So where does one start when it comes to planning an On-Line Campaign? First and foremost you must look at your current web presence. Do you have a site? Does it look like your current Off-Line Marketing? Do you have a landing page that shows all important information without the need to scroll? Do you have E-Commerce? If you don’t have a Blog would it benefit you and your business to start one? What about SEO, is your site optimised?

These are all very important questions and each need to be addressed. The thing about new media and the on-line world is that we have to think laterally. Once you think you have come up with a solution, go through it again and add to it. Chances are in the initial design of the content you missed possible links in the body text, possible outbound links to associated businesses, and other interactivities that could be implemented on a page. The web is a big place and you should be sure that you’re site is utilising as many tools as feasible.

Make sure you are utilising at least some basic SEO techniques, a large percentage of sites don’t. By simply choosing some effective keywords and adding them into the code of your site where ever possible (meta tags, HTML Comments, Headers image descriptions etc.) you automatically increase your relevance to search engines, in turn giving you a better position in the search results.

The possibilities on-line are endless and this is where thinking laterally comes into play. You need to ensure that every possible connection that can be made with the minimum of fuss and maximum benefit to your client (be it to an applications, a website, a database). If you have a lot of technical jargon, do you have a glossary? Don’t have time to do a glossary? Why not link to WikiPedia?

As designers, businesses and marketers in this new age of information pollution it is our duty to cut through the clutter. The first step to any web marketing campaign should ensure that visitors to your site are directed to the information they require with minimal navigation on their behalf. Without this first step your on-line marketing will ultimately fail.

One thing that constantly surprises me is the corporate sectors misunderstanding of on-line marketing. Regardless of the difference in the way that the internet has changed our consumption of information, one fact still remains the same: a good marketing campaign requires solid planning and a strong hook. In fact if anything the internet has made this even more important.

All too often I find that business owners and marketing managers are quick to throw money at the internet without actually understanding how it works. Unfortunately certain businesses (who shall remain nameless… for now) are taking advantage of this naivety and returning little to no results, by utilising techniques (such as AdWords and SEO) that show some growth and minor financial return for the marketing budget.

Understandably business owners and marketing managers have grown wary of all things web based. This means that those businesses who are trying to build proper campaigns are being seen as door to door salesmen selling nothing more than snake oil.

On the flip side we see that many business owners and marketing managers have cottoned on to the concept that on-line marketing is the way forward and is returning something (unlike many sites developed prior to the .com boom). They hear all of the “experts” running around talking about buzzwords like “SEO” and “Social Media” and trendy products like “Google AdWords” and they want a piece of the pie.

So what does this contradictory combination mean to the legitimate on-line marketers of the world? It means that these businesses end up trying to feel out the water and gauge results using small budgets, in a conservative effort to see if these forms of marketing can work for them. They know it needs to happen NOW as the competition is on the same tip, but they can’t afford to trust legitimate on-line marketing businesses because they’ve been burnt before.

This in turn places both businesses in a bad position from the start. A Google AdWords campaign needs to be well researched for a start and secondly it takes money to get results. Many businesses utilising the AdWords system have spent thousands of dollars on pay-per-click with on-going analysis of what is and isn’t working for them. This means that the business paying for the advertising will not see the results they want despite the best efforts of the company providing the service.

Before it gets to this point it is up to the on-line marketer to ensure that they have informed the client to the best of their ability. A strong web campaign should not start with AdWords, first and foremost the business needs to have a strong site with easily accessible information. If a visitor to the site cannot find what they want in less than ten seconds they will navigate away. As you can see if this happens the money spent on a campaign that gets them to click through to the site is wasted.

Like any campaign an on-line campaign needs to be worked on from the ground up. If the company doing your web marketing has not taken the time to develop your on-line campaign in sync with your off-line campaign then it is likely they are spending your money on advertising without having planned out a strategy that works for your business.

For on-line marketers don’t try to sell the buzz word or product of the moment, it may bring you money straight away but you will lose clients when the bubble bursts. Be sure to review what your clients business actually needs rather than jumping on the latest web bandwagon. We have seen on-line marketing crash before (we all still shudder at the ramifications of the .com bust) let’s not let this happen again or businesses will lose faith in the web all together.

Can someone please tell me the point of Alexa rankings? I am a little flabbergasted by the point of them to tell you the truth. Many people use Alexa Rankings to get free “Site Ranking Statistics” that they then use to sell their dubious SEO wares and it’s really beginning to upset me because they are really not an accurate representation of the popularity of your site.

These rankings are allocated depending on the amount of people who use the Alexa Toolbar that visit your site. Now I don’t know about you but until I started working in this On-Line Marketing space I had never heard of Alexa. The only people who I know who actually have the Alexa Toolbar installed are Search Market Professionals.

So yes this does provide accurate statistics regarding people using the Alexa toolbar who visit your site but in reality they have no real relevance to Page Ranking or volume statistics at all. Other sites like Compete have a go as well but their estimations are dubious to say the least. These tools can be used to give a general idea of how your site is performing but they are in no way shape or form an accurate representation.

To get a real understanding of how your site is performing requires actual code to be written into your sites HTML and the site to be monitored over at least a period of a year. Then you can see the ebb and flow of traffic over seasons, what changes and updates work and what really resonates with your audience. Anyone who tells you any different is selling you nothing more than snake oil repackaged in an exciting new electronic way (now with AdWords)!

Don’t be fooled by these people. They will take your money and you will see little in return. We don’t mind if you use another company for your SEO and Search Marketing we just ask that you make sure that you know that they really know what they are saying and they are not just pulling stats and figures out of thin air to get a sale.

What’s the one thing that bugs you the most about the growing number of web savvy business people making it onto the internet? For me it’s people running Web Companies that don’t understand the term Passive Marketing. That’s right, business like Wise Orange but that completely missed the point of what the internet is all about.

“So what is the internet all about?” I hear you ask. That’s a very good question with a few very obvious answers. First and foremost the internet is about information (and porn but that’s a whole different ball game). Having said that; what started out as an amazing resource for information has evolved into a whole world of entertainment.

A large percentage of the population of people using the internet are surfing the tubes looking for nothing more than a good laugh and something to take their minds off of their boring day to day activities. These people are sick of the constant barrage of commercials in everyday life and are really just looking to get away from all of that.

How can I say this? The proof is in the punch when it comes to the backlash of users against Facebook introducing commercials and then against applications that force you to invite users. Facebook was the place to socialise without being bombarded by banner advertising and although it didn’t stop them, they copped a lot of flack over the addition of advertising. Then when applications started requiring you add people to use them it all got a bit nasty with dozens of groups opening up to speak out against them. Have you noticed how most apps don’t require you to invite people now? Coincidence? I think not!

Which brings me back to my opening statement: Web Marketers who don’t understand the term passive marketing are fail. We see them all the time pushing their wares and targeting people after putting them all into little boxes. Like the late great Bill Hicks says: “Oh your in Marketing? Kill Yourself!” People do not want to be put into boxes. A recent article from the Wired Magazine Website shows that 59% of Americans take exception to being monitored by big Web Media businesses studying their habits and targeting them.

This leads me to ask the question: why? Targeted advertising is better isn’t it? It means that you only get to see commercials that are related to you and your interests isn’t that a good thing? Well it is, if it’s not in your face and interrupting your time on-line. People don’t like the Hard Sell. They hate the “BUY BUY BUY!” mentality of commercials that pop up over their news articles. They don’t want to be sold on the latest pair of Hemp Pants while looking up solar energy. They want to read information, they want to play games, they want to forget about the fact they only have enough money to sit at home and enjoy the web rather than go out and drink beer with their mates.

So if you’re an on-line marketer please hear what I say. Inform people. Don’t sell to them. Entertain People. Don’t Bombard them with repetitive marketing strategies. If you write an article or make a game that people enjoy the next time they go looking for the product you are trying to sell they might think of you. Wouldn’t you prefer them to say “Oh yeah I remember a product like that from a game?” not “Oh I don’t want to buy that product, their ads annoy me every time I go to a website!”?

Think about it. Oh and please feel free to leave a comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. But please do not do it if your URL is www.sexypantslickers.com or some other such pornographic site. We don’t want your spam here so sod off!

You see, the thing about blogs, is that you have to update them regularly for them to be of any benefit to you. In fact, websites in general, you really need to update at least once every two weeks for them to be effective in any way shape or form. The thing about the algorithms used by search engines now is that there are so many levels of website activity they take into account, but you can be assured of one thing: sites that are more active are sites considered to be more relevant as they are updated.

The funny thing is… we all know this. We tell our clients this. We tell our friends this. We preach it until the cows come home. But do you think for the life of us we can find the time to do it? Heck No!

The thing is, our site has been optimised and we have been getting enough traffic through word of mouth marketing combined with our SEO techniques (even though Google still hasn’t given us a Page Ranking yet). So we have been busy just trying to keep up with the influx of new business (off-line marketing is still the most important aspect of any campaign). But all of this is about to change.

Our numbers have remained at an average of ten unique visitors a day. This is not bad as far as we are concerned but we know, and have experienced, that there are a lot more hits out there. There are thousands of people just waiting to be introduced to new material, new ideas and new content. So we are about to embark on an experiment and we would like to invite you to come on the journey with us.

From this day forward we will update this blog at least once a week. We will cover topics related to Web Design. We will review sites of the many submissions we have had from designers looking for work (thankyou fellow web junkies for your interest, we will give you work when we require your services). We will keep you up to date with the latest social networking tools. We will pontificate and make ourselves sound self important like every other successful Blogger in the Blogosphere.

BUT…. (dramatic pause)

We will do it with a sense of humour. One thing that people forget about the web is that it is an ever evolving platform. It changes and fluctuates at a rate that is unlike any other medium we have seen before it. The rules (as they stand) will change as soon as you blink, and if you blink, you damn well missed it. So we won’t pretend to be experts. We are learning constantly, just like you, and we will do our best to apply our life long infatuation with all things technological to help you utilise this constantly morphing animal to your benefit.

Best of all though, as we update this blog, as we evolve our site, we will share with you our experiences, we will divulge our analytics, we will tell you what has worked for us and how it can work for you. We are taking it beyond the academic now and making it experimental. If it fails, you will know. Look out Evil Knievel, this is balls to the wall web development as you have never seen it. Welcome to Wise Orange. The new era (and we’ve only been in business for three months….)