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It's probably no surprise that the process of acquiring new customers comes with one of the higher price tags of any of your marketing initiatives. The value of growing your customer base is obvious: the potential to sell more products or services. Moreover, increasing customer loyalty will reduce your marketing ... more
Because your customers will abandon online purchases if they encounter a tedious checkout process, it's critical to make your e-commerce functionality simple and efficient. In a post at the Conversation Marketing blog, Ian Lurie offers recommendations like these: Never make a customer log in before ... more
Last year, Google and MediaVest reported on a brainwave-tracking study about banner ads. According to the ad giants, banner ads rated a 6.3 in effectiveness—which was said to be a "very encouraging score." But combined with overlays, the effectiveness of banner ads increases to 6.6. This is because users find ... more
You can always find someone willing to sell you a solution for boosting your keyword effectiveness. But in a recent blog post, search marketer PotPieGirl offered her favorite free keyword research tools: Your brain. We were all consumers before we were marketers, she reminds us. So ask yourself, "If I ... more
If you've made some recent improvements—whether to your product, service or customer experience—now is the time to trumpet those changes! A new year, with consumers anxious for a new start, is a great time to tell your subscribers what they can expect on their next visit to your site. In a post at the ... more
On the weekend it launched, Apple sold one million iPhone 3Gs—and not just to early adopters and hipsters: stats from ChangeWave suggest iPhone's moving in on the smartphone (read: ENTERPRISE!) market, currently dominated by BlackBerry. Already, iPhone's a fertile ad medium. From MySpace to Stella McCartney to the Associated Press, ... more
"The news regarding investment in marketing is not good, with many firms cutting their marketing budgets left and right," reports Neil Anuskiewicz in an article at MarketingProfs. Before taking such drastic steps, you might want to consider his better option: "Instead of taking an axe to your marketing budget … ... more
MarketingProfs' own Roy Young recently asked Barry Judge (CMO of Best Buy) and Jessie Paul (CMO of Wipro) how they planned to stay up in a down economy. An article at MarketingProfs details their responses, including this helpful tip from Judge: "Seek out pockets of demand, and invest." Here's how: ... more
It happens with every downturn: some companies find ways to thrive. In a recent post at B2B Marketing Confidential, Andy Hasselwander offered some good advice on doing business when the economy goes south. His source? None other than Studs Terkel's book about the Great Depression, Hard Times. One chapter in ... more
"If you want to avoid being stuck with inventory or downtime during a recession," advises Seth Godin in a post at his eponymous blog, "you might profit from realizing that people [now] tell themselves a different story when they go to buy something." Two years ago, your customers might have ... more
"In the holiday email season of 2008, retailers turned up the gas on their email campaigns, hoping to salvage what was predicted to be a flat or down consumer spending season," says Loren McDonald in an article at MarketingProfs. If handled haphazardly, that's a risky strategy that increases the likelihood ... more
As the calendar page flips to a new year, now is the perfect time to re-evaluate and refine your search campaigns' lead gen capabilities. In a new MarketingProfs article, William Leake of Apogee Search offers the following tips for boosting your pay-per-click performance: Add new compelling lead bait. Many viable ... more
The secret to success in the new year may lie in divining the right keywords. As Christine Churchill says at Search Engine Land, the words you buy in pay-per-click, the terms you target for organic, the phrases you focus on in your images and videos, all depend on making good keyword choices ... more
Gems of 2008: You need an e-newsletter and you know it. But before rolling up your sleeves, please review the following six bromides from a recent how-to article phoned in by a reigning email-marketing magnate. After each, I'll explain how to do the exact opposite so that you can avoid polluting ... more
In a post at MarketingProfs' Daily Fix blog, Lewis Green ponders an age-old quandary facing marketers: How to prove value to a company's top leadership. "Let's begin by ending the argument regarding ROI," he says. "When we say we can't measure it, we sound like whiners. Our bosses don't want ... more
This focus on "The What" is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic rather than to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers ... more
In a post at GrokDotCom, Jeff Sexton puts the winter-holiday quandary in blunt terms: "[Y]ou won't keep profit margins healthy unless you actively take business away from someone—either from direct competitors, or from businesses outside your market/category. If the pumpkin pie gets smaller, you'll have to cut a fatter slice ... more
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