Tracking your banner campaigns has become an incredibly valuable part of Google Analytics. You now have the ability to track by source, medium, campaign, keyword, and content using Google's URL Builder. This tool allows you to easily append tracking variables to your URLs. Below are some guidelines for using these five dimensions:
Medium: Typically should be 'Banner'
Campaign: Use the name of your campaign. For example, 'Free Shipping'.
Keyword: The keyword field is not required, however I have found it extremely useful to include the size of the banner ad. This way you will be able to run a report for which place...
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March 2009 Archives
Email marketing, at first glance, seems simple and straightforward, and unfortunately, is often an afterthought for many marketers. However, when applied correctly, email marketing can be an incredibly cost effective means of dramatically increasing revenue. An Internet Marketing Company, such as Endai Worldwide, that specializes in email marketing can help increase the medium's effectiveness with effective planning. No marketing message is effective if placed before the wrong audience. Database building is an important part of many marketing efforts, but it is absolutely essential for email marketing. Start building a mailing list by collecting email addresses from current customers...
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Because I want it...Search Marketing Requires a Plan
By on March 26, 2009 4:21 PM
I recently homage and a visit to the Toys R' Us in Times Square in New York City. I heard an awful lot of "because I want it" through the din as only kids can. It was said so emphatically and with such conviction, but is of course followed with little to no reason supporting it. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend who was thinking of becoming an online marketing client, regarding SEO keyword selection. Not particularly the child like tantrum part, but more the statement of "need" with limited planning and reason behind it....
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Email Marketing Is Nowhere (Without a Fresh Database)
By on March 25, 2009 10:43 PM
While it's getting harder to find a marketer that has not adopted some level of search marketing religion, I am still amazed by the number of marketers without a serious initiative built upon an email marketing customer and prospect database.High quality email marketing software is now available to every marketer on every budget at a low enough price point that you can't afford not to touch your customers and prospects several times a year at a minimum.Couple this with the fact that the venerable search marketing keywords are continuing to soar in cost and competitiveness. Gone are the days (1998-2000) where search traffic was quite inexpensive, and the relatively few marketers that jumped in early turned an ROI with little...
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AdAge recently reported the gripes of the media world over how Google's results ranking system was burying major media companies "expensive professional content within the search engine's undifferentiated slush of results."Nevermind the irony of how I am now attempting to do the same to AdAge, here are some reasons why I believe Google's current PageRank algorithm is perfectly suitable.Google is a for-profit business. It makes tons of profits selling Google AdWords and paid search results. If a media company wants its content at the top of the results, then they can pay Google to do just that.The internet is nearly impossible to regulate. Google is the only entity with the influence to regulate the web and it has little interest...
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Patience is a virtue not an excuse
By on March 25, 2009 9:31 AM
Yesterday I decided to try a new sandwich shop. This was a big step for me because I am a creature of habit. I placed my order and waited and waited and waited. I went up to ask the counter girl about my order, and she quickly replied, "great food is worth waiting for". I am a big fan of food, so I decided that I was willing to wait. But for how long? And in this time I got to thinking.SEO clients and prospects almost always have the same question, when will I be ranked #1. I immediately made the connection of that question and my current situation in the sandwich shop. My response is very similar to that same counter girl, "great SEO takes time". However, never should that...
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Loyalty is not one size fits all.
By on March 23, 2009 3:05 PM
This past weekend I was at Atlantic City, New Jersey. As I was walking around I realized that there is no better example of customer loyalty programs than in casinos. These programs have such monikers as "Diamond Club", "7 Star Club", and so on. Regardless of which casino's program it is, they are all based on identifying customer's usage and tracking over time.
This provoked questions in me which I will pose to you.
· &nbs...
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Email Marketing Grows Integrated
By on March 22, 2009 8:48 PM
Friday afternoon I met with two television media companies in New York
City. I noticed a trend, these big media companies are rapidly
embracing email marketing as a vehicle to drive viewership on
television. Yup, email marketing is starting to be implemented
to bump GRPs. Perhaps in it's early stages, but the common thread is
virtually all the traditional media companies are racing to build large
email databases to target and reach prospective viewership.We're starting to measure the success of this with tools like Google Analytics on the website and our email marketing software, MarketTraq Email for Google Analytics.Stay tuned, we'll post updates as the email success stories keep growing in this niche.
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GAAC Deficiency Syndrome- You Don't Want This.
By on March 22, 2009 7:54 AM
What is GAACDS you ask? It's bad stuff and its going around the business community. There are a couple of symptoms that are easily noticed including:- Head scratching while viewing web analytics- Violent jerking when speaking to your web development team- Uncontrollable outbursts of obscenities when discussing web traffic and behavior on your website.Do not despair. There is a cure.With the creation of Google Analytics, Google changed the web analytics game.. no surprise that Google changed the game. Additionally, with it's low price point (FREE), it makes enterprise level analytics available to any company with a website.One problem- to extract real value from Google Analytics, you cannot just look at...
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Search Engine Optimization: Whatever happened to the N?
By on March 19, 2009 3:57 PM
I remember when I first started in the online marketing world, all the rage was this 4 letter acronym, NSEO. This stood for Natural Search Engine Optimization. As I was walking around the Barnes and Noble in the Internet Marketing section, I noticed that all the books were focused on SEO, Search Engine Optimization. My curiosity got the best of me, so naturally I went online next. Amazon has 1,511 books that are returned when searching for SEO, in addition to that, there are even 39 for the Kindle. Only 59 books were returned in the search for NSEO....
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Email Marketing, Your Highest ROI Marketing Opportunity
By on March 17, 2009 10:49 AM
I had a conversation this morning with a prospective customer about email marketing. I heard the all too familiar refrain... Really, what's the value of email for us? I mean do our customers read email?Ok, One more time. Email like many things in life works exceedingly well when it's done well.The Direct Marketing Asssociation in their "Power
highest ROI...over $51 for every $1 spent". You know what, we've seen that return and higher with our Clients.The fact is, if you don't have an email newsletter, then
starting one is probably the single highest ROI program you can start. Yet most email marketing is not done so well. Most email marketing is not segmented, ...
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Email Marketing Dialogs Made Easier
By on March 17, 2009 12:56 AM
The promise of email as a vehicle to develop customer and prospective customer relationships has long been appreciated by Internet marketing professionals and rookies alike. However it's all too often the case that both the very experienced, and the less tenured online marketers have short changed the value of their email marketing.One of the biggest reasons is that marketers just dont have the time, and in many cases perceive that the list just isn't big enough to have enough benefits to warrant the time it takes to create and manage a true dialog with the consumer.Today, Endai Labs (our research and development group) released the M-Streams™ API feature to create and manage unique "one to one" email dialogs with customers and...
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Search Engine Optimization- The Basics Part 2
By on March 15, 2009 8:35 PM
At this point, you have done your keyword research and an initial placement report.The next steps have to do with on-page and off-page optimization. Let's look at both optimization tactics individually.On-page OptimizationOn-page optimization is the process of optimizing each page of your website for the keywords that you have determined are important to your business. On-page optimization can be divided into a few categories: copy, meta-content and site structure. Each category is critically important.CopyKeyword placement, density and frequency are all factors in writing copy.Meta-ContentWriting meta-titles, meta-content and keywords with the correct length and keyword density are musts for good SEO...
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Currently, there are several sites under the social media umbrella from Digg, Flickr and MySpace to Twitter, LinkedIn and Spoke. However, it seems Facebook is working hard to be the center of the social media universe.
Facebook's most recent evolution...
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Unless you are blissfully ignorant, chances are you've been affected by or at least have heard about the collapse of the stock market and the slowing global economy. Marketing is still essential, perhaps more so, during a recession; however budgets are being squeezed and many companies view marketing as an extracurricular activity. The recent emergence of the "new" media is a deluge of offerings and strategies competing for a marketers strained resources, but which route is the most effective use of those resources?...
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When speaking with clients about setting up a Google AdWords account, one topic that always causes confusion is 'Quality Score'. The quality score of each of your keywords is often an important, but overlooked variable in your campaign. Google explains Quality Score as:
"The AdWords system calculates a 'Quality Score' for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query. A keyword's Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC)."
What this basically mea...
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A recent AdAge article examines what could become an enormous problem for an Internet Marketing Company or any brand with a presence online. Currently, there are twenty-one common domain names with .com being the most widely used. Others include .org, .net, .edu for educational facilities and .gov for government sites.The article cites a proposal from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to expand the number of domains to a nearly limitless amount by allowing brands to purchase and rent .anything for its domain name. Bridgestone can be .tires, Dell can purchase .computers and so on. To add the fun, if two brands want the same domain, they need to compete to outbid each other for the right to that domain.This...
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Search Engine Optimization- The Basics
By on March 7, 2009 10:01 AM
Optimizing your website for top placement in the major search engines is probably worth your time. However, with all of the available optimization tools, there's no need to guess. As a side note, the very nature of online marketing eliminates the necessity for guessing. If you are guessing about your next online marketing move, you should stop and contact an authorized Internet Marketing Company. It will save you time and money.Back to search engine optimization. Start with the free online tools:1. Use a keyword tool to determine the most popular keywords for your business. Basically, you are looking for highly relevant, highly search keywords. Google's keyword tool is a good place to...
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Newspaper itself had a hand in its demise. Many published content free online with undervalued display ads pitched as an "added-value" bonus for print advertisers. Now it sees its print subscription and circulation numbers plummeting and fewer advertisers willing to pay the higher rates for large ads and color in today's slow economy.
Enter email marketing to the rescue.
The direct-to-consumer aspect of email marketing places embedded ads at a premium compared to ...
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SEO Files
Are search engine rankings based on the quality or quantity of links?
Google's Matt Cutts recently rebuked a Forrester Research report that cited a Kmart effort to entice its customers to blog about their Kmart experience with the reward of Kmart gift cards. The move, Google claimed, ignored its policy requiring "nofollow" tags for solicited posts. So called "sponsored conversation" efforts that ignore the policy, in Google's eyes, artificially inflate a site's ranking in Google's PageRank algorithm which is designed to ignore "nofollow" tags.
The idea of sponsored conversations, and Google's reaction to the practice, asks an interesting question for every Internet Marketing Company: "Is it the quality or quantity of li...
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Large or Extra Large? A Lesson in Marketing from a Donut Pitchman
By on March 2, 2009 10:49 PM
I'm standing in line this morning waiting for a cup of burnt, overpriced coffee from a Dunkin Donuts pushcart in Penn Station in New York City. I can't help but to hear the gentleman behind the cart say to every still drowsy New Yorker... "yes sir.. large or extra large?"I did consider for just a moment that they only had the two sizes... this IS New York City... but when he asked me I said medium. He flashed me a big smile and handed me a medium coffee. Indeed there are still four sizes at "Dunkin."I also thought for a moment about a meeting I had later that day at a large brand retailer we do business with. We've been discussing implementing a collaborative filtering technology. I asked the vendor to come in a few times, each...
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