Category Archives: Business Strategy

5 Internet Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSR1P-GhSSx44YzRhEv9ZHA1gUdve1w-JvcoYBs7K2Iilp6HgAdIn this weak economy, when even large companies with billions in bank balance are struggling to maintain sales and profits, one can imagine the difficult situation faced by small businesses. It is hard to run a small business, and there’s always something new to do. Internet marketing is yet another thing to do, but if you make some time for internet marketing, you can do even better with your business. The internet provides a great place to sell your products to an audience larger than you will experience anywhere else. Following are 5 Internet Marketing Strategies  that can increase visitors to your site and increase your sales. Continue reading

Lehman Brothers Case Study

This is an ongoing post to study what exactly happened to Lehman Brothers.

Sep 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers was the 4th largest investment bank in the world. Why was Hank Paulson smiling the day Lehman Brothers was declared bankrupt? Did he play a role in the denial of US Govt support for Lehman Brothers at a critical juncture? Nobody knows that. But what one surely knows is that Hank Paulson is ex-Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs is a long term beneficiary of Lehman Brothers fall. Agreed that Lehman had much higher leverage (about 40x) than its peers (20x), so their balance sheet was much higher in risk. But if US Govt could support other large financial organizations like AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Max, maybe they should have offered some “short term support” to Lehman Brothers too. In credit crunch situation, time is all that one needs, and with a bit of time, Lehman could have got a chance to get sell some of its assets to raise capital or raise fresh capital from its long term investors globally. The US Govt’s/ Fed’s attitude of “not a single dollar to support you” towards Lehman Brothers was not logical and it harmed the global financial markets, including US economy. Continue reading

Search Engine Marketing update: Google Instant

Hello Folks, you may have started seeing the latest update in Google search engine. Its called Google Instant.

Since many companies and professionals have used MyOrbit services for their online business, I wanted to share this with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/sep/09/google-instant-effect-on-seo

What is clear is that Google wants to offer long-tail keywords to users as early as possible in the search process.

For example, along with the keyword: “Hair Transplant Surgery Cost”, people will also see options like: “how much does hair transplant surgery cost”, and the latter phrase will now receive many clicks too, even though its hardly a keyword in today’s internet marketing book.

Earlier such a longer sentence or question would have received very few direct clicks because people won’t type long text, but people can surely select longer text if its offered as a drop-down like it is being done now, thereby generating more exposure/visits to web content built on long tail keywords than today.

In addition, Google has been working hard to improve “personalization”, which means they want to show you things relevant to your search profile based on past searches, geography, etc.

What does it mean for website owners and SEO? I believe websites that cover their topic thoroughly using all possible keywords and their natural expressions will ultimately come out winners.

We will study this further to see how Google Instant can be used for our work, and will share the learning with you. Meanwhile all basic SEO work should continue because that is essential to get started in the search engine indexing game.

Best Wishes,
Shankar

Indian Cement Industry: Proposed Demerger of Grasim Cement Business

For those are who have been following it, the Indian Cement Industry is rocking. It has been one of the best performers in fundamentals and also in the stock markets.

Vallabh Bhansali of Enam Securities comments on the proposed demerger of Grasim’s cement business and formation of a wholly owned subsidiary called Samruddhi Cements, which will ultimately get merged with Ultratech Cement, which is also part of AV Birla Group like Grasim.

Ultratech has shareholding in it by rival Larsen & Toubro, so that could be a reason why a direct transfer into Ultratech is not being done.