Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Tuesday, December 22, 2009,
In :
Paid Search
If you do nothing else to improve your PPC Management (meaning increase conversions at a lower cost per conversion), you must always run two Ads per Ad Group. This gives you the ability to compare and replace the poor performing Ad, leading you down a path toward conversion-optimized advertising. That's what I talk about in this episode (under 3 minutes).
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Wednesday, December 16, 2009,
In :
Paid Search
This is the introductory video for a new series on Pay Per Click Advertising. I discuss the cardinal rule of online advertising success and provide five (5) techniques for creating Ad variations. Keep in mind, this is just one of several methods to increase Web traffic.
It's a small thing, but they're actively asking for an email address. Sure - they should have been doing this 10 years ago. But hey, this is positive, forward movement. Here's the form available at the front counter of any Boston Market:
This type of business lead generation should be happening at every restaurant! And, they should be charting what we order. If we eat there, they should give our finished plate a score - as in "loved it" (nothing left) or "hated it" (hardly touched it). Then, t... Continue reading ...
This content was originally created June 10, 2009. I take you through a quick introduction to Comment Marketing. This is akin to Blogging, but you are hitch hiking on the energy being created by another (the owner of the Blog). It is a much quicker route to ROI.
I continue to explore Social Media using the structure provided by Charles Heflin (see my post "Top Industries with Social Media Potential" on July 29th, 2008). Charles separates social networks into four categories:
A NETWORKS - Have the functionality for you to create a group, blog or channel within the network and any combination of elements from B, C, or D NETWORKS. A NETWORKS must also have the ability to mass communicate with members of you...
I've been reading and enjoying a new book called Groundswell. It's about adapting your company/organization to the new world of social media (Web 2.0). In the book, there are countless examples of companies fighting to maintain control of their brand and corporate messaging. All ultimately reaching the conclusion that it is no longer possible today. Your brand is what people say it is, not what you say it is. Well, I've related to a number of thes...
1. TYPE 1: Markets where people socialize (internet marketing, movies, music, sports, medical, weddings, reunions, politics, religion, spirituality, etc, etc, etc.)
2. TYPE 2: Markets where socializing is limited or non existent (cardboard boxes, socks, desks, office chairs, satellite tv, shoes, poker chips, etc, etc, e...
Over the last several months, I've been using "Comment Marketing" to effectively increase traffic to the Semanticator website. It's been amazing! Essentially, you find a blog post or several where you can be relevant, and you comment (the process requires you to identify yourself and your website - this is the whole reason for doing it). The real challenge is doing it efficiently: determining where to comment; keeping track of where and what you've commented;...
This post was originally published on June 6, 2008.
I attended the American Marketing Association meeting this afternoon in Phoenix. A friend of mine, Matthew O'Brien, was presenting social media marketing, in particular the use of video. You can find him on Twitter: @Blogster or by visiting his new Social Media Marketing company: Mint Social. Anyway, one of the side notes was that creating identities on social networks with your company name may not be the best choice, for a number of reasons...
This post was originally posted on April 18, 2008.
I really started Tweeting about two weeks ago, even though my account has been active for awhile. My early thoughts about it were probably not too dissimilar from yours. It felt like a very juvenile, time-wasting activity. So, I quickly dismissed it and moved on. Then, I decided to attend a Social Media Club meeting in Phoenix where everyone seemed to be on Twitter and loving it! It took some time for that to settle in on my mind, but it made ...
This past week I've been trying to identify blogs that are frequented by one of our target markets: Advertising Agencies. So, I tried Google Blog Search using the term "Advertising". It returned 76,922,165 entries. Among them were the following:
Pronet Advertising
AdAge
Advertising Lab
The Business Marketing Blog
Then, I tried the IceRocket Blog search engine for the same keyword. It returned 580,233 entries. I examined the first page and only found references to small marketing oriented...
What's the promise of the Semantic Web (a.k.a. Web 3.0)? It is to
make it easier for
people to find things that have meaning to them - information, media,
websites, etc. When they arrive at a website - they'll see more of
what's
interesting to them and less of what isn't! The reason I use the word
"promise" is if we look only to the scientific community, there are
debates as to whether the Semantic Web will happen at all - classifying
and making
new relationships out of c...
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
One of the first questions we get asked when talking to clients about Semantic Marketing - in particular our technology, Semanticator™ - is how much work is required to maintain content for each market segment?
There are a couple of ways to look at this question. If we step back and observe the way the Web has mostly been viewed - as another piece of marketing collateral - it makes sense to ask this question. In our experience, most companies aren't getting what they could out of their we...
I have been struggling to determine where to focus my energy across all of the social media applications available. I have categorized them as follows: Content Aggregators, Social Media Aggregators, Micro Blog, Bookmarks, Community: Visual Media, Community, Community: Business and Discovery. There are a few others like Community: Software - Wakoopa, Community: Books - Shelfari and Marketplace - Kiva.
In each bubble, the participating applications are in order of type size. The clear winner i...
Over the last couple of months, I have immersed myself in Social Media. I blog a few times a week, I Twitter
, today I tried Twitxr (Twitter with photos), I belong to groups, content aggregators, community bookmarking, etc. Here are the top 5 things I have learned from the experience thus far:
Having a blog is key, but not mandatory. While I have a blog on our company website, having one hosted differently (a separate IP range) than your company website is important for Search Engine love!...
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
As I grow in my understanding of the Semantic Web, it occurs to me that there are two camps aiming at the same goal - an improved, highly-relevant Web experience for us all. One camp, Developers, consists of those who are really going to make it happen - architects. They are participating in the development of standards for Web 3.0. They are determining how Web components (pages, content within pages, images, etc.) will be classified so that content can be quickly assimilated with meaning. Th...
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
There's a lot of discussion brewing on the Semantic Web. For example, you might check out the Google Group or a Digg search when you get a chance. When you get there, you will find much techno-speak. Here's an example:
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
For the last year, we at ThoughtLava have been working on a patented business process, Semanticator™, within the Semantic Web category. Up until we received patent pending in early November 2007, we had been in stealth mode about our innovation. In the past couple of months, we've begun speaking more openly about what it is we do to grow sales leads via the Web. This will be an ongoing topic for this blog, especially as we increase our experience with client implementations of the technolog...
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
I have been catching up on my reading and ran across a chart in Advertising Age, December 31, 2007, entitled "Digital-Marketing Spending" (source: Forrester Research's "U.S. Online Marketing Forecast: 2007 To 2012", October 10, 2007).
The reason this chart is interesting to me is that it shows a sharp increase in the ratio of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) spending in relation to Paid Search spending by 2011. The fate of SEO has been a hot topic within our company as of late. As we cont...
Web 1.0 was about locating information. Web 2.0 is about websites as applications. The emergence of applications like Writely that became Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentations, PrezentIt, Splashup, BackPackIT, TaDaLists, Gmail, Google Calendar, Gliffy, Mind42, etc. Here is a wonderful list of Web 2.0 applications.
Some pundits, like Nova Spivac, believe that the Web 2.0 era corresponds with the first decade of th...
Posted by John-Scott Dixon on Thursday, March 19, 2009,
In :
Semantic Marketing
I am amazed at how many organizations treat their website as nothing more than a means to establish legitimacy. It is put in the same category as traditional business collateral: business cards, brochures, sales presentations, etc. Lot's of attention is given before it receives final approval. However once completed, it is published, the authors check the box and they continue with business as usual. In many cases, the website is mistaken for an extension of advertising. It is important to n...
I have over 16 years of experience managing and leading the Ecommerce efforts of medium and large companies. I have held sales, sales management, marketing, operations, IS/IT, legal and executive management positions in start-up to multi-billion dollar organizations. I have also served as an adjunct professor of Ecommerce for the MBA program of the University of Missouri (where I received an MBA concentrated in Direct Marketing in 1989). I led the Ecommerce initiative for Sprint PCS (PCS) and Sprint (FON) as Vice President of Ecommerce. I led the integrated marketing efforts for Insight (NSIT) as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Ecommerce. Today, I am the President of Aidan Taylor - a Web marketing company.
Cases/Methods
Learn
how
we get things done for our clients. Everything we do is measurable. If
we can't test it, we don't do it!
I have over 16 years of experience managing and leading the Ecommerce efforts of medium and large companies. I have held sales, sales management, marketing, operations, IS/IT, legal and executive management positions in start-up to multi-billion dollar organizations. I have also served as an adjunct professor of Ecommerce for the MBA program of the University of Missouri (where I received an MBA concentrated in Direct Marketing in 1989). I led the Ecommerce initiative for Sprint PCS (PCS) and Sprint (FON) as Vice President of Ecommerce. I led the integrated marketing efforts for Insight (NSIT) as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Ecommerce. Today, I am the President of Aidan Taylor - a Web marketing company.
