1) Provide unique content: Many people see a video that goes viral and then turn around and produce something similar. While this may work on occasion, videos with unique content have a better chance of going viral.

2) Producing a well made product: Every once in a while a video that obviously took little effort or planning gets big. However, by taking the time to make sure a product is well made is the better way to go more often than not.

3) Make it relevant: Many very well made videos have been put out that never got noticed. The reason for this is that they lacked relevant SEO friendly content to a large number of people. When making an attempt to go viral, try to keep the product relevant to as many people as possible.

4) Funny is okay with everyone: While it is difficult to do right, humor will definitely help cause a video to go viral.

5) Entertain, don’t sell: While the reason for a video may be to spread the message about a particular product or service, try to keep the messages entertaining.

6) Keep it short: Internet users tend to prefer media that is short and simple. While a longer video works when people want in depth information, almost all viral videos are under five minutes in length.

7) Promote, promote, promote: By using social media sites such as FaceBook and Twitter a videos chances of going viral increases. Also, if possible, try and get a couple of widely read SEO clogs to post the video.

Make the message obvious: Most people attempt to create a viral video in order to spread a message. Make sure that message is easy to see. Whether trying to drive traffic to a website or raising awareness about a political issue, making sure people understand the message is vital.

While there is never any guarantee that a video will successfully go viral, by following the above tips, the chances are increased.

Comments

It’s not that demographics will never be important in search. As personalized search takes hold (and especially as mobile search grows in importance), marketers are likely to know much more about searchers than they do today. So, you might, in fact, know gender, age, industry, and other demographics (and firmographics).

But that’s not he place to start. Instead of trying to map your existing market segments onto search, you need to give in to the idea that the first level of segmentation in search marketing is the keywords that yur customers type into the search engine. Those keywords give you the insight you need to craft the message, whether it is for a newbie trying to solve a problem or for a customer that has purchased many times in the past. It’s the difference between “Unix server” and “IBM Blade Server model 3426-A45.” Theres a huge difference in the proper message between those two segments, just as in offline marketing, you have different message for different segments.

That’s the key to success. Put your messaging ability to work. Instead of trying to think about what message you want to send, and blanketing it over as many people as possible, you must do your keyword research to find out what people are looking for. Then, like a good salesman, you tailor your pitch to hit the points they need.

So, market segmentation isn’t dead when it comes to search marketing. You just need to take what you know about segmentation and apply in in a new way. If you do, your skills in messaging will suddenly start to make you successful in search marketing, too.

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In a world overrun with marketing messages, the next wave of marketing technology will cut through the clutter, building automated marketing campaigns that address customers’ wants and needs individually. The result: greater customer intimacy, improved loyalty, and higher revenues.

Moving quickly will gain real competitive advantage for organizations that start planning for the future, according to a new report by Booz & Company.

Next generation marketing technology should be developed with three primary goals:

The first is to instantly collect data from a variety of channels and then distribute relevant information back to those channels.

The second is the capacity to compile and generate a coherent view of every customer taking into account his/her histories and preferences.

The third is the creation of business rules that will govern every customer interaction.

“To achieve a next-generation marketing strategy, CIOs must work closely with marketers to lay out the overall strategy, and then translate it into processes and rules that will occur at every point of contact,” stated Ramez Shehadi, a partner at Booz & Company.

In marketing, knowledge is power

Next generation marketing campaigns can go beyond traditional marketing’s rough efforts at customer segmentation by using IT to gather more refined perspectives on customers and their behavior. Messages and offers can be generated through dynamic, rules-based software engines, and tailored to a “segment of one”— making the right offer to the right consumer at the right time.

Designing a next generation architecture

Next-generation direct marketing demands a front-to-back rethink of the overall IT architecture, with the ultimate goal of better understanding the customer. Within the new architecture, all channels, including customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems must connect to a central integrated engine, which mediates between channels and the customer data and back-end processing. The central campaign engine should also contain the business rules that govern every interaction with every customer.

“Key to the success of the architecture is the creation of a flexible model of the metadata that controls customer information,” Shehadi said. This enables marketers to tap into any number of customer data warehouses, without the time and effort required to inte­grate all that information into a single database. It also allows every channel to tap into the same collection of customer information. A critical innovation lies in removing the typical siloed, channel-specific archi­tecture on which most current direct marketing and campaigning technol­ogy depends.

The new architecture provides unprecedented flexibility as campaigns can be designed and executed without needing to be tied to individual chan­nels. The business rules required by each channel are integrated by the system, allowing marketers to design cross-channel campaigns that can easily shift direction between channels.

The system is also designed to support all critical processes and workflows required by each campaign; from planning and the build­ing of the rules engines to campaign execution and the orchestration of multiple campaigns. “Business users benefit further through increased usability with “dashboards” to aid in interacting with customers, manag­ing campaign workflows, monitoring a campaign’s progress, and assessing its performance,” noted Chahine.

The path to the next generation

Next-generation campaign success depends on the design of the new system and how it is incorporated into an organization. Each step requires the willingness to rethink the overall marketing strategy, from the tactical processes involved in each campaign, and the IT tools required. The skills required to design and execute analytic campaigns must be developed and, the technologies required to enable those cam­paigns must be built. Most important, from begin­ning to end, the CIO and the CMO must work together as partners to design, build, and test the necessary infrastructure, and to expand it, step by step, throughout the organization.

Comments

While we have a good looking group this week, the Search Agents was the winner for the best looking Search Marketing blog. Not only does it offer a clever theme, but content and usability to boot. There are more contributors listed than most SEM agencies have in their employ. Content is balanced between SEO and SEM followed by everybody’s friend, Social Media. The Search Agents is the official corporate blog of The Search Agency, an integrated online marketing firm headquartered in Santa Monica, CA.

Let’s get to it with the last BIGLIST class of November 2009:

• Actionable Insights – Covario isn’t just a leading San Diego company in the interactive marketing analytics space, it’s full of Covarians. What do those Covarians do when they’re not using their clever software to automate and analyze SEO and PPC? Why, they’re writing about industry news and updates, indepth analyses, strategic and tactical advice on a blog good enough to make it on the BIGLIST.

• SEO Contrarian – What are the chances of another SEO having been a Combat Engineer in the Army? Except my stint was long, long ago. Ari Ozick has his opinions and even a Manifesto, which makes for interesting blogging, especially when mixed with skill and first hand experience. Don’t let the SEO Scum category scare you, just read.

• Shark SEO – Dave Peiris works for iCrossing in London and besides playing with search engines all the live long day, he likes coffee, jaffa cakes, napping and designing clever linkbait. The good kind.  The blog has a very cool design but reading what’s on a good SEO’s mind is even better. And no sharks to be seen.

• Best SEO Blog - With an awfully literal name, (oh wait, we do that too) this blog by Michael Martinez, Nicholas Ramirez and Gene Tapang from Visible Technologies puts out “the latest in search engine marketing tactics, the tried and true techniques.”  With posts back to 2007 there’s plenty of SEO insight to gain, which is a good thing in a world currently dominated by social media content.

• SimpleFuzz – Jeremy Martin admits to his vices: webaholicism. Which of course, is a good thing when you blog, since that openness means the opportunity to exchange ideas. Say, on the topics of seo, social media, ppc, blogging or web design. This blog is a great resource for small businesses in Utah, where it’s written and beyond.

• Holistic Search Marketing – Like TopRank’s BIGLIST, Peter Young (Head of SEO at Mediavest in Manchester) has his own list called TSMR (Top Search Marketing Resources) that you may want to get on. I can’t tell you how here, you’ll just have to visit his blog and find out. While you’re there, check out all the fine SEO and Google focused blog posts too.

Made the BIGLIST did you? Well then don’t forget to wear this impressive badge.

Comments

How does it go?

Do you dread it, or is it fun and easy?

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably had one of two experiences: You either ended up sitting in the front of a blank computer wondering where to start. Or, you struggle, agonize and finally write something you are happy with, but it generates little or no response.

If either of these scenarios hits home for you, then you are in for a treat. Today I’m going to show you a way to avoid both of those horrible fates.

How? By sharing one of the best kept secrets for easily writing copy that really sells.

And believe it or not, it has far less to do with your writing ability than you would think. In fact, all you need to be able to do is write clear, easy to understand sentences and this secret will vault all your copywriting into the stratosphere.

Are you ready? Good.

Here’s the real secret to crafting compelling copy quickly and easily: Preparation.

Yeah, I know. You probably wanted to hear that about as much as you want a root canal. But trust me, it really works.

Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” The same holds true when it comes to writing marketing materials, ads and even sales presentations.

So before I start writing, I do quite a bit of work “sharpening my writing axe”. And by the time I’m done, whatever I’m working on is already 75% written.

Now I’m going to show you exactly what I do to get ready to write knock-out killer content. To make it even easier, I’ve broken the process down into 10 simple steps…

1) List all the features and benefits of your product or service.

2) Make a note of what makes your company, product or service different from competitors. Marketers call this your USP or Unique Selling Proposition.

3) List of all the pains or problems your product or service solves.

4) Describe your primary customer or ideal target market. Include all possible details such as sex, age, race, education, geographic location, socioeconomic demographics, etc.

5) List any pains or problems your target customer is likely to have (whether or not they relate to what you are offering). Try thinking about their goals and dreams, and what could be stopping them from achieving those.

6) Write down what your ideal client stands to gain by purchasing your product or service, and what they stand to lose if they don’t.

7) List every excuse or objection you can think of that might cause customers to resist or delay making the purchase, then write down answers or rebuttals for each?

Write down any details that need to be included like price, location, details etc.

9) Note the purpose of the piece. In other words, what do you want folks to do after they read it (buy something, click here, call to request a free sample, give me their name and email, etc.). This will become your call to action.

10) Decide on the specifics of your offer. How much is it? What is the guarantee? Is there a payment plan? Rebates? Free extras? Bonuses? Up sells? Once you’ve done all this, it’s just a matter of reorganizing the information, adding a few transition phrases, and creating a really juicy headline. That’s it. Not sure how to arrange all the information?

Here’s a good rule of thumb you can use that works amazingly well no matter what you are writing…

1) Start with the pain or problem.

2) Explain the solution and benefits.

3) Address any potential objections or questions.

4) State what they stand to lose by not buying your product or service.

5) Finally, include the offer, a call to action, and your contact info.

Simple as that. So next time you get ready to write anything that is supposed to make customers take notice, and take action, just grab this handy guide. It is sure to make your writing less difficult, and more effective. Who knows…you might even start enjoying it!

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Google’s policy of serving relevant ads in response to user queries coupled with complex factors like quality score can make Adwords a minefield for a novice or intermediate level practitioner so much so that a lot of money is coughed up to elicit a poor ROI (Return on Investment) or not the best bang for your buck in layman terms.

If you are in a position where you have set up PPC campaigns and they are not doing well, then you could use the following guidelines to fine tune their performace to achieve optimum results. Let us get cracking.

1) Relooking at Opportunities:
There is a good chance that you would have done keyword research relevant to your industry before setting up your PPC campaigns. If you are finding that your campaigns are not doing well, then you will have to do a more indepth keyword research and dig deeper to find the “money keywords” – keywords that have decent amount of traffic (ideally 1000 searches per day or more) and less competition (50,000 and below).

If your site has been in existence for some time with Analytics installed, then your Analytics account will provide you a wealth of information. You can look at the keywords that are bringing in organic traffic and you can use these as the seed keywords for your keyword research and build on the opportunities presented in your domain of business.

2) Targeting and Relevancy:
These are the two mantras you have to keep in mind when setting up a new campaign or reorgainising an existing campaign. If you have a group of keywords that are well related to each other and can be grouped into a relevant ad group targeting an underlying theme, that is the first step of achieving relevancy.

The ad copy for that ad group must reflect the same idea as the keywords themselves. When writing the ad copy, make sure you include the representative keyword in the title and include it once in the two lines that make up the ad copy description.

Always your ad must show a clear benefit and it should have a clarion call to action. If you do not ask users to take action, they probably never would. Do not waste precious ad copy space by using words like Click here.

If you are stating in your ad that your blue widget would do something, then make sure that the landing page which that ad leads to dwells at length and explains clearly that benefit. Never mislead users by staing something in the ad and having a landing page that is totally different. If you get all the above correct, then you are well on your way to improving relevancy and targeting which plays a huge part in the optimisation of the quality score.

If your current PPC campaigns are not doing well, then you must ensure the relevancy of keywords in the ad group. For example, if you are a builder and you build both industrial and residential buildings, you must have two distinct ad groups, one each for Residential Buildings and Industrial Buildings. Though they are both buildings, they are distinct types of construction and you must differentiate between them.

Try reorganising your campaign at the granular level and accord each and every distinct keyword the respect and value it deserves. Avoid lumping unrelated keywords together. You can bet that these keywords will be rejuvenated and gain a fresh lease of life and start performing really well.

3) PPC Landing Page
You have improved the targeting and relevancy of your PPC campaigns. The next important criterion is the landing page for the ads that display triggered by the keywords in your campaigns that match the searches made by users on Google.

The landing page plays a very important role in determining the quality score, a mystery component that is evaluated by the Google algorithm. Human nature is such that when something is shrouded in secrecy, the human mind tries to analyse it to the maximum possible extent.

I like to keep things simple. In my opinion, I do not worry about the quality score excessively. All that you need to do is get the targeting and relevancy spot on and the landing page near perfect. The quality score takes care of itself.

Ensure that your landing page is in total sync with the keywords and the ads that lead a user to it. Your landing page must contain the representative keyword in its title tag, meta description and h1 tag to start with.

Your copy must also include variations of the representative keyword (in other words, the other keywords contained in your ad group targeting this specific landing page) when defining the benefits of your product or service.

Sell the benefits of your product/service and keep features to a minimum. If your product/service is solving a problem, then go ahead and lay it out for the whole world to see. Users are looking for solutions to problems. When a great solution is found, a user automatically ends up a buyer.

Have clear calls to action and embed them as anchor text on the landing page. By highlighting the call to action as a clickable link, you are getting the user to focus on the blue underlined text and at the same time, you are able to gain value in terms of improving quality score for your keyword phrase by making it part of the anchor text.

The common belief is to have a tight sales funnel. I myself do not like to divert a user’s attention much when she lands on a landing page. I tend to remove the global site template from landing pages. The reason is two fold. It is possible to accurately track the user’s path from the moment they land on the landing page. The second reason is to minimise the user distraction.

You are paying for every user that lands on your optimised landing page. You want to capture their focus and lead them on through the sales funnel and this is achieved by making them take action (in our case, click the link) and take them to buy your product or sign up for your newsletter or whatever it may be on the following goal page.

But for the purposes of quality score, you would be well advised to have links on the landing page. You can have links like Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy at the bottom of the page. At the top, you can have links to Resources and any other information laden areas of your main site. From the user perspective, this also gives the user the feeling that she is not hemmed in and led like cattle to the final desired goal.

Again, if you are getting a user to fill a form, please do not make the user sweat it out. Have a form with just 3 or 4 fields where you capture their name, email address, phone number and comments. Then call them or email them to prove you are a human operating a business and take your sales process to the next level.

If you sell products and have a shopping cart, please make it a simple and intuitive process for the user to go through the sales cycle. Have a clear call to action with a button saying Add to Cart or Buy Blue Widget. Do not make the user jump through too many hoops that would result in frustration and make her leave your site.

4) Analyzing Results:
Once you have reorganised your PPC campaign, it is vital to have an eye on the results as much as you can. If it is an existing campaign, you should get a clear sign of the trends in a week or so. If it is a brand new campaign, it will take atleast 3 months to get a clear picture.

Just as in real life, even your keywords are all not created the same. You will find a few keywords that are foot soldiers. They will bring in good load of visitors but not necessarily convert. You are going to have a few lynchpin keywords (royalty kind) which can convert like crazy. These are the superstars.

You will find dummies that just do not fire up.

If you find that certain keywords are not recording any clicks over 3 months, then there are two ways to look at it. Maybe they need to be checked for better targeting and relevancy. Else, there is no demand in the market for the product or service that the keywords in question represent.

Group them into a distinct ad group and see if they fire up. Wait for another couple of months. If nothing happens, pause them. Please do not delete them. You can read my earlier post titled Taking On An Existing PPC Campaign – Things To Be Aware Of explaining the PPC account history.

5) Cutting down Costs:
This is not directly connected to the optimization of a PPC campaign but it is handy if you are not loaded with money. Adwords is Google’s revenue generating flagship. Click costs are only going up everyday. There is no way the CPCs (cost per click) are going to tank in future like the stock market. The best thing you can do is run your campaigns on Adwords for atleast 3 months.

You can easily pick out the winners at the expense of paying a “good” price as CPC even after using the above techniques for optimizing your PPC campaigns. After 3 months, start advertising on Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter with the winning keywords. You are going to pay less than what you would pay on Adwords.

If you are happy with the response from these two big networks, you can either switch off the Adwords campaigns and concentrate on improving your site’s position on the organic SERPs. You can also have the luxury of paid traffic albeit at manageable budget levels.

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There are a number of ways to monetize a site. Aaron covers the options in extensive detail in the “Monetization” members area , however today we’ll take a close look at just one aspect of monetization, Affiliate Marketing.

What Is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a marketing method whereby one business rewards another business for sending customers, visitors and/or sales.

Mostly, affiliate marketing rewards come in the form of revenue share on a sale. Site A (the affiliate) funnels visitors to Site B (the merchant). If a transaction is completed by the merchant, the affiliate receives a commission on the sale. Do this numerous times a day in a high-margin area, such as loans, and both the affiliate and the merchant can make a lot of money.

Affiliate marketing is nothing new.

In the carpet markets in Turkey, you get pestered by salesmen whos job is to tempt you off the street and across the threshold of a carpet shop. He – its invariably a he – might get paid for bringing you to the door (the online equivalent is equivalent to cost-per-click), or, if you buy a carpet he receives a commission (cost per action). Or perhaps a mixture of the two.

The benefit to the merchant is that he doesn’t have to pay the full time wages of the salesman, and he only pays him on performance. The benefit to the salesman is that he doesn’t have to own a shop, carry merchandise, deal with transactions, or any of the other costs associated with running a carpet shop.

Win-win.

In 2006, MarketingSherpa estimated online affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions

The Players & How It Works

The Affiliate Marketing industry consists of three core players:

• The Merchant
• The Affiliate
• The Prospective Customer

As the affiliate model became big business, further levels emerged, including sub-affiliates and affiliate networks. We’ll take a look at the role of the networks shortly.

The Pros Of Affiliate Marketing

Easy To Set-Up – You simply need to select a program, sign-up, add the tracking code to your site, and you’re good to go.

Focus On Your Core Skills – If SEO is your key skill, you can focus 100% on rankings and traffic generation. You leave all the customer handling, sales, returns, legal issues and transactions to someone else.

You’ll also be amongst esteemed company. The top affiliate marketers who use SEO to generate traffic typically rank amongst the highest-skilled SEOs. They live or die based solely on their ability to rank well in highly competitive areas.

Low Startup Costs – setting up commerce delivery online can require a lot of start-up investment. The affiliate need not invest anything other than some time. If one area doesn’t work out, the affiliate can quickly move onto another area. The merchant has to too many sunk costs to do likewise.

Multiple Income Streams – once you’ve honed your sills in one area, you can apply them to any area you choose. There is no limit to the number of merchants you can work for, so you are free to develop multiple revenue streams. Some merchants will give you ongoing revenues based on customer activities, too.

Cons Of Affiliate Marketing

Low Level Of Control – Unless you have a close relationship with your merchant, you have little control over offers.

If their competitors are offering better services and/or lower prices, you can’t counter unless the merchant changes their offer in line with the market. You’re also pretty much stuck with the same standard offer available to every other affiliate you’re competing against, making it difficult to differentiate.

There are exceptions.

Sometimes super affiliates – those affiliates who consistently put through high sales volumes – get offered special deals. It’s unlikely you’ll know what these deals are unless you become a super-affiliate. Some programs allow pricing control, but mostly, you’re dealing with cookie cutter offers.

Customer Base Not Locked In – The merchant keeps the customer.

Typically, you deliver the customer, the merchant pays you a one-time commission, then that customer remains theirs for all subsequent purchases. The value of the merchants business increases the more customers they have.

As an affiliate, you don’t tend to have lock-in on the customer. Some affiliate deals offer you on-going revenue, however.

High Competition – One of the pros of affiliate marketing is that is is easy to sign up and get started.

This is also a negative.

If it is easy for you to sign up, then it is easy for everyone to do likewise. There are new affiliate hordes arriving each and every day. The incentive for the merchant and affiliate network is to sign on as many performing affiliates as they can, so they don’t really care if you face ever increasing levels of competition.

This is why top affiliates look for private deals. More on this shortly.

PS: As I stated above, you’ll be amongst esteemed company. The top affiliate marketers who use SEO to generate traffic are typically very highly-skilled SEOs. They live or die based solely on their ability to rank well in highly competitive areas. These people will also be your competitors

Pay On Performance – This is a great option for the merchant. They only pay when they sell something. What this does is transfer all the advertising risk to you.

You may spend weeks or months on SEO and make no sales. This might not even be your fault. You get great rankings and traffic, but the merchant has an uncompetitive offer, or loses customers at the point of sale.

Middlemen – As the affiliate area has grown, so too have the number of middlemen.

The biggest middleman in the chain is the affiliate network. The affiliate network is the go-between linking the merchants with the affiliates. Commission Junction is one example.

The network often provides valuable reporting tools and tracking, as well as affiliate and merchant support. Of course, all this costs money and places an additional layer between the affiliate and the merchant. Whilst the network may provide benefits in terms of reporting and support, it also reduces the level of control and contact the affiliate has with the merchant.

Limited Growth Potential – Because you can’t lock in your customers or adapt deals to suit changing market conditions, growth potential is limited. Like the carpet salesman, you rely on a new stream of visitors each and every day with no way to grow what you do, other than by adding sub-affiliates.

There is a solution to many of these problems, however.

Direct Partnerships

There are many affiliates making very good money following the model I have outlined above.

However, as affiliates get more and more successful, they often look to partner direct with merchants. This way, they cut out the middlemen – leaving more profit for the affiliate – and gain a closer relationship with the merchant.

Some affiliates structure the entire deal, and take a percentage of the merchants earnings over time. Whilst this approach requires upfront organization, the long term payoffs can be huge compared to the traditional network-driven affiliate model.

But how do you do it?

First, you need to look at areas where there is high returns and low levels of competition.

Make a list of merchants who have a web presence in your chosen area and have the ability to take online orders or inquiries. Approach these merchants directly. It’s a good idea if you can demonstrate potential traffic levels and sales, so come armed with this information.

Look to sign up exclusively i.e. you’re the only affiliate working with them. Also try to get a cut of ongoing revenue i.e. if the customers becomes a repeat customer, you receive repeat commissions. The bonus to the merchant is that you’re a salesman willing to work on a commission basis. There is little risk involved for the merchant, and most will be only too happy to at least consider your proposition.

These types of deals require a high deal of trust and transparency, so it’s unlikely you’ll get everything you want right away. Suggest a trial run to prove your worth, then negotiate favorable terms once you’ve proved yourself. If the merchant turns you down at that point, then you simply go to his/her competition, with your accumulated data, and make the same offer.

This way, you should be able to build up a private label affiliate system. You can bring on your own hand-picked sub affiliates to work with you, too, and if you’ve selected your market correctly, you should face little or no competition. As you have a close, direct relationship with the merchant, you can work on structuring product and service offerings that remain competitive. It becomes more of a partnership that can be nurtured and made valuable over time.

Some of the biggest money-making affiliate opportunities you’ll never hear about.

That’s because they involve private label deals.

Comments

They make my phone ring a lot, with so many companies struggling to measure their marketing in terms of sales, all because they sell offline.

You see, e-Commerce marketers seemingly have it easy, because the same Web metrics programs, such as Google Analytics, that count visitors and page views can also count actual online sales. So, every move the marketer makes can be tracked and judged on its success and failure. You do more of what works and less of what doesn’t, and suddenly you have a very successful business.

Online marketers that sell offline envy that kind of clarity. They live in a world where they attract more visitors to the site, they show them some information, and then those visitors vanish. We hope that they pop up offline with a phone call or a store visit, or some other way to restart the sales cycle, but often we can’t tell which Web visitors did so and which ones just dropped out.

Our mistake is to treat this situation as though its uncorrectable. It’s not. As I show in the slides, direct marketers pride themselves on the many ways that they connect their marketing activities to sales. The venerable, “Call 800-555-1212 and ask for Alice” is one version of this technique, where “Alice” is a code name for the particular issue of the magazine the ad ran in. By coding each piece of marketing, you can measure which ones worked better than others.

So, how can you tie customers offline activity back to their online activity? Let them press a button to send an e-mail. Let them print a coupon to turn in at the store. It doesn’t matter what the technique is, as long as both your customers and your offline sales folks are willing to do it.

And that’s why my phone keeps ringing, with company after company calling to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of their online marketing activities to offline sales. It’s exciting to see so many marketers taking the leap to measurable outcomes. Once they do, they can start experimenting just like those e-Commerce companies–doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

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You see, I am a New York Giants fan. Although I only told one person on my entire trip of this fact, I suspect that Dallas Cowboys fans have some powerful social network that is at work behind the scenes. They know I am a Giants fan and they don’t like it. My plane can’t get off the ground fast enough. It’s not safe here for people like me.

As for the Inbound Marketing Summit? Great event. The two day program was rapid fire and full of relevant information about Internet marketing for all skill levels. Of course, the emphasis was on social media. Honestly, would you expect any different from a Chris Brogan event?

Here’s just a few themes and highlights from the summit:

• Online Reputation Monitoring and Management - While Andy Beal has known this for a while the rest of the world is starting to discover that this discipline is quickly becoming required over previously just being desired. Once any company or organization gets a taste of what is being said about their brand on the Internet, they realize that they can’t continue to go about business with their heads in the sand. They need to be aware of these things at the very least. An increasing number of larger companies are dabbling in the discipline. It appears that the majority of these are still viewing it with a “crisis alert” mentality but there is a growing awareness that a continual “ear to the tracks” for what is being said about your brand (and your competition’s brand) is absolutely essential for success both on and off line.

• Listening – This basic tenet of social media was pounded hard by most speakers and for good reason. The takeaway for social media is very similar to the age old guideline followed by good sales people. It goes like this; you have been given 2 ears and one mouth, use them in the same proportion. You should be listening at least twice as much as you are talking. No one cares about you or your product features unless you are addressing their needs directly. How do you understand their needs? Listen. If you are doing all of the ‘social’ in social media you probably need to shut up for a while and listen.

• Time – The reality is that social media, as a full time exercise, is time intensive. It requires serious time commitments. Brogan put the number at 2 to 2.5 full time employees or an equivalent (which equates to roughly 100 man hours per week) are needed to truly be ‘engaged’ if you are a larger brand. What about for the little guys? It still takes a lot of time but their resources will determine how involved they can get. Fortunately, most agreed that you do not need to be in every social media outlet at all times. If you are not where your customers are then why are you doing it?

• Many in social media are winging it – Well, not completely but pretty darn close. Wildly successful social media practitioners in the corporate world like Whole Foods and Humana admit they are winging it to a degree. They admit this because they know that change in the social media space occurs at such a rapid pace that there is no other way to go. How do you know if something is right unless you give it a shot? Sure there is planning but only after much experimentation to uncover what deserves planning / resources and what doesn’t. In social media it seems to be better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission (that’s another old selling axiom – are you seeing a pattern here between great sales ability and social media?)

• With time comes confidence- Southwest Airlines has been in the social media game for quite some time and their confidence shows. One statement that was indicative of real intentionality regarding social media and specific activities was by Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines, who alluded to the social media drills that they conduct to see how quickly they can react to certain situations. I would like to see one of those. She also stated that they put a significant amount of trust in their employees to do the right thing and represent them well unlike recent events like the Domino pizza debacle. Paula’s grasp of the importance and impact of social media to Southwest was very evident and there was a very obvious reason for it; she seems to genuinely love Southwest Airlines. As a result, her activities and presentation of the brand in social media outlets is effective because it is founded on her passion and the passion of those who help.

• Measure it – Sure everyone complains that social media is hard to put metrics to but guess what – you gotta try. Mike Moran emphasized the importance of doing your social media and Internet marketing activities so that people are eventually guided to measurable events. Mike’s point is that Internet marketing isn’t any different than the traditional marketing that has been going on for as long as people have had something to market; it just now takes place on the Internet. As a result, don’t get too hung up on the tools and technology but rather what they achieve. Being cool is one thing but being effective is a complete other area. Being cool makes ‘friends’ while being effective makes careers.

Well, there was a lot more to talk about. The two days were just filled with great information and nice people. Next stop is Boston in September. Are you going to be there?

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Internet marketing has its own version of a fresh 24. Every day you get another 24 hours, a reset if you will, that allows you to do something that will ‘score points’ for your Internet marketing efforts. Like basketball or any game for that matter, more often than not the best results come from doing the fundamentals well. Sure you can have moments of glory and flash but they don’t get it done day in and day out because they can’t easily be repeated day in and day out. Same goes for Internet marketing.

Here are a few fundamentals that have been repeated millions of times over on the Internet for you to consider. One or more of these can be done every fresh 24 you are awarded.

• Optimize title tags – Make sure each critical page of your site has unique title tags that effectively integrate focal keywords of your page’s content and H1 tags. Show unity across these elements and the search engines smile.

• Refresh content - If you haven’t updated your site in a few months then you start to smell like you are rotting. Start the blog already. Get over your fears. Time to move on

• Contact a potential link partner – Find someone who carries some clout in your industry and strike up a conversation that may lead to a mutually beneficial relationship. If a link happens great. If a fantastic networking opportunity occurs then even better.

• Update a social media outlet - I know social media takes a lot of time. That’s only if you let it. Maybe updating your Facebook profile every few days while throwing in a few tweets on Twitter or answering a question on LinkedIn is all you need. Except for a select few, spending too much time on social media is time sucking black hole that can take more than it gives.

• Pick up the phone – Make one of your social media connections actually hear your voice.

You don’t need to do everything every day. It is most likely that you just can’t. Take the fresh 24 you are blessed with every day, however, and do something fundamentally sound for your Internet marketing efforts. You may be surprised one day.

FT Takeaway: Doing one of the basics of Internet marketing on a daily basis is better than trying to do everything in one day. Optimize, update and engage. You may be surprised at the results.

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