Internet Marketing
18 Productivity Tools for Improved Time Management
If you’re doing anything at all on the Internet these days, the amount of time you have is your scarcest resource. With that in mind, here are 18 productivity tools I use to help me maximise what I can do each day.
Hardware Productivity Tools
1. iPhone
The iPhone is one of the best productivity tools available. Not only can you check your emails, manage your calendar and check your social media accounts, but you can do it in your dead time such as waiting in line or getting a coffee. Additionally, many of the software tools I recommend in this article are beneficial because of their iPhone apps.
2. iPad
When I first got an iPad I didn’t really know how to use it to get the biggest productivity benefits from my day. What I finally understood is that the iPad is not a replacement for your laptop or your phone. But when you use it in conjunction with the apps listed in this article, such as Things and Flipboard, you really start to see how its benefits.
3. Mac
As a die hard PC fan it was a hard decision to convert to Mac, which I did in January 2011. The transition was a bit hard at first and re-learning all of the shortcuts took a bit of time, but once the transition was over (which took me a month or two) I gained significant productivity improvements. Not only does my Mac start up and shut down in less than 20 seconds but features such as Spotlight and custom keyboard shortcuts save a considerable amount of mouse clicks (more about that later).
Advanced Tip: Don’t use your mouse to open any programs or documents. Instead use COMMAND + SPACE to open spotlight and then start typing the name of the application or document you want to open. When you see it at the top of the list, just hit ENTER and it’s open.
4. Smartpen
Anybody who attends a business meeting takes handwritten notes (at least if they want to the meeting to be effective). Usually these notes include action items, key points and other pertinent information. The question is, what do you do with those notes after you’ve taken them? If you’re like me, you probably have alot of notebooks full of notes from various meetings. Using a Smartpen is a great way to get your handwritten notes onto your computer. You handwrite your notes using your Smartpen, then sync your smartpen with your computer, and all of the handwritten notes are automatically transferred to your computer available to browse or search. The best part about this software is that it can transcribe your handwritten notes into text (and it’s very good at it) and you can search through your past notes using keywords.
5. Amazon Kindle
At first, the feeling of reading a book on a Kindle was a little jarring, especially because I enjoyed the feeling of holding a book and turning pages. But in less than a week the benefits of reading on a Kindle far outweighed any nostalgia I had towards physical books. The main benefits of reading on a Kindle are that you can set the size of the font you want to read at (ensuring a consistent reading speed), fast turning of pages, instant availability of nearly any book you want to read, the ability to send documents and web pages to it, and carrying all of your books with you wherever you go.
Software Productivity Tools
6. Things
Things is by far the best piece of software for managing a to-do list that I have ever used (and I have used a lot). Things is a software application that runs on Macs, iPhones and iPads. You can quickly add to-dos using keyboard shortcuts from wherever you are on your Mac, you can create categories and assign to-dos to categories, and you can schedule to-dos for the future. The iPhone and iPad apps synchronise with your Mac so you have the same list on all devices, and you can quickly add new to-dos through your iPhone or iPad when you’re on the go.
Advanced Tip: take your iPad to meetings, create a project name for the meeting and add to-dos for all action points and notes that come out of the meeting.
5 Ways To Drive Sales During Difficult Economic Times
With the current state of the global economy, more and more businesses are diverting their marketing budgets online to maximise sales and their return on investment. IAB Australia recently announced that the online advertising market is on track to surpass $3 billion in 2012.
Simply having a website or an Adwords campaign is no longer enough to keep up with the increasingly fierce online environment. Your online marketing strategy needs to be robust and multi-pronged to ensure you are successfully reaching your target market (wherever they are) and then effectively selling your products or services.
Here are 5 ways to drive sales and grow your business during these difficult economic times.
1. Develop a website that sells for you 24/7
What member of your staff would work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Certainly no-one I know. An effective website should be viewed as part of your team, it’s there 24/7 and allows you to sell your products and services even whilst your company sleeps. Spending money on your website to improve or update it is a long term investment and pales in comparison to the annual wage of one of your staff members. Potential customers and clients can instantly assess, judge and act without you having to lift a finger.
2. Engage with prospects on their Smartphone or Tablet
It’s predicted that in only six months time 1 in 2 people in the USA will own a Smartphone (Inside Retail). In Australia we’re not quite at this level yet however a day does not go by without seeing people on the move connected to their smartphone or iPad… browsing, shopping, sending emails or sharing photos. Not having a Google places listing, or a mobile-friendly web design, a Facebook page or for that matter simply zero online presence will impact your business’ ability to effectively deliver to the growing market of mobile search users.
How To Split-Test Your Way To Higher Profits
Your website conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for your online marketing. Your conversion rate becomes even more important if you are running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign. This article starts by highlighting the relationship between conversion rates and profits and will go on to show you 5 different ways to improve your conversion rate.
First let’s look at an example that shows how small improvements in the conversion rate can result in greater increases in profits.
How Your Conversion Rate Affects Profits
Example: Assume you are an online retailer buying traffic on Google AdWords. Your average profit on one sale is $100 excluding advertising cost.
Scenario 1: Your monthly advertising budget is $5,000 and your metrics are:
- Cost per click: $0.50
- Clicks: 10,000
- Conversion rate: 1%
- Sales: 100 (= 10,000 clicks x 1%)
- Cost per sale: $50 (= $5000 budget / 100 sales)
- Profit per sale: $50 (= $100 sale amount – $50 cost per sale)
- Overall profit: $5,000 (= $50 x 100 sales)
5 Things You Should Know About Your Online Marketing
The Internet has completely revolutionised not only the way businesses operate but how businesses market and connect with their customers. Yet according to the latest eMarketer report, 33% of B2B marketers don’t track their return on investment through their online marketing initiatives.
So, how well is your business doing online? And just how effective is your online marketing strategy?
Here are 5 questions you should know the answer to…
1. What Keywords Are You Ranking For And Are These Of Value?
Are the keywords you are ranking for on Google high value keywords for your business? And do these keywords bring traffic to your website?
There are three keyword types that people refer to in regards to search engine marketing. These include:
- Navigational: this keyword type is used to define when someone is looking for a specific web page and has some knowledge on the result they want their search to find.
- Informational: this is a keyword people will use when researching or looking for information on a particular topic.
- Transactional: a keyword commonly used by consumers when they are looking to purchase a product or service.
An effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy will focus on keywords that are relevant to your business, are transactional keywords (rather than informational) and have the highest monthly traffic volume on Google. There is no point ranking on Google for keywords that are informational and have no search volume as it will not drive traffic to your website to convert into sales.
TIP: Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to gain insight into the monthly traffic for each keyword you are optimising for on Google. Make sure when you do this that you look at the ‘Exact’ match keywords rather than ‘broad’ match. Exact match looks at the traffic for that exact keyword phrase. Broad match will display all traffic for the exact phrase as well as other similar or relevant variations.
How To Use Google Analytics To Improve Your Online Marketing
Are you overwhelmed every time you open Google Analytics? Does the thought of being confronted with so many graphs and numbers deter you from looking at your Google Analytics account on a regular basis? You’re not alone.
Google has recently released Google Analytics v5; their new version of the Analytics product, offering a more intuitive user interface and promising a completely new user experience. It still contains an enormous volume of powerful information, just presented with a fresh look and feel. Whether you’re sold on the new version of Google Analytics or still traversing the old, the point remains…if you don’t know where to look to find the key data that will inform your business decisions then its usefulness is immediately devalued.
A good strategy when first starting out with Google Analytics is to keep it simple. Think about what you’re trying to measure and the information you need to do this. Here are 6 of the most common questions businesses might ask themselves about their online marketing efforts and the reports available in Google Analytics to help answer them.
1. Who is visiting my site and how did they find their way there?
Google Analytics Navigation (New): Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > All Traffic
Most, if not all, businesses would be interested in the answer to this question; even if the sole purpose of your website is to have an internet presence and nothing more. This report can reveal a lot about where your visitors are coming from. For example, you might realise that:-
- The majority of your traffic is generated organically through Google, reinforcing your marketing spend on SEO and Google rankings; or
- Your PPC campaign is working effectively to drive more visitors to your site; or
- A large proportion of your traffic is being generated directly by visitors typing your site URL into their browser indicating perhaps the success of an offline marketing campaign or an increasing brand awareness of your business online (TIP: You can use the Google URL Builder to track offline advertising performance).
