Search Our Marketing Resources

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

A good landing page should tell a story. But filling the page with fluff isn't going to sell your product or service. There is a method to the madness behind the creation of a great splash or jump page. And it's a pretty systematic, organized, and detailed method, at that.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Email marketing is likely your most effective tool for improving customer relationships, building brand awareness, and generating sales. It is also the most abused one. Practitioners of knee-jerk planning rely on emails to bolster a sagging month or fill in the holes left when other marketing techniques miss their mark. Even though it works (which is why it is abused), there is a price to be paid. Customers become disenchanted when they receive numerous emails promoting one sale after another or one product over and over. Everyone's threshold is different. Some may opt out after a week, others a month, and still others a year or more. (Note: there tends to be a jump in opt outs at the start of the New Year. People want to start fresh, so they do some housekeeping. If you saw a jump in opt outs in January, then you desperately need to review your email strategy.) The best way to avoid a mass exodus from your subscriber list is to have an email strategy that works with the rest of your marketing.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

On company Web sites everywhere, community sections are popping up—both a cause and an effect of a climate in which more and more marketing directors and brand managers are being asked by their companies, "Why don't we do something 2.0?" Although an online community can bring innumerable benefits to a brand, launching one is a project that should be considered carefully, to ensure that your efforts will have the desired results.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Do video ads work to turn viewers into buyers and passionate brand advocates? For starters, measurement of the effectiveness of video ads gets bogged down by syndication, viral distribution, viewing via social networks, and many other factors. So how can you find out if your video ad "worked"—an even more important question in tough economic times when marketing budgets are tight?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

When done properly, win/loss analysis provides clarity and insights into customers' perceptions of your product, experiences throughout the sales cycle, and expectations created by your company messaging.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Want to improve your online conversion rates? Reconsider your registration page. Whether your conversion process includes registering for a demo, signing up for an e-newsletter, or making a purchase, there are particular rules you should follow.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Decision-makers who are worried over the stability of their company's finances should remember one simple truth: The source of your business's cash flow is your customer base. What all of this boils down to is the need to make smart, informed investment and cost-cutting decisions that have both a short-term and a long term perspective.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Marketing events with paid search campaigns can be a great source for additional traffic and, with these tips, can also be an efficient promotion channel.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Some businesses opting for digital instead of print do it because they've gone green. Others want to harness the internet's speed, reach, and other capabilities. The rest like the convenience of online or have some other strategic purpose that points them that way. But it might pay to slow down and make sure that you've picked the better route... or, combination of tools. So, here's a list of filters to consider.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Earlier this month, the author offered five ideas for getting ahead in an economy that's got us down. As promised, here are five more inexpensive (yet powerful!) ideas that can help you and your business come out on top.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Why do brand leaders wait until their brands are at the breaking point, at risk of joining the likes of Radio Shack and 7Up? Instead, renovate your brands while it is strong and growing. Spot changing market dynamics and address them as opportunities... before they have time to develop into threats.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Consumer Electronics Association announced it expects mobile phone unit sales in 2009 to grow some 31 percent in North America, with global unit sales reaching approximately 1.2 billion. The announcement validates the mobile market as a wellspring of untapped potential, but it also poses the challenge of how to effectively engage audiences increasingly selective about how, when, and where they buy.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Many companies already recognize the value of translations for reaching that vast worldwide audience. They've been having product information, press releases, and marketing and advertising copy converted into the languages of their current and potential customers for years. But smart companies realize that to strike a chord with more buyers, they'll have to "localize" their messages so that audiences will feel that everything about an electronic or printed communication has been produced by someone just like them. Not only is the text in their language (with proper idioms and slang), but the graphics, navigation buttons and user interface are familiar. In short, nothing hinders the flow of information—or elicits a chuckle.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Not all customers are alike, and what appeals to one may not interest another. Therefore, it is important that you connect the message you are sending to your customers' differing interests. Email messages that are segmented, targeted, and relevant to the recipient are much more likely to be opened and acted upon.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

How do companies reap solid advertising ROI from email newsletters? They incorporate four key marketing tactics into their campaigns: relevancy, list quality, design, and tactical landing pages. And then they apply them, like this....

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

If you are on Twitter to represent your company, your boss will probably soon ask you to prove the value that your tweets have to your business, if he or she hasn't already asked. So how do you know whether your followers are listening or whether you're just tweeting in the wind? How do you know whether tweets about topic X have more or less value than tweets about topic Y?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Where do marketers turn once all the fat has long since been trimmed and all that's left is muscle and bone? And how do we break the downward spiral of cut, cut, and cut some more? Here are some ideas on what to cut... and (just as critically) what not to cut.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

For most CEOs, good marketing is a bit like pornography—it's hard to define precisely, but they know it when they see it. Still, it's clear that one of the problems is that most CEOs cannot put their finger on what Marketing isn't getting done—but they can envision that nothing much would likely change if the whole marketing team were to disappear. So, what's a CMO to do?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Hyundai took the bull by the horns in this bear market and scored big. It used behavioral segmentation to identify what was keeping prospects from buying and then developed a strategy that made it easier for customers to part with their hard-earned dollars. What can you learn from its example? In every market change, even a downturn, there is an opportunity to use the power of behavioral segmentation to make your product or service stand out.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

One of the most dangerous trends emerging is that B2B marketers, and their extended search-marketing resources, are regularly making bad decisions based on "solid analytics data." All too often, marketers are deciding to spend either more or less money based solely on the conversion rate of how a certain search phrase, ad creative, or banner ad performs: in other words, the percentage of people who visited the site and requested a whitepaper, a demo, etc. While conversion rate, in the context of an analytics report, is one way to measure the effectiveness a search phrase, it can be extremely misleading.