Wordpress, for those four in the back row who don’t know, is the highly popular open-source blogging platform thankfully made by this guy. Fast forward a couple years, and Wordpress is going from strength to strength, having just beaten the likes of Drupal and Joomla as the ‘best open source CMS‘. (more…)
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…)
‘What do you think? Should I focus on SEO?’ A friend and colleague asked me this question recently, interested in breaking out of their current web publishing role and exploring some new, exciting options in the industry to keep interested. I replied with my usual garble about SEO – that it’s *not* something to focus on – IMO good SEO starts and ends with good code and good content. So instead I got all anthropological. (more…)
Argos. Clearly doing well as the UK’s most popular ‘catalogue showroom retailing’ store in the UK. More than 700 stores, 130m customers and £4.3b in sales in 2008 isn’t bad. They also take 26% of their sales online, aided by an Argos catalogue found in 18m households across the country. Not bad for a chain who relies on a strictly ’self-serve’ philosophy that doubles as a business model… but they could do it so much better. (more…)
For many of us, answering the question ‘What are you doing’ is analogous to checking our email – we do it several times a day and it’s become second nature. But for every new social network we jump on, there are friends, families, and colleagues who will ask us ‘Why are you doing it?’
They’re questioning what drives and motivates us to open up our daily lives to anyone and everyone, when it’s possible that no one’s listening. They can’t imagine opening a Twitter account and talking to an empty room, so why do we bother? (more…)
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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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:
Categorized in: Wordpress, ecommerce, ideas