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  • Pitches Gone Wild and How You Can Recover From Them

    pitches1Have you ever heard a child sing so off-key you can’t help but feel embarrassed for the kid? Of course the parents have no issue with their daughter’s tone. It’s their baby and she can do no wrong. But the dreadful screeching scratches away at your innards no matter how cute she looks in her brand new outfit.

    Fancy this. The shrieking abruptly stops. Astoundingly, it is replaced by a gentle melody, sweet as summer honey. You give your eyes a few rubs and notice that the same once tone-deaf girl is still singing. Is the awful first half of her tune forgotten? Probably not, but the sheer awesomeness of the child being able to recognize the error of her voice and recover so well might move you to forgive her.

    Bad pitches happen. They just do. The important thing is that you recognize when one is taking place as soon as you can and make a hasty comeback. Here are a few methods you can try to get past a sour pitch.

    Honesty Is Key

    For starters, acknowledge the error. Making an open, sincere apology to people who are willing to forgive you is the just the sliver of hope you need to carry on. An honest mistake is precisely that – a mistake. You’re human, and so are your clients.

    Attempting the opposite and trying to cover up your slip-up is most likely going to resolve nothing. You might even be digging yourself a deeper hole. You’ve already been humbled at this point, so let go of any residual pride, say sorry, and prepare yourself for the second act.

    Fool Me Once

    Do not repeat the same mistake. If your pitch just tanked, try focusing on the components of the pitch you haven’t already covered. Stick to the plan, but alter it to avoid any chance of duplicating a blatant blunder. You’ve invested so much time in the initial pitch that there must be some worthwhile points to help drag you back onto solid ground.

    In the worst case scenario, start fresh. Let go of the silly error and do what you do best – sell. You are a marketer, after all. Don’t let your nerves get the best of you. Flex your PR muscles and regain control of the situation.

    Take a Chill Pillpitches2In scenarios where the pitch has really flown the coop, take a step back (literally, if necessary) and give yourself a mental break. Sometimes the best way to recover from a PR setback is to give it time. It’s not the end of the world, and even if it was, there isn’t much you can do to change that fact. So breathe deeply, think about what went wrong, and take it from there.

    Ask for Feedback

    When the nightmare is over, do everything you can to learn from your mistake. Use a survey for feedback, ask a friend for advice, or directly talk to clients about what they did or did not like. Seek out suggestions on how to improve. Then try those recommendations out.

    In some special cases, a bad pitch can be the best way for you to learn how to develop a really good pitch. Learning from your mistakes is absolutely critical for you to move forward. Focus on the future so that you’ll be able to sing your heart out the next time around.pitches3

  • Love at First Sight: Making Refreshing Email Headlines

    love1love1Remember the first time you crossed paths with the person of your dreams? You were walking down the boulevard on your way to class when a miraculous, misty glow seemed to appear out of the blue through which the most beautiful person in the world was floating through. You embraced. You kissed. And you lived happily ever after.

    Okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but the point is first impressions are sudden instances. It takes no more than a split second to fall in love or to decide unequivocally that a particular work of art is ugly, or to ignore an email. Let’s say you’ve already collected a wonderful little list of emails. You have a group of leads, and along with that, all the hope in the world. So where do you go from there? Those email leads will amount to nothing if you’re not able to get them to opt in.

    In order to turn a lead into a customer you need to draw them in and, at the very least, get them interested in what you have to offer. In the case of emails, subject headings may be the single most important factor in triggering attention. Take-home lesson of the day: Compose solid subject lines for your emails.

    Know Your Clientele

    You want to establish some semblance of trust. Extending a token of familiarity is one way to get a lead to buy in. “I know you. You know me. We’re a happy family.” And all that jazz.

    One key tactic is personalizing emails. A study conducted by the Science of Email Marketing found that email subjects with the addressee’s first name had a significantly higher clickthrough rate than those that didn’t. You can use their actual name or just a common sender name instead of your company’s, and certainly not a generic no-reply email ID.

    If names are too close to creepiness for you, consider tailoring headings according to the product. Whether it be specific to a particular city, type of good, or preferred style. Using “you” is also a suitable substitute.

    Down to Brass Tacks

    Simplicity trumps all. Be concise. Be clear. Get to the point.love2Stand Out King

    Set yourself apart by being witty. Put those evening improv classes to use for once and include a quick joke or a clever pun in your subject line. Be careful not to overdo it, of course. And whatever you do, try not to talk down to anyone. Stay clear of ALL CAPS and exclamation points altogether.

    Another way to stand out is to use numbers. A thought-provoking statistic could do the trick for some people. Asking an interesting question is yet another way to catch an eye. Lastly, make your readers feel good about themselves, special even. They could be receiving a unique offer just for them or maybe even being asked to complete an important task. The proper phrasing can hit the sweet spot and win over any stone-cold email user.

    love3Think about your email subject line as the one chance you have to win someone over. Go ahead. Hit them with your best shot. Fire away.

  • Coming on Just Right: On Designing Open Rate-Boosting Emails

    coming-on1 coming-on2Was Goldilocks being too nitpicky when she complained that one oatmeal was too hot and the other too cold, and that one bed was too hard and the other too soft? Perhaps. But she was ultimately able to find the food and bed that were “just right” for her. Now your leads may not be outlandish lassies with golden locks, but like most modern-day customers, they more often than not want their products to be just right.

    Creating desirable content applicable to hundreds or thousands of people is an art that you, along with countless other marketers, should consider mastering if one of your goals is to boost open rates. Think about Goldilocks. Or better yet, think about picking up that cute person who has been eyeing you for the past twenty-odd minutes. Now that you’ve already drawn their attention, how are you going to keep them clicking? Try these methods:

    Familiarity: Have We Met Before?

    Once a lead has opened your email, the content’s presentation is in play. You can personalize your emails to your customer. Identify what their interests are and use that to make them feel comfortable and eventually develop a sense of familiarity.

    Compliments: Nice Shirt

    Try being nice and start email content by saying something kind. Believe it or not, the smallest compliment can inspire someone simply by brightening up their day. You can also try to make them feel special. Turn them into protagonists. Center the email around them and make the product a side kick awaiting their orders.

    The Classic: May I Buy You a Drink?

    coming-on2

    A direct and clear message is liable to do the trick in situations where the lead already wants what you may have to offer. They want what you have. You want what they have. A little authenticity could spell for a budding new relationship. In such cases, remove as many distractions as possible and give a to-the-point presentation.

    Be Funny: I Should Call You Google Because You Have Everything I’ve Been Searching For.

    Most people enjoy a little positivity and can appreciate even cheesy attempts at humor. Well-placed jokes and catchy phrases in your email content can lower the guard of wary leads and draw them in. If you can make them laugh, why wouldn’t you also be able to provide them with something else they might like?

    The Shining Star: You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’

    coming-on3You’re Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Your customer is the uptight piloting instructor who’s been giving you a hard time all week. You spot her at the local bar after class. What do you do? You sing her a Righteous Brothers ballad of course.

    While your aim isn’t necessarily to impress your subscriber via email, it may be helpful in certain situations to include references, glowing testimonials, or a respectable background within or at the end of your email content. People like to know they’re in good hands. And some people like to be sung to.

    Creating solid email content is critical to increasing your click to open rate. Think about what the majority of your clients are looking for and find a way to offer it to them. Whatever your method of choice, try to make it “just right.”

  • Spotting Fishy Opt-in Rates

    fish1fish1Most people who’ve been in the business have no trouble spotting a lead. Potential leads flood the market like bees hovering around a hive. Identifying a lead who has a high probability of turning into a prospect, however, is another matter entirely.

    Snagging a legitimate lead is a challenge for beginners and well-versed experts alike. After identifying a lead and communicating with them through whatever channels (be they phone calls, emails, or advertisements), finally getting them to buy from you is where the rub actually lies. Only at this definitive point do you actually start seeing green.

    So when someone is offering to provide, or better yet guarantee a whopping 55, 60, or 65% opt-in rate, just hold your horses, because something certainly smells fishy. More likely than not, an excessively elevated opt-in rate of 60% is being promised to lure unsuspecting victims to choose their shady service instead of a legitimate one that has realistic promises.

    fish2

    The Perils of Lead Stuffing

    While the allure of acquiring a high opt-in rate is nice, the risks generally outweigh the possible benefits. Lead stuffing practices are frequently led by dreaded bot traffic. Bots not only distort your numbers, but may also produce pestering spam and irrelevant comments with no return of any real value.

    More importantly, having fake emails on your list can reduce your ability to hit the inbox of those that asked for you to email them.  If an email address is never opened, your emails don’t get read.  If your emails don’t get read, it’s impossible to transform the lead into a sale.  Plus, having a large amount of the people you send email to never open the emails you send becomes an indication of the quality of the messages you’re sending.  In other words, the people that signed up for your list because they want to hear from you may stop seeing your emails and your messages can be sent straight to their spam folder.

    Getting tied in with false leads sucks up precious time and, at the end of the day, results in nothing more than a waste of email list space. Stay clear of lead stuffing. Don’t gamble your time and reputation on flashy numbers.

    Spotting a Good Opt-in Rate

    A myriad of factors determine what a “good” opt-in rate should be, which is why there is no golden standard. It is reasonable to believe someone is trying to dupe you with an unrealistic opt-in percentage. On the average, opt-in rates range from 20% to 40%. Anything above 30% generally means you’re doing well and any percentage below 20% means you should consider making drastic changes.

    How to Increase Opt-in Rates

    You should take measures to increase the opt-in rates of your leads instead of turning to lead stuffers. Of course, a common strategy is to utilize a squeeze page, which is a landing page other than your normal home page that your traffic gets sent to. If you just had a lead capture area on your home page, then you should seriously consider using a squeeze page as well. This is where all paid traffic should be sent to if possible.

    A squeeze page only exists for one reason:  To capture names and email addresses.  The advantage of a squeeze page is that it can be dedicated exclusively to a particular deal or product you sell.

    A squeeze page allows you to centralize your offer while avoiding unnecessary distractions or even unwanted confusion. The page provides the kind of clarity and intention people can appreciate. The entire page is dedicated to making an offer in exchange for the prospect’s name and email address.  Opt-in rates for such pages are generally 20% to 40%.

    Another way to boost opt-in rates is to employ pop-ups that open every time they visit your website. Leads who are interested can immediately choose to opt-in by clicking on the pop-up, and those who are not can just as easily close it. Pop-ups can be irritating to some, but the payback is worth it. Anyway, most people are so accustomed to pop-ups that they are quickly forgotten by uninterested parties.  If you can pull a 10 – 15% opt-in rate from a pop-up, you’re doing well.

    The final option is to simply be more diligent about collaborating with high caliber copywriters who are capable of thinking outside the box and consistently delivering top-notch sales copy. It’s more work, but the effect is potent and long-lasting. Hey, whatever gets the job done, right?

    fish3

  • Spinning Clicks into Gold: Boosting Call to Action Button Conversion Rates

    The conversion process is like a whirlpool. The farther down you get, the smaller the neck of of the vortex and the less water is actually in motion. Numbers fall away during the journey from user to lead to customer, and in where and how that happens lies the secret to boosting conversion rates through call to action buttons, close to the final step in the conversion process.

    Below, we’ve listed a few ways to refine your call to action buttons and to streamline conversion in general. You can begin weeding out inefficient practices and thus narrowing the margin between views and engagements.

    1Source: cilsos.my

    A/B Testing

    In A/B testing, audiences are shown two kinds of call to action and given a choice between them. A/B testing is carried out live, meaning it doesn’t have closed trials. Public exposure fills that role, with analytics revealing which of the two buttons draws a better response over time. Once a winner is clear, the inferior button is retired.

    After a decent interval, you could repeat the test using the original winner and a new contender to make sure you’re keeping one step ahead of stagnation. A/B testing is dynamic and direct, and it can help to shape a company’s direction by revealing exactly what customers want through the process of elimination. A more popular call to action button means more clicks, which means a higher conversion rate.

    Conversion Rate Analytics

    One measure of a call to action button’s success is how often it’s clicked versus how often it’s viewed. The resulting formula shows how popular it is when measured against the average ratio of clicks to views, providing an indicator of how to proceed. A failed call to action button can be filed away under Professional Embarrassments, a successful used as a template for further successes.

    Analytics can provide all sort of secondary data, too. Which links users follow to your website, how long they spend browsing, which pages they view; analytics can create detailed maps of online behavior which in turn form the basis of a lead.

    2Source: Youtube.com

    Step by Step Analytics

    It may not sound like fun to spend days poring over detailed reports of people ignoring your business, but not only is it necessary, it’ll pay dividends every time. Knowing when and why people are dropping out of the conversion whirlpool can provide a picture of flaws built into the process. If disproportionate numbers are leaving at a certain step, there’s probably something worth digging into. If another step sees high retention rates, that’s worth a look, too. You can always reverse-engineer accidental accomplishments into repeatable formulae.

    Converting a user into a customer may look like a torturous process to some when you lay it all out on paper, but the truth is that case to case, it mostly happens in a time frame no greater than a minute. People make snap decisions all the time about purchases of every size; what you need is to understand how and why they make the choices that they do.

  • The Best Things in Life are Free (Or at Least Self-recouping)

    Mise en place is the French art of preparing and stocking a kitchen for optimum performance. It’s an efficient use of space and time in service to greater productivity and creative freedom in the future. Businesses need the same exacting attention paid to the mechanics of their day-to-day running, and once that work is attended to, you’re free to innovate, tweak, and otherwise stretch your creative muscles.

    To that end, you owe it to yourself to consider monetizing your website. Below are a few ways to go about doing just that, but bear in mind that not every type of monetization suits every type of website. Read on to see which methods might work for you.

    1Source: The-sassy-spoon.com

    Advertising

    Your website is real estate. Domain names, server capacity, tech support, web design; there’s a lot of money tied up in getting a website running and then in maintaining and maintenancing it, to say nothing of expansion and reconfiguration. Any chance you get to order that space and to make it work for you is a chance worth taking. The best office is one that pays for itself, no?

    Banner ads, pop-ups, and other visual and audio advertisements are easy to integrate into existing website infrastructure. They’re a great way to monetize space on your website, and by hosting ads relevant to your users you can slice into your overhead without driving traffic away or compromising your brand image. Advertisers typically pay a flat monthly fee for a given amount of site space.

    Affiliate Marketing

    In affiliate marketing, you make an agreement with another site to drive traffic toward them. When their analytics log traffic incoming from your site to theirs, the data is recorded and applied toward a financial metric agreed upon by both parties. The means of pushing toward the client site is up to you, and it can be as splashy or as unobtrusive as you want. Choosing a partner whose company is relevant to your users but not in competition with your own business is crucial. If you’re selling handmade bass lures to professional fishermen, you probably don’t want to stump for Big Vinnie’s Hand-crafted Bass Lures right on your homepage.

    Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative practice. Most companies offer a small fee for all traffic sent their way while some offer percentages of profit garnered from purchases made by redirected users. If you keep affiliate integration organic and don’t overplay your hand, it can be a great way to make your website work for you. Go too far, though, and you’re going to look like a shill.

    2Source: lonny.com

    Pay Per Click

    Pay per click is the fire and forget of Internet marketing. You host an ad and as soon as a user clicks it, you get paid. The more clicks that come through your site, the more you make. While not as reliable as a traditional advertising payment model, pay per click boasts a formidable advantage in its ability to scale with increased traffic. If your site sees high volumes of visitors on a regular basis, pay per click could wind up being well worth your while.

    Mise en place is about intricacy and preparation, but it’s also about the freedom to cut loose and go a little nuts, knowing that you have a stable foundation to fall back on. Building up a solid advertising revenue stream gives you the freedom to un-knot your tie and get wild.

  • Get ‘em Through the Door: eMail Subject Lines to Increase Open Rates

    Let’s say you’re jumped while you’re passing by an alley. Muggers beat you up, take your wallet and phone, kick you in the ribs, and book it before you can so much as scream for help. You limp home and crawl into bed after a quick, confused call to the police. These things usually go unsolved, they tell you. Don’t expect much.

    Then the next morning, you wake to find the muggers chatting about box gardens and making you an omelette in your kitchenette. I mean, it’s touching, but it’s probably not going to change your opinion of them.

    You only get one chance to make a first impression, and it’s the same with email marketing. Sender and subject line are as close to a guaranteed read as you’re going to get, and they’re the only shot you have to hook a lead and draw them into the email.

    Here’s how you get a lead’s attention.

    Keywords

    A good subject line is tailored to its target audience. At t4me, we see hundreds of emails every month flooding into inboxes with no real direction or intent. Every subject line, every banner ad, every headline has a purpose: to get the consumer interested and to provoke a click, a read, a purchase, and to help it achieve that purpose you’ve got to make sure that it’s appealing to the people seeing it. News junkies want politics and world events, movie fiends want box office rankings and hot reviews, and marine biologists want to read about whales and kelp. You’re probably not chasing the marine biologist market, but the point stands. You’ve got to give people what they want in order to draw them into deeper engagement.

    captureSource: umminc.com

    Keywords should populate the subject line, but they should also be present throughout the body of the email or newsletter. These pieces of copy aren’t just sales patter, they’re an overture toward a relationship between reader and brand. Boosting the number of qualified opens your emails get is one of the easiest ways there is of giving your overall health as a business a shot in the arm.

    Urgency

    A sense of urgency strengthens a subject line by manufacturing a fear of missing out in the reader. Mentions of sales and promotions can draw interest, especially if a time frame is established. While it won’t do to bang the drum too hard, say by claiming lives are at stake, a little bit of incentive to act quickly is always good.

    2Source: forbes.com

    Brevity

    Brevity, as the Bard says, is the soul of wit. If you can’t communicate your email’s voice and personality in the space of a subject line, you aren’t trying hard enough. Success is subjective, but the best subject lines impart a sense of the person behind the copy, an image which makes readers much more likely to open an email and read through it. Try playing around with your copy and seeing what feels natural. There’s an element of gut instinct you’ll have to learn to trust.

    There’s no magical formula for boosting your open rate. Sometimes people will read what you write and sometimes you’ll wind up in the spam filter, and the truth is that most of the time you’ll never know the reason it fell out that way. What matters is giving your best effort to making that initial impression, and that once you see something working, you hammer the hell out of it and never stop making it better, testing each new tweak and change.

    Overall, the point here is that you want people to remember you as someone who’d make them an omelette, not some shady character hanging around in an alley.

  • The Biggest House Ever Abandoned: Why Some Websites Flourish While Others Flounder

    The Internet is more dead air than noise, a house of a trillion dusty, forgotten rooms that have long since lost the appeal that kept them brightly-lit and crowded, or which never had it in the first place. Sure, hubs like Amazon and Facebook are blinding points of light in that dark sea, but the truth is that almost every page of every site on the Internet is a tomb, a haunted house left abandoned and ignored. So what determines who gets traffic and who doesn’t, and how, if you see your site’s stats slipping or are having trouble attracting an audience, can you buck the trend?

    1Source: doubtfulnews.com

    Site Construction

    Is there anything to do on your site? If so, is it immediately clear how one might go about doing it? There should be nothing between users and your site’s functionality, and if there is, it could be part of the reason your traffic is suffering. Every step between navigating to a site and doing whatever that site ostensibly exists for is another chance for users to get bored, frustrated, or distracted and click away to something else.

    Information formatting is another crucial factor. If your site’s copy doesn’t flow, if it’s rendered in big, chunky blocks of text with nothing to break them up or differentiate them, people just won’t read it. You want a quick, tight paragraph leading into bullet points and interrupted only occasionally by additional paragraphs, and you want the whole thing to focus directly on the essentials.

    Marketing Outreach

    Chasing garbage leads is a great way to tank your traffic numbers. If you’re directing your marketing campaigns at fake accounts, or worse, at spamtraps and bots, then not only are you wasting your efforts, but you could be endangering your site. Bot traffic can flood servers and slow websites down until they run like molasses, which is guaranteed to drive real traffic far away. You’ve gotta advertise; outreach is a major part of fueling growth, but you’ve gotta be careful about how you do it.

    Deal selectively when buying leads. Find a merchant who’s accountable for their wares and transparent about their business practices and the frequency with which they scrub their lists for bots and other nuisances. Even if you’re paying more for less, knowing that you’re targeting your ads at actual flesh-and-blood human beings is worth it.2Source: abandonedexplorers.com

    Social Media

    An active social media presence is a necessity these days. Not only do you need to maintain a running account of promotions and company news, but you also need to engage with your customers and inject a little humanity into your public persona. That human connection is at the center of all advertisement, an implicit promise that at the end of the day, this is one person selling something to another, and being able to put a face and a voice to the experience helps users feel confident in the relationship.

    The best way to remain a warm, well-lit place for users to interact and engage is to make that human connection a part of your company’s ethos. Clean, simple business practices, a solid interface, and a winning personality draw traffic and stave off the haunted house syndrome that devours so many failed sites.

    3Source: mlkshk.com

  • None Shall Pass: Letting Customers Know Your Site Is Secure

    Security is a tenuous thing.

    1Source: lotr-wikia.com

    One slip is all it takes. Yahoo, Sony, and many other major companies, hell, even government agencies, have been hacked and their user info pillaged by hackers and handed over to the ravening hordes of Internet. Identity theft may not be a balrog of Morgoth from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but it’s the first thing on everyone’s minds as soon as they’re asked to do so much as log into a customer forum.

    Assuring your users that their data is safe with you when they use your website is crucial in preserving the bond of trust between you. No one, after all, wants to get dragged into the deep places of the earth by the metaphorical spirit of flame and darkness that is keylogging scams. Here are a few ways to let your users know they’re safe.

    Credentialing

    Some security companies offer inspections and, if the inspected company passes, credentials. Displaying these credentials reinforces your company’s image of security and responsibility, and the need to retain those credentials through subsequent inspections is a great motivator to keep security countermeasures and procedures ship-shape throughout the year.

    Pick a credentialing organization that doesn’t just throw passes out in exchange for its fee. The quality that comes with having to work to meet their standards is well worth the extra effort, and an extra outlay of cash. Bogus or laxly-scrutinized credentials will only hurt you and your customers in the long run, no matter how temptingly easy they are to acquire.

    2Source: Youtube.com

    User Authentication

    Redundant layers of protection make hackers’ jobs exponentially harder. Crummy passwords might be easy to crack, but obscure personal information is a much taller order. Have security questions tied to user login so that information about birthplaces, childhood friends, and distant relatives acts as a buffer around more easily accessible info like the names of one’s children, pets, and favorite sports teams.

    Two-factor authentication requires that users register a phone number to their account. When they log in, the site sends them a text message containing a code they’ll need to complete the login process. This means that unless an ID thief already possesses their victim’s phone or a way to read its contents, breaking into the account is much, much harder.

    3Source: adrenaline.uol.com.br

    Security Software

    Protect your site and your users with robust security programs like the suites offered by Bitdefender, ESET, and Vipre among others. Anti-theft software can detect suspicious logins, monitor the number of attempts someone makes to enter a password, lock access to accounts, and log user information. T4me, for example is one of the best-protected and most secure cloud networks on the Internet. Its multiple layers of security programs and authentication processes place it in a class apart from other traffic companies, as it’s the first such company to actively block spam traps, bots, and other forms of digital fraud.

    Imagine yourself as Gandalf, a lonely wizard facing down a towering demon, and the narrow bridge over Moria’s echoing depths as the security measures protecting your users. You have one job of material significance, which is to prevent an immortal and malevolent entity from steamrolling you and then devouring your helpless companions. You’d better do it right.

  • Full Digital Jacket: Online Advertising Boot Camp

    Do you know what pay per click means, soldier? Do you have a working understanding of contextual advertising? Do you even know how to detect an ad blocker, you maggot? No? Then you’d better drop and explain the difference between cost per action and revenue sharing affiliate marketing models! I want to see you sweat!

    Welcome to online advertising boot camp.untitled

    untitleduntitledSource: http://www.cineblog.it

    This Is My Ad: There Are Many Like It, But This One Is Mine!

    In traditional media, ad campaigns are set in stone according to broadcast and publication schedules. Advertisers buy space for their message and publishers integrate that message into their platform. Online advertising more or less retains the essence of the advertiser/publisher dynamic, but it weds that relationship to the fluidity and colossal reach of the Internet by allowing advertisers to purchase space on a much more flexible and immediate schedule. In addition, ad servers and ad affiliates further diversify the ways in which revenue and ad placement can be distributed.

    In 2012, Internet advertising generated over $36 billion in revenue. In 2013, that number rose to over $42 billion. It now eclipses advertising revenues for all of broadcast television. No commercial business can hope to compete online without engaging in Internet marketing, even with emerging ad regulations and freeware adblockers cutting down on revenue growth.capture

    captureSource: screenprism.com

    Shock and Awe: The Many Faces of Internet Advertisement

    Internet advertisement isn’t limited to a single media or distribution method. Email marketing, traditional filmed commercials attached to popular video players, radio spots integrated into Pandora and Spotify; advertising on the Internet demands range, and access to leads and traffic through companies like t4me. Still, all the breadth in the world means exactly squat when it comes time to make your audience sit down and pay attention. With the hyper-saturation of ads throughout the Internet, quality is more crucial than ever to standing out and making an impression.

    Email marketing allows for direct outreach to leads. With a snappy subject line and an enticing offer, you can draw consumers into reading a much larger body of copy and move them toward engagement and purchase. Affiliate marketing leverages voluntary ad hosting by “affiliate” sites, rewarding those sites monetarily for driving traffic through said ads. Sometimes the affiliates share in the profits generated by redirected shoppers’ purchases. Others they’re paid a flat fee for driving certain numbers to the advertised site.

    Contextual advertising is perhaps the most robust marketing tool currently on the market. It uses the information in leads from social media profiles, search histories, and other online ID repositories to tailor ads to a specific user. If the user spends time browsing cardigans, contextual advertising programs can start integrating ads for cardigans and other fall wear into their online browsing experience.3

    3Source: Youtube.com

    Live Fire: Getting a Campaign Assembled and Out the Door

    Don’t act just to act. There’s no prize for being the first one out of the trench, and spending money on a slapdash campaign is a good way to waste resources and tarnish your company’s reputation. What you want is a tactical operation, something designed from the ground up to reach and intrigue a target group for whom you’ve got solid leads. Ad agencies help businesses assemble coherent and targeted campaigns while ad servers track the effects of those campaigns and provide useful data to aid in future refinements. It’s a machine built to improve itself, and with attention and hard work, there’s no limit to what it can accomplish.

    Alright, maggots! That’s enough for your first day! Lights out!