Vinny Lingham’s Blog

I’ve just arrived in London for Search Engine Strategies. I’ll be manning the SEMPO Booth on Wednesday morning from 10am - 12pm, so if you’re at the event, please stop by, I’d love to meet with you.

The trip to London was pretty easy - quick overnight flight on SAA.

On a slightly different note:

Companies that retail numerous products often have an XML product feed that they distribute to partners. We use these feeds to produce websites such as ThatShoe. The problem we as marketers face is that the companies which produce the feeds, do not necessarily have the inhouse skills to do so. The result is poor quality product feeds that lead to poor user experience, and ultimately, a negative brand experience. We believe strongly in the vertical search market, however, the limitations are simply that the merchants in the vertical do not always understand what their users are searching for.

Don’t get me wrong, some merchants are fantastic about providing better feeds with more information, but others couldn’t care - they have their feed built, and that’s that. No maintenance, no adjustment, no enhancement.

I think that eventually the people who deploy product feeds will have to start answering to their superiors as to why their existing and potential customers have had negative brand experiences as it relates to their product catalogs.

With content syndication playing a greater role in online marketing - don’t you think that the content that merchants distribute needs to be at a high level of quality?

Online marketing is becoming more and more similar to offline shelf space. To draw an analogy:

Currently, if you walk into a supermarket, you will maybe 20 brands of washing powder, all owned by 2 or 3 companies. These companies realise that in order to compete, the more brands that they own, the higher percentage of shelf space they dominate. If for instance, there are 20 slots on the shelf, and Company A has 10 slots with 10 different brands, they effectively will control 50% of the shelf space of that supermarket. By having more shelf space, it is a proven way to increase your market share.

Online is no different!

With over 8 Billion pages already indexed in Google, capturing users interest is becoming more and more difficult. The Internet is growing at a rate faster than the number of new users coming online. This simply means that previously, if you had a hobbies site selling very specialized widgets, and you had 9 competitors, with a potential market of 1 million consumers, within the next few months, your potential market might only grow to 1.1 million consumers, but the number of competitors in your space will grow to 13.

So, previously, you would have had 100,000 potential customers per website, now you’re sitting at about 84,000. Over time, you will be diluted more and more.

Sounds scary, right? Well, there is hope, and planning way in advance definitely helps! Here are potential solutions to the impending doom problem:

1. Build a bigger, better brand - but you will always have leakage, and a declining potential market size.

2. Compete on price - but this will lead to price wars and is not advisable. Compete on value, not price.

3. Deploy new clone websites (highly advisable, we do this for alot of our clients), to increase market prenetration. Mostly white labelled to create unique user experiences. Do NOT use the same content and graphics - this will create an impression of search engine spam.

4. Build a strong affiliate program and catalog feeds to power affiliate portals and distribute your content far and wide through the Internet (for instance, our portal - ThatShoe).

5. Invest in website building software for your affiliate base - eBay & Amazon already offer such solutions.

The number of new websites coming online in recent months is incredible, it’s seriously outpacing the growth in online users. No matter what your business is, you’re going to find yourself competing with more and more websites - if you’re smart, you’ll probably own them!

Hi

There has been more media coverage of ThatShoe.com.

Visit:

ITWeb
Biz-Community

Hi All

incuBeta has just launched the world’s first shoe search engine. The press release follows, please feel free to use or syndicate this release (without modification):

incuBeta launches the World’s First Dedicated Shoe Search Engine

incuBeta has just launched ThatShoe.com, the world’s first vertical shoe search engine.

ThatShoe.com utilizes product catalog information from seventeen large merchants, including eBay, Amazon and Zappos.com. Currently in beta testing, ThatShoe.com offers a selection of hundreds of thousands of shoes. The merchant base will be further expanded over the next few months.

Says incuBeta’s Chief Strategy Officer, Vinny Lingham: “We created a one-stop-shop for consumers looking for shoes. It is quick and easy to use, unlike clicking through directories or mostly irrelevant search results. The quality of results is based solely on the merchants’ ability to provide quality data feeds.”

Asked whether he would consider merchants who approach ThatShoe.com for inclusion, he said: “Of course. We’ll consider all online and offline merchants who approach us, but ThatShoe.com will only include reliable merchants who are able to fulfill our users’ requirements.”

incuBeta sees much potential in vertical search engines. The shoe category is a prime online opportunity with huge potential for growth. Research publications by eMarketer and JupiterResearch , amongst others, point to the potential of vertical search engines, with retail expected to be a major component of the vertical search market. To quote David Hills, CE of LookSmart, “(t)here are times when you are looking for something … and, from an efficiency standpoint, a vertical search engine may help you find what is essential to you.” (In: San Francisco Chronicle)

incuBeta is a Business Day Technology Top 100 company and winner of the Commission Junction Horizon Award for Innovation in the USA.

Contact: Vinny Lingham at vinny.l@incubeta.com or +27 21 417 1363.

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Oh, and I just found another very interesting blog - Good RV Turns - it’s being written by Marketing Supremo, Todd Tweedy from GoYaMi. What will he come up with next?