ETD: 933 Theory of Start-Up Ideas; Music powers a rise in
online spending; Keyword Search Drives E-Commerce Holiday Traffic
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu Nov 17 04:58:29 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0933 November 17, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Theory of Start-Up Ideas
[3] Music powers a rise in online spending
[4] Keyword Search Drives E-Commerce Holiday Traffic
---------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Greetings.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Hi All:
I recently came across a new POS product that
links to Quickbooks. I'm curious to know if
anybody is using such a product now, and if you
would be willing to comment for us? I know there
are a lot of them out there, and feedback would be nice.
Steven Owens has an interesting theory on startup
ideas. Remember the "good ol' days (late
1990's)?" Maybe this theory has some merit. What do you think>
U.S. spending on online content grew 16 percent
to nearly $1 billion in the first half of the
year, driven largely by the growth in legal music
services, according to the Online Publishers
Association. So why doesn't the music industry
try harder to capitalize on this phenomena rather
than fighting it and suing everybody?
.
What are you doing to promote your business this
holiday season? Keyword searches, e.g., Google
Adword seems to be the best way to drive traffic,
according to one company. Has anybody had
success with Adwords? We tried them a number of
times, and didn't get any decent results. We
will be trying them again soon with our cosmetic company.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, LLC
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
[2] Theory of Start-Up Ideas
----------------------------------------------------------------
I have been thinking about the general question
of how you come up with a good startup idea, how
you know it's good, etc. A couple thoughts come
to mind, that I'd like to bounce off people here for feedback.
Let's start with "business model", a popular buzz
phrase back in the boom, but still worth keeping
in mind. In a nutshell, "business model" boils
down to who actually pays, and why, and why they
should pay you instead of somebody else? "Why
you" can be answered in a number of ways, which
leads to my next thought, which is that possible
ideas usually hinge on one of four, hmmm, call them dimensions or extremes:
1) rocket science
2) organizational muscle
3) marketing muscle
4) engaging a market
Rocket science is my short-hand for a
knowledge-based edge. It could mean something
truly patentable/copyrightable that you control.
It could mean productizing/capitalizing on
freely-available but not-yet-in-mainstream-use
research. It could mean deep knowledge and skill
in a difficult domain, or a particular technology
that is not widely available for some reason.
Organizational muscle is the ability to throw
lots of bodies at a problem, which lets you
tackle problems that are difficult to "work
smarter" at. This could be a lot of bodies in a
small amount of time, or few bodies over a long
period of time (though that is less effective in
software and high tech because knowledge more quickly becomes obsolete).
As an example of organizational muscle, consider
solving a problem like building a desktop search
engine that knows how to parse a zillion
different file formats and index them. Building
a good search engine requires a little rocket
science, though that technology is moving more
into the mainstream these days. But building
parsers for the lions share of the file formats
is a problem that you just have to throw lots of
bodies or lots of specialized knowledge at.
Marketing muscle is an alternative to
organizational muscle. In my first version of
this I had the two lumped together. It's
epitomized by the old joke "How many Microsoft
programmers does it take to change a
lightbulb? None, Microsoft just defines "dark" as the industry standard."
IBM, for example, has both organizational and
marketing muscle. IBM could decide to build
import/export modules for every point of sale
system out there - or they could decide to create
a standard and use their marketing muscle to get
people to move to supporting it. Since
organizational muscle and marketing muscle so
often go hand-in-hand, often it's both - throw
some bodies at an 80/20 solution and use
marketing leverage to get everybody else on board.
Lastly, you can engage a market - I'm using
"engage" to mean identifying, knowing, and
establishing a dialog, and "a market" to mean somebody who:
- has a pain, a problem
- is conscious of the pain, knows they have a problem
- has the financial means to pay for a solution
- has the practical ability to adopt the solution.
If you can engage a market about a solvable
problem, a problem that doesn't require black
magic (unobtainable rocket science) or boiling
the ocean (unobtainable organizational muscle or
market muscle), then you have an opportunity to create a solution and sell it.
--
Steven J. Owens
puff at darksleep.com
"I'm going to make broad, sweeping generalizations and strong,
declarative statements, because otherwise I'll be here all night and
this document will be four times longer and much less fun to read.
Take it all with a grain of salt." - http://darksleep.com/notablog
----------------------------------------------------------------
[3] Music powers a rise in online spending
----------------------------------------------------------------
Driven largely by the growth in legal music
services, U.S. spending on online content grew 16
percent to nearly $1 billion in the first half of the year.
A study by the Online Publishers Association also
finds that spending on entertainment and
lifestyles services has surpassed the previous
leader, personals and dating. People spent 45
percent more on music and other entertainment,
compared with 7.6 percent growth in finding love.
"We see an increasing appetite for consumers to
turn to the Web not just for functionality but
for fun," said Michael Zimbalist, the association's president.
Much of that results from the increased
availability of high-speed Internet connections, he said.
The study was based on tracking by comScore
Networks and excludes some types of content,
including pornography, gambling and software.
Although the study did not break out figures for
music, researchers credited that for most of the
growth in entertainment. In that category,
single-purchase sales — a song or an album —
reached $115 million in the first half, compared
with $126 million for all of last year.
Subscriptions still dominate, accounting for 57
percent of entertainment spending.
Article at...
http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA111305.2R.techbriefs.c0b7a34.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
[4] Keyword Search Drives E-Commerce Holiday Traffic
----------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Regan writes in E-Commerce Times....
"This is our season. This is the one that makes
or breaks our year," said Jon Thralow. "This is
the time of year when no one sleeps." But armed
with the hottest online advertising tool, Thralow
hopes to make all those sleepless nights
worthwhile. "We've got our keywords in place and we're ready," he added.
For Thralow, Inc., the majority of its
e-commerce customers come from two sources:
Those who go directly to its various sites,
including binoculars.com, and telescopes.com, and
those who find it through Google's AdWords listings.
"When somebody goes to Google and types in 'Nikon
Monarch binocular' they are ready to buy," said
Jon Thralow, director of technology and marketing
at the Proctor, Minn. firm, which has made its
way onto the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing
private firms for the second time this year.
"That's the kind of traffic Google drives to us."
Strategic Spending
For that reason, Google AdWords makes up the
largest portion of Thralow's marketing budget. In
addition to the strong quality leads, the firm
likes the flexibility of the online keyword
buying system. "I probably log on and manage our
AdWords at least twice a day," he said. "We are
constantly making sure our keywords are working
the way we thought they would and making adjustments based on our inventory."
Heading into the holiday season, hundreds of
businesses are expected to follow Thralow's
example, using AdWords from Google and similar
products from Yahoo and others to drive high-quality traffic to their sites.
And because the products offer flexibility,
real-time reporting and other features, the
retailers will be constantly adjusting their
campaigns to make sure they are advertising the
hot items and selling inventory that's stacking up.
David Fisher, director of the Google AdWords
program, told the E-Commerce Times that Google
advises businesses to put themselves in customer's shoes.
"They've got a lot of shopping to do, a big list,
they want to bang it out as quickly as they can,"
he said. "Maybe an e-tailer has a holiday deal or
a shipping offer, they should target that. They
should think about their customers and how they might be thinking."
Growing Up
Though Google and its rivals don't pinpoint
forecasts, keyword ad spending is expected to
surge this holiday season along with e-commerce
itself. The ever-important holiday season may
even get an extra boost this year, with some
analysts predicting that surging fuel prices and
other factors may prompt more shoppers to turn to
the Internet for more purchases.
Continuing to grow at the historic rate will be
harder for e-commerce, which topped US$23.2
billion in 2004, excluding travel, a 25 percent increase over the year before.
"Businesses have been ramping up for a few weeks
now," said Fisher. "We certainly see that every
year around this time. As we get into the
beginning of the fourth quarter, they really
start to think about gearing up. We start to see
people approaching different ways and different
keywords getting more interest."
Fisher said again this year AdWords will benefit
from being suitable for businesses of all sizes,
including small specialty retailers who might not
otherwise be able to drive significant traffic to their niche sites.
"We have really big names, huge retailers, down
to small little mom and pop stores that might
even be people selling out of their own houses,"
he said. "The beauty is they can compete for the same keywords."
Being able to target certain ZIP codes or
geographic areas or to run national campaigns
also attracts advertisers as does the ability to
cap daily click-through spending, which offers
small businesses with limited budgets some
assurance they won't run over at a critical time.
Flexibility the Key
Fisher said the ability to quickly react to
trends is another selling point of the keyword ad approach.
"Every year there's that one big item and often
it's a surprise as to what it is," he said. "Once
you notice that trend you can change your keyword
mix to take advantage of what you have to offer."
The system also has built-in flexibility on
specific keywords, with the ability to insert
different ad copy on the same keywords. With
real-time reports on what ads are driving clicks
to a site, successful copy can be expanded while
other creative not performing as well is dropped.
"You can update based on where you are for your
business, down to the hour or day," Fisher added,
meaning that early shoppers and last-minute
shoppers can be targeted with different copy or
offers on the same keywords. "The beauty of
AdWords is that you don't have to lock in weeks or months ahead."
For Thralow as for many other e-tailers, the
stakes are higher than ever heading into the last
eight to 10 weeks of the year.
"This is our season. This is the one that makes
or breaks our year," said Jon Thralow. "This is
the time of year when no one sleeps."
But armed with the hottest online advertising
tool, Thralow hopes to make all those sleepless
nights worthwhile. "We've got our keywords in
place and we're ready," he added.
Article at...
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/47254.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
Links to follow
----------------------------------------------------------------
GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.gapent.com/
E-Tailer's Digest http://www.etailersdigest.com
Interim Help http://interimhelp.com
Sophisticated Me http://sophisticatedme.com/
Marketing Your Web http://www.gapent.com/myweb/
Automated Press Releases http://www.automatedpr.com
More information about the ETD
mailing list