SEO Versus PPC: Where's Your Budget Going in 2011?

28 percent of the biggest companies recently surveyed by (those with revenues exceeding $1 billion per year) in a recent survey apparently do not think search engine optimization is all that important. The firms report spending nothing on SEO.


An eConsultancy survey asked for information on company budgets for search engine optimization. About nine percent reported spending nothing on SEO. Some 43 percent spent up to $25,000. About 18 percent spent between $25,000 and $75,000.

Another 13 percent spent $75,001 - $150,000. Some 16 percent of respondents said they spent $150,001 to more than $3 million on search engine optimization in 2009.

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Foursquare Sees 'Biggest Day Ever' After Facebook Places Launches | ClickZ

Marketers often say that having a powerful new competitor in an emerging market sometimes, or often, is a good thing because it validates the market for all the contestants. That appears to be the case for Foursquare. At least, that is what Foursquare hopes is the case.

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley tweeted on Thursday that his company had its "biggest day ever in terms of new user signups."

The disclosure came one day after Facebook launched its location-based feature, which some industry pundits had deemed a "Foursquare killer."

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Study: 83% of ALL Holiday Shoppers Influenced by Reviews « Marketing Pilgrim

Of the 92 percent of consumers surveyed by Channel Advisors that say they read product reviews, only three percent say they weren’t swayed by such reviews. That suggests 83 percent of consumers are influenced by online reviews.

A surprising 67% said they would purchase an identical product from an unknown website if the retailer offered a better value, meaning low pricing and free shipping, typically.

So the issue is, what is the balance between low price or free shipping and recommendations as drivers of user behavior. One might suggest low price and free shipping mostly always win when recommendations are favorable.

One might also suggest that favorable recommendations will fail to outweigh price and free shipping.


http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/09/study-83-of-all-holiday-shoppers-influenced-by-reviews.html

Amazon Said to Plan Film, TV Web Service With Studios

Amazon apparently is trying to create its own Web-based content service featuring TV and movie programming, as part of its shift to sales of digital goods. In principle, the approach is the same as Amazon has taken with books, where it sells both physical versions and digital versions.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-01/amazon-said-to-plan-film-tv-web-service-with-studios.html

eBay to Ban Google Checkout: What About That PayPal-Android Deal?

eBay sats that third-party checkout solutions, like Google Checkout, will no longer be supported on eBay after June 30, 2011. eBay says that other checkout solutions (besides PayPal) are only used less than 10 percent of the time on eBay.com.

As with all such decisions, one suspects a heightened sense of competitive threat is playing a large role in eBay's thinking.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/223346-ebay-to-ban-google-checkout-what-about-that-paypal-android-deal?source=feed

The Generational Culture Gap: Marketing Implications

Different generations have attitudinal orientations that affect the creation of marketing messages.

Gen X military recruitment ads, for example, have focused on “risk, the individual, and personal conquest,” for reasons related to the attitudes Gen X consumers tend to have.

Millennials, on the other hand, value teamwork. So marketing messages pitched to millennials have to hightlight the meaning of the choice and the teamwork.


http://millennialmarketing.com/2010/09/the-generational-culture-gap/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MillennialMktg+%28Millennial+Marketing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Social Commerce: In Friends We Trust

Social networks generate very-large numbers of pageviews and longer times on site than other sites, which has made them attractive for advertisers. But some say social networks actually aren't like traditional media, meaning traditional advertising and campaigns might not work as people think they will.

The gist of the argument is that social networks are about users communicating with other users, making marketing messages a bit of an intrusion.

None of that seems to be slowing advertiser interest, though.


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User-Generated Content More Important, at Least for Google Rankings

While search engine providers have talked about fresh content for years, Google Caffeine's emphasis on freshness gives user-generated content a lot more weight. Maintaining a good ranking according to Google's algorithms now requires that at least some of the page's content is fresh and dynamic, which indicates to Google that the page is still relevant.

Adding customer reviews or user-generated questions and answers can obviously help provide fresh content.

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What's the Next Game Changer in Digital Marketing? Mobile

Mobile devices, will be the "number-one platform for persuasion" in 10 to 15 years, predicts BJ Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. "If you want to influence people, it will be more important than the Web, than TV."

But we are only at the beginning of a long learning curve, for practitioners and end users. "We're going to see a lot of failure," he said.

Others might argue that is why there is at the moment so much optimism about all forms of mobile marketing, communication and commerce. But it will take a while. Many will find they are "too early" in the market. Just about all of us will find we didn't understand the medium very well.


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Ads As Entertainment: 3 Tips

Increasingly, developing online ads that are built to entertain is a necessity rather than an agency preference. The handful of brands that are currently making the effort are setting the bar high, and setting a standard all others will soon be expected to meet.

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Social Media Is Not Free

Marketers can probably agree that the "cost" of using or producing social media is nearly free, in terms of "placement." What is demonstrably not free are all the other tasks that go into creating and sustaining a social media initiative.

Designing and building a Foursquare application costs money. Beyond that, it takes time to promote, interact with and manage a social media effort. 

The typical pattern is that a company gets into social media in some way using volunteer effort. Then it becomes clear that everybody has a "real" job with real tasks, and that the effort diminishes over time. That leads to adding new people, with dedicated responsibilities, to the effort. It might not take lots of out-of-pocket money on the operating expense front. It will take people, and that will mean money. 

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Could Facebook Create Its Own Ad Network?

Facebook has got serious traction. It is becoming ubiquitous in most age and social demographics.  People spend lots of time on Facebook and visit it every day, if not all day. With its massive user base, no matter what a particular niche audience looks like, Facebook could probably aggregate and target them.

At some point, Facebook could pose a challenge to the Google AdSense network. Facebook could create its own ad network and sell incredibly targeted ads that reach Facebook-profiled users on other sites, not just its own, some might speculate.


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The Rise of the Demand Side Platform

Because advertisers are able to rely on more behaviorally-driven ad models today, which page an ad appears on is becoming less and less significant. Instead, second or third tier online inventory can now be sold at a premium price, not because of where or when the ad runs, but because of who is seeing it when it does. This allows publishers to increase the value of all of their site impressions without having to weigh in on a page popularity contest first.

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Why Touchscreens Matter

The most important development that touchscreens enable is simplicity. Whether it be in a website, an application, or an ad, there is a constant struggle between getting all of the information across and keeping things nice and simple. People want simplicity. Businesses want to tell everyone everything.

Touchscreen technology gives us the chance to start pulling away from that and into a new level of design, simply by removing the mouse from the equation. Instead of a mechanically separate navigation interface, people simply point and touch. 

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Social Media Drives Hyundai 'Uncensored' Campaign | ClickZ

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1729306/social-media-drives-hyundai-uncensored-campaign?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClickZFeatures+%28ClickZ+Features%29&utm_content=Google+Reader