Why Use Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing has been creating quite the buzz in the past few years. But should marketing directors, business owners, and advertising professionals be focusing their efforts online? The answer is yes, short and sweet. The real answer is your business can’t afford NOT to be in this space. For every business who is thinking about using Pay-Per-Click, Search Engine Optimization, or Social Media Marketing; the reality is that your competition is most likely already in this space. Not only is your competition already hiring 3^rd party agencies and hiring in-house specialists but you are missing out on the massive audience on Google, Yahoo, and Bing that are specifically looking for your service.

One of the main benefits of using PPC and SEO is that you are marketing to consumers or other businesses that are already looking for your services or have a genuine need for your product. Leveraging this space is critical as the internet becomes the main source of shopping, researching, education, and social activity.

Internet marketing services come full circle when qualified Analytical professionals are involved with helping your SEO, PPC, Email, Web Design, and Social Media campaigns. The beauty of Internet marketing is the ability to track ROI and increased traffic. Through traffic metrics, conversion tracking, and keyword position reports you can see if your agency is providing real results or real fluff.

I am not saying to rush into acquiring Web Marketing services, but I am saying that companies should be aware of the benefits and reach of these services and attain some insights on various competitors. After these issues are taken into consideration along with company goals and objectives, a recommendation on hiring in-house e-marketing specialists or Internet marketing agencies can be done with greater confidence!

New Version of Google Analytics: Improved Interface Means Improved Reporting

On March 17, 2011, Google announced that their new and improved version of Google Analytics has been released to beta. They have started rolling out the beta version of the new interface to a small group of users, and have also provided an option for people to sign up for the free beta.

Google Analytics Version 5 brings quite a few improvements and additions to the table, including:

• Streamlined, easier to use interface.
• Customizable widgets.
• Ability to create multiple totally customizable dashboards for each profile.
• New, customizable visualizations, including pie charts and term clouds.

The smoother, more efficient design and added functionality should allow for improved reporting and better insights into the performance of your website. Internet trends are changing day-to-day. Luckily, the tools to monitor these changes are evolving at the same pace.

Your Trademark = My Keyword

Recently, a California Appeals Court ruled that it is legal (as least for now) to use competitors’ trademarks as keywords. Although it is legal, that does not mean you should run out add your competitors’ names, or other trademark terms, to your keyword list. Google Adwords and others give keywords a quality score based on how relevant the term is to your products/services and the landing page of your ads. Assuming that your site is tightly optimized for your specific products/services, then adding competitors’ trademark as a keyword will generate low quality score. This low quality score will result in your ads not being shown, average Cost-Per-Click increasing, and/or ad rank dropping. Although adding competitors’ trademark terms to your keyword list will get more impressions for your ads, specifically when someone is searching for a competitor, is it worth it? This answer may vary depending on the industry, the competitor, and even the location. Before, you start having your ads appear for your competitor’s trademarks, make sure that it is worth the time and effort. My point being, trademark or not, do research and test keywords and make sure that it is worth the time and effort to implement them it into your keyword list, and continue to monitor and measure performance to ensure results.

Marketing. Measuring. Testing. Results!

DaBrian Marketing Group LLC.

Increase Marketing Effectiveness With Web Analytics

When it comes to marketing your product or service, it is best practice to determine who your target audience is, both demographically and geographically. You figure out who you want to market your product or service to, and then where to market it.

When it comes to traditional marketing, it can sometimes be difficult to determine how effective your marketing campaign is, or how many people view it. With internet marketing, however, it is possible to not only determine who is viewing your website, but where they are from, and how much they interacted with your website. With web analytics, you can find all of this information, as well as:

· How much those visitors interacted with your website.

· What traffic sources they came from.

· Where they went after landing on your page.

· Success of e-commerce transactions.

· Determine whether those visitors are generating ROI on your site.

Internet marketing does not stop the moment you launch your shiny new website. It is an ongoing and continuous process, which benefits greatly from being monitored. Implementing web analytics tracking and reporting can provide the key insight to get your results.

Social Media: Measuring Gets Result.

We are at the point where almost everyone is doing something social. The question is, are their social media marketing efforts effective. So for those who are wondering how to find out if your social media is actually helping you here are a few items to keep an eye on.

1. Social media leads. Track web traffic breakdowns from all social media sources, and chart the top few sources over time. If members of your social media networks are sending referrals, consider measuring this data as well.
2. Membership increase and active network size. This is the portion of your company’s social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) that actively engages with your social media content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Pages, etc.). Are your collective members, followers, fans network growing, and is there interaction with your content?
3. Activity ratio. How active is your company’s collective social network? Compare the ratio of active members versus total members, and chart this over time. There’ll always be some social network members who are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, you should also measure the resulting data. Activity can be measured in a variety of ways, including usage of social applications.
4. Conversions. You want social network members to convert: into subscriptions, sales (direct or through affiliates), Facebook application use, or whatever other offerings you have in your overall sales funnel and that can somehow be directly or indirectly monetized. (E.g., subscription to a weekly e-newsletter can be monetized by giving other companies access to your list in the form of advertising.) Measure all types of conversions and chart them over time

So if you’re doing social media on your own or if an agency is doing it for you make sure that while they’re Marketing, they are Measuring and Testing for optimum Results.