Thank you Jason

From: The New York Times

With our choices for entertainment and “content consumption” being ever wider, and the traditional venues for advertising becoming increasingly less effective, advertisers are looking for more places to place TARGETED ads.

Product Placement in Music Videos

Are you seeing more of this?  Are you tolerant of this?  Do you expect this?   Will you pay more for no ads?

From Fortune Magazine

Fortune GOOGLE 24/7

This blog looks like a great way to keep up with all things GOOGLE from a business and technology standpoint.  I will be checking it often.

What do you think?  Any other sources so dedicated besides GOOGLE itself?

From HubSpot

This blog posting lists 27 “Lessons” for B2B Marketers.  B2BMarketing Lessons   I really like the recognition of the role of keyword driven content in a number of the items listed.  The focus on integrated marketing tactics across traditional, social, and online tactics is also interesting and important for B2B marketers to understand.

What do you like? Are there any tactics or lessons you would add?

From Constant Contact

Better Email Subject Lines

I found this brief article with 6 direct points on how to write a better email campaign communication.  When creating your marketing tactics, you need to understand your customer or prospect to get their attention.  Once you have it, do not forget to have a well integrated, measureable  campaign with clear objectives and a great, valuble “call to action” included in the communication.

What do you think?

From Hub Spot

Email Marketing Optimization

One of the tactics in an integrated marketing tactical plan is email marketing linked to a well designed landing page.   The article linked here has some great tips to consider when using email in your tactical marketing  mix.

From the article  “Like any good analytical marketer, you’re always testing, measuring, and improving your marketing campaigns. So you reach your email marketing program – what’s first? The copy? The image? The call to action? Actually, none of that. The first step in email marketing optimization is: your landing page.”

From   Wordtracker

This article gives some great tactics for link building.  It is, of course a promotion for services and products, however there is some wonderful information in the article on how to run an effective link building campaign, 62 steps in fact.

62 steps to the definitive link building campaign

What do you think?

From Corporate Report Wisconsin

Thanks Mary for sharing this article with me.

Atwitter over Social media

We have been discussing the use of social media in the marketing mix.   We had been looking for specific examples of success with including Twitter in the marketing mix and we find two in this article.

From the article “The Tweets drove recipients to a Web site where they could receive more information,“We scheduled 14 surgeries because of that Twitter cast.”

Here is one example of what appears to be a pretty good ROI on a social media investment.

What examples do you have?

From Corporate Reports Wisconsin

Atwitter in the NEW North

The survey of companies in the “New North” supports that Social media is on the rise in Wisconsin among businesses.

From the article “Of those who do use social media, they tend to use it to connect with/communicate with others in the community or their industry (39 percent), to connect with/ communicate with clients (31 percent) and to gather information or research specific topics (27 percent). Just 22 percent indicated they use social media to find or connect with potential new clients.”

The article also states that of the companies using social media 79% feel the networking has benefited their firms.

Is your organization using social media?  What are you using? Is it helping? How?

From WordTracker

SES London Takeaways Article

Lots of great tips and ideas including some videos.

Here is one: ”#56) SEO is becoming more popular and will eventually overtake PPC and become the primary method of online marketing.”
Rand Fishkin

Who else has a favorite?

From WordTracker

The LongTail of Keyword Research –Single Keywords are for Losers

this article gives some excellent insight into Single Word Keywords.  Time is precious, so is money.  The evidence is in, keyword phrases in the “Long Tail” is the way to go.

Fromn the article “How do you make a profit from keywords that bring just one visit a month? Easy, you target lots of them at once – you target groups of keywords (keyword niches). Here’s how…

Let’s start simply with one page. Your SEO might focus on one or two keywords but you’re really targeting those keywords and their long tails. And the more relevant and related words on your page, the more of that tail you can get results for.”

READ the Bullet points in this article after the subsection called “How to make a profit in the Long Tail”

What did you think?  Do you agree?

From HBR

Brand Report Card

This article looks quite good; I will be reading it in detail.  The summary has some excellent information.  From the summary, “Tuck School professor Kevin Lane Keller lays out the ten characteristics that the strongest brands share. He starts with the relationship of the brand to the customer: The strongest brands excel at delivering the benefits customers truly desire, he says. They stay relevant to customers over time. Pricing truly reflects consumers’ perceptions of value. Keller then moves on to consider marketing strategy and implementation: Strong brands are properly positioned. The brand stays consistent. Sub-brands relate to one another in an orderly way within a portfolio of brands.”

What do you think?  Good read?

Do you think that BRAND is growing in importance as I do, or, is this not something that all managers need to pay attention to?

From Marketing Power (American Marketing Association)

Social Media Virtual Conference — February 25

Check it out.

From BtoB Magazine Online

Twitter Tools for Teams reports that  “Today, it would be rare to find a marketer that not only is managing a single Twitter feed—either for themselves or a companywide feed—but more than likely juggling a slew of them across different departments or, in the case of marketing agencies, across a cross- section of clients.”

It seems that TWITTER is becoming a TOOL that must be considered in everyone’s marketing mix.

The article reports that tools are emerging to manage multiple Twitter Feeds.  Do you have your first one yet?

Thank you Wendy

Home Depot 3D Interactive Gift Card VIDEO  Be patient it takes time

Home Depot gets into Augmented Reality with its Gift Card.

Think it will sell more gift cards?

From Fast Company ……

Google says that many e-commerce sites have not been optimized for search engines.  With each shopper spending only 8 seconds (stay or shop decision) Google feels that some help is needed.  Introducing GOOGLE Commerce Search.

GOOGLE Commerce Search Article and Video

What do you think?  Needed?  Boring?

Thank you Sarah for your suggestion of this webpage.

Social technologies have been discussed in a number of classes from a technology standpoint as well as marketing and management perspectives etc.  Forrester Research has published a tool that helps describe the potential audience in terms of (Social Technographics).  The page has an interactive tool where you add Age, Country, and Gender of the audience and it characterize the audience.  A presentation is available to describe the levels of social interaction (my words).    Presentation LINK

So, what do you think?  What are you?

Zipcar — Best New Idea in Business says FORTUNE Magazine

People saving money ($600 per month says the article), GREEN, convenient, and easy to use.  Could it get any better?

We discussed in class how this company has built a business model that could not really exist without the web and m-commerce (well it could, but it would not be as cool).  From the article “the company’s mission statement still pledges to “change the world through urban and environmental transformation” sounds all good.

Zipcar Website

What do you think?  Could this exist without the web?  Will this catch on?  Will rental car agencies take over?

Just for fun — Sam Adams CEO Jim Koch teaches us how to drink a beer.   From Fast Company “A Master Class in Drinking and Sales: Jim Koch takes us to Beer School”. The short article features a 3 minute video.

Related:  A Detailed look at the special beer glass

What do you think?  Is this just about selling beer?  What about the special glass?

Amazon buys Zappos Jeff Bezos video — 8 Minutes

Bit of the history of Amazon along with  “how to conduct business” Amazon style and a welcome message.  Customers. Focus on invention — Kindle.   He admires Zappos as customer savvy.

What do you think?

Thanks again Drox.

Foreverism –

Check out this briefing.  It describes “foreverism” and why you may want to think about what you put online.

What do you think?