It does not matter what type of business you have or you work for, marketing is probably one of the most important departments.  Without marketing you would not be able to reach out to new customers or even keep your old ones interested in doing even more business with you in the future.  You see, you definitely need to implement marketing strategies across the board.  There is a lot more than one way to market too. Continue reading

In sixty seconds, a lot can happen.  You can drop your coffee, watch is explode all over the new carpet, run for a towel and perhaps have time to utter one four letter word in its entirely.  You can drop someone else’s coffee, widen your eyes, and take about eight rapid strides towards the nearest exit.  You could pop a snack sized bag of microwave popcorn.  All of that is well and good, but it’s nothing compared to what goes on over the Internet in 60 seconds.  Continue reading

Color is key when it comes to getting in touch with the emotions and desires of consumers, according to recent data collected from a survey of marketers who have had some success in the application of color in advertising and branding campaigns.  It’s nothing new.  Color has long been associated with relative psychological aspects that are known to influence perception and mood in people who are shopping.  It applies to everything from cars to designer handbags and tech devices.  Just look at the success of the fairly inexpensive line of handbags and accessories from Vera Bradley if you have any doubt at all.  These have become an obsession for millions of women in the Southern US, and the interest has now spread to college campuses all around the country.  Color plays an important role in how well these items sell. Continue reading

Social media marketing is the new frontier in advertising, and everyone seems to be climbing aboard from the smallest sole proprietorship to the largest corporate entity.  There’s a good reason for this.  Social media advertising has literally been a game changer, and its ability to influence consumers through personal recommendation — long regarded as the most effective form of building brand loyalty — seems limitless.  Yet, this is a power that can utterly fail in the hands of the inexperienced.  Learning how to maximize your reach through social media advertising takes hard work and hours of research, but the potential pay off makes it worth it. Continue reading

Infographics have taken the place of traditional presentations for several reasons:

1.  They are usually a single, colorfully illustrated image with a lot of data crammed into a small space that is compelling to read

2.  They don’t require any special software (Microsoft Powerpoint, Apple Keynote…) to view, since they are images and render perfectly well in a web browser, and

3.  Infographics tend to go viral more often than other online forms of media, with the exception of videos

Because infographics can pack a huge data punch into a small area — one that is actually quite large as far as images are concerned — they are uniquely useful in presenting persuasive info in a way people will be more likely to share with others, and remember fairly well themselves.  Infographics are where it’s at in online marketing, and if you are not yet leveraging their power in your campaigns, you will want to consider the benefits of designing infographics. Continue reading

Facebook did not always employ the use of ads in its structure; in fact, in the beginning, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was famously vocal about maintaining The Facebook as an ad-free zone with a fairly discriminating group of users in a limited and well controlled demographic.  Now, Facebook is literally covered in ads, even taking a social advertising stance that allows users to “like” certain ads while blocking some others and providing one of a number of pre-defined reasons for not wanting to view that particular ad.  This supplies Facebook with valuable marketing information about its users, generates some revenue for the company, and provides Facebook partners and advertisers with opportunities for targeted advertising that is truly suited to the users’ preferences.   Continue reading

It is true that publishing videos on the web hasnot been a big deal at all for years now,  and even so, the process of getting them highly ranked in search engines remains a mystery.  Video SEO seems to have been left behind the rest of the SEO industry,  but it is now starting to gain ground.  The fact that it has taken this long is puzzling when one considers the great successes of viral videos, and the fact that people would rather watch and listen to information than simply read it.  The presence of video hosting companies like YouTube have made the possibility of incorporating video into SEO a reality of our times.   So, how to get on with that? Continue reading

You’re getting ready to read some astounding information. On what is quite possibly the world’s bulkiest infographic.  You’ll thank me for it, too, especially if you are an online marketing newbie,  since it’s basically a 6-month action plan for using online resources to market your business.  If you read it all at once, you’ll probably get a headache, so take this slowly.   Continue reading

In the bid-based PPC advertising model, an advertiser signs a contract enabling them to compete against others in private auctions put on by a publisher or advertising network. Each advertiser tells the auction host how much at most he or she is willing to pay for a given ad spot (usually based on a keyword) using online tools.  Every time a competing advertiser visits the site, the automated process of bidding and auctioning is triggered again. Continue reading

I’ve been involved with quite a few comprehensive social media plans for companies ranging from specialty SEO boutiques to corporate furniture sales and the link that ties them all together is a moral code.  Some firms take social media marketing very seriously, putting an emphasis on becoming involved in the local social community so they can relate to customers.  Others are much less interactive and started their social media campaigns simply because everybody else was doing it.  No matter what opinion you have on how important social media is or what the true ROI for your investment of time is, you better not be putting any information out there that will come back to bite you. Continue reading