Tag: Brand

Develop online brand management strategies and tactics with a multi-channel approach to promotion.

Brand Your Business With Promotional Banner Ads

Online brand marketingThe best promotional banner ads market an online business with a mix of branding and response.

Promoting an online business is not entirely about pay per click advertising, which in the case of the search engines emphasize text ads. Graphical banner ads can build awareness and memory of a site name and bring customers back again.

Again, all advertising is a combination of branding and response. A TV commercial brands a car model, and the hoped-for response is a customer who goes to the dealership (a lead) and buys the car (a conversion).

But what about online branding and response? Continue reading “Brand Your Business With Promotional Banner Ads”

Discover Online Brand with Simple Search Term

Traditional media has powerful online brands and give simple lessons on how to build and keep them powerful.

Online brandTraditional media has powerful online brands and give simple lessons on how to build and keep them powerful.

During my work on large newspaper and TV station websites, I was surprised at what I discovered in analytic software about the ways people went to those sites. Some of them had been around for many years and were getting more than 1 million unique visitors a month.

It was no surprise that these sites attracted major amounts of traffic from search engines. The surprise was how people used those search engines to reach the sites. Continue reading “Discover Online Brand with Simple Search Term”

Online Brand Marketing Needs Focus, Consistency

Online brand marketing needs focus and consistency for a long time before a website reaches a key goal — a growth in return visits.

Online brand marketing needs focus and consistency for a long time before a website reaches a key goal — a growth in return visits.

Return visits grow when people start coming to the site by entering the address directly in their browser address window, entering a version of it in search engines or saving it in their bookmark list. Continue reading “Online Brand Marketing Needs Focus, Consistency”

Offline Marketing Strategies Add to Site Brand

Offline marketing strategies are low on response and high on brand. In other words, they help people remember the name of a site.

Offline marketing tactics

A traditional media business can use offline marketing to boost audience and revenue for its site. Otherwise, a standalone Web business can partner with a local media business if the agreement allows both partners to meet each other halfway.

A standalone site can meet a media partner halfway by helping it understand how the Web site can provide effective promotion in return. It is becoming easy to prove. A partnership doesn’t stop the media outlet from doing its own offline marketing.

A dated and documented plan will go a long way toward building trust, credibility and follow through.

The first half of the plan can explain how the Web site will help the media partner, and the second half will explain how the partner will help build site readership. Continue reading “Offline Marketing Strategies Add to Site Brand”

How to Get Facebook Fans: A Simple Approach

Facebook logoGetting Facebook fans isn’t that difficult for anyone with a small to medium-sized business.

But it is the cornerstone of a social media marketing strategy, which is valuable to any businesses seeking new ways to promote themselves online.

This free approach depends in part on:

  • How prominently the business promotes the fan page
  • How much consistent effort goes into the page
  • The type of fan page / type of business

How do I know? Because I have implemented social media efforts that have succeeded for some ventures and failed for others. The three steps above made the difference in many of the results. Continue reading “How to Get Facebook Fans: A Simple Approach”

Track ROI for Pay Per Click with 2 Simple Metrics

Pay per click marketing requires a return on investment like any other promotional channel. But what is the right ROI?

Pay per click marketing requires a return on investment like any other promotional channel. But what is the right ROI?

A report from The Nielsen Company indicates that online advertising has the highest ROI of any medium. To cut to the chase, it says that the short term ROI on all channels is 109 percent and for online it is 218 percent.

Although some may argue that the online number is questionable, there is no question that online marketing is more cost efficient. It doesn’t require a broadcast TV station, a newspaper circulation department, cable TV fiberoptics or a printing plant to produce a magazine.

In other words, it comes with an immediate cost efficiency that gives the marketer room to experience, fail, try again and succeed at an online campaign without bankrupting the budget.

Let’s define our terms and explore “return on investment” and “return on advertising spend”. Continue reading “Track ROI for Pay Per Click with 2 Simple Metrics”

Direct Traffic Results in Brand and Site Loyalty

Direct traffic may be the second most important source for Web site audience after search engines and SEO.

Direct trafficDirect traffic may be the second most important source for Web site audience after search engines and SEO.

However, it doesn’t get that kind of respect.

How often do site publishers brag about their direct traffic numbers on the various blogs and forums dedicated to online publishing? The answer is, not very often.

But the analytics for many sites will show that direct traffic is the second highest source of audience for those sites.

Direct traffic shows up in several forms:

Continue reading “Direct Traffic Results in Brand and Site Loyalty”