My consumption of news has decreased over the last few years and I think I’m becoming less informed. I think its my lack of interest in breaking news along with the new’s declining credibility. Publishers are incentivized to push the extreme, breaking news because it’s how they get more clicks, and that means more revenue. […]
Fulfilling Demand vs Creating Demand
Fulfilling demand is advertising where you help people who are already inclined to buy make a final purchase decision. Creating demand is advertising that puts an idea in the person’s head to go out and buy something they hadn’t previously considered. The reason why TV ads are so good at creating demand, I think, is […]
The Bleak Reality Of Social Media Marketing
There once was a time when social media was the solution to all of advertising’s woes. Social media was to replace antiquated interruptive advertising techniques by allowing customers to have “relationships†with brands. Brands could “join the conversation†and let customers “tell their story†too. All of this “engagement†would be called “earned media’ instead […]
Corporate Blogs Suck, Do This Instead
The common advice is that you should include a blog to your ecommerce or business website. So attached to your site is a blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog. The reasons behind this are sound: Build traffic through search engine optimization Increase credibility Enhance customer interaction But there is a common problem with corporate blogs: they lack credibility. […]
You Bid On Keywords Not Search Queries
I think the distinction between queries and keywords is important. A keyword is the flat, literal, lowest-common-denominator word that you want as much commercial intent in it as possible. A search query is the actual phrase that the user puts in the search box. More often than not search queries are absurd. The keywords you […]
You Can Do Better Than Brand Marketing
Often online marketing budgets fall into two camps: direct response and branding. The purpose of direct response is pretty obvious – to make money at a return that is aligned with the business’s goals. The other camp – branding – I’m kind of convinced is always a waste of money (at least the conventional idea […]
The Big Flaw With A/B & Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing allows marketers to test unlimited combinations of elements on a web page in a live environment and measure the significance of those changes on the site’s conversion rate by allowing the visitors to vote with their clicks. The typical mindset for testing content on a website is to find which variation of site […]
The Limits Of Data Driven Marketing
Online marketing has up to this point claimed that big data which allows more precise targeting is the solution to all of marketing’s woes. I think that data can go a long way but there is a point when more data isn’t the answer. Focusing on the data too much can have some negative impacts. […]
What SEO Is vs What SEO Is Sold As
Generally, SEO is simple, but not easy. The majority of it is common sense stuff. You can learn the lion’s share of SEO tactics directly from Google here. But, SEO is not necessarily common sense to the average non-tech savvy business owner and unfortunately SEO is often sold as something only experts with very technical […]
Diluting Facebook Newsfeed
I measure the value of any website by the quality of information that I get from it (Snapchat is by definition made up of trivial content, stuff not worth keeping around, therefor I have no interest in the medium). Facebook has also dwindled in value for me. I think there are three main trends for […]