MAD MARKETING TACTICS™ !: Internet marketing

Showing posts with label Internet marketing. Show all posts

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Digital Marketing - OneUpWeb: Fabulous Resource

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Click On The Above Image For A Grand-Sized Version

Digital Marketing is here to stay, and is growing in utilization, acceptance and influence by the day. This trend shows no signs of abating.

While fumbling and stumbling through my overloaded inbox, an introductory signup email (try as I might, I can't resist those) caught my attention, called me to action (to arms, Mad Marketing Tactics Comrades!), and I was truly amazed with what I saw -- one of the most dynamically-designed, accessible, interesting and information-packed websites that I have ever seen on the concept of comprehensive digital marketing.

Not only am I excited enough to blog about it, but we (yes, help has arrived) are adding it to our blog site resource section for your regular reference. Following is a quick skinny on this digital creature. I would suggest that you look at each link, come back here, catch your breath, and then go to the next. We'll sum up together at the end. I swear (much too frequently)...

OneUpWeb - A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY AND RESOURCE

WOW! What A Site!

A truly amazing, engaging and fascinating website, filled with links and opportunities to immediately access more information...specialized information on various digital marketing subjects as well as services offered by the agency. One of the best -looking, best designed marketing-oriented websites that I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen quite a few).

Their website: http://www.OneUpWeb.com

Their digital e-marketing magazine: http://www.oneupweb.com/themerge/

Selected digital marketing blogs:

Digital Marketing Whitepapers
http://www.oneupweb.com/white-papers-rss/

Creative Meat
http://www.creativemeat.com/feed/rss/

StraightUp Social Marketing
http://socialmarketing.oneupweb.com/feed/

Web Reviews
http://www.oneupwebreviews.com/feed/

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The bottom line is simple: Either you will be going intensely digital, or you will become a soon-to-be-extinct analog slog ("slog" is a lingovation). Heck, I'm so excited about this stuff that I'm going to create (in the Mad Marketing Tactics Laboratory, pictured at the top of this post) a mixed feed and call it Digital Marketing World.

Douglas E. Castle for The Mad Marketing Tactics Blog

#MadMarketing

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Social Media Advertising: Today's Realities / Tomorrow's Possibilities...

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As the amount of ambient media noise grows louder from an ever-increasing number of sources, and as the average person is so "Broadcast-fatigued" that he or she is almost becoming inbound-media averse, utilizing social media is no longer only about shock-and-awe, differentiation , pure creativity and multi-sensorial stimuli. While those are crucial, they are not necessarily adequate. In fact, they are becoming less and less of a defining force in arriving at social media ROI.

The three new points of focus which must be emphasized and optimized in order to maximize your ROI on social media are:

1) Targeting your market so you can appeal to their product and service needs;

2) Finding the medium that gets the most automatic views (Twitter has a phenomenal "opening rate" because a vast majority of those receiving tweets will see them as soon as they open up their Twitter accounts -- they don't have a yes or no choice as they would in an email, newsletter or blogging campaign);

3) Engaging, opinion-gathering, crowdsourcing and brainstorming with your prospective viewer audience - making the social media experience much more of personalized, humanized conversation than a one-sided shout. To win viewers and keep them, you must involve them at a personal level to the greatest extent permitted by the technologies of social media.

A video presentation which I found on the endlessly resource-filled SOCIAL MEDIADD page (which I highly recommend) says a great deal about this.

This is an incredibly long, albeit fabulously informative video featuring four social media pundits discussing information and implications pertaining to social media advertising. It is worth listening to. If your doctor permits, I recommend watching this video in about five installments, each punctuated with a ten-minute coffee break. Personally, I recommend hazelnut. When finished, please hit the "BACK" Button on your browser to come back home and get some more ideas.

What Does $3 Billion in Ad Spend Get You? The Dos and Don't s of Social Media Advertising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmBGiiT8oRU&feature=player_embedded#!

Here are those ideas ("idears" if you're from Western New York State):

1) Go for retweets, re-posts, re-publishing and comments and viral signalling instead of just for views;

2) Use surveys and questionnaires frequently; and

3) Provide sharing tools that permit re-posts and responses to your every communication.

To most effectively use social media you must be involved in the creation of humanized, personalized communications and relationships. In the words of expert Brian Solis, "Social Media is about social science - not technology." To be continued...

Douglas E. Castle

Monday, October 31, 2011

Millennials: Marketing To Reach Them

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Marketing to Millennials. It's a challenge, but a worthwhile one if you have the right product or service -- or if you can 're-position' your product or service to suit their tastes. Either objective requires some study. Ecch. But wait...

"The Millennial generation, also known as Generation Y or the “Echo Boomers,” is three times bigger than Generation X and even bigger than the Baby Boom generation. The dates of the Millennial generation are not precisely defined, but depending on what measure you use, their birth dates typically stretch from the late 1980 to 2000."

I say that we engage 'em. C'mon.

The challenges in any business plan are to a) identify the product or service of interest, and b) see how to best deliver it. The challenges in any marketing plan are more about identifying the audience ("getting into the prospective consumers' head"), and finding the most efficient and effective branding, sloganating, messaging and media mix to a) get the attention of the market, and b) get the the most influential members of that target market to endorse and start making public use of your product or service. This will drive Millennial traffic to your inbound marketing funnel. You must become a sociologist and a psychologist to truly understand what makes this special generational market tick.

Bear in mind, also, that this same group will spawn many of tomorrow's decision-makers, workers, entrepreneurs, and writers, as well as consumers. I'd like to help you to gather some fast, high-quality, insightful intelligence.

The two links below lead to exceptionally informative articles, very specific to our Mad Marketing Tactics agenda and objectives. Please read both. After you have fatigued your weary fingers with hitting the "BACK" button (probably two times, as I've figured it), go to the bottom of this article for a wealth of other links to related articles:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/3-ways-millennials-will-change-the-face-of-business?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily

http://smallbiztrends.com/2011/10/new-baby-boom-generation-millennials.html

As a Baby Boomer myself, I find this mystifying -- but then, my intuition sense a vast, efficiently accessible market for all of my readers, friends and colleagues.

Douglas E Castle

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Begging: Marketing Simplified!

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When trying to attract attention, build a brand, or expand the scope of your market, you will invariably a great deal of time and a good deal of money on creativity, social media broadcasting, giving out 'free samples' and incentives for 'signing up', sponsoring contests, utilizing advertising services, developing a fancy unforgettable logo, sloganating (inventing a brilliant and highly memorable slogan), news releases, publicity shows and other types of buzzing, bullhorning and barnstorming.

While all of the above approaches are indeed commendable, the most honest approach to marketing, and perhaps one of the most cost-effective, is simply humbling yourself, being very polite, and begging. That's right. Simply asking for a stranger's (or prospect's) attention and consideration for a few moments.

The elegance of begging cannot be overstated. It is devoid of pretense, manipulation, subliminal suggestion, bait-and-switch and technology.

Yes indeed. Whether you do it using an open guitar case, a picture of a suffering creature, a cardboard box, a sandwich sign, a wooden bowl or a blog, your integrity will be beyond reproach. Some kind people (there are some) will be generous enough to give you what you are asking for, provided that you are not too overwhelming, if you are not frothing at the mouth, and if you are not carrying a weapon.

An example (shameless self-promotion on my part) follows:

Please visit some of my most popular blogs, and feel free to comment on articles, to link to any of them (and I will reciprocate your backlink with an inbound link to your site), or to re-publish any of the content. You can re-publish without permission, provided that you republish any articles in their entirety, with all images and hyperlinks left fully intact and 'live,' and with attribution given to the author (that's me).

At the end of this post, you'll find a listing of links to related articles that involve various aspects of these search terms, categories, tags, keywords, labels and topics for your reference and use:

attribution, Backlink, gurus, Hyperlink, PR Ranking, promotion, expanding readership, social media, reciprocity, inbound links, guest blogging, commenting on posts, original content, re-publishing, link profile, Methods of website linking, quality link, Search engine optimization, increasing traffic, hub-building, blogging resources, PageRank, Douglas E. Castle, Alexa, Google Analytics, CoolText, and others...

As always, I truly appreciate your reading me.

Thank you so much.

Douglas E Castle