What’s Working in Marketing

Highly effective search engine optimization strategies that really improve natural search rankings is a specialized area of expertise.  Not everyone can do it, even though they say they can…there are many fly-by-night operations that promise the world and completely under deliver.  That’s why for this next podcast, we decided to sit down with our very [...]

As the days progress with this oil spill, one thing keeps circulating in the back of my mind:  This could have been BP’s shining moment.
But it’s not, and in fact, as every day passes, the brand perception of BP continues to swirl down the perception drain. Their CEO botched opportunities to build support and empathy.  [...]

Social media may be getting a lot of attention these days, but search engines are still top dog when it comes to researching information about a branded product. Note I said “branded.” Even if the person knows the name of the company making the product, they start their search on a search engine.
According to [...]

A wealth of new research is out to help us fine tune our e-marketing programs, from the web site (the cornerstone of any e-marketing program) to search marketing to e-mail marketing to social media. How does your implementation compare with these best practices?
• All important calls to action need to stay above the fold [...]

The economy has been harsh for much of the last year and a half. In the last quarter, we can describe it as sluggish, at best. But 2009 was a banner year for digital marketing. The Internet and e-marketing tools allow us to reach out and engage prospects and customers efficiently and at lower cost [...]

2009 was a turbulent year, to say the least. Manufacturing and high tech took a good hit. Not quite as dramatic as 2001, but painful nonetheless. For marketers, this turbulence means more attention is being paid to tighter and tighter budgets. The pressure is on to make each dollar, each click, each conversion targeted and [...]

We’re still recovering from the ISA Marketing & Sales Summit in Boston last week. It was the 4th annual event and, I think, the best ever. We had a great group of speakers from the automation industry, and engaged senior-level attendees from marketing and sales. It was 3 days of interesting conversations and idea exchange. [...]

The long, sanitized corporate video is now a big no-no. They’re boring and less than useful. And the over the top production quality is an immediate indicator to viewers that it’s probably a marketing piece done mostly for the company’s benefit.
The Internet and Youtube have dramatically changed expectations when it comes to videos. As [...]

Just wandering through MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Buyers 2008-2009 report. Interesting data about the top influences on the buy cycle, broken out by stage.
Not surprisingly, word of mouth, web sites, and search engines made it into the top for every stage. Note that word of mouth has been supplanted by manufacturer web sites in the [...]

Despite Google’s customer service blackholes discussed by Shari last post, it doesn’t seem to matter much on the search side.  In a new study that I read on BtoB Online, Google owns 72% of searches in the US, an 8% increase in February 09.  It’s sad how far behind all the other search engines are:
Yahoo [...]