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The Emerging Impact of Direct Digital Marketing

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Josh Gordon, Director of Marketing at Knotice, discusses the importance of including a direct digital marketing strategy when developing a marketing plan.

The fragmentation of the marketing software provider landscape is well documented. As the number of digital capabilities and channels marketers have access to has increased over the past 15 years (a good thing), the provider landscape has become a jumbled mess of specialist providers (a bad thing). Marketers are forced to engage one solution provider for email, another for website improvements, another for mobile, yet another for data, and the list grows with each new channel or touch point. What consumers both crave and respond to – relevant communications – marketers are unable to coordinate across multiple channels and deliver… unless they are willing to take on the entire provider landscape and the complexity and expense that come along with it. 

What marketers need is a software partner and marketing approach capable of multi-channel campaign execution, built on a foundation of data.

Enter direct digital marketing. As defined by the American Marketing Association, direct digital marketing is, “a digital marketing method that provides relevant marketing communications that are addressable to a specific individual with an email address, a mobile phone number or a Web browser cookie. Traditional direct marketing uses an individual’s postal address. With the evolution of direct marketing to direct digital marketing, addressability comes in the form of three primary digital channels.”

Regardless of industry concentration, 2009 was a significant year for the growth and adoption of direct digital marketing.

The hospitality industry has used direct digital marketing to orchestrate easy online room upgrades during the booking process, to personalize a data-driven email program designed to educate and up-sell guests prior to their arrival, and to begin to unlock the promise of mobile with express check in and checkout and relevant text messages about the property during a stay.

The restaurant industry is using direct digital marketing, especially mobile marketing, to design customer friendly mobile programs and drive store foot traffic in real-time with incentives designed to boost sales volume immediately, not in a few days.

Retailers are using direct digital marketing to completely overhaul product launches, increasing sales by 25 percent. Mobile marketing is becoming increasingly popular within retail circles as well, either as an enhancement to a traditional campaign or to drive deeper engagement and improve the consumer experience.

The exciting developments across the entire marketing community in 2009 sets the stage for an exciting 2010. Two elements of direct digital marketing will see the most press and adoption in 2010.

First, direct digital marketing is unique because the content execution through the email, Web, and mobile channels takes place in the same software where the data is stored. The direct digital marketing data mart – better known as a universal profile management system – uses a Web service API to store known customer information like past purchase data and unique customer preferences AND capture behavioral information like keyword search activity and click path. The power of one database having so much information unlocks myriad segmentation possibilities and will be a highly sought after arrow in the marketing quiver.

 The second element of direct digital marketing that will see growth in 2010 is onsite targeting.  E-Commerce managers, for example, are eager to make improvements to the targeting and personalization of the content on their websites, but may not have the modern tools capable of helping them reach goals, or the resources to get them. Onsite targeting offers a simple approach to improving the relevance and personalization of content on a website without the cost of replatforming a website.

The ideal scenario of digital consumer engagement only seems elusive. Aligning the primary direct digital marketing channels is now not only a “can,” it is a must. To move beyond survival goals in 2010, the development of a direct digital marketing strategy must be the cornerstone of any marketing plan.

About the author: Josh Gordon is the Editor-in-Chief of the popular direct digital marketing blog The Lunch Pail and Director of Marketing at Knotice, a direct digital marketing solutions company. Contact Gordon at jgordon@knotice.com.

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Posted in Guest Articles, Mobile Marketing, Online Marketing | No Comments »

The Findability Formula – The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

RSS Ray Segment One

Show Date: November 11, 2009 at 1 pm Eastern, 10 am Pacific

Heather Lutze, Owner of Findability Group

Show Topic The Findability Formula – The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM

Show Guest: Heather Lutze, Owner of Findability Group

About Heather Lutze: Heather is a nationally recognized Internet marketing speaker, trainer, and consultant in search engine placement, cost per click models, natural search, and ad campaign tracking. Heather’s internet marketing skills, experience and certifications are almost too numerous to mention, but include DoubleClick, YesMail, Traffic Leader Cost Per Click, Paid Inclusion Management, Conversion Analysis, Multi-variant and a/b Split Testing, and Atlas One Point.

RSS Ray Segment Two

Show Topic: How the Phoenix Suns Reach and Engage Fans with Interactive Marketing

Jeramie McPeek, Vice President, Interactive Services of Phoenix Suns

Show Guest: Jeramie McPeek, Vice President, Interactive Services of Phoenix Suns

About Jeramie McPeek: Currently enjoying his 17th season with the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns, Jeramie McPeek oversees the organization’s digital and social media initiatives. Under his direction, Suns.com has twice been named the top team site in the NBA by the Sports Business Journal (2002, 2004) and received the Website of the Year Award from the NBA in 2007.

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

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Posted in Show Announcements | No Comments »

5 Common Mistakes With Search Marketing Campaigns and How to Fix Them

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Richard Stokes, Founder, President, and Chief Gooroo of AdGooroo explains common mistakes people make in search marketing campaigns and what you can do to fix them.

There are over 850,000 companies advertising their goods and services on the search engines this month (September, 2009) yet only a handful truly excel at it. At AdGooroo, we monitor virtually every advertiser in the world and see some common mistakes. Here are the top five which can stop your campaign dead in its tracks!

Mistake #1: Failing to Track Your Visitors

Pretend for a moment that instead of promoting your business over the web, you were to take a more traditional approach such as television advertising. You might be prepared to spend upwards of a quarter million dollars just for production, to be followed by potentially millions of dollars of national media buys.

With so much at stake, it seems unlikely that you would simply write a check and forget about it. Not by a long shot. I bet that you’d be watching the sales figures like a hawk to see if your campaign was bringing customers in. And if it didn’t perform, you’d cut your losses quickly (and probably fire your marketing manager.)

Most of our businesses will never grow to the scale where we can afford big-ticket television buys. Fortunately, internet advertising now gives us a way to purchase smaller, more reasonably priced blocks of traffic.

The downside of this is that these less expensive campaigns tend to fall off the radar of most managers and entrepreneurs. There is a false sense of security that comes from spending “only” $500 a month or so on search. We tell ourselves, “Maybe it will come in, maybe it won’t,” or “Let’s just start it and see what happens.”

This is nothing more than a shortcut to failure and I don’t want you to fall into that trap. So please take this firm, but friendly, piece of advice:

If you don’t track your campaign… you will lose. Period.

If you blow off the numbers behind your business, your marketing will be mediocre because it will be built on opinion and guesswork.

Guesses and opinions are the enemy of good marketing. If you let the numbers tell you the truth, you’ll make your website better. You’ll make your advertising better. Your sales will end up 5x, 10x, even 100x over where you started.

Mistake #2: Trying to Save a Bad Website with PPC Advertising

Hands down, the surest way to improve your PPC results is to improve the efficiency at which your website converts visitors into buyers.

Too many marketers hope that adding an AdWords campaign will redeem a low-performing website or product. If that doesn’t fix their business, they compound their error by raising their bids. They make the same mistake that many “dot com” companies made during the late ‘90s; they pour money into a losing business in a mistaken attempt to “grow to profitability”.

To do it right, you have to accept pay-per-click advertising for what it is: a way to multiply your existing business. If you add PPC to a bad business, you’ll simply lose money faster.
On the other hand, if you add PPC to a good business, you will make more money… if you do it right.

A proven technique for improving the efficiency of your online business is through website optimization. Website optimization is the art and science of enhancing the user experience of a website with the goal of converting visitors into customers.

There are several good books on the subject. One I recommend is Tim Ash’s book, “Landing Page Optimization.” Tim’s book is quite in-depth, so I’ve also written an extensive treatment of the subject aimed at time-pressed website managers in my upcoming book, “The Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising” (Entrepreneur Press, February 2010.)

Mistake #3: Targeting Too Few Keywords

In both organic and paid search marketing, keywords are the bait that lures prospective customers to your Web site.

People will find your site based on the keywords where your ads appear. For this reason alone, it’s important to expand your campaign with as many relevant terms as possible. Yet according to Marketing Sherpa, the average B2B (business-to-business) advertiser only bids on fifty terms. This is not a recipe for success!

Keyword selection may not be the most important success factor for paid search, but it’s certainly in the top five. The time you spend perfecting your keyword list will dramatically improve the potential results of your pay-per-click advertising campaign.

There are many good tools for this. Some are free, some are not. In the free category are the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool. In the paid category are WordTracker and AdGooroo. Each of these tools generate keyword suggestions in different ways and the resulting lists are very distinct from one another, so you should try to use several tools to get the best coverage possible.

Mistake #4: Gladiator Bidding

Gladiator bidding refers to the practice some marketers have of trying to buy the top spots at any cost and without regard to ad quality. This is often the mentality at large corporations who are long on dollars and short on search expertise.

What ends up happening in these cases is that the advertiser succeeds at capturing the top side ad placement and pushes other, higher-quality advertisers further down the page. However, their low quality score fails to secure them the coveted premium ad spot (above the organic results) and it ensures they will pay a price close to their maximum bid.

I cover the math and provide some in-depth examples of this in my book, but the takeaway here is that Gladiator bidders pay a 48% premium over the expected CPC price. Yes, you can buy that #1 spot, but you will pay dearly for it.

Mistake #5: Ignoring the competition

Gone are the days when you could run your pay-per-click campaigns in a silo. The search engines’ increasing focus on relevance as well as high demand for ad placement means that advertisers are judged against one another to determine which ads will be shown and which will not.

If you want to take a bigger bite of the apple than your competitors, you have to keep close tabs on them. This practice is known as Search Engine Intelligence (or SEI for short).

At a tactical level, you need to know when competitors are making improvements to their quality score and bids. As they succeed in doing so, your relative advantage to them will be diminished. Having even one competitor close the gap can put the hurt on your campaign. Having a few do it can be catastrophic. This is the main reason why campaigns which are left to their own devices invariably decline after a few months.

The price you pay for your ads is determined in no small part by your competitors’ aggressiveness and the ratio of your optimization efforts to theirs. Your quality score relative to other advertisers in your industry also determines the placement of your ads and the amount of traffic you’ll receive from paid search. And finally, it also plays a huge role in determining how much of the available search traffic your ads will be exposed to (coverage.)

Another important tactical benefit of watching your competitors is that it allows you to defend against such tactics as bid jamming, which can result in dramatic drops in impressions and clickthrough rates, or even result in your being banned from valuable keywords altogether.

Paying attention to competitors’ paid search efforts can pay off strategically as well. Because PPC is so measurable, many companies test new products, features, and services on the search engines prior to widespread launch. You can get advance notice of these changes if you’re watchful.

You can also use paid search to peek inside of your competitors’ business models. If a competitor launches a new pricing model or brand while aggressively increasing CPCs, keep a close eye on them for awhile. If they later drop CPCs and/or pull the model, you’ve found something which didn’t work. Our competitors have saved us countless times at AdGooroo from launching features which the market truly didn’t want.

This wraps it up for our discussion on common mistakes. There are others of course, but most search advertisers would be well served by simply focusing on these basic rules. Good luck in your online marketing efforts!

About the author: Richard Stokes is a long-time internet marketer over 15 years experience in technology and advertising management. He founded AdGooroo, a leading search intelligence company, in 2004. He was previously a technology executive at Publicis Groupe/Leo Burnett. He has a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Technology Management from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Richard is a regular speaker on search marketing topics, is a certified expert in both email marketing and conversion optimization, and is the author of “Mastering Search Advertising – How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords”.

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Posted in Guest Articles, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing | 3 Comments »

Free Webinar – How To Get The Most Out Of Your Online Marketing Campaign

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Discover the best ways to utilize the internet to serve, support and sell.

Do you want to learn the best ways to repair and utilize your web marketing to increase sales and success?  This Wednesday, September 16, at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific, Lorrie Thomas, Marketing Therapist at Web Marketing Therapy will do just that.

You do not want to miss Lorrie Thomas as she teaches you how to successfully employ your web marketing skills. This webinar is presented by some of the best experts in the business and they will make sure that by the time it is over, you understand how to optimize your web marketing and have healthy, ongoing success in it as well.

Visit our free internet marketing webinars page to sign up for this free webinar.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Posted in Online Marketing, Show Announcements | No Comments »

If Content is King, Why So Many Peasants?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Mike Schultz, President of Wellesley Hills Group, offers an eight point litmus test for your web content to ensure you are establishing yourself as an authority in your field.

Everyone says, “Online marketing is all about content!” Too bad most of it is terrible.

If you want to generate content that sings, that makes a difference, and that, over time, will truly position you as a leader and authority in your field, it’s got to meet an 8 point litmus test.

  1. Distinction. Does your content say something? Do you take a position? If it’s run of the mill or wishy washy, it’ll get you nowhere.
  2. Salience. Salient content isn’t just noticeable, it thrusts itself into attention. Think of your intellectual capital as a spark waiting to start a fire. If it’s not salient, it’s like a spark in the middle of a damp swamp; much as you might try to keep it going it’s more likely to go out than anything else. But if it is salient, your spark is sitting on a pile of tinder. Just the slightest blow…
  3. Relevance. Your content needs to matter to people.
  4. Consequence. Your content needs to pass the “so what” test.
  5. Defensibility. Even the greatest business ideas have their detractors. While few business ideas will be bulletproof (as much as you might think they are), you do need to be able to defend the ideas on their merits.
  6. Realism. Your ideas need to be able to make the leap from theory to implementation.
  7. Elegance. Convoluted models and hard to remember concepts don’t capture the attention of the masses.
  8. Presentation. You’ve got to present your content well. Bad grammar, poorly produced videos, and scratchy sounding podcasts will always bring you down.

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Posted in Guest Articles, Online Marketing | No Comments »

Are Web Analytics Easy or Hard?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Akin Arikan, product strategist for Unica, discusses web analytics and whether or not they are easy enough for everyone to use and understand.  

Akin Arikan - UnicaBelieve it or not, that question has been a heated debate in our little industry. 

Looking from the outside, you might think that we just breed over web site usage reports all day long to dream up ways for increasing usability, conversion rates, or sales.

But you need to know the following fact about us:

While people looking from the outside might feel that the topic of web analytics is so boring that it could cure insomnia, for us on the inside, there is deep passion for the subject.

The fire of passion is burning: 

  • In web analysts who are trying to get their advice heard in their companies
  • Among vendors competing with each other like gladiators in Rome, e.g. Unica, Omniture, Coremetrics, and Webtrends
  • Between vendors and consultants who have epic debates over whether the bottleneck for success is in the tools or how they are being used
  • In all of us, trying to advance web analytics from mere tactical reporting to a strategic source of customer insights for the business

So, it isn’t surprising then maybe that all this passion has led to a bitter debate among the best minds in our field

Are analytics “easy” and can even be done on the side sometimes? Or are they “hard” and difficult and need closer attention to get right?

Some of our brightest are on a crusade to make analytics intuitive and spread their adoption to the masses. Others of our brightest are on a crusade to reveal all the pitfalls that exist and that have prevented too many companies from generating ROI from web analytics.

It is a good thing the world has me to now reveal the answer to this epic debate!

The answer is, of course, that web analytics are both easy AND hard.

There are aspects of analytics that are easy or at least straight forward. For example:

  • If you measure that visitors coming to you from search keyword XYZ have a high bounce rate, i.e .they are arriving at the landing page and them immediately leaving, chances are that either the landing page doesn’t fit their expectations or the keyword isn’t a good one for your offering.
  • If you create two test versions of the landing page with essentially the same content but different layout, design, etc. and you find that one leads to higher engagement and conversion rates, chances are you should keep the better performing page.
  • If you measure that visitors coming to you from search keyword ABC have a great conversion rates but there are only few people reaching you via this keyword, you probably want to check whether you should try to rank higher for that keyword ABC.
  • If you measure that visitors buying from you are all shopaholic until they reach your page where you reveal exorbitant shipment costs or a long form that they must complete, chances are that improving these items will decrease leaks from your funnel

If you did nothing but the above, you’d likely create very respectable ROI from analytics.

But there are other valuable aspects of analytics that are far from easy. In fact, the harder you look at any individual metric the less it seems to say. The more you know about analytics, the less sure you become what any individual report really means.

Huh?

Well remind yourself of the following: 

  • If search keyword ABC has great conversion rates, is that because of only the keyword itself or have visitors been exposed to other ads or emails of yours that led them to search for ABC in the first place? Most obviously, anyone searching for your brand or product names must have heard them elsewhere.
  • If you create two versions of a landing page with different offers and one performs better for conversion rates, you may still find that you hurt your company by producing lower sales or profits. That happens if you accidentally lead people towards products that are cheaper or less profitable
  • If people leak at a particular page in your funnel is it because of something you said? Or is it the point where they have learned enough from you to stop and check first what the competition has to offer? Think about how you shopped for auto insurance online, for instance. Of course, you drop out after receiving the quote and before buying the policy.

So given easy and hard options, which would you pick to work on first?

Tackling the more difficult questions is critical for working towards the ultimate optimization summit whereas the easier questions may leave you working towards a local optimum.

But the easy questions have potentially higher % ROI because you put less effort into them. So you might be inclined to start with the easier tasks and work yourself to the more difficult questions over time.

But would it be a waste of time to optimize the layout of a landing page, for example, if optimizing the offer on the page could yield much higher overall returns?

Argggh… Analytics are both easy and hard.

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Posted in Conversion Rate Improvements, Online Marketing, Web Analytics/Web Metrics | No Comments »

Simple Strategies to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Bill Leake, CEO of Apogee Search, offers simple strategies that can significantly increase your website’s conversion rate.

Bill Leake

SEO and PPC efforts can drive qualified traffic to your website, but in order to justify the time, effort, and expense, the site must be able to convert that traffic into either a lead or a sale. Different websites experience different obstacles, such as building trust, brand recognition, or simply experiencing high abandonment rates, and therefore require different solutions for improving conversion rates.

The best place to start analyzing your conversion rate is to look at entry pages with the highest traffic, such as home pages or high ranking landing pages. These pages are extremely important in forming the right first impression with any visitor or potential customer to your site. If visitors are only spending a brief amount of time on these pages and you are experiencing a high bounce rate, consider using bullet points, bolded text, and more compelling headlines that grab every visitor’s attention and gets your message across in a clear and concise manner. If an individual is spending a great deal of time on your website then leaves without completing any sort of action, consider adding more calls to action to guide them into the conversion process.

Lead form optimization is also an effective way to increase conversion rates on your website. In order to increase the amount of lead forms that are submitted with complete and accurate information and avoid abandonment, it is important to ensure that your forms are simple to complete, establish more trust with individuals, and only ask for information that is necessary and beneficial in obtaining a lead. Improving the conversion rate for e-commerce lead forms is slightly more involved. The amount of steps required in an e-commerce website can make conversion optimization seem daunting. Let’s separate problems with e-commerce purchases into three buckets:

  1. Customer’s ability to find the product they want
  2. Process of adding products to the cart
  3. Process of purchasing the product once in the cart

Web analytics data can help you identify which of these steps is causing problems. These common problems can be resolved by working the individual into a pipeline, increasing the persuasion on the pages, inserting more calls to action, and discarding unnecessary requests for information that may deter an individual from completing the process.

In general, analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you pinpoint problems; while usability analyses, best practices lists, and case studies can help you identify possible solutions. However, replicating a method that may have worked for someone else is not guaranteed to work for you. Testing different solution ideas is crucial for ensuring an improvement in conversion rates.

Bill Leake is the CEO and Founder of Apogee Search, the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, one of the 20 largest in North America and one of the fastest growing companies on the Inc. 500 list. In addition to leading Apogee Search, Bill also serves as the president of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, and as the chairman of the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) committee.

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Posted in Conversion Rate Improvements, Guest Articles | 1 Comment »

The Age of Personalization is Doing Away with the Model-T’s Philosophy

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Sitebrand President and CEO, Chris Corman, discusses the power of personalization to deliver effective marketing messages that can significantly improve conversion rates.

Sitebrand logo

Personalization is a big word. In its most basic definition, personalization conveys the idea of tailoring or customizing a product or service to an individual’s needs or desires. Before the industrial revolution and mass-market economies, everything was personal and handmade, usually by a local crafts-person. In the industrial age, craft and personal choice gave way to standardization. It was most succinctly summed up by Henry Ford in his famous quote about color “People can have the Model-T in any color–so long as it’s black.”

The mass-market paradigm is only now coming apart at the seams.  As seen by the slow death of traditional media and the rise of the Web 2.0 movement, people have moved to more personal forms of content delivery and communication.  The online world burst on to the scene defaulted to the one-size fits all approach but now needs to rapidly evolve to embrace the changing market landscape.

Now, I don’t know about you but I definitely have different desires from my wife and kids yet we all use some of the same websites. So, why do most websites treat everyone the same and assume the same content and the same offer will be as compelling to me as the next visitor. That is where technology has finally progressed to the point of bringing cost-effective personalization into our online lives… no more Model-Ts in black only.

So what does personalization mean in the online world where the norm is the mass market driven by the economies of scale and technology limitations? It’s confusing, does it mean:

  • Registration centers, welcome back messages and wish lists
  • Product recommendations – Jane bought this book, so you should too
  • Customization – getting a gift with a unique engraving or printing
  • Email/database marketing with individual messaging

Well, in a word yes! It is all of those but how does an online marketer take advantage of personalization.  The problem is more acute when it is the first visit or has yet to fill out a form; marketers don’t have a lot of information.

That is where anonymous personalization solves the problem.  Using visitor behaviors and web browser attributes, marketers can segment the incoming traffic and deliver different content for different people. By dynamically delivering different content in real-time, marketers have an active tool by which they can interact with their visitors site-wide. 

As an eCommerce example, a clothing retailer might choose to present different offers to different traffic segments. Let’s say it is the middle of February and the retailer’s website receives two different visitors:

  • A visitor from zip code 10012 (downtown Manhattan, NY), at noon on Monday and arrived at the site from Google by typing in the term “Fashion blue jeans”
  • A visitor from Albuquerque, on a week-end by typing in the website name directly into the address bar.

So what can we infer from each of these visitors? Visitor A will most likely have a higher income due to demographics, is on their lunch hour, and is looking for a higher-end fashion product but only has a limited amount of time to buy. Visitor B has shown some brand recognition but may have a lower income and has time to browse.

Does this mean the retailer should promote the same product to both? Of course not, the visitor A should be presented with an array of branded, full-length jeans where visitor B should see more causal styles including some shorter length capris.

That is the power of personalization; two completely different site experiences targeted at different individuals. And unlike other online technologies such as in-site search, live chat or customer reviews where the visitor must perform an action to receive the benefit, personalization is subtly engaged with the visitor even before the first page is rendered in their browser.

Chris Corman is the President and CEO of Sitebrand, a personalization platform for online marketers. Sitebrand’s products deliver real-time, rule driven, personalized online campaigns for blogs, email, banners, website, affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, point of sale, or any other web medium.

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Posted in Conversion Rate Improvements, Guest Articles, eCommerce Marketing | No Comments »

How To Use Personalization for Online Marketing Success

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

RSS Ray Segment One

Show Date: June 10, 2009 at 6 pm Eastern, 3 pm Pacific

Chris Corman, President & CEO of Sitebrand

Show Topic How To Use Personalization for Online Marketing Success

Show Guest: Chris Corman, President & CEO of Sitebrand

About Chris Corman: Chris, a 15 year veteran of the technology industry, most recently founded and led Shout Research Corp, a firm specializing in competitive web analytics and audience measurement research for Fortune 500 companies. Prior to founding Shout, Corman served as President and CEO of webHancer Corp, a pioneer in web performance measurement which posted 15 consecutive quarters of revenue growth prior to its acquisition by a leading US based software company.

Sample Questions for Chris Corman:

What specific elements of a marketing channel can be personalized?

How does using personalization improve conversion rates?

How can personalization shorten the sales cycle?

RSS Ray Segment Two

RSS Ray, Host of Online Marketing with RSS Ray

Show Topic: RSS Ray’s Potpourri of Marketing Tidbits Sure to Ring Your Cash register

Show Guest: RSS Ray, Host of Online Marketing with RSS Ray

During the second half of the show, RSS Ray will be offering some exclusive put to work now marketing advice that you can use to increase your bottom line.

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

RSS Ray’s Comments: “Online Personalization can significantly increase your conversion rates and Chris Corman is the perfect person to explain how it’s done” stated RSS Ray, host of “Online Marketing with RSS Ray.”

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Posted in Conversion Rate Improvements, Guest Announcements, Online Marketing | No Comments »

How Marketers Should Prepare for the Semantic Web

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

RSS Ray Segment One

Mike Darnell, Creative Marketing Director of Headup

Show Date: April 22, 2009 at 6:00 pm Eastern, 3:00 pm Pacific

Show Topic How Marketers Should Prepare for the Semantic Web

Show Guest: Mike Darnell, Creative Marketing Director of Headup

About Mike Darnell: Mike Darnell is the Creative Marketing Director at Headup. Through blogging, twitter, and other new media outlets, Mike is responsible for growing Headup’s user base. He is also a Lecturer for the department of Industrial Design at Holon Institute of Technology as well as a digital artist.

Sample Questions for Mike Darnell:

What is the semantic web?

Why is the semantic web so overdue?

How should marketers prepare for the semantic web?

RSS Ray Segment Two

Show Topic: Measuring and Maximizing the ROI of Your Brand Online

Jen Martino, Principal of Project X Media

Show Guest: Jen Martino, Principal of Project X Media

About Jen Martino:

Jen Martino is the Principal at Project X Media, a San Diego-based branding and design firm that helps companies become industry leaders in the ultra-competitive brandscapes of the 21st century. Before founding Project X Media in 1996, Jen was a senior designer at Lyon & Associates where she managed multiple assignments ranging from corporate identity to environmental graphics to advertising design. Prior to that she was a graphic designer at Franklin Stoorza responsible for the design and production of a wide range of marketing collateral and materials.

Sample Questions for Jen Martino:

What should companies consider when “friending” or connecting with individuals through sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter?

What are the guidelines or rules businesses should follow to ensure brand integrity online?

Should companies change the way they go about presenting themselves now that social media is becoming more mainstream?

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

RSS Ray’s Comments: “Headup is an inspired Firefox addon that introduces users to a new ’semantic web.’ This could represent the future of the internet and all online marketers should take note.” stated RSS Ray, host of “Online Marketing with RSS Ray.” RSS Ray went on to say “Project X Media has taken a fantastic approach to online branding that integrates social networking, new media, and traditional brand management.”

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Posted in Branding, Guest Announcements, Online Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Web Design and Usability | No Comments »

Measuring Keyword Effectiveness and Using Online Marketing in a Tough Economy

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Last week on Online Marketing with RSS Ray:

RSS Ray Segment One

RSS Ray interviews Chase Granberry, Founder of AuthorityLabs

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to select the right keywords for your SEO campaign.
  • An easy way to track the effectiveness of your keywords.
  • How to understand exactly why people visit your website.
Listen Now!

Additional Resources:

AuthorityLabs’s Website

Search Engine Optimization Podcasts

RSS Ray Segment Two

RSS Ray interviews Bob Regnerus, President and CEO, The Leads King

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to use landing pages to instantly improve online sales.
  • Why online marketing is more important then ever in a tough economy.
  • How to sell big ticket items online.
Listen Now!

Additional Resources:

The Leads King Website

Big Ticket eCommerce Website

Bob’s Blog

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How To Select Keywords and Easily Track Keyword Rankings

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

Chase Granberry, Founder of AuthorityLabs

Show Date: April 8, 2009 at 6 pm Eastern, 3 pm Pacific

Show Topic How To Select Keywords and Easily Track Keyword Rankings

Show Guest: Chase Granberry, Founder of AuthorityLabs

About Chase Granberry: Chase Granberry graduated from Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, TX. Shortly after that he went to work for a startup ad network, FetchBack. FetchBack is an ad network specializing in retargeting. There, he gained valuable sales and client management experience. He turned that experience into his own consulting practice when the idea for AuthorityLabs came to him. The startup incubator Gangplank and Chase partnered to get AuthorityLabs off the ground. Two months later they launched the initial version with paying clients and continue to add new clients every week.

Sample Questions for Chase Granberry:

What on page considerations are important for high rankings relating to search terms?

Overall, what are some of the major things search engines consider when ranking a website?

What are 2 or 3 easy things most listeners could do to their website to improve their rankings?

Bob Regnerus, President and CEO of RJR Computing Solutions, Inc.

Show Topic: How to Recession-Proof Your Business With Online Marketing

Show Guest: Bob Regnerus, President and CEO of RJR Computing Solutions, Inc.

About Bob Regnerus: Bob Regnerus, author and ecommerce expert, is the creator of the Big Ticket eCommerce system for selling high priced products and services online. He has created thousands of websites, attracted more than 35 million website visitors and generated 2.2 million leads for clients in 30 different industries, including the Dartmouth School of Business and Miracle-EarR. His new book, “Big Ticket eCommerce,” is geared toward executives and owners of brick-and-mortar businesses looking to increase prospects online.

Sample Questions for Bob Regnerus:

Why is online marketing superior to other marketing methods during tough economic times?

How can companies use landing pages to significantly increase their sales?

What are some of the common mistakes you see in landing pages?

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

RSS Ray’s Comments: “AuthorityLabs is a great new way to monitor ranking on your website.” stated RSS Ray, host of “Online Marketing with RSS Ray.” RSS Ray went on to say “With the economy as rough as it is right now, it’s nice to have people like Bob Regnerus to help companies grow while their competitors fold.”

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Understanding Digital Body Language

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua, explains key concepts from his new book Digital Body Language.

Digital Body Language

In today’s digital age, the behavior of prospective buyers – the way they identify, understand, evaluate, and buy products – has fundamentally changed. In the past decade, buyers have achieved new capabilities to understand an industry’s trends, translate that into business pain/opportunity that can be addressed, assemble a list of potential vendors, and analyze the best solution for their specific needs – all without the involvement of a sales professional.

Buyers are leveraging these new information sources, rendering the salesperson to a secondary role (or even a non-presence) – particularly early in the process.  As the professional salesperson somewhat fades from view, so, too, does his ability to observe and understand the buyer. 

In this environment, it is far more challenging to align the prospect’s buying process with the company’s selling process – which are no longer synonymous.  And that carries significant implications for lead qualification and hand-off.  When a prospect appears on the corporate Web site – perhaps to download a white paper – he is most likely merely “kicking the tires” and is not ready to buy.  As a result, the sales rep disqualifies the lead and ejects the prospect from the funnel.  It’s not that the prospect isn’t going to buy – he’s just not going to buy right now.

This creates the “leaky funnel” with which most marketers are painfully familiar.  They devote huge efforts to generating raw leads, but if those leads aren’t in a perfectly synchronized phase of their buying process, the sales team will waste marketing’s efforts by ignoring the lead. Sirius Decisions found that, of the leads passed over to sales, a shockingly low 20 percent actually received follow-up from the rep. Of that 20 percent, the rep sets aside 70 percent of them as “disqualified” – even though subsequent objective analysis shows that 80 percent of them eventually buy a solution (usually from another company). They were good leads – just early leads.

So what should we, as marketers, do to meet these growing challenges?  The answer requires understanding the buyers’ web activity – their digital body language — in context of how you are communicating with them.  Here are a few key things to look for and how you can respond.

  1. Know where the prospect is in the buying process.  By looking at downloads, areas of interest, and search terms, you can understand whether they are in an education phase, selecting potential short-list vendors, or validating a vendor choice.  Once you understand this you can tailor your email marketing messages to match each buyer’s interest stage.
  1. Understand the prospect’s level of interest.  Research shows that many email recipients will think of an email as spam, even if they legitimately subscribed, if they are no longer interested in the company or products behind it.  By watching recipients’ web activity, you can determine their interest level and identify those who have “emotionally unsubscribed,” even if they have not explicitly clicked an unsubscribe link.  Catering your messaging content and frequency to this awareness will keep you more engaged with your audience.
  1. Determine their area of interest.  By understanding which product line, what industry, or what type of information a prospective buyer finds interesting, you can match the content of your email marketing to their interest area.  Dynamic content capabilities are available in most leading email and marketing automation platforms.  By leveraging the insights available in a prospect’s web activity, you can make dynamic content even more powerful.

The complex, consultative process is experiencing dramatic shifts that are transforming the very way in which buyers conduct transactions as they accrue and exercise new power.  Marketers who adapt to this new buying reality will thrive.  Those who don’t will find themselves consigned to a steady erosion of relevance, influence, and value.

Steve Woods is cofounder and CTO of Eloqua, a leading provider of marketing automation technology. He is the author of a forthcoming book, “Digital Body Language,” and also writes on the topic at his blog.

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Posted in Conversion Rate Improvements, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Guest Articles | No Comments »

Why Even the Best Writers in the World Fail With Online Marketing

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Announcing a free webinar on how to create content for search engine optimization. This Wednesday, February 25th at 4:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Pacific.

When writing copy for your marketing campaign you should focus exclusively on your customers, right?

WRONG

That might have been true in yesteryear, but in today’s competitive online market, focusing on the customer is only half of the equation. Now it’s all about the search engines. For marketers to be effective online, they not only need to write engaging copy that sells, but they must also write in a way the gets them noticed by Google.

Without traffic to your website, you could have the most amazing copy in the world and still not get any sales. Writing for a search engine is a whole lot different than writing for people and you have to know what you are doing.

On Wednesday, February 25th at 4:00 pm Eastern, 1:00 pm Pacific, RSS Ray will be hosting a free webinar to discuss how you can get started writing your marketing messages with search engine optimization in mind.

Join us this Wednesday as we discus anchor text, tagging, and how to create search engine friendly content.

It’s free to attend, so register today at http://www.brighttalk.com/channels/595/view.

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What’s Old Is New Again

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Jen Martino from Project X Media explains why online branding is still about making real connections.

Project X Media

There’s something to be said about actually interfacing with someone – in person – rather than via email. And while some believe social networks are set up solely to allow individuals to connect with as many people as you possibly can, it’s really a tool that should be used in the same manner as you would introduce yourself and your company at a party or over the phone – with a personal touch.

Mind you, there’s nothing I enjoy more than sharing a tasty morsel on Twitter or posting a new happening on my Project X Media’s Facebook page. I am the first to acknowledge the power of these wide-reaching tools. I believe there is a lot of value to occupying cyberspace – after all, the more your brand is seen, the more powerful it becomes, and the more it resonates with the customers/clients. 

But it’s HOW you engage with people that’s equally important. You and your company’s brand is on the line each and every time you “follow” a new individual on Twitter or “friend” someone on Facebook. So before you open your virtual doors to just anyone, keep in mind that these rules still apply:

  • Choose your online connections wisely – It’s not about quantity, but quality. When you get an invitation to connect with someone online, decide whether you truly know this person. If you’re on a professional site like LinkedIn, this is especially important. You may be asked if you know this person, and if you would recommend him/her.
  • Be true to your brand – When you are posting something online, like a website news posting on your blog, or adding a comment on a social networking site, be sure that the content you post is aligned with your company’s mission, vision and values. By staying loyal to your brand through the content you post, it will elevate your status as a guru in the industry and breed trust through your followers.
  • Nurture your “inner circle” – Part of social networking, especially sites like Twitter, is about the social interaction between you and other online community members. It’s not just about posting your latest happenings, but commenting and replying to your followers as well. (Hence the word “social”.)
  • Walk the talk – Do what you say you’re going to do or can do. If you say you’re an expert, be sure you can back it up. Nothing is worse than finding out someone is a fake, or posting misinformation. How disappointing to find out you can’t live up to the expectations you’ve set in the presentation of your online brand.

The rules of engagement have dramatically changed through the introduction of the aforementioned social media sites, however the way we present ourselves through being authentic has not, and should not change. I’ve personally coached our clients on how to blog and write content, and one of the fundamental principles is to stay true to your brand. When interacting with social media sites, be your own “brand police” – is this something that directly represents your core values? If the answer is yes, then go for it!

About the author: Jen Martino is the Principal at Project X Media, a San Diego-based branding and design firm that helps companies become industry leaders in the ultra-competitive brandscapes of the 21st century. She can be reached at jen@projectxmedia.com

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Small Business Online Marketing Tips for Profit in a Tough Economy

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

Harry Brooks, Director of Search Marketing of Network Solutions

Show Date: February 11th, 2009 at 6 pm Eastern, 3 pm Pacific

Show Topic Small Business Online Marketing Tips for Profit in a Tough Economy

Show Guest: Harry Brooks, Director of Search Marketing of Network Solutions

About Harry Brooks: Harry Brooks is an expert in SEO, PPC, link building and Website marketing, Harry created and launched the Internet Marketing Webinar series for Network Solutions in 2007 to provide marketing education for Website owners and small businesses. Since, Harry has trained thousands of business owners on how to develop a search marketing strategy to increase traffic to their website. Harry regularly engages business consumers in a variety of capacities, including being a regular contributor to Network Solutions Online Marketing Blog, and has appeared as a featured guest on Technically Speaking Radio to discuss search marketing.

Sample Questions for Harry Brooks:

How do I develop a search marketing campaign?

Why should I use search marketing?

Is it cost effective to use in tough economic times?

Yaro Starak, Founder of Blog Mastermind

Show Topic: Boost Your Profits with Business Blogging

Show Guest: Yaro Starak, Founder of Blog Mastermind

About Yaro Starak: Yaro Starak is a young entrepreneur from Australia that has created, managed and sold several different Internet businesses since 1998. He currently teaches people how to make a full time income from blogging part time through his Blog Mastermind mentoring program.

Sample Questions for Yaro Starak:

What separates a good blog from a great one?

What are some common mistakes you see bloggers make?

What search engine optimization techniques do you use on your blog?

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

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Ray Raps…20 Questions with Jim Sterne

Friday, February 6th, 2009

RSS Ray interviews Jim Sterne, President of the Web Analytics Association, on why web analytics is an essential part of your online marketing strategy.

Web Analytics Association

RSS Ray recently sat down with Jim Sterne, President of the Web Analytics Association and founder of Target Marketing of Santa Barbara for the latest installment of Ray Raps. During the interview, Jim offered some important insights into the world of web analytics that you can’t afford to skip.

What is web analytics?

The Official WAA Definition of Web Analytics:

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.

How does it work?

There are a number of ways to collect information about visitors to your website. Each web server has a Log File that stores data transmission information, the pages themselves can contain javascript that helps track a visit and each visitor can get a cookie to help recognize them as a previous visitor – and a lot more.

How is it used?

These data are brought together for benchmark reporting (how well are we doing compared to last month?), website optimization (how easy is it for people to use our site?), process optimization (how do we get more people to sign up for our webinar/download our whitepaper/buy our products?) and marketing optimization (which message/offer seems to get the best response?).

Why should companies use web analytics?

How much are you spending on your website? Wouldn’t it be nice to know if that’s money well spent? Wouldn’t you like to earn more return on your Internet investment? If you don’t measure it, how do you know?

What is the measure of a successful web analytics strategy?

When a consulting client tells me:

"We run our website by the numbers. We have specific business goals we are trying to achieve and we are using the data from our website to tell us if we are moving in the right direction. We can actually use our web analytics data to inform the rest of the company about what features to add to the product and how many to ship to which parts of the planet. We are basing our promotional pitches on the radio and in print based on how people respond online" then I say, "My work here is done."

Why aren’t more small companies paying attention to web analytics the same way they do a P&L?

Smaller companies look at web analytics as another opportunity rather than another fire to put out. If you had the opportunity to hang new curtains in the den or put out a fire in the kitchen, which would you choose? The problem with this perspective is that your website *is* a fire – it’s burning money!  Web analytics gives you the visibility you need to see where that money is being wasted and how that website could be made to more than pay for itself.

What kinds of results can one expect?

Reports – lots and lots of reports. What results can you expect from a gym membership? If you don’t use it, use it sporadically, use it wrong, you can expect nothing, little or injury. By the way, the reports are very interesting, but without applying some brain power (analysis) they are not useful. They tell you what the numbers are but you have to decide what the numbers mean, what to do about it and then measure the impact of those actions. Then you can expect great and continuous results.

What are the steps to creating a successful web analytics strategy?

  • Have clearly identified business goals.
  • The ability to make website modifications easily and quickly.
  • A willingness to test things rather than assume you know what’s best.
  • Recognize that you are not the target audience and let the numbers tell you what your visitors like.
  • Put more attention into the people you hire than the tools you use.
  • Look for low-hanging fruit (things that need fixing, conversion processes with unambiguous success metrics) so you can show off your progress.
  • A commitment to continuous improvement.

How does one get started with web analytics?

The three things to get started are:

a) Carefully tagging all of your website pages or at least the ones you want to track.
b) Assiduously watching the numbers against a specific goal set.
c) Hiring somebody who is naturally curious and really understands your business goals.

What tools do you recommend for getting started with web analytics?

Google and Yahoo! have free tools you can use and they are a lot more powerful than you could hope for. With no experience in web analytics, the most sophisticated website could use these free tools for a year without running up against some of the reasons that there are other companies selling web analytics software-as-a-service and applications.

Is a web analytics campaign something that needs to be constantly monitored, or can companies set it up and forget about it for awhile?

Is steering your car something you can set and forget? You can get away with cruise control if you’re on an empty road in the middle of nowhere, but try that in the city and be prepared for higher insurance premiums. No – you may not forget about it. That’s because the Internet is not a brochure. You print a brochure once in a while and it flies off the shelf – great. But the Internet is a two way street and you cannot ignore how people are consuming your information nor what they are saying about you to 10,000 of their closest friends.

Are there certain types of industries better suited to using web analytics?

The websites that are not suited to web analytics are those that have been abandoned by their owners. If you have a website and you want it to improve, then web analytics is the way to go. If you don’t care, then neither does anybody else.

The most obvious website to benefit from web analytics is the eCommerce site. But that’s only because the goal is obvious. B2B companies are making great strides in improving how well their websites act as lead generation tools and how well they improve customer satisfaction.

Is web analytics a venture a company can undertake itself, or should they hire outside help?

It’s easy to get started, it’s hard to get started in a meaningful way that will lead to a long term strategic program. Haphazard is never in it for the long haul. It might be interesting to sprinkle some tags on some pages and see what the reports say, but doing it well and interpreting those reports well is a skill – one that I recommend you rent-to-own. Hire a consultant to come in and help you set it up and then teach you how to get the most out of it.

If hiring outside help, how can I separate the good from the pretenders?

Talk to their clients.

How much should I expect to pay to get started and on an on-going basis?

This is a young industry and there are lots of consultants with a large range in pricing. Talk to their clients.

What is the Web Analytics Association?

The WAA is a non-profit, membership driven, volunteer organization that  … wait… where’s the official… Ah, here it is: The Web Analytics Association leads and supports the members by providing quality education, developing standards and best practices, conducting research and advocating for issues that advance the industry.

The WAA got started because the audience at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit wanted to keep working together to guide and build the industry. Now we’re 1,700 people strong and growing.

Who should join and why should they join?

Anybody whose job depends on knowing what their website is doing and making it better should join. They should join to network with others in their same situation, to take courses that teach best practices and tricks and traps and to help define what the standards might be. We are trying to put some logic into an industry that’s only been around for a dozen years or so.

What are the major learning events for the association in 2009?

The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit is the official conference of the Web Analytics Association. More about the nine events this year at http://www.emetrics.org. There is also an online course run out of the University of British Columbia and the University of California at Irvine that has been a huge success. We are also starting to roll our Base Camp workshops which help introduce people to web analytics.

What do you see as the future of web analytics in the next 3-5 years?

Web analysis is a different sort of data analysis. It isn’t just stirring up the data to look for patterns, it’s also optimizing specific processes. Today, those are website visitor processes, tomorrow they will be strategic marketing processes. The day after tomorrow, we will be using web data to provide strategic business insight. Some companies are doing that today.

The group I most need to join is ___________ because ______________.

The Web Analytics Association, an eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, the Yahoo! Web Analytics Forum, and a Web Analytics Wednesday gathering near you because if you’re not measuring the success of your website, you cannot manage your website.

Jim Sterne is the President and Founding Director of the Web Analytics Association and the founder of Target Marketing of Santa Barbara. In 1994 he produced the world’s first Marketing on the Internet seminar series. Today, Sterne is an internationally known speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and Internet entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his 20 years in sales and marketing on measuring the value of a web site as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships.

Sterne has written five books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service including, his most recent, “Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success.”

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About Our Radio Show

Online Marketing with RSS Ray is a weekly radio program about internet marketing best practices. It is carried live on wsRadio.com, the internet's leading talk station with more than 3 million listeners. You can listen live Wednesdays at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific or get free podcast versions of the show.

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