Posts tagged as:

digital marketing

Marketing on the Internet seems to get harder all the time, doesn’t it? Content marketing, paid search, natural search/SEO, display advertising, remarketing, and on and on and on. How can anyone expect to keep up?

Well, happily, here’s a secret: They’re all much more related than you might think. You build content to meet your customer’s needs. That’s a landing page. Make sure it’s got some appropriate keywords in it, get some folks to link to it, and you’re doing SEO (admittedly, a simplified version, but it’s better than nothing). The better its relevance, the less you pay for clicks if you point paid search or display ads to it. And so on.

Happily, loads of resources exist to help you tie your activities together. Here are just a handful of excellent posts to help you start:

  • Google’s Agency Blog has a great look at using Audience insights to improve your ad campaigns. While Google’s presentation focuses on paid search and display media advertising, the tools offered can help you develop better content and understand your customers’ behaviors more readily, too. (I’ve added the full video below if you’ve got the time to watch it.)
  • Rimm Kaufman Group’s RKGBlog (one of the Thinks 2011 All-Stars), explores paid search conversion by position. Very cool.
  • What, you don’t do and paid search or display advertising? You might want to consider it. The Certified Knowledge blog shows how to use PPC to test SEO. Sweet. (And sorry about their “enroll” popup when you land there. The content’s still worth reading.)
  • Social Media Explorer follows up this theme of “content meets search meets SEO” with this post that, well, explores the future of content in SEO. Very much worth the read.
  • Now, in case you wonder why all of this is a good idea, check out Drew McLellan’s report on mixing media types. It seems customers exposed to the same message in multiple media channels (surprise, surprise) showed better recall than those seeing the message in only one. Offering the same message, in multiple channels, targeted to the right customer, goes a long way to achieving your best results.

Have a great weekend, folks. And remember, we’re here at Thinks every day helping you untangle the Web to improve your marketing and e-commerce activities. Why not subscribe via email and get these updates delivered to you?


Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

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Selling luxury onlineAdWeek looks at an interesting question this week, asking whether digital is killing luxury brands. As the article notes,

“…the question of how brands that pride themselves on exclusivity—indeed, that depend on it—can keep their brand image from taking a turn for the tawdry in a digital universe is one luxury designers can’t afford to ignore. “

Well, sure. But does that mean that luxury brands should ignore digital?

No.

In fact, AdWeek gets it most right when they point out the elephant in the room:

“The reality, of course, is that brands are being watered down whether they like it or not. In some cases, they’re even speeding things along, as bottom-line concerns push them into big-box collaborations and less expensive line extensions. Image still counts, and some companies aren’t navigating their dive into digital as carefully as they should be.” [Emphasis mine]

The problem for many luxury brands isn’t inherent to online. It’s how true to itself the brand remains. Reach and exclusivity are often, as you might guess, contradictory. But if your digital efforts center around reach, you’re probably heading in the wrong direction.

For example, a luxury brand I worked with a few years ago tried a massive reach campaign and discovered that most of the “customers” we found were only in it for a one-time experience, never to be seen again.

By contrast, when we sent targeted discount offers only to best customers, the customers upsold themselves to higher-priced products and often acted on the brand’s behalf, spreading news of “the deal” they’d gotten to their equally well-heeled friends.

The lesson: Speak in your customer’s language. If you’re an exclusive, luxury brand, remain exclusive, online and off. Otherwise, you risk telling your customers that you’re no longer right for them.


Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

Or subscribe via email.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

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Have you got the “right stuff” when it comes to online marketing? Ready to shoot for the moon? As the Space Shuttle ends its mission, the astronauts offer lots of lessons for marketers about how to run your marketing program launches. Which is the topic of my latest piece for Mike Moran’s Biznology blog, “Countdown to Digital Marketing Success.”



Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

Or subscribe via email.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

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What’s the Big Question for Online Marketing Success?

February 10, 2011 Marketing

My latest post for Mike Moran’s Biznology blog looks at the big question behind the most successful online marketers

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Is digital marketing a core skill?

January 5, 2009 Marketing

The skills you need as a marketer change every year. Should you worry about adding digital to the mix? Read on and find out.

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