Internet Marketing Blog Posts

Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is not just a phrase that some agencies use to bill more. An internet marketing agency is altogether different from, say, a web site design firm or a search engine marketer. Internet marketing agencies do all of the things you’d get from these kinds of firms, but they pull it together in a… Read More

Internet Marketing

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that discussed e-commerce and how it’s now a requirement. Which leaves me wondering: Why do so few retailers do e-commerce right? I have my suspicions. Read on and see why so many online stores fail, and how to avoid their mistakes. Yet so few businesses… Read More

Internet Marketing

An article on Search Engine Watch notes that around 90% of American consumers now distrust advertising. That’s a lot. It’s also a fairly new development. How do you respond? One strategy is to focus on marketing venues that aren’t perceived as advertising. Search engines are a great example. Online PR/Blog marketing is another. It’s easy… Read More

Internet Marketing

Mike sent me a priceless e-mail from Amazon.com. Here’s the important content: “For the next few days, you can pre-order your copy at a savings of 0% by following the link below.” Then below you see that the price is $6.96, for a savings of $.03. No doubt, this was generated by some of Amazon’s… Read More

Internet Marketing

The state of Washington is launching a new, $442,000 marketing campaign. They undoubtedly invested a lot of time in coming up with a slogan to rival ‘I love NY’ and ‘What happens here, stays here’. In the end they came up with ‘SayWA’. Yes, SayWA. Huh? After choking on my morning cereal, I decided that… Read More

Internet Marketing

You don’t have to take it from me. A Forrester Report states that only 13% of web professionals at 89 online companies said they actually measure the ROI of all web site changes. Only half said they measure the ROI of major changes. Half said they don’t measure the ROI of any changes at all,… Read More

Internet Marketing

The Wall Street Journal posted an article about a search engine optimization company called Traffic Power. It’s a great lesson in how not to hire an SEO firm. Traffic Power’s tactics included ‘doorway pages’, which are pages invisible to users but crawlable by search engines. These pages are packed with keywords, in order to draw… Read More

Internet Marketing

I am rereading Tested Advertising Methods, by John Caples. It’s the definitive work on effective advertising, copy and ad testing. If you want to learn all there is to know about successful ad campaigns, read this book. It provides great insight into testing ad campaigns and then adjusting those campaigns for the best results. Here’s… Read More

Internet Marketing

Nothing else needs to be said, really: www.milliondollarhomepage.com (note – as of 1/13 this site appears to be having some bandwidth issues, so you may get a ‘not found’ or ‘site busy’ error when you click the above link)

Internet Marketing

Google’s been dabbling in print ads, and the results so far haven’t been great, says Business Week. They cite lack of flexible pricing, higher costs and an inability to target ads the same way Google Adwords does online. I think there’s a different reason: Measurement. Folks flock to Adwords pay-per-click ads because they can measure… Read More

Internet Marketing

Standard & Poor’s is predicting a terrible 2006 for every advertising medium except one: The Internet. It’s not hard to figure out why: With the focus on leaner/meaner/faster everything, the Internet is the logical marketing medium. It’s the only one where organizations can measure their audience, place an ad, and then measure exactly how well… Read More

Internet Marketing

ZDNet has a new article up that refers to 2005 as the ‘turning point’ for online advertising. I look at 2005 as even more – it was a watershed year for online marketing. Organizations are catching on: In an age when consumers are skipping TV commercials, cancelling newspaper subscriptions and replacing their radios with iPods,… Read More

Internet Marketing

Sometimes you’re better off saying nothing at all: www.ralesforsenate.org/issues.html The page shows ‘under construction’ for his ‘issues’ page. All jokes about honest politicians aside, couldn’t someone have taken 2 minutes to write a few bullet points? The first rule of good Internet marketing or political speech: If you have nothing to say, say nothing. This… Read More

Internet Marketing

Tuesday, November 15, I’ll be speaking to the Seattle Chapter of SMPS about blogs as a marketing tool. It’ll be pretty free-form, but I’ll cover what really makes a blog a blog, how to decide if you need one, and a few do’s and don’ts… You can get the full information at http://www.smpsseattle.org/calendar/111505.html

Internet Marketing

Dang, looks like I missed another chance to coin a trendy term and make millions. Apparently Micropublishing is the new wave in advertising. Apparently that’s using blogs as an advertising vehicle. Put another way, it’s all about buying ads on lots of small, topical sites and then measuring the return. What a shock. Excuse me… Read More