Dreamweaver and web design

We looked at the Dreamweaver program over the past few sessions. Dreamweaver creates cleaner HTML code as opposed to word and has a number of other advanced features. The ability to create a separate Dreamweaver 'site' has the advantage of making sure everything needed for the web site is in one place: Cascading Style Sheets knowns as CSS (preformatting for your web page), photos, images and HTML pages. In lab, we recommend putting that site on the network drive and/or backing it up on a portable drive as well. I have been able to solve some problems with website displays by reminding students to put everything in their www folder that the web site needs, including CSS's and images. Also, make sure in Dreamweaver you just have the image name and not a specific location on the desktop or network drive, otherwise the image will not display. Remember to use tables and not frames for your web page for good web design. Enjoy your web site design!

The power of viral video

We have been having so much fun with our YouTube campaign that I have almost forgotten to blog about it. We really had some wonderful results for gimmepleez.com, our Professional Sales Program and the Interactive Program. I have included the results to find the four videos for our program below. Students found that facebook, particularly creating an event, was the most successful way to get the viral effect. We jumped to the first page on google when searching for the term Interactive Marketing and are currently number two. We could never have paid for that type of search ranking in PPC! Web site traffic is also up by over 75% and enrollment in our advanced classes is up over 30%. Great job everyone and a great lesson in viral marketing. We learned that a specific landing page or micro site would have made it easier to track campaign results and that tracking results of viral campaigns is in general a challenge, particularly unique views. Students got a chance to actually report on and analyze the analytics information provided in YouTube. Overall, we are pleased with our results, learned a lot and had some fun. Students said in their papers that the learning by doing experience of running a real campaign helped them understand what Interactive Marketing was all about and what they might do in their future careers.

Have a good Thanksgiving everyone. Check out our videos below.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=interactive+marketing+niu&search_type=&aq=f

Website analytics

We looked today at website analytics. I showed my google adwords account and google analytics account as well as the insight section of my YouTube account and we looked at the types of information available and the types of insights that might be made from that information. We also looked at some of the recent trends in online advertising. Online ad spending is smaller than last year but growing overall. Sponsorship and mobile marketing are on the upswing and most results can be attributed to search and older media rather than social media and some of the new media....analytics are lagging changes in technology. Traditional ways of looking at web analytics include number os unique visits, pages of visits and traffic source. A landing page is a good way to tie a campaign to a particiular web page to track the results. Some analytics, such as page views and time on the site, can be misleading, as people might just spend time on the site but not really be engaged on the web site. "Bounce rate" with a web site means when the user leaves the site. There are so many metrics and so many possibilities. Some good rules include, always test, look at trends, track key metrics and set goals. We also talked about the difference between data, information and knowledge and how markters want to create databases that can be used to gain customer knowledge for better offers and relationships with customers.

Web site design

Web site design is a complex subject because there are so many different approaches to an effective web site. As always in marketing, think about the target audience and corporate objectives first. We looked in class at some ecommerce sites that seemed busy but yet were successful because that layout is what the audience wanted to see. In general, it is useful to have the purpose of the website and any relevant offer in the upper left hand 'golden triangle' area of the site. Often this area is a good place to put a search function as well as the reader's eye will go to the upper left first. We get this information from tracking eyeball movements for many subjects and displaying them on a 'heat map.' The heat map shows where people click on the site, that cearly 'above the fold' is where eyes are resting and how eye movements also form an "F" shape inside the Golden Triangle. The heat map of a Google web search shows why people want to be in the top three or four searches. http://www.ahfx.net/weblog/79 We looked at ideas on web design from Mary Lou Roberts, Jan Zimmerman, Amy Africa and finally, Dr. Zahay! Some independent sources for good web design and customer service are Forrester.com and Bizrate.com. Dr. Zahay likes sites that load easily, use breadcrumbs, are easy to naviagate, use 2-3, clicks, and have easily available contact information. Trust is an important part of web site design because the user must trust the site to exchange information or do business with the site. Even so, the students said they do not look at Truste or other trust seals on the web in deciding to do business with the site. Again, for marketing, web site design and usability are strategic and not technical issues. Web site development is often iterative as companies find out what works and what doesn't in web site design and make changes accordingly.

SEO and SEM

We learned about Search Engine Optimization, the process of optimizing a site for Organic or Natural Search and about Search Engine Marketing, the process of using piad search. Both processes are designed to drive traffic to a web site. Many people are amazed that by a few adjustments to a web page can bring dramatic results in terms of natural or organic search rankings. Making use of the blue title, linking in and out to relevant pages, making page content relevant to the title and subject of the page are all great ways to improve ranking. I shared the story that when I came to NIU the Interactive Marketing web site did not rank that highly and that I followed basic SEO principles to get the page ranked highly with natural search. Often we recommend that companies use a PPC, pay per click campaign thru google adwords or yahoo to understand which search terms are most relevant. It is easy to see by how much it costs to be listed under a PPC program which terms are going to get the most exposure for the company. A combination of natural and paid search usually works well in driving traffic to the site. The students enjoyed watching Cary Pearlman set up a live Google adwords campaign for them and I will go thru my Google Analytics next week.

Email Marketing/Mobile

We had a good discussion on email marketing before I left for DMA and then learned the Email Marketing tool Exact Target. We learned the reason to use a tool like ET is the ability to get emails past potential spam filters that ISP's might set up and to manage many different emails effectively. The ability to include dynamic content for personalized offers is also a big plus of this type of system. A company such as Careerbuilder.com might send millions of emails per month and needs to effectively manage and track campaigns. Even though email marketing is a small percentage of total online advertising, its ability to target customers and be integrated within an overall multiple channel marketing campaign makes email an important and influential medium. Good emails have an effective and descriptive subject line and a clear offer or purpose. While email open rates remain higher than those of direct mail, we learned that same week at the CADM monthly luncheon program on mobile marketing that mobile emails can have an over 70% response rate! It seems as each new type of way to reach the customer comes on the scene response rates are high and then level off, but I am thinking mobile rates might remain high. People read their text messages within seconds typically instead of days or hours for email. We also learned how to identify "phishing" emails that want to get personal information for fraudulent purposes and about the CAN-SPAM act and how to remain compliant. Good email marketers want to follow the guidelines of that act and comply by having a subject line that clearly states the advertising purpose of the email and is consistent with the body of the email, a valid reply to address, a physical address and an unsubscribe provision.

Search engine marketing & Guests

We had two guest speakers in the past week and a half. One was Gimmepleez.com, relating to our project to produce a YouTube video. The other speaker was restaurant.com CEO and President Cary Chessick. Students enjoy hearing Cary's story of how restaurant.com started and how it had changed its business model over time and has evolved to the brokerage model it uses today. I refer students in the class to links to the video on these speakers. Students wishing to work on the Professional Sales Program who did not hear Dr. Weilbaker speak in class can feel free to set up a meeting with him or talk to either of us about the project.

We started SEM, Search Engine Marketing this week and will continue with the topic on the 20th and 22nd. On the 20th Cary Pearlman will teach our class in PPC (Pay Per Click) and we will have a lab on the 23rd. I introduced the area of SEM and we looked at a sample google search and pointed out the paid ads versus the natural search results. We talked about Gooogle having 70% of the search engine market and that almost fifty percent of internet advertising is in search engine advertising spending. For this reason even though online advertising spending has dropped this year Q1 09 versus Q2 09 by about ten percent, search engine spending continues to rise. We talked about SEO being the process of optimizing organic or natural search. There is a lot companies can do to optimize their organic search efforts and get high page rankings without spending money. these tactics include a descriptive title bar, text that matches the title bar and is descriptive of the subject matter, links to and from related, relevant sites and appropriate keywords (although the latter is less important now). Search engine spiders or crawlers use complicated algorithms as they search through pages to determine if a page is a good fit with a particular search term. Images need to be tagged and spiders have a hard time with flash intro pages as well. I always enjoy teaching this topic and look forward to the rest of the time we will spend on SEO and Paid Search.

Internet Advertising

We talked last week about internet advertising and the fact that much of internet advertising is concentrated on search engine marketing, which is why we will focus on search engine marketing in class. The advertising business model is difficult to sustain because most internet advertising is focused on the top ten portal sites and it is hard to attract advertisers to a specialized, smaller, web site. The focus of marketers is on push versus pull marketing and there are more and different media forms each day such as blogging, podcasts, RSS, social media, etc. The marketing job is more complicated. These tools are used even in B2B marketing, with information-based tools such as e-zines being effective in B2B. We talked about the evolution from contextual to behavioral advertising, and then ended with an overview of viral video marketing. Short, quirky, engaging, funny and shocking works! This type of advertising is in its infancy so we will all be learning together for our class project. Don't forget to check out the tips in the links I provided in the class notes.

Business Models and Social Networking

We had a discussion on business models this week. We discussed popular models such as brokerage, merchant, manufacturing, advertising, affiliate, community, utility and subscription models. A business model is nothing more than a way to make money online and if a company is not profitable offline going online is probably not going to help. We identified that companies can be Click Only or Bricks and Clicks by having a store presence. The emphasis on multichannel marketing means that Bricks and Clicks is a more popular option than Click only. Most companies want to do business with their customers across multiple channels because multi-channel customers are more profitable. Our guest speaker Dana Van Den Heuvel from Marketing Savant gave us an update on social networking applications in industry. We have talked about how marketing is becoming a conversation and social media is defined as people having conversations online, although other technology such as pictures and videos are involved as well. There is a new standard of expectations that companies will be hanging out where their customers are. Some key social media platforms are blogging, photo sharing, podcasts, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and social media sites. Marketers should focus on what their business objectives are before engaging in a social media strategy. Many companies have a social media presence because these firms wish to have a passionate and loyal customer base. Most consumers are not creators of online content but rather consumers and most successful companies in social media target their efforts toward the majority. Some examples of successful companies in social media include P&G. By 'crowdsourcing' their new product development efforts, about half of their new product ideas are coming from customers now. Comcast provides customer support via Twitter and Dell not only engages customers but provides product promotions online. Coca Cola spreads conversations through its fans on facebook. It is important to have a good story to tell and have a sound company before engaging in a social media strategy. Micro metrics for social media include number of customer comments, referrals, issues addressed and implemented ideas. Some recent research indicates that companies that use social media well are growing at a faster rate than those who are not employing social media as part of their marketing strategies. Marketers can't ignore these media and students were encouraged to join linkedin and twitter and use these tools to participate in the conversation on marketing. By demonstrating their expertise and what they can contribute, students can become attractive to potential job seekers. Social media sites are also a great way to meet people that can help in the job search process.

Who is on the net?

We looked at social media sites in our course lab and then this week have been exploring the question of who is on the internet? The internet consumer is in general older, more college-educated and increasingly female. Seventy-five percent of adults now use the internet, with 53 percent using some form of cloud communication. Although mobile applications are increasing in the United States, especially among African-Americans, over half the population, according to the Pew Report, can be classified as more tied to stationary than mobile media. In Europe, mobile applications are more widespread. Some of our class will be attending a presentation on mobile media at a CADM meeting in October so we will learn more about it then. We looked at various models of consumer behavior, such as AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire and Action to explain how we as marketers want to involve consumers on our web site. Attention, Acquisition, Assessment and Action explains involvement from the marketer's point of view. Once the person is on board as a customer, we want to assess their needs so we can answer them most effectively through interactive communications and offers. We also talked about new ways of finding out what the consumer is thinking, as opposed to traditinal marketing research surveys. Blog posts, customer reviews, etc. all provide insight for the marketer but are harder to control. Anyone can be responding rather than a random sample of a known population. Companies like bizrate.com use panels of consumers to solicit input and control for this problem.