Local Business Search Marketing Success Checklist

Posted in: Blog, Local Business Marketing by admin on November 22, 2009

Local businesses seeking to leverage on Search Marketing for online business success can reference this new best practice checklist released by MapleCommerce.

Click here to download the local business online success checklist.

Questions? Feel free to contact us.

New Glossary of Internet Marketing Definitions

Posted in: Blog by admin on November 21, 2009

A new glossary of internet marketing terms has been added to our resources section. You can view the online marketing glossary here.

How To Innovate For Free

Posted in: Blog by admin on November 17, 2009

How To Innovate For Free (Or Close-To-Zero Budget)

This is an excerpt of an article by Ivan Wong that was published by Web In Travel, Asia’s leading travel distribution, marketing and technology conference.

Read the full article here.

I started our WIT Ideas Lab workshop by posing the question “Is it possible to market online on a zero budget?”
One key premise was that marketers on zero budget would have to avoid paid advertising channels, and focus instead on attracting visitors through free traffic sources including the search engines, video and social media.

In this regard, some relevant quotes arising during the discussion included “content is king”, “social networks build trust and act as your personal information filter”, “content shapes the brand, especially user generated content”, “destination research is 70% of time online in travel” and “the ultimate aim is to convert lookers to bookers”.

We also considered some case studies of innovative use of social media for viral marketing, including the “Best Job In The World” campaign by Tourism Australia. Though not done for free, this campaign generated over US$150 million worth of media exposure on a US$1.2 million budget.

Some free tools were presented to assist in each step’s activities:
Market research tools: Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Kayak Trends, Google Trends.

Content creation/publishing tools: Free blogging software like WordPress, Animoto for producing viral sales videos.

Traffic generation sources:
For a typical travel business doing online marketing, there are a myriad of marketing channels to choose from. Citing the results of a recent HeBS survey in which hoteliers were asked to select their top three Web2.0 initiatives, I suggested that marketers start generating targeted online traffic by optimising for Google, using TripAdvisor, creating profiles on social networks and blogging on the hotel website.

Measure conversions: Use Google analytics to measure conversions and marketing success.

Read more at the WebInTravel Newsroom.

Google Buys Mobile Ad Firm In $750 Million Deal

Posted in: Blog, SEM Industry News by admin on November 10, 2009

Google announced Monday it is buying smartphone ad specialty firm AdMob in a 750-million-dollar stock deal.

The acquisition will help the Internet search company to speed up efforts to develop more effective tools for creating and placing mobile ads on smart phones and other devices.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki.

Google also recently reported some mobile ad stats:

iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years

And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]

As noted in the stats, Google is doing well in mobile search (though there’s still plenty of competition).

According to the official info site put up by Google to coincide with their acquisition of AdMob, the deal

- will bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising, and

- will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving, and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats.
will benefit developers, publishers, and advertisers by improving the performance of mobile advertising, and will provide users with more free or low-cost mobile apps.

- will make the mobile ad space remain highly competitive, with more than a dozen mobile ad networks. The deal is similar to mobile advertising acquisitions that AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have made in the past two years.