How-to
Advice and guides to help execute marketing tactics and strategies.
Narrow down your results by adding or subtracting another category. Numbers in the columns below indicate how many stories will be shown as a result of adding / removing each category. [ Help ]
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To narrow down your selection of articles, click on the "AND" or "NOT" next to any of the categories below. Say you’re currently browsing entries in category "A", you can then drill down into entries that belong both to category A and another category, or belong to category A but not another category. For instance, you could list entries about demographics in the automotive sector, or entries about email marketing that are not about spam. Numbers in the columns below indicate how many entries the selected operation will narrow your query to. You can combine multiple intersection and exclusion criteria to further limit the number of entries.
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Industry Calls for Standardized Email Metrics
The Email Experience Council is pushing to standardize metrics it has developed after a two-year research endeavor that included surveying dozens of email broadcast vendors.
The bottom-line reason for its call for industry-accepted metrics, it says in its blog, is that it has become impossible to compare response and deliverability rates when terms are based on different calculations.
The [...]
Posted: Tuesday, February 2nd 2010
The Pros and Cons of Crowdsourcing a Marketing Campaign
Crowdsourcing is expected to be one of the top trends for marketers this year, according to the digital experts at Last Exit. The concept certainly resonates with cash strapped companies: tap an online community for ideas on how to advance a brand, or develop a product or, in many cases, both.
However as the concept gains traction thanks to success stories - Netflix developed [...]
Posted: Thursday, January 14th 2010
Email Marketing: New Devices Mean New Tactics
Increasingly email marketing messages are being read on screens other than the 19-24 inch-sized monitor of a typical desktop. Marketers now have to take into account the growing number of people who check email via smartphone - which have screens typically sized at 2-4 inches. (via Direct Marketing Association [pdf]).
With the advent of [...]
Posted: Wednesday, January 6th 2010
Industry Buzz & Snippets 12/21/09
Email Marketing:
StrongMail acquires The Email Advisor.
e-Dialog adds campaign management, social sharing, and landing page creation to email marketing application.
Nuts and Bolts:
Four things agencies should [...]
Posted: Monday, December 21st 2009
Industry Buzz & Snippets: 12/14/09
Account Moves:
TVGuide.com has selected PubMatic to optimize its ad revenue.
Strategies:
Package-goods players are ramping up online spend.
Email Marketing:
Embedded video in e-mail slows [...]
Posted: Monday, December 14th 2009
New SocNet Tools Seek Missing Revenue Link
CMOs are seeking better ways to link social media advertising and investments with related revenues. Some companies, most notably Procter & Gamble in the UK, have begun experimenting with "pay for engagement" strategies. In September, the company decided to pay publishers when a consumer downloads a game or otherwise indicates he or she has interacted with the site instead basing compensation merely on site visits or number of eyeballs. ( [...]
Posted: Thursday, December 10th 2009
SMBs Ramp Up, Tailor Email Strategies
Keeping email messages relevant, polling customers, leveraging social media and video functionality, and creating campaign landing pages are just a few of the ways small and medium-sized business (SMBs) can maximize their email marketing strategies.
Though email is a fundamental communication tool for firms of every size, recent data suggests that SMBs - in particular - are getting set to step up their use.
The Proof
More than one-third (36%) of the smallest businesse [...]
Posted: Tuesday, November 24th 2009
Industry Buzz & Snippets: 11/05/09
Online Media:
Murdoch: Plan to charge for online content delayed.
News Corp reports steep drop at digital unit.
Search:
Google Analytics for mobile apps rolls out. [...]
Posted: Thursday, November 5th 2009
Downloads:
It's time to get mobile
Are your marketing emails mobile-friendly? They should be - find out why.Search Gone Wild!
Find Out Why in Oneupweb's Eye Tracking Study on Google's Real-Time Results.Google Introduces Sidewiki For Annotating Webpages
Google announces the creation of a sidebar which allows anyone to comment on a webpage and share that info with others.
How Sidewiki works is that users read a page, then add their own notes or comments in the sidebar.
Those annotations are then available for anyone to see after them when they search for that particular [...]
Posted: Thursday, September 24th 2009
AT&T Webinar Offers Small Businesses Tips on Making Good Business Decisions.
On Thursday, August 13 at 1:30 p.m., AT&T will run another free one-hour webinar aimed to equip small business owners with the knowledge and resources needed to run a successful business. As part of a series of instructional webinars and training courses available on AT&T's small business website, the upcoming webinar, “10-10-10 For Business,†will feature noted business commentator, journalist and aut [...]
Posted: Friday, July 31st 2009
How-To: Track Rep and Keywords from a Unified Feed
In a media climate in which anyone can publish material about anything they like, anytime they wish, it is crucial for marketers to keep a close eye on what others are saying about their brands.
To simplify the process of scanning thousands of blogs, review sites, "tweets," forums and social networks, Search Engine Journal's Ann Smarty recommends Feed Killer, a simple [...]
Posted: Wednesday, July 15th 2009
How-To: Maximize Conversion with Email Design
Many online marketers send emails that are similar to their websites in terms of navigation and linking.
However, major differences in the way consumers view emails vs. websites indicate emails should be designed differently to achieve better results, according to a recent report from Smith-Harmon.
[...]
Posted: Wednesday, June 17th 2009
How To: Strengthen Your Pay-Per-Click Chops
Effective PPC management demands persistence, creativity, and discipline. The following steps should help strengthen your campaigns and help to determine and meet your ROI goals (via NVI Solutions).
1. Keywords
Regularly adding new keywords to your ad groups will help you capitalize on new or missed traffic. Use [...]
Posted: Wednesday, June 10th 2009
How To: Track Transactions To Initial Referrer
Marketers dishing dough for site traffic via AdWords may not know that many final transactions don't occur until later - when users return to the site organically. And Google Analytics, by default, attributes transactions to the last referrer.
This how-to by ROI Revolution offers a way to change your Google Analytics Trac [...]
Posted: Wednesday, June 3rd 2009
How To: Optimize For Conversion In Organic Search Results
SEO success - traditionally measured by target keyword rankings and traffic - should be measured by ROI instead, according to a presentation given at eMetrics San Jose 2009.
Below, some highlights (via Search Engine Land).
Rather than rankings and traffic, focus on conversions - that is, impact on revenue - as measures of success.
Calculate the ROI o [...]
Posted: Wednesday, May 20th 2009
How-To: Optimizing Image Use in Social Media
Images are among the most powerful tools in social media: they are easily consumed, and offer more stimulating information than text.
And since most people are busy and increasingly tightfisted with time, mastering the image -- which takes little effort to scan -- has a lot of appeal.
Search Engine Land provides advice on how to apply this medium into a successful media campa [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 25th 2009
How-to: A Rough Guide To Advertising On Facebook
A recent collaborative effort by SEOmoz CEO Randfish and David Klein offers advice on how best to leverage advertising on Facebook and build investment confidence in the space.
The following is a summary of their findings, posted on SEOmoz.com.
Facebook, sporting hundreds of millions of users, makes a compelling case for investing (chart [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 18th 2009
How-To: Using SEO to Manage Your Online Reputation
Is there a page you don't like about your company on the web? The best way to "take care" of undesirable material with a high organic ranking is through search engine optimization, writes SEOmoz.
Google has posted advice on how to remove unwanted pages, but its strategy is mostly to contact [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 11th 2009
How-To: Leveraging 2009's Top Digital Trends
As the US media landscape changes, successful companies must increasingly learn new rules of engagement -- particularly for fluid digital media.
What's more, they must pursue cost-effective and measurable ways to engage the public online, especially in the areas of search and social networking, according Edelman Digital.
To help organizations navigate the mutable world of digital communications, SVP/Director Steve Rubel of Insights for Edelm [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 4th 2009
How-To: Lessons Worth Learning from Twitter's Success
This How-To was syndicated from Rohit Bhargava's Influential Marketing Blog. Mr. Bhargava is the SVP at Ogilvy PR and author of Personality Not Included.
By any measure, the growth and popularity of Twitter has been phenomenal. To say that Twitter has [...]
Posted: Wednesday, February 25th 2009
How-To: Using Social Media Strategically (Pt II)
This how-to was syndicated from a four-part series on social media created by Leigh Householder. Read more about her at the conclusion of the article.
Last week we went over what social media is and explored two ways in which companies commonly use it -- letting users support each other, and [...]
Posted: Wednesday, November 26th 2008
How-To: Using Social Media Strategically (Pt I)
This how-to was syndicated from a four-part series on social media created by Leigh Householder. Read more about her at the conclusion of the article.
Years ago, when we were first talking about social media, it was Friendster and blogs and not much else. People asked, is it really worth investing in? Or is this just something for early adopters? The province of geeks?
But somehow -- while we w [...]
Posted: Wednesday, November 19th 2008
How-To: Getting More Out of Your Site Footer
Once upon a time the site footer -- that miniscule stream of text at the bottom of your homepage -- was a means to interlink your pages and send "link love" to other sites, observes Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal. Abuse of these tactics has driven Google to frown upon them and watch the footer more closely.
Below are tips on how smart webmasters stay on Google's good side -- and use footers to their ad [...]
Posted: Wednesday, October 15th 2008
How-To: Tips for Seeding Branded Web Videos
"Viral" video marketing is a low-cost, high-value complement to traditional online marketing for ad agencies and brands. It gives agencies and clients a chance to experiment with more adventurous creative that doesn't fit on TV or in a pre- and post-roll format.
It can also be thought of as the ROI that keeps on giving. Popular videos keep getting views, sometimes months after they're seeded online.
For many agencies and brands, questions of strategy and execution persist for what [...]
Posted: Wednesday, October 1st 2008
How-To: Managing a Blog Crisis Like a Pro
A blogger has just said something bad about your company and it's getting picked up and repeated by others rapidly online … what do you do?
One of the toughest things to understand about responding to a negative situation on blogs is the speed with which the conversations happen. Speed matters because in a matter of minutes, content can go viral and not responding early means that your voice is missing in the crucial early discourse -- and therefore not represented as the conversation is c [...]
Posted: Wednesday, September 10th 2008



