Thoughts on Internet Marketing
Thoughts from the National Sports Forum
02/09/2010 04:00
What’s the current state of the sports industry? What
are corporate sponsors saying and doing this year?
What are sports organizations doing to market
themselves as the economy slowly recovers?
To understand these trends, I was fortunate to attend the National Sports Forum, which held its 15th annual gathering in Baltimore last week. Hundreds of sports industry colleagues gathered to discuss these topics and gain insights for the coming year.
Naturally, I tried to absorb all of it in the context of Internet marketing. From my perspective, the quick take-away lessons were:
1. Sponsors and advertisers demand real business results from any marketing program. Actual, measureable results - sales, for example - are the new signs of success in marketing.
2. Social media is the hottest of hot topics. EVERY conversation and panel discussion, for three consecutive says, eventually turned to social media. No matter the subject on the official agenda, these executives and marketers couldn’t help but discuss this aspect of Internet marketing and communication.
Naturally, lesson #1 bodes well for Internet marketing and search engine marketing. It’s impossible not to measure this marketing channel and it’s easy to evaluate the real-world business impact. Fortunately, if the impact of your Internet marketing campaigns isn’t what you hoped for, you can make changes on the fly - something that isn’t always possible in traditional media.
Lesson #2, meanwhile, raises questions for me. Primarily, if social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, etc.) cost money, would marketers be as excited by it? If companies had to pay to tweet, would so many be participating? We’ll have to revisit this one later...
During a presentation about “outrageous” advertising by author and marketer Bill Glazer, I was reminded that most principles of successful advertising are also fundamentals of a good Internet marketing campaign. According to Glazer, your marketing must:
a) cut through the clutter;
b) always have an offer or call-to-action; and...
c) grab someone’s attention in a matter of seconds.
Glazer pointed out that the same holds true for direct marketing as well as display advertising or out-of-home advertising. When designing a web site, landing page or Internet marketing campaign, each of these must be true as well. Even though our society moves faster and faster, and increasingly online, it seems that many fundamentals of communication haven’t changed.
Forum attendees also had a great opportunity to receive and dissect the results of the 2010 National Sports Forum Corporate & Industry Survey, which was conducted and presented by GMR Marketing and the Ohio University Center for Sports Administration. I’m still reviewing my copy of the report and I’ll share my thoughts in this space, next time. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading,
- Jeremy Davidson
To understand these trends, I was fortunate to attend the National Sports Forum, which held its 15th annual gathering in Baltimore last week. Hundreds of sports industry colleagues gathered to discuss these topics and gain insights for the coming year.
Naturally, I tried to absorb all of it in the context of Internet marketing. From my perspective, the quick take-away lessons were:
1. Sponsors and advertisers demand real business results from any marketing program. Actual, measureable results - sales, for example - are the new signs of success in marketing.
2. Social media is the hottest of hot topics. EVERY conversation and panel discussion, for three consecutive says, eventually turned to social media. No matter the subject on the official agenda, these executives and marketers couldn’t help but discuss this aspect of Internet marketing and communication.
Naturally, lesson #1 bodes well for Internet marketing and search engine marketing. It’s impossible not to measure this marketing channel and it’s easy to evaluate the real-world business impact. Fortunately, if the impact of your Internet marketing campaigns isn’t what you hoped for, you can make changes on the fly - something that isn’t always possible in traditional media.
Lesson #2, meanwhile, raises questions for me. Primarily, if social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, etc.) cost money, would marketers be as excited by it? If companies had to pay to tweet, would so many be participating? We’ll have to revisit this one later...
During a presentation about “outrageous” advertising by author and marketer Bill Glazer, I was reminded that most principles of successful advertising are also fundamentals of a good Internet marketing campaign. According to Glazer, your marketing must:
a) cut through the clutter;
b) always have an offer or call-to-action; and...
c) grab someone’s attention in a matter of seconds.
Glazer pointed out that the same holds true for direct marketing as well as display advertising or out-of-home advertising. When designing a web site, landing page or Internet marketing campaign, each of these must be true as well. Even though our society moves faster and faster, and increasingly online, it seems that many fundamentals of communication haven’t changed.
Forum attendees also had a great opportunity to receive and dissect the results of the 2010 National Sports Forum Corporate & Industry Survey, which was conducted and presented by GMR Marketing and the Ohio University Center for Sports Administration. I’m still reviewing my copy of the report and I’ll share my thoughts in this space, next time. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading,
- Jeremy Davidson
This web site isn't working
01/29/2010 12:57
... At least, that’s what I’d been saying to myself
for the first few months of this site’s existence.
By monitoring my web site analytics, I watched closely as this site failed to generate the interest or contacts I’d initially hoped for. Of course, being a “new kid on the block” was a big reason why my site received limited traffic, but still something was missing.
I was very proud of my site and loved the way it looked and flowed. In the real-world environment, however, the site didn’t fully resonate with my audience. It was a difficult fact to accept, but it’s also the great opportunity that is Internet marketing. A business owner or web site publisher can see, in great detail, how a site is used and viewed by the audience. If you find something that works, dig deeper or run tests to determine why it works - than build on that success! If you see where usage drops off, change or eliminate those pages - and go back to the drawing board.
Unlike traditional print or broadcast media campaigns, which are locked in by deadlines and production requirements, online marketing campaigns can be tweaked and re-tooled in real time, in direct response to your customers’ actions.
This month I’ve unveiled a new look and some new content on SportsTarget.biz. I sincerely hope you enjoy it and find this information useful. But be honest for me... if you aren’t interested in what I’m doing here, click onward and continue looking for what you need. I won’t be offended - I’ll be better informed about the needs and interests of my web site audience.
If you are interested in the topics found here, send me a note and let me know! I look forward to hearing from you, or learning how to improve my site to meet your needs.
Thanks for reading!
- Jeremy Davidson
By monitoring my web site analytics, I watched closely as this site failed to generate the interest or contacts I’d initially hoped for. Of course, being a “new kid on the block” was a big reason why my site received limited traffic, but still something was missing.
I was very proud of my site and loved the way it looked and flowed. In the real-world environment, however, the site didn’t fully resonate with my audience. It was a difficult fact to accept, but it’s also the great opportunity that is Internet marketing. A business owner or web site publisher can see, in great detail, how a site is used and viewed by the audience. If you find something that works, dig deeper or run tests to determine why it works - than build on that success! If you see where usage drops off, change or eliminate those pages - and go back to the drawing board.
Unlike traditional print or broadcast media campaigns, which are locked in by deadlines and production requirements, online marketing campaigns can be tweaked and re-tooled in real time, in direct response to your customers’ actions.
This month I’ve unveiled a new look and some new content on SportsTarget.biz. I sincerely hope you enjoy it and find this information useful. But be honest for me... if you aren’t interested in what I’m doing here, click onward and continue looking for what you need. I won’t be offended - I’ll be better informed about the needs and interests of my web site audience.
If you are interested in the topics found here, send me a note and let me know! I look forward to hearing from you, or learning how to improve my site to meet your needs.
Thanks for reading!
- Jeremy Davidson
The Message Matters!
11/10/2009 09:59
A recent examination of some of my clients' text ads,
and their positions on the search engine results
pages, brought back an age-old advertising truth:
the message matters. Despite the
technologies and targeting abilities of today's
Internet marketing platforms, advertisers must always
provide a compelling and relevant message. If your
message resonates with a customer, they're likely to
click on your ad and visit your web site, no matter
where the ad appears on the page.
I wanted to know if my clients' lower-positioned ads were being clicked less frequently. I plotted click-through rates for a series of text ads, against the positions of those ads on the search engine results pages. I expected to see a basic, inverted curve, with higher-positioned ads enjoying higher click-though rates, and click-through rates diminishing as the positions of the ads became lower. This theory makes sense, right? If an ad isn't at the top of the page, weren't users more likely to ignore it?
To the contrary, my simple chart showed that ad position was less important than I'd assumed. Click-through rates for this particular group of ads varied, with no negative effect on the lower-positioned ads. In fact, some of the highest click-through rates were for ads that had the very lowest positions!
The moral of this story? A few things...
Of course, the message matters above all else. If your [text] ad is compelling enough, and relevant enough to the users' intent, they'll click on the ad no matter where it appears on the page.
Secondly - and no less importantly - this was one study of an isolated group of ads. Each campaign may be different and users may react differently to another series of ads.
In the world of Internet marketing, there is a wealth of detailed data available to advertisers. This data should be used to drive decisions, write ads, select keywords and optimize your campaigns in response to real-world, real-time results. Our assumptions may help us get started, but as our marketing campaigns evolve, we should follow the paths that our customers' actions lay out for us. What works for one campaign may not work for another - but we'll have the data and evidence to tell us the difference.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your Internet marketing efforts!
- Jeremy
I wanted to know if my clients' lower-positioned ads were being clicked less frequently. I plotted click-through rates for a series of text ads, against the positions of those ads on the search engine results pages. I expected to see a basic, inverted curve, with higher-positioned ads enjoying higher click-though rates, and click-through rates diminishing as the positions of the ads became lower. This theory makes sense, right? If an ad isn't at the top of the page, weren't users more likely to ignore it?
To the contrary, my simple chart showed that ad position was less important than I'd assumed. Click-through rates for this particular group of ads varied, with no negative effect on the lower-positioned ads. In fact, some of the highest click-through rates were for ads that had the very lowest positions!
The moral of this story? A few things...
Of course, the message matters above all else. If your [text] ad is compelling enough, and relevant enough to the users' intent, they'll click on the ad no matter where it appears on the page.
Secondly - and no less importantly - this was one study of an isolated group of ads. Each campaign may be different and users may react differently to another series of ads.
In the world of Internet marketing, there is a wealth of detailed data available to advertisers. This data should be used to drive decisions, write ads, select keywords and optimize your campaigns in response to real-world, real-time results. Our assumptions may help us get started, but as our marketing campaigns evolve, we should follow the paths that our customers' actions lay out for us. What works for one campaign may not work for another - but we'll have the data and evidence to tell us the difference.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your Internet marketing efforts!
- Jeremy
My search story
09/09/2009 01:38
By the dawn of the New Millennium, the Internet
landscape was well on its way to becoming the
situation we know today - millions and millions of
web sites clamoring for attention. The directories we
relied on, in our early years of surfing the early
world wide web, were becoming obsolete. Search
engines helped, of course, but our experiences were
still somewhat limited.
The arrival and growth of a certain search engine, in 1998-99, changed everything for most Internet users. This is my story - about the fading memories of a favorite children's book and the experience of finding it online.
Like most of you probably experienced, a colleague suggested I try Google in 2000. "Hey, you gotta try this new search engine - Google.com - it's really good." People were buzzing.
I'd been OK with the search engines I was using at the time, but Google's results were clearly different, relevant and right. The more we used it, the more we figured out how to find stuff online. And not just web sites - but stuff. People, places and information. Unfortunately for the Super Bowl-advertising sock puppets of the world, individual web site addresses began taking a back seat to the raw information we could now seek and find. Looking for something for your pet? Forget pets.com, type it into Google. In this way, our behavior rapidly began to shift.
Later in 2000, I began using this new generation of search engine power to look for a favorite children's book I'd forgotten the title of. But I remembered the story, of two neighboring islands, one rich and one poor. As the wealthier island rulers enslaved the poorer islanders to mine for gold, their corrupt ways upset the balance of nature. Flooding and disaster followed, dooming the greedy islanders until they turned to their neighbors for help and cooperation. With each turn of the page, the books' illustrators had painted beautiful, full-page scenes of the islands as they underwent these changes. As a child, I loved these sequences and detailed images. I'd always remembered the story and its vivid images.
Sitting with my laptop computer, decades later, I searched for the chance to see these pages again. I started with the things I'd remembered: "children's story, islands, sea, changes to islands." And so on. Not much turned up in the first few tries, but soon a few obscure book reviews and write-ups surfaced. Based on my descriptions, which were clearly lacking details, I'd uncovered a few web sites that named the book in their articles or reviews: The Sea People, by Jorg Muller and Jorg Steiner. I'd found it and I began looking for a copy for sale. The book is out of print, so it took a little more searching to find a used copy for sale. But I'd found it nonetheless - and a slightly worn copy now sits on my bookshelf. A cherished childhood memory brought back in full color.
It was a moment that unlocked the real power of the Internet to me. The power we'd been promised when the web went mainstream in the late 1990's. The power to connect with people, places and merchants far and wide, across time zones and languages. The web was always a fun and useful tool, but from that point forward it became a central part of life.
Today, those types of searches - and results - are routine and getting better with new search engines and technologies. As a marketer, I like helping clients create opportunities to connect with customers at those moments when a search (reflecting a person's wants, needs, curiosity or nostalgia) is the perfect match for their products or services. It's a near-magical moment that users embrace and companies can use to establish great new customer relationships.
What's your search story? What are your customers' experiences when they search for you?
Thanks for reading.
The arrival and growth of a certain search engine, in 1998-99, changed everything for most Internet users. This is my story - about the fading memories of a favorite children's book and the experience of finding it online.
Like most of you probably experienced, a colleague suggested I try Google in 2000. "Hey, you gotta try this new search engine - Google.com - it's really good." People were buzzing.
I'd been OK with the search engines I was using at the time, but Google's results were clearly different, relevant and right. The more we used it, the more we figured out how to find stuff online. And not just web sites - but stuff. People, places and information. Unfortunately for the Super Bowl-advertising sock puppets of the world, individual web site addresses began taking a back seat to the raw information we could now seek and find. Looking for something for your pet? Forget pets.com, type it into Google. In this way, our behavior rapidly began to shift.
Later in 2000, I began using this new generation of search engine power to look for a favorite children's book I'd forgotten the title of. But I remembered the story, of two neighboring islands, one rich and one poor. As the wealthier island rulers enslaved the poorer islanders to mine for gold, their corrupt ways upset the balance of nature. Flooding and disaster followed, dooming the greedy islanders until they turned to their neighbors for help and cooperation. With each turn of the page, the books' illustrators had painted beautiful, full-page scenes of the islands as they underwent these changes. As a child, I loved these sequences and detailed images. I'd always remembered the story and its vivid images.
Sitting with my laptop computer, decades later, I searched for the chance to see these pages again. I started with the things I'd remembered: "children's story, islands, sea, changes to islands." And so on. Not much turned up in the first few tries, but soon a few obscure book reviews and write-ups surfaced. Based on my descriptions, which were clearly lacking details, I'd uncovered a few web sites that named the book in their articles or reviews: The Sea People, by Jorg Muller and Jorg Steiner. I'd found it and I began looking for a copy for sale. The book is out of print, so it took a little more searching to find a used copy for sale. But I'd found it nonetheless - and a slightly worn copy now sits on my bookshelf. A cherished childhood memory brought back in full color.
It was a moment that unlocked the real power of the Internet to me. The power we'd been promised when the web went mainstream in the late 1990's. The power to connect with people, places and merchants far and wide, across time zones and languages. The web was always a fun and useful tool, but from that point forward it became a central part of life.
Today, those types of searches - and results - are routine and getting better with new search engines and technologies. As a marketer, I like helping clients create opportunities to connect with customers at those moments when a search (reflecting a person's wants, needs, curiosity or nostalgia) is the perfect match for their products or services. It's a near-magical moment that users embrace and companies can use to establish great new customer relationships.
What's your search story? What are your customers' experiences when they search for you?
Thanks for reading.
Why You Should Advertise Online
08/18/2009 10:18
Remember your "elevator speech"? The quick, to-the-point explanation of what you do and why it's beneficial? If you can't explain the value of your products/services in a few sentences or less, your customer's attention may go elsewhere.
Now, boil this pitch down to 140 characters and you have your basic search engine text ad. Challenging? Yes. Rewarding? Definitely. People will be interested in your products/services, or they won't. They will let you know with their actions. It's a highly efficient use of your time and resources, and a highly efficient way for customers to find the products/services they're looking for. Everybody wins.
With search engine marketing, you can reach people at the very moments they're looking for your products/services. True, you could reach a wide audience of baseball enthusiasts by advertising in publications like Baseball America. But when they read the issue containing your ad, how do you know if they're in the market for the bats and gloves you're selling? Maybe they bought new equipment right before they picked up that issue. In this case, your ad dollars were wasted on that particular reader. You'll still attract some customers who need new equipment, but you've paid for the other readers, too - the ones who won't become customers. Online, you're only paying to reach the people who specifically click on your ads. Continuing our example: they're looking for bats and gloves and you've met their needs at the precise moment they're looking. Everybody wins.
Boil your message down even further, and you can also reach people on their mobile devices. An iPhone isn't a phone, it's a handheld computer with an Internet browser. This is the new frontier for advertising and marketing - and you can't reach this audience through print or broadcast advertising. If customers show interest in your products/services by clicking on your ads from a home computer, doesn't this interest increase exponentially when they're on the way to the mall, wallet and credit card in hand? OK, this is an extreme simplification of consumer behavior, but I hope you'll agree about the impacts of well-placed online advertising. It's the perfect merger of customer intentions and your products/services. Everybody wins.
This blog was 2,299 characters.
What's it worth?
08/05/2009 04:39
The beauty of Internet marketing is the ability to
measure everything about your campaigns. Marketers
can see real-time data showing the costs for each web
site visitor, lead or sale.
But flip this equation around: what is the value of your web site or e-mail database? If Internet marketing can tell you how much it costs to gain each web site visitor or e-mail subscriber, are you receiving a good value for your Internet marketing efforts?
For example, let's say a minor league baseball team conducts a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign to acquire more subscribers to its e-mail newsletter. Those fans can certainly be considered good season ticket sales leads. Let's suppose the team's PPC campaign results in an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.95 and they received 750 web site visitors as a result. Of those 750 web site visitors, 50 signed up for the e-mail newsletter. The team's cost-per-conversion is $14.25 ($712.50 campaign cost / 50 conversions = $14.25 per conversion).
So the team paid $14.25 for each e-mail newsletter subscriber. Is the average e-mail subscriber worth $14.25? Are individual web site visitors worth $0.95 each? How to tell?
Fan surveys would go a long way to answer this question. If the team asked its e-mail subscribers if they planned to purchase a season ticket package, they could determine a reasonable estimate of the average subscriber's value. Let's say our hypothetical team conducted such a survey and found 15% of their subscribers planned to purchase season tickets. Let's suppose that the team's total e-mail database includes 600 fans and season tickets cost $500. (Totally hypothetical numbers here, folks!)
In our example, the average e-mail subscriber has a potential value to the team of $75 ($45,000 in potential season ticket revenue / 600 subscribers = $75 value per subscriber). And the team spent $14.25 to acquire each new subscriber. In this case, the team's Internet marketing campaign could be considered a success!
The same exercise could be conducted for single-game sales, or based on web site visitors instead of e-mail subscribers. Knowing this information should make any marketing campaign more successful. Do you know these numbers for your organization's web site or e-mail list? Something to think about, perhaps...
Thanks for reading and good luck with your marketing efforts!
But flip this equation around: what is the value of your web site or e-mail database? If Internet marketing can tell you how much it costs to gain each web site visitor or e-mail subscriber, are you receiving a good value for your Internet marketing efforts?
For example, let's say a minor league baseball team conducts a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign to acquire more subscribers to its e-mail newsletter. Those fans can certainly be considered good season ticket sales leads. Let's suppose the team's PPC campaign results in an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.95 and they received 750 web site visitors as a result. Of those 750 web site visitors, 50 signed up for the e-mail newsletter. The team's cost-per-conversion is $14.25 ($712.50 campaign cost / 50 conversions = $14.25 per conversion).
So the team paid $14.25 for each e-mail newsletter subscriber. Is the average e-mail subscriber worth $14.25? Are individual web site visitors worth $0.95 each? How to tell?
Fan surveys would go a long way to answer this question. If the team asked its e-mail subscribers if they planned to purchase a season ticket package, they could determine a reasonable estimate of the average subscriber's value. Let's say our hypothetical team conducted such a survey and found 15% of their subscribers planned to purchase season tickets. Let's suppose that the team's total e-mail database includes 600 fans and season tickets cost $500. (Totally hypothetical numbers here, folks!)
In our example, the average e-mail subscriber has a potential value to the team of $75 ($45,000 in potential season ticket revenue / 600 subscribers = $75 value per subscriber). And the team spent $14.25 to acquire each new subscriber. In this case, the team's Internet marketing campaign could be considered a success!
The same exercise could be conducted for single-game sales, or based on web site visitors instead of e-mail subscribers. Knowing this information should make any marketing campaign more successful. Do you know these numbers for your organization's web site or e-mail list? Something to think about, perhaps...
Thanks for reading and good luck with your marketing efforts!
Read This First
07/21/2009 02:37
Since it's the only blog entry so far, I guess there
isn't much of a choice. But you're here, so I'll
assume you have some interest in Internet marketing
for your business. First and foremost, thanks for
visiting to see what we have to offer!
Internet marketing can include MANY things. The options and new technologies can be overwhelming, and so is the amount of data that comes with it. For example, if you're advertising your business through search engine marketing, you can test and tweak your keywords, ad copy, landing pages, messaging, offers, web site copy, contact forms, site design, colors, graphics, images, navigation and more - to see what your customers respond to. And you can break down the results of these campaigns into detailed reports showing every possible angle. Adding social media to your marketing mix creates another layer of results to be analyzed.
I can't honestly say I was always a "numbers guy," but I'm a huge believer in doing business efficiently. Today's technology allows everyone a chance to be more efficient. You can figure out how to spend less to acquire new customers, by taking time to study how they became your customers. I believe that Internet marketing is the best way of doing this, with detailed tracking available at nearly every level of the sales process.
As you read this, I hope you are considering what brought you here. What is your organization trying to accomplish? More merchandise sales? More season ticket sales leads? Better, more qualified season ticket sales leads? More participants for your marathon, triathlon or tournament? The data available from an Internet marketing campaign may answer the questions that other advertising missed.
I could go on all day. We're new here, and ready to grow with you. We'd love to share more thoughts and ideas (seriously, I could go on all day. You've been warned!). Please do get in touch or download our list of Internet marketing ideas for sports businesses. They'll be more later and I wish you the best of luck with your marketing efforts!
Thanks for reading.
- Jeremy
Internet marketing can include MANY things. The options and new technologies can be overwhelming, and so is the amount of data that comes with it. For example, if you're advertising your business through search engine marketing, you can test and tweak your keywords, ad copy, landing pages, messaging, offers, web site copy, contact forms, site design, colors, graphics, images, navigation and more - to see what your customers respond to. And you can break down the results of these campaigns into detailed reports showing every possible angle. Adding social media to your marketing mix creates another layer of results to be analyzed.
I can't honestly say I was always a "numbers guy," but I'm a huge believer in doing business efficiently. Today's technology allows everyone a chance to be more efficient. You can figure out how to spend less to acquire new customers, by taking time to study how they became your customers. I believe that Internet marketing is the best way of doing this, with detailed tracking available at nearly every level of the sales process.
As you read this, I hope you are considering what brought you here. What is your organization trying to accomplish? More merchandise sales? More season ticket sales leads? Better, more qualified season ticket sales leads? More participants for your marathon, triathlon or tournament? The data available from an Internet marketing campaign may answer the questions that other advertising missed.
I could go on all day. We're new here, and ready to grow with you. We'd love to share more thoughts and ideas (seriously, I could go on all day. You've been warned!). Please do get in touch or download our list of Internet marketing ideas for sports businesses. They'll be more later and I wish you the best of luck with your marketing efforts!
Thanks for reading.
- Jeremy