Online rules of engagement are changing. Old school business approaches and methods are getting left behind for dynamic new mediums that offer more interaction and less broadcasting. Businesses and industries are realizing it’s no longer possible to simply say what you do – you need to say what you can do as well.

This is the dawn of social media as a true business outlet and there’s never been a better time to get in on the inside.

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Can you tell the difference between these two ads?

Look closely:

Well the one on the bottom just made the founders of Teracent, very, very rich!

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There is no doubt that keywords play a crucial role in search engine ranking of a website but many people are not aware of the basic keyword research process done by using the adCenter user interface. One of the reasons is that UI method do not match the level of information offered by the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence as advertisers. But, there are certain things that the new search engine marketers should know to get familiar with the beginners resources for keyword expansion.

Are you new to search engine marketing and are a bit apprehensive of using Microsoft Advertising Intelligence? A post on Microsoft Advertising community
is talking about expanding the keywords through User Interface. (more…)

Over the course of two days, I saw two stark examples of what could easily be considered the best and worst of airline advertising messages encompassed in two ads done for domestic US-based airlines. Let’s start with the worst from United:

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It’s clear that Internet Marketing and Social Networking are here to stay. And all these new online tools offer an endless supply of highly effective and inexpensive ways to market your small business.

However, you may have noticed there’s more to it than just putting up a profile or sending a few Twitter Tweets. That’s why I’ve written this 3-part (maybe more) series of posts filled with simple tips and how-to’s for getting started with–and making the most of– your online marketing efforts.

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These are questions I recently got in fielding a proposal for search marketing services. For others who might have the same question, here’s the answer, and an explanation.

PPC is necessary when you’re just entering a market.

At that point, you have no idea what keywords will or won’t convert. By buying ads on those keywords, you can tell what does and doesn’t convert. This is essential to keyword research; you can’t perform SEO that delivers a positive ROI without knowing whether you can make money with traffic from a particular keyword.

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Have you ever chatted to a direct marketer (from the old school) about online and search engine marketing? Did you end up hearing the line – “it’s all direct marketing, just in a different medium”

Whether you believe that or not, the fact of the matter is that many of the old rules of direct marketing very much apply to our new age of marketing.

There’s a myriad of “top rules of direct marketing” lists out there, one of which I stumbled on in my recent meanderings online. While reading it, I couldn’t help but see how these rules applied to PPC advertising. So here it is with a PPC advertising slant on the explanations.

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A new report released today by Efficient Frontier shows that overall search advertising spend is beginning to stabilize as the economy slows its freefall.

Overall U.S. advertising spend dropped slightly in Q2 2009, however the rate of decline is slowing. In contrast to the reduction in spend is advertiser’s ROI, which recently grew by 12 percentage points to 129%.

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If you’ve got someone managing your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign, then you probably are hearing a lot of jargon and acronyms. The world of PPC is similar to search engine optimization when it comes to abbreviations and tech-speak, but it is still important for a customer to understand what is being referenced in a conversation, since your PPC agency is using your money to make the best possible purchases. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) agencies generally use a whole raft of terms in their internal reporting, and unfortunately they don’t always tone down the jargon when speaking to customers. (more…)

This information comes from eMarketer by way of ReadWriteWeb and it conjures up some thoughts about why the following is found to be true. iPhone users recall advertising seen on their smartphones better than those of other smartphone providers like RIM’s BlackBerry. This probably is not a shock to many but for marketers it poses the question of how now address a market based on device in addition to other demographic and psychographic markers. (more…)