Star Wars, "Stairway to Heaven," and the Apple Macintosh -- what do they have in common?  They're creative and cultural works of genius that have shaped and defined generations. We might also think that they're original works born of a lightning-in-a-bottle, "aha!" moment of creation by the lone inventor.  In fact, each one of these is a copy, combination, transformation, or remix of previous works presented as something new. Star Wars was based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, "Stairway to Heaven" pulls its opening from Spirit’s "Taures," and the Macintosh� [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column

The path from clicking a search ad to a conversion -- buying a product, downloading a brochure, locating a store -- is well understood and widely accepted today. Because a search ad relates to an intent expressed by the person doing the search, click-through rate serves as a good proxy for conversion, and cost-per-click (CPC) is a reliable guide for buying search ads. In search, optimizing for clicks is essentially optimizing for conversions because they’re so closely aligned. Online display advertising, however, is a different story. People go to websites for information, entertainment a [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising

Content marketing is one of the biggest buzz phrases of the moment, with many people talking about it as if it's a new phenomenon. The fact that The Guinness Book of Records will be 60 years old next year should put paid to that suggestion -- but so, too, should the creative work put out by Nike, which has consistently shown that great marketing is great content. And, they're still doing it now. PHOTOiD is a new mash-up Nike has created that allows you to use an Instagram photo to inspire a pair of personalised Nike iD trainers. It's built in HTML5, is lovely to look at, is intrinsically li [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Professional stand-up comedians are known to practice their routines with smaller audiences in preparation for their big shows and HBO specials. They do this in order to find out what works and what doesn't and to hone all the elements of their routine: timing, delivery, wording and so on. That way, when they hit the big stage, they have the confidence that they are delivering an optimized routine. This is not unlike the "lean startup" approach described by Eric Ries in his book, The Lean Startup. In it, he advocates the "build-measure-learn" cycle, which puts experimentation, measurement [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Display Advertising: Programmatic Media Buying

Finding images for your WordPress site can be a challenge. Of course, you could take the pictures yourself -- but if you run multiple sites, that could prove exhausting. I have recently started using a WordPress plugin that makes it very easy to find creative commons images and credit them properly right from inside my blog. The plugin is called PhotoDropper -- and I am loving it! PhotoDropper has over 62 million free images that blog owners can access and insert right from their WordPress dashboard. They also have a premium tier that offers more professional photos on a pay-by-the-photo [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Column | Blogging | Channel: Content Marketing

Almost 70% of all messages in people’s inboxes are non-personal, meaning they are marketing offers, social updates, receipts and more. This is both good news and bad news for marketers. The good news is the inbox is now more of a marketing channel than ever before. The bad news is there is more competition, and marketers need to work extra hard to stand out. Luckily, measuring email campaign performance is moving beyond opens and clicks. New measurements are available that can tell you not only how your campaigns are faring but also what’s working for your competitors. Email Forward [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Marketing Metrics

In my last column, I discussed strategies for testing content on your Facebook page. I also talked about how important it is, even when testing, to retain the character of your brand in all your content. Your Facebook page should have an identity to it, and you should strive to hold that identity constant. Part of holding this identity constant is making sure that your advertising is aligned with your Page content. That means keeping the style and character of your ads consistent with the status updates, photos and videos you’re posting on your Page. This principle is not just limited to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook Marketing Column | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Pages

For everyone from business executives to teens, mobile devices facilitate a significant portion of communications and media consumption today. Yet, even as mobile devices become increasingly saturated into our everyday lives, mobile still remains a challenge for many B2B Web designers and online marketers. Most marketers do not actively employ mobile landing pages as a part of their greater B2B marketing strategy. Instead, they rely on personal opinions and gut reactions that tell them it's okay to wait. Don’t miss out on mobile! Review these five reasons to better understand why you [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In the past, when email marketers noticed a drop in audience engagement, they would increase the volume of email sends, trying to win the attention deficit game by increasing frequency. But this strategy just doesn't work anymore. With the increased usage of mobile devices, smart phones and multi-channel social streams, your customers (or potential customers) now have a wealth of information available at their fingertips around the clock. In fact, it's estimated that three out of four Americans under the age of 35 now check their smart phone or mobile device before even getting out of bed [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column | How To

As social media becomes an increasingly vital component of marketing strategies, agencies are getting more comfortable with associated social data. For example, analyzing brand mentions and sentiment data is becoming fairly common practice, even among smaller shops. But, as I’ve pointed out earlier, social listening data is just the tip of the iceberg. The variety and volume of data available to marketers keep getting bigger -- and more interesting -- each day. Agencies that know how to harness and use social data creatively will profit and grow; those that do not will be left behind.� [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Social Media Marketing

When I started publishing online back in 1998, I didn't have a shred of traditional marketing experience. It may sound counter-intuitive, but that ended up giving me a huge advantage. The first marketing book I read was Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing in 1999, which sparked my "aha" moment regarding how the Internet worked from a marketing standpoint. Godin made it clear that the Internet was a direct-response environment that required an evolved form of direct marketing. You didn't buy mailing lists. You built audiences. Likewise, my company, Copyblogger Media, began a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column | Google: SEO | Social Media Marketing | Word Of Mouth Marketing

Smart social media marketers know that some tactics are totally off the table. Spamming that Google Plus community with your off-topic links? That's a no-no. Auto-DMs to new Twitter followers? No way. Then there are tactics that aren't inherently bad, but you may not want to use them every day. Like pop-up ads, advertising jingles or re-targeting campaigns, these tactics can be just shy of annoying if used incorrectly, but often get the kind of results that make them irresistible to try. Let's call these "yellow light" social media tactics. When you come to a yellow light in traffic, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Pinterest | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column | Twitter

Marketing technologies and strategies are like a runaway train these days -- if you blink, you’ll probably miss the latest techniques; and, if you don’t hold on for dear life, they will pass you by entirely. The good news? It doesn't have to be this hard. An evolving market has far more benefits than disadvantages, if only you know how to wrangle them. Personalization is just one example of this, especially within site retargeting. Before you scratch your head and think that personalization is already in full force within site retargeting, take a step back and let me explain. I'l [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

As the second biggest shopping season behind the winter holidays, more than $18 billion is spent annually on Mother’s Day gifts in the United States. Of that, 25 percent is attributed to purchases made online. This represents a steady increase over the years when you consider that in 2011, 21 percent of Mother’s Day purchases were made online. While most purchases are made during the five days leading up to Mother’s Day, the most successful affiliate marketing plans are set into motion weeks in advance. So, to help you make the most of the upcoming Mother’s Day shopping season, h [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Column | Channel: Content Marketing

"Negative" metrics -- you might prefer the term "De-optimization Metrics" -- can be just as important to your continuous optimization efforts as your positive ones. The purpose of a negative metric is to isolate for you the deleterious effects you may inadvertently be having on your positive metrics. A negative metric is not necessarily something you want to get less of. For example, one might mistake "reduce bounce rate" as a negative metric -- but really, it's just a more convenient way to refer to the positive metric of "increasing the un-bounce rate." Rather, a negative metric is someth [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics

Google Enhanced is the online marketing advice-giver's gift that keeps on giving for 2013. By now, everyone touching search has been in several hours of meetings discussing these changes and where they will take us (mostly in the short-term), and has probably written or consumed at least one FAQ, eBook or White Paper on the subject. Feature roll-outs with APIs and a little bit of insanity in trying to get your numbers to match up are all necessary bumps on the road to truly optimizing. This yields the way for Google (and subsequently, every publisher) to ultimately optimize on a person-by-p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google | Search Marketing Column

With today's pressing content demands, every organization with a website, blog and marketing communication documents needs a content marketing strategy. Below are a few questions to consider when developing your own strategy. Do you know everyone in your organization who creates and/or publishes content? Where are your organization’s creative assets stored and managed? (“My Inbox” and/or “My Desktop” are not correct answers.) Do you have an editorial calendar? Do you have content specific metrics? Do you have a channel strategy? You’ve heard it a million times by n [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column | Infographics

[caption id="attachment_39268" align="alignright" width="350"] Image via Magnetic[/caption] More and more Web browsers are blocking the use of third-party cookies by default, a development which has sparked a fierce debate in the digital ad industry. Firefox is the latest browser to make the announcement, forcing marketers, ad technology companies and ad agencies to discover another means for reaching consumers with targeted advertising. This controversy began with Safari, but because Safari had a mere 5% market share, it didn’t ruffle many feathers. However, over time, other browse [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Retargeting & Remarketing

Mobile is one of the fastest growing mediums of our time. It seems every day some new technology or new development is being brought to market. With so much going on in such a short time frame, key developments are sometimes glazed over and often not fully understood. This is the case with Apple’s move to replace the use of the UDID for ad targeting with a new and improved ID created exclusively for adverting purposes – the launch of IDFA (or sometimes called IFA) with their release of IOS6. This article is the first of a two-part series to provide mobile marketers with a little back [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Google's switch to an all-paid shopping search experience, featuring Product Listing Ads (PLAs), was the single largest change to the retail paid search landscape last year, and the offering continues to evolve as the official release of PLAs on smartphones was announced last month. PLAs are not only a new ad format but also a new marketplace, with auctions running independently of traditional text ads although they're often being served alongside them on search result pages. Now that the new market has had time to mature, we can take the opportunity to step back and review what we have lea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google: Search | How To | Marketing Metrics | Search Marketing | Statistics: Online Advertising