CarbonGraffiti - Email and Online Marketing

As I recently commented on Twitter, the Google Creative lab crew recently posted a shared slideshow showcasing
87 cool things that, from their perspective, was stuff ‘worth knowing about’. (more…)

It’s not social media, or email marketing, or the family of acronyms that includes SEO, PPC, SEM, SMM, CPA, CPC, ATOS, or any others. It’s really quite simple – the most important thing you as a marketer will do in 2009 is analyze.
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Although as a whole online marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels out there, some online marketing methods can still eat into a yearly budget faster than you can say ‘Google’.

Take PPC (pay-per-click) for example. According to MarketingSherpa, US SEM spend is expected to hit $16.5 billion by the end of 2008, with Google accounting for 71% of all US search traffic (74% for the UK). Add to this the news of Google’s recent deal with Yahoo, and the search engine marketing landscape (with paid ads in particular) is shrinking. With less competition, we’re witnessing the formation of a quasi-monopoly that can only drive keywords costs up. As a cost-aware marketer, you’ll still have to rely on the long-tail keywords to maximize conversions, but you won’t be able to avoid some competition over pricey keywords and your online budget will take a hit.

However, the true beauty of online marketing is the multitude of choices available that are either cheap or free. In this time of impending economic doom and gloom, below is a list of various marketing tactics you can do that won’t break the bank… and if anything they’ll only add to it.
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Announced yesterday on their official AdWords blogspot that the algorithm used in determining a paid ad’s quality score is changing very soon. TechCrunch covered the same story today.

In a continual push for ‘bettering’ their services (including enhancements made to their content network), Google have said that 3 main components in AdWords are changing, in an effort to provide the advertiser with more complete, real-time information that impacts their quality score, and the ability to make it to the front page easier (at a higher cost, of course). In all cases, changes are clearly ‘win-win’ as advertisers get more flexibility and Google gets more money.
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A quick post to point out some very revealing and interesting data from ‘Think Eyetracking‘. After fitting 30 participants with what I assume to be the crazy Clockwork Orange-style headkit, the searchers viewed a Google SERP for the term ‘Oasis’.

Anyone who works in SEO or SEM… Your job just got harder.

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A bit late on this one, but Google announced on Thursday (Aug 7th) that the content network has (finally) been upgraded to offer a better experience to users, and a better value for us publishers & advertisers.

In summary, Google’s enhancements are as follows:
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Lately I’ve noticed a rise in creative ways to use PPC for personal or corporate gain. Whereas I use PPC daily to market B2B or B2C products the ‘old-fashioned way’ – selecting and bidding on a keyword, using appropriate ad copy, and directing B2C traffic to a tracked landing page – savvy marketers seem to be going one better. Here are some top examples:

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Huge news from Adobe today – they have officially released optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo in an effort to enhance the search engine indexing of SWF files (the output file from a native Flash file, called an FLA – the SWF files are web-optimized and are what you view on a Flash-based website).

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It seems the latest free, online product from Google is going to make a big impact in the online ad area – both positive and negative.

Unfortunately I’m still waiting for my granted invitation from Google, but basically Ad Planner is a free online tool that allows online advertisers to find and target sites that match certain demographic criteria. The sites listed are (thankfully) not restricted to the content network, meaning that Google are clearly using some form of data collection method apart from AdSense subscriptions to generate lists of viable, revenue-generating sites for online advertisers.

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Their mantra is ‘don’t be evil’ right? Isn’t transparency Google’s middle name?

So why is it that after installing a real-time site tracking tool (statcounter.com) to my PPC landing pages, I see several (50-60%) of all inbound, paid clicks being referred from websites or pages of questionable quality? Did I mention that, as always, my content network option is most definitely set to ‘off’?

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