On a regular basis, Trovus wants to give something back to our community by sharing our insights and best practice from case studies and our experiences to help your drive more value by using innovative web marketing ideas.

Finding out who is using your website can lead to many creative ways for creating value for your organisation. There is no prescriptive right way to use this information, so Trovus using Trovus Revelations want to help support you by sharing ideas on creative new marketing initiatives and ways that your organisation could extract value by knowing who is visiting your website and why.

Client Experiences: an SME Software Company - creating a focused Direct Marketing List - target 30 companies, not 3,000!

I spoke with one of our newer clients this week on how they are using Trovus revelations and using the knowledge generated by knowing who is visiting their website.

The first feedback point is that it provided a great number of revelations in terms of understanding exactly who was using their site and why. Prior to this, they had no idea who the users of their site were - it just looked like a large number of users.

The second was they developed a process for creating a highly focused and relevant direct marketing list - there were 4 steps in the process:

Step 1 - they went back over the past month and identified 30 new companies who had been on their site who looked like potential prospects.

Step 2 - they then looked up the relevant contacts in an industry yearbook which identified the relevant decision makers at all those organisations.

Step 3 - They sent tailored letters to all 30 companies focusing on the content each organisation had been looking at.

Step 4 - They then gave them to their tele-marketing company to call them back

Results: So far, one of the companies has responded and has signed up for an Exhibition run by our client, and they are optimistic they will get more.

There are many ways to get value by knowing who is interested in you and your services - we will continue to share our thoughts and client experiences in this new and innovative of marketing from the inside of your website.

For more case studies and experiences on how this information can be used to generate real revenues for your business, speak to website revenue generation specialists at Trovus and see how we are working with b2b web marketing techniques to increase client annual revenues by 4-5% from using this information.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7673486.stm

Interesting and probably not unsurprising that they are feeling the pinch. They are a great indicator for retail sales although you might expect ebay to have more robust results than the general high street as whatever the high street prices, the inherent mechanism within an auction site should make them cheaper.

However, this doesnt mean that it needs to be bad news for all companies driving value from their web presence, be that selling direct to consumers or selling business to business. The key as always is to differentiate from your competitors. There is still a lot of business out there and the key is to make your web presence work smarter and harder.

In my view, this means driving more intelligence into your web presence - you need to understand exactly how your customers and potential customers are finding you, using your web presence and what behaviours they exhibit before they eventually convert (or not) into actual customers. Its not a time for despair, its an opportunity for those willing to invest in really understanding how the web could work for you and driving more value from your web presence.

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Just back from running the Windsor Half Marathon. Glorious September sunshine for the race and perfectly organised.

Finished in 1 hour 55 mins which is a little quicker than my previous best in Reading Half Marathon of 2 hours 22 mins.

**Updated 22nd Sept - official time from the Windsor Half Marathon website is 1 hour, 54 mins and 35 seconds, and came in 1466 place, out of around 5,000 runners.

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I am sure there cant be many people who have been able to avoid all the latest news about the banking crisis and in particular the run on HBOS (most likely caused by hedge funds shorting them).

In times such as these with depositors and investors with heightened concerns about their investments, the natural reaction is to start to look around for information on what is going on.

For me personally with deposits at HBOS, I started with the Radio 4 Today programme (lots of sport and not much news), then to the BBC website, the HBOS site itself, Reuters and Interactive Investor. Clearly events are moving quickly and the press havent had time to respond to events so for a period of time, one is in an information vacuum.

As a keen advocate of the power of the web, I am then tempted to look to the web and blogs to get the latest information. In this case, it seems that events are moving too fast even for the blogosphere as I can find no relevant blogs (at least by 910 am).

By 9:31, the latest information (other than a sea of red falling prices on Interactive Investor) is a story on the BBC that Lloyds are in talks to buy HBOS at levels of around £3 a share:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7620483.stm

Whether this is true or not is clearly up for debate - its rumour at this stage and you wonder whether it is a story put out there to stabilise the market.

What occurs to me through all this is the information vacuum and you wonder whether the use of blogging and the web could help fill this information vacuum and help to re-assure depositors and investors around what is going on. I looked at the HBOS site on the Investor Relations page just now and could see no updates or re-assurance.

 

Clearly, I appreciate this has just happened to them and they are I am sure busy working out how to respond.

Surely though, in these troubled times, these are the eventualities that the Investor Relations and Communcations teams consider. Why not engage through everyones primary channel these days ie the web and keep concerned investors and depositors updated through a blog, information updates and so on.

The danger otherwise is that people in search of information turn to less reliable sources on the web - nothing could possibly fan the flames of concern faster than a number of blogs spreading rumour and fear …especially if hedge funds and the like were to get behind them

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Just a quick one…we’ve been getting a great press response to our Launch…select articles below where we have been profiled so far:

Brand Republic

SME Web (this is actually a blog I wrote for SME Web)

Netimperative

IT Director

TMC Net

Bits of News

 SB Informer

Great to get such a good response and some nice write ups from Brand Republic and Net Imperative.

More to come hopefully : )

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Quick note to say we have now formally launched Trovus Revelations …details below:

Thursday 11th September 2008, Web ROI specialist, Trovus today launches a new web analytics tool called Trovus Revelations™, to deliver high-value, ‘who & why’ information about activity on a website in real-time while simultaneously protecting the privacy of web users accessing the site. The tool is especially useful in helping marketers to identify and exploit online interest and unconverted sales from specific companies, potentially enabling businesses to maximize possible sales in the current economic climate.

Trovus Revelations™ tracks and logs key information such as the source domain (and therefore company identity) of individuals accessing an organisation’s website even if they do not register on the site, how the user found the site (e.g. Google search, including search terms), which pages they viewed on the site and how long they spent on those pages. A report is provided through a secure portal in a clear, simple layout that enables marketers to easily identify the organisations that could prove serious sales prospects for specific product or service offerings. The data also highlights whether the business’ current marketing strategy is generating interest from the right target markets.

Unlike traditional monitoring tools, Trovus Revelations™ provides simple, intuitive, real time information for non-technical users. This knowledge enables a rapid turnaround between the potential customer accessing the site, the marketer identifying that interest and the business being empowered to take action. 
 
The new tool is being marketed at small to medium enterprises and provides an affordable way to enhance online sales and marketing efforts and deliver real-time marketing intelligence on specific sales opportunities that can be leveraged on or off-line.
 
Caspar Craven, Co-founder and Director of Trovus, explains: “With Trovus Revelations™, you can really target your online marketing efforts and interaction with customers and prospects.  Our data arms sales and marketing teams with real intelligence on how their customers and prospects are responding to their messages or promotions – by providing the who and why data.
“Many businesses still rely on services like Google Analytics to track activity on their website. While such top-level analytics play a role in the online marketing mix, they do not offer the type of detailed, qualitative data that tells you which companies have been viewing your website and what they might be interested in buying.  That data – available through Trovus Revelations™ - offers SME’s the knowledge that enables them to turn browsers into buyers and interest into real revenue.  Our system delivers this information online, in real time and in an easy to read format, at an affordable price.”
For an online demonstration or a 14 days free trial please visit www.trovus.co.uk

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Good news at Trovus - we have relaunched our site focused on b2b internet marketing intelligence at Trovus.co.uk

More to follow in the coming weeks…

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Just back from meeting one of our clients, RM2 who set up employee share schemes for companies - as a former accountant you’d think that being on top of the most efficient tax schemes would be second nature, but from talking to Colin and Geoff you realise just how quickly your knowledge goes out of date. For all those web entrepreneurs out there, its probably something worth thinking about - the Inland Revenue isnt especially web2.0, but you can be savvy and work out the best way to maximise your gains when your social networking project turns into the next Bebo or Facebook.

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I was asked last week to provide feedback on the online community that the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW) has set up and of which I should confess I am a paid up member from a former life as bean counter.

I think they have done a great job at IT Counts (what the site is called) and thought it would be worth publically sharing my views:

The challenge with any community site is finding sufficient fresh interesting relevant content that its users find sufficiently compelling to encourage them to want to return on a regular basis. If the content and the topics are too broad the site tends to lose the interest of its readers as it doesn’t address their issues; if it is too narrow, it presents challenges in terms of producing sufficient quality content.

 

A simple way for me to judge content suitability is the measure of how many comments get left on posts on a regular basis – what I observe on IT Counts is that there is a good flow of comments and postings which are a good indication of the content being suitable for the audience.

 

 

The site design is simple and effective – it uses all the space and allows for a consistent mental map so that I can continue to find key information as I navigate through the site

 

IT Counts is a great initiative to get CA’s more connected and sharing information – the web is happening all around us and the advantage I believe moves with the innovators – ICAEW have taken a great step with this initiative.

 

I look forward to seeing how the site continues to develop and engage with its members (not always the most innovative of thinkers from my experience!)

 

Technorati Profile

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Social networking - so tantalising for all those brands out there - millions of people in your target market all in one place - how do I get in there and sell to this captive market.

I can see lots of brand managers grappling with this one - spurred on by their directors - we have to get into this social networking thing - its where all the buzz is.

Here’s the view of one blog commentator:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/06/17/how-brands-can-buy-social-media/

In essence - the article outlines that value comes from three areas:

- Advertisements - straight purchase of ads

- Sponsorships - longer term form of advertising

- Social Media Optimization - using the social media platforms to optimise your brand and content (part of what Trovus does)

 

I would add several other areas;

- engage with the discussions - this is a battle for mindshare - this is’nt about you the brand, its about what the people want - run with what they want and help them get - its the best way to get engagement;

- create things (content and tools) that are of interest to your target market - its about what you can do for your market, not how much you can sell them.

 

The key thing - its not about you - its about them. Thats why I dont believe that advertising on social networking platforms works - it just jars as its an intrusion and doesnt add to the value of the platform for the users.

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