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Posts Tagged ‘online marketing’

What Facebook’s Open Graph Means to Marketers

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Facebook introduced Open Graph at the F8 Conference last week, which will extend Facebook’s platform to any third-party publisher online. So, what does this mean for marketers?

For the Publishing Marketer, this will allow you to tap into Facebook’s 500+ million users without having to have a Facebook branded Fan Page. By using the Facebook API, will allow publishers to enhance the user’s experience at their site with social functionality. How? Publisher’s will now be able to place the Facebook toolbar at the bottom of a site page, which will offer a social experience with the popular ’Like’ button, friend’s list info and chat.

Marketers that advertise their products/services or Fan Pages on Facebook will eventually have better ad targeting, since the Open Graph will allow for Facebook to gather new user data on preferences and behaviors, thus making better for targeted ads for marketers.

Tags: better ad targeting, Facebook, Facebook advertising, Facebook Open Graph, for online marketers, online advertising, online marketing, Open Graph
Posted in internet marketing, online marketing | No Comments »

Facebook Destroys Traditional Online Gaming Channels with Applications

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Facebook has done it again! Traditional Online Gaming Publisher companies are seeing a major drop in their traditional traffic channels, as high as 50% to their sites in 2009, due to the change in online consumer behavior because of Facebook. Online gaming companies that have not already created Facebook gaming applications are already at a loss because of Facebook application companies, such as Zynga, which are highly dominant on the Facebook Games applications page. If you’re an Online Gaming Marketer, encourage your company to build Facebook applications and use Facebook as a channel. Check out Zynga and how they market their games.

Take a look at the homepage of Facebook Games Applications page and you will see at a minimum,6 Zynga games with the most users and popularity, which is everything to being promoted through Facebook.

Here’s why consumers are playing more at Facebook, rather than seeking out games through old traditional channels:

1. Consumers are already in their ‘downtime’ when they are at Facebook, so an option to play a game directly from this portal is much more likely, than seeking out another site

2. ‘Real Offline Friends’, not pseudo MySpace ‘Online Friends’ challenge each other in the games, so it’s more fun to compete with one another
3. The games are short and don’t take much effort
4. Other games are promoted, after a game is completed, so it encourages the player to continue to play at Facebook, rather than seek outside of Facebook alternative games

So, how do traditional online gaming publishers compete? Build a FB application and use it as a channel to drive traffic back to your site. Cross-promote the other games to the database of players, so that they will invite their friends to come and join. Do this now, before it’s not too late!

Tags: facebook gaming applications, online gaming, online marketing, Zynga
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »

eCommerce Sites Keep Online Customers and Gain New Ones with Offering Lower-Priced Product Goods

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Marketing is not easy, especially in this economy, so if you’re an eCommerce site that has specialized in carrying higher-priced luxury goods, what can you do to not lose your existing customers and attract new customers, since everyone is cutting back? Try, introducing lower-priced goods, as the airlines do with their customer seating in coach. If you’ve haven’t flown in the past 2 years, check out any of the airlines’ sites and see how they are offering more seating prices of different levels in coach, so that they can keep their margins and acquire new customers that they normally wouldn’t have attracted without diminishing their brand efforts.

By offering more goods options that have different price points, you’ll be able to keep your high-priced luxury item lines and introduce lower priced items without hurting the brand.

Tags: brand marketing, customers cutting back, ecommerce marketing, internet marketing, keeping customers, luxury goods, luxury priced ecommerce, offering new product lines, online marketing, online marketing tactics
Posted in online marketing | 4 Comments »

Using Social Media Twitter for Lead Generation

Monday, May 4th, 2009

There’s been a lot of noise about Twitter today, but what good is it for online marketers? For B2C marketers, Twitter can be a powerful lead generation marketing tool, which can send out real-time information to Twitter ‘followers’. For example, an eCommerce site can send out last minute sale information via ‘tweets’ to move inventory quickly on limited items. By sending out a ‘tweet’ to followers on a 24-hour sale, can increase traffic to a site tenfold.

Tags: b2c marketing, ecommerce marketing, for online marketers, internet marketing, lead generation, online marketing, online marketing techniques, online marketing tip, send out tweets for marketing, social media marketing, Twitter marketing
Posted in internet marketing, online marketing | No Comments »

Social Media Sites to Use for PR Outreach

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

To get the word out, try Social Media sites to help promote your site, service or product. Here is a list of Top 10 Social Media sites to market through:
1. Twitter.com
2. LinkedIn.com
3. Facebook.com
4. MySpace.com
5. FriendFeed.com
6. YouTube.com
7. StumbleUpon.com
8. Digg.com
9. Veoh.com
10. Friendster.com

Tags: Facebook, FriendFeed, Friendster, LinkedIn, online marketing, PR outreach, social media, social networks, stumbleupon, Top 10 Social Media sites, Twitter, YouTube
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »

For Customer Retention, Email Marketing Will Do

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

You’re getting tons of customers to your site, but you’re losing them just as fast as you are getting them, so what do you do? Don’t expect that just because you built it, they should stay. Building a good customer retention program is as important as creating a good customer acquisition program. Email marketing is a good and simple way to keep your customers informed with new items at your site, community happenings, announcements and making sure that your user base returns to the site. Here are some tips on what you can do to build a good email campaign:

1. Segment the Database – Do not send a mass email to all of the database. This will surely have a lot of opt-outs or low click through rate back to the site. Separate the database mailings by how you want to market to the user base, such as creating emails tarrgeted to either region, gender, age, or work title. Learn and understand what your customers want and mail to them accordingly.

2. Test Email Campaigns – Test different headlines, subject lines, graphics and body text to see what performs better. Test, test, test!

3. Email Blasts & Newsletters – Try sending weekly email blasts with specific product or service offerings to your segmented database. Send monthly newsletters that contain content that is more general and can appeal to a larger audience than the segmented email blasts. Monthly newsletters can contain content, such as news, third-party offerings, community happenings, and Refer-a-Friend programs. Make sure to be consistent about the newsletters delivery schedule to keep consistency. This will help build brand-equity of the company site.

4. Do Not Send Too Many Emails In A Short Period – This is a big no-no. The more emails that are sent in a short period will surely tire the customer base and ensure that your campaigns will be opt-out with more frequency. Think about how many emails do you get…what are the ones that you opt-out of?

For more information or help on your email marketing campaigns, please contact Ashley Hart on the ‘Contact Us’ tab of the homepage of www.AshleyHartMarketing.com

Tags: Ashley Hart, ashley hart marketing, customer retention, email, email blasts, email campaigns, email marketing, internet marketing, keeping customers, newsletters, online marketing, online newsletters, online traffic, returning customers to site, segment database
Posted in Ashley Hart, internet marketing, online marketing | No Comments »

Being Efficient in a Bad Economy

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

It’s tough times out there, including for the online industry, so how do we make sure that we are getting the most for our advertising buck? Take a look at your current online marketing strategy and see which channels are the most inefficient. Get rid of them! Yes, I know what you must be thinking, if it’s bringing me even one client, it’s worth it…but it’s not. Now is the time to really pay attention to your customer acquisition metrics and conversions and see where you can cut the fat, so you can move over money to the most efficient channels.

Also, pay more attention to your customer retention programs. This is where many marketers don’t take advantage of the database they already have. Make email and viral marketing your best friend. Offer promotions to drive the traffic back to your site. I will guarantee you, by creating unique retention programs, you will increase the LTV (Lifetime Value) of your customer and increase your ROI. This will also help you to decrease your marketing expenses, since its much cheaper to market to current clients than it is to acquire new ones.

Tags: advertising in a bad economy, customer acquisition, customer retention programs, efficient advertising, email marketing, internet advertising, internet marketing, lifetime value, LTV, online advertising, online industry, online marketing, return on investment, ROI, viral marketing
Posted in online marketing | No Comments »

Know Your Marketing Metrics!

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

I can’t stress enough that, if you are running online marketing campaigns, you have to track them for measuring success. There is no excuse for any online marketer to not track their campaigns through either paid or free analytic software. Google Analytics (/www.google.com/analytics) is a free software that enables any marketer to see how well their Search campaign is going, as well as, other online campaigns. What’s great about this software is that you can place a simple tracking code, provided by Google Analytics, on your website to see how specific campaigns are converting at your site, how users are interacting with the site, and if you have an e-commerce site, how well sales are converting. Without knowing how new users and repeat users are interacting with your site, you won’t be able to know how to improve the user experience to increase registrant or sales conversions.

There is a down-side to Google Analytics, it has problems aggregating all of the traffic accurately for unique visitors and visits. For example, if you are running a Facebook advertising campaign, Google statistically will show less traffic to your site, than what Facebook reports, but hey, what do you expect from a free software.

For a more robust analytic software, try WebTrends. WebTrends can be customized to your needs and is very granular about its tracking. Keeping in mind, it is a paid software, but if you can afford it, I would highly recommend it. If you are running a Search campaign, you’ll be able to see, down to the keyword, if new registrants or sales can be accounted to those specific keywords.

Tags: analytic software, facebook ads, facebook advertising tracking, google analytics, internet marketing tracking, online analytics, online marketing, search engine marketing, search marketing, SEM, tracking online campaigns, tracking sales, webtrends, webtrends analytics
Posted in Search, internet marketing, online marketing | 1 Comment »

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