Cincinnati Internet Marketing Blog

Favorite Interactive Marketing Tools

"Favorite Interactive Marketing Tools" is the topic for the January meeting of the Cincinnati AMA Interactive Shared Interest Group on January 11th.

One of our most popular topics, once a year we have a meeting when we go around the around the room and everyone who attends spends five minutes describing their favorite Interactive marketing tool.  What smartphone app, software program, website or web browser extension makes your job as an Interactive marketer a whole lot easier?  Here is your chance to share it with the group and learn about new tools that you might be able to use!  Please come to the meeting ready to talk about 2 tools with the group (one and a spare in case someone else chooses the same tool).

The meeting is on Wednesday January 11th from 11:30 am - 1:00 pm at Office Key Hyde Park in Rookwood Tower (3505 Edwards Road, suite 550).  The meeting is free for American Marketing Association members, $15 for non-members and online registration on the Cincinnati AMA website is required.

Interactive SIG meeting details and registration: http://cincinnatiama.org/2012/01/interactive-sig-january-11-2012/

I hope to see you there!

 

Small Business Online Marketing Seminar

Joanne Westwood of Westwood Virtual Associates and I are teaching a one-day Small Business Online Marketing Seminar this Friday at Indiana Wesleyan University in West Chester.  Topics include:

• Facebook Marketing
• Social Media
• Business Blogging
• Online Video
• Email Marketing
• Website Conversion
• Search Engine Optimization
• Online Advertising
• Google Analytics

This is a small class (capped at 20 attendees) in which Joanne and I will be walking folks through many of the most important elements of online marketing for small businesses.  Joanne will be teaching the morning session from 9:00-noon, there will be a lunch break from noon to 1:00, and then I'll be teaching from 1:00 to 4:00.

If you are a small business owner, entrepreneur or marketer looking to get a hands-on "crash course" in the basics of online marketing, this is the event to attend.  This is an "introductory" level course and prior marketing knowledge or education is not necessary, so if you're intimidated by these topics, don't be.  We're here to help!  

The price is $149 for either three-hour session or $249 for both sessions.  Additional details and secure online registration through Eventbrite is available at: http://nov18class.eventbrite.com/

Learn About Google AdWords at the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber

On August 11th I will be giving a presentation at the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber on Google AdWords.  I'm really looking forward to this event!  Here are the details including a link to the Chamber's website to register for the event.   

The 90-minute presentation is titled "Google AdWords: Getting the Biggest BANG for your Online Advertising Bucks".  I'm going to be going over how AdWords works and how businesses can cost-effectively run online advertising campaigns that produce measurable results.  While the focus will be on Google AdWords, I will also be emphasizing the importance of having specific advertising goals, how easy it is to track online advertising effectiveness and how this can fit into an organizations' overall marketing plan.  If you have friends, prospects or clients that are "on the fence" about advertising online or have expressed an interest in learning about how to advertise their business online, this would be a great event for them to attend.  I'm not going to be using PowerPoint much, it's going to be a high-energy and fun presentation that also has a lot of info.         

This event is only $35 for Chamber members and $50 for non-members and that includes lunch.  Folks can register at the link below and I have pasted additional info below you can pass along.  If you have any questions about this, please feel free to give me a call at 937-312-1400.

What: Google AdWords: Getting the Biggest BANG for your Online Advertising Bucks

AdWords has revolutionized advertising over the past decade by enabling businesses to reach people in a whole new way, track their results, and make program adjustments to improve performance 24/7. This lively presentation is designed for small, medium or large business owners and marketing managers who are interested in growing their business via results-oriented Google AdWords online advertising campaigns.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Generate sales or sales leads online via Google AdWords advertising
• Target prospects much more effectively with less waste than with other forms of advertising
• Buy online advertising for a fraction of what others pay
• Set a search marketing budget, return on investment goals and estimate expected results
• Avoid the most common search engine marketing mistakes when using Google AdWords

When:    Wednesday 8/11/2010 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Where:
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
300 Carew Tower, 441 Vine Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Event Page on Chamber website (to register):

http://www.cincinnatichamber.com/events/eventdetail.aspx?menu_id=144&EventCode=N1008PUL

Dayton B2B October 21st Dyanmic Dialogues Event: "New Media: Effective Business Applications"

Next Wednesday October 21st there is a great event taking place in Dayton that I will be attending and you might want to check it out as it will be a lot of fun and a great networking opportunity.

Cox Ohio Media is having their second Dynamic Dialogues event at the Dayton Art Institute from 4-6PM and the topic is "New Media: Effective Business Applications".  This event features small 20-minute round-table discussions which will be led by myself and other local new media experts including Michelle Beckham-Corbin of C3: Creating Connections Consulting, Debba Haupert of Girlfriendology, David Bowman of Lucrum, Carole Hicks & Ron Campbell of U! Creative and others.  After the short, small-group discussions will be an hour of networking.

Here is a quick two-minute interview with Cathi Eastman, Event Marketing Coordinator for Cox Ohio Media about the event.

You can click here to register online or call Cox Ohio Media at 937-225-0785.

Video Interview with Krista Neher of Boot Camp Digital

Last week I got to have lunch with and interview the lovely and awesome Internet marketer Krista Neher, whose new company, Boot Camp Digital (www.bootcampdigital.com) has begun offering digital marketing consulting and training courses in Cincinnati.  Here is the video of Krista briefly describing her background and experience with Internet marketing, as well as Boot Camp Digital's services.

On the Boot Camp Digital website is information regarding and you can register for the upcoming courses "Blogging from Start to Finish" and "Social Media for Marketers".

Hey Cincinnati: Add Videos to Your Website!

My colleague Ron Harper of VideosOnYourWebsite.com interviewed me a couple of weeks ago about optimizing videos for the Web and the benefits of adding videos to a website.  Here's the clip:

 

If you're interested in how video might work for you, check out Ron's site or call him at 513-477-5175.  His rates are very reasonable and within the reach of most companies and non-profits.

Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips:

• Conduct keyword research to determine the best keywords you should target
• Include your keywords in your video's title, for example a pest control company in Cincinnati might title their video "Choosing a Pest Control Company in Cincinnati"
• Create a YouTube channel for your business or website and upload your videos to YouTube (which is owned by Google)
• On YouTube, include a link to your website in the video description and keywords in the "tags" section
• Submit a video sitemap or MRSS feed of your video content to Google so it can be indexed.  Get the details here.
• Try to get links to the video that include keywords on your site from external sites, for example you could link to the video from your Facebook page, blog, Twitter account, etc.

Benefits of Adding Video to Your Site:

• Adding a "face" or personality to your web presence that helps to alleviate the impersonal nature of the web
• More compelling content for your site visitors than plain text, let's face it watching a video is more fun than reading!
• Excellent way to present information that is hard to convey with just words
• Cost-effective way to add some style to your site and make your firm seem more impressive by standing out from the crowd

Online Search Engine Optimization Resources

This morning I was on a panel discussion regarding search engine optimization (SEO) and handed out a sheet with a list of SEO resources online and thought I'd also post them to the blog with a little more info.  If you are looking to learn more about SEO, check out the sites listed here, most of which have lots of great free information. 

Search Engine Land   Lots of articles and search industry news.

 

Search Engine Watch    Free columns on various SEO topics, part of ClickZ (www.clickz.com)

SEObook.com

SEOmoz.org

Search Marketing Standard     A quarterly print magazine ($29.95/year) but also has lots of great articles on their website.  This publication is owned by iNetInteractive in West Chester.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool    Look up search volumes of terms in Google and find similar terms to build your keyword list.

Google Webmasters / Site Owners Help    Tips, including "Do's and Don'ts" straight from Google

Blah...Blah...Blah...THE END

I remember being a teenager and watching TV with my grandmother one day when we got to the tail end of the Hitchcock move The Birds.  My grandmother then launched into a short, mild rant in which she complained about how she hated Hitchcock movies because in her opinion they just seemed to end for no apparent reason, without a tidy resolution or conclusion that ended the story.

My grandmother, may she rest in peace, would probably hate most of the business websites I see today.  Much more often than not, I see websites with decent content on the page that extols the virtues of the company or product and then...it just stops.  No link to relevant content on a following page.  No call to action.  No offer.  Nothing.  Just blank space at the bottom of the page.

Don't leave your website visitors hanging.  Direct them where you want them to go or to do what it is you want them to do.  If you want them to a read the next page in your story, put a link to that page.  If you want people to pick up the phone and call you, put your phone number and the name of the person they should ask for at the bottom of the page. 

Take a look at your site and see if it resembles a Hitchcock movie. If it does, add appropriate links and calls to action to every page on the site so people will be more likely to take that next step.

If your website isn't producing the results you're looking for, call me, Rob Bunting at 937-312-1400 so we can talk about how to change that. 

THE END

MarketingSherpa: Paid Search Tops List of Marketing Tactics for Viral Success

My friend Jane Vandehorst of Vanderhorst Consulting sent me a short article from Marketing Sherpa I found very interesting and want to share.  Marketing Sherpa features marketing case studies and data from recent surveys of professional marketers that are often very informative and have more details than you will find elsewhere, so I suggest you check out the site and consider subscribing to some of their free email newsletters.

This week's "Chart of the Week" showcases data from the Video Marketing Survey Marketing Sherpa conducted last month.  The chart indicates how the 1,083 respondents rated the effectiveness of various tactics in promoting viral videos.  The winner?  Paid search!

   
This doesn't surprise me at all, but I would bet many people who have not promoted a viral video before, if asked "How would you promote a viral video?" probably would answer 'blogs', 'social media sites' or 'traditional PR' but as you can see those don't rate as well in this survey as paid search and paid media.  The article makes the point: "The free methods are the most likely ones to be tried, but the least likely ones to succeed." 

This is good info to keep in mind the next time someone tells you they want to do a viral campaign but not do any advertising at all to support it. 

 

Google's New Search-based Keyword Tool

Google keeps innovating and coming out with all kinds of tools, gadgets and other shiny things to help us online marketers do our jobs more efficiently (and therefore spend more money with Google of course).

Well here is another one: the Google Search-based Keyword Tool.  This handy new tool helps by providing information on which terms are driving search traffic to a URL and competitive data for other related terms that might be good to add to your Google AdWords PPC account and/or to your search engine optimization efforts.

For example, I can enter the URL for one of my clients, www.shiptheweb.com and the term "moleskine" (ShipTheWeb sells the complete line of moleskine notebooks) and the tool displays:

• a list of terms related to the term I entered
• the number of monthly searches for each term
• a small bar chart that indicates how competitive the term is
• a suggested bid amount
• the ad/search share (what percentage of time my client's ad comes up in search results)
• the landing page on the website where the ad is sending folks

So I can see new terms I might want to add to ShipTheWeb's AdWords account or bids to increase and therefore expand and refine our program. 

This tool incorporates data from the existing Google AdWords Keyword Tool which is helpful for doing basic keyword research in creating a list of keywords for SEO & PPC.

This is a bit difficult to explain, you may want to try it out and use Google's help to fully understand what the tool is doing.  And of course it's in beta and Google will undoubtedly continue to tweak it.  You're welcome to post a comment or contact me with questions and I'll be happy to help, but be advised I may be under the influence of tryptophan from mass consumption Thanksgiving turkey.