Joomla 'Content Management System' & eMarketing specialists Starberry, recently completed the web design process and web development for MAP Environmental - www.mapenvironmental.co.uk

MAP Environmental commissioned the development of their corporate website to communicate their Solar business offering to both the Commercial and Home Owner sectors.

MAP are one of the UK's leading manufacturers of Photovoltaic Solar Panels and have a nationwide network of Installation Partners who are exclusively contracted to MAP Environmental.

With the forthcoming launch of the governments 'Feed In-Tariff' initiative, any excess solar engine created will be purchased back at the going rate and transferred back on to the national grid.

In preparation for the impending boom in solar engine, produced from affordable and subsidised PV Panels installed throughout the UK, MAP have commissioned Starberry to plan and develop an On and Off Page SEO program to dramatically increase their search engine keyword ranking across all major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing.

This in-depth Search Engine Optimisation program includes a combination of keyword and competitive analysis, Directory, Press Release and Article submissions. Forum posting, Blog development and commenting, along with Social media creation and Social bookmarking which will also help to increase the keyword rankings. All these techniques will be combined to improve MAP's overall SERP's (search engine ranking positions).

Finally, a targeted Pay Per Click ( PPC ) campaign will be running in parallel. The knowledge and learning from the Paid Search campaign will be fed back in to the Natural Search ( SEO ) program.

The overall aim of the SEO and PPC campaigns is to increase the visibility of the MAP Environmental brand and further drive 'qualified' enquiries and overall sales of PV Panels and Solar Panel installations for MAP across the UK.

If you are interested in having a CMS website designed and developed for your business and or SEO and Paid Search services, please Contact Us

"Why did we fly 5370 miles to California and travel from San Francisco to Mountain View"?

We decided that it was important to attend the "first ever" Twitter Conference in Silicon Valley to make sure that we could hear, first hand, how Twitter is developing into a social networking platform that is here to stay.

"Twitter is the Realtime Web" offering a wealth of opportunities.

There were some very inspiring keynote speeches delivered over the two day event - below are the keynote titles that where up for discussion, and some downloadable session slides (below);

Day 1:
"The Business Value of the Twitter API" by Alex Payne, Lead API Developer for Twitter
"Best Practise - I am a Twitter God(dess) and So Can You" by iJustine, Tara Hunt, Dave Peck & Steve Broback
"What makes a Great Twitter App" by Loren Brichter, Britt Selvitelle & Dom Sagolla
"How Twitter will make a Billion, and How you can make a Million" by Jason Calacanis
"Twitter Strategies: Real World Success Stories" by Jeff Pester, Bryan Rhoads, Warren Whitlock & Justin Kan
"Visualising Twitter" by Damon Cortesi, Jeff Katz, Dan Zarella & Steve Broback
"Twitter Goes Mainstream: What are the Issues and How will they be Resolved" by Jennifer Leggio, Jonathan Matkowski & Richard Brewer-Hay

Day 2:
"Twitter's Potential - An Investigation into the Possibilities" by Anamitra Banerji
"Mining Twitter: Extracting Value From Conversaions & Connections" by Soren Macbeth, Brian Solis, Warren Sukernek & Steve Broback
"What the 2008 USA Election Teaches Us about Politics & Twitter" by Kathy Gill, Jason Preston & Sarah Granger
"Case tudies in Community Building" by Jeremiah Owyang
"Corporate Tweeting: Strategies and Tools for Co-Ordinating Workflow" by Jon Ziber, Morgan Johnston, Sudha Jamthe, Ross Mayfield and Jerry Michalski
"How Twitter and the Real Time Web Change the Dynamics of Web 2.0" by Robert Scoble, DL Byron, Stowe Boyd & Jason Preston



Here are many of the session slides from the presenters at 140 | The Twitter Conference, pulled together into one convenient location. If you're looking for Slide Shows from the event, you can try grabbing them here:

Click here for #140tc Session Slides

If you would like to understand more about our learnings from the #140tc Conference, we would be delighted to share this information with you.

CONTACT US
 

What's everyone Twittering on about!

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking website out there. Even Facebook is keeping a very close eye on this seamingly lo-fi network.

Once you have set-up your account (for free), you can instantly start following others, without waiting to see if you are accepted. You can instantly start writing your own micro-blogs (described as Tweets), just like SMS, but with the addition of pictures and links back to your website.

We set-up all our blogs to feed to Twitter. Your followers can then pick and choose what to read and drill down further for the full story.

Even celebrities are realising that they can connect directly with their fans, whilst keeping them at an arms length. Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) stole the march in the UK and has over 150,000 followers, and Jonathan Ross (@wossy), Chris Moyles (@chrisdjmoyles), and Philip Scholfield (@schofe) are already hooked.

Twitter recently played a part in President Obama's (@barackobama) campaign to victory. I am proud to say he is now following me and me him!

Though it can be a bit like watching and being on Big Brother, the potential for sending instant relevant news, out to your valued followers and onto a public network, is a powerful web app to have on your mobile or Mac/PC.

Currently, there are many web applications being developed that are making good use of Twitters powerful API, using Twitter as a carrier of information passed directly to other web apps.

I think this is just the beginning for Twitter, and the Starberry Constellation are already developing some interesting ideas of our own with Twitters easy to use API such as social media marketing.

To learn more about how Starberry (@5tarberry) can help make Twitter become part of your Online marketing Strategy, contact us now.

CONTACT US

-- Post From My iPhone

Why should we need to be bidding on our own brand? This is a typical question that often gets asked by our clients when referring to paid search in one of their Google Adwords Campaigns. Many industry experts support the view that bidding on your own brand is the key to getting qualified leads and driving sales. According to Travelocity's Jeffrey Glueck, brands still matter on the internet, most of your profits come from buying your own brand name.

A recent study by Travelocity found 96 percent of booked trips resulted from branded keywords, leaving just 4 percent of bookings coming from non-branded terms. To further back up his findings Glueck refers to other recent research findings such as 360i's study concluding that while brand words account for just 5 percent of paid search spend, they generate 80 percent of profit from search alone.

The multiple exposures achieved from running paid listings alongside natural search listings not only enhance your credibility in the minds of the searcher, but this also means that you occupy more of the real estate of the page. After all the more spaces you occupy on the page, the less are occupied by your competitors!

Ignoring the fact that around 30 percent of clicks take place on ads themselves, you shouldn't rely on natural search listings exclusively. Often, your natural search listings end up below two or three ads shown at the top of the search page anyway. Also when bidding on your own brand you have more control over copy content, placement, landing page and optimisation of ads than in natural listings. Improved conversion rates alone can often pay for ad costs. Go and Google 'Dell' and you'll get my point.

Bidding on your own brand can also act as a defensive online marketing strategy against competitors too. Searchers who type in a branded name might be perfectly happy with a different brand or they might be somewhat committed to one brand, but willing to switch, given the right offers. These are two reasons why competitors bid on each others keywords, hoping to steal away customers and clients. (We do not advocate bidding on competitors brands as we consider this unethical, and can cause a flurry of 'cease and desist' letters from competitors lawyers!)

For small to medium sized businesses, brand searches are even more important. Your site may be new, or have low visibility in general, but there are still a handful of people searching your name or brand, and you want to be in front of them, even if it means paying a few pence extra for a click. The point is, it builds up brand recognition for smaller brands and can be very important to build up a level playing field with the larger players.

Overall, in nearly every scenario I've looked at, it makes financial sense for the brand owner to be bidding on their own brand.

For more information on bidding on your own brand, and how we can help you take up the top spot on Google contact us now.

 Paid search advertising spend is at an all time high, whilst newspaper advertising budgets are being slashed by Estate Agents and Property Developers in the UK.

I have analysed Starberry's client roster, and have noticed a substantial increase in our clients Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising spend in the last quarter. Over half our clients have been doubling their PPC budgets, and at the same time all of those clients are reporting that they have reduced their press ad spend dramatically, some have stopped national and local ad spend completely.

This trend is echoed in a recent report by the Interactive Advertisng Bureau (www.iab.net) about the overall online advertising spend. They announced that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of $4.9 billion for the first quarter of 2007. The 2007 first quarter revenues represent a 26 percent increase over Q1 2006 at $3.8 billion and a 2 percent increase over Q4 2006 at $4.8 billion.

"The continued growth of online ad revenues clearly illustrates marketers' increased comfort with the extraordinary vitality and accountability of this medium," said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. "It reaches consumers with an unprecedented level of efficiency and measurability that provides marketers with actionable data. And the ever-changing landscape of new platforms and technologies that enrich interactive advertising guarantees that this growth trend will continue."

Source: PwC/IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report (www.iab.net)



Starberry teamed up with DoubleClick in 2006 and formed a partnership to provide PPC and Natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the Property Marketing sector. This partnership has gone from strength to strength as we feedback all the learnings and knowledge from focusing in this sector to all our clients.

Of course the recent news that Google intends to purchase DoubleClick in a record breaking deal that is reportedly worth $3.1 billion has helped to rubber stamp DoubleClick's position at the forefront of the online advertising revolution. This deal has a knock on effect which benefits Starberry and all its clients being in a partnership with DoubleClick in these exciting times.

If you would like to know more about driving qualified leads to sell your properties, and how you can put your business firmly at the top of Google, then please contact us now.

Every day we are asked, "how can we get to the top of Google Search?" and our response is (99% of the time), you need to add more rich relevant content to your website.

"what's rich relevant website content?" they ask.

We explain - if you are selling a property in Chelsea, write about the property in Chelsea, write about the market, the area, write about property prices in Chelsea, write about the ease of transport, the surrounding restaurants - in a nutshell, the more you write around the subject, the better chance you have of appearing on the first page of search engines.

"how do we add this content?", our website doesn't have content management - yet!

Typically we would urge everyone to have a Content Management System to manage their website.

Starberry specialise in designing and developing 'award winning' content managed property websites - We really don't want to waste our time and your money carrying out silly little updates, when we could build a CMS that would empower you to do them instantly yourself, in-house. Meanwhile we can get on and develop more useful web applications and or focus on driving more qualified leads to your sales team.

However, a CMS does comes with a price (not always a big price) and takes a little time to put in place and integrate with your property search.

So, what can you do in the meantime?

Get a Blog and simply add a tab or a link to it from your website. Then start writing and never stop. Create links from keywords in your copy to pages within your website, specific properties for sale or for rent, and link to external sites that compliment what you are writing about.

Then the magic will begin to happen.

If you don't believe me, type "adwords property" in Google and see who comes at the top of the Natural Search (even above Google Adwords)!

If you would like to learn more about Blogs, Content Management Systems and or online Property Marketing;

CONTACT US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

I wouldn't want to be a "Subscription Based" Property Portal in this day and age!

Today, the vast majority of Estate Agents & Property Developers regard the Big 5 Property Portals as "the be all and end all" to property marketing online. As mentioned in our Portals vs Natural Search article, they are killing your natural search opportunities. However, their days are numbered, because there are some new kids on the block, www.extate.co.uk, www.nestoria.com & www.zoomf.com and these are just the start of things to come in the next generation "search based" property portal space.

The new Web 2.0 Property Portals are incorporating a whole bunch of tricks using API functions (Application Protocol Interfaces) - to simply translate, Google offers its mapping technology free for them to link all kinds of other free data to. Not only can you easily locate the properties from a postcode search and visually see them on a map, you can also easily show where the nearest schools, pubs, parks, shops and pretty well anything that has a postcode within any given area are too. In this way, the browser gains a lot of information on a particular area, very quickly.

They are also using "Tags" to further help the browser profile searches, eg, 2 bed flat, Chelsea, balcony, parking. This speeds up the search process and gives the browser a more visually inspired search experience - every time you add a Tag, the better you pin point your results.

Blogs, RSS Feeds, Video & Skype (Internet Telephony) are also beginning to appear in the new age Property Search verticals.

One of two things is going to happen in the next year, either the Big 5 are going to slowly disappear or there will be a number of big trade sales within this sector, as the Big Fish snap up the Mino's and suddenly reappear with new Web 2.0 look, feel and functionality.

Whatever the outcome, Starberry will make sure that we get your properties embedded into the best of them.

CONTACT US
 

Starberry have been assisting Property Developers and Estate Agents to "Sell Off Plan" with the use of a number of very powerful Web Apps (applications).

The first thing we do is to analyse the market, both current and old - Starberry helped develop www.hometrack.co.uk the leading online application for viewing house prices /comparables across the UK - the site is used by all the leading money lenders, and has been integrated it into sites such as www.UpMyStreet.co.uk & www.propertyfinder.com

With the use of our Keyword Search App, we can analyse types of property being searched for and view information by popularity in real time. We can also budget expected online marketing spend requirements by analysing current keyword bids.

Starberry manage in excess of £100,000 per month of PPC (Pay Per Click) paid search media spend through our centralised keyword & ad management application. We also have access to data captured from multiple Leading Property Portal accounts.

We data mine and aggregate this information on a daily basis with our dedicated team of Property Search Analysts. We can offer some very powerful selling information to Developers & Agents including:

• Volume of buyer interest by area & by price
• Pricing recommendations
• Converting keyword searches
• Expected bid values
• Competitive Analysis
• Estimated Cost per Qualified Lead
• ROI

We analyse the area, the product and the target market, before we begin building a suitable online sales tool such as our award winning SiteRobot or our recently released Plotfinder technology. In conjunction with the website build, we develop a tailored keyword paid search campaign.

If you would like to utilise Starberry's wealth of Web Apps:

CONTACT US

"Starberry Property eMarketing Leads to Sales"

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use programs called feed "readers" or "aggregators": the user "subscribes" to a feed by supplying to their reader a link to the feed; the reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards:

* Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
* Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
* RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel".

Description supplied by Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia


Starberry are confident that RSS could dramatically assist Estate Agents and Developers to build and retain a friendlier communication path between themselves and their customers.

Email is becoming more and more intrusive, in an age when we are all inundated with spam. Opt In Email communication still has its place for delivery of certain information you really want. However, for example, Regular Updates, Latest News and New Property Releases might more suit being delivered through RSS Feeds, in a less intrusive, friendly, read at your leisure way.

Try it now. Subscribe to Starberry's RSS feed and try out Google Reader to receive our regular news stories relating to information on the best ways to Marketing Property Online.

At Starberry, we regard 'driving qualified leads' to be the most important part of our business.

For decades, all our clients, including Residential Estate Agents, Commercial Agents and Property Developers have all been sayng the same thing;

"We are only interested in 'qualified leads' that convert to sales."

Any other smoke and mirrors salesman's chat about "numbers of eyeballs, readership, website hits or unique visitors" is regarded as meaningless waffle.

Historically an Agent would preach that 80% of sales came from the hoarding or signage and who knows, they might have been right?

Today, Starberry can now actually demonstrate a true CPA (cost per acquisition) and ROI (return on investment) by following a few key online procedures;

• Building sufficient tracked "actions points" into your property sales websites.
• Building banks of keyword search terms and phrases with relevant targeted ad copy and managing published bids across multiple search engines such as Google, Yahoo & MSN
• Analysing successful paid search terms and embedding key terms into rich relevant website content to improve the sites Natural Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Capturing pre-qualified leads, converting to qualified leads with tools such as rich email auto-replies & tailored targeted campaigns.
• Qualifying leads through a careful process of identifying the potential buyers actual requirements (data mining) and giving them what they want, rather than what one thinks they want.
• Building confidence through successfully delivered online relationships that convert into physical relationships and ultimately emerge as viewings and sales.

If you would like to understand more about how Starberry can drive Qualified Leads for your business:

CONTACT US