Content Marketing Today

Pay  Careful Attention to the Upper Right hand Corner of Google Search Results

If you have recently checked your category's Google search results, you may well have been as surprised as was when I recently checked  our first page placement in the  'content marketing'  topic.

In weeks and months past, text ads would have appeared in the upper right-hand corner. Those ads still appear, but they have been bumped down by a gigantic Google+ area that features 2 content marketing gurus,  Joe Pulizzi and Brian Clark.

Interestingly, the Google+ content has exactly the same prominence as the major sponsored search results that appear above the organic search results. I cannot imagine that advertisers are overly pleased by that. Read More

In November, we told you the latest forecast – that social network advertising would top $10 billion by 2013 and that Facebook was on its way to pull in over $5.5 billion this year in ad revenues. A new survey from ad buyers suggest that those figures are too modest, that the demand for social media ad buys could blow away all previous predictions. Here’s the data that caught our eye, courtesy of the Advertiser Perceptions survey as reported in Ad Age. Here’s how Ad Age broke it down: Read More

With digital ad revenue projected to overtake all other platforms by 2016, it is the key to the financial future of news. Are news organizations transitioning their legacy advertisers to online platforms?

Between 2011 and 2015, revenue from digital advertising in the United States is expected to grow by 40% and to overtake all other platforms by 2016.
Yet how much of that growth will go to underwrite news remains in doubt and throws into question the financial future of journalism as audience continue to migrate online. What will happen pivots in part on whether the news industry can move into the more lucrative areas of digital advertising, particularly using consumer data to target ads, persuading major legacy advertisers to also advertise online and moving into new revenue areas. Read More

 

Lessons on writing headlines from legendary ad man David Ogilvy are relevant to writers of blogs, websites, articles and social media posts.

Written by Joanne Costin I think advertising man David Ogilvy would have enjoyed online marketing for the instantaneous feedback it provides.  His rules about advertising weren’t based on opinion, but years of research. As he famously said:

“Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you will have wasted 80 cents out of your client’s dollar.”

Rule No. 1: “The headline is the ticket on the meat.”

Ogilvy promoted the use of keywords in the headline,  before keywords were keywords. Read More

No old-world icon is safe. Just in recent weeks, both Kodak and Sears have percolated back into the news, offering headline writers a dilemma borrowed from the classic Saturday Night Live Weekend Update line, “Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” Read More

Sure They’re on the Web, But They’re Also Out and About on the Streets of Naples, Florida

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up behind this small van on a Naples street.

I started to get hungry just looking at the back of the van. This is mobile marketing that quite literally whets my appetite.

Read More

B Squared Marketing Shares Its Wisdom While Making It Short and Sweet

I might be getting carried away. But, I loved this very brief bit of marketing advice when it showed up on my iPhone this afternoon.  I think it proves how brevity can be the soul of content marketing brilliance in a social media milieu.

B Squared is an established SW Florida Advertising that does great work and has won a ton of awards. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought of them for ages until I saw their Facebook post this afternoon.  I was so struck that I had to write something right now.

Advertising Tip of the Week: Want to drive more traffic? Consider condensing a 3 to 4 month advertising budget to just 6 weeks and build a promotion around it.

Six Reasons Why This Makes for Fabulous Content Marketing

Read More

Unless You Address This Top of Mind, Unspoken Question, You are Out of the Game

Imagine for a moment, that you are looking out at a hoard of your customers in an actual or virtual audience and that each and every one of them is wearing a hat.

And, on each and every hat, are the words "so what?"

Essentially, that's what they're thinking when you are talking, sending them an e-mail, inviting them to your website, sharing an eNewsletter, mailing them a brochure or presenting them with an advertisement.

Read More

Geico’s Drill Sergeant Therapist Gets It Just Right. Mayflower Marionette Gets It All Wrong.

Even though they spend plenty of money on television advertising, Geico doesn't need to spend much money at all for this incredibly effective commercial which is one of a series that are similarly effective.

On the other hand, Mayflower has created an elaborate series of giant marionette television commercials which are certainly expensive but almost as certainly ineffective.

Geico Makes a Simple Point and Ties It to a Compelling Story

The commercial begins with an intro asking whether Geico can really save you 15% on automobile insurance and then segues into a little vignette that tells a story that virtually all of us would believe would be intuitively true. The connection is then simply made between the story and the saving of 15% on automobile insurance.

This commercial series is not about some highfalutin branding or image making. Rather, it's about telling a simple story that is not only easy to remember but is also easy to retell. Even better, most of these Geico ads are also pretty darned funny. That makes them even more memorable.

The best content marketing should include compelling stories to which your customers and prospects can relate easily. This may be hard to do. But it does not have to be expensive.

Read More

Marketing Campaign Trashes Worst Suspected  Big Brokerage Firm Traits

One of the great things about funny advertising campaigns is that they tend to be particularly memorable.

Even better, we’re more likely to talk about them with our friends.  And in the viral age, we can even share commercials via YouTube and other social media. 

Best of all, funny commercials that also embed a simple and compelling message, make it unavoidable for us to remember both the commercial and the message.

In their latest TV advertising campaign, Scottrade invented the character, Chad A. Ridgeway, who represents all of the worst traits we ever experienced or imagined about the folks who tried to get us to invest big bucks with them. 

Chad is slick and just this side of sleazy. He plays racquetball, travels in a limo, and owns his own medium-size yacht. What we know for sure is he managed to get where he is by charging us a lot of money to buy and sell stocks.  But, as we learn from the commercials, all  that easy money and easy living may vanish because of the compelling value offered by Scottrade.

Read More