For an online retail store the top spot of a search engine results page for any product you sell is the holy grail of online marketing, it is like having the prime spot on the high street or the biggest and best shop in the mall. Of this lucrative cherry there are also two bites, organic and paid listings.

One online company seems to have achieved this lofty goal in fairly short order, namely one worldstores.co.uk.

In an apparently shrinking market of home and garden furniture Worldstores.co.uk is thriving and last year boosted revenue by 70%. So how did they do this?

First some background information.

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I recently gave a talk on behalf of GBM as part of their Video Solutions day at Vison+Media at MediaCity. Since the talk I have had several people request some of the case studies I showed, so I thought I would collect as much as I could from that talk into a blog article.

A few years ago we took a major decision at Red C to push our digital video offering, this came about after we read an article in Campaign Magazine, which highlighted that the agency that could successfully deliver low cost video solutions to clients would have a larger share of the future. Which is true when you consider all the places now where clients can use video, from video adverts on the internet to video embedded in magazines on iPads to narrowcasting in Petrol Stations and Taxis… and of course video on YouTube and Vimeo.

Rather than highlight our own work; at the talk I highlighted several video case studies that over the years have impressed me. Together with the videos, I highlighted the responses the videos have received as well as reasons why I think they have been so successful… so here they are:

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Technology. It does not like to stand still does it. In fact it makes me smile that if we grabbed someone from ten years ago and dropped him or her in the middle of the Technology for Marketing & Advertising Expo at Earls Court in London… they would probably think they were at least 100 years in the future.

It’s very easy to walk round here and look at some stands and just say ‘Wow, that’s clever’. It’s also very easy to attend some talks that really get your mind racing with the possibilities for your clients… so it’s probably a good job I’m spending today and tomorrow here then!

Thanks to it being painfully slow to get in, I missed the special keynote presentation from Google. From what I could gather, they are saying mobile phones are the future and they were amazed how many people relied on mobile browsing during the ash cloud crisis of 2010.

Anyway, despite missing that talk, here’s what I did manage to listen in on, on day one.

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I’ve got a confession to make.  I’m a PPC turncoat!

I’ve changed sides in the last 12 months on one of the most controversial issues in PPC marketing.  It’s a debate that’s generated a lot of virtual column inches in the search engine forums, and I’ve done a complete u-turn during 2010.  The issue is whether you should be bidding on your own branded terms, and I can recall throughout 2009 passionately arguing that clients shouldn’t pay for clicks that they would get anyway – for free – through being number one in the organic listings.  They would simply be cannibalising their own natural search traffic.

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I’ll admit it to you all… I love Star Wars. And I’d love to have the powers of a Jedi. If I did, I’d use my Jedi mind-trick powers to stop unwanted ad clicks. Or better, I’d use my mind-tricks on an imperial storm trooper and get him to tell people to move along.

Ah well a man can dream… a man can dream.

Google does have a few tools, however, that we can use to help us direct our PPC ads at the people we want to see them and hopefully by-pass the ‘looky loo’s’, saving us money and improving our return on investment.

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What's not to love!

Monopolies are a bad thing, we all know that. It is a universal truth that greater consumer choice creates competitive pricing, innovative products and a fairer world for all. Giant corporations that merge, acquire, undercut and annihilate their way to total domination are looked upon with fear and distaste. I remember, as a student, reading ‘No Logo’  by Naomi Klein and being enraged by the plight of the independent coffee shops, delicatessen’s and family run enterprises that had been crushed by the giant corporations.

As a result I, like most people, have an instinctive predilection to root for the plucky underdog as a response to the dominance of a competitor. It is this basic human instinct that companies like Virgin, Apple and Airbus have used to their advantage to become the global corporate giants they are today. In all areas of my life I will always give the little guy my business, even if it takes more of my time and comes at a premium. All areas, that is, except for the search engine I use. When I’m looking for anything online I’ll always choose Google.

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Google Analytics is a fantastic FREE tool for showing you everything you would need to know about your website: who’s viewing it, how many are viewing it, what they are looking at, how long they are looking at it and whether your advertising campaigns are working. But with so much information available at your fingertips it’s difficult to see what you should be looking at and how you can use it.

Below is my detailed guide that should help make things clearer. It shows the top reports you can get through Google Analytics and more importantly how they can provide insight that will help when making important business and marketing decisions.

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On a recent scouring of the web for marketing news, I stumbled across this fabulous story about copywriter Alex Brownstein. Fed up of not being able to get in front of some of New York’s finest Creative Directors, he devised a PPC strategy to get himself noticed by the likes of Scott Virtrone and Ian Reichenthal… by playing on that egotistical moment when these guys would Google themselves!

Marketers have for a long time now realised that by focusing on long-tail keywords that have less competition, not only will you pay less per click, but you will also have a higher conversion rate. In fact this conversion rate can be as high as 200% when compared to short-tail, or generic, keywords.

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Facebook, Twitter and YouTube… not what first springs to mind when you think about politics. But over the last few years, more and more politicians have started using the internet as a tool to drum up political support.

When the Presidential elections in the US got under way in 2008, Democratic candidate Barack Obama used the internet to great effect to raise funds and gain supporters in his race to be President. His success has seen UK politicians follow suit and with the current general election, UK political parties have been pushing their online activities more than ever. Below are some examples of what they’ve been up to:

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During the 1980s and 1990s, two giants of the soft drinks world went to war. In the red corner we had the Coca-Cola Company. In the blue corner was PepsiCo. While Coca-Cola would entice us with the ‘New Coke’ before seducing us back again with ‘Classic Coke’; Pepsi used a whole host of pop and movie stars to show us they were the ‘Taste for a New Generation’ and even went as far as demonstrating to us that the average person on the street preferred Pepsi thanks to their ‘Pepsi Challenge’.

Just when we thought the marketing landscape was getting a little dull, we now have a new battle on the horizon. Instead of battling to quench your thirst… this time we have a battle to satisfy your online search needs. Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls… let’s get ready to rumble as Facebook, Google and Microsoft go to war in the battle to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the search engines.

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