Archive for the 'Lead Generation' Category

Search Engine Strategies Day 1 - What To Do?

Published
by
Tom Dressler
on August 7, 2008
in Branding, Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Paid Search, SEO, Search Marketing, Social Media, Website Analytics and Website Effectiveness
. 3 Comments

Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008We are getting ready to head out to San Jose for the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Conference, Aug. 18-22. For the first time we will be blogging LIVE providing great information on the latest in Search Engine Marketing. Please join us here at MarketerInsight to learn what’s going on at Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search.

Below is a overview of what’s going on. Please let me know on what topics are of interest to you. I have some ideas but would like confirmation. So here it goes…

Search Engine Strategies offers 5 different tracks on the first day of the conference, they are:

  1. World View
  2. Search 2.5
  3. Search Industry Track
  4. What’s Next?
  5. ClickZ Track

The first session I’m planning to attend falls under the What’s Next track, called More Customers, Fewer Costs - Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense.  This session “will address how marketers utilize the long tail of the Internet and search engine marketing to identify and reach consumers who are interested in what a company has to offer, but don’t fit the traditional definition of the demographic audience.”

The next session on my personal agenda is Pay Per Conversion, which is under the Search Industry Track.  This session will center around how to improve content to increase conversion rates.

The Keynote Panel follows with a conversation about How Search Fits Into Digital Advertising.

After lunch, I will be attending the Storyteller Marketing session.  This session will teach how to communicate by telling a story and how the storytelling method delivers a memorable message which will hopefully lead to positive results.

The final panel of the day is a Keynote Presentation by Lee Siegel, author of “Against the Machine.“ I’m looking forward to receiving a copy of the book and letting you know what it’s all about.

Finally, the day ends with a VIP dinner hosted by Omniture’s Chris Zaharias.  The dinner is sure to be an exciting end to an exciting day.  I plan on posting updates while I’m attending the different sessions to keep you current on what we’re learning.

Coming up Day 2 of 4.

Facebook Marketing Strategies, Food for Thought

Published
by
Tom Dressler
on July 30, 2008
in Branding, Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, Lead Generation, Online Marketing and Social Media
. 0 Comments

Facebook Marketing Strategies, Food for ThoughtWe as Interactive Marketing professionals, consumer market research professionals, and eBusiness & channel strategy professionals look for solutions that meet the needs of today’s online environment. When posed with this question, Facebook comes up over and over again. So what should we do about it?

As described by Forrester,

Facebook is a media, community, and application platform that offers an existing thriving ecosystem, scalable growth, and quick word-of-mouth marketing. The ability to understand users, their preferences, networks, and helps web applications to quickly segment and rapidly grow.

WebsiteBiz FacebookWow, what does that mean? First off, as a community the opportunity to study your prospects are huge. Are they engaged on Facebook and/or Social Media as creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, or inactives? I find this information to be surprising at times. If your market is using Facebook it provides a targeted advertising platform unlike any we have ever seen before, the ability to provide messages segmented by location, gender, and/or preference gives us the ability to accurately market effectively.

Ideas to be considered when evaluating Facebook Marketing

  • Demographics and trend data
  • Word of mouth and viral growth using Newsfeeds and widgets
  • Groups, sponsored groups, and other community features
  • Harness personal and network information
  • Contextual and targeted advertising opportunities
  • Monetizing your efforts
  • Case studies of success and failure
  • Understanding costs, and strategies to measure ROI

While this can seem intimidating at first, proven strategies do in fact deliver positive results. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.

Please provide your thoughts and impressions of Facebook Marketing.

2008 Online Marketing Summit

Published
by
Tom Dressler
on July 24, 2008
in Customer Acquisition, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Search Marketing and Social Media
. 0 Comments

2008 Online Marketing Summit

We are excited to be attending the 2008 Online Marketing Summit in Atlanta on August 12th, which is an educational event for marketing professionals.  This year, the topics include:

  • Website Strategy
  • Customer Life-Cycle and Loyalty Marketing
  • Search Engine Marketing
  • Demand Generation
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Strategies

A colleague and I are attending this event in hopes of honing our strategic thinking initiatives. The importance of knowledge-based decision making is critical in today’s economic environment. I think that the sessions offered in this summit will help us greatly with our goals and initiatives when we return.

I’m excited to get involved in the Complete Website Strategy session for a chance to understand user experience and how to improve it.  I am conflicted about whether to attend the Social Media Strategies session or the one one Behavioral Targeting and Technology. The first is geared towards learning how leading companies build online communities and leverage the latest Web 2.0 technologies to proactively engage customers.  The latter focuses on how experience-driven web initiatives can succeed with a combination of online marketing strategies and a technology infrastructure. Please leave comments to suggest which you think would be most beneficial.

This busy day will end with a much needed Happy Hour, with drinks on OMS!  Hopefully I’ll be able to remember the day’s lessons so I can reflect back after we return!

New Data Benchmarking Service Available from Google

Published
by
Tom Dressler
on April 10, 2008
in Lead Generation, Website Analytics and Website Effectiveness
. 0 Comments

Google recently announced the availability of a data benchmarking service that gives users the ability to compare their properties to other sites within an industry. Brett Crosby from the Google Analytics blog writes, “Of course, benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so we’re also introducing a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data.”

Wikipedia defines benchmarking as follows, “…a process used in management and particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own sector. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to adopt such best practice, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices.”

As we are continually faced with more competitive online marketing environments, this data benchmarking information becomes critical in your strategic planning. When future direction is determined by a hunch or a perception the outcome can be negative. The solution lies in the continual use of this information over the long haul. The advantages of using data benchmarking information enable organizations to see new methods, ideas and tools to improve their effectiveness. The savings over the long haul are significant in reference to both time and money.

So the question becomes…Am I using this information in my strategic planning initiatives?

  1. Identify your problem areas
  2. Identify other industries that have similar processes
  3. Data Collection (Now Available)
  4. Determine current performance gap
  5. Implement new and improved business practices

Remember: “Benchmarking isn’t just about data-culture and circumstances must be taken into account when you view the results.”

More Ad Dollars Reallocated to Online: Advertsiers Care More About What Works

Published
by
Eric Dudley
on February 24, 2006
in Branding, Lead Generation, Paid Search and Search Marketing
. 0 Comments

It is no surpise to me that more TV, Print, and Radio dollars are being reallocted to online marketing.

Why?

Advertisers care more about what works; online marketing is quantifiable, and reduces risk.

The Pay-per-click models continue to attract advertisers as the cost is only in the click, not the impression. And with the new forms of user driven content centric online marketing, a sustaining and profitable platform will evolve.

The facts speak for themselves; this new study from Outsell reinforces the trend…

More Ad Dollars Reallocated to Online: Advertsiers Care More About What Works