LooseSuits Forum: Marketing

Are Facebook Ads Going to Zero? Lookery Lowers Its Guarantee to 7.5-Cent CPMs

Scrivs — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:34:02

This doesn't surprise me at all and is a big problem for Facebook. At least Myspace was aware from the beginning what to do to gain revenue and wasn't ashame to just plaster the ads on there. Facebook, while I have respect for what they do, tried to keep it too clean and give targetted ads that just don't pull any weight.

With so many pageviews, an advertiser can see their campaign for the month gone in a couple of hours so who would be willing to pay a premium on the CPM rates?

Ashanti Kills: viral marketing gone bad?

Tyme — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:08:47

The video describes Ashanti's marketing campaign (which was pulled) for her new music. They ask if this campaign went to far? I can see both sides. It can be compared to the violence in video games. Just because someone plays a violent game doesn't mean they will go out and murder someone.

On the flip side, they make an effort to keep adult material out of the hands of kids. Was this done with this campaign and honestly how can a company monitor something like that? The song itself has nothing to do with the type of violence the marketing campaign added to the situation. I personally wouldn't want my song associated like that but artistic expression is different for everyone.

What do you guys think? Was it over the top or are people being too "sensitive"?

Sponsorships and Blogger Hypocrisy

Scrivs — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:38:56

We've had this discussion a million times and now I'm beginning to wonder if anyone has specific examples of blogs caving in under the "pressure" of sponsorship influence? Readers always seemed concerned about a blog taking up advertising or sponsorship, but when has that effected the quality of the blog at the moment? Anyone have any examples because I would love to see them in action.

Make Your Web Site Work for You

Tyme — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:42:33

I was doing good (I agreed with the author) until I got to the example sites.

Health Barn
Revat Fitness
Walter & Ping Ping

Walter & Ping Ping is a good example but the other two? Um, ok, if the author says so.

How much does the company website impact your perception of the company? For me, I have to admit it does make a difference if I am searching online. Of course it "could" be that the malicious person makes a wonderful site to lure people in.

Question.. advanced SEO, any takers?

bombadda — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:11:55

I guess this is an advanced SEO question, relating to page ranking and links.

If I have a link to my web site on a site that gets 10,000 hits per day does that increase my page rank more than the same link on a site that gets 10 hits per day?

anyone know? thanks

Marketing Education - Prospects of the Occupation

KVA — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:22:24

Now I am studying in the University and will graduate as a marketologist in 2012.
What do you think: will marketologists be demanded in the future?
And in what other spheres they could work?

Thanks for the answers :)

HELP: Your Formula for Charging AD Space?

rileycentral — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:46:14

Hi all. I'm a pure writer first, but I've recently found myself getting into selling 125x125 ad space on my blog. Currently I am charging an amount that some have told me is far too low.

Is there a formula you use as related to daily uniques etc. that helps you set a price? I'm probably going to get a lot more into this so i need some help setting price for ad space.

Thank you in advance for your responses.

Damien

How aware are you?

Tyme — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:03:42

I came across this on Seth Godin's site today. I looked at the video and was so proud I got the right answer but I didn't get everything right. I don't want to spoil it, it's completely work safe. You might learn something about yourself. :)

What web design related networks do you use to promote your site?

HelenWalker — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:22:17

What are the web design networks you use to promote your websites?

Where is the brand in the 21st century?

alex-hardy — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:29:25

I'm not looking for the textbook definition; as social networks become more significant, what is a brand these days? Is it the carefully constructed image (the aspirational values or fictional narrative) that is presented to consumers, or is it the reality of how the brand owner (or indeed their customer) is perceived?

For example: Where is the brand for a sportswear company? Is it an ideal of fitness and athleticism or the slob on his couch, watching TV and eating pizza?

How can a company reconcile the two? Do any companies truly walk the talk? Who are they?

What do you want from an ad network?

Scrivs — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:27:35

As webmasters I'm sure you are aware there are plenty of different types of ad networks out there that you can use to make money, but it still seems very few of us use any of them. For the people that do implement ads on their site why don't you use most of these ad networks? Is there something they are missing that you would want? Too difficult?

I always liked the concept behind BlogAds, but never the implementation behind them. The Deck does a great job for a limited inventory of publishers. I just can't picture what the perfect ad network would be. Maybe it includes:

High % payout for publishers.
Based around a community. Everything else on the web is community-based yet selling ads is almost something we must do on our own.
Building relationships with your advertisers. Many times it's just a stranger slipping money into your pockets killing almost any chance of doing anything long term.

Do you have anything else for the ad network you want?

Adidas takes on Nike?

trendsfreak — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:05:20

This is something interesting we are observing - In blog citations, Nike and Adidas are getting closer.

Any reason why people are so much discussing about Adidas? What you like/dislike about each brand? Which will be hot in next few months?

If you wish ,you may answer in TrendFreaks Facebook group as well.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8181412285

Managing Your Online Brand

Scrivs — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:01:55

This can apply to just one person or a whole company (I'm in the process of writing an entry by the way for ExpertIdiot on this topic), but do you feel that to achieve maximum exposure you have to manage your brand/identity across multiple sites? For example, if part of you brand was based around video, wouldn't it make sense to post your video to the biggest video sites to expose yourself or do you think you can actually just focus on one? Does it take that much time to manage yourself across 4-5 sites?

Now I'm not referring to the people who have a Facebook account just for social reasons, I'm talking about the ones who are trying to grow a business based around them. I'm of the mindset that you should spread yourself around, at least through the biggest sites because it doesn't require that much maintenance.

Say goodbye to SEO as you know it, say hello to LSI

seopher — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:12:26

In an unprecidented turn of events I'm actually writing a note relevent to my site...

Latent semantic indexing is going to change how your content is written. It's going to pull you in the opposite direction to the conventional theory of keyword density. That is unless LSI is already upon us.

It's basically the opposite to keyword density (where you rank higher for certain phrases by having them appear more times on a page); LSI rewards you for having a more keyword rich page. Google already knows the synonyms for your search terms so it's only a matter of time.

What do you guys think?

Shameless Digg plug

Watch for cars when wearing headphones

netzkobold — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:36:27

The New South Wales police force and DDB Sydney have released a print campaign to raise awareness of the fact that teenagers get injured or die as a result of listening to music whilst they cross the road.

AOL's 15 Minutes Ad

Scrivs — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:40:26

Cool for us web geeks who get all the references, but not sure if the general public will understand. At least they should laugh at the Don't Taze Me Bro writhing around on the floor.

Let's talk PPC

seopher — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:00:11

I'm reaching out to the wealth of information held within the 9rules community; let's talk PPC.

I'm forcing myself to learn it because I'm equally as smart as the "super affiliates" who leverage CPA schemes with PPC to make thousands upon thousands of dollars. I've had little success thus far and maybe need to break beyond these mental barriers...

#1 - If the CPA is $10, my logic is that I should only spend $10 on the PPC campaign; if no sales are generated by that point then I should stop. The logic is so that I don't operate at a continual loss and can salvage the situation. I just wonder whether this is wrong.

#2 - Low CPC is best (clearly) because I need to maximise my clicks. I've got a campaign at a nice tipping point because it's generating a lot of clicks for relatively specific terms but I'm not getting any sales.

And so on.

Any PPC gurus in?

Welcome to Scotland

vlado — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:02:51

The Scottish government have just spent £125,000 on a new national slogan to be used sell Scotland to visitors, and the best they could get for their money was

"Welcome to Scotland"

Hardly what you'd call imaginative.

Reckon they were better off with their previous slogan

"The Best Small Country in the World"

I'd have happily made a few suggestions if they were willing to throw some of that cash my way... how about

Scotland: More than just kilts and bagpipes

Scotland: Just like haggis, you might like it once you've tried it

I sure you could do better than "Welcome to Scotland".

Damn These Guys Are SEO Geniuses

Mike — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:38:50

So I wanted to point out to all of you the best SEO consulting firm I've ever found, Intact Info Solutions based in Los Angeles. These guys are so smart, they decided to post a spam message in Notes last night (since deleted) with a junk account that pointed over to this lawfirm for whom they are doing "Website ReDesign and search engine optimization" work. Talk about creative!

Oh and in case you ever want to give a spammer something to chew on if you get ahold of one, it's actually illegal to post "annoying" or spam messages under a fake personality on the web. I don't know if anyone has went to jail for this yet, but it's fun to point it out to idiots.

What if you had to shop for customers?

mvlabs — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:34:18

If you go into the heart of Kuala Lumpur and start perusing the latest deals in China Town, you might run into a nice fellow named Nii. He'll probably be wearing a festive, brightly colored hat and handing out fliers for his bar, Reggae Bar by name and "the only reggae bar in KL."

You see, Nii's customers are mostly the traveling type, i.e. very short-term and ever-changing. So, each day he goes out to "shop for customers" in China Town, targeting that day's foreign crowd that might be interested in a bar like his.

Luckily, many of us don't have to worry about a complete turnover of customers every day, month, or year... but what if we did? The internet is giving consumers such a plethora of choices that you do, in fact, have to shop for new customers and must try even harder to continue impressing your current ones.

If the amount you push on the market no longer matters; if you have to shop for every customer, every purchase of your goods, what should you start doing differently?

Web Design Creams For Better CTR, ROI, and Sexiness

friday — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:08:18

There's a cream for everything. Now there's even a cream you can apply to increase your logo size tenfold!

A very important factor in the pages you are sending all that traffic to is how big to make your logo. Additionally, how much white space is on your pages.

Some people will cram their logo into impossible-to-notice spots on their pages and completely lose their branding opportunity. Others have way too much white space and lose ROI.

And don't get me started on how many webmasters don't even know what website stardust can do for CTR!

Watch this video and see what I mean...

Marketing a video games site

BinaryMoon — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:57:14

I want to increase traffic to my video games blog - in particular Binary Joy

So I am wondering 2 things

How do I differentiate myself from the rest of the video gaming sites (and there are lots)?
How can I market myself to people?

Obviously I know about standard blog marketing tactics (comments, signatures, social media etc) but they only go so far.

I'm guessing part of the problem is that there are so many sites out there that write about video games. When I started the site I tried to focus on good games that people will enjoy, ignoring all the crap out there. Now I am wondering about flipping things around and talking about rubbish stuff as well - occasionally being a little abusive to the truly awful games I find.

I'm just confused really. I genuinely think my site is good, and I want to make it more successful, but I just can't think how :S

Perpetual Spam Subject Line Thread

Scrivs — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:01:42

It never fails. I wake up in the morning, open Mail to watch the numerous amounts of spam messages get downloaded into my inbox. However, instead of deleting them instantly, now I scope out each and every subject line because they have now become very funny and interesting. What I want to do is start a collection of the best spam subject lines that I could find and just continue to add them to this Note forever. If you can censor out the nasty stuff because these can get really bad, really quick.

Increase your love stick to make it really magic.
Add extra inches of length to your little soldier of love.
If you treat your filly as a goddess, why not become a God in her bedroom?
Yolanda's hulky shlong (Tyme will appreciate that one)
Surprise your boyfriend/hubby, LARGER your SmallBreast

So if you are a male and want to impress the ladies, then you don't need advice from a book, simply read your spam and you will be good to go.

Main points to effective SEO... What are they?

bombadda — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 09:24:13

It's Sunday and I have work to do. SEO work. *cringe* I want to get this over and done with so I thought I'd seek the advice you all you clever people out there for a quick SEO checklist...

1] The main things I am aware of are:

Repeat main Keywords in the page title, description meta, keywords meta, body content and alt tags.
Use Keywords as the text or alt-tag of links where possible
Use Keywords as part of the filename of pages in the site

Is this correct? What else should I do?

2] Question... I'm unsure as to the way search engines read keywords
i.e. if I put a string of say 3 keywords together as an img alt-tag or comma separated keyword would the search engine index those words only as a 3 word phrase or would it also index them as individual keyword? e.g. would 'nine rules notes' be indexed only as "nine rules notes" or would it also be indexed as "nine" + "rules" + "notes".

3] Question... do I have to include both singular and plural variations? e.g 'note, notes'?

I hope someone out there can offer some advice.

TIA Bombadda

Best way to market your online store?

creat1ve — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:58:06

I'm getting ready to launch a new store in the next month or so, and I'd like to know the best methods of marketing it. What have you done and what works for you? and most importantly what should I stay away from?

Will the recent hit on blog networks by Google reduce the effectiveness of blogs for SEO

UsedCarsOnly — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 06:31:55

For a while now, blogs have been powerful tools for search engine optimization. Google has devalued many of them recently, especially those on networks that keep them linked together. Is this the end of blog effectiveness?

The spammers and link buyers can be blamed, of course. It was becoming too easy to throw money at a website and increase its power (through page rank) and effectiveness (through search engine rankings). Still, there is a conspiracy theory behind it...

I can imagine the problem of paid links and blog networks coming up as a topic for those (Matt Cutts and company) whose job is to make the algorithm less "gameable" by SEOs. They brought up the issues, offered possible solutions, and went to work.

The higher ups saw the data and thought that it was nice, but someone noticed something. If they can devalue paid links, more people would have to use AdWords to promote their websites and AdSense to monetize their websites.

What did they have? A valid, justifiable reason to push towards monopolization of the internet marketing industry.

Sound crazy? Sound obvious?

Yes to both.

Social Bookmarking SEO

Web Design

tobysmith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:00:00

Web designing and web marketing go hand in hand. A website desired for marketing must have a trendy design to attract customers. Learn more on Ensure

Disruptive Marketing, but in a good way. Other examples?

mvlabs — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:08:53

I was at a trade show this past weekend.

The thing with trade shows is you see the whole gamut of marketing efforts, from price listings on torn-out notebook pages taped to a support beam (while the rep sits there eating) to chaps decked out in company gear dishing out catalogs (with nary a question as to what you do) to more stellar efforts, like active demonstrations, smiles (so simple but so effective), and efforts to first find out about me (what else is there to talk about?).

The thing with trade shows like this is most people can't be hassled by most booths; they have specific products in mind and yours probably isn't it... but you never know. And herein lies the problem, as a seller, the only way to find out if you can benefit a buyer is to stop them for a few precious moments and find out who they are. The stopping them is the hard part.

Which is where I saw something interesting. One booth had a mascot out in the aisles offering hugs, pictures with people, and general clownery. I'm not usually a proponent of this, but the casual observer would see something interesting happening here. Many people stopped (albeit usually quite briefly) to observe what exactly was going on and why in God's name all these people were smiling.

Now, instead of trying to sneak in a question or two to buyers practically running by, they had a few precious moments to inquire about their identity.

I bet they found a lot more potential clients and got catalogs in a lot more warm hands than pre-mascot time.

In a 3 or 4 day trade show, why not take an afternoon or day to really switch things up? What do you do to score a few more moments to explore potential clients' identities?

Share your thoughts and any other examples of this that you've seen.

Help Me Understand Advertising

Scrivs — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:51:42

The other day Mike points me to an article about how some blgogers are raking in the cash. The lead character of the story is Mike Arrington of TechCrunch who reports to make over $240,000 a month from his site. Whether I like it or not TC still gets the scoop on a lot of news so I visit it daily and I couldn't tell you more than two ads that I recall ever seeing there.

There are so many that they get lost. As a company that is looking to advertise and get their name out how can you look at the site and see it as a great opportunity for you? I've never bought a banner on another site so I don't know what criteria to look for, but I would think that a site with 16+ ads on the page would be something to stay away from.

Maybe someone can help me out here with the logic and do you think that it really pays off to get on a large site like this no matter how dense the advertising is on the site?

Wanted: Head Up Butt Detector

wrttnwrd — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:10:36

I am sooo sick of comments like this from potential clients:

"We're really short on cash" (from a CEO sitting in an office in the most expensive office building in Seattle)

"I need to get consensus from all my managers before we move ahead" (from a CEO who has over 20 managers)

"But X said they could do it for $Y/10000", where Y is my price. (why are you talking to me then?!)

"I really, really want to work with you. I know you're the best. I know your price is fair. I just can't pay it." (um...)

"I want you to have control over the creative. We just need to tell you how it's going to look, and what the copy will be." (I walked out of that one)

The first four I've heard in the last 48 hours.

So, I need a device that will detect when someone has their head so far up their ass they can't hear what I'm saying.

Please help.

IT's GUMBY!!!!

xirclebox — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:20:29

LOL!!! Sleeping bag makes you look like gumby!!!!
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/selk-bags/index.html

Toom hardware store commercial - bumper

netzkobold — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:49:54

German Toom hardware store just released a new commercial starring a suburb do-it-yourselfer promoting Toom's raffle about do-it-yourself ideas you can send in. The homeowner got annoyed by speeding cars in front of his driveway and built his very own speed bumps ...

'
'

More information regarding this promotion and the spot here

Internet Marketing Account Management?

wrttnwrd — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:35:46

Last week I posted about issues within my company. After a weekend and some good advice, those problems don't seem so serious. The real issue, I think, is the lack of good account management.

I've made, I think, some bad hires in this area. The old account management model doesn't work in the internet world (duh).

The folks I hired were plenty smart. But they just couldn't handle the clients. They passed information back and forth between my team and my clients, no problem. But the clients ran roughshod over them as far as setting priorities and sticking to a smart marketing strategy. And in the end, that's what they're paying us for.

If you've had experience as an internet marketing account manager, or hiring them, or working with them, can you help me out by describing what worked, what didn't, etc.?

If someone forwards you an email, what makes you open it?

mvlabs — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:33:55

If you are like me, you get tons of forwards every day. Now, while I appreciate my friends thinking of me, I get hundreds of emails and don't enjoy pasting my eyes to a computer screen 24/7. So, I'm trying to come up with a system to quickly filter the good stuff from the bad.

And so I ask, what makes you open a forwarded email? Or how about email in general? What is your system for choosing which get opened and which go straight to Garbage World?

Bonus question: Now put yourself in place of a writer. What would you do to maximize fowarding and open rates?

Marketing class project - your thoughts wanted!

Sara — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:54:55

I'm working a massive project for my Marketing Communications class, and part of the project is to conduct some market research around the assigned topic, which in my case is information gathering and decision making for major home appliance (like fridges, washing machines, etc) purchases.

If any of you have a few moments to fill out a quick survey (and it really is quick, I promise), I'd really appreciate it. The only qualifying criteria are that you a) own your own home, and b) have completed or are planning on completing renovations/upgrades to that home. So, if you feel like lending a hand for my assignment, here's the survey!

Also, if you have any other thoughts around the decision-making process for major appliance purchases that aren't addressed by this survey, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks in advance for your help!