Online Marketing for Marketers

If you are like most of my clients, you are confused about what your paid search advertising budget should be. I created a simple tool you can use to determine a profitable budget. A link to the free tool is provided at the end of this article. But first, let’s review some basic budget setting concepts.
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Quick story for you.

I was flying back a few nights ago from Chicago via Southwest Airlines. After we landed, there was a long taxi to get to the gate - and to pass the time, everyone was talking to each other (it was actually pretty loud).

About a minute into the taxi the Southwest flight attendant asked if anyone wanted to hear a story. Within 10 seconds, over 100 people were completely quiet, and so, she told the story. Read more

In this economy, we marketers know what to expect: the knife. Already, two of my steady clients have laid off good people with whom I had been working. It’s grim out there. With personnel being cut, budgets can’t be far behind.

Yet I think there’s a better way. In fact, one of the most familiar brands in the world took the lead under circumstances similar to our own. And they did it by advancing their presence just when their competitors were retreating. See the whole story here:

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Social networks are all the rage and many of my posts at OnlineMarketerBlog recommend social tools for businesses. However, there are potential pitfalls to consider before you facilitate interaction between customers and your business.

Here are 21 things your business should consider before starting a social network:

Internal (Your Business Capabilities)

1. Can you invest the necessary resources to run a social network properly? Can you afford the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to properly create and staff this resource?

2. What is the role of marketing, sales, IT, customer service, advertising, HR, etc.? Social networks often delve into all of these departments and more. Make sure all of your teams are engaged, enthused, and prepared. Read more

One out of five US email marketers send additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, according to the new study Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me”  from Return Path.  A very poor practice, indeed, and a lesson for marketers in every nation. If someone requests off your file, please let them off without any troubles. Further the study found that 11% of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request - a violation of the US federal CAN-SPAM Act. Read more

Ok, perhaps the headline is a bit overdramatic, but the point here is that companies tend to focus far too much on staying within a set budget line for their online initiatives to the detriment of driving an acceptable amount of qualified traffic. This common, albeit myopic, tactic will drive marketers right out of a job.

Any promotion campaign – but particularly online ones – must first and foremost deliver returns for a company’s investment. This is where the true value of such initiatives lies; if they bear sizeable fruit, it would stand to reason that an organization should look at putting more resources toward them, and consider going over budget to capitalize on their full potential. That isn’t to say that corporations need to write a blank check to advertising outlets, but it does mean that adherence to an arbitrary dollar figure should not come at the expense of customer growth and market share. Doing so leaves significant money on the table. Read more

Anybody feeling good about the economy these days?  With so much pressure to perform, it’s hard to “envision the future” or even get your arms around 2009 planning.

Here’s two things you can do now, in Q4, for immediate impact, that will not only help you improve results, but will help you feel good about your planning efforts (and keep your job safe).  Read more

In the past, I’ve explored how the state of today’s Social Media tools may be turning off some Social Networkers. I suggested that the future of Social Media cannot be assessed based on today’s immature tools but must be viewed in the context of the concepts and tools that will revolutionize personal communication in the years to come.

So what might the future look like? It certainly won’t be the jumble of independent, overlapping, and unreliable tools that we have today. Let’s imagine a Social Media future and then consider how we might take actions now that will better prepare us for this future. Read more

There are a couple extremely important components you need to have in place to achieve Web marketing success. Without them, your chance for failure is great. Make the jump over to this post to watch this video to learn what they are.
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I’ve been following The Marketing Technology Blog by Douglas Karr, and I’m in awe of him and his natural blogging ability. He blogs on his topic daily, sometimes more, and produces really well thought out posts. As a result, he has built a strong following on his blog that is rivaled by very few. And he’s done it in record time!

I decided to reach out to Doug Karr and interview him on a podcast to bring you some key learnings on how to build the audience for your blog. Enjoy …

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