It’s fantastic that the Olympic Games are being held in London in 2012; in terms of the development and the prospects of London; it’s businesses and it’s people. The Games will improve infrastructure, services and the economy both in the lead up to the Games and during the Games. But is all as it seems when it comes to Internet Marketing in London?

Well, it’s true that visible businesses relying on footfall in London should benefit from the influx of people who will be coming to the games but the laws relating to advertising and marketing in the London Games are far more restrictive than they have ever been at any previous Olympic Games. Sure, the Olympic Committee need to ensure they make as much money as possible through official sponsorship but the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 goes much farther than the Olympic Symbol etc Protection Act 1995 .

Does it go too far? I think so, in effect it’s stopping anybody from using a whole heap of words in their marketing and advertising activities like for example ‘London 2012′ together. There were already sufficient safeguards protecting sponsorship within the UK, in addition to the Olympics Symbols Protection Act there are safeguards covering copyright, trademarks and misleading advertising.

Even the Instiute of Practioners in Advertising (IPA) wrote to all 646 Members of Parliament to advise them of their concern stating that the 2006 Act was “too broad and disproportionate” and that “such radical and disproportionate legislation does not benefit anyone, it gives unparalleled power to event holders, which pushes up the price of sponsorship and prevents ordinary smaller businesses from benefiting at all from major national events.

According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) marketers are “ill-informed” about the legality of Olympic-related marketing activities.

In the latest Marketing Trends Survey, 86 per cent admitted to having little or no understanding whatsoever of rules regarding what promotional activities they can undertake in relation to 2012 Games. Despite this nearly a quarter (23 per cent) say they are planning marketing activity around the London event.

40 per cent said they had no understanding at all of the law relating to the Games - called the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. A further 46 per cent admitted to only a very poor or poor understanding. Just 14 per cent described their knowledge of the law as good. The CIM warns “Those marketers planning activities must be fully aware of the Olympic Games Act, otherwise we are likely to see a string of court cases brought against the ill-informed.”

Interestingly the majority of focus around the Olympic legislation has been about offline advertising with much less focus on internet marketing and advertising, I’m not sure if this is because it is harder to police or not.

So what does this mean for internet marketing in London? Well, I can’t imagine that Google is going to disallow the ‘banned’ keywords from being used in it’s Paid Search Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation will also present opportunites to internet marketers so long as the content within sites is not misleading. In short you will need to makee your plans early, be clear about the law and be innovative in your approach. It will be interesting to see what unfolds in the lead up to the London Games in 2012.

For more information regarding the legislation visit:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/Ukpga_19950032_en_1.htm

http://www.london2012.com/documents/brand-guidelines/guidelines-for-business-use.pdf

http://www.b2bm.biz/features/?groupId=13226&articleId=28674

Internet Marketing Services >>

In almost all consumer business areas the online competition for high ranking organic and paid search  non-geographic keyword phrases is extremely high. Of course, you can achieve high rankings for generic keywords but if you are pursuing organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as a strategy then you need to be patient for the results and put in a lot of work or pay someone else to do it for you and if you are utlising Paid Search then although the results are almost instantaneous you need to be prepared to pay a high Cost per Click (CPC) which depending on your conversion rate could end up being very expensive.

Therefore, if you want to compete for the generic non-geographic keywords whether you’re opting for a strategy of SEO or Paid Search or indeed both, you’ll need to be prepared to invest both time (either yours or someone elses) and money - you’re objectives, resources and budget will define exactly how much of both. That’s exactly what successful worldwide, nationwide or wholly online businesses targeting the most competitive non-geographic keywords have to do.

If however, you’re primarily an offline ‘bricks and mortar’ business that relies on footfall from your surrounding area and are by your very essence targeting a specific village, town, city or county then Local Search is defnitely the route you should be considering as your starting point. Afterall, if let’s say you’re a restaurant in Notting Hill, do you really need to be promoting yourself to people outside of London? Probably not, if potential customers were coming from outside London on business or for a holiday and they wanted to find a restaurant online then they’d most likely search for something like a ‘restaurant in notting hill’. So on that basis you’d definitely want to promote yourself geographically for the search term Notting Hill but then you may also want to expand your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) whether SEO or Paid Seartch to include nearby villages like Kensington and Westborune Grove, maybe West London or perhaps even London as a whole. Either way, if you’re limited on budget and resource you stand a much greater chance of success by localising your SEM.

I’ll use a client case study and SEO to demonstrate this further.  The client is called Beautcamp Pilates and they’re credited with bringing reformer pilates over to London from LA. Their business is extremely successful due to their professionalism and quality of service and they have large studios in both East and West London. As with many ‘first movers’ that are successful you get a lot of competition surfacing after the event all playing catch-up, all searching for a piece of that success and competition is good thing so long as it is ethical…

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In recent studies, top e-commerce and information web sites were discovered to receive up to 85 percent of all of their visitors (and customers) from search referrals. Without doubt, for the vast majority of on-line companies, Organic SEO provides the highest possible ROI of all affordable marketing and promotional activities for businesses.

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Although SEO takes longer (between 3-6months) than Pay Per Click advertising to achieve high rankings and despite being more work-intensive, certainly initially, a good strategically planned Search Engine Optimisation campaign will reap massive long term rewards for your business if done properly and needn’t cost the earth. If you would like to find out more about SEO then click this link Search Engine Optimisation.

Search engines drive extremely targeted traffic. The visitor who finds your site through a search engine is already actively looking for exactly what you provide. You can’t find a more targeted form of marketing than that.

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