Web.com Group Stock Price Up 8.1% Following Strong Earnings (WWWW)

Web.com Group (NASDAQ:WWWW) rose 8.1% during mid-day trading on Friday after the company announced better than expected quarterly earnings, MarketBeat Ratings reports. The company traded as high as $25.85 and last traded at $24.96, with a volume of 1,030,247 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $23.08.

The company reported $0.60 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.57 by $0.03. The firm had revenue of $135.70 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $138.08 million.

WWWW has been the subject of a number of research reports. Deutsche Bank boosted their price objective on Web.com Group from $28.00 to $30.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a report on Friday. FBR & Co. upped their price target on Web.com Group from $25.00 to $32.00 and gave the stock an "outperform" rating in a report on Friday. Piper Jaffray reiterated an "overweight" rating and set a $32.00 price objective on shares of Web.com Group in a research note on Wednesday. B. Riley restated a "buy" rating and issued a $30.00 price target on shares of Web.com Group in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, RBC Capital reiterated a "sector perform" rating and issued a $20.00 price objective on shares of Web.com Group in a report on Monday, July 27th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have issued a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the stock. The company currently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average tar get price of $25.92.

The company's 50-day moving average is $23.52 and its 200-day moving average is $20.31. The firm's market cap is $1.27 billion.

Web.com Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:WWWW) provides a range of Internet services to small businesses. The Company offers Domain Name Registration and Services, Do-It-For-Me Web Solutions, Do-It-Yourself Web Solutions and Online Marketing Services. It offers Domain Name Registration and Services, such as domain name registration, transfers, renewals, expiration protection and privacy services. It offers Do-It-For-Me (DIFM) Web Solutions, such as custom Website, Ignite, Facebook Boost by Web.com and eCommerce. It offers Do-It-Yourself Web Solutions, such as Website building and marketing solutions. It offers Online Marketing Services, such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing, Leads by Web and renovation experts. Web.com offers small businesses subscription-based solutions, such as domains, hosting, Website design and management, search engine optimization, online marketing campaigns, local sales leads, social media, mobile products and eCommerce solutions.

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Source: Web.com Group Stock Price Up 8.1% Following Strong Earnings (WWWW)

Yardley Borough Council approves new website and marketing logo, but not everyone is singing its praises

YARDLEY BOROUGH >> After considerable discussion, the borough council, in a 4-2 vote, approved a new logo for the town's digital properties and marketing projects.

The new borough website is scheduled to debut soon and when it does the new logo will be on it.

Councilmember Jef Buehler, head of the Yardley Borough Business Enhancement Team (BET), made the motion, which was seconded by councilmember Uri Feiner, also a BET member.

Voting in favor of the new logo were Bryon Marshall, Mike Ruttle, Buehler and Feiner. Voting no were council vice president Katherine Cadwallader and councilmember Rich Wayne. Council president Joe Hunter was absent.

"While the logo is essentially the name, Yardley, the elongated and sweeping 'Y' is symbolic and representative of three of the major defining aspects of the borough – the canal, the towpath and the river that relate to the history of the borough and its present," explained Buehler.

Buehler said that hypothetically, the logo could be used on posters and any kind of social media that the borough has a presence on -- both current or in the future.

"There is no specific plan for how it gets rolled out," he said. "It's just going to be used as needed moving forward. "

The logo will be an integral part of the borough's new website, now under development by Flood Zone Media, which is based at the Yardley Grist Mill.

"Flood Zone Media has a national profile for branding, marketing and website design," Buehler said. "They agreed to create the logo and the core website at a substantial discount of normal commercial rates."

After r eviewing a variety of draft logo versions and much discussion of the design with professionals at Flood Zone Media, Feiner and Buehler agreed that the logo presented to council haa clarity, aesthetics and scalability. Continued...

Marshall asked if the logo would supplant the existing icon of borough hall, which is used on borough letterhead and police cars.

Buehler and Feiner explained that the new logo would be supplemental to the existing icon, which is a line drawing of the borough hall.

Feiner explained that the existing icon cannot be used because "it is not a scalable graphic and it is not professionally done ... It may not be the best logo," he said of the new one, "but it's better than what we've got. And it's suitable for our digital assets," he continued.

"I would rather see the current logo used consistently on borough properties -- be it Twitter, Facebook or the website," said Wayne. "This is good for business enhancement, but I don't think it should replace the logo we have as the primary logo," he noted, adding, "I don't like it at all."

Wayne questioned when the new borough website will be ready and what will be used on the homepage. He said tha t should be the guide of what is used for other electronic communication.

Buehler said the borough hall logo does not exist as a digital asset. "It is simply a photo copy and a scan," he said. "There is no actual original design of this logo. It's just used for print purposes."

Feiner added if there was an official logo, there would be artist drawings and proofs that could be used in various sizes. "We looked for this," he said. "There is no logo."

Cadwallader responded, "The logo we have on the letterhead is also on uniforms and on some of the police cars. It's not 'nowhere?'" she asked.

Wayne prodded, "Why didn't we do an electronic version of the logo? You're telling me a graphic designer can't take what's there and redesign it in digital form?"

Cadwallader interjected, "It could be very confusing to have two separate logos out there." Continued...

Ruttle attempted to find some common ground.

"I like our borough hall on our letterhead and our cars. I'd like to preserve that. I think it's classy. It reminds me of logos I have seen on law firms. But, I also see the value in having something like Jef and Uri are proposing here - a marketing device - something we would be able to use immediately…We need to do this now or soon.

"We could work on converting the letterhead logo into a digital form in the future," Ruttle suggested. "There is no reason why we can't pursue that…What we're trying to do is get the website up and running."

Cadwallader responded, "In my point of view, getting the website up and running and this logo are not the same thing at all. Are we holding up the website because of the logo?"

Feiner said, "Not proceeding at this time would mean it would hold up the website."

Cadwallader responded, "I don't personally like this logo. There is nothing distinc tly Yardley about it. "

She asked how the proposed logo would be utilized other than on the website.

"The primary purpose of the website is to be - in my view - the voice of the borough and the borough government," she said. "I certainly think we should promote business, but that is another purpose of the website."

Buehler said the use would be digital in nature, placed on the website and used as an icon for social media presence. The logo "would also be used to brand the borough linking it back to the website and for projects such as the Yardley Borough Gift Card program."

Cadwallader said, "I realize we have different things, but part of the function of our Facebook page and our Twitter page is to inform the public on certain things that are happening -- Afton Avenue is closed or there is a big tree down. That is a government function and not a business function or promotional function. I see that it could be confusing to people." Continue d...

YARDLEY BOROUGH >> After considerable discussion, the borough council, in a 4-2 vote, approved a new logo for the town's digital properties and marketing projects.

The new borough website is scheduled to debut soon and when it does the new logo will be on it.

Councilmember Jef Buehler, head of the Yardley Borough Business Enhancement Team (BET), made the motion, which was seconded by councilmember Uri Feiner, also a BET member.

Voting in favor of the new logo were Bryon Marshall, Mike Ruttle, Buehler and Feiner. Voting no were council vice president Katherine Cadwallader and councilmember Rich Wayne. Council president Joe Hunter was absent.

"While the logo is essentially the name, Yardley, the elongated and sweeping 'Y' is symbolic and representative of three of the major defining aspects of the borough – the canal, the towpath and the river that relate to the history of the borough and its present," explained Buehler.

Buehler said that hypothetically, the logo could be used on posters and any kind of social media that the borough has a presence on -- both current or in the future.

"There is no specific plan for how it gets rolled out," he said. "It's just going to be used as needed moving forward. "

The logo will be an integral part of the borough's new website, now under development by Flood Zone Media, which is based at the Yardley Grist Mill.

"Flood Zone Media has a national profile for branding, marketing and website design," Buehler said. "They agreed to create the logo and the core website at a substantial discount of normal commercial rates."

After reviewing a variety of draft logo versions and much discussion of the design with professionals at Flood Zone Media, Feiner and Buehler agreed that the logo presented to council haa clarity, aesthetics and scalability.

Marshall asked if the logo would supplant the existing icon of borough hall, which is used on b orough letterhead and police cars.

Buehler and Feiner explained that the new logo would be supplemental to the existing icon, which is a line drawing of the borough hall.

Feiner explained that the existing icon cannot be used because "it is not a scalable graphic and it is not professionally done ... It may not be the best logo," he said of the new one, "but it's better than what we've got. And it's suitable for our digital assets," he continued.

"I would rather see the current logo used consistently on borough properties -- be it Twitter, Facebook or the website," said Wayne. "This is good for business enhancement, but I don't think it should replace the logo we have as the primary logo," he noted, adding, "I don't like it at all."

Wayne questioned when the new borough website will be ready and what will be used on the homepage. He said that should be the guide of what is used for other electronic communication.

Buehler sa id the borough hall logo does not exist as a digital asset. "It is simply a photo copy and a scan," he said. "There is no actual original design of this logo. It's just used for print purposes."

Feiner added if there was an official logo, there would be artist drawings and proofs that could be used in various sizes. "We looked for this," he said. "There is no logo."

Cadwallader responded, "The logo we have on the letterhead is also on uniforms and on some of the police cars. It's not 'nowhere?'" she asked.

Wayne prodded, "Why didn't we do an electronic version of the logo? You're telling me a graphic designer can't take what's there and redesign it in digital form?"

Cadwallader interjected, "It could be very confusing to have two separate logos out there."

Ruttle attempted to find some common ground.

"I like our borough hall on our letterhead and our cars. I'd like to preserve that. I think it's cl assy. It reminds me of logos I have seen on law firms. But, I also see the value in having something like Jef and Uri are proposing here - a marketing device - something we would be able to use immediately…We need to do this now or soon.

"We could work on converting the letterhead logo into a digital form in the future," Ruttle suggested. "There is no reason why we can't pursue that…What we're trying to do is get the website up and running."

Cadwallader responded, "In my point of view, getting the website up and running and this logo are not the same thing at all. Are we holding up the website because of the logo?"

Feiner said, "Not proceeding at this time would mean it would hold up the website."

Cadwallader responded, "I don't personally like this logo. There is nothing distinctly Yardley about it. "

She asked how the proposed logo would be utilized other than on the website.

"The primary purpose of the website is to be - in my view - the voice of the borough and the borough government," she said. "I certainly think we should promote business, but that is another purpose of the website."

Buehler said the use would be digital in nature, placed on the website and used as an icon for social media presence. The logo "would also be used to brand the borough linking it back to the website and for projects such as the Yardley Borough Gift Card program."

Cadwallader said, "I realize we have different things, but part of the function of our Facebook page and our Twitter page is to inform the public on certain things that are happening -- Afton Avenue is closed or there is a big tree down. That is a government function and not a business function or promotional function. I see that it could be confusing to people."

Feiner said, "What we're all trying to do here is increase the quality of our communication."

He noted that considering the borough's small pop ulation, it is not good to have a marketing site like bigger municipalities have. He said in Yardley's case it is good to have one site to address all of the basic uses."

Marshall said, "I very much support the business community and all the things that have been occurring. BET has moved us in many fashions and moved us forward…I see no reason to not move forward with the logo…It's not going in granite. It is not going to be permanent."

Cadwallader said the matter should be revisited in three to six months. "Anytime you do something new, people are going to come up with ideas that nobody thought of."

Wayne said simply he does not like the logo. "I base my decision by graphic designers I know," he said. "All five said they can't stand this."

Source: Yardley Borough Council approves new website and marketing logo, but not everyone is singing its praises

Essentials of digital media marketing

By Deepankar Biswas

"The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing"

It seems simple, but especially when you blend technology and glance towards digital marketing, it's quite the reverse.

With rapidly evolving technologies in the area of mobility, the Internet, wearables, Internet of Things etc., tech is now becoming the basis of how a digital marketing professional (let's call it our Digital Superman) would plan, execute and measure his campaigns.

Whichever way we look at it, there are a few essential elements, which should be the basic ingredients of a successful digital media campaign.

They are "Being Customer Centric", "The Big Picture", "Presence", "A/B Testing" and "Measurement".

The first and foremost is the how focused are we on the "customer / user", to whom the campaign is directed. She/he is the key constituent in the entire campaign and in most cases, will be the cause of celebration or salvage at the end of the campaign.

It's very i mportant to observe, how much attention do we pay to this very essential element. Some key questions, we may want to ask ourselves :

a) Have we defined the customer well? b) Do we know what we want from him/her? c) Do we know a possible behavior? d) Is there a one-liner to which this customer would smile at? e) Where can she / he be best reached - Mobile? f) How is the persona - Gamer? / Socially active/ App freak?

Therefore, "Being Customer Centric" is the first essential that one should look at, before taking the next step.

These customers may be connected via various devices, such as desktop, a laptop, mobile, smart watch or a tablet. They could be searching, browsing, playing a game, watching videos, chatting, interacting or contributing etc.

To reach out to these customers you may need to go through different digital channels, Ad-Exchanges, Ad-Networks, DSPs, DMPs, SSPs or Cross-Channel Services. Quite a handful of terms and they don't end here.

It 's just the beginning. There are many more, which can make this article look like a third year engineering textbook.

We should not forget, that technology is a just a means to the digital marketing end. It really becomes important to have a sound grasp of the "big picture" when it comes to planning your campaign. It helps you put in the right messaging, select the right ad channels (mobile, search, social, display, video etc.), choose the right media formats, preparing better copies, assigning the right bids, and choosing your budget wisely. Our digital superman must understand this essential as a part of his planning exercise, before taking on to execution of a campaign.

With the first two essentials, our digital superman has got some speed now and we are well placed in our planning. Probably now, we are able to comprehend and identify our customer in detail as well. We also know the possible paths by which we can meet him. The immediate next question would be - "how ar e we presenting ourselves".

This forms our next essential - "Presence". Is our website having the "right" content? Are we ranked well when someone searches for us, either on the web or even in the app store (if we are marketing an app)? Is our landing page sensible? Have we spent some good thinking time on building our credibility / Do we have some social proof?

These questions typically help you answer "Presence". Our digital superman will fall flat if the presence is poor and the campaign won't even budge an inch. Before we ask the copyrighters to start preparing copies, it's extremely necessary to get the presence worked up. It may need multiple stakeholders to participate but it's worth the effort.

After getting the first three essentials in order, our superman starts setting up and executing the campaign. Channels are setup, copies and bids are defined, and budgets are allocated. It should work and customers should throng. In some cases, they do, but in most c ases, our next essential is required and that is "A/B Testing".

It's a practice of evaluating two or multiple versions of an entity in your campaign. It could be the channel, copy, keywords, lander, URLs, messaging, color, button size, margins, position etc. Typically, after some days of running the campaign, it's prudent to setup an A/B. In some cases, A/B could be setup from day one itself. The data from A/B helps you get closer to your customer, understand his behavioral trend, and get the objectives fulfilled faster.

So, we are probably closer to a good campaign and returns? A bit early when we say this, because, we have not measured it yet. Our superman will be a true sky-flier if he gets a handle on the measurement of this campaign in near real time.

Yes. That's our last and the most important essential. "Measurement". What all do we measure? Where all do we measure? Can we do it real time? Which metrics are important? Which are the right signals?

These questions help you setup your measurement strategy. Right from setting up the pillars for visitor / app analytics, heatmap analysis and seeding in tools for optimization opportunities and business intelligence, it makes the campaign more intelligent, and measurable by all the stakeholders. Starting with our superman who runs the campaign, till the bosses of the brand, all get their own actionable view.

The key takeaway when we work on our essentials are, to be mindful and aware that all what we are doing is customer centric and needs to be measured, even if we think we fly the fastest.

Digital Marketing is a rapidly evolving industry and probably as you read this article, some new terms must have joined the party. As an analogy, focus on the nucleus, the rest will fall in place.

(Deepankar Biswas is CEO, Co-Founder of Offergrid)

Source: Essentials of digital media marketing

Is your online marketing scattergun or on target?

One of my favourite clients owns a well-established restaurant.  However, despite their considerable restaurant experience, they have found themselves requiring a hefty amount of marketing assistance to appeal to newer audiences.

When I came along, their menu of promotional tactics was something of a - dare I say, dog's breakfast.

Yes, they'd invested in many of the right areas – publicity, website, Facebook marketing and so on.  The problem was that the investment wasn't being allocated correctly and the execution was poor.

They had spent way too much on publicity, had their radio ads on the wrong station and had hired an amateurish digital marketer.

So by the time I got to them, it really was a case of getting their all their marketing ducks lined up prior to firing a shot at their market.

Urgent marketing action required

 

The problem was, their previous promotions has failed them so badly, they needed some promotional hooks out there whilst we got their house in order.

In marketing terms, this is a bit like actors going on stage with the previous play's scenery.  The lines come out but they don't make a lot of sense.

While some of these unplanned tactics can make a difference, a good digital marketer knows that it will never be as good as a campaign that is carefully thought out, prepared and executed.

Don't be too trigger-happy

A promotional message needs to be carefully thought out with care taken to ensure it reaches all of your available market prior to rolling out the next one.

One of the side effects of having so much direct access to our digital communications tools is that few smaller businesses resist the temptation to create yet another message on, say, Facebook when it hasn't been properly rolled out to markets in other ways such as the website, email and so on.

 For my client, in a perfect world, a full marketing plan would have been written for the year.  However, the need for quick results meant skipping straight to the promotional plan.

 As a guide, here's how it should have evolved. 

1. Objectives

In short, what we are trying to achieve, who are we pitching to and what is the desired result.  How will you 'position' your product in the marketplace, e.g. is it discount, middle, premium etc

 

2. Budget

 

Many have the budget allocated much later in the planning stages but by setting it out upfront, it helps eliminate promotional tactics that are financially out of reach.

3. Tactic selection

 

Based on experience and an evaluation of available means, create a wish list of promotional tactics and narrow it down to be the most practical and affordable within the period of time.

 

4. Creative Development

 

Identify the core messages you wish to convey and the 'image' you want for your brand.  Create a plan for the various creative components you need, who is going to create them and when.

5. Integration

 

How will different promotional tactics dovetail into others?   For example, a blog piece can be published on your website and onto third party websites, be emailed to your list and promoted via social media.

6. Action plan

 

Once tactics have been identified and creative put in place, create a list of higher level actions broken down into tasks, responsibilities and deadlines.

7. Calendar of promotional activities

 

Draw up your calendar of what promotional pieces go out at different times during the year.  Given the style and nature of social media, this can drill right down to daily planning – even setting the specific time it should be distributed.

8. Other Preparation

 

What other aspects need to be prepared?  For example, is your website in good enough shape to withstand the constant addition of different promotional and informational messages?  Do you have enough resources to co-ordinate the various requirements of your campaign?

9. Execute

Once all is in place, you can start to roll out each aspect of your promotional campaign. 

10. Monitor and improve

 

None of your promotional campaign can afford to be 'set and forget' these days.  Each component needs to be monitored to ensure effectiveness in converting to sales.  The beauty of digital media is that it can be changed quickly if required.

11. Review and Start Over

 

It's important to set an end point for your campaign so as to properly assess its importance and collate lessons for future campaigns.  You will have learnt a lot along the way so it's a great idea to take stock of how different tactics stacked up against their objectives and identify how each can be improved or dispensed with altogether.

There will be many variations on this approach but these steps provide a good basis for most smaller businesses.  Of course, if you don't have the skills or time to create such a plan, there are plenty of affordable providers ready and willing to assist.

 Now, all I need is to manage to get some time out from executing my client's immediate plan to go back and get their fundamental planning in place.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.

 

Source: Is your online marketing scattergun or on target?

Web personalizer Qubit partners with Apptimize to add mobile apps to its repertoire

[Are you a growth marketer? Do you want to know what it takes to be one? Join us at GrowthBeat, on August 17-18 in San Francisco. Thought leaders from the biggest brands and most disruptive companies will share winning growth strategies on the most pressing challenges marketing leaders face today.]

Qubit, which helps personalize websites and mobile websites, is today getting into apps.

The company is announcing a new partnership with Apptimize, a provider of optimization tools for native apps, to create Qubit Mobile. The new service brings app data and targeting to Qubit's web-oriented profiles and personalization, allowing a retailer to provide more focused customer experiences across platforms.

Qubit is oriented around first-party data of identified, logged-in customers for such companies as Staples or Lenovo. It also maintains data on anonymous, unlogged-in users, adding the behavior to the profile of a known user once it's clear it's the same person.

Previously, the London-based company had focused only on desktop/laptop websites or mobile websites, including web-based HTML5 apps. This data helps retailers pinpoint sales, products, and other personalized experiences to their known customers with the intention of increasing sales and keeping customers coming back.

Apptimize, which says it has access to more than a billion users' mobile devices, will collect the native app data and add it to the web-oriented profiles in Qubit's Visitor Cloud. The Menlo Park, California-based Apptimize provides the ability for retailers to test alternatives, segment users, and target them with messages or product info in the app. Its Visual Editor allows marketers to make app-level changes for a given segment of users.

Above: A Qubit screen that now includes app data.

Imagine you're searching for a Ninja Turtles T-shirt on Google, Qubit CEO and founder Graham Cooke suggested to me. You find the TeeTurtle site on your desktop and, because you're a frequent customer, you log into the retailer's site.

Then you have to go out, so later you resume your visit by logging into the site on the mobile Web browser on your smartphone. When you return home, you pick up your tablet, and, when you visit and log into the TeeTurtle website, it suggests its app might be more useful. So you download the app and log in there as well.

Check out VB's research Mobile marketing automation: How the most successful apps drive massive engagement and monetization$499 on VB Insight, or free with your martech subscription

For this Qubit-enhanced retailer, the loyal and logged-in TeeTurtle customer will now see consistent experiences across apps as well as sites. In practice, of course, a retailer might cross-market to a logged-in user on other cooperating sites or apps.

I asked Cooke whether a content management system couldn't handle that kind of consistent experience for a logged-in user. He said that Qubit, which integrates with CMSs, offers "50 to 60 times the info a CMS is getting" and provides more effective A/B testing and personalization across devices.

Cooke acknowledged that there are tons of cross-device personalization technologies out there, especially for logged-in users, but he pointed in particular to Adobe Marketing Cloud as the competitor they frequently face. By contrast, he said, Qubit offers a "lightweight, agile solution."

Qubit's consolidated insight and personalisation platform empowers the 21st century marketer 
to turn more visitors into customers on ecommerce websites. Our platform helps you identify the highest value groups of visitors on your ... read more »

Apptimize is the most powerful mobile A/B testing solution for iOS and Android. With the Visual Apptimizer (a what-you-see-is-what-you-get visual editor) and a codeless installation process, Apptimize empowers product managers to exper... read more »

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Source: Web personalizer Qubit partners with Apptimize to add mobile apps to its repertoire

10 Amazing Affiliate Marketing Blogs

Affiliate marketing isn't a new trend. It's been around for years. In fact, Amazon Associates, which is one of the first online affiliate marketing programs, has been in use since 1996. However, with advances in technology like the rise of mobile devices, affiliate marketing is evolving extremely quickly.

This means that if you haven't considered affiliate marketing in the past, it may be time to give it another look.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Image Source: Shutterstock

Before we go any further, what exactly is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way for a blogger or anyone involved in online marketing to make money by promoting products and services in exchange for a commission from the sales or leads they drive. This is usually accomplished when a merchant or web advertiser places a banner ad, button, or link onto a website site. The webmaster will be compensated when a visitor clicks on that link or makes a purchase through that link.

The Pros of Affiliate of Marketing

While making some additional income sound great to most of us, affiliate marketing does present some appealing benefits.

It's quick and easy to set-up. Find an affiliate program that fits within your niche, sign-up, and paste the tracking code onto your site. That's not to say it doesn't involve any sort of effort, however.

You don't need to be a marketer. Don't worry if you don't have a marketing background. Most programs provide you with all the materials and handle all of the marketing and transactions.

Reach a larger audience. Affiliate programs already come equipped with a built-in audience.

Small investment. You don't need to purchase an inventory and most programs are free to join.

Steady income. Once you understand affiliate marketing you can earn a steady income as you have an internet connection. Best of all? It's something that you can do on the side.

The Cons of Affiliate Marketing

That's not to say that are some problems with affiliate marketing. And here are some of the most common concerns.

You're not in charge. Since the program is running the show, you really have no control of the offers and products or services.

High commission. Since affiliate marketing involves a middleman, they get a cut of the money you make.

Lots of competition. There hundreds, if not thousands, of affiliates. This means that it can be difficult to stand out from everyone and you'll be competing against seasoned marketers.

Pay on sale. You could drive a ton of traffic to the merchant's site, but you only get paid when a sale is completed. Even worse, if the merchant loses a sale because of a bad offer, you still miss out on the sale.

Scams. There are a lot of fraudulent affiliate programs out there. So you need to be careful when choosing a merchant.

If you're still interested in affiliate marketing, you may want to check out the advice from the following ten bloggers, in no particular order. Each of them have years of experience and success with affiliate marketing, so you can definitely learn a thing or two from them.

Disclaimer: These bloggers are not affiliated with Search Engine Journal.

In 2007, life was pretty good for Pat Flynn. He was a senior drafter in a Bay Area architecture firm, a job that he loved. When the economy slowed in 2008, Pat was laid off and forced to think of another way to make a living. He took his experience of studying for the LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – and launched a blog (GreenExamAcademy.com) that shared his study notes. This lead Pat to publish his first e-book, which resulted in $8,000 of income during its first month. Since then Pat has launched the Smart Passive Income Blog and the popular Smart Passive Podcast.

Pat believes that affiliates, and businesses as a whole, should be both ethical and transparent. This means that Pat only recommends products that he's passionate and familiar about. He also uses four concepts when working with affiliate networks: provide massive value, earn massive trust, learn and understand the needs and wants of your followers, and lead and teach by example.

John Chow has had one interesting journey. At the age of seven he moved from China to Canada, survived the dot-com crash, launched TechZone in 2008, and started his first blog in 2005. By 2008, John figured out how to monetize his blog which went from a monthly income of $353 to $300,000 annually.

Today, John pretty much blogs about how you can make money from blogs. He's also recognized as a leading authority figure, a best-selling author on Amazon, and founder of TTZ Media, Inc.

John's success can attributed to teaming up with the right affiliate programs and staying on top of the services that can help you monetize your blog. For example, in 2007 he made approximately $3,800 by writing reviews through ReviewMe. In 2012, he joined MOBE and became their biggest affiliate after only six months.

Shoemoney was founded by Jeremy Shoemaker back in 2003, but Jeremy had already proven to be an innovative businessman. While he was attending Western Illinois University, he started his first business which sold Macintosh games, which was followed by NextPimp.com. By 2006, he was named the Best Affiliate Marketing Blog by a little publication called Search Engine Journal. In 2007, Jeremy teamed up with David Dellanave to start the eBay affiliate service AuctionAds – which was named the "eBay Most Innovative Application-Buyer" at the 6th annual eBay Developers Conference.

According to SEJ founder Loren Baker,

"Shoemoney has taken affiliate marketing to the next level by publishing his real life experiences on his Shoemoney blog and his Webmasterradio.fm Show, Net Income. He's become the unofficial talking head of affiliate marketing, arbitrage, and monetization among the search community and at the same time developed a business around it."

Matthew Woodward began his career at the age of thirteen when he started reviewing games for a site NintendoPhiles. This lead to Matthew launching a web-based community where people could share demos of their games. After a stint as the head of online marketing for a large distributor in Europe, Matthew went into business for himself to develop and rank websites. His blog has since been recognized by the following: HubSpot Top 5 Internet Marketing Blog March 2015, Affiliate Summit Best Affiliate Blog 2013, Technorati Top 100 Business Blog July 2013, and The Best Of Search Engine Journal 2012.

Matthew's blog provides quality advice, tutorials, and case studies based on his experience with online and affiliate marketing that can help you achieve your goals, as opposed to just sharing the offers that bring in the highest commissions.

After her son suffered a massive pediatric stroke in 1998, Rae Hoffman founded a non-profit website that served as a support group for parents and families of pediatric stroke survivors. In 2001 Rae discovered affiliate marketing as way to support the site. And, she's been involved with affiliate marketing ever since. Today Rae, also commonly known as Sugarrae, is one of the leading figures in affiliate branding and is co-founder/CEO of the SEO/PPC agency PushFire.

With her Sugarrae blog, Rae is now showing others how to make money online legitimately as a way to give back to the industry. If you're looking for some get rich quick schemes, you should look elsewhere.

Luke Kling started blogging in 2004 and is now the Affiliate Manager for PeerFly, Inc. PeerFly is an affiliate ad network that uses custom-built software. His blog is separate from PeerFly, Inc. but it still provides more than enough advice for affiliate marketers. For example, Luke has created The Affiliate Marketing Guide that shares tips on getting started and how to successfully run marketing campaigns on Facebook.

What's appealing about Luke's blog is that he discusses how you can make money online by selling shirts to capturing the attention of your site's visitors through tools like Engagifire.

Having been involved with affiliate marketing since 1997, Shawn Collins is one of the most influential minds in the industry. During his career, Shawn co-founded the Affiliate Summit, is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine, host of the 7 Minutes in Affiliate Heaven show, and a best-selling author.

Shawn's Affiliate Marketing Blog provides the latest industry news and advice on how to make money online. Like many other bloggers on this list, Shawn is honest in saying that you won't get rich through affiliate marketing, but you can make a little extra cash on the side. He also only endorses the products and services that he uses himself, so you can rest assured that these are quality products/services.

Martin Osborn, better known as Finch, is a high school dropout who discovered affiliate marketing in early 2009 while employed as a web developer. Within a week he was making more than £1000 per day and decided to quit his day job. He hasn't looked back since.

Finch Sells is a great resource if you're new to affiliate marketing, since Finch describes how he got started with affiliate marketing, explains how the industry is segmented and provides advice on how you can begin in an easy-to-understand and comical way. He also provides a priceless Survival Kit and a list of resources that ranges from blogs to events to tools.

Following his graduation from Georgia Tech in 2007 and stuck in a cubicle, Charles gave internet marketing a chance. However, after learning the hard way, Charles stumbled into affiliate marketing.

After a few months, Charles was able to convert $4,000 into $1,000,000+ in profit. Of course, there were some hiccups along the way. Charles launched 14 unsuccessful campaigns and lost $4,000 before he found success. What makes Charles unique is he's open about his failures and uses that to help advise anyone interested in affiliate marketing. Not only does his blog offer affiliate and marketing tips, Charles also shares lifestyle and career advice.

Missy Ward has been involved with affiliate marketing since 1999 and co-founded Affiliate Summit with Shawn Collins in 2003 on a mere $400 investment. Affiliate Summit is now a multi-million dollar company that produces conferences, tradeshows, FeedFront Magazine, GeekCast.fm, and AffStat.com. Missy is also the co-founder of itsaWAHMthing.com, founder of AffiliateMarketersGiveBack.com and is in charge of a number of her own niche affiliate websites.

Her blog offers practical advice to affiliate marketers, such as 5 Tips to Successful Affiliate Recruiting Emails, where she shares what she has learned from personal experience.

Are you an affiliate marketers? If so, which blogs do you turn to for advice?

Featured Image: Shutterstock

Source: 10 Amazing Affiliate Marketing Blogs

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Source: internet marketing

Mazda Singapore’s website gets hacked

Mazda Singapore's website, under the Eurokars Group, was hacked yesterday morning around 9 am by Turkish-based group Ayyildiz Ti. The Mazda website was taken over by the hacker's logo and message on the site.

In a conversation with Marketing, a spokesperson from Eurokars Group said that so far there are no signs of customer data being compromised and that is the brands main concern at this point. Customer data on the site is accumulated through various means such as booking Mazda test drives by providing information such as their names, addresses, mobile numbers and email addresses.

He explained while some customers have expressed concerns regarding the hack, this was largely because of the newspaper reports. He added that when contacted, the customer service teams from Mazda have been actively assuring customers of their data not being breached.

When asked if online security measures have been strengthened, the spokesperson said there are currently necessary measures put in place. He also added that police investigations are underway.

In today's digital world, hacking is no new phenomenon. Over the recent years, several high profile brands such as Burger King, Apple, Twitter and many others being hacked.

In an earlier article on the issue of hacking, CEO of Reading Room, Margaret Manning said that no brand, however high the profile, is completely safe from the multifarious threats out there – technological, viral, physical, human.

"It is always difficult to protect against the human piece, because it's almost impossible to predict. That's why it is even more imperative for brands and organisations to get the basics right, and prioritise the security of their site. The alternative could be a very expensive repair bill," said Manning.

Meanwhile, Ryan Lim, founder of QED Consulting also told Marketing in an earlier interview that marketers must learn to defend their brands' key digital communication assets. While digital marketers are not the ones who directly implement security measures, they still need to be aware of the potential threats and impact to their business when engaging in digital marketing activities.

Read also:When hacking does your brand a favour10 tips to handle hacking

Source: Mazda Singapore's website gets hacked

How you can utilize internet for your business marketing?

Details WhaTech Channel: Marketing Blog Published on Thursday, 23 July 2015 16:19 Submitted by Jay Patel News from: Vrinsoft Technology Page views: Not Yet Available

Imitating the Internet Marketing plans of others is not a worth. There are many ways to attract customers through the internet. The marketing professionals are just required to know that which way of internet marketing is for them. Refer the different ways of internet marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

Pay Per Click (PPC):

In this marketing strategy, businesses run PPC campaigns and target the keywords. The advertisers have to pay a bid for each time an ad is clicked.

Business owners can see instant results for this marketing strategy with compare to others. This strategy is worth because you advert yourself when the users are in a search of your products and services.

It is a best marketing strategy for the eCommerce stores.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

You need to hire SEO professional who deliberately organizes your website in a way that improve the search engine results of your site. This strategy is time consuming.

You can get organic traffic and leads. Make your business visible with the top most rankings on search engine.

Many activities are monitored under the SEO approach. This is not for the instant results.

You at least have to wait for minimum 9 months for the best outcomes. Content marketing is also most effective for the SEO.

Informative content optimization can leave a positive impact on the rankings.

Social Media Optimization (SMO):

Managing social media accounts or business pages is an ideal way to put your business in front of the customers. People now interact with the world though their social media accounts.

They search their needs in their accounts. Even social media platforms allow businesses a paid advertisement.

The regular posting of business pages with the interesting and informative blog links, photos and video upload, announcing the discount offers, introducing new products or services, etc. results into the increased traffic.

Online Advertising:

You can promote your business in other website by paying some amount to them. Banner ads fall below in this category.

About Vrinsoft Technology:

Consult Vrinsofts.com and experience the supreme services of website designing and development, mobile app development, internet marketing, app store optimization, etc.

For more information:

This news was posted by a Free member of WhaTech. Re-new membership to activate links now.

www.vrinsofts.com/internet-marketing-services.html

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Source: How you can utilize internet for your business marketing?

Impossible Marketing expanded to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Source: Impossible Marketing expanded to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

6 Local Marketing Lessons Learned At Comic-Con

Get the latest news in local search marketing each week.

Excelsior, fellow local search fans! I was lucky enough to attend Comic-Con in San Diego a few weeks ago. About half of the massive convention center hall was populated by toy and comics vendors, so the room was full of local businesses.

If you've read any of my past columns here, you know I'm pretty obsessed with local SEO — so, as I walked the massive convention center floor, I couldn't turn off my marketing brain.

Now, the comic book geeks out there are thinking, "But Greg, comics sell online, so it's just e-commerce." But that's the wrong way to look at things. Every one of these vendors has an actual physical location where they do business with customers. Many of the vendors we talked to were based in southern California, but there were vendors from all over the country.

The big movie studios spent tons of money on their marketing efforts, but the comics vendors almost didn't seem to care. I couldn't even count the number of vendors that didn't have a URL or phone number on their signs.

As I cringed time and time again at the marketing mistakes and huge missed opportunities, the post you're reading right now began to take shape.

These comic book vendors were marketing to a captive audience — and an audience that is 100% likely to convert and buy something. Furthermore, many comic book fans like to buy their books from a local store, but these vendors were doing nothing to help rope in any potential long-term customers.

This was a perfect metaphor for event marketing for other small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and I see the same mistakes at the local events that vendors were making at Comic-Con. If you're a sponsor at a golf tournament, or a 5k, or any local event, you're in exactly the same boat. You're there because you want to get more awareness for your business so you'll build your customer base.

Whenever you're marketing to a captive audience, you need to maximize your opportunities for capturing future customers. Here are a few examples of the local marketing missteps I saw at Comic-Con this year:

This guy's got an 800 number on his banner, but his shop is based in New York City. I went to check out his site, and he's got an 800 number there, too. A phone number with a local area code is a huge signal of local relevancy, and he'd have the added bonus of catching the eye of any New Yorkers who recognized the area code. His site isn't mobile friendly, either.

Woo-hoo! After quite a bit of searching, I found a vendor with a local phone number. I pulled up his website, and again — not mobile friendly. Even worse, the home page is full of info from 2011. Maybe he's updated other pages, but the home page makes it appear to users that nothing has been done in four years.

This guy didn't even have a phone number listed on his site. I checked his URL, and it led straight to his eBay store! Sure, if you've got rare comics, they'll sell online — but he has a store where he sells comics, too. Without a website, he's not going to rank for any local comic book searches. Even worse, he's still using an @aol.com email address. If you've got a website, then you should always have your email address based at your website's domain name!

Another toll-free number. Awesome. Just like every other vendor I checked, this guy's site isn't mobile friendly. Worst of all, GeoCities called and wants its design principles back.

We were planning on trying to stand in line and get one of the exclusive Comic-Con toys, and this vendor heard us talking about it. His sign simply said "Matt's," but he offered to buy any of the exclusives we were able to get. He handed us his card so we would remember where his booth was. He's got a local area code and a website address (not mobile friendly, again), so the local signals were in place. But why the heck would you put a "thumbs up us on Facebook logo" on your business card? If he wanted likes, he should have listed his Facebook page's URL.

Local area code number? Check. Address and URL? Check. I pulled up the site and stared. It's just a single page site with a banner and his address on it. There's a skyscraper banner on the right side, and I happened to mouse over it and see that it was clickable. It took me over to his eBay store — but if I hadn't accidentally moused over it, I never would have known! Plus, with no content on his site, he's never going to rank.

This one was the craziest one. This is a huge comics vendor with several booths throughout the convention floor. And their website isn't even working! How much future business did they lose out on?

If your business will be present at a local event and marketing to a captive audience, make sure you pay attention to the six lessons we learned at Comic-Con:

Make sure you've got a website. Obviously, check that it works before you print your signs and business cards. An eBay store doesn't count, either; it needs to be your own site.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. If you're at an event where you're selling something, it's likely that customers will price shop. If you're not selling anything, you still want people to be able to check out your company.

Make sure your site is well designed for a good user experience. Unless you're purposefully going for the retro-kitsch thing, don't have a site that looks like it was designed in the early '90s. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, and definitely be sure to optimize your site with the correct local signals so you'll rank well in local searches.

Make sure your email address uses your site's domain name. AOL addresses make you look less professional, and a branded email helps showcase your URL whenever someone sees your email address.

Make sure you're using a local number. This is especially important on your website, but on business cards and ads, too.

Make finding your social properties easy. If you're printing business cards, fliers or ads, make sure you list the URLs for your social properties, not just icons.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Be a part of the world's largest search marketing conference, Search Engine Land's SMX East. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.

About The Author Greg Gifford is the Director of Search and Social at DealerOn, a software company that provides websites and online marketing to new car dealers all over the country. Check out their awesome blog for more of Greg's local search posts and videos. (Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)
Source: 6 Local Marketing Lessons Learned At Comic-Con

Off-the-plan marketing site Investorist raises $2.5m ahead of US expansion

Off-the-plan property marketing website Investorist has raised $2.5 million from a string of big-name developers and technology investors to help fund its expansion into the US market and further its growth in Australia, the UK and Asia.

Investors include Eureka Tower developer Benni Aroni, Netspace founder and BRW Young Richlister Stuart Marburg and Paul Clark, CEO of ASX-listed Redflex and current chairman of Melbourne Water.

The wealthy Tarascio family, owners of Salta Properties, invested $1.7 million last year in the first round of seed funding and have invested again.

Investorist was founded two years ago by former Mirvac marketing manager Jon Ellis and connects developers with financial planners, real estate agents, accountants and advisers.

It has over 300 Australian project listings – and a number of overseas listings – and facilitates about 1000 property sales a month. The website has 4000 members who pay $99 a month to use the site. Developers pay a fee to list their projects on the site.

Mr Ellis told The Australian Financial Review he planned to launch Investorist in three or four key regions in the US in the next three or four months.

"We're treading carefully. This week we appointed research consultants – the same team that helped Drapac enter the US market – to examine opportunities in each state."

He said the current investment valued Investorist at over $20 million. He hopes to float the business in the next three to four years.

In February, Investorist opened an office in London to market UK property off the plan. It also has offices in China, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mr Ellis said half the money will go into the US venture, with the remainder used to help fund recruitment of staff in Australia, London and China.

Source: Off-the-plan marketing site Investorist raises $2.5m ahead of US expansion

Emerging era of digital marketing

T J Joseph, Bengaluru, July 16, 2015:

Digital marketing involves mining of data to determine individual customers' tastes, hobbies, food preferences etc. and products and services customised to suit an individual's profile.

Digital Marketing uses the Internet, social media (Facebook, Twitter, Skype etc.), Short Messaging Service (SMS) and file sharing services (Google Drive, Dropbox etc.) to promote products and services offered by companies and establishments.

In the digital space, marketing is highly focussed. Advertisements and promotion campaigns are no longer "one-size-fits-all". It is directed at a particular com munity, a social group, family or even individuals.

But you should know that digital marketing is not e-commerce. The latter is the sale of goods and services through a digital medium. Digital marketing involves understanding customer preferences in much greater detail than was ever possible hitherto.

In fact, e-commerce companies themselves use digital marketing to further their sales. Digital marketing is also used by brick-and-mortar shops and service providers to promote their offerings.

The field has numerous opportunities to offer to those interested. Here's looking at a few:

*  Analytics professionals: When marketing through digital media, the effectiveness of each effort or expenditure needs to be analysed. Usually, raw data is available in Big Data. Analytics uses advanced statistics and sophisticated algorithms to analyse effectiveness.

*  Community managers: The Internet propagates development of communities of people from around the worl d with similar interests, such as fans of a particular television show. Managing such communities and providing a link between customers and the parent organisation is the work of people in this area.

*  Content marketers: Content marketing is that set of activities which involves creation and sharing of media and publishing content used to acquire and retain customers. The information may be in the form of news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, Q&A, photographs, images etc.

*  Digital advertising professionals: This career is the equivalent of advertising in newspapers and magazines, but now in digital space, e.g., running Facebook or Google ads. 

*  Email marketing professionals: Email is one of the media in the digital space and it is possible to market goods and services through aggressive and imaginative mass emailing. In this activity, techniques and methods of persuading customers to buy products or services ar e fine-tuned and made suitable for emailing.

*  Graphic designers: The digital medium lends itself to visual presentation of information, either static or dynamic. Along with content writing, graphic design creates the pages in digital space that will be viewed by customers over the Internet and on mobile devices.

*  Marketing strategists: These are experts who work out the overall strategy for a company, identifying which channel and which market can best be tackled using a particular digital medium. They would work out the specifics of the strategy to be used in each case.

* Mobile marketers: This is the equivalent of email marketing, but on mobile devices. Products and services can be marketing directly or indirectly along with apps.

*  SEO experts: This is one of the most important functions in digital marketing. SEO uses many techniques to ensure that a particular content appears high on the relevance listing, and people in this area do this.

*  SMS marketers: These experts who specialise in marketing through SMS's, which has its own unique set of capabilities and constraints. SMS marketers adapt the overall marketing strategy of an organisation to sell through SMS.

*  Social media managers: Users of social media number in the hundreds of millions. They can be construed as a social bloc, much like a large country. The Internet provides a direct access to the population of this "country" and marketing products and service can be done to the citizens through social media.

*  Software developers: Coding in digital marketing is no different from other areas. Understanding languages like HTML, Java, Python, Ruby etc, as well as understanding CSS will be mandatory.

*  User experience experts: User experience with a marketing approach is very important because it is very easy (just one or two clicks of a mouse) for a user to switch to another site. These experts would assess and monitor user experienc e to ensure that users find their experience delightful.

Go to Top

Source: Emerging era of digital marketing

Marketing Day: Prime Day Felt Across Web, Facebook’s Top Publishers & A Video Creator List

Get the most important digital marketing news each day.

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the Web.

From Marketing Land: Recent Headlines From Search Engine Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Search News & Information: Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

Affiliate Marketing

Blogs & Blogging

Business Issues

Content Marketing

Conversion Optimization

Display & Contextual Advertising

Domaining

E-Commerce

Email Marketing

General Internet Marketing

MarTech

Mobile/Local Marketing

Social Media

Video

Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.

About The Author Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles. (Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)
Source: Marketing Day: Prime Day Felt Across Web, Facebook's Top Publishers & A Video Creator List

Improve Your Mobile Marketing WIth These Five Surefire Tips

Since 1995 the world's internet population has grown from 35 million users to 2.8 billion but even that stunning increase is dwarfed by growth in the world's mobile phone fleet. Twenty years ago there were only 80 million mobile phones in the world – today there are 5.2 billion.

With consumers said to check their iPhones 150 times a day and with the overwhelming majority now using them at shopping carts and cash registers it's no wonder that marketing dollars are chasing this mobile diaspora. Indeed Econsultancy, suggests there will be a 67 per cent increase in mobile marketing budgets in 2015.

The shift has happened to quickly that it's easy to forget that for most marketers, mobility in a new concept.

In a new marketing guide titled "Mobile marketing: A Prescriptive Guide Fortified to Build Stronger Marketing" (LINK),  Oracle Marketing Cloud has identified 5 key things brands need to know about Mobile Marketing:

Market with cross-channel orchestration

Use smart data and signals to inform your mobile communication strategy

Create a holistic view of customer interactions

Deliver personalised marketing experiences

Prove the value of your mobile marketing strategy

The Guide explores each of these offering examples of the practical application of these concepts.

(1) Market with cross channel orchestration

As the ability to create a single view of the customer shifts from aspiration to reality, the opportunity to deliver genuine cross channel orchestration of campaigns is becoming easier.

According the authors of the Guide, that opportunity is not about buying a slew of individual mobile technologies to execute such as SMS, push, mobile advertising, or passbook.

In fact they argue that as with other marketing channels, the risk of creating new silos actually increases the likelihood that a brand will simply deliver fragmented experiences that frustrate customers and result in missed opportunities for marketers.

The real opportunity they say lies in "unifying mobile technologies and delivering orchestrated experiences that monitor signals from all channels (including connected devices)."

"These experiences speak to customers offering solutions based on who they are as individuals and how they're interacting with your brand in their moments of need. By having the ability to send marketing campaigns out across channels, you can also track results that aren't limited strictly to mobile."

(2) Use smart data and signals to inform your mobile communication strategy 

The Guide suggests that by integrating marketing technology into apps on mobile and connected devices across the Internet of Things, a new world of data driven possibilities emerges.

"By focusing on collecting these new types of smart data, marketers can sense and respond to real-time contextual information about the customer, giving them the ability to deliver relevant information in a way that was never before possible—both on the mobile device and in an orchestrated way across traditional marketing channels."

(3) Create a holistic view of customer interactions

To deliver truly personalised experiences marketers need to understand the basics; who their customers are and what they're buying, when they're buying, and how they prefer to buy.

The authors argues that brands should centralise all their customer data and connect customer identities across touch points and channels.

"Today's technology enables marketers to collect information on how individual customers are interacting with distinct channels and to analyse those interactions to glean information on what customers want."

That information in turn should be used to deliver distinct customer journeys, which raises the important issue of segmentation.

"Segmentation is vital when it comes to establishing engagement trends. With the ability to identify the physical location of consumers, marketers can now even segment their audience by location, enabling them to connect with their audience at the right time and place. Behavioural targeting allows marketers to reach out to customer."

(4) Deliver personalised marketing experiences

The authors note that services like SMS can be used to deliver deliver personalised messaging with content that matters to the customer and offers that are based on their needs at that moment in time to strengthen customer relationships and loyalty.

See: SMS marketing has "staggering" response rates 

(5) Prove the value of your mobile strategy

The need for marketers to prove the worth their campaign strategy remains true in the world of mobile marketing.

While it is difficult to link long-term customer loyalty to any specific campaign, mobile or otherwise there are steps marketers can take to track the value of their mobile campaign, say the authors.

"Many mobile marketing platforms now have a link tracking capability which allow marketers to embed branded short URLs in their SMS messages to get deep insights into how well campaigns perform by monitoring SMS click through rates, conversions, and click recency. SMS click recency behaviour is recorded at the individual level and can be used for targeting."

Clear goals need to be tied to business objectives from the outset and marketers should set up custom events based on KPIs, such as installs, in app purchases, or time spent on the app.

Takeaways

The authors conclude by suggesting that while mobile is a moving target a few things are very clear.

Your website must be mobile friendly.

You need the SMS and Push features.

You have to have the data from both online behaviours and offline purchases.

You need to track and use preference information to truly personalise the experience.

You will probably be asked to quantify to justify and show ROI.

This article originally appeared on www.which-50.com

Source: Improve Your Mobile Marketing WIth These Five Surefire Tips

The Catch-22 of Social Media Marketing

Tammy Finch is a website designer and social media consultant from East Peoria, IL, and the founder of Web Services, Inc. She has more than 16 years of experience teaching clients to use the Internet as a business tool, and has worked with ...

July 15, 2015 7:15 p.m.

July 1, 2015 5:40 p.m.

June 22, 2015 5:25 p.m.

May 29, 2015 5:25 a.m.

May 22, 2015 5:30 a.m.

Source: The Catch-22 of Social Media Marketing

WordPress 101: How to Make Your Site Search Engine & Marketing Ready

The more I use WordPress, the more I love it as a platform for building beautiful and robust websites. But it probably wasn't until I was invited to speak at WordCamp in 2014 that I began to truly appreciate the awesomeness that is WordPress.

Being with so many knowledgeable people whose sole goal is to help others use WordPress to earn a living, broadcast their message, or fulfill their passions, and it's difficult not to learn of all the things that make WordPress such a powerful content management system.

Because WordPress is open source, there are plenty of plugins you can use to help make your website more search engine friendly and web marketing ready. While I don't want to focus too much on specific plugins in this post, I do want to highlight a lot of native WordPress and plugin settings that you can–and should–be implementing on your WordPress site.

This guide covers three main areas:

How to Optimize Your WordPress Site for Search

How to Optimize Your WordPress Site for Visitors

General Housekeeping issues

This is just a starter guide, and is by no means comprehensive for what can be accomplished using WordPress or the plugins mentioned here. Ultimately, your needs will be different from anyone else's, so my goal here is to just cover the basics that just about every site needs.

There is no arguing that search engines are an important part of marketing your website. We can choose to focus only on visitors, but those visitors come through search engines, so there are some basic architectural issues that have to be addressed to help the search engines properly spider, index and analyze your site.

Set the www.

Every website comes equipped with potential duplicate content issues that, if you don't correct them, can cause the search engines to split the value of your home page between two URLs. It typically looks something like this:

http://site.com or http://www.site.com

Search engines treat the same URLs–just with and without the www.–as two separate pages. It's your job to configure WordPress so search engines are fed only one version of the URL.

This is done in General Settings > Site Address (URL).

Here you want to put the URL of your site. Decide whether or not you want to use the www. in the URL or not. Which one you choose doesn't really matter. Just pick one you like and stick with it.

Once you determine which way you're going, be sure all the internal site hyperlinks in your navigation and elsewhere use the same version so search engines are likely to only index the correct version of your URLs.

Since search engines can still find the other version of your URL should someone type it in incorrectly, you'll want to also talk with a developer about how to prevent that from happening with global 301 redirects.

Allow Search Engines to Index Your Site

If the search engines can't index your site, you have little to no chance of appearing in the search results. By default, your WordPress settings should allow the search engines through, but often times, while in development, a site is deliberately blocked. Either way, this is definitely a setting you'll want to double-check to be sure.

Do this in Reading Settings > Search Engine Visibility.

Keeping the box unchecked allows the search engines through.

Set Your URL Structure

The default settings for WordPress URLs use parameters and numbers that represent the page. For web marketing purposes, you want URLs that use words, not numbers.

WordPress gives you several customization options. The quick and easy option is to use the post name in the URL, but you can set a more customized structure. This is great if you want your blog posts to fall into a specific /blog/ URL category. (i.e. site.com/blog/post-name vs. site.com/post-name.)

I'm a big fan of categorization, so I opt for the custom structure so I can build the URLs the way I like.

You can customize your blog post under Permalink Settings.

Simply choose the specific setting you want.

Configure Your Meta Information

The Yoast SEO plugin has a number of settings we'll be using throughout this tutorial. If you don't have this plugin installed, you'll have to find similar settings for the plugin you are using, or just install Yoast and follow along.

There are a few meta settings (not to be confused with meta descriptions or meta keyword tags) that can be helpful to your marketing efforts.

Most blogs have archive pages that are a great way to get to good content by category, tag or date, but by themselves, they don't make for good landing pages from search results. Since these archive pages can really add up (one archive page per month multiplied by the number of years you have been or will be blogging!), it's a good idea to allow search engines to spider those pages but not put them in the index.

Check the box under Yoast Titles and Metas > Sitewide meta settings > Noindex subpages of archives.

By doing this, you're helping the search engines focus on the content that has the most value by keeping those pages out of the search results.

Next, you want to remove the possibility that Google will pull your page title and description information from the DMOZ directory and display it in the search results. I honestly don't know if Google still does this on a regular basis or not, but until they definitively say otherwise, this is one setting I wouldn't go without.

Source: WordPress 101: How to Make Your Site Search Engine & Marketing Ready

Interview: Lyndsay Menzies on internet marketing

Having started out in pursuit of a career in chemistry, Lyndsay Menzies has been getting to grips with the science of internet search and marketing for the best part of two decades.

In that time she has been involved in a trio of deals, culminating with a £332 million takeover three years ago, and is now busy writing a new chapter as chief executive of 8 Million Stories.

The digital marketing firm, which counts publisher Condé Nast and distiller William Grant & Sons among its clients, has about 20 staff across its head office in Edinburgh and an outpost in London, and sees Menzies reunited with the duo who helped her break into the internet industry in 1998.

Fresh from a stint at oil major Shell, Menzies arrived in Edinburgh in search of a job and found a vacancy at Vertigo Web Design, run by husband and wife team Steve Leach and Heather 
Luscombe.

"At that time Vertigo was very much about building websites, for people like Wolfson Microelectronics and Gillette," says Oban-born Menzies at 8 Million Stories' rather swanky offices on Queen Street. "But then it became apparent there was a gap in the market for search and we landed a couple of big contracts early on, including with MTV, and that was the start of it."

Vertigo went on to become Bigmouthmedia (BMM), which in 2006 joined forces with German web marketing outfit Global Media in a deal engineered by private equity group Carlyle. Menzies explains that the tie-up, which saw BMM inherit 12 offices across ten countries, "was amazing but created a massive headache – you can imagine us rocking up in Germany, not being able to speak the language, wanting to talk about developing the business".

Three years later BMM merged with Dutch group Lost Boys International (LBI), before being acquired by French advertising giant Publicis for €416m in 2012.

After combining maternity leave with a sabbatical on sun-kissed Majorca, Menzies is back in Edinburgh and again working with Leach – who chairs 8 Million Stories – and chief marketing officer Luscombe.

She says: "I'd originally planned to commute from Majorca but it's not ideal with a small child and in August there's no internet connection on the island because the population explodes. We still spend a lot of time out there."

As well as Universal Music, client wins include high-end resorts operator Aman, which recently took up the top six floors of the Otemachi skyscraper in Tokyo and hosted David Beckham's 40th birthday celebrations in Morocco.

"We're starting off doing all their English language search and content work and then moving into Japanese, Chinese and Russian. We cover off some languages in-house and have a really strong network of consultants."

It's a long way from an earlier career path that saw Menzies studying chemistry at Edinburgh Napier University, but she admits: "I wouldn't have made a great chemist because I probably had the messiest lab coat out of everyone in my year, and that's the sign of a very disorganised chemist.

"My dad was involved in oil and I wanted to get into the biochemistry side of things, and I did my dissertation on remediation options for North Sea oil rig drilling discharge. I loved it but I couldn't see myself doing it as a career."

With a laugh, Menzies adds: "I still know a lot about periodic tables, so it will come in handy one day when my son does chemistry at school."

After graduating, she worked for Shell for about a year before heading off to go backpacking in Australia. Returning to Scotland after 18 months – having planned to be away for four – she joined Shell again before deciding to move to Edinburgh.

At that time, internet search was still in its infancy, with Google yet to become a household name, but Menzies was able to secure a job with Vertigo by telling Leach that the now-ubiquitous search engine was her favourite.

When the deal with LBI came along, BMM was the largest search marketing company in Europe, and clients were beginning to look beyond simply getting found on the internet and focusing on what they could offer customers.

"People were starting to think about cross-digital strategies and we could see that tech and content were going to be so important, and we really needed a strong creative arm in the business to do that," Menzies says. "That was one of the major drivers behind the LBI deal, as they were the best fit for us."

But by the time of the Publicis take-over, Menzies says she was spending too much on planes and wanted to get her feet back on the ground and become "nimble" again.

She explains: "You lose sight of all that when you're caught up in operational decisions, but being back at the coalface and working with clients helps me think about what direction to take the business in. It's a refreshing change for me and work has become much more exciting – it's back to what it was like at Bigmouthmedia."

While keen to avoid a return to her globetrotting days, Menzies acknowledges that 8 Million Stories will eventually have to start looking at increasi ng its geographic footprint, with mainland Europe or the Far East among the likely first ports of call.

In the meantime, the focus is on the UK, but she says the proportion of staff in Edinburgh will probably remain at about 70 per cent, with the remainder in London.

She adds: "We'll probably add another ten people to the headcount this year. There's a growing community here and although certain creative roles are difficult to find in Edinburgh we don't struggle from a tech and account management perspective. We get a lot of speculative CVs through the door."

"We have great universities on our doorstep, and we're great believers in nurturing home-grown talent."

Source: Interview: Lyndsay Menzies on internet marketing

10 Ways to Improve Your Online Marketing Efforts

There are so many different ways to market your business online. You need to have your own website, a social presence, and maybe even a video strategy.

Members of our small business community have plenty of experience with these methods. Read on for some of their tips in this week's Small Business Trends community news and information roundup.

Make a Lasting First Impression

(nancyrubin)

Your landing page is often the first thing people see when they get to your website. So its job is to create a positive first impression and a clear call to action. If your brand is having trouble converting online customers, consider these tips for creating an effective landing page from Adam Groff.

Create Social Media Graphics That Spread Like Wildfire

(Rebekah Radice)

Visual marketing has become incredibly important in recent years thanks to social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. If you want to be successful on those platforms, you need to know what kinds of images are likely to gain attention. Rebekah Radice shares some tips for creating shareable social images. You can also see conversation about the post in the BizSugar community.

Use These Best Practices for Design and Conversion

(Marketing Land)

Great web design doesn't always lead to the best conversion numbers. But designing specifically to increase conversion doesn't always lead to great design. However, there are a few things that Web designers and conversion optimizers can agree on, as Jeremy Smith shares.

Avoid These Writing Mistakes

(Kapow Content)

Whether you're creating content for your blog, social media channel or other outlets, great writing is key. You don't need professional training to write great content for your business. But tips from Wendy Johnson can help you avoid some common writing mistakes.

Don't Automatically Write Off Pop Ups

(Spin Sucks)

Most people hate pop ups on websites. However, when used in the right situations and for the right customers, they can actually be pretty effective. Laura Petrolino shares some tips for implementing pop ups. And BizSugar members shared some feedback as well.

Understand Your Video Presentation Options

(The SEM Post)

Video presentations can be some of the most effective ways to get the attention of your customers and teach them about what you have to offer. But there has been quite a bit of change in the online video presentation market lately, as Greg Jarboe explains. So it can help to know your options before getting started.

Understand These Realities of Blogging for Business

(Busy Blogs Plus)

Pretty much anyone can start a business blog. But it takes practice and hard work to actually keep it going and make it successful. Amanda Lynch shares these and other realities of business blogging. The BizSugar community also discussed the post.

Connect with Your Employees Online

(Biz Epic)

Virtual businesses are becoming more and more prominent. That also means that there are a lot of online tools available for business owners to communicate with their employees who work remotely. Ivan Widjaya shares some tools and tips for virtual businesses to connect with their employees.

Learn These Lessons from Successful Entrepreneurs

(CorpNet)

You don't get to be a successful entrepreneur without learning a few lessons along the way. So less experienced business owners could do well to listen to some of that wisdom that their more experienced counterparts have to share. Nellie Akalp shares some of those business lessons from successful entrepreneurs.

Find Marketing and Additional Resources Online

(SMB Stash)

There are so many different resources available online, it can actually be difficult to keep track of them all. But this new online directory is now available to give small and medium sized businesses a place to find a huge variety of resources that can help them with marketing and more.

Help improve these community roundup posts in the future by suggesting your favorite content. Send posts to [email protected] or just submit your content to the BizSugar community. You could see it appear in an upcoming post!

Marketing Team Photo via Shutterstock

Source: 10 Ways to Improve Your Online Marketing Efforts