Global Cargo Solutions Campaign

Global Cargo Solutions

Increased internet presence and data supply

Leicestershire based freight forwarder, Global Cargo Solutions contacted us and asked us to put together a plan for them to increase their internet presence and to help them expand their current client base.

After meeting up with them to discuss their needs, plans and ideas IC247 put together a campaign which included:

• Website design and build including corporate design of logo and website look and layout
• Blog template design and build
• Newsletter design build and newsletter tool supply
• Internet advert campaign
• Directory listings and back link sourcing
• Google tools including; Google Maps (local business listing, Google Base service listing, Google analytics to monitor website visitor trends, Webmaster tools and a Google Page mini website)
• Data supply
• Telesales (calling above to introduce Global Cargo Solutions)

Campaign description

After going live with the website we compiled a database of 500 company names with decision maker contact details for businesses that had shown a previous interest in freight and shipping services or UK businesses that exported their wares internationally. This database includes a wide variety of different industries, based all over the UK and Northern Ireland.

IC247 then initiated an online advert campaign describing Global Cargo Solutions services, with text provided by them and posted these adverts on different highly ranked classified advert websites. We then added their services to Google Base, built the mini site, Blog and sourced well ranked business to business websites for back link partners and also other top listed website directories for the freight forwarding industry.

The enquiries from the adverts and website have been forthcoming and the sales calls have been a hit. IC247 make approximately 20-30 calls per day and these calls have led to at least 2-3 new quote requests every day.

Organic Internet And Modern Marketing

Strategic Marketing Campaigns

Nowadays the first port of call for business information is the internet and everyone is aware of the importance placed on achieving high volumes of traffic to a well built website. Most campaigns are based upon the long term organic aspects of getting these results via Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and other search engines and this will always be the ultimate aim; to have an ever evolving website with as much relevant information available as possible with good quality, highly ranked back links that is managed regularly.

The major search engines take some amount of time to index new information but pay per click (PPC) services are available (Google Adwords is the best example) which can send you visitors depending on the amount of money you spend per click and the keywords you choose to use within your targeted adverts.

Depending on your budget, such pay per click campaigns can be expensive and over a longer period of time are economical burdens on most marketing budgets. One must look to utilise other tools and arenas that are both already available on the internet and reachable by as large a target audience as possible (Newsletters, E-zines, Social Networking websites, online forums, Wikis and directories) as well as older and more traditional marketing practices (Telesales and marketing, personal appointments and to a degree other media advertising like TV or radio) to market or sell your service or products.

Gaining back links and a presence on other highly ranked websites are really important. Not only do you get seen by their own visitors but you also get recognised by the major search engines by having a link from the given website to your own.

The telesales and newsletters (per email or normal post - although normal post is les important due to environmental issues etc) tools are also great assistance when one is building ones marketing range and increasing ones audience as long as you have obtained the correct and up to date data. You need decision makers contact details of your target customer and you also need to have the ability to decipher and recognise the type of character at the end of your telephone immediately. Politeness and also in depth knowledge of your product or service are major requirements of any sort of telesales campaign and a thick skin is needed!

Strategic marketing and tactical nous go well together. Each campaign or project must be aligned correctly so that the best results are garnered in the easiest and quickest way. Your search engine optimization (SEO) project needs to be well thought out and implimented by knowledgeable team members or agencies who study all aspects of the website optimization, from code, back links and keywords to how your competition perform and then this SEO work needs to be complimented by your designs that catch the eye of the potential customer, your sales staff politely approaching clients on the telephone with follow up newsletter emails from the contact information you have because of the time taken to source the perfect lead and once you have this well oiled machine up and running then the foundations for success are lodged firmly so that you can simply add content to your website that becomes optimized and freely available to new and existing customers generated by your free flowing marketing campaigns.

Contact IC247 here for a friendly chat with one of our team about best practice, modern day, one stop, strategic marketing

Case Study: Target Displays

Case Study: In partnership with Target Displays.

Website SEO and Online shop

One of our newer customers - Target Displays (based in Crawley, UK) have recently undertaken quite a change in the way they work with their internet presence. After intensive discussion and planning the decision makers at Target Displays wanted their website to be a more effective business tool rather than just as an advertising feature for their company.

Target Displays design and supply exhibition and point of sale display systems (roller banner stands, pop up display stands etc) and also provide a printing service for some of the larger corporate companies including: Virgin sports, Canons, Esporta. They have had a website for a number of years to help promote their company but it was never really optimised for search engine indexing and worked only as an addition to the companies advertising and marketing.

We at IC247 sat down with Target Displays and after in depth discussions with them about their future plans, what the competition were doing and what plans they had for the website, we put forward some proposals which included:
SEO of the main website (meta tags, correct coding etc)
More keyword rich text content correctly set out
Online store with buy online functions for their stands
The above products added to Google Product search
A Blog with regular postings by Target Displays and their customers
Extra pages added to aid any website visitors

It was decided that the website would need a lot more interactivity once a visitor clicked onto it and also that the website must be better optimised so that potential customers could find it easier by using search strings in Google, MSN and Yahoo associated with the display stand genre.

The original website design looked great; it was clear, defined and sent out a precise and simple message to visitors. Sometimes this isn't enough for a good fully functional website. It is important that the website is findable by a potential targeted visitor and therefore any website must have the correct ingredients to come up in a search engines results. These ingredients are correct coding (Meta tags), correct set out of descriptions and keywords, keyword rich text and back links.

We went right into how the website for Target Displays was built and optimised it codewise. We also added the Google Analytics tool so that Target Displays could monitor website visitors and utilise the tool for other future campaigns. We wanted to add some extra main pages to the menu bar and rebuilt this so that we could include a Helpful Links and FAQ page as well as an online shop for the top 130 products with buy online functions. These new pages were also optimised correctly but followed the main original visual design of the website.

We work very closely with Target Displays to compile their regular Blog postings and add keyword rich text for their FAQ page and also for the What We Do page and the Homepage. The homepage now has the special offers and a lot more text content and the website itself now is steadily climbing further up the search engine listings for relevant search strings and terms.

We also added all the products to Google Base (Google Product Search) and made some additional postings to Gogle Base Services and sourced some cool links about the display stand and advertising/marketing arena (Wikipedia, Technorati etc).

Every month (minimally) we post a Blog about what the new speial offers will be, what has been happening in the Target Display world and any other news and we have been in discussion with Target Displays about online videos, embedded in their website with feeds to Youtube etc for visual instructions on how to set their display stands up and introductions to the team. We have also just initiated a pay per click campaign using the Google Adwords tool to create more short term interest in Target Displays Special offers.

Target Displays also have a mini website for more information. This website is hosted via the Google Page Creator Tool and has lots more text and pictures and informative help for potential customers.

There are also proposals for an online interactive brochure that shows all of Target Displays products with links to the online shop, videos and more special offers. This type of brochure is one used by some of our other customers and can be emailed out to a customer, printed as a normal catalogue, adds interactivity via links and can also be embedded into a website.

All in all click rates are improving dramatically on Target Displays website and the website is refreshing and a lot more interactive. As with any good website one must plan, improve and look to add functionality and Target Displays now dedicate more time to their internet presence with monthly advert campaigns, directory listings and also more plans underfoot for Intranet systems for them and their customers and three more domains!

Here are the links for you to see some of the Target Displays work completed by IC247:

Target Displays Main Site
Google Products
Google Base
Google Pages
Special offer internet advert example
Target Displays Blog

Contact us here for further information

Promotion packages

IC247: Helping You To Get Seen!


We have got 3 excellent new packages available for mass promotion acros the board! Take a look at the packages below and contact us for more information on pricing, timings and about initiating these proven mediums of mass promotion and marketing of you and you services/products!

Bronze package

Free website evaluation including full breakdown of build, needs and competition evaluation

Basic Website SEO (Meta tags, Keywords, content description for each website page)

If no website basic website design and build x 3 pages (Fully optimised)

URL added to search engines for indexing (Google, MSN and Yahoo)

Google tools

Analytics installed (for in depth click monitoring)

Google Maps business listing updated (Google Local Business)

100 products from E Commerce shop added to Google Product Search

If no E-Commerce shop then contact details, logo, pictures and 5 products added with selling leads to 2 x highly ranked International B2B Business websites

Directory listings x 10: Business details added to top directories including back links (where applicable), Logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

Classified Adverts x 10: Special offers/ services added to top internet advertising websites including back links (where applicable), logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

Silver Package:

Free Website evaluation including full breakdown of build, needs and competition evaluation

Full SEO (including Meta tags, Keywords, content descriptions, keyword rich text compiled and added for each page by sourcing highly ranked competitional websites in customers genre, analysing content and preparing content for our customer)

If no website then Fully SE optimised website build x 5 pages or Online shop designed and built with 100 products.

100 products added to Google Product Search or customers business added to 3 x Highly ranked B2B International trading websites (includes 5 x products/services, logos and contact details)

Google Local Business listing updated (Google Maps)

Google Analytics installed on each page (for in depth click monitoring)

5 Page Google Page mini website built using customer’s Logos, corporate colours with back links to all other online content. Hosted free of charge on Google.

5 Forums sourced in customer’s genre for customer to participate and promote business

Google group started for customer

MSN Group started for customer

5 Internet groups sourced in customer’s genre for them to participate and promote their business

25 potential customers sourced for customer

Listing added to 10 highly ranked directories including back links (where applicable), Logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

15 adverts posted on highly ranked classifieds websites including back links (where applicable), logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

Blog template designed and built with links to and from customer website

10 Back links sourced for customer to link to (informative sites including videos, Blogs and websites)

Gold Package:

Free website evaluation including full breakdown of build, needs and competition evaluation

Full SEO (including Meta tags, Keywords, content descriptions, keyword rich text compiled and added for each page by sourcing highly ranked competitional websites in customers genre, analysing content and preparing content for our customer)

ALL products from customer added to Google Product search

Customers business added to 3 x highly ranked B2B International trading websites (includes 5 x products/services, logos and contact details)

Google Analytics installed on each page (for in depth click monitoring)

Google Local Business listing updated (Google Maps)

Google webmaster tools added

5 Page Google Page mini website built using customer’s Logos, corporate colours with back links to all other online content. Hosted free of charge on Google.

Online catalogue/brochure designed and built using customers text, logos and corporate colours

10 Forums sourced in customer’s genre for customer to participate and promote business

Google group started for customer

MSN Group started for customer

20 Internet groups sourced in customer’s genre for them to participate and promote their business

At least 25 potential new customers sourced AND contacted by IC247 each month acting as customer using email out, cold call and brochure response

Factual and scientific articles sourced for customer

IC247 assist customer to add their own content to above articles with back links to other online work

Blog template designed and built with first Blog posting completed by IC247.

Customer’s basic profile added to Google Orkut, Facebook and MySpace

1 x online video for customer posted on 3 different highly ranked video sites with back links

In depth competitional analysis undertaken of customers competitors including website analysis, pricing analysis, standards of service

Directory listings x 10 including back links (where applicable), Logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

Online adverts x 20 including back links (where applicable), logos and pictures (where applicable), company description and contact details

The packages are designed to streamline your marketing capabilities and to get you results and all the stages are tried and tested!

Blogging and why it's good!

Let's talk about how Blogging can help you gain more depth with your internet promotion. IC247 tell it like it is!

A Blog means a weblog: an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page.

That's what it means from a dictionary's point of view but what does it mean for you and your business point of view or even from a personal side?

OK, put yourself in the position of a potential customer; you have the choice of a multitude of different companies offering you the same product and each company offers you
pretty much the same product for pretty much the same price. Every business owner knows that any possible positive addition to their repertoire to assist in atttracting customers to buy their product will be worth looking at. Blogging certainly does help in providing your business with both an air of professional knowledge (if you post Blogs that are open and on the line about your services) as well as showing them a personal side to what you do.

As we mentioned earlier. Blogs are a like a diary. You set up your template; taking the time, care, attention and adding all those personal touches to make it all look cool and feel nice and you sit down and you write. You add all the cool photos, maybe some logos and definately links where you want your Blog visitors to browse to after they've finished with reading your Blog. So, the next question is.... what do you write?

Well, you write about all the things that have made you and your business tick! You get everything down that makes you proud about the way you operate and how you have overcome all those day to day obstacles that give us all a headache. Come on, be happy about what you do and be positive. Positivity in any form, whether it's in daily face to face life or jumping out at you off a page on a website all amounts to the same thing - it all makes us as a reader or browser feel good too! As a potential buyer of your goods or services it would be good to hear about difficulties that you have overcome recently or to be able to get more of an idea about you and your company operate in comparison to another company offering the same or similar types of goods who do NOT post Blogs.

Naturally, there is another positive issue in that by posting regular Blogs you create a bigger online presence and more relevant text content for the search engines to index. This gets you more potential online visitors,especially if you have the Blogs hosted on other websites via RSS feeds or pings etc. This sort of content sharing is how we all use the world wide web now and don't you think it a cool thought that someone else on the other side of the world may be reading the Blog you just posted?

On a more personal side Blog writing can be good for you; it can be almost therapeutic in the whole act of the sitting down at your PC, Mac or laptop thinking about a given subject, choosing your words and then posting it for others to see. We at IC247 read Blogs as well as post them and we feel it all to be a great part of sharing new information, feelings, experiences and also hopes and needs from a personal basis.

They say at least one new Blog is posted every second and by writing Blogs and posted them we are helping each other to learn and develop new skills, hear about other peoples personal views and thoughts and maybe even to improve ourselves!

Contact us for help and advice about setting up your Blog templates, where to Blog and for some advice about the technical side of things!

Technorati.com
Blogger.com
Wikipedia Blog article
My Space Blogs

Online Videos

Online Videos: The Benefits and thoughts about posting them from IC247

Everybody's heard of You Tube (now owned by Google), Google Video or Yahoo Video and we have all watched some of the really funny and amusing videos that get posted on these websites daily. The different types of videos are absolutely astounding with diverse ranges such as the ramblings of weird and wonderful charactors right through to commercially astute product demonstrations and advice on different brands.

Web 2.0 (The IC247 way!) encourages one to be able to post information using many different mediums via many different hosting websites. Visual information transmitted on all these different hosting sites is obviously a great way to do this (from your website via RSS feeds if you want) and enables you to show either potential customers or a wider audience a visual aid to help you get your message out there.

Nowadays everyone looks at Youtube to see videos about their hobby or about films and books they are interested in and also to help them with assignments for school and college. The millions upon millions of people that visit video hosting sites benefit from all the information there from different videos that these sites hold and host.

You don't have to post a video that's serious and designed to get you money one way or another. It can be fun too. You can post those holiday videos that gave you so much pleasure; those moments that were so golden and you can share such good times with the rest of the world and help the internet evolve. From a commercial point of view it's also "golden" because if your posted videos take off, are interesting and well thought out then you will get people looking at them and therefore potentially get more visitors to your main site (via links from your videos) to see your products and services.

As with everything there has to be a darker side and there are videos out there that show a different side of life that the most of us don't really want to see. Just recently in the British press there were the "Happy slapping" videos which weren't fun or enjoyable at all. We just have to understand that the internet is a huge world which takes all sorts - good and bad to make it. We don't have to watch those tasteless, indiscriminate videos because we have a choice. If you see these sort of videos then flag them so that the hosting sites are aware of them and go on and surf to find the videos you want to see.

What we at IC247 want to encourage is the idea of providing more information that others can share and learn from on a wider scale and we want to help you to do this to by helping you learn how to host and post videos, write and post Blogs, write articles and really open up the Internet world to you with simple explanations and training that will assist you to get the most out of any online activity. It's all about Web 2.0!!!

Come and talk to us about it! Look at the contact details here with this posting and just get in touch - it's easy and we'll be happy to share our knowledge with you.

Here's a great video about what we love - Web 2.0, click on this link and check it out.

Directories and Listing Your Services/Businesses

Listings on Directories

How it helps gain more online presence:

There are a lot of benefits to adding your own listings to highly ranked directories, no doubt about it. First and foremost, it's about choosing the real good directories that will help you with good quality back links and give you a good platform where a large amount of people will see what you are offering. Some of them will enable you to add an in depth desription of your business or service as well as back links to your own website whereas others will just let you add a brief description of what you do.


At the end of the day these sites help you promote yourself better across the board and will, once you have added your listing, assist you in obtaining more traffic via shares of their own website visitors. You know how IC247 go on and on about back links and Web 2.0? Well. this is a part of what we carry on about and as much as you think it all takes too much time, it's really worth the effort.


You see, if you have a website (which is great) then you need to encourage others to be able to access your website and the things that you offer. Adding your site or your company description to a directory will help you to do this. IC247 strongly advise all of our contacts and customers to take the time to physically look on the different search engines, determine the best directories and then add sites/services/listings to these websites. Promotion of any aspect (as long as it's legal and won't get you penalised by the search engines is good, come on.....)


The way the WWW (world wide web) is evolving means that we all as users are now able to add or share content as we wish. This was the initial idea for the Internet; a democratic information source where we as individuals are able to access information at the click of a fingertip.... OK, so we all know we can get the information we look for - the natural progression is to be able to add the information we want for others to view it. There are many steps to do this and directory listings help!


Human edited directories such as dmoz are excellent ways to get yourself a great presence and get your site added to Google's directories. You can also add your URL (as you well know) to Google, MSN or Yahoo driven directories.


OK, let's look at the negative aspects of adding your listings to directories; erm... there really isn't a great deal, maybe some spam which one can deal with using the usual filters and anti viral protection, but this is extreme stuff and if you choose the right sites it aint never gonna happen. You need to be clicking on the right sites at the beginning to make sure that you get you know funny business..


So, IC247 recommend directory listings and also we think its good to add your services and businesses to classified advert sites. Get a bigger presence; use the tools, sites and mediums available to you and get people viewing your adverts and listings!

Web 2.0: The future

WEB 2.0 and how it works for you:

Sharing information and online promotion.

The concept of Web 2.0 embodies the future of how we use the internet in our daily lives. At IC247 we believe strongly in sharing information and for our contacts to be able to interact with each other and the world in general over the internet.

For us Web 2.0 means not just having a good website but also to have the potential to post information using a variety of different means across as many different sites and platforms as possible and networking interactively with other sources of information.

There are many ways to start getting the benefits of Web 2.0 and some of use them already in our daily lives: Blogging is a great example. If you post Blogs then those Blogs are usually hosted on different sites using RSS feeds. Your Blogs can be accessed by anyone and the words you write and the information you provide is put out onto the world wide web.

Photo sharing and video posting sites are also part of the Web 2.0 world and are great mediums to really get a message out there to not just potential customers for your products but to also let others share your interests and hobbies. We all enjoy watching the amusing videos on YouTube or Dailymotion but have you thought about posting virtual tours of your workplace or interviews with your staff from your own website to these sites?

It's easy and this is the whole point; ease of use and simple steps to get your message out there.

Nowadays, our children, who have grown up in this interactive world, almost always access Wikipedia for their homework assignments or to look up information about a given subject. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone online. Sources need to be cited and validated so that the information provided is factual and of true content worth but again, Wikipedia encompasses the spirit of Web 2.0 wholly and the informative text content, visual aids and subject information available as well as the idea of being able to edit yourself is fantastic.

Open directory projects with website listings being edited by humans are another example of how the internet is changing. Instead of us using the machine and learning from it, we are becoming the machine and we teach the machine as we go on. The original theory and dream for the internet was that it should be a democratic, information providing tool for the human race to evolve and progress through the ability to share and provide information at the click of a button. Web 2.0 is this epitomised!

The possibilities are endless and for us at IC247, the thought of helping to
add information so that we can learn and evolve together is a phenomenal thing. We love the thought of one of our customers providing information about a mountain bike that they sell in England and a kid in Tokyo who is completing a school project about his hobby accessing this information from his PC just really makes us tick!

There are so many buzz words and technical abbreviations; mash ups, Ajax, XML, CSS, RSS, RIA, Javascript, Podcasts, Blogs and so on and so forth that it can sometimes be a bit of a minefield. We at IC247 can make it all simple for you, like it should be!

Why not take a look at some of the following links and videos to get a better idea of what we do and as you watch just think about how you got to this information...

Wikipedia Web 2.0
YouTube Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Techcrunch

..... You got to it by social networking or Web 2.0 methods - in other words by reading this Blog we have posted you were given a link to new information!

You get it?
Come and talk to us on the contact details provided about how we can help you to get your information out there.

The IC247 team

New Project for JLO Logistics

JLO Logistics Marketing Project



IC247's direct marketing department, DPL DIRECT have started a new campaign calling exporters in the Midlands, UK on behalf of JLO Logistics to drum up new business for Janet Lowe's company.

The response has been great and JLO have been kept busy with a constant daily flow of new comparison quotes to do for companies we have hand picked from our databases who export or import goods around the world.

The last 2 days have been days interrupted by the flooding here in the Midlands, UK (nature showing her power again!!) but DPL DIRECT have a multitude of potential new customers for JLO Logistics and are champing at the bit to get started again.

Part of our service from IC247 is direct marketing. This includes telesales, telepolls, questionnaires, mail shots and email outs. We also arrange data supply for you or your company and also cleanse your current data/customer lists making sure that you have all the correct information you need like decision makers, reasons for lack of trade and latest contact details. It's all important stuff and is just a part of what IC247 can do for you.

Inter Communication on all levels - that's our Forte!! We are currently in talks with JLO Logistics to help them improve their current website and start to get them a bigger online presence via directories, their own Blog and lots more really helpful online promotional tips that we have learned over the years.

If you are interested in any of these services mentioned above then please feel free to contact us via the details provided.

Inter Communication Around The Clock (24/7)

Welcome One And All To Our World!!



Please let us introduce THE HAT and WILLSTA. The founders of IC247 and the drive behind the vision. It's one world, guys and girls and we all need to hold hands, move forward and be together!

Stars collide, volcanoes erupt and NATURE IS THE POWER - feel the vibe!!!
Changes are needed for the survival of everything we know so let us share our knowledge, share our thoughts and knowledge and become one - communicating across the divides. Age has no place here; all are welcome to post their thoughts, to write their rages and to share their loves, gripes and ideas.

We want to touch you and to be touched. We want life, expression, ideas, and movement. We want to know and we want to share what we know with you so that we all can gather momentum and progress.

Our thoughts are yours and your thoughts are ours, so feel free to visit our beautiful links, suck up the information and use it to better our world. We want commerce to be ECO-FRIENDLY, we want success for the world; from the KENYAN CARVER, to the rice farmer in China, to the corporate chairman with a conscience right up to the STUDENT IN THEIR BEDROOM studying hard and planning their life.

IC247 offer advice and guidance from what we know. We offer a listening ear to new ideas and we BUILD links to make our world ONE WORLD. The Internet, the Telephone, Word Of Mouth, Books, Informative Media, Blogs and more - come on and tell us.