you talk us through some of the techniques, and why somebody would do it?

Ashley Stephenson: Screen scraping is a concept that was pioneered by early terminal emulation programs decades ago. It is a programmatic method to extract data from screens that are primarily designed to be viewed by humans.

Basically the screen scraping program pretends to be a human and "reads" the screen, collecting the interesting data into lists that can be processed automatically. The most common format is name:value pairs. For example, information extracted from a travel site reservation screen might look like the following -

Origin: Boston, Destination:Atlanta, Date:10/12/13, Flight:DL4431, Price:$650

Screen scraping has evolved significantly over the years. A major historical milestone occurred when the screen scraping concept was applied to the Internet and the web crawler was invented.

Web crawlers originally "read" or screen scraped website pages and indexed the information for future reference (e.g. search). This gave rise to the search engine industry. Today webcrawlers are much more sophisticated and websites include information (tags) dedicated to the crawler and never intended to be read by a human.

Another subsequent milestone in the evolution of screen scraping was the development of e-retail screen scraping, perhaps the most well know example being the introduction of price comparison websites.

These sites employ screen scraping programs to periodically visit a list of known e-retail sites to obtain the latest price and availability information for a specific set of products or services. This information is then stored in a database and used to provide aggregated comparative views of the e-retail landscape to interested customers.

In general the previously described screen scraping techniques have been welcomed by website operators who want their sites to be indexed by the leading search engines such as Google or Bing, similarly e-retailers typically want their products to be displayed on the leading comparison shopping sites.

TRP: Have there been any recent developments in competitive screen scraping?

AS: In contrast over the past few years, recent developments in competitive screen scraping are not necessarily so welcome. For a site to be scraped by a search engine crawler is OK if the crawler visits are infrequent.

For a site to be the target of a price comparison site scraper is OK if the information obtained is used fairly. However as the number of specialized search engines continues to increase and the frequency of price check visits skyrockets these automated page views can rise to levels which impact the intended operation of the target site.

More specifically, if the target site is the victim of competitive scraping the information obtained can be used to undermine the business of the site owner. For example, undercutting prices, beating odds, aggressively acquiring event tickets, reserving inventory, etc.

In general, we believe there is a significant increase in the use of automated bots to gather website content to seed other services, fuel competitive intelligence, and aggregate product details like pricing, features and inventory. Increasingly this information is used to get a leg up over the competition, or to increase website hit rates.

For example, in the travel and tourism industry, price scraping is a real issue as travel sites are constantly looking to beat out the competition by offering the 'best price'. Additionally, the idea of inventory scraping is becoming more common. The concept of bots being used to purchase volumes of a high value item to resell, or to increase online pricing to deter potential buyers.

With the high availability of seemingly legal software bundles and services to facilitate the screen scraping process, and the motives we've just described, it's really a pretty powerful combination.

TRP: How long has screen scraping been going on for and is it becoming more or less of a problem for companies?

AS: Screen scraping has been going on for years but it is only more recently that victims, negatively impacted by this type of behaviour, are beginning to react. Some claim copyright infringement and unfair business practices while in contrast, organizations doing the scraping claim freedom of information.

Many website owners have written usage policies on their sites that prohibit aggressive scraping but have no ability to enforce their policies - the problem doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.

TRP: How does screen scraping impact negatively on a business's IT systems?

AS: Competitive or abusive Screen scraping is just another example of unwanted traffic. Recent studies show that 61% of Internet Traffic is generated by bots. Bad-bot scrapers consume valuable resources and bandwidth intended to serve genuine web site users, this can result in increased latency for real customers, due to large numbers of non-human visits to the site. The business impact manifests itself as additional IT investment needed to serve the same number of customers.

TRP: Ebay introduced an API years ago to combat screen scraping. Is creating an API to provide access to data a recommended form of defense?

AS: Providing a dedicated API allows "good" scrapers access to your data programmatically and voluntarily observes resource utilization limits however it does not stop malicious information harvesting to be used for competitive advantage.

Real defense can be obtained by taking advantage of technology that can identify and block unwanted non-human visitors to your website. This would allow real or 'good' users to access the site for their intended purposes, while blocking the bad crawlers and bots from causing damage.

TRP: How else can an organisation defend itself from screen scraping?

AS: Using techniques such as IP reputation intelligence, geolocation enforcement, spoofed IP source detection, real time threat-level assessment, request-response behaviour analysis and bi-directional deep packet inspection.

Many organizations today are relying on Corero's First Line of Defense technology block unwanted website traffic including excessive scraping. Corero helps identify human visitors vs. non-human bots (e.g. running scripts) and blocks the unwanted offenders real-time.

TRP: Are there any internet rules governing the use (or misuse) of screen scraping?

AS: Screen scraping has been the topic of some pretty high-profile lawsuits for example Craigslist vs. PadMapper, and in the travel space for example, Ryanair vs. Budget Travel.

However, most court cases to date have not been fully resolved to the satisfaction of the victims. The courts often refuse to grant injunctions for said activity most likely because they have no precedent to work with. This is primarily due to the fact that there few if any internet rules really governing this type of activity.

Source:http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/screen-scraping-how-to-stop-the-internet-s-invisible-data-leaches-1214404