Place your Advertisement on Google

Today my blog post is about Keyword research and how to do a Google adwords campaign.
Search engine marketing is play very important role in any marketing campaign. SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing) are the main part of the Search engine marketing. To do a PPC marketing campaing , we use Google AdWords. Now I going to explain How to do a key word research and how to creat AdWord account.
I have done a key word research for "English courses in Colombo". You can run a key word research by using google AdWords. Now I explain how to do this.
First of all you have to log on to AdWords using your google account.Then you should select Keyword Tool under the tab of Tools and Analysis.

Now you can enter English courses in Colombo as the word or phrase that going to search in google. After that you can select Sri Lanka as the location and English as the language. Now you can click on search and get the most common keyword that people used in search. Then you can select appropriate keyword and download it.

These are the keyword I have selected. Other than the keyword you can see Competition, Global monthly
searches and Local monthly searches.
This is called as the Keyword research.
Now we can identify what are the keyword used by people, when they are searching English courses in google.
Now you can create your own advertisement by using theses keyword.
Ok. Lets start. You can start your campaign by clicking campaign tab and then select new campaign. when you click the new campaign, you have some option to select. Here you should select "search network only" option under the new campaign. After that you can give campaign name, location, network and bidding option. Here we are going to create very simple add. So we don't want make any changes here. After click the save and continue button you can create your add. First of all you should give a Add group name and then you can create your add by entering  Headline, description and Display URL. Then you should select keywords that your add can show on google when people search for things related to your keyword. After doing all things you can set your default bid and then you can go to billing. Here I do not going to explain how we make payments.
I think now you have a general knowledge about how to create a PPC adds.
Finally, I would like to explain what are the benefits of PPC marketing.

• Immediately you can reach millions of viewers around the world. 
• Your adds may be placed in the top position where they can be easily viewed. 
• You can create a campaign strategy to target specific group or individual who already have an interest your product. 
• PPC marketing will give your online business the competitive edge.

Try to use this. All the best...!!!!!

My first experience on the Web based lecture

Now is time to change the traditional class room culture. This blog post is about my first web based lecture experience. When I was in school, teacher came to class room and teaches using black board.  Then I came to University there are two things differ from the school. White board replaces to the black board and teachers used power point presentation. Finally I luckily to got new experience, in this digital world.

First of all I would like to thank Mr. Amitha Amarasinghe who was organized this lecture. Technology that they use here is webinars. Simply Webinar is a way of conducting lecture and workshop through the Internet. My first webinar experience was on Search Engine Optimization which was conducted by Mr. Suranga Priyashantha who is a senior marketing consultant at Australia. He conducted the lecture from Australia and we participated from the university premises.
This is very effective method and this generates lot of advantages. Mr. Suranga who is our resource person is from Australia. So even physically we can't contact with him because of the distance. This technology made a remarkable opportunity for us to get the knowledge from that kind of resource person. Mr. Suranga did this lecture very well by using some slides. After the lecture traditionally we fear to ask question form lecturer. But that time we asked some question from lecturer through the Facebook.
Here I explain my personal experience about web based lecture. So some time I felt this method is uncomfortable. Why I said like that. Because students couldn't joined with lecture interactively and we couldn't asked question when lecture is going on.
I think this is not a big issue. This is the first step. So we have to develop lot of areas. In near future we can do this in a better way by minimizing issues with modern technology.

      

Analysis of News 1st Web site Usability.

News 1st is the one of major news provider in Sri Lanka. Now I going to explain how I feel about News 1st web site.
Accessibility 
First of all site load time is reasonable. Its take 8 to 10 second.
Contrast between text and background is good. They are using black text in white background.
They use normal size font with bold heading. It is easy to readable.
We can see several banner adds and flash on the web site. These adds are not interrupt for viewers.
Their is no any appropriate ALT tags for images. So this is not enough to satisfied.
This site does have custom not-found/404 pages. Its not good for web viewers.

Identity 
Company logo is placed on the top of the web page. Viewers can clearly identify the company logo.
We Report You Deiced is the company tag line and daily head line is on this tagline. So these are clearly explain company purpose.
This site mainly provide news. When viewers come to home page they can clearly understand web site less than 5 second.
Company information is available in the web site. But path is not clear and difficult to find the place that information are included.
 As well as there is no any contact information.

Navigation
Main navigation is easily identifiable. This navigation tabs are top on the web site.
Navigation labels are not clear. It does not give clear description. T
his web site has reasonable number of buttons and link. Its not too high.
Company logo is linked to home page. When we are in the any page, by clicking company logo easily we can come to home page.
There are some links to other web pages and social networks. Easily we can identify these links.
There is a site search option. It is positioned on the top of the web page and it is easy to access.

Content 
This web site consist with the news. So there is lot of hot news, special news, etc. But these major headings are not clear.
Critical content such as head lines, special news are above the fold and clearly identify.
They do not use too much styles and color. Mainly they used same type of text and main colors are black and white.
They emphasis head lines from bold text and they use text background color.
There is lot of adds. Therefor they obstruct the web page content.   
This site main copy is concise and explanatory. In few seconds we can understand this is all about news.
The URL http://www.newsfirst.lk/english/ Its clearly explain the web site name and the version of the web site.( English or Sinhala). So its very user friendly.
The HTML can be see by clicking the web site tab.( Eg: www.newsfirst.lk/english/sports) This title clearly explain the content of the page.

News 1st web site is user friendly. But some of thing have to change and develop. This is how I see the News 1st web site.

The Digital Marketing Revolution. Is Sri Lanka Ready?

What is your answer? Yes or No. If somebody asks this question from me, it’s difficult to give any direct answer. My answer may be both. Why would I say like that?

In 1978, Sri Lanka introduced open economic policies. After that Sri Lanka connected with the world and involve with new technologies. Sri Lanka went through the stages of different technologies and media such as Radio, TV, Internet, Mobile phone etc.

First of all we should know what Digital Marketing is? “Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smart phones,  cell phones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage with consumers and other business partners”. (From Wikipedia).  Internet Marketing is a major component of digital marketing.

When I say YES for above question, there are some facts to prove it. Computer literacy in Sri Lanka is about 35% and the main objective of the government is to increase the computer literacy up to 75% by the year 2016. And also internet users in Sri Lanka are 15.1% (2011) of the population. There are nearly 1.2 million users’ accesses the internet weekly or more often. When talking about Social Media in Sri Lanka, Facebook come to a major position. Currently, there are 1.21 million Facebook users in Sri Lanka. According to TRCSL, the total mobile subscription as of 2012 was 20,324,070. That’s almost equal to the current population of 20,869,000.Approximately 46% of internet users access the internet through their mobile phones. These all facts are saying the current position of Sri Lanka in the digital world. So now a day’s lots of companies try to do their promotion through the digital marketing campaign. And also some companies sell their product online. Moreover there are some online shopping malls such as anything.lk, kapruka.lk, wowmall.lk, gadget.lk, tickets.lk etc. Considering these factors we can say Sri Lanka is ready for the Digital Marketing Revolution.

But, is this enough to say Sri Lanka is ready? Above mention facts and data are collected from the entire country. But we should analyze these data according to the geographical areas in Sri Lanka. Percentages of the computer literacy and internet users are high in the Western and Central province. When we consider the other provinces, their percentage is low and these rural area people are not aware about the digital medias. If some companies want to reach their brands to the rural area customers, digital marketing is not the ideal communication method.

Sri Lanka is still developing. So in another 5 years time these all data and facts will be expired. And also digital marketing will get the highest proportion of the promotion budget of the companies and other Medias will be vanished.