PPC driven year-over-year branded sales are down – so the first natural recourse is to find someone to blame. Logical deduction would have it that it is the fault of whoever is managing the PPC campaign, because surely, if the PPC campaign was driving strong branded sales last year, well then, what has changed this year to lower those sales figures? Surely, it should just be identified and fixed.
This is, unfortunately, not quite that simple. It is difficult to exert a great measure of control over branded sales online – certainly, a branded PPC campaign can facilitate branded sales but it cannot be managed in the way that the competitive landscape is managed within non-branded terms.
Whether people are actually searching under a branded term is a function of the strength of the brand, word-of-mouth and offline brand building marketing efforts designed to drive branded online traffic. The branded PPC campaign may have been built, but certainly it does not mean they will come and it is not the role of the branded terms online to make them come.
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Marta Turek October 26th, 2009
With blogs, forums, social networks having an open architecture to almost anyone being able to join them and start marketing right off the bat, does it mean that Joe Schmoe can be as effective as the most savvy social marketers out there? Maybe not.
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Andrew Wee October 13th, 2009
In just under a week the annual Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association Summit will be held downtown Minneapolis at the Hilton. With keynotes from Seth Godin and Jackie Huba as well as a collection of local and national subject matter experts ranging from Greg Swan of Weber Shandwick to Scott Monty of Ford, it should be a veritable vortex of interactive velocity. I apologize, that alliteration was so bad.
Anyway, TopRank has been asked to participate in the “Migrate” themed event on the topic of search engine optimization and social media convergence.
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Lee Odden September 29th, 2009
Keyword Technology Improvements
WordStream offers a free tool for keyword research. The coolest feature it offers is that it allows you to download thousands of keywords at once, though it requires giving them your email address to get the keyword list. Their FAQ states they use a variety of keyword sources: internet service providers, browser toolbars, and search engines.
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Aaron Wall September 15th, 2009
I’ve started an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ Each post in the series addresses a step that will help to make your lead generation campaigns work like a well-oiled machine.
In the first installment, I discussed tackling your organization’s lead generation mindset. Your touches should be conversations not just campaigns. Your “marketing” approach should be more consultative. The post received a lot of great comments. Ardath Ablee was fascinated by one and wrote about it in her blog. I think you’ll find “How to Use Existing Content in B2B Demand Generation Programs” helpful. Thanks Ardath.
Now for Step Two. I want to focus on dissolving the discord that inevitably exists between your sales and marketing teams.
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Brian Carroll September 2nd, 2009
Are you making enough money from your website?
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.
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Peter Da Vanzo August 18th, 2009
Here are several excerpts from an excellent post by David Baker, VP of eCRM Solutions at Razorfish, Where Is Marketing Automation Going?:
Today we have a wide variety of options to support email marketing and service functions for our companies. I typically categorize these email companies into four categories: small business, specialty applications, enterprise solutions and then marketing automation.
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Jim Berkowitz August 4th, 2009
Sometimes I think that traditional offline marketers look at the Internet like the title character of some monster movie–the Internet is the thing that ate marketing. It doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, things are changing for those of us that have worked in marketing for some time, but it doesn’t mean that everything you know is wrong. Internet marketing is still marketing, and what you know is still true. You just need to apply what you know to a different situation than before. Sometimes I wonder whether it is we experts that bring these fears about, starting with how we portray the changes that the Internet has brought to marketing.
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Mike Moran July 17th, 2009
For anyone who’s joined and had success in the Internet Marketing world, there are likely a great number of things you have learned over the years that allow you to be successful today.
This list is compiled from my own experience with Internet marketing, it consists of the top 5 lessons I’ve learned in 3 areas of Internet Marketing that I believe are essential to success.
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Chris Tynski June 30th, 2009
I realized that I never posted my slides from last week’s Dallas Inbound Marketing Summit. I’d only tweeted them to my Twitter followers. So, today, I am posting a longer version of those slides, called Internet Marketing by the Numbers, but I also want to tell you something about those slides.
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.
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Mike Moran June 6th, 2009
