Category Archives: Online Marketing
Atomic Wedgies: Misadventures in Keyword Insertion
Blinding flash of the obvious: If you are using dynamic keyword insertion to make (theoretically) more relevant PPC ads, pay attention to what you’re doing.
In the case above, I was looking for a funny image of, well, an atomic wedgie, and happened to catch this ad at the top of the paid search results. Being the [...]
Case Study: Trialware Best Practice in Action @ eFax
I couldn’t get my old eFax account working, so I did what most of us do when that happens in a time crunch… create a new trial account. Here is the email eFax shot over in an effort to aid in retention of trialers to buyers.
In this case, the idea is that the more people [...]
Case Study: Martha Stewart and the Motrin Sponsored Content Promotion
I am about to take you through a marketing campaign completely out of order.
Not because this is how it was intended, I am sure, while crafted in the conference rooms of Martha Stewart and Motrin. Simply because this is how I experienced it, first hand, as a consumer and I would bet I wasn’t alone.
STEP [...]
Clairol Stalking Part II: Happy Birthday Once Again
Apparently my friends at Clairol remembered my birthday again this year. Folks, take note – this is not the way to maximize personalization in email marketing.
I don’t have a regular relationship with this brand.
In fact, I cannot recall the last time I even used one of their products.
I don’t receive other communication from them on [...]
Toolbox: Finding Competitive Intelligence Online
Want to know which sites your visitors are also visiting?
http://www.alexa.com
Who is linking to your competitor’s site, but not to yours?
http://www.linktree.info/
What is the overall visibility measure for your site?
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
Want all the gory details on a URL?
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
Research: Search and Shopping Behavior Notes
CUSTOMERS RESEARCH ONLINE, BUT BUY OFFLINE
Roughly half (46 percent) of consumers say they research items online before they buy them offline. Another 29 percent say they occasionally do so, while 25 percent say they never do online research before making a purchase.
Source: BIGresearch
Consumers are actively shopping in store, online and catalog channels. Store shoppers also [...]
How to Speak SEO Geek: Two URLs for Marketers
I was recently updating a resource list for an upcoming talk on Search Marketing, and came across these two links. Both are good resources for people just learning about SEO and trying to grasp just how this search thing works. I am a big fan of starting with the basics – the terminology and technology [...]
The CPA of CPC: How The Cost of Acquisition and Cost Per Click Work Together
A few quick notes on creating keyword campaigns
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) ads on Google and Overture are nothing new, but perhaps thinking about them in terms of cost per acquisition rather than per click is new to you. To review, CPC works like this:
You find a keyword that will bring you traffic.
You bid on that keyword.
People click [...]
Apple Made Me Do It: A Convenience Store, A Freshly Stocked Cooler and Me
If you’re not familiar with the latest Pepsi/Apple promotion, you’re probably not living in the US. The campaign is brilliant – buy a bottle of Pepsi or Diet Pepsi & check the cap for a code. If you get a free iTunes song, you enter the code into your iTunes application and you get a [...]
Happy Birthday from Clairol: You Are Now Being Spam-Stalked
It’s birthday time again and it’s nice to know that the folks at Clairol and winfreestuf.com haven’t forgotten me this year.
It’s quite spooky to get faceless birthday emails from corporations – makes me wonder what other info they have on me. What’s next? Will I receive wedding gifts this October from the likes of Johnson [...]