Leverage Easy Offline Marketing for Your Online Business

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Editor’s note: Editor’s note: This post was written by Rohan, who creates digital master plans at E2M Solutions for companies seeking advanced search marketing services. He also works on mobile UX improvement for startups and sui generis brands at OnlyDesign.org. Hit him up on Google+  for a chat on any of these areas.

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“Online marketing will wipe out traditional marketing.”

“Digital is the future of marketing.”

“Offline marketing is for dead brands.”

These are common doomsday predictions about offline or traditional marketing that have been parleyed around endlessly in the last decade. The trouble is, these ‘predictions’ do not explain the fact that brands still spent only about 21% of their marketing budgets in 2013 on digital marketing. 2014 is expected to see that number going up to 24.6%. [Read more…]

How Referral Marketing Can Make You Money

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Certain contemporary companies have given up the idea of selling their products only in stores, or they’ve chosen to market only through one or two exclusive retailers. You might think this limits physical exposure and pose a restraint to growing sales, but this has not always turned out to be the case.

In fact, this approach saves money, increases engagement, and for not a few firms, ultimately improved the bottom line. [Read more…]

Which Medium is Best for Delivering Content that Goes Viral? Video or Text?

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Every marketer , writer and business person is searching for the potent secret formula for creating content that ensures virality and mass consumption to increase sales. We’re all convinced that there’s a good and bad way to do things and certain techniques exist which once put into practice, generate profoundly rich results.

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It’s quite valid to ponder which medium, platforms, tools and social networks will result in greater benefits for your brand and business. Unfortunately, many miss success employing tactics through mediums that seem to only work for some. There are many tried and tested techniques and reasons for choosing each medium, so why doesn’t it work for so many who try? [Read more…]

How to Use Interviews & Collaboration to Boost Traffic & Sales Online

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The vast majority of business people, writers, marketers and other professionals online have to start from zero with whatever venture we decide to dedicate ourselves to. Most of us aren’t born into fame and as we excitedly embark online with our new products and business, we’re practically invisible and the journey to stardom or business viability seems daunting. Especially among the noise in our present digital age; we need a little help.

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Imagine getting an endorsement or mention by the likes of marketer and influencer, Gary Vaynerchuk or a business catalyzer like ex Y Combinator chief, Paul Graham. Such exposure would no doubt be a strong boost to help propel your business into the view of valuable potential clients and add years of credibility to your name. [Read more…]

15 of the Silliest Mistakes Email Marketers Make

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Editor’s note: This post was written by Rohan, who creates digital master plans at E2M Solutions for companies seeking advanced search marketing services. He also works on mobile UX improvement for startups and sui generis brands at OnlyDesign.org. Hit him up on Google+ for a chat on any of these areas.

Email marketing is probably the most ubiquitous form of marketing there is today. With ExactTarget’s Channel Preference Survey of 2012 showing that 91% of internet users check their emails every single day, this statement is proven in real numbers. After all, checking our emails as soon as we wake up – often even before we’re out of bed – is an act that most of us are guilty of.

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The same survey showed that 66% of consumers have made a purchase as a result of an email campaign that they’ve received. Other studies show that 74% of all users prefer to receive communications from brands via email over any other form of communication.

So if email is widely used and if customers look forward to brand communication via email, have all brands mastered the art of email marketing? Not really.

There are some very elementary mistakes that most brands make, thus messing up a perfectly good marketing opportunity. Let’s take a look. [Read more…]

21 Edifying Resources To Help You Become A Successful Online Marketer

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The voice of the online publisher has grown over the years to be well respected for disseminating information as well as a tool for launching businesses and opening doors for ordinary people to making a decent living and achieve their dreams online. Marketing today is not quite as simple as it was in past years and with over 300 Million blogs in existence the competition is quite fierce.

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However, one thing I have noticed is that not many bloggers are extraordinary in their efforts to making their blog a success. Lots of mediocrity and sub par performances are abundant as most don’t truly respect the art and are just not hungry enough to seek to be better day-in day-out. Being better requires hard work, more so than you’d put into your 9-5 job. [Read more…]

4 Reasons Why In-Image Advertising Converts Better Than Traditional Banner Ads

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Pageviews are no longer king when it comes to measuring website and content performance—if they ever truly were a useful metric at all.  More and more advertisers, marketers, and publishers have begun to realize that without actual conversion, views mean very little when it comes to monetizing content.  There may have been a time when the availability of content was less ubiquitous and a certain number of views could be counted on to coincide with conversions—but that ship has, for the most part, sailed. 

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Today, those who are working with content monetization, online sales, and online publishing of all types are aware of the fact that marketing must be done in a careful, calculated manner in order to capture the attention of today’s information inundated consumer base.  This might sound as if it goes without saying, but it needs to be said because so many advertisers are still clinging to traditional display ads, which simply aren’t effective.  Some estimates claim that the average internet user is served 1,700 banner ads on a monthly basis.  How many banner ads do you, the reader, remember seeing over the past month? How many of those brand names do you remember? [Read more…]

Your Blog Can Dominate Offline Too – Get Your Blog Out There

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In this new media age everyone has some idea of the value of websites, online advertising and social media. Brands have powered their way to exponential success and bloggers over the last decade have paved the online marketplace with tactics geared towards winning the attention of readers and getting their products and services out to billions of web users. It’s been all about the web but have we forgotten good old-fashioned face to face, paper based branding and marketing? I can guarantee that most bloggers reading this don’t have a business card specially designed for their blog. Am I right?

The truth is that there are still many opportunities offline to spread the word about your blog and online services while building strong relationships. [Read more…]

How To Automate Your Marketing Workflows

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As a marketing professional, you are always looking for ways to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts – and ultimately to drive more sales for your organization. However, marketing has become increasingly complicated over the last decade – there are many more channels to manage simultaneously, and markets are becoming more fragmented and diverse. Many marketing teams struggle to deal with this complexity, in large part because they still rely on manual processes that don’t scale to meet the new reality.

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Marketing automation is designed to address this issue – and to actually let marketing teams capitalize on complexity to maximize their effectiveness. It does this by intelligently automating repetitive marketing tasks, integrating existing marketing systems, and providing comprehensive analytic capabilities that deliver new customer insights. By combining these three aspects, automated workflow software significantly enhances marketing effectiveness and efficiency, and ultimately delivers significant competitive advantage and increased sales opportunities. [Read more…]

Build Your Company’s Reputation In The Blogosphere

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Companies put the majority of their marketing efforts into creating content that they can distribute via their websites, brochures, online newsletters and other platforms they control. However, what they fail to consider is how well they are reaching out and targeting their core demographic in media they don’t control. This is starting to change as companies build their presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but the focus is still on direct communications with people that already know about their brand.

At the same time, companies are becoming increasingly vulnerable to online reputation damage from negative sentiment – some of which is real, and some of which is a result of malicious activity. Online smear campaigns are common, for instance, and result in significant commercial consequences for their victims. One example of this is the recent negative astroturfing – posting fake reviews – that Samsung carried out in Taiwan against its competitors, but there are many, many more. [Read more…]