Category Archives: New Media

Business Development, Business Strategy, FAQ, Internet, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing, Outsourcing, Start-ups

Top 5 Questions: How to Increase Online Sales?

2007 was the first year of MyOrbit – and full of great experiences. We consolidated our ground in E-Business and learned new things from our clients worldwide. Though we have completed 3 quarters, this New Year 2008 gives an opportunity to share the top 5 questions from our customers in 2007. If you are in any form of business – these will help you.

Q1. How can I increase my sales through online channels?

Answer: This really is a big question with no one answer – otherwise everyone would have done it! What we have found from our experience of running multiple businesses is that there is a need for a structured approach to attract targeted visitors (prospects) and ensure that the entire chain of events is planned – till the time an order is placed.

Many services companies will say “oh, this may work for product companies, but not for us”. This is just a lame excuse by someone who fears change. We have seen successful examples of services companies generating almost 80% revenues from their website + other online channels. The need is to create an online platform (say, a part of your website/blog) which shares valuable information with prospects, and a system which can do all of what a physical sales person can do. With Audio and Video possible on web-pages, a good website can generate more sales than a team of salespeople, at a fraction of the cost. The only expenses you have to make are for online marketing, for which you can see other posts on this site.

Q2. We have built a great website…now how do we promote it?

Answer: Do you know which places your clients and prospects visit often? That’s the place you need to advertise in some way. Consider buying text links, we have found them best on performance/price. Some sites also offer paid articles referring your site – those are good too. For example, our clients often visit sites like: www.cio.com, www.cfo.com, www.ft.com, and many smaller sites – all of them are good options to advertise. Small sites and blogs can give a great return on online ad spend. So invest some effort in that. Over the last 6 months, we have developed a way to identify such small sites relevant to each business, and you can contact us for more info.

Q3. What are the options to increase my online sales?

Answer: There are numerous options, and each product/service should plan a suitable mix of them: Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, Text Link or Banner Advertising on High Traffic Sites, Sponsored Articles on Sites or Blogs, Email Marketing, Mobile SMS Marketing (this is a very exciting area, and will evolve rapidly in 2-3 years – if you are a consumer products/services company – you just can’t afford to ignore this).

Q4. How much should I spend on online marketing?

Answer: Just like in a physical, brick & mortar business – your online marketing budget would have two components: (1) Brand Building (2) Product/Service Marketing. Now, if you already have a known brand, then skip (1), and spend effort and money only on (2), which is more focused towards earning dollars by selling your Product and Services. Plan to spend up to 10% of the sales volume, and spend in phases to ensure results are coming. So if you have a product/service of $500 value, and you want to sell to 200 customers, then your desired sales volume = $100,000. So you should plan to spend up to $10,000 in online marketing. This does not include your fixed costs, like staff salary and business operating expenses.

Now, it’s important to note that the amount you spend will depend on the gross margin you have on the product/service. So you can choose to spend just 4-5% as well. But 10% is on the upper side, and will perform very competitively to physical sales people. If you are spending more, you are probably not executing well and there is room for improvement.

Q5. What kind of team and skills do I need to increase my sales online?

Answer: The team can be very lean, but must understand your business and products/services well, and also understand how information is shared in the Internet space. Many Small and Medium businesses are able to do it (with some initial guidance) with just 1-2 full-time staff because they can easily coordinate with the sales and production teams. But its a different problem in large companies: the marketing departments often don’t have the skills and support to generate online sales, and the sales teams don’t have access to any part of the website – so it’s a difficult situation.

Our recommendation is to give the responsibility of online sales also to the Sales/Product Teams, and give them the tools and training to make it happen. Regardless of your company size, new media tools can be (and should be!) used successfully. If you are not sure about your team’s understanding/skill of operate your blog (write and discuss with audience), you can contact us for inputs as we have done it for a few companies in 2007. At its core, your website is an extension of your key business people and presentations – and is best suited to generate business leads.

We hope you found these answers useful. You are welcome to ask your questions on how to increase online sales.

Wishing you a great 2008!
Shankar AVSB
CEO, MyOrbit

Advertising, Innovation, Internet, New Media, Online Marketing

2008 New Year Resolution: Publish Your Own Book

Over the last one month, it was the season of New Year resolutions, and there’s one resolution which seems to be getting more popular: to write a book (only a handful of folks, but that’s substantial already!). A colleague on Wall Street wants to write a book on Scuba Diving Adventures. And others want to write about better Business Practices, Internet Security, ERP implementation tips, etc. The topics are varied, but the point is – people want to express themselves to a larger circle – very much like a blog works in the online space.

And here’s a question that was asked earlier today by a VP of Technology Solutions, which prompted this post.

My son is near completion of his first book, I’m prejudiced because he’s my son but it is very good for a first novel. Just an opinion of a reader and a father :) What is the best way for him to go about getting noticed by publishers? This is completely new ground for him and I have no experience in this area so knowledgeable experience is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Book publishing is easier today than ever before. Thanks to the Internet, and extensive communication infrastructure, Print on Demand (PoD) is a very viable and low-cost way to have your book published.

Based on my experience of publishing two books — an EBook and a Paperback that’s WIP, and helping a family member in publishing a printed hard-bound book —  I strongly believe that the old-style publishing of seeking an agent/publisher and the run-chase is not necessary anymore. The agents/traditional publishers are risk-averse and typically accept people with established credentials. So don’t waste time in writing and posting manuscript/ sample pages to an agent/publisher.

Things have moved beyond, and you should make full use of the POD (Print on Demand) capabilities of the following two publishers – they are the two best options for your case:

Book Surge (An Amazon Company): http://www.booksurge.com  
Lulu: http://www.lulu.com  

I have personally used the services of both of them, and spoken with their managers – these folks are very good, and can do any type of book – in 10% the time it will take in the traditional approach. Even when you publish with Lulu.com, you can get your book available on Amazon and other online/offline bookstores by paying about $100 dollars.

And once the book is published, you can use the Internet to promote the book’s web page on Lulu or Amazon – if you are unsure how to do – just let us know using the Contact page. This is something we do N times every day!

Good Luck!
Shankar

Advertising, Business Strategy, Innovation, Internet, Market News, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Retail, Training

Bezos describes Amazon Kindle EBook reader

1 Comment

So you can think of Kindle EBook Reader as a ‘large-screen pre-paid cellphone’, through which Amazon aims to galvanize portable book reading like Apple did to portable music through ipod and iphone. As you can see, Kindle is released just in time for the holiday season! How many gadgets can we really have on us?

Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Trachtenberg talked to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezor, who unveiled the Kindle, a $400 wireless device – purpose built for E-Book reading. Bezos says Kindle will make reading electronic books much easier. It uses 3G cellular connection to download the content directly from Amazon’s site, and Amazon will take care of the complexity behind the interacting with the cellular. What do you say?

Some serious analysis: The global EBook market is estimated around $25 million, and if this device stands up to the promise, then that market can essentially double. The price point of $400 looks high – its aimed for entry and holiday shopping.

In two quarters, we can expect them to sell on Amazon marketplace under in a more attractive $250-290 range. And if the product does well, which company is best placed to compete? Device manufacturers: RIM with an advanced Blackberry, and Google Books + Nokia with a new large screen version, could be top alternatives.

In fact MyOrbit has a couple of EBooks getting ready for publication, and we will check if Amazon has some special deals for publishers. We will share updates from our discussion with Amazon. Stay tuned.

Business Development, Jobs & Careers, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, People, Sales & Marketing, Training

Harvard Law School podcast: Negotiating for Job Satisfaction and Success

1 Comment

There are times in the careers of most professionals, when you will feel if the job you are doing is going the way you wanted it. Even when we take up new jobs, we assume somethings rather than discuss them upfront – which also leads to issues sometimes. These are very common situations, and happen across career stages and industries.

This latest podcast from Harvard Law School features an article from the November 2007 issue of their “Negotiation newsletter”. It talks about how thinking broadly about your career goals can increase your value and opportunities both inside and outside a hiring organization.




The original post and podcast are available here.
And here’s the main site for more info: www.pon.harvard.edu/

Advertising, Business Strategy, Innovation, Internet, Market News, Mobile & Telecom, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing

Open Handset Alliance announced -Google Android to Arrive soon

Google has announced the details of its mobile OS strategy. It’s called Android and its the brainchild of the so-called “Open Handset Alliance.” The Daily Tech Rag reports on the latest and very interesting development in the Mobile application space.

Google has teamed up with 34 different partners in the technology space (including NVIDIA, Intel, Texas Instruments, Synaptics, Marvell, Qualcomm, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile, Sprint, Skype, LG, HTC, KDDI, DoCoMo and China Mobile) to create the Open Handset Alliance (OHA)–a group focused on building an open, fully customizable alternative to closed operating systems like Windows Mobile 6, Symbian S60 and the iPhone OS.

The OHA’s first product will be Android, an open-source mobile OS and associated application suite that’s built on the Linux operating system (and will be open-sourced via the Apache v2 License). The Android SDK will be made available to developers on November 12th and Android-sporting handsets will flood the market next year, from device manufacturers like HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung.

These handsets will be available during the second half of 2008 in the U.S. (from T-Mobile and Sprint) China, Japan, Germany, Italy and Spain. As has been reported earlier, the Android OS will be targeted toward consumers and will be available to OEMs free of charge (the OS will be ad-supported, like all of Google’s other apps).

“A few observations:

  • It’s interesting that Google isn’t putting their own name on this but rather, taking a step back and pushing the OHA brand. While this certainly seems like a collaborative effort to a degree, it’s clear that Google is the driving force here–they’ve had the OS in development for three years now.
  • Will this force other carriers/device manufacturers (most notably AT&T, Verizon, Nokia, RIM and Apple) to open up their handset platforms?
  • Does this mean that just about every desktop developer who has thus far been shuttered out of the wireless industry will make a mad dash for that SDK in order to have an Android app out by next year? You had better believe it.

From the looks of it, Google and the OHA are sitting on what could be a real game-changer here, in terms of openness, user-customization and mobile functionality. Android is expected to usher in an age where mobile devices operate more like PCs, with users downloading, installing and customizing to their heart’s content. ”

Endadget has compiled some useful background information – if you want more details.

Read – Google press release
Read – Android mobile OS overview
Read – Google blog: “Where’s my Gphone?