Online Marketing for Marketers

Legendary rock band AC/DC just released, “Black Ice” their first new album in over eight years. Black Ice was released on October 8^th and rocketed to the top of the charts selling nearly 800,000 earning it the distinction of being the year’s best-selling rock debut.

Black Ice marks the band’s second stint at #1 (1981’s For Those About to Rock … We Salute You reached the peak several weeks after its initial release), and the first chart-topping debut of the band’s more than 30-year-career. Read more

To start, let’s make sure we’re on the same page as to what a campaign is, and we’ll do it the quick and dirty way… Wikipedia:

“A marketing campaign is an organized and coordinated effort to promote the sale of a certain product or group of products in accordance with a particular theme, using multiple forms of media.” Read more

There was a time when Marc Evon Enterprises enjoyed a comfortable living manufacturing skate blade guards. You see Marc had the patent on the product, and little in the way of competition. Everything changed when his patent ran out, and the world of skate blade guards changed forever. The first to seize on the opportunity were the Chinese. The marketplace was almost immediately flooded with exact copies of Marc’s blade guards costing many dollars less. Alarming as this was, Marc decided he wouldn’t just roll over and play dead - he would fight. Read more

What do good campaigns have in common?

They don’t have much in common with other campaigns. They say something fresh. They say something new. And they’re not afraid to defy conventional wisdom.

In fact, many of the best are gosh-darned contrary. I’m thinking of the Volkswagen “lemon” campaign. The Hebrew National “Uncle Sam” campaign. Forbes’ “capitalist tool” campaign. They all defied expectations by turning those expectations on their heads.

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Marketers don’t need to reinvent the wheel and forget everything they learned in business school – or in the trenches – when planning a social media campaign. Having reviewed hundreds of social media campaigns (and planned my fair share), here are four essential elements that great campaigns have in common: Read more

I was recently asked to give my thought on what is the most important attribute in a successful web marketing campaign. I believe there is one single attribute the far out weighs all others. Watch this video to find out what I think it is. Read more

So, I am sitting here looking through the latest B2B magazine, BtoB’s Best 2008 and a thought strikes me, How come “return on investment” or “campaign success metrics” don’t matter enough to report on?

At a time when the economy is tightening every day, our clients want quantifiable results. They are watching every dollar spent and demanding that we measure the return on each. Yet, almost 30% of the issue is all about the “Best Creative” - with no mention on the success of any of the campaign. More interestingly, the issue hi-lites the tops Brands, Marketers and Creative - nothing about the most successful campaigns based on their return. Read more

The surest way to successfully construct a building is to follow a blueprint. A blueprint contains detailed plans and designs that enables skilled personnel to build the structure just from the blueprint. In the same way, a detailed set of plans is the surest way to build a successful search marketing campaign. And just like construction blueprints, while each SEO blueprint may be unique, each will also contain similar details to ensure success. What details should a search marketing blueprint contain?

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No matter what you are writing and what product or service you are selling, certain copywriting principles will always play a role in your marketing campaign.

Here are the Top 5 must-consider-never-ignore points to remember in any campaign you create, tweak or analyze:

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If you are attempting to generate more leads and sales through your website, you need to pay attention to website conversion. In my opinion, website conversion is the most important element of online marketing.

Simply stated, website conversion refers to the percentage of visitors who take a particular action. Let’s say you conversion goal was to have visitors schedule a free consultation by filling out an email form. If you had 1000 visitors and 20 of them filed out the email form, your conversion rate would be 2% ( 20 / 1000 = 2%). Read more