2009 was, by most accounts, a year of severe business challenges and adjustments. Through that however have come significant shifts in business and consumer preferences, practices and technology that will continue to impact marketing trends in 2010. (more…)

When running a banner/display advertising campaign there are often many options as to how the advertiser will pay the publisher or publisher network.  The general options are cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) or cost-per-action (CPA).  In the CPA pricing model the advertiser only pays the publisher if the user completes a pre-determined action.  The action will usually be the purchase of product or the submission of contact information in lead generation campaigns.  If you are running a large banner advertising campaign across two or more publisher networks that receives hundreds of thousands of impressions per day using the CPA model, it is extremely important that you use Ad serving technology. (more…)

Often, geo-targeting your paid search campaign is vital to achieving success and meeting your ROI objectives. It allows you to target search engine users by location, ensuring you don’t pay for clicks from users who would not want or cannot get to your offering. As many of you already know, being able to target and pre-qualify your audience so precisely is one of the core benefits of Internet marketing. There are two main tactics to implement a paid search geo-targeting strategy and this blog will tell you how to do just that. (more…)

I would consider that question analogous to “Why is a ruler so important to a carpenter?” You might be able to eyeball four chair legs to within a centimeter without measuring them, and the chair will function. It may even temporarily hold you while it wobbles a little. However, after repeated use one of the legs is sure to come loose (Don’t you wish you took the extra time to measure what you were doing in the first place?). (more…)

It is no secret that e-mail marketing is an excellent means of directly reaching your target audience. If e-mails are created, segmented and deployed properly, your company can obtain conversions, while generating a high ROI. What many don’t know is how to establish an e-mail marketing strategy that will ensure your efforts are successful. By consistently deploying branded e-mail campaigns to your target audience—be it your internal list of contacts, a third party list or both—you have the opportunity to enhance your customer and/or partner relationships, build your brand and increase leads and revenue. (more…)

Google custom search is a Google application that allows you to create a customized search engine for your own website.  In celebration of the feature’s one year anniversary, Google has added several new features to its Custom Search application—Custom Search Themes, Structured Custom Search and Custom Search Wikipedia skin—creating new SEO opportunities for Web masters. (more…)

There has been some recent pushback in the blogosphere regarding Google’s universal search, which returns results to queries beyond simple Web sites – including videos, images, maps and local business listings. What’s all the buzz about? Google real estate is becoming increasingly more crowded as the search giant continues to expand monetization opportunities and it is causing some marketers frustration. (more…)

The beauty of Internet marketing is how measurable the ROI is.  That being said, it’s surprising how many Internet marketing campaigns are run without clearly defined goals and a means of measuring performance to reach those objectives in place.  Simply driving traffic to a site’s homepage and utilizing the increase in website visits is not an effective measure of an Internet marketing campaign.  One must define conversion goals (e.g., form submission, newsletter sign-up, or product purchase) and measure the success of the campaign based on the volume of visitors that complete the pre-defined actions. (more…)

After recent back-to-back announcements, Google disclosed plans to incorporate Twitter into their search results and Microsoft unveiled intentions of featuring both Twitter and Facebook in Bing results. Google will be integrating Tweets into their search results while Bing, at least currently, is using a subpage for searching tweets. This will enable Web browsers to view tweets relevant to their queries in the search engines, creating a more robust search experience. (more…)

In past “Running an Agency” blog posts I have discussed topics and formulas that heavily impact the success of a business. Two additional statistics companies should constantly monitor are revenue per billable hour and percent of billable to non-billable hours. Revenue per billable hour is crucial to maintaining the sanity of your staff, your profit margin and the quality of work—therefore crucial to maintaining the health of your organization. (more…)