Category Archives: Marketing

Does your online marketing message work?

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What will prove most beneficial: Web 2.0 or traditional marketing? When it comes to new marketing strategies using the internet’s “search and converse tactics,” compared to traditional marketing, target segments are reached at higher rates at a lesser cost. However, the more tactics you use, the more your messaging determines your visibility and your profitability.

Messaging is everything you say, do, how your website, marketing materials and even your employees present themselves. To avoid any communication problems it is crucial to maintain the same face across all mediums. If you excel in one area of these messaging mediums, but lack in another, a major marketing problem arises.

Los Angeles Internet Marketing

Traditional marketing can be a lot easier to maintain consistency when compared to online marketing. “Once you make your website more interactive, build search traffic, and begin to use social media, you’re suddenly engaged with multiple conversations, audiences and environments. Plus, other sources start picking up your messaging. Getting mentioned by bloggers, flagged by search engines, and having “fans” spread the word is a very good thing. But if you don’t have the right messages — and keep them consistent — it can be a very bad thing.”

Consistency does not necessarily mean repetition. Search engines and consumers do not like repetitive content. “If, for instance, your over-arching message is that you can save a customer money, don’t just repeat that phrase – amplify it with specific examples. Promote one example in a blog, promote another example in an online press release, and promote a third example in your traditional-marketing ad or mailing. All three examples support your overarching messaging. Plus, instead of one set of keywords, you’ve got three phrases that can bring your name up in searches. Make sure your website — your marketing hub — pays off on all three and you’ve got a great shot at converting consistent messaging about how you save customers money into new visibility.”

Along with consistency, keyword optimization also plays a big role. Keywords used in traditional marketing may not transfer over to online marketing. For example, a law office emphasized the words “litigation support” in their traditional marketing but received zero ROI for those words online. This is because prospective customers were searching for “lawyer, Richmond, VA,” instead of “litigation support” online. Once proper keywords are chosen it seems obvious to utilize them, right? Sometimes we are distracted by competition, and lose sight of the big picture- what people are looking for. It’s important to choose specific words that optimize the service/product being offered.

“Bottom line: Messaging matters — and it matters in a 2.0 world more than ever. So before you market, message. Be absolutely sure that the messages you’re about to pump out onto the Web (and which, according to Trendwatching.com, will stay visible forever) are (1) right for your brand, (2) right for the media you’re using, and (3) right for engaging your specific audience. With a little upfront work on messaging, you can create a rich mix of new and traditional tactics that can quickly increase – and sustain – your visibility.”

Information Provided By: Visibilitymagazine.com

Job Recruiting Moves from the Campus to the Internet

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As the Internet has become a huge repository of entry-level job advertisements, recruiters have pulled back from on-campus job fairs and recruiting efforts. A recent study by Monster.com found that over 90% of companies utilize online advertising for job recruiting. About 25% are also using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to advertise entry-level openings.

Monster.com also found that college students and recent graduates sought out friends and family (78%) and online job boards (67%) the most for job opportunities. Social networking sites were only utilized by 38% of respondents. However, this shows a huge gain over last year’s survey, when social networking sites were utilized only 15% of the time by new graduates.

While social networking sites continue to proliferate in their uses, the line has become increasingly blurred between public and private content. 55% of college job seekers said they have tailored their online profiles to make them more appropriate for viewing by potential employers.

Smartphones continue to lead in mobile advertising

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Call us Today! Its FREE!!

Call us Today! Its FREE!!

Contact Us today for information on Advertising your business on Andriod, iPhone, Blackberry and the rest of the web! We are now offering a FREE Consultation to discuss possible marketing strategies! Call us Today!!

Millennial Media, a mobile advertising network, found through a recent study that smartphones account for almost one-half of mobile ad impressions in the US. Even though more subscribers have feature phones, these users have less interaction with advanced mobile content, and therefore only account for one-third of mobile ad views.

iPhones continue to dominate ad impressions within the smartphone category, followed by BlackBerrys and Androids. Androids have seen that largest increase in ad requests, rising 72% month over month. March was the first month the Android phone was one of the three top smartphone operating systems. Requests were up 20% from Apple phones and 25% from BlackBerrys.

On other mobile devices, such as iPads, iPod touches and connected video gaming devices, Millennial Media found that those devices took a significant share of impressions. iPad impressions climbed 713% during the first full week the device was available for purchase. Numbers will only climb as the iPad and similar mobile devices continue to proliferate.

While Apple’s tight hold on the smartphone market continues, the Android has gained significant ground because of its high customer satisfaction and loyalty. Indications that Android also represents a robust mobile app platform also point to a greater share of mobile ad impressions in the future.

Start-up Success

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Perhaps the most ambitious campaign of start-ups, Y Combinator is a hybrid venture capital fund and business school that invests in, advises, and literally, feeds 40 or so early-stage businesses a year. Paul Graham, it’s fearless and optimistic leader, supplements his nominally sized investments of under $25,000 with lots of smart advice, technical help, and sense of community. The model has produced 145 companies to date, a few sizable acquisitions, and copycat funds in cities across the country and around the world.

For all the pain of nurturing a start-up, Graham believes that founding a company is the most efficient way to create wealth — for investors, for founders, for society at large. “There’s this classic pattern that has happened over and over again throughout history in which something is made one at a time, very expensively and unreliably by hand, and then someone comes along and figures out how to make large numbers of them cheaply and reliably,” Graham says. “We’re pulling this kind of transformation with venture funding. We’re mass-producing the start-up.”

Graham is something of a folk hero to a generation of ambitious techies, who debate his essays, read his books, and pitch him start-ups by the hundreds. His philosophies are simple: founders should live as cheaply as possible so that they can first become cash-flow positive. Wealth will follow.

Indeed, there’s something exhilarating about Graham’s optimism, especially at a time when so many once-great companies are sitting on the verge of bankruptcy. Graham believes, deeply, that start-ups are the answer to the world’s problems; that they are easy to make if you are determined enough and cheap enough; and that it’s getting a lot easier to start one.

North American Search Market Heats Up!!

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Search engine marketing spending is expected to be up 14% to $16.6 billion in North America in 2010. While growth in this marketing channel, which includes paid search, search engine optimization, and other search engine marketing technologies, slowed in 2008 and 2009, it still proved to relatively recession-resistant. As we progress into 2010, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) projects steady growth to return.

In a recent survey, SEMPO found that a majority of marketers planned to shift marketing budgets away from other channels such as direct mail and spend more on paid search and search optimization. Marketers see search optimization as a valuable means for increasing Website traffic and generating leads. In turn, site traffic metrics could measure the success of campaigns, such as conversation rate.

Respondents, however, are concerned about measuring return on investment, effectively optimizing their sites, and choosing the best keywords. Further, markets were also daunted with the challenge of integrating paid search and search optimization with other online and offline marketing strategies.

Local Online Ad Buys on the Rise

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The state of the economy in 2009 forced changes to the local ad market. This has caused BIA/Kelsey, a large media strategies group, to lower expectations for local advertising spending, pushing the recovery curve out one year further than previously forecast.

Last year, according to the firm’s “Annual US Local Media Forecast,” US local ad spending reached $130.2 billion, or 55.3% of the total. That was lower than what BIA/Kelsey projected in February 2009 forecasting $141.3 billion and a significant drop from the $156.3 billion spend on local advertising in 2008.

BIA/Kelsey believes that the total local advertising spending will continue to stagnate through 2011, while 2012 will bring more “meaningful recovery” to the ad market.

Some important points to be noted within this study suggest that:
• Buys Online will continue to get a larger share of the local ad spending pie with increases from 12% in 2009 to a projected 14% in 2010.
• By 2014, BIA/Kelsey expects one-quarter of all local advertising spending to be online!
• In January, Barclays Capital also reported 2009 local ad spending down significantly from the year before, by about 22%. Barclays similarly expects a flat local ad market through 2011.

Here are some graphs to show details concerning the ad market in 2010:

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Benefits of Online Streaming for Sports

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Sports fans from all areas of the sports arena have been vocally demanding one thing from their teams they are loyal to… online streaming of their sporting events that can be seen anywhere at anytime.

The spread of paid-streaming content online by U.S. leagues brings huge audiences for sporting events like the Olympics, March Madness, and the U.S. Open. Major League Baseball however, is the leader in capitalizing on this new trend offering its fans streaming live-game content on a paid basis. According to the Sports Business Journal, MLB has built an online streaming package that generated around 40 million dollars in 2009! The NFL, NBA, and NHL are also putting their best efforts forward to get their online streaming capabilities up-to-par for their fans.

Also, with the increase in smartphone use and data plan subscriptions from sports teams, this opens up demand for streaming sports and video content to call phone and mobile device users.

The increase in online and smartphone streaming allows many benefits for all different types of groups:

• Avid sports fans will now be able to watch games they are interested in seeing online, on their phones, or at a later date. This keeps fans interactive with their teams and up-to-date with how their teams are doing during their season.
• Advertisers now have an opportunity to sponsor online and smartphone videos and content allowing them to increase their branding strategies as well as hit some of their target markets
• Sports teams now have the opportunity to profit from an online market by offering these live streams of their team.

Here is a graph of the leading U.S. Sports teams taking advantage of video-streaming:

So, for all you sports internet marketers out there, give your fans what they want and start making some money off of it!

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Astounding Facebook Stats

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Happy Birthday Facebook! On February 4, 2010 Facebook officially turned 6 years old. Facebook is used world-wide and has become the platform for internet networking with over 400 million users and more than 900 employees.

Quick Facebook facts:

1. The average user spends about 55 minutes a day on Facebook- this is equal to over 8% of their day.

2. Facebook is now able to be viewed in 65 different languages.

3. 30% of Facebook users are from/in Europe.

4. Every day 35 million users update their status and 20 million become fans of pages. (There are 1.6 million fan pages, by the way).

5. Of the 1.6 million fan pages, 700,000 are local businesses.

6. 2.5 billion Photos are uploaded every month by users.

7. Each month 3.5 million events are created.

Did we mention that now users don’t have to wait until they get home to log onto Facebook? The Facebook mobile application is supported by three phones: Blackberry, iPhone, and the new Android. Facebook mobile has 100 million monthly users and is still growing.

Facebook is dominating the networking game on all levels; especially for marketers. People can directly advertise to their target market via Facebook using pay per click. You can use Facebook as a tool that will post your ad on the pages of those people you select to target- a marketers dream come true. No wonder Facebook is a billion dollar company.

WebitMD knows the value and importance of marketing via social networks like Facebook. It is crucial that businesses, especially local businesses, take advantage of getting their name out to members of their community and using Facebook pages to reach people is the fastest way. WebiMD specialized in social media marketing among the other services we offer.

Information provided by: mashable.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan

5 Free/Inexpensive SEO Tools For Your Website

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Looking for some free tools to help you improve your website’s SEO? Get familiar with the following 5 tools that can help improve your website’s visibility online and increase your conversions!

1. SEO Analyzer: You submit your website’s URL into this SEO Analyzer and it will provide you some feedback regarding your SEO and conversion strategies. It actually gives your website a rating on a point scale between 1-100 on how you are currently optimizing your website for search engines and optimization. It also gives you a report on every aspect of your website, including inline styles, obsolete HTML, and download time. For being a free tool, it is worth taking a look at!

2. Website Grader: This free tool is one like that of the SEO Analyzer. Instead of giving you a grade on a point scale between 1-100, it actually gives you a letter grade. Website Grader provides a great deal of information in a short amount of time and tells you all you need to know about optimizing your site, making your SEO efforts easier, and in less time. This tool also tells you how many del.ici.ous bookmarks you have, as well as grading both on-site and off-site SEO.

3. AWStats: This tool is also free and is mostly helpful when researching who is visiting your site, what search engines visitors use, and when visitors are actually showing up on your site. This is more of a log analyzer than an analytics tool but still provides free and useful information.

4. Crazy Egg: The basic version of this tool is free, but can also be upgraded if you pay a little extra. Crazy Egg allows you to see what visitors do when they get to your website, as in where there mouse is actually moving and what they are clicking on. It even has a heatmap to show you the exact mouse movements made by your visitors! Very easy to use and great free information!

5. Mint: Mint is a tool that provides great information regarding unique referrers, popular pages, and number of visits. This tool is around $30 dollars, which is not bad when the pay-off will hopefully be increased site traffic.

One should of course use web analytics tools first to receive most of their information like Google Analystics and Google Webmaster Tools. However, yo should be using the free and inexpensive tools that are available out there to find out more information about what your website is doing right, wrong, and to find out more information your analytics tools don’t tell you. In this economy, any beneficial information you can receive on a tight budget can only help your website grow, so get out there and start utilizing these tools!

Information Provided By: Moe Tamani
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Social Media Use at Work is a Liability

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Have you ever considered the effects of social media use your employees are engaging in during business hours? According to the “Social Networks vs. Management?” report from employment services firm Manpower, they claim that although social network networking sites can be utilized as an effective marketing tool for your business, it is just as big of a liability.

Lower productivity, security problems, and reputation issues are huge threats to the success of any company and these happen to be the end result of increased social media networking performed by employees during and after business hours.

The graph below demonstrates how many companies have a formal policy for employee use of external social networking sites worldwide. Only one-fifth of the companies that were surveyed in Manpower’s report even have a policy that concerns social media use. It seems that the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific business worlds are leading the pack with setting policies about social media use during business hours.

Among the companies that did have one of these policies, around 63% of them claimed that it was pretty effective in fighting off the lost productivity social media use encourages.

The loss of productivity in the workplace is one major concern of the use of social media. However, one must not forget about the effects of social networking and how it could potentially negatively effect the reputation of your company. Currently in the U.S., 8% of the companies surveyed in Manpower’s report confessed that social media did in fact have a negative effect on their overall reputation.

I personally believe that limiting the use of social media in the workplace is a great way to increase productivity of one’s employees. I also would want to encourage my employees to either promote a positive outlook on their company or even become unaffiliated with it altogether in order to keep the overall reputation of a company’s brand free from harm online through these sites.

Information Provided By: eMarketer, Manpower
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders