Results tagged “internet marketing” from Portent Interactive, Seattle, WA
While this is a true story, it took me awhile to stop being creeped out and make the connection to how this could apply to internet marketing. Once while home was a mere four blocks from a friend’s house (granted I crossed a major avenue in which prostitution is a known issue, but 35 blocks south) I was marketed to offline by a young man in a red car. The young man followed me off the major road onto a side street and offered me a ride. I of course declined, since I was only 200 feet from my home,
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Continue reading Don't Market to Me like I'm a Prostitute
Any reputable Internet marketing company will tell you that you need product descriptions. That’s the bad news. The good news is, they aren’t difficult to write and they not only help sell the product, they can improve your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Who knew? Trouble is, most copywriters would rather write toilet plunger ads than tackle a thousand product descriptions. I can say this, because in my copy writing career I have written hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. You start the day with the wind behind your creative sales and by the time you finish product number 15, you
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Continue reading 5 Tips To Better Product Descriptions
Everyone knows those distinctive for Dummies books; the bright yellow cover, the triangle headed man with pointy fingers and the strange feeling you might have picking up something for Dummies. Why? Because you know you’re smart. Why would you need a book for Dummies? (Because I co-authored one, that’s why.) Need a little more than that? Fine, here are 36 reasons why you need the Web Marketing all in one for Dummies book.... Learn how to optimize a blog post to earn the top Google rank for “enraged bear.” Because no one reads your blog. $25 coupon for Google AdWords
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Continue reading 36 Reasons You Need This Dummies Book
A proud day at Portent: Elizabeth Marsten (our lead PPC guru) and myself worked with three other authors to publish Web Marketing for Dummies All-in-One. I won’t belabor it, but I’m allowing myself a brief bit of pride. I wrote about 400 pages of this 800+ page book. I’m particularly proud, though, that one of my team is also an author. I feel pretty lucky to get to work with such a talented group of people. Marty Dickinson wrote Book 1: Web Presence. I wrote Book 2: Search Engine Optimization And Book 3: Web Analytics Elizabeth wrote Book 4: Online
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Continue reading Portent Team Co-Publishes a New Dummies Book
To me, internet marketing is comprised of 3 kinds of optimization. I’ve built Portent around these three areas - if you’re considering working with us, this is another way to look at our approach. The three types are: Site Optimization This is the least-known, at least by this name. We practice site optimization when we analyze how visitors use your site, and then make changes that will increase sales, or leads, or some other conversion rate. Site optimization includes: Analysis: Reviewing what’s attracting visitors and what’s driving them away. Creative work: Writing copy and designing pages that will welcome those
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Continue reading The Three Kinds of Optimization
I’ve taken great pains to explain exactly what my internet marketing company does, but folks don’t always get it. So here’s my take on what we do, in priority order: Pull it all together. You’re dealing with the web designer, the developer, the search expert and the writer. We pull it all together into a real-live strategy. Optimize. We perform three kinds of optimization: Search engine optimization (moving you up in the unpaid search rankings); ad spend optimization (making sure the dollars you spend on pay per click, banners and such are generating a return); and site optimization (improving conversion
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Continue reading What Does an Internet Marketing Company Do?
How’s that web site thing working out for you? If you market a business, knowing how people use the Web and how people might find your web site and how they want to use it is critical. Notice I wrote might find and how they want to use it. Face facts; it’s not about what you want. It’s about what your prospects and customers want. It’s about how they want it. For success there must be a strategic and purposeful overlap between how people use the Internet, how your industry or niche operates and how your web site functions. There
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Continue reading It's 2009! Are You Ready to Fail?
Become an internet marketing creature unlike any other Times are tense, and now more than ever, you feel the burden of needing that ever-elusive advantage over the competition. If you’ve overdosed on tipping points, purple cows, and cheese-moving, it’s time to turn to the true treasure-trove of internet marketing secrets: the dating bible “The Rules” by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider. Read on to see how these guerilla dating tactics brilliantly translate into internet marketing maxims to live by. The Rules for Internet Marketing Be a creature unlike any other. This is probably the single most famous line from this
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DISCLAIMER: Get over the gun analogy. It's Quentin Tarantino, so of course he's going to use incredibly violent imagery. Don't let that stop you from learning some of the best creative advice I've heard this year. First, a little stage setting. As a Creative Lead in an Internet marketing agency myself, I would venture to say Tarantino's advice is relevant to anyone who has experienced the double-edged financial comfort/frustration of doing a creative job in a commercial setting. In an even larger sense, it's about anyone who doesn't work in a technically "creative" field, but who views their job
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One of the most common misconceptions about a copywriting career is that all you need is good writing skills. This is hardly the case. There are many great writers in the world who would either not enjoy copywriting, or who would not excel at it. But there are definitely certain qualities that predispose people to a successful copywriting career. Some of them might surprise you, so read on! The Four Characteristics of a Good Copywriter Curiosity. Without a surplus of this cat-killing quality, you will neither enjoy nor be successful at copywriting. As an Internet marketing agency copywriter, you may
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If you were a creative writing or English major, you may think your job prospects include pouring coffee in a cafe while scrawling poems on napkins, burying yourself in manuscripts as an editorial assistant in a publishing house, working as a journalist for a local publication, or of course writing the Great American Novel. But there is one wee writing career that doesn’t really cross the average English major radar (and least it didn’t cross mine) and that’s copywriting. If the muse hasn’t been in lately, why not give marketing writing, aka copywriting, a try? Below, I cover the
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Continue reading Copywriting is better than other writing careers
It’s the tiredest of icebreakers. And yet, at lease once a month, someone asks me what I do. After I say I’m a copywriter, I am usually treated to one of three sparkling remarks: “So, you just copy what other people write?” “So, you make copies of other people’s writing?” “So, you make copyrights?” Har, har. While these comments get a little tedious, I don’t blame people for not knowing much about copywriting. It isn’t a well-known career, really. In fact, even spellchecker doesn’t seem to know what copywriting is, since it keeps underlining it like a misspelling as
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Continue reading Part 1: What is copywriting
The economy is rocky. Resources are tight. It's the perfect time to run out and hire a creative services firm to do your Internet marketing, right? Right! While resources must be considered carefully in a rocky economy, I am here to explain why investing in professional creative development is one of the soundest business decisions you can make. You have it forever. Unlike other maintenance-driven services like PPC and SEO, which require constant upkeep, a bells-and-whistles web site design or some truly keen copywriting have endless charms that don't depreciate. A timelessly great design or some especially astute written
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Continue reading Why You Need Creative Services
When someone orders iced tea, don’t serve them maple syrup It’s no secret that pouring it on too thick will make consumers suspicious and distrusting of your advertising. It’s no secret that advertisers continue to do it anyway. But there is a quiet uprising occurring, an anti-movement springing up in the form of sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Yahoo Answers. Such user-based sites aren’t new, but due to the bombardment of glitzy, insincere ads, flash banners and billboards, they are taking on a momentum of their own. Consider their influence. I’d argue that TripAdvisor reviews supersede “star” ratings when booking
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Continue reading The Holy Grail of Internet Marketing: The Truest Best
An interface only a shoemonger could love I am looking at a site so cluttered and ugly, it connotes every $1 table yard sale you’ve ever seen. I am looking at a site with such a dizzying array of calls to action, you feel like you are on a street corner in Tijuana. I am looking at a site where I and every single one of my friends shops, regularly and enthusiastically. If you haven’t been living on a smoke-monster-ridden island, you’ve heard by now about Zappos.com and their amazing offer to new employees. Here’s an excerpt from Harvard
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Continue reading Controversial Company Practice Proves Shoe-in for Online Success
Twitter is a Popular Group Chat Client When Twitter came on the scene 2006 I was an early adopter. Chatting IRC style with the addition of subscribers and an archive was most compelling to me. I was quick to abandon it too. Back then you may as well have shouted, "Hello!," into a desert canyon, but without the comforting echo. Twitter reached a tipping-point (and I began using it again) during the 2007 SXSW conference when attendees used the tool to chat during sessions and figure-out which bar to convene in. At the same time conference bloggers lit the Internet
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Continue reading Twitter Secrets Revealed
When it comes to marketing, it’s always peanut butter and jelly time. No, this isn’t some lame joke about how lunchtime is the best part of an internet marketing gig, nor is it some vaguely incestuous reference to the necessary blend between technology and creative. Actually, this is a story about my fourth grade teacher, who in between Newberry classics and ancient Greece, gave me my most valuable internet marketing lesson to date. The infamous peanut butter and jelly lesson goes something like this, and I’m sure many of you can relate: Her: “Tell me step by step how
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Continue reading When it comes to marketing, it’s always peanut butter and jelly time
The title of this post is Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model. If I went into a search marketing conference and proclaimed that Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model I imagine that the conference organizers, the speakers and quite a few attendees would want to tar and feather me then run me out of town on a rail. I don’t care and I’ll say it again, Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model. Search Engine Marketing Should Emulate Your Business Model. What do I mean by Search Engine Marketing Should Emulate Your
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Continue reading Search Engine Marketing Does Not Affect Your Business Model
Yes, Gen Y is young, driven, spoiled, busy. But a slew of recent advertisements neglect to notice that we are also well-educated, scarily mature, and shrewd as hell. In other words, we know when we’re being talked down to. And now we are talking back with a message for you: When it comes to banking and savings accounts (and any other important issue), Gen Y doesn’t just want to have fun. When it comes to serious issues, we want to be treated seriously, shown the value, and supplied with all the facts. So please, lay off the bright colors and
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With the ‘R’ word hovering, the volatile internet marketing industry is bound to suffer right? Not so fast. One odds-defying industry offers inspiration to those of us in the ever-fragile web biz. Read on for survival tips culled from their mysteriously hardy shelves... Start With an Untapped Community If you cater to a targeted community, especially one that had no other place to go before you came along, you will be able to withstand the impact of more generic giants. Such is the case with Barbara Bailey, who started Bailey/Coy books in Seattle in 1986. The first bookstore to
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