Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

As social media grows in popularity (Facebook, for example, has over 250 million users worldwide), it has become essential for marketers to integrate social media within their existing marketing programs. Before diving in however, it is important to ask the following questions when developing and managing a social media campaign.

• Why am I doing this? Are you implementing a social campaign to help with organic search engine visibility, branding, promoting the launch of a new product or all of the above? Identifying the objectives and goals will help aide in the process of selecting the correct social media platforms, crafting your message/offer and determining which success metrics to track and analyze throughout the campaign.
• Where is my audience? It is important to identify which social media platforms your target audience is using and what offer or message will resonate best with them. If your target audience is younger, MySpace would be a good choice, while Facebook is great to reach a more mature audience. One useful tool is Quantcast, a free tool that provides demographic information for websites including most of the social platforms. Another way to locate your target audience is by getting social yourself. Reading blogs, searching Twitter, etc., will ensure you are a part of the conversation and can provide some great insights. read more »

Posted by: Chelsea Maxwell, Marketing Coordinator

Testing and optimizing your landing page is a critical part of creating a successful online marketing presence.  However, even when you do not have time to test your landing pages you can still easily eliminate common mistakes and increase your conversion rates. The following approaches to raise conversions will work across a variety of industries:

1. Keep it Simple. Your landing page should be focused on the desired conversion.  Make the action you want the consumer to take clear. Let them know you are looking to generate a sale, download or email sign-up.  Remove additional clutter on the page by limiting other clickable links and choices.
2. Trim the Fat. Studies have shown that less text on a webpage leads to higher conversion rates. Consider reducing your content down to simple headlines, bulleted lists and prominent buttons.
3. Deliver Value. Visitors come to your site with an expectation before they ever landed on your page. Ensure that the message delivering traffic to your site matches the content of your landing page. read more »

Posted by: Caitlin Diehl, Senior Marketing Coordinator

With the growing popularity of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is important to consider not only the influence of your personal profile page, but also of your business profile page. Remember, opening that Facebook account drops you into a network of thousands of critics. Each company should take a unique approach in creating their Facebook persona, but there are a few behaviors to be avoided at all costs!

1. The Show Off. It is great to see news about achievements; especially business awards or nominations, but it is important to know when enough is enough. If every Facebook update is a link to your blog, your award recognition site, your internal employee achievements, or your company’s latest market share, you will sound like a bragger or a self-centered careerist. Vary your posts with promotional offers, achievements and company information.
2. The Grammar School Failure. “ABC company offers 2 for one sale tomorow.” Remember that if you are running a Facebook account for a business, posts are more likely to be scrutinized by users. Spell-check all posts and run them by a second pair of eyes to avoid any unwanted errors.
3. The Complainer. Don’t use Facebook as an outlet to complain. If your business page is a long list of complaints, your users will start to think your company can only rant about problems instead of providing solutions.
4. The Insistent Inviter. We’ve all logged in to see eight new invitations waiting on our home page. Support my cause. Join my green energy group, sign my petition, etc. Gain the attention of your fans by showing you are involved in the community, but do not send so many invites that they feel overwhelmed.

The most important persona to take on when developing your Facebook presence is one of honesty, transparency and sincerity.  Social media sites provide the perfect opportunity to have fun and explore a different outlet for your brand or company.

Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator

CEO of VerticalResponse Inc. said that “E-mail recipients probably aren’t going to buy something from another company on their BlackBerry or iPhone, but they certainly might flag something or take action on it later back at the office.”

This statement points to the importance of tailoring your email campaigns to fit the capabilities of today’s mobile device.  People rely heavily on their smart phones for everyday activities, like checking their email. However, the small screens on many mobile devices are not equipped to allow users to easily view large amounts of text and/or images. For this reason, email marketers should be careful when constructing their messages. Below are a few tips to follow when creating an email that might be viewed through a mobile phone.

• Survey subscribers: Who is viewing your email through their smart phones? Add a question in the opt-in process.
• Eye catching, concise subject lines: Some people might only be able to see the subject line from their phone. Eliminate the “From” label to save space. read more »

Posted by: Leslie Norgren, Project Manager

What if the price of an online advertisement was based on if people liked the ad or not?

Well in June Digg began plans to implement a process to do just that with a new form of contextual advertising.  The new advertising platform called Digg Ads allows users to either Digg or bury sponsored ads.  Sponsored listings began appearing in August and are still in limited rotation as the platform becomes adopted by both users and by the site itself.

Ads are designed to look and feel similar to regular Digg content, falling in the stream of stories, but are noticeably marked as paid assets.

read more »

Posted by: John Batchelder, Conversion-Driven Media Specialist

Google recently made a subtle change to their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads by shifting them from the far right side to center-right, just next to organic search results on the user screen. Much discussion has surrounded the reasons behind this shift and the potential effect on click-through rates (CTRs) for both PPC and organic search results.

While there is not yet industry-wide evidence that CTRs will increase significantly for PPC as a result of Google’s change, Blogger Frank Lee of The Search Agents SEO blog recently reported a 10% jump in PPC CTR across multiple clients immediately following the Google shift. This evidence may is not conclusive, but does indicate an initial upswing in CTR as a result of the change. It is reasonable to expect this increase over the short term, as the closer proximity to organic search results naturally places them closer to users’ eyes.  However, as users become accustomed to the new location of PPC ads, CTRs will likely increase at a much lower rate than 10%.

An increase in CTR for paid results will likely lead to some drop in organic CTRs, but not across all search categories. PPC ads perform well when a user is searching for specific products or services. When queries are topical, vague, or rare organic search becomes more relevant as PPC ads cannot target a product or service to the users’ need. Simply put, organic search will continue to offer a more detailed and accurate overall search result.

In the end, shifting paid search results closer to organic results will likely cause an increase in overall PPC click-through rates. However, the accuracy of organic search results and users’ active avoidance of online advertisements make the location of PPC ads less influential for CTR than the ability of advertisers to provide a compelling reason to click.

Posted by: Heather Cratty, Senior Accountant

Since Bing has become a part of the search engine world it has slowly increased Microsoft’s market share of search quires in the United States from the previous months.  With an increase of 0.4% in June and 0.5% in July, the new decision engine seems to be revving up usage.  The reality is that Bing has yet to help Microsoft regain its position of 9.5% in July of 2008, as according to ComScore in July of 2009 Bing accounted for only 8.9% of US quires.  A review of current international usage figures reveals no gain since launch and even dropped a percentage in July.  This could be due to the fact that Bing initially launched a more sophisticated version in the US as well as contributed to a generous US marketing campaign.  According to Market Share, the yearly trend for Global usage (international and US combined) shows Microsoft’s percentage decreasing from 3.56 % July 2008 to 3.17 % July of 2009.

read more »