Marketing Archives - Page 8 of 15

Yahoo’s “New” Ad Format

I’ve got a long long history dealing with co-registrations and lead generation going back to the halcyon days before 2003 when email marketing was all the rage (still should be) and FreeSlide was just a twinkle in our performance marketing eyes.

I’m not a defender of the admittedly very tacky and mostly illegal tactics that many “marketers” employed to get iPod-wanting visitors with a zip code and an email address zipping down registration paths towards free Gevalia coffee pots or Netflix DVD’s, but the registration path become an essential part of performance marketing during this “wild west” (as we called it) period.

So, it’s interesting to see Yahoo roll out a new Cost Per Lead (CPL in the industry lingo) ad format in its search results that looks strikingly familiar…

Yahoo Intros Cost-Per-Lead Search Ads, First New Format Under Marissa Mayer: “The new ad format, which can collect information like demographics, email addresses or phone numbers, is called Cost Per Lead for Search. It’s clearly marked as ‘Ad from’ with the advertiser’s name following.”

Square and Disruption

Square Gift Cards from Square on Vimeo.

We make no secret of our love for Square and the ability to democratize transactions to the point of making our on-the-go clients very very happy. We even gave them out as stocking stuffers to clients.

We couldn’t be more excited about Square’s new gift card functionality that will surely make a few of the great folks we work with happy as well (especially during the holiday season):

Square Introduces Gift Cards: The Slow Death Of Physical Credit Cards And Cash Continues | TechCrunch: “Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards, through its Square Wallet app. You can now go through all of the businesses that use Square to process payments, pick the right one for your friend or family member, and then purchase them a gift card of in amount of your choosing.”

It can only be a matter of time before Square gets acquired by Apple (I think). It’s an obvious partnership and makes sense given how disruptive Square is becoming to local payment industries.

New in WordPress 3.5

We’re super excited about the upcoming release of WordPress 3.5 as we use the insanely flexible and competent WordPress content management platform for our own blog as well as a a number of client sites (especially in the affiliate and performance marketing world).

MediaTemple, who we use for hosting this site and can’t recommend enough to others who need server hosting, has put together a great post about the new features of WordPress…

(mt) Media Temple » Weblog » Blog Archive » What’s New in WordPress 3.5: “WordPress 3.5 is set to be released this Monday, December 10! What can you expect from the new upgrade? In this article, we will cover the basics of the new default theme, Twenty Twelve, the new Media Manager, and some lesser known but very useful features that will be a part of 3.5.”

We’ll post our experiences with 3.5 next week after we’ve had a few days to kick the tires.

The Value of No Interface

It’s not intuitive, but it is beautiful:

The best interface is no interface | Cooper Journal: “It’s time for us to move beyond screen-based thinking. Because when we think in screens, we design based upon a model that is inherently unnatural, inhumane, and has diminishing returns. It requires a great deal of talent, money and time to make these systems somewhat usable, and after all that effort, the software can sadly, only truly improve with a major overhaul.”

For a generation or two raised on detailed instruction manuals and websites with overwhelming options and menus, the idea of a clean and interface-less experience for users is painful… however it just might be what you need.

Fun Mail

Gotta love getting snail mail from the mothership!

SEO on the Cheap

We get lots of questions from folks interested in improving their position in Google searches but who aren’t quite ready to jump into a paid solution like we offer.

If you’re looking for “cheap SEO” (we didn’t coin this term), you’re in luck and have quite a few options. Here are a few free resources that you should definitely consider:

1. Create an account for your site or blog with Google Analytics. If you have a Google Account (GMail), you’re halfway there. Google Analytics isn’t perfect, but it’s more than most folks new to SEO or site optimization will ever need.

2. Sign up for Google Webmasters Central. It has a little bit of a learning curve but the payoff is certainly worth the thirty minutes you’ll spend. From learning about sitemaps to addressing problems that the GoogleBot might have indexing certain pages or parts of your sites, Webmasters Central is a goldmine of a reference site.

3. If you happen to have your site or blog on WordPress as a self-install (you pay a host like MediaTemple or BlueHost and install WordPress on a server yourself… not wordpress.com), then check out the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. Yoast does a great job of walking you through easy steps to make your WordPress site more “Google Friendly” and will help you optimize options like your sitemaps and XML. Again… nothing free is perfect, but it’s a good start.

4. SEOMoz has a great page on what to expect when expecting Do-It-Yourself keyword management. Keyword research is insanely important. We stress this so much with our clients and we’re always amazed when people overlook this critical component of website and brand success. This is part of a larger book and not completely up-to-date, but will help you get a start when you’re ready to start dabbling with AdSense.

As always, get in touch with us when you’re ready to take your site or business to the next level. As strange as it sounds, we love helping people discover the power of search and what it can mean to their business, especially when combined with a healthy social media plan. But start playing with these tools and see what you can do for yourself.

First Fall 5K

For some reason last year, I didn’t run in many fall 5Ks and as I was running and training this summer, I realized I missed the scene and the energy that encompass a Saturday morning run for a good cause.

Asheville is the perfect place to get re-engaged in the running scene (although I would suggest hiding in the middle of the pack and not pushing your way to the front of the start line) because you have people who are passionate about running and people who are passionate about helping!

It’s intoxicating to be a part of this kind of community and to understand the world is bigger than you and your own issues.

So as I sit here drinking my post race coffee, I am happy that I was able to support Autism Society of NC and Harrelson Agency.

Oh, but I am definitely checking out the course map next time so as not to be surprised by quarter mile hills that lurk around mile 2!

Contact

We encourage our clients to embed a contact form into their websites because :

it transfers communication about bookings and/or business to their website rather than their inbox with their dentist appointments and child’s soccer schedule.
the form collects valuable data that can be used for other purposes

Plus, when you realize how many people really want to contact you, it makes you feel good inside!

Discovery Marketing

At Harrelson Agency, we know that discovery marketing is revolutionizing how consumers search and interact. When I am looking for a place to stop as I am traveling, I know what I want. I know the foods that I like and the foods I don’t like, so I am going to wait and stop where I like, which leads me to search for a specific restaurant.

And I’m going to search with my directions app.

That changes the marketing world even if that’s not how you discover. Even if that’s not how your employees discover.

It’s how consumers discover.

Discovering Client-Based Marketing

There is nothing better than having your client ask, “Could we….” and your being able to answer yes! You can see the hesitation because they have had experiences where other marketing or technology agencies have said, “No.”

Discovering that your story can be told well and that there are more possibilities than you thought is important because it leads to new learning and new challenges. There is something powerful about discovering for yourself.

As I discover what my clients see, I see them discovering new possibilities and avenues for themselves. I see their identities and audiences expanding to more than they thought, but the best part of all this discovery is that it’s the way marketing works now.

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

Website is only a piece of the puzzle.

We like to find other agencies and learn more about what they do! Rock on, Blue Ion!

Show, Don’t Tell

I try to explain to student writers that there is something powerful about talking around your point. It’s a strategy called showing and not telling. By using an interaction, a conversation or an observation you can show your audience what you mean.

It may seem unrelated, but as I have talked to clients, I have realized that too often marketing strategies are straightforward explanations rather than real life experiences. When you include these experiences that have shaped your story and your journey to where you are, you draw your audience in because they can connect with you.

Maybe show, don’t tell isn’t just for writing.

Social Media’s Importance For Business

Forbes:

The perception of social media marketing has shifted quickly—no longer viewed as a trendy or passing fad, having a flexible and well-managed presence in each of the “big three” (Facebook, Twitter, and Google+) has become a must for any business seeking to secure a place in both the traditional and digital marketplace.

We’ve quickly entered a brave new world where social media matters infinitely more than most businesses guessed it would a few years ago.

Don’t get caught left behind.

New Biz Cards

Awesome thick (like hard card stock with red in between) business cards from the always awesome Moo shop for The Harrelson Agency…

You have to love that Apple-like design aesthetic of their entire presentation.

These cards are amazing. You should ask for one soon.

We Made the Move

Decided to go with the amazing SquareSpace platform for the new blog.

SquareSpace 6 is a really mature platform that has come of age and is definitely impressive for our needs and the needs of many of our clients.

Highly recommend!

Dash and Affiliate Pageviews?

Interesting concept for a company looking to posit itself in the already heated analytics space…

Parse.ly Will Launch Its Pageview-Generating Machine Called “Dash” This Month | TechCrunch: “Dash aims to help publishers increase pageviews by providing insight into what topics are trending and what topics they should write more about or less about, among other things. But most importantly, its predictive analysis engine is able to recommend what topics publishers should cover right now to be on top of future trends. Simply put, it’s a pageview-generating machine.”

Dash sounds like it might have the predictive chops to fill a gap between aggregate analytics programs and more real time programs by focusing on the predictive side of things.

The question will be whether it actually works for niche sites and not just mega Twitter-style trends.

If Dash does work well with niche traffic predictive analysis, it could be a very very useful tool for affiliates.

Keep an eye out.

DreamHost is Down; Affiliate Sites and Hosting

One of the questions I get the most frequently from folks new to affiliate marketing is which host to use for affiliate sites.

There is no one true answer to the question, of course. The answer will vary depending on the person.

However, it is not a decision that you should arrive at quickly or easily. There are many many variables involved in picking a good host and price is just one of them.

For instance, DreamHost is down again (evidently this has been happening frequently judging from the comments):

DreamHost Status » Blog Archive » Major Network Outage: “Our admins are currently investigating this matter. This outage is impacting all of our central databases. Which controls nearly every service ( ex. DNS, Panel, WebMail, Customer Websites, etc ). Therefor if you are encountering any type of downtime, it’s likely related to this outage.”

Do your research and due diligence when picking a hosting provider for your affiliate sites. Sure, it’s great to get a site up and going for $10 on a domain name and $5 a month for co-location hosting, but is that really the best provider for you? As always, research research research.

The prices run from $5 to around $25 for entry level hosting and minimal traffic but once you start scaling, things like downtime, versions of PHP offered, ability to add subdomains, mask links etc really become more valuable than a few bucks. And trust me, it’s a pain to move a site once it has a home.

By the way, if you’re wondering, I always suggest the fine folks at MediaTemple and use them for all I do on the web.

Time to Learn to Code

I use MarsEdit more than any other app out there. If you write content for the web and have a Mac, MarsEdit is a must.

Its developer, Daniel Jalkut, has a fantastic post on the topic of programming as the literacy of the 21st century…

Red Sweater Software Blog – Learn to Code: “Literacy isn’t about becoming a Hemingway or a Chabon. It’s about learning the basic tools to get a job done. I think programming — coding — is much the same. You don’t have to be the world’s best programmer to develop a means of expressing yourself, of solving a problem, of making something happen. If you’re lucky, you’ll be a genius, but you start out with the basics.”

That’s why I’m crazy enough to be working with a group of 15 6th-8th grade girls to help them learn how to make an iOS or Android app. Coding is the new literacy.

Brent Simmons, maker of NetNewsWire and overall deep thinker on programming, has launched Code Year. Go and join up here (free, you get a weekly newsletter to help and prod you as you learn programming).

Go and learn.

Why Freemiums Aren’t the Future Path

Interesting piece by Tac Anderson on the concept of Path as an Upstream Social Network (USN below) compared to traditional networks like Twitter and Facebook which he terms Downstream Social Networks (DSN below) and how USN’s could affect the engagement of marketers with lucrative data-rich networks:

What Path Teaches Us About The Future of Social Networks | @NewCommBiz: “Lets assume for a minute that as social networking evolves the social graph is filled with private USN and more open, commercial DSN. And what if most of those USN didn’t allow brands and advertising in? (Most of them will but humor me for a minute.) If marketeers and brands want to reach people inside their private USN, they need to be brought in by the members of those networks. Brands need to create experiences worth talking and sharing. A small example is when I shared my new Star Wars Moleskine I was going to be using on Path. You can see the reactions I got on Path as well as those I got on Instagram. Both of those went to Twitter and received their own reactions there.”

Basically, he ponders what if these Downstream Social Networks could thrive with a fermium model where brands and ads weren’t allowed to participate.

I’m not certain this will ever happen for a couple of reasons.

1) Social networks, unlike apps, don’t necessarily proliferate based on individual user experiences. Freemiums work on iPhone apps or even cloud based services that are more single user in nature. Social networks are, by their nature, commons that we don’t have complete control over and we’re more willing to make compromises on design, ads and privacy (hence Facebook).

2) The data-based nature of social networks is so lucrative that even new networks that are beautifully designed and based on the idea of limits (150 friends only, limited sharing etc) will certainly find more and better funding by relying on brands and marketers to subsidize the costs of running a network.

Path (and Facebook) can and should do all they can to encourage marketers to think above the “All Traffic is Good Traffic” blasting approach that many marketers use to get passive and relatively unqualified (and thereby low quality) traffic to their sites/offers/links and think towards better engagement based on some qualitative value in the exchange.

However, freemiums aren’t in our future for social networking.

This may all sound like it has more to do with brand advertisers than direct or affiliate marketers, but I’d argue affiliate marketing has the most to gain from the idea of interacting in these rich spaces of real human interactions and frictionless sharing.

All Traffic is Not Good Traffic

Affiliate Summit published its latest webinar today on the topic of traffic generation. Evan speaks for an hour about how he generates traffic and “fans” organically through search, via social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook, with email and paid search…

10 Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate Website: “Affiliate Summit ran a free webinar featuring Evan Weber, of online marketing agency Experience Advertising, on 10 Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate Website, and it’s now available to watch on demand.”

It’s an interesting video for people new to the area of affiliate marketing and Evan does a good job of showing how to get traffic via tried and true techniques that do increase page views.

However, my reminder to advertisers and publishers I work with (especially folks new to the industry) is that not all traffic is good traffic.

For instance, ping.fm is spam (still waiting for the mud fight, Kim). It’s a fantastic tool if you’re looking to broadcast like you’re Dan Rather, but that’s not what the effective media tactic of 2011 looks like and you’re not CBS.

In Evan’s webinar, he makes great use of tools like ping.fm, a Chrome extension for blasting out links to Digg, LinkedIn, Reddit, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Status.net, Plurk and God knows what else, but most, if not all, of the traffic gained from such blasting will do little to help you conversion numbers and in fact drive the type of dilution that could lead you to make poor choices about ad placements, keyword buys etc.

In other words, this type of traffic generation is great if you’re doing CPM advertising, but CPA and PayPerSale in 2011 requires different strategies based on community growth in the long term.

A much more realistic strategy for effective and sustained traffic and conversions generation is to hyper-focus. Build out the profile of your ideal user. What networks do they use? What things do they search for? What will lead them to your site, make an action on your site and then refer your site to others and come back at least once in the coming three months? What do they look like? Where do they live (don’t be creepy)? What do they wear? What kind of pets do they have? What games do they play? What do they drive? Be obsessive. Sweat the details and do your research.

Take the portfolio of that person you create and work incessantly to sell your story to that person. It’s not easy, but it will pay off. If you get that one person to your site, you’ve made it.

Stop reaching for millions of page views via artificial keyword buys and blasted out social media messages and thousands of indexed pages with forums that no one uses and work to convert that one person that you’ve created.

At least that’s what works for me and why you’re reading this now.

Namecheap Domain Move Update

Yesterday I decided to go with the gestalt and move a few test domains from GoDaddy to Namecheap.

I’m happy to say that at about 9pm last night, I received an email from Namecheap saying the process had been completed (and one from GoDaddy saying goodbye).

In total, it took about 10 hours from start-to-finish, but I’m guessing much of that was due to the Dump GoDaddy Day movement.

All of the name servers were switched over automagically (they point to my host MediaTemple for the samharrelson.com domain) without me having to do anything, which is a big relief.

I’ll be moving PayPerTrends, as well as all of my domains, over to Namecheap this weekend. So, if you see anything goofy or the site has some downtime, you’ll know the hamsters in the back are doing their thing.

Excited.

I’m a nerd.

Rock on.