‘advertising’

The New Consumer Protection Act No. 68 of 2008 as signed in 2009, known by many as the CPA, has changed the business to client relationship considerably. In the past the consumer had to prove wrongdoing or lack of service on the part of the service provider, but with the New Consumer Protection Act it is now the responsibility of the business to prove that the service has been as advertised and that goods supplied are up to standard.

For the business owner, and then of course, also the website owner the Consumer Protection Act has a lot of implications. You should know that when selling a product online or in your store that the consumer will have up to six months to return goods which have been deemed unsafe or faulty. Guarantees will thus be for a minimum period of six months. You, as the supplier, will not have the choice anymore. The consumer can demand replacement, repairs or a full refund. As supplier you are still protected against negligence by the consumer.

Be careful with delivery promises. If you advertise a delivery date when selling online, you must keep to that date. If a consumer purchases a report online, and the website stipulates delivery within 48 hours, the website owner or company will have to keep to that date because the user can reject the product if the product is not as expected and can cancel the purchase agreement if the delivery doesn’t take place within 48 hours. As such online sellers need to ensure that they stipulate delivery times that they can keep.

Consumers, according to the Consumer Protection Act, now also have the right to demand an estimated cost for repairs of a product or a service and the service company must keep to that estimate. The consumer must approve of the estimate and should the work needed be more than originally estimated, the company must inform the consumer and get approval before going ahead.

Selling online seems to be safer for the company than selling through the mail or via telemarketing since the consumer has the right not to be harassed through telephone calls and mailings on specific days of the year and time of day. If a person has placed their name on the marketing blocking list, telemarketers may not contact or solicit them with any advertising or options according to the CPA. If you send out electronic mail with direct marketing messages, you need to take note that consumers have up to five business days to cool off after they have bought a product as the result of your direct marketing efforts. You will have 15 days to refund them provided they return the goods first.

According to the Consumer Protection Act, there will no longer be automatic renewals of service contracts. In the past cellphone companies simply kept on billing the consumer if the consumer did not cancel the cellphone contract after the contract expiring date. It is no longer the case. The company must contact the user and give the user the option of keeping with the contract, cancelling it or changing the terms of the contract. The month-to-month basis used by many cellphone companies stays in place until the consumer chooses not to have the contract.

Any consumer can now end a contract, such as a cellphone contract, before the expiry date if the consumer is unhappy with the service as long as the consumer, according to the terms of the Consumer Protection Act, gives the company written notice of a period of twenty days. It should be noted as a service provider, the company must contact the consumer before the expiration date of the contract to offer the consumer a choice. The consumer is still responsible for payment of amounts up to cancellation date.

With the New Consumer Protection Act in place from 31 March 2011, consumers have the right to get products in good working order. Should there be any defects even on second hand products, one must inform the buyer of such and the buyer must consent to purchasing the product in such a condition. In the online world you can thus not place a classified ad or sell a product “voetstoots” at Bid or Buy without informing the potential buyer of all the defects and the exact condition of the item.

According to the CPA, suppliers may not discriminate against consumers in the sense that they limit products or services to a specific group of consumers. Free market doesn’t mean setting prices as you want. The consumer has the right to fair priced goods. This means that a company cannot buy up all the stock such as for instance, energy savers, and then set a high price for the goods. The products must be reasonably priced. One cannot for instance, sell a report online that consists of only a few pages for an exuberant price. The price must be in line with the value of the item.

Online marketers and website owners need to take note of the privacy rights of consumers. Unsolicited email, thus spam, has always been a no-no, but website owners bypassed the ethical rules by having an opt-out option. The consumer, according to the privacy rights stipulated in the Consumer Protection Act, has the right not to receive unsolicited emails. If you want to introduce your website to a consumer, then search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising will be the best route ensuring that the consumer finds you and then opts in to receive electronic mail. Once a consumer has opted out on a newsletter, the website owner must ensure that the user doesn’t receive emails from them after such.

Goods and services delivered in an unsolicited manner may be refused by the consumer and the consumer can also retain such goods or services after 20 business days have passed. Online marketing is thus also affected by the Consumer Protection Act. Although the terms may seem a bit harsh for suppliers of goods and services, we are all consumers in one way or another. As such the protection is to the benefit of all; it will mean careful consideration of online marketing techniques and wording of sales letters, but at the end of the day, the marketplace should be fairer because of the Consumer Protection Act. Contact us at iLead to help you reach consumers in an ethical manner through sound SEO and online marketing techniques.

Google AdSense is means of advertising for other businesses on your website while you receive commission for click through actions. Instead of the business paying you directly, Google does the payment. The ads are already made and you will only have to copy the code and paste into your page. In turn Google receives money from the advertiser for the click through actions. Google doesn’t place each ad. It is on an automated system based on the content of your site. In this way the advertiser is ensured of relevant traffic when users click on the ad, and you as the website owner gets more online commission because more users click on the ads which are related to the topic of your website.

Why Put Google AdSense On Your Website?

People argue that with Google AdSense on their site, they will lose valuable online income as the user will be directed away from their site and that the ads are in direct competition with their site content. Although the above can be true, one can also ensure that the user returns to your site and don’t click on directly competing ads by making use of the ads management option. This will allow you to block certain ads from being displayed ensuring that relevant, yet non-competitive ads are displayed at the site.

Now to answer the question of why place Google AdSense at your site. The bottom line is money. You can make money online from ads on your site which can be enough to pay for your hosting, maintenance of the site, and also general management of the site. It can even be more. Businesses often place Google AdSense on their site for the extra earnings while some simply have websites to place ads and earn big. Make no mistake, although it is an excellent passive income earner, it is not all that passive and requires a bit of work at the beginning to ensure that the ads are placed at the right places and in the best possible combinations. Once the secret is understood, the income stream starts.

How Does One Get Paid?

Depending on where you live, your payment can be in the form of a cheque or it can be by means of withdrawal to your US bank account. For South Africans the earnings come by means of a Google AdSense cheque which is payable at the Citibank of Johannesburg. The cheque is issued when your earnings are over R1000 if in South Africa, and $100 if in the USA.

AdSense Reporting

Every AdSense member at Google has access to an online report feature where one can view daily, weekly, and monthly earnings, payment history and specific page clicks. The AdSense reporting feature is quite comprehensive ensuring that the website owner can identify exactly which pages provide the best income and identify the ideal combinations of ad placements. One can also request that payments are kept back until the cheque is big enough to justify withdrawal. The AdSense reports contain a wealth of information ensuring that the website owner can customise pages to ensure more traffic and more AdSense clicks.

What About AdSense Fraud?

Yes, it exists and there have been occasions where other sites steal the earnings from a website owner, but with the ability to specify which sites may display ads for a specific account, the website owner can also prevent other less ethical sites from stealing clicks, earnings and standing with Google. It should be noted that Google is rather strict about the clicking on ads. The account holder may not click on any of the online ads displayed at their website. One may argue that a person can then simply get a friend to click on the ads, but Google has that covered as well. Any repeat clicks from an IP raise alarm bells at Google and it won’t be long before the website owner gets a notice from Google about their observation. Should it continue, the account is then suspended. Anyone earning online from Google AdSense will agree that it is not a good idea to attempt AdSense fraud and risk losing the income stream. Google, does however, also provide an opportunity to restore the account status if the reason for the clicks was not by purpose. One does have to explain in detail and make sure that such an action doesn’t happen again.

Google Wants You To Make Money

Google is not out to cheat anyone. In fact, Google even provides optimization information and tools to help website owners get the most from their online AdSense income. There are full demonstrations on how to insert and manage the Google AdSense.

Is It Profitable Enough To Run As A Main Business?

Website owners differ on the topic, but with everything in life taking a bit of effort and time, it is possible to make a considerable income from AdSense earnings. Some have earned millions while others struggle to get a cheque every month. The secret is to get experts in online marketing to help drive enough traffic to the site and to ensure also that the ads are managed properly. In conclusion then it certainly is worth the while to use Google AdSense as an online income stream.

What Is The Next Step?

Setup an account with Google AdSense which is free. You first need to register and provide your bank details. Google will also request confirmation of tax details before payment will be issued if you stay in the USA. Once your registration is approved you will be able to login into your Google AdSense account, select the type or types of online ads that you want to display, and block ads you don’t want displayed. Verify the websites to display the online ads, which in the simplest form, involves uploading of the Google verification code in a blank page. Google will visit the page, confirm that it is correct and you are ready to earn income. Customize the display of the ads to fit your website theme and background and grab the codes which you place in the HTML of your pages. Upload the pages and wait a bit. Don’t click on any of the ads. It does take some time before the ads appear. Once the ads are active you can log into your account daily to monitor earnings and identify any problems. Once the threshold is reached, Google will issue a cheque for your online earnings.

iLeadOnline for one, has proven that it is possible to provide top notch information, excellent service, and earn considerably from the display of Google AdSense. So if you need a little help running a Google AdSense account, why not ask us for advice?

It feels like déjà vu whenever a new search engine make its appearance with the notion to take the internet by storm and set the new bench mark for what they think a search engine should be. The latest in line is blekko, a new search engine that was recently opened its public beta  and already claiming that they provide the average Joe with “better search results”.

What’s blekko’s claim to fame?

They want to slash spam out of search results completely, thus making search not only safer but more relevant too. It is evident that they are fed up with search results inundating users with content that is more about making the sale than providing high quality information to the searcher. The way they are planning to achieve this is by making use of human input into their algorithmic results which should then screen out content from content farms in the likes of Demand Media. According to reports the average internet user is completely oblivious to the fact that they are, in fact, consuming Demand Media content.

In a recent interview the chief executive officer of Blekko Inc., Rich Skrenta, stated that blekko was starting out without advertising, but since we all know how effective it has been – just look at Google’s AdWords – they plan to monopolize on this once their traffic has built up. He continued on to discuss the current market shares, stating that they didn’t really have to make a dent in order to be profitable, all they need is 1/10 of 1% of the billion+ searches done per day and it will still be a lucrative endeavour for blekko.

blekko is all about the ‘Slashtags’

Do you know what ‘slashtags’ are? If your answer is no then you don’t have to worry that you might be the only one as the majority of internet users don’t know either. Ok yes, most people in general are not all that clued up when it comes to online lingo, but this brings is back to the question as to what exactly ‘slashtags’ are. Basically it comes down to using the slasher symbol “/” to avoid the search results from providing the user with unwanted sites, including those used for spam as well as sites with phishing and malware infections.

The reality is that Google is light-years ahead of time. For instance, Google makes it possible to limit your search to one site by simply typing site:www.ilead.co.za. Then, of course, there are also numerous desktop power search tools to limit results.

When we gave it a try by doing a simple search for “online marketing South Africa” we found it rather alarming that their list of slashtags were very limiting and didn’t include basic factors into the search/results such as locations, as you can see below (result no.2 Chicago web design).

When we scrolled down a little further on their first page of results we even found one or two websites that had nothing to do with online marketing, never mind South Africa – point in case result no. 10 where the website’s content was far from what we were searching for:

You can, however, create new slashtags but in order to do so, it is necessary to create your own profile page. From here you can create a list of keywords for your subject after which you can opt whether you’d prefer to keep your slashtags private or share them with blekko’s users. You are also able to follow someone’s slashtags – similar to following somebody’s tweets on Twitter – which will appear on the left hand side of your profile under the header “following”.

Rank search results

Blekko seems to be very transparent as to how it works. Moreover, blekko allows website owners to see how they look at a site which can help owners to improve their search engine optimization (SEO) for blekko. Some information they provide website owners with includes:

• when last their search bots crawled the site;
• how many pages they looked at; and
• if/where they found duplicate content from your site on other websites.

For online marketers such as ourselves, one thing that stood out was that it didn’t show data on the terms users used most often that drove the traffic to a website in the first place. For optimizers this is a key factor they’ve overlooked, especially if they want website owners to optimize their websites for blekko.

Our conclusion

Although it is impressive enough that blekko was able to get backers who were willing to provide them with $24million to create a “new” search engine when Google owns the monopoly, we are rather doubtful, however, that this will lead to a “slashtag revolution”. As stated, many search engines tried to leapfrog Google before, but Google is still pretty darn good and we think that their search results are far more relevant in comparison to blekko’s – as we’ve shown you. Ok, yes, Google will have to keep on being innovative, but they have been doing a brilliant job thus far. Which brings us to the point – such a moderate improvement will hardly vault blekko’s search engine into prominence, making them nothing more than a little scratch instead of the swashbuckling slash they were going for.

A recession is generally seen as a bad time. Jobs are lost, banks loan less, and, as the consumer tightens his or her belt, businesses start to suffer. Generally businesses try to counteract the negative consequences of a recession in one of 3 ways:

• By retrenching and laying off workers
• By closing loss making and marginal divisions
• By cutting budgets across the board

Although these steps are often painful, they are necessary to ensure the survival of the company during tough economic times. But lately more and more companies are hesitant to cut their marketing budget to save on expenditure. In fact, Kellogg’s actually increased their marketing budget during the Great Depression and as such their sales increased. Today, more than 80 years later, Kellogg’s is the only breakfast brand of that era that is still in existence and their case study proves the short as well as long term benefit of advertising during an economic slump.

During the recent economic recession (some have even called it a depression) the majority of companies took a hit. In fact,  even those who were considered to be doing well also felt the pinch.

Interestingly enough advertising agencies in South Africa experienced the recession more severely than other industries and many had to retrench employees in order to stay afloat. This was because businesses cut on their offline advertising (radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and billboards) – choosing to spend their advertising budgets on online advertising instead.

Online advertising has allowed companies to spend less on advertising but still build on their equity and solidify their client base; not to mention gain new clients and taking on their competition. Indeed, many progressive companies are finding that when weighing op the two advertising methods, that internet driven advertising has multiple benefits.

Costs

From a purely financial consideration online advertising is far more cost effective than offline advertising. Purchasing airtime for a TV commercial is very costly, especially for the prime time spots when most of the targeted consumers are tuned in, and the risk is always there that the channel might be changed during ad breaks. Online advertising on the other hand works with a fixed cost per click (CPC) budget and website advert. Moreover, an online advertising campaign is far more cost effective (with savings of over 80% for the same results found in offline advertising) and controllable in the short- and long term.

Target Audience

People tend to think that you simply need to design and create a website in order for it to be seen, but business owners need to remember that there are literally thousands of websites in any specific vertical and market. Don’t let this scare you however, because while consumers may read the newspaper or watch television on a daily basis, they are not particularly looking for a product or service. With online searches on Google on the other hand, they are specifically looking for the product or service that you offer, and are therefore much more likely to take the time to read your advertisement.

In this case your advertisement would be your website. With online advertising you can be very particular who your target audience is. Moreover, if your website is set up correctly, you will be able to track your statistics. This will give you the particulars of your viewers, such as their age, location, how they came upon your website, what keywords were used to search for your website, and so forth, thus giving you an edge on your marketing strategy.

Reach

With offline advertisements you can never be sure that your particular target audience paid much attention. Yes you can definitely say that a certain amount of viewers were tuned in, but were they actually noticing your ad and were they the right demographic?  With print ads there is of course the chance that the reader will simply page over. The fact is that online readers look at this form of advertising differently. They typed in specific keywords into the search engine looking for the product or service that your website offers. This is why online marketing plays such a significant role.

When your website is properly optimized, you will be sure that your website will be one of the top search results that the reader finds, and by tracking the readers actions, you will be able to see exactly what pages they went on to on your website, how much time they spent on a page, and even if they left your website directly or clicked through to another page. In the online world this is referred to as the click-through rate (CTR) which is used to measure the success of an online campaign.

Speed of Campaign

Another reason why companies choose internet marketing (online advertising) over offline advertising is the speed at which campaigns run. While most offline ad campaigns can take quite some time before the reader/viewer even sees the ad, advertising online is much quicker. From the moment you publish a new page, story or pay per click (PPC) ad it will be live on the internet and have the potential to be viewed by your targeted audience instantaneously. This means that you have to be much more particular with your timing of running an ad campaign offline, and often you are limited by outside influences, while internet advertising allows you to take that new story or ad live whenever it suits you.

While offline advertising still has its place in the world, the fact of the matter is that online advertising is growing rapidly because of several reasons – speed, cost effective, target specific and reach. Does this mean that you should let go of your offline campaign and go fully online? Not necessarily. But you definitely should include online advertising as part of your marketing strategy. Not only is it much faster, cheaper and targeted, but online advertising is also more flexible and offer you as business owner options to get your message across. At the end of the day you can be certain that even during tough times, you will see a positive ROI.