Internet Marketing, Social Media, Business | StuckInTheFunnel

Sears continues to ride the Social Media Bandwagon

According to RetailerDaily.com, big time retailer Sears is continuing to make good on their home improvement site: Manage My Home. The site targets consumers working on home improvement projects and provides a portal with products, information and other features sucn as:

• Expert advice and assistance from Sears
• Scheduling delivery of products and home improvement services from Sears reps.
• Helpful blogs written by volunteer homeowners called “Neighborhood Helpers”.
• Advice and tips pushed via Twitter.
• Parts list creation
• Project planners
• Cost estimators

Why is this a good strategy?

Creating a community where you can get free advice, purchase products your project requires and manage your project makes sears a one stop shop for your next home project – if you prefer to use the web for research and planning. This will surely increase the loyalty of Sears’ current customer base and will attract other curious home owners as well.

Twitter Brings Dell 3 Million in Sales

While attending a Twitter for Brands event hosted by New Media Age in London Last Friday, Dell employees claimed that their Twitter account has driven $3 million in sales since it was first created in 2007.

I am curious as to how Dell tracked the correlation of their Twitter activity to their additional sales.

How did they use Twitter to generate these sales? Did they Tweet about specials, direct message followers or gain new customers by finding them on Twitter?

These claims are evidence that when used effectively, Twitter can be a viable marketing tool. However, a recent poll on Linked In/Harris poll revealed that only 8% of marketing professionals and consumers think Twitter is a usefull promotional tool. Are they right or do they just not know how to leverage the SMS dispatch service effectively?

I think as more companies like Dell show off the value of Twitter, more marketers will educate themselves and adapt their marketing plans accordingly.

Oprah Puts the Squeeze on Internet Marketers

Using celebrities to help sell products and increase click through ratings of online banner ads is not a new practice. It doesn’t just impact celebrities, either. During the last presedential election, Internet Marketers plastered President Obama’s face and logo on all types of online creative.

Oprah, a strong force and idol for empowered women has decided that this needs to change. She has teamed up with Illinois State Attorney General’s Office to form a lawsuit against 50 Internet Marketers who have used her logo and other icons without permission.

I first found out news of this from Mashable, who learned about it from Azoogle, a large online affiliate network. Apparently they notified their members of the pending lawsuits:

“The Illinois State AG has filed actions against three parties for deceptive advertising practices in the marketing of acai berry products and other dietary supplements. Please keep in mind that the regulators are choosing to directly pursue affiliate marketers for their marketing practices. The full text of the press release can be found here.

Dr. Oz and Oprah Winfrey have also filed a lawsuit in New York for copyright and trademark infringement against approximately 50 companies, including advertisers, suppliers, ad networks, and affiliates. To put it bluntly, they are very unhappy of their celebrity status being used to market dietary supplements and cosmetics, without their permission. They have specifically listed hundreds of affiliate sites they want discontinued immediately, because the URLs use their name or the sites claim endorsements from Oprah/Dr. Oz. The full story can be found here.”

Honestly, I am trying to get to the bottom of Oprah’s motives here. Many celebrities like the additional promotion they get from Internet Marketers using these tactics, given the product is decent. Does Oprah have a problem with products that are using her image like the Acai diet or is she trying to start a movement that will ban Internet Marketers from using celebrities to enhance their promotions in general?

Does Increasing Display Ad CPM Indicate an Economic Recovery?

Although the economic downtownturn did cause some cutbacks on Internet Marketing ad spend, a new report by Adify revealed that CPM for various display advertising verticals increased overall in 2009.

Adify’s Vertical Guage (AVG) measures quarter to quarter online CPM data for 13 Internet Marketing vertical categories on their platform. The platform includes 200 ad networks and 12,000 sites and blogs.

Analyzing internet marketing verticals is not just handy for seeing where your CPM costs may rise, but they also reflect the current economic status of many business sectors.

Some detailed findings include:

Real Estate CPMs grew 100% between Q4 2008 and Q2 2009 and are aligned
to housing starts. Across all verticals tracked by Adify, real estate($6.49 in Q2 2009)
has shown the most noteworthy CPM growth, up 100% over
Q4 2008.

Sports and entertainment CPMs are up nearly 20%. The sports vertical
($7.09) dipped slightly in Q1 2009, but is up 18 percent in Q2, thanks to
college hoops, pro-basketball championships, and the baseball season.
Entertainment has grown steadily (up 19%) since October 2008, in keeping
with the trend that the entertainment industry tends to fare well during
recessions.

News recovers. In Q2, news-oriented content commanded CPMs with a
median value over $10; that represents 20% growth over Q4 2008, but a
decrease since Q1 2009’s Presidential inauguration and the temporary news
audience growth that went with it.

Travel, technology, automotive, and health held onto the highest
absolute CPMs, despite fluctuations. These traditional CPM leaders are
continuing to command the highest rates among premium vertical ad networks.
Technology ($16.01) experienced a significant decrease in Q1 and has since
begun to rebound. Both automotive ($15.33) and travel ($19.89) have grown
over Q4 2008 with some contraction since Q1 2009.

Moms/parents and beauty/fashion verticals are down slightly. This fits
expectations because these verticals have cyclical advertising seasons. Q4
2008 was strong due to committed campaigns and traditional holiday
advertising. Adify expects these verticals to experience CPM growth in late
Q3 2009 and throughout Q4 2009

Hopefully these verticals will continue to improve as we move into 2010.

Microsoft Bing Gains Search Market Share

According to ComScore, Microsoft Bing continues to make small gains on rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc in the U.S:

Microsoft, which launched Bing in early June, racked up 8.9 percent of U.S. Internet searches in July, up 0.5 percentage points from June.

Google, the search market leader and Yahoo both lost .3% of search market share dropping to 67.7% and 19.3% respectively.

Last Month Yahoo and Microsoft inked a deal that would allow Bing’s search technology to power search functions for both of the sites’ and power their Internet Advertising.

Needless to say, Bing has been accepted much wider than it’s Live search engine.

Friend Feed CEO Paul Buchheit Discusses Facebook Acquisition

Tech Crunchs’ Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble were lucky enough to sit down with Paul Buchheit – Friend Feeds Co Founder.

Here is the video:

Read the full transcript here:

Fox News Calls Internet Marketing a Scam

I was writing a blog on landing page optimization and came across this page in my Tweet Deck stream:

Full article from Fox >>

 Needless to say, I stopped writing my other article.

 Growing up in the Y generation has given me a different perspective on news. In all honesty, I watch little to no news on television, primarily because I feel that I cannot trust the integrity of the information.

The advent of social media (and the internet) has changed the way people get their information. We no longer have to shift our focus to the television in the morning or evening to get our fill of daily happenings. As the web spawns more user generated content, I anticipate more attention being spent on various non-mainstream news channels.

Fox News’ crack on Search Engine Marketers is downright appalling and juvenile, especially considering they have their own SEO team. Their quote from the article says it all:

 ”Ever wonder why “nonsense” Web sites sometimes turn up in your search results on Google or Yahoo? That’s because search engine optimizing scammers work full-time to create thousands of other Web sites that link to the spam site. For example, the creator of spamlaw.com is hoping to dupe would-be visitors to spamlaws.com, a legitimate site that bills itself as an online security resource.”

More »

Twitter Tips for Businesses

A lot of companies are beginning to embrace the SMS dispatch service Twitter. Before jumping into the new phenomenon, it is wise to educate yourself on some best practices first.

Here are a few of my humble recommendations for using Twitter for a business account:

Don’t Automate.

Using software such as Hummingbird  may help you rack up followers quickly, but you run the risk of coming across as a spammer. Twitter has recently buckled down on removing accounts with suspicious activity as well.

Don’t just promote, engage.

Many businesses make the mistake of using Twitter to push out product offerings and nothing else. While this is expected in traditional media like television or radio, it makes your company seem like a promotion machine that is not concerned with their customers. Use Twitter to spark conversations with customers and listen to their problems.

Put some time into your company profile.

Setting up a company profile with a bio on Twitter does not take more than 5 minutes. If possible, create a custom background that reflects your company’s branding and displays your contact information. You should also display a list of other users on Twitter that work for your company.

Watch those @replies.

Whether you are using free software like Tweet Deck or have a reputation management firm watching your online identity, make sure you respond to all mentions of your brand. This will make your customers feel more connected and appreciated - which will ultimately improve your brand loyalty.

As Twitter evolves, it will be another aspect of your brand maintenance. Make sure you embrace it smartly from the beginning.

Save a Headache: Design With SEO in Mind

I have been called into many situations where a company wants to achieve that coveted first page Google ranking only to find that their website is poorly designed or outdated. On  top of that, I am told that they have no interest in changing their web presence except for their Meta tags. Ok, no problem, right? No. In fact, search engines do not place nearly as much emphasis on Meta tags as they used to.

If you find a web design firm that has appealing creative work, let them know that you would like your site built with SEO in mind, even if you do not plan on implementing an organic SEO campaign after its initial launch. It will save you money down the road when your budget permits an ongoing organic SEO campaign.

A few tips when building your new web presence:

Design is Important, but its Not Everything

A good design will convey your company as established and credible, but does that design convert visitors to qualified leads? A website is like any investment and should contribute to your bottom line. The days are over when a website was simply an informative credibility statement. Ensure that your messages provide visitors with takeaways that are conducive to producing leads. This can be in the form of an information packet download, presentation or registration for a webinar.

Content is King

Nowadays many sites are built on large scale CMS platforms like Joomla or Drupal. Smaller scale sites can be deployed with a common CMS like Wordpress. At the minimum, I would request that your website be built on the Wordpress platform. Search engines like continuous content updates (relevant content) and those platforms will provide update capabilities for you or your staff.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

If you find a killer design firm without an SEO specialty, hire an SEO consultant and a copywriter. The SEO consultant can perform crucial tasks such as keyword research, competitive analysis and architecture design. The copywriter can write keyword rich/compelling content based on input from the SEO consultant. The web design firm can then tie all of the elements together.

The Bottom Line

Ask the right questions of your web design firm up front and you will save yourself a great deal of headache down the road. Don’t be afraid to let the web design firm now that you may have additional consultants providing input on your site architecture. They should embrace it, especially if they are trying to provide you with the best solution to your problem.

Cleaner Retweets on Twitter Mean Less Recognition

A post by Twitter’s blog revealed Twitter’s new method for displaying Retweets on their user interface. The new method displays a link below the Tweet indicating the username of the person who Retweeted the Tweet. (say that 10 times fast). This will obviously cleanup Twitter’s UI, but comes with the cost of receiving less Recongition for posts that are retweeted.

Here is a screenshot:

 It will be interesting to see how the community responds to this, especially since the Twitter community established the RT standard initially. What do you think?