Jan
14th

Infomercials For Dummies

Posted by Denise on January 14, 2010 at 11:55 am

The ShamWow® seems to be a household name. You know, it’s that mighty piece of fabric that can soak up a lake (okay, maybe just 12x its weight, but you get the point). We’ve all heard of it. But why? It looks no different than any other rag.

Except, it’s not just any other rag. Ask anyone who has seen the infomercial, the reason we’ve all heard of it can be attributed to one thing—marketing.

The ShamWow was rated the number one infomercial of all time by CNBC. Truth be told, infomercials are a bit annoying. But that fact aside, they’re effective. And here are five reasons why.

1. They tell a story. And often, they give the background of how the product was developed. It’s usually the same story. An average person stumbles across a way to improve an average product. Take the Snuggie, for example. Blankets have been around longer than any of us have been alive. So what makes this blanket so unique? It has sleeves.

2. They demonstrate how the product works. They prove it’s the best thing ever, and it’s something that will make our lives better.

3. They infuse customer testimonials. Infomercials often feature customers telling customers that this product works.

4.They provide a specific offer. Example: “Buy 1 Snuggie™ Blanket with a Free Book Light for $19.95 + $7.95 P&H, and receive a 2nd Snuggie™ Blanket in the same color & a 2nd Book Light for FREE! Just pay an additional $7.95 P&H!” Right to the point.

5. They provide an immediate call to action. And there is always an incentive for customers to buy now. “Call and order in the next sixty seconds, and we’ll double your order!” You know the routine.

Any marketer trying to sell a product or service can learn from infomercials—whether it’s how to do it right, or wrong. So the next time you’re setting up a campaign—take a second to think about those famous infomercials we all know.

Or on second thought, contact Oneupweb and let us do the thinking for you. We’re relentless digital marketers—and growing businesses is what we do best.

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Jan
13th

Online Marketing Advice From Me And My Dog, Charlie

Posted by Christopher on January 13, 2010 at 10:05 am

Let’s hypothesize. Let’s just say it’s a new year. Let’s say, further, that one of the things people do when faced with a new year is to make resolutions. “This year I’ll stop eating twelve servings of bacon a day and lose 25 pounds.” “This is the year I ignore the new season of ‘Metalocalypse’ and, instead, write that novel.” Etc.

Now, I could go all faux-philosopher on you and start blabbing away about the calendar year being an artificial construct and, as such, what difference does a new year make, but, yawn, who needs to hear all that? Plus, duh. All I know is this—there’s no better way for me to ensure January is a month filled with disappointment than to make even marginally far-reaching resolutions. Unless my follow-up resolution is to fail to keep any previous resolution, well, I’ll fail. I blame my lizard-brain, the lump on the top of my brain stem that basically just needs whatever regardless of any consequences.

I see the power of the animal urge evidenced every day in our dog, Charlie. Charlie knows, for example, certain things are off limits. Like, say, the fish food. For the most part, Charlie’s dog-conscience, paired with our vigilance, enables him to keep himself from trying to get the fish food. Charlie’s dog-conscience is of a tentative nature, however, because it sure didn’t stop Charlie from eating an entire bag of algae tablets after they fell on the floor. Was he ashamed? You bet. Did he feel guilty? In the way dogs feel guilt, which is to say, fleetingly. Will he refrain from eating another bag of bottom-feeding fish food if he finds it within reach and he’s not being watched, despite the fact that they’re made of freaking algae? No way. Were Charlie to make a resolution, any resolution, it would be broken before he knew he was breaking it.

Our (“our” consisting of me and Charlie) gift to you this year, then, is this advice: make your online marketing resolutions those of the shooting fish in a bucket variety. Kill multiple birds with one rock. Reassess the tree from which you’ve plucked the low-hanging fruit, and see if you missed some. (I’d resolved to use fewer cliches this year. See how that went?) Given the fact that we’ve either just been through or are still enduring a relatively serious recession, it’s not unusual to need to make every marketing dollar count. Plan accordingly. If you’re planning a site redesign, take advantage of the fact that you’ll have the hood up and schedule a usability assessment—it’s way easier to make changes when the IT team’s already dedicated. If you need your SEO spruced up, keep in mind that title tags are at once relatively easy to construct while still being one of the most powerful on-page ranking components. As long as you’re working on those, make sure your meta descriptions are compelling and, more importantly, aren’t getting cut off on the results pages. Make sure your copywriting best practices are up-to-date before you add a bunch of new copy to your site.

Even better, admit to yourself that your valuable time is better spent elsewhere and hire Oneupweb to keep your online marketing resolutions for you (even the difficult ones). We’re the equivalent of a drill sergeant, personal trainer and constant dog-watcher—all in one.

And thus, I break another resolution (to avoid the use of the flimsy metaphor).

Our (“our” consisting of me and Charlie) gift to you this year, then, is this advice: make your online marketing resolutions those of the shooting fish in a bucket variety.

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Nov
25th

“You” Marketing

Posted by Luke on November 25, 2009 at 4:04 pm

Traditional marketing focuses on making a sale and ends once that sale is made. In other words, traditional marketing is “me” marketing. Here’s our business, here’s our product. Our newsletter will reach out to you each month to check in.

Smart marketing is “you” marketing. “You” marketing is when every message, every conversation and every touch-point is about the consumer. Rather than count your money, you should be counting the number of new relationships at the end of each month.

“You” marketing recognizes the numerous channels and opportunities to connect with an audience. Get rid of the mindset that the bigger the audience, the better. A more efficient mindset to consider is that a smaller, targeted audience translates into a bigger bulls-eye. However, the bulls-eye in this instance is not to close, but rather gain initial approval from the consumer and then broaden it.

Consider a cancer screening center that distributes a press release, outlining a new study that reveals an increased risk for prostate cancer in men with high-protein diets. The press release then links to the website, which offers a free PDF download of the full study. At the end of the study, there is a brief description and link to an application allowing men to enter diet-related information to calculate their individual risk. Depending on your risk, the results may highly recommend that you schedule a screening. This recommendation includes a 1-800 number that connects you instantly with a specialist. The end goal for this center is to generate cancer screenings.

A competitor may decide to rely strictly on Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click advertising to send traffic directly to a page with a 1-800 number. The cancer screening center that distributed the press release enjoys a 40% higher number of incoming calls to their specialists.

Scenarios aside, it’s about finding the right marketing combination that pushes consumers through the sales cycle, no matter how many necessary steps are required in between.

The first step to finding the right marketing combination is to be aware of every single marketing weapon in your arsenal. Apply benefits and features of what you are offering to your target audience’s everyday life.

Oneupweb now offers an expanded list of services to help you take full advantage of your arsenal. Take a look at our weapons cache and take what you need.

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Nov
12th

How Far Should You Take SEO If Site Redesign Plans are in the Works?

Posted by Steve on November 12, 2009 at 2:24 pm

This is something a lot of companies struggle with: “We’re planning to redesign our website next year—should we wait until that’s complete before we start optimizing it?”

Or maybe whether or not they should continue optimizing it.

The short answer: it depends. But in most cases, the answer is: no, you shouldn’t wait to optimize your website, even if you do have redesign plans. This is especially true if such plans are several months out and you don’t want to wait until then to start generating more leads and sales.

Are there times where you should absolutely wait? Maybe, in rare cases. Here’s one for example. Let’s say you have plans to redesign your site in three months. It will be a complete overhaul. The site will have a new look and feel, the back end system will get an upgrade, page URLs will change, all of the content will be updated, there will be new content, certain content will be removed (all of which hasn’t yet been determined), and the organization will change dramatically.

If this is the case, then yes, it would probably be a good idea to hold off—at least on some things. Even with all of these changes that will take place, there are still things that you could be doing to help your cause in terms of building organic search engine placement.

Like what, you ask?

Well, the page URLs will be changing, which can cause a temporary loss of trust and relevancy applied to those pages by the search engines. So what? You shouldn’t wait to optimize pages that you know will remain on the site after the redesign. Instead, optimize the “bejesus” out of those pages. Then, when things change and the new site goes live, let the search engines know about it.

So all this stuff is going to be changing on site. What about things that should be playing a role in your SEO efforts off site?

Again, URLs are changing—but the domain itself is not. Link building efforts should not be postponed (or held off if you haven’t yet started). If you get a link to a page in the interim that has its URL change, ask the webmaster of the site hosting that link to kindly update it. If it doesn’t happen right away, worst case, you maintain some value by notifying the engines where they can find that page’s closest replacement.

What about social media? We’ve seen the search engine landscape change dramatically over the past several months, meaning more blended results and more focus on social outlets. Just because your site is going through a redesign doesn’t mean you should stop focusing on brand building through social media, which ultimately plays a role in how you position in natural SERPs.

Certainly there are things that need to be taken into consideration, and it’s extremely helpful to have a knowledgeable partner to guide you on what you should be doing and when. If your partner that’s handling the redesign is experienced in SEO, and I mean really experienced—not just with the basics—that’s even better.

The key takeaway here is no matter where you’re at with site redesign plans, and no matter what you have planned, it is almost never the case that, right now, there’s not something that you could be doing to work toward your objectives as they relate to greater search engine visibility for your brand. Contact Oneupweb if you need some help. It’s just what we do.

Just like that annoying bunny – keep going!

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Nov
10th

The Perfect New Year’s Resolution for 2010—No Scale Involved.

Posted by Carly Wujcik on November 10, 2009 at 3:12 pm

I’m a planner. It’s a known fact that I sometimes border on obsessive about crunching numbers and being prepared. Just ask my team. With 2010 right around the corner, I have the perfect New Year’s resolution that I thought I’d share with everyone this sunny November day (with plenty of advance notice, of course, so you have time to commit to it before the big day comes).

And fret not—there are no awkward mornings in the bathroom shivering on the scale, no “I give up pints of ice cream on January 10th” involved. You can stick with this one and see it pay off. Quickly.

Reevaluate the way you measure success.

Simple. It is. But in the sales and marketing world, particularly the digital marketing world—the implications are huge. And the change, well, like most change, can be hard to adjust to at first.

Walk with me for a minute. Digital marketing, back when it was shiny and new and the world was wealthy, offered one very tangible benefit (among many of course). You could measure it. Track it. Nail offline sales down to the last click customers executed online. You could pin point exactly where your consumers weren’t clicking, converting or engaging and slice those initiatives out of your budget, with laser precision. And you did that. We all did at some point.

The result? You had a 2009 marketing budget so lean it would make Amy Winehouse jealous and so efficient it put the ShamWow to shame. All you kept was the one tactic that “worked” in months previous. Your plan was destined for the marketing hall of fame.

And here we are now, winding down the year and at a point where we have to explain to our bosses and neighbors alike why the plan didn’t work. And I’ll give you a hint—it had nothing to do with the size of your budget.

Think about this long and hard before you walk into your 2010 budget meeting with the board next week demanding that you need double the marketing spend for 2010 in order to see anything work. What were you measuring when you hacked the initiatives that “weren’t working”? Did it extend beyond the bottom line or the last point of conversion?

For example, did you or your agency stop to consider the impact that your display campaign might have had on the success of your paid search campaign before you decided that the only one to survive was the more “successful” paid campaign? And this year, when your one time efficiency super star—the paid search campaign—fell flat on it’s face while it was expected to perform on it’s own, what did you credit as the reason for its failure? The economy? The creative? The size of your budget?

Reevaluate the way you measure success. And failure. The results you see might surprise you. And of course, if you need a hand, Oneupweb is happy to lend one. Make 2010 a phenomenal year. For your marketing plan and yourself.

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