Yearly Archives: 2005

PPC

Yup, it’s ranting time. Why are the biggest online players the worst online marketers? I don’t know the ‘why’ but I can sure prove the ‘what’. Here’s a story of Yahoo and GoDaddy wasting pay-per-click dollars like they owned their own mint. It’s also a great story of what not to do. I was searching… Read More

Random

Seth Godin gives some good hints for using RSS in his recent post, What’s RSS?. He left out one important, really easy tool, though – no cutting-and-pasting required. Install the Mozilla Firefox web browser on your computer, and whenever you use Firefox to visit a site that’s correctly configured, you’ll see a nifty little icon… Read More

PPC

I’m sure you’ve all heard of click fraud by now. In case you haven’t, here’s a quick primer: Click fraud occurs when someone clicks repeatedly on a pay per click advertisement (say, a Google Adwords ad) for the sole purpose of spending the advertiser’s money. Click fraud has become a cottage industry. Folks worldwide get… Read More

Internet Marketing

Most traditional advertising agencies bill their clients for a percentage of total advertising buys. So if you hire an agency and they buy, say, $100,000 worth of television time, you’ll pay them about $10,000. What’s their incentive? To buy more advertising, and do cool, creative stuff that wins awards. They have very little incentive to… Read More

Internet Marketing

A friend/client last week told me that they felt their marketing campaign hadn’t worked because their audience just didn’t ‘get it’. She said this in a tone of total frustration. Clearly, she felt her potential customers needed to get with the program. We’ve all felt this way. I often catch myself grinding my teeth when… Read More

Internet Marketing

As an internet marketer, I’ve always hated phones. With a passion. Why? Because I can’t tell why someone calls me. Did they find me in the phone book? On a search engine? From that e-mail I sent out? When customers call companies, the company has no way of knowing if they got the phone number… Read More

Internet Marketing

OK, maybe not completely modestly. The Puget Sound Business Journal did a piece on my firm, Portent Interactive. You can read it here: http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/salespower/2005/07/25/

Internet Marketing

I’m not one to gloat (hah) but I’ve scored big for a client in the Brag Modestly column, and thought I should point out the whys and hows of it. In short, consider blogs and other online news sources whenever you’re Conversation Marketing. If you want the details, read on. For those who don’t know,… Read More

Analytics

Do you know what your Internet advertising campaigns are earning for your business? Really know? The Internet’s the only place where you can precisely measure advertising and marketing performance. But most folks I talk do have very little idea whether their search engine optimization, pay-per-click, banner or e-mail campaigns are actually earning more than they… Read More

Internet Marketing

I was talking to a friend today about the upcoming big screen adaptation of War of the Worlds. I’m hoping it isn’t too horrifically bad… Regardless, I started pondering the success of War of the Worlds. Most people think it’s a story told by Orson Welles. Of course, it was a book written by H.G.… Read More

Internet Marketing

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’m hosting our second Conversation Marketing Breakfast on June 8, at 7:15, at the Seattle World Trade Center. The topic this time will be Internet Marketing ROI. Folks rarely measure the actual return generated by their online marketing campaigns; usually, that’s because they don’t think it’s possible. But… Read More

SEO

I think I’ve seen real proof of the Google Sandbox, at long last. One of our clients launched a site at a new URL last October. They achieved a top-4 ranking on MSN and Yahoo! within a few weeks, but Google left them in the depths of the rankings — around page 20, in fact.… Read More

Internet Marketing

Why does Internet marketing feel so, well, dirty? Internet marketing’s been around for a while now – I’ve been doing it for ten years. I’ve helped lots of thoroughly reputable organizations grow using the Internet as a communications tool. I’ve never touched spam or other unethical methods. So why do I sometimes feel like I’m… Read More

Internet Marketing

Seth Godin has a new blog post that cuts to the heart of marketing versus advertising. He even says ‘Good Marketers Measure’. Bless you, Seth! It also mentions marketing as a conversation a few times, but I’d add something: Online marketing is a real-time conversation between you, your audience, and between audience members. If you… Read More

Design & Development

Last year Portent redesigned Dessy.com. It was our second iteration of the site in four years, and we really liked it. Turns out some other folks did, too – Dessy.com won Macromedia Site of the Day yesterday, proving that you can conduct a fundamentally sound Internet marketing campaign and still look cool, too. And proving… Read More