week 9

Traffic Building

Search Marketing
SEM is a form of internet marketing which aims to increase a websites visibility in search engines.
Increasing visibility in a search engines gives a website more chance of being returned as the first site in the results pages. Hmv.com pays search engines to return their site at the top of the results pages (talked about in last weeks blog) these sponsored links ensure hmv.com is as visible if not more as its online competitors.

Online pr
PR is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics. PR exposes a website to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. These can be in the form of blogs or media alert services for example. Hmv.com have this year set up a site specifically for hmv blogging customers. http://hmv.com/blogs. HMVblogs is designed to allow communication with HMV.com customers, and to provide further leverage of the company’s “Get Closer” brand. Get Closer is hmv’s social networking site. The site allows users to import music and film files and create their own library. They will be connected to other users with similar tastes to form so-called ’spider clouds’ around the artists, genres or films that they have in common.

Online Partnerships
As Hmv.com is a leading player in its market in both high street stores and online, a partnership would be of no benefit. There would be no need for sponsorship as the hmv group is a huge company and more than capable of funding themselves. Co branding is more so for companies who create their own products. Hmv.com mainly sell products bought from suppliers and record companies for examples.

Interactive Ads
Advertising is a huge deal in e-marketing and will contribute a lot to traffic building. In the sites i have visited today i haven’t come accross an ad for hmv or any of its competitors, though in the time i have been writing this blog (with the tv on in the background) there has been an hmv ad on tv. For this tv ad to increase the traffic flowing to hmv.com the customer would have to go out of their way to access the internet and visit the site. Online advertising means the site is literally one click away when the advert appears, a lot more users would be inclined to access the site with one click than have to put in the effort of moving from the tv to the computer and searching fot the site or typing in the address.

Opt in e-mail
Opt in e-mail is when a customer is given the option to receive “bulk” e-mail, that is, e-mail that is sent to many people at the same time. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Obtaining permission before sending e-mail is critical because without it, the e-mail is Unsolicited Bulk Email, better known as spam. Hmv.com uses confirmed opt-in (COI).
A new customer is asked if they want to subscribe to the mailing list when they purchase a product a confirmation e-mail is sent to verify it was really them. Many believe the person must not be added to the mailing list unless an explicit step is taken, such as clicking a special web link or sending back a reply e-mail. This ensures that no person can subscribe someone else out of malice or error.