Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Week 1: Mile High to Capital City and How it Happened

12
June
2009

Transamerican Trip to a Big Media Market

Blake Bowyer
Media Program Analyst

On some corn-lined highway between Hays, Kansas and Cumberland, Maryland I realized I was crossing a Rubicon. But it wasn’t until hour 21 of my 25-hour odyssey to D.C. that it really hit me: media, as I know it, will soon be redefined.

To give this journey some context, a little about me …

My name is Blake. I am 26 years old and I spent 25 of them in Idaho. I currently attend the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado where I am pursuing my Master of Science in Marketing with a concentration in statistics. I am a marketing junkie, a social media-phile, and a sucker for new experiences. However, I also like to think I have a purpose from time to time. And it’s that belief that took me through the cornfields, backroads, and Waffle Houses of the Midwest to Washington, D.C. and my internship with EyeTraffic Media.

That brings us to today – Friday, June 12. My first week is coming to a close and I already sense a shift in perspective. Working for consumer electronics companies and developing a career in the Information Age, my professional exposure to technology and media has not been limited. However, it has always been in-house and less-than-best practice. With EyeTraffic Media, I applied for the internship expecting a bleeding edge media experience in which I could gain a lot and hopefully contribute from my own areas of expertise – whatever those might be – in return.

For now, the former is dramatically tipping the scales. Since Monday, I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of crash courses in SEM, online media buying, viral marketing, and even fortunate enough to attend the first event in the CoolTwitter Conferences World Tour. Whew.

So this is big market online media from a best practices marketing consultancy? It’s a long way from wearily looking for Georgia Avenue through a cracked windshield on Monday at 2:30 a.m., but punch my ticket for the rest of the ride. I hope you’ll join me.

Now, if I could only figure out this Metro thing …

Great Marketing for Lousy Economic Times

29
October
2008

Economic problems continue to mount in the United States and consumers are spending less resulting in lower revenues. As a consequence marketing budgets are getting tighter. Now, more than ever, organizations must optimize their marketing efforts.

George Assimakopoulos
Principal Manager

Recessions are periods of opportunity that can be taken advantage of or which can take advantage of you. By cutting your marketing activities, not only will you sell less than if you had kept your marketing steady but you may lose core customers to competition. That means you’ll have to spend more time, money and energy in the future to win them back. We have noticed that across our vertical clients online marketing budget are not getting cut - but we are getting scrutinized like never before.  We have to choose promotional indulgences carefully and we must prove the value of emerging Web 2.0 media expenditures.

During such challenging economic times, we remind our clients that "the low-hanging fruit" opportunities should be where we concentrate marketing budgets to mazimize return on advertising spend (ROAS).  David Warschawski of B2B Magazine illustrates this point well in his most recent article.  He says "…even when a business is cash-strapped, there are ways to market that enable you to enjoy greater dividends. Two online marketing strategies that have great return on investment are:

1)  Reaching your core target audience through brand-centric public relationship campaigns that secure local, regional and trade media coverage.

2)  Updating your Web site so it uses the latest search engine optimization techniques. This will dramatically increase your chances for being found when members of your core target audience do an Internet search for your type of product or service."

Smart businesspeople know that when they continue to invest or buy even more when the stock market is down, they secure a stronger future for themselves. The exact same approach is true for marketing.

Tips for Using Viral & Social Networks for Online Marketing

5
August
2008

Strategies to ensure success for social networking campaigns.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

In today’s day and age, most companies engage in some form of online marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO),Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns  and media buys are the more established solutions of interactive marketing. However, newer mediums such as viral and social marketing are becoming more prevalent online marketing tactics among companies of all sizes.

Some viral and social marketing practices include blogging and creating profiles on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  There are 90 million active users on Facebook, 25 million users on LinkedIn and over 1 million users on Twitter, and over 112.8 million blogs (according to the blog search engine Technorati).  Of these millions of users, individual companies have blogs and a presence on social networking sites as well.

The goal is for companies to use these mediums to increase brand awareness, network, find new business and get better qualified leads. Though these tools companies can spread information about their organization through “word of mouth” and allow a company to interact with its audience on a more personal level. However, while using these tools may be less expensive than other interactive strategies, maintaining these outlets usually requires more time and effort. Below are a few key takeaways from MarketingSherpa to help utilize these new marketing tools. To see more tips, click on the link below.

1. Be selective with online networks. Pick networks that are relevant to you and your company, where you will be able to contribute to the online space.

2. Link to all of your social platforms. If you do choose to have multiple networking sites, make sure you link them to each other. This helps find new clients and contacts, teach them about the business and keep in touch with them over time.

3. Create a backlog to plan ahead. You need to continually maintain the dialogue between your company and your audience to keep them engaged and attract new business. This takes time and if in a rush, the quality of your conversations and blog posts will show.

Cuil: Better Than Google?

30
July
2008

Former Google employees create their own search engine which could reduce Google’s market share.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

According to ComScore, an online measurement company, in May 2008 Google held a 62% share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21% and Microsoft at 8.5%. This month, another search engine, Cuil, joined the list of Google competitors which also includes Teoma (whose technology is used by Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft this month. What gives Cuil an edge over all the other competition is that it was created by Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, all former Google engineers.  

Patterson built and sold a search index that probed old websites for the internet archive to Google in 2004. Patterson and Power worked together on the same team at Google. Monier was the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, the best search engine before Google launched in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay’s online auction site. This group is also teaming up with Tom Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. Costello later joined IBM where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.  It is clear that this team has extensive knowledge in this space and also of, Google, the industry leader. Because of this, the possibility of creating a more comprehensive and efficient search engine seems more realistic.

Patterson emphasizes that there will be many differences between Cuil and Google.  For example Cuil’s search index is 120 billion web pages. Google has an index of 8.2 billion web pages as of three years ago (when Google stopped publicly announcing its index count).  Cuil’s results are gathered by the actual content of a page, not by ranking the quality and quantity of links as Google does.  The results on Cuil are displayed with photos, and the layout resembles that of articles in a magazine. The results page on Cuil also includes additional categories related to your initial search, conveniently displayed in a drop down menu.  Additionally Cuil will not track the users search histories, as Google does. 

Cuil faces several challenges such as building a better search engine and winning over the public who are loyal to the Google brand.  However, the bigger question is, if Cuil raises the bar for search engines, how will this change the world of online marketing?

Widgets: The New Online Marketing Tool

30
June
2008

The evolution of widgets into powerful online marketing tools.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

A recent study by eMarketer predicts that US companies will more than double their spend on widget creation, promotion and distribution from 2007 to 2008.  Marketers are expected to spend about $40 million on web widgets in 2008, up from $15 million in 2007.  A widget is a miniature, portable software application that can be placed on a section of a website, a desktop, or on a mobile device.  Widgets have transformed from meaningless applications on social networks into a legitimate marketing tool. Its viral nature allows companies to increase brand awareness by extending their web presence, acquiring new customers at a minimal cost, driving qualified traffic to targeted websites and leveraging a website’s existing content.

We have not yet seen the full potential of widgets as an online marketing tool until they are able to improve a website’s natural search rankings (Search Engine Optimization).  If widget developers are able to place text links within the code of a widget, the website that the widget promotes should benefit from an increased link count and move up in natural search rankings. When widget creators are able to close this marketing loop, the widget will truly be a powerful online marketing tool.

Web Widget and Application Advertising Spending 2007 and 2008

MarketingSherpa Announces Winners of Fourth Annual Viral Marketing Contest

9
June
2008

The ten winning campaigns shared several common themes including the use of social media…

Ryan Moss
Media Coordinator

MarketingSherpa recently released the list of the top ten viral marketing campaigns for this year and inducted them into its’ hall of fame. For the fourth year in a row, the Sherpa staff evaluated the top viral campaigns and decided which ones were the best. All of the winners utilized peer-to-peer pass-along in order to reach consumers who fit into a variety of demographic groups.

As the staff analyzed the winning campaigns, it noticed several common themes. The three most prominent were an increase in the use of social media (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), an emphasis on peer-to-peer sharing and the use of great content in a campaign.

Companies who were inducted into the hall of fame include VIBE Media, General Mills, Columbia Sportswear and VeriSign. For a complete list of inductees and to see each campaign in more detail click on the link below from MarketingSherpa. 

Lack of Personalization and Welcoming

4
June
2008

Studies show that the majority of companies who use e-mail marketing don’t send welcome messages to new subscribers…

Ryan Moss
Media Coordinator

As e-mail marketing continues to grow, it is critical that companies operate their campaigns in accordance with e-mail marketing best practices. If they don’t follow the best practices, they put themselves in danger of losing customers or tarnishing their reputation.

According to a recent study by Return Path, 70% of the companies surveyed asked for more than just an e-mail address when a new user registers. However, after the user subscribes, 60% of those same companies didn’t send a "welcome message" and 33% of the companies didn’t send any type of e-mail during the next 30 days.

Of those companies that did send out welcome messages to new subscribers, 85% percent of them did not personalize their messages at all. 

 

Media vs. Racial Mix?

19
May
2008

BIGresearch’s recently conducted a study shows different racial groups respond to different types of media…

Ryan Moss
Research Analyst

BIGresearch recently conducted a study to find how different racial groups respond to different types of media. The results show that that African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Whites all consume these media types differently, which should be considered by marketers when designing campaigns. As Gary Drenink, President of BIGresearch said, "understanding how media consumption behaviors differ by race is fundamental for marketers wishing to increase ROI for advertising."

Here are some the results from the study, which was titled "Simultaneous Media Survey," and surveyed 15,727 people

  • Cell phones are the most common form of new media used by all of the groups.  57% of Hispanics, 53.9 % of Asians, 53% of African Americans and 49.4% of Whites regularly use cell phones.
  • Minorities use new media more often then whites. New media includes, iPods, cell phone text messaging, video/picture phones and online instant messaging.
  • Shopping is the main reason that Asians (43.7%), Whites (43.1%) and African Americans (40%) use the Internet for fun and entertainment. Hispanics (42.7%) prefer to use the Internet to look up movie news.

For more results from the study check out the link below from MarketingVox.

 

E-mail Marketing Still A Great Tool

21
April
2008

Recent surveys show that e-mail marketing is still an effective way to reach consumers, however marketer’s campaigns and messages need to be more highly targeted

Ryan Moss
Research Analyst

E-mail marketing is a powerful tool when used properly and has proven to be a great way to attract customers and influence purchases. In fact, e-mail marketing was the second most useful way to influence online purchases during 2007, with the first being online customer reviews, according to DoubleClick Performics "Green Marketing Sutdy".  Over half the adults in the United States surveyed in Merkle’s "View From The Inbox" reported that they had made a least one purchase as a result of e-mail permission based marketing within the past year.

Unfortunately it’s not all good news for e-mail marketers, as the same Merkle study showed that consumers are more willing to revoke email permission that they had once granted.  Consumers rate relevance as the most important e-mail aspect so a growing number of unsubscribes can be attributed to poorly designed e-mail marketing campaigns.  Nearly one-third of the Merkle survey respondents admitted to severing business ties with at least one company due to bad e-mail marketing practices.

E-mail marketing is still a great tool if used correctly, however marketer’s campaigns and messages need to be more highly targeted to keep the recipient retention rates high.