April 6, 2018
Text marketing is going to start to become a bigger deal. Especially for ecommerce with platforms like this.
Click Here To Read The Entire Article:
https://martechtoday.com/led-tapcommerce-founders-startup-attentive-launches-smsmms-marketing-platform-210877?utm_src=ml&utm_medium=textlink&utm_campaign=mlxpost
November 13, 2016
Its possible there could come a time when malls are filled with only restaurants. even for clothing stores where people are trying clothes on then buying for less online.
US Department Store Sales Are Declining Ecommerce sales are on an upward trajectory
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June 11, 2014
Have you ever gone to a website, leave the website, then see banner ads popping up all over the place for that website you’ve been on before? That happening is a new marketing technique called remarketing, which is great both for advertisers and consumers alike. I mean, if a consumer is going to have to look at ads anyway, better they look at ads that actually interest them, right?
Unfortunately, some marketers abuse this technique. Have you ever gone to a website, leave the website, then see banner ads popping up all over the place for that website you’ve been on before? And then see the same banner ad pop up 10 times a day? 20 times a day? Feeling as if the ad is stalking you, following you on every website you go on?
Yes, that happening is what is known in the industry as “stalker ads”.
Surprise! People do not like stalker ads.
So here’s the lesson: If you’re a marketer, do not run stalker ads. It will actually hurt your client’s brand and cause consumers to not like your client. I mean, businesses’ aren’t paying you to ruin their brand, right?
So here’s what you do! There’s a setting known as a frequency cap. It can set a max of how many times a day each person sees your banner ad. Perfect!
At Customwave, we usually set our frequency cap at 2 views per day. This way, our client’s banner ads blend in with everyone else’s banner ads and it just looks like the client advertises a lot, which is good for the brand!
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April 23, 2014
What I’m about to write about covers a lot of ground, so I want to summarize everything here and then go into greater detail on each point in future blog posts.
-The consensus in the SEO community is that Google more and more is favoring brands when it comes to search engine optimization. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land fame even addresses this in the first question of a recent interview. Sullivan’s key point is that Google is not just favoring big brands over small brands. Google is favoring ANY brand over websites no one cares about (in other words, non-brands).
-So how does Google determine who is a brand and who isn’t? That type of thing could be subjective. But I believe the main determining factor is based off of how many people search for a particular brand by name. For instance, there’s probably way more people that do a Google search for “McDonald’s” than “Joe’s World Famous Burgers”.
-And the great thing with small business is that there’s lots of industries that don’t have a dominant super power in their market. Take the limo service industry for example. There’s no national, household name that the mainstream automatically turns to. Therefore, a limo company only has to compete with other small business limo companies. Therefore, success can be achieved when it comes to boosting a small business into becoming more of a brand than the next small business limo company that isn’t doing anything.
-So how does a small business boost brand awareness? Isn’t that expensive? In 2014, it is not.
-The answer is with website banner advertising.
-Nielsen, that does the local TV ratings, put out a report in February that said the average cost of reaching 300,000 people in a local market with TV advertising costs $7,500. Pretty expensive. But the cost of reaching 300,000 people in a local market with banner ads on websites cost only $100. Pretty incredible, right?
-The key thing to understand is that the value of banner ads is not to get clicks to your website to produce sales leads. The value is the same as TV advertising. It’s to become more well known and have “top-of-the-mind awareness”. The same reason Coke still advertises and Taco Bell still advertises. Everybody knows who they are. But they want to be fresh in your memory in case you get hungry or thirsty.
-Most people don’t click on banner ads. But people do notice them. And after 6 months, 1 year, 2 years of advertising, people in your local area will start to know who you are.
-And when the time comes for people who finally have a need for your product or service, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll think of your company because of all the reminders your banner ads have given them.
-When this happens, you’ll see a gradual increase in the number of people searching your company name on Google. Thus making your company name more of a brand and favorable in the search rankings.
-Why would Google favor brands in search engine optimization? I remember reading a story almost 10 years ago when BMW was using SEO tactics Google didn’t like. And Google warned them to stop, but BMW kept doing it. So Google decided to punish BMW and removed bmw.com from the search engine! And at the time, Google thought “Ha! That’ll show you BMW!” But the unexpected happened. It was Google that experienced the backlash. Because people typed “bmw” into Google and when BMW’s website didn’t pop up, people thought Google’s search engine wasn’t working.
-So the main reason Google has always favored brands and is now favoring them even more is that when people search for things, they want to see brands they’re familiar with.
-Imagine this. Let’s say you have more than 1 million people see your banner ad for your limo service business at least 5 times within the span of 1 year. People in your local area become familiar with who you are. And then they search for a limo company in their area and your company, one of the most well known limo companies in your city, doesn’t pop up on the 1st page. Guess what? That makes Google look bad, like it’s search engine isn’t working. The same way people got upset when they couldn’t find BMW’s website.
-It means that consumers have an expectation with Google’s search engine that the most well known companies should pop up first and then smaller brands or no name brands underneath.
-So to come full circle with my point, besides creating specific keyword related content, making your business a brand in your local area, is the most effective and most important search engine optimization tactic in 2014.
-And I don’t see Google changing their importance on brands anytime soon.
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March 23, 2014
What I’m about to say is more theory on my part than actual fact. I think when people think of reaching an enormous amount of people, they think of TV.
I’m just here to share how many people have been on entertainment related websites in January 2014. Nielsen says that the number is 167 million people in the United States. YouTube alone got a little over 110 million people in that one month with each person averaging 12 visits throughout the month.
Overall, there were 198 million Americans online in January 2014. Average time each person spent online throughout the month? 29 hours and 43 minutes.
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March 19, 2014
They’re finally here!! Google finally has unveiled it’s much anticipated “smart watch”. Watches that little display screens that act like mini computers. Even smaller than cell phones! We’ve already seen how much smart phones have taken off. So it’d be a wise assumption that the US consumers will adopt the watches in the same way. So for us marketers, making sure our websites are “smart watch” compatible and show up properly on watches will become a new part of the job description. To me, the more devices there are out there that connect to the internet, the more website traffic and online marketing opportunities there will be : )
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March 19, 2014
Very thought provoking article on marketing: American Express CMO Jon Hayes explains that marketers win not by having best technology or knowing how to talk to consumers the best. He says marketers win when they’re able to best interpret changes in technology to figure out how best to use it. And interpreting changes in society to figure out how to tailor the message to consumers. Like its not about the ads themselves. It’s about figuring out the value of how to use the technology for marketing purposes. And how to custom fit the new process for each individual business. For instance, it’s key to understand with banner ads, the value is not in getting the clicks to produce immediate phone calls. The value is in branding in the area your potential customers are in.
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March 9, 2014
When I read the headline from eMarketer, I was stunned. The retail price of an XBOX One is $500 and the Playstation 4 is $400. Yet, teenagers are using these video game consoles more for internet use on their TV more than the video games themselves.
What this tells me is that their is tremendous demand for internet usage on the consumer’s TV. And it presents a tremendous opportunity for internet marketers and small businesses alike.
Back in the early 2000’s not many small businesses had websites. So getting one was a big deal and gave the business with a website a big advantage over the competition. Then around 2006-2008, we were getting to a point where most small businesses had websites, but not many were actively advertising and marketing their websites to get website visitors.
Fast forward to 2014 and virtually every small business desires to be on Google’s search engine in an attempt to market their website and try and get more business. But making money off Google has become more difficult with increased competition and limited real estate on Google’s first page.
I believe the new frontier for small businesses is in local, geo-targeted, banner advertising on websites throughout the internet. Right now, not many small businesses are doing it, but soon they will be.
And not only is there great opportunity because the advertising is inexpensive. Or from the lack of competition.
The opportunity is great because of the coming explosion of website traffic from people using the internet on their TV’s.
In the next 5 years, internet traffic and eyeballs on websites will skyrocket not only from mobile devices like cell phones and tablets, but also from people using the internet to watch their TV content.
And the more traffic there is, the more the cost of the advertising will be driven down due to such a large inventory of eyeballs.
This study from eMarketer illustrates the coming boom of online display, banner advertising.
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