A new role for me...very exciting

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Jeff Chamberlain
The Candy StoreWell, change is in the air.  I've just moved to a new role at Aprimo and I am extremely energized.  I started my life in Product Marketing and now find myself getting the opportunity to head back there.  After a three year stint learning the ropes in traditional corporate marketing and marketing operations, I now get the opportunity to run Product Marketing for an exciting new on-demand version of our product that is optimized for online marketing - Aprimo Marketing Studio.  I'm like a kid in a candy store!!

It's really almost too good.  I've been driving our move to online marketing internally (with the help of some really great and experienced people, of course).  Honestly, three years ago I didn't know about Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click or Campaign Workflow to any level of detail.  Now I've been through it and it has really opened my eyes.  With this recent economic challenge, the move to Online Marketing has accelerated and it's clear there is no looking back. So, the tune of my blogs will change moving forward.  I'll be sharing our thoughts about product direction and the challenges I'm hearing from our customers and prospects.  I would love to hear from you.  What are your challenges with online marketing?  Are you using social media and getting value from it?  Is your email marketing generating the response and return you expect?  Are you able to build a profile of your prospects, customers and partners so you can communicate the way you want?


0 Comments »

PPC Advertisers Should Follow SEO Rules

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Darrin Strain
A common misconcpetion about pay per click (PPC) marketing and PPC advertising is that if you throw enough money at it, you can have a top paid search placement with search engines.  This is just not true.

PPC marketing requires marketers to utilize many of the same rules that are required for organic search engine optimation.  When creating a PPC campaign, here are three considerations any interactive marketer must keep in mind: bid amount, click through rate (CTR) and quality score.

Let's exmaine these three areas a little closer.

 

·         Bid amount does not necessarily ensure a high position.  A PPC advertiser can have the highest bid for a keyword, but the PPC ad may not rank well. Google will factor in CTR and Quality Score as well as Bid Amount to award a PPC search ranking.

·         CTR must be a certain rate, generally .05 percent, to even continue the campaign.  Google will disable PPC campaigns if the CTR falls much below .05 percent. The higher the CTR the better the chances for the top spot for your PPC ad.  Typically, the more focused the PPC ad, the better your CTR will be.  Of course, this is subjective as to the keyword and the PPC ad.

·         Quality Score: Google will assign a measurement  or grade to the overall campaign. The higher the Quality Score (from 0-10) the better chances your ad will appear in the No. 1 spot. To achieve a high quality score, the PPC ad should use the keyword at least once. And, the landing page should have considerable keyword density as well as content that directly relates to the what the PPC advertisement is selling.  For example, if your PPC ad is pushing an Email Marketing Webinar, your landing page should be focused on offering the Webinar.  Your density would go down if the Webinar is only a small part of the landing page.  If your landing page does not offer a Webinar at all, it is highly possible that Google would disable the PPC campaign, or, at the least, your quality score would be so low that your PPC would not show regardless of CTR and bid amount.

0 Comments »

B2B Marketers Harness YouTube for Search Engine Optimization

Sunday, October 18, 2009 by Darrin Strain

Keeping up with one area of online marketing can be a tall order. Trying to stay abreast with every facet of interactive marketing can seem like an impossible task for humans.

But it is being done by people just like us.

B2B marketers, like myself, seem to be slow to utilize some social media tactics like YouTube, but for a handful of B2B marketers the results of using social media advertising are well worth the effort.

One of my favorite B2B social media advertising videos on YouTube would have to be Mr. W, the story of windpower.

It would seem getting wide-spread appeal and putting a personality to an abstract concept like windpower would be nearly impossible, but German-based Epuron nailed it with this video.

Epuron gained international interest for this YouTube clip.  The video has has been watched nearly two million times. So, before you think YouTube is not a viable social media outlet for your B2B product, you might learn something from Mr. W.   



 

0 Comments »

Like Fast Food, Online Marketing Webinars are Everywhere

Sunday, October 18, 2009 by Darrin Strain

Once upon a time, we had marketing and we had marketing-related specialties like search engine marketing and online marketing. Not so much today. The division between offline and online marketing is becoming more and more blurred. After all, marketing needs to create demand and interest for a company's products and services, no matter what form it takes.

For a traditional marketer, online marketing can seem a little overwhelming, but it doesn't need to be. Marketers can find a Webinar or podcast for nearly any facet of the marketing world.

One of the marketing tactics nearest to me is search engine marketing. Network Solutions had become a great resource for everything Web related, from securing a domain name to browsing and watching its comprehensive listing of pre-recorded Webinars.  It's a great place to brush up on some lesser used skills or learn new ones.

Right now, the Network Solutions is offering free pre-recorded Search Engine Marketing Webinars on these topics:
  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  2. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
  3. Link Building Techniques
  4. Effective Keyword Strategies
  5. Search Marketing for Local Businesses
  6. Constructing Optimized Web Pages
  7. Blogging/Web 2.0 Strategies
  8. SEO for Ecommerce Sites
  9. Getting your Business Online 101
Even the most seasoned interactive marketer can learn something from this extensive list.
0 Comments »

Got Collateral? Get Aprimo.

Thursday, October 8, 2009 by Kati Dafoe
Not talking about calcium today.Maybe you already "got milk," but that's not all you need in life. Experts say we need a balanced diet of dairy, protein, grains, fruits and vegetables. You wouldn't try to survive on only one of these. You'd run into all kinds of problems if you only ate ground beef or blueberries. You know better, so you try to include every food group.

I hope you also know better than to think you're set for life if you're using marketing software that addresses one, tiny area of your marketing organization. Yes, it may be improving your outbound marketing and lead distribution efforts, but what about your materials and inventory? You may have a microsite builder, but are you working on search engine optimization or PPC Advertising?

We do software, and if you do collateral we can help. If you and your team realize that much already, half the battle is behind you. Are you looking for collateral customization software? Collateral management software? Marketing collateral software? Marketing collateral management software? Digital asset management software? Brand content management software? (Phew.) No matter what you call it, we do it.

James Gilchrist, a Graphics Designer at Aprimo and one of my coworkers, may be talking about this functionality so check out his posts for more information.


0 Comments »

Marketing Pain Points- How to Partner with Sales

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by J. Dreesen

Ah, Marketing......
We are in the inviable position of creating the voice of our company to the world!
We are also here to serve a growing list of internal customers.  And, I would say, without reservation, that our most important customer is the Sales team.  They look to us to provide leads and to grow the sales funnel.  They look to us to provide and manage their collateral.  They ask for help with PowerPoint presentations, ask us to edit RFP's, and to remind them of upcoming events.
How can we better help our lonely comrades in the field? 
OK, let's talk about the sales funnel?  What can we do to grow it:
Leads.....good, strong, highly-qualified leads.
How do we find them?  By using search engine optimization, by utilizing and optimizing social media, by building connections with prospects.  
How do we get the leads to Sales in an efficient and effective manner?
By connecting directly to their salesforce automation system, so that we can funnel contacts and information quickly, efficiently, and to the right people.
0 Comments »

Little British Cars and Marketing Tools

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Darrin Strain
I have a tendency to love tools. I don't care if they are power tools, iPhone apps or just a good old-fashioned set of wrenches and an old MGB car in need of a little fine-tuning, which is pretty much a constant on old British cars. Life just doesn't get any better.

MGB, by famous English car maker Morris Garage, or MG.


And, that's why I love my job.

As an interactive marketer and a Web site manager,  I can always turn to a bevy of Web- and search engine optimization tools to ease my withdrawal from old cars and the strong smell of gas and oil that I hold so dear. 

Whether your need is search engine traffic, Website marketing or Web analytics, there is a tool to help. You just need to know where to look. One of my favorite free tools is Alexa.

Alexa helps marketers learn all about their websites and about the site of their competitors. Alexa can help you determine the popularity, to find relevant new sites and new keywords. You can also find out about demographics on a particular Web site and general site information such as bounce rates, traffic rates and who owns a URL.

My only word of caution is to take the time to understand all the data tools like Alexa churns out. Analytics can easily be misunderstood, so be a smart interactive marketer and know your tools and, most importantly, be sure you know how to interpret the data.

With all this talk use of of Web tools this week, I am ready for a tool that offers a more tactile experience.  I am off get my head under the bonnet of a little British car, and to have my hands covered black with grease and oil. Living the dream!

0 Comments »

Search Engine Optimization Tools

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Darrin Strain
Technology for marketing takes on many forms. In this post, I will focus on some great web analytics tools marketers can use for marketing information technologies, search engine marketing and overall Website health. 

Google Search Tools
Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google. Google Search Tool will list back links, pages indexed, cached page and related links. 

Yahoo Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Mike's Marketing Tools
Search Engine Rankings offers free, instant, on-line reports of web site rankings in eight top search engines and web directories, including Google, Yahoo! Search, Bing (MSN), AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Directory, and Open Directory (Dmoz).

These are just a few of the many free tools available. Do a Google search and you will find many, many others.

Let us know about your favorite search tool. Post a reply and tell us about it.
0 Comments »

Interactive Marketing: Making It All Work Together

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Bill Godfrey

So what's the big deal here? Well, here's what we know - as interactive marketers, we ...
 

  • already use a collection of tools to manage paid search, search engine optimization, banner advertising, commercial email, triggered email, social media marketing, microsites, website traffic, lead management and the like.  Basically a bunch of execution tools.  Separate tools.  Disconnected tools.  And you (yes, it's safe to admit it) are the person responsible for meshing all this digital data and  producing intelligent insights (ahh yes, the elusive dashboard). 
     
  • live in isolation from the rest of our marketing organization, in part because we're so different (and cutting edge) and in part because we're focused on the new stuff - the online world. 


Now let's be honest with ourselves.  As interactive marketers, we ...
 

  • know it's impossible to integrate all these point tools and your customer's experience is falling short of it's potential.

  • don't really want to operate as an island disconnected from our marketing mothership, as we fully realize that our online marketing activities have much greater impact when weaved into our offline marketing campaigns (and vice versa) - creating a seamless customer experience.


Yep, I agree it's a big deal - a really big deal!  So let's do something about it.  I invite you to learn about a new and truly innovative solution for managing your world of interactive marketing.  Visit aprimo.com/marketingstudio.  It's interactive.  It's integrated.  It's intelligent.  More importantly, I think it'll make our life a lot more enjoyable and bring a WOW factor to your online marketing. 

0 Comments »

Introduction to Aprimo Marketing Graphics Design and Communications Blog

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by James Gilchrist
Introduction
Hi everyone, and welcome to my Aprimo Marketing Graphic Design and Communications blog! My name is James Gilchrist, and I am a Graphics Designer on our marketing website team here at Aprimo, Inc. Here's a little bit about myself:

How I got started at Aprimo
I went to Purdue University, starting off in the computer science department. Then, after banging my head against the wall for a year, I decided to make the change to computer graphics technology, with an emphasis on 3D animation. I did graphics design work as an intern for Aprimo, Inc. in 2006 and was hired on in January of '07 after graduating from Purdue. Aprimo has provided a great opportunity for learning about marketing, as we are a marketing automation software company.

Personal Hobbies
First of all, it's probably important to mention that my first and most important personal passion is playing and recording music. My cousin and I are in a band called Mudbird (formerly Tim Meils Band), and we're hoping to record a CD to promote our new band name. I can't wait to use my marketing and graphics experience to promote our band.

Mubird at Merchants Fest
*Mudbird band at Merchants Square (that's me on the left)

Other hobbies include being a GIGANTIC Colts fan and watching movies.

Blog Purpose
I will be using this blog as a tool to share an in depth view of our Aprimo graphics projects that we build within our own department headquarters. I can break the projects into the following categories:
  • Web Design (all graphical elements behind a website)
  • Interactive Flash (interactive objects created using Adobe's Flash)
  • Interactive Video (using Canon A1 + Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Flash, Encore, etc)
  • Web Programming (everyone loves making forms!)
  • Print Media (brochures, booths, flyers. etc)
  • Web Analytics, Search Engine Optimization and Traffic
  • How we use our Aprimo Marketing Software to fit our Microsite and Email Needs
I'm looking forward to diving into a project in my next post!
0 Comments »

Deploying Interactive Marketing Software

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Eric Teitsma

I thought it might be good to begin with a quick summary to make sure everyone reading this is on the same page.  There are many different interactive marketing software solutions in the market today.  Most of these solutions are Software as a Service or SaaS based software solutions.  They address various needs related to online marketing.  They include some or all of the following features: list management, email, marketing lead management, microsite builders, web analytics solutions, social media software (blogs), search engine optimization, PPC Management, web advertising, and reporting.

With so many tools to leverage, deploying interactive marketing software is best approached in stages or phases.  Beginning with the quick easy wins and building up to more complicated features over time.  For example, starting with simple email campaigns with some basic personalization or limited dynamic content in the first phase can show early success internally.  I have found that letting users see some early wins and success can really help build internal momentum and excitement.  You can then leverage that success to move into more advanced features like a microsite builder and maybe begin to tie in a web analytics tool in future campaigns.

Yes, the real power and value comes when you tie all of the features together to see a full picture of your online marketing efforts and measuring their success.  However, do not get too caught up in the vision to think that you must have everything turned on at once for it to be worth it.  Too often I see companies get so wrapped up in wanting it all right away that they try to push everything out all at once in one large phase and end up overwhelming their users.  This leads to user adoption issues and can kill the entire implementation.  It is much better to take the crawl, walk, run approach when deploying an interactive marketing solution.
0 Comments »

To Bing or not to Bing for Search Engine Marketing

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Rob McLaughlin
I need to make a confession.  I have a bias toward Microsoft technology.  In fact, it is so bad, I am one of the 10 people that purchased a Zune in the opening weeks and I already pre-ordered the Zune HD.  In my office closet, a box for Microsite Bob still probably lurks.  I never complained about Vista and I will be quick to upgrade to Microsoft 7.  So, it is with this background, I approach Microsoft Bing both as a technology user and marketing software provider.  Like almost 90% of the rest of us, I have used Google search in my daily life for the past several years.  It also dominates our planning and thinking around search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and various other web based marketing initatives.

Quick observations:
  • Bing needs a better news feed.  One column just does not cut it.  Back to Google for news.
  • Bing, several times, did a dreaded "awkward pause" after hitting enter in the search box.  As a marketing software provider, I have some sympathy.  However, in search, you simply cannot, I mean cannot, have 20+ second delays in your search results (ever). 
  • The Bing search results (once received), in general, were very good.  I believe they do have some noise to make around their search approach and I believe that is already influencing Google.

Looking at our visitor data within web analytics for the last month, I saw that Bing was used in 5% of our search results.  That is equal to Yahoo.  For reference, Google was 90%.   It is strange to turn to Microsoft to break up a juggernaut in a technology area, but that is the reality of search today.  There are reasons Google is dominating this space, until something really compelling happens (Bing is not there yet), I believe that dominace will remain.  So, for the time being, our web analytics and search engine marketing planning will still center on Google.
0 Comments »

Marketing Automation Software: The Agency Dilemma

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Bill Godfrey
Marketing agencies develop great creative.  For companies lacking strategic marketing competencies, agencies can also help fill this void.  Many agencies are also highly efficient in managing the outsourced production of marketing campaigns.  Agencies are a tremendous asset to corporate marketers. 

Within agencies, technology is harnessed and pushed to the limits for designing creative, executing email marketing campaigns, and managing interactive marketing activities using online marketing tools for search engine optimization and social media. 

So why have agencies been laggards to adopt marketing operations software, commonly referred to as Marketing Resource Management?  I believe it's because they realize that MRM applications have the potential to disrupt the status quo of their client relationships.  Think about it - why would agencies want to give their clients greater visibilty and transparency into their internal marketing budgets, plans, production workflows, traffic schedules, marketing calendars, digitial asset libraries and communication strategies? 

Aside from a few innovative firms, most agencies have been sitting on the sidelines out of fear that MRM systems will disintermediate the fundamental business relationship with their clients.  In the meantime, corporate marketing organizations are rapidly standardizing on MRM platforms in order to increase their own visibilty, accountability and control across their marketing portfolios, while accelerating their time to market and reducing costs and inefficiencies along the way.  Ironically, the benefits of marketing operations software can be the greatest in the very area of focus for many agencies -- interactive marketing!

The net result is that CMO's are taking outright ownership of their operational platform, inclusive of the intellectual capital and creative assets that were typically maintained within agencies.  Agencies and other marketing suppliers are being required to use these MRM systems as a virtual extension of the CMO's marketing value chain.  Over 70% of Aprimo's customers require their agencies to utilize their Aprimo solution as a collaborative extranet platform.  CMO's are no longer held captive by inordinate switching costs as they're now institutionalizing their marketing knowledgebase as a corporate asset.

Welcome to the 21st century.  Successful agencies of the future will embrace, and in my opinion should actually lead, this marketing transformation.  Interesting times, for sure.  



 
1 Comments »

Business Blog Software by Compendium Powered by Compendium Blogware