Online Marketing for Marketers

The ‘Get a Mac’ ad features two men standing side by side in front of a seamless, gray/white background. “Hello, I’m a Mac,” says the young guy on the right. “And I’m a PC,” says the guy on the left (sporting dorky glasses, business casual khakis, and a jacket / tie).

This well known, highly successful ad campaign from Apple promoting their Mac computers against Microsoft’s PC is closing in on its’ third year. Apple has attempted to cement the perceived wide gulf between the PC/Mac in terms of ease of setup, use and operating system stability and security - see Vista vs Mac OS spot. Or see the South Park version here.  Read more

Last week I talked about some of the new changes Google is phasing into their web analytics platform. This week I wanted to introduce yet another enhancement that the folks from upon high in Mountain View bring to us - Event Tracking. With Event Tracking Google is really stepping out into the more advanced or enterprise level reporting realm.

The idea behind Event Tracking is that now you can track discrete user actions beyond and deeper than at the page level. For instance, now you can track user interactions with Web 2.0 style content such as AJAX, Adobe Flash / Air, Microsoft Silverlight, and many social networking applications. 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

One of the questions I often get from clients is if the Google Analytic platform is sufficient for their needs. The answer usually depends on the nature of their site and what they would like to accomplish business-wise with it. Many B2B web sites are primarily concerned with promoting their corporate brand and lead generation. Their conversion funnels tend to be relatively simple, tracking a visitor through to a lead for example. Interestingly, many organizations only use 10-20% of the overall functionality of their web analytics platform. Read more

Study the current IBM home page shown to the left (click to enlarge).

When I came across it this week there were two things that instantly jumped out at me. Do you see them?

The first is the reference in the banner copy to how “finance execs” build their business. I am not sure that with all the negative press in the news today about the ecomonic bailout, the AIG spa day, and general discomfort among the finacial sector that using finance execs as a model to build business is the best analogy to make.

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31 Days of the Dragon

In early 2008 HP launched a new laptop that they dubbed ‘The Dragon’. It is a beast, weighing 15lbs, with a 20.1” HD ready screen, dual TV tuners, blue ray DVD and (2) 250GB hard drives and oh yea, Vista Ultimate. The go-to-market price was in the neighborhood of $4,800. Sales were flat out of the gate. Really? What a surprise. I could hang a 60” plasma on the wall for that kind of cash. 

HP employed the traditional advertising media against the launch initially, web, television etc. Still sales were flat. Several months after the product launch HP turned to a social media marketing firm, Buzz Corps Inc. for help. Buzz Corps developed a social media campaign to promote the product through a competition administered through 31 techie blog sites. Each site was assigned a day of the month for their contest over the 31 days.

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Online reputation management for C-Suite execs and a corporate brand: it’s more important than you might think. I love this definition from Wikipedia, “Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organization. It is an important factor in many fields, such as business, on line communities or social status.” Your goal is to protect and shape that public opinion in favor of your clients.   Read more

Many web sites have grown organically to a point where there is not a master plan in place that controls the arrangement and makeup of the content within them. This is particularly true with Search Engine Optimization efforts. Many sites often have their SEO initiatives layered on top as an after thought and not fully integrated into the web site and aligned with their business strategy.  Read more