Behavioral retargeting emerged to be an extremely viable direct response marketing opportunity in 2008. The Arizona Republic published an article on January 2nd, featuring an elite retargeting technology provider, Fetchback. Much of the article includes information on how retargeting works and how it is successful compared to other types of advertising; says Chad Little, CEO of Fetchback, Inc., “I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and it’s arguably as good, if not better, than paid search, and paid search is at the top of the heap.”

Many people and businesses have yet to reap the benefits of retargeting. While it generally runs concurrently with other types of advertising, many companies do just that; they let other advertising methods play larger roles while a retargeting campaign is held at a much lower ceiling than its ROI potential.

Several companies have initiated the implementation of retargeting on a larger scale, and with much success. When asked to assess the benefits of retargeting, our very own Dan Redman offered his words of wisdom.

The affiliated site of The Arizona Republic daily newspaper, azcentral.com quotes, “With retargeting, you can basically assume that every person who reached your site . . . has at least a baseline interest in your product,” A clear understatement; this point is certainly true, but only a sliver of the retargeting total picture.

Perhaps misquoted, but Dan’s more complete thought was to express that, “If you are driving targeted (site) visitors, you can gather that they have some sort of baseline product/service interest. They are selecting the messaging in your ad to click after searching for keywords relevant to your brand; they are allowing a page load and may even spend a few pages reviewing your site. Particularly through SEM; visitors can be grabbed late in the education cycle. Additionally, on any great eCommerce or lead generation day, a website may turn anywhere between 3%-5% of unique visitors into a conversion. Retargeting assumes that though only 3%-5% will convert at the time of their tracked visit, previously interested and educated visitors may later convert.”

There is no doubt that retargeting is emerging as a new and effective way to advertise. What many people are starting to learn is that it is not just a strategy that simply runs in the shadows of other marketing techniques. Rather, it is a necessity for any would be successful online marketing initiative.

Learn more about our behavioral retargeting services.

Have you ever wondered (as I commonly do): where is eVisibility positioned in the world of social media advertising? That long awaited answer that many of us have lost precious sleep trying to figure out has now been resolved; and let me tell you the wait has been worth every minute of tossing and turning. The largest and most reputable network of bloggers the internet has ever known, has named eVisibility its advertiser of the month. This should come as no surprise, as we have been publishing more blogs by volume than any other subscribing agency.

This recognition has been some time coming, as our media campaigns have been hitting the Web in full force. Within the last month, we have launched social media campaigns with several reputable and household name brands. In addition to these successful social media campaigns, eVisibility is proud to announce a new offer of Social Media Consulting, where clients can learn the latest tricks in running and managing their own campaign.

If your prospects or clients are considering an advertiser to take them into the world of social media, which other internet marketing company could they possibly choose?

**With recent event unfolding on how pagerank sculpting works with the nofollow tag please refer to Google Finally Makes Up Their Mind About PageRank Sculpting With The No Follow Tag **

Learning to implement “nofollow” tags is fairly easy. Learning how to apply them in the proper way does require some skill. This post was created in order to educate the average webmaster, or website owner, on what “nofollow” tags can do for your site.

The use of “nofollow” tags can serve many different purposes. They can be used to limit the amount of link juice that flows out of a page to external pages of different domains, or they can be used to control where the link juice will flow to within a site and its internal pages.

Today, we’ll talk about the use of “nofollow” tags to control the amount of link juice flowing within a site and its internal pages. To better explain this I came up with an illustration that should help the “not so technical” crowd understand this process.

If you would, please visualize your homepage as a bucket, and the subpages as sub-buckets. See the image below:

Your total search engine authority can be represented by what I’m going to call “SEO Juice”.

Now, imagine that every link you have, in every page of your site, is a hole in the bucket. Once the different Search Engines pour their “SEO Juice” into your homepage bucket, the juice leaks out to your sub-pages, and external pages, through every link you have.

The problem is that some of your sub-buckets (sub-pages) don’t need that “SEO Juice” as much, while others need a lot of it. A good example is having those “Privacy Policy”, “Shipping Info” types of pages that really don’t need to rank highly in any SERP. So, instead of spreading your “SEO Juice” thin, you’d direct it to where it is most needed. Your site could have an extremely relevant, and high converting sub-page that you want to boost, this would be a good place to start.

The “nofollow” tags help you plug the holes of different buckets and let most of the juice flow where you want more Search Engine authority. See the image below:

Once you’ve drawn the “nofollow” strategy map for your site, and decide on what pages need more search engine authority, the implementation part is quite simple.

Now that you understand what “nofollow” tags can do for your site, make sure you look into taking advantage of this awesome tool, and take control of where your “SEO Juice” is flowing!

Still confused? Let us help you out! Check out our full list of search engine optimization services.

Well Greg Sterling is moderating today and he starts off with a VERY controversial statement. He believes that search is a better medium for branding than it is for direct response (conversion)! Our online media planner, Dan Redman, would love Mr. Sterling! James Lamberti from comScore starts off with, of course, some VERY cool numbers. He notes that most people are still using generic terms for search, as opposed to branded terms. Branded terms are still great and need to be addressed, but if you are missing the generic terms, you are missing out on a large segment. Another point that James makes is that people in the consumer packaged goods industry, and probably others, are looking for information and help. Most CPG marketers use the Internet as a big coupon drop as opposed to a medium where they can provide good information to consumers.

An overlying theme in this session seems to be the idea that search fuels brand awareness, not in a direct response manner, but in a longer term (branding) manner. It has long been known that people use search primarily for research and will typically purchase much further down the funnel. Well, this idea is being proven to be stronger than ever given all of the superb information that is being presented in this session, real hard data!

Connecting your brand to your customer’s passions is the best way to build a relationship with them. Appealing to the passions of your target audience really helps put your brand in the forefront. This really helps in creating the coveted brand advocates. Search is a huge partner throughout the entire relationship with your customer. From a paid search perspective, you need to match your “95 characters” to the consumer’s intent. Bob Tripathi, of Discover Card, notices that brand fixations occurred in the URL and title of their paid ads, not in the description, through eye tracking studies. They still spend a majority of their marketing budget in TV but have been doubling their budget in online and are currently at 16%. They definitely notice the impact TV ads have on both branded and non-branded terms, there are significantly more searches and conversions after running their TV ads.

Cam Balzer, of DoubleClick/Performics, notes that they are on a mission to build value with clients in the keywords that build the brand or purchase long before the actual desired end result. It is very difficult to track and to explain this subject to advertisers. Conversion is typically measured by only the last click, or Direct ROI. Adjusted ROI measures sales credit distributed across all paid search clicks in the stream. Investing in high-performance “assist” keywords will help boost the overall campaign. Eliminating under performing keywords and improving negative terms, are just some of the benefits of detailed clickstream analysis. Of course, you are going to need a very robust analytics to do this clickstream analysis, and from what I have seen, this investment in clickstream analysis is well worth it.
Cam shows us very convincing figures on the benefits of clickstream analysis from a fortune 500 client.

Overall, I do actually believe in the power of search in building the brand, creating awareness, and driving conversion. The only problems I see with the focus on branding over direct conversion comes from the standpoint of the small to medium sized businesses. The business that only has a few thousand dollars per month to spend online cannot afford to dedicate resources to detailed clickstream analysis, they need to drive conversions. Asking a small to medium sized business to spend more on branding is super difficult, even after showing them tremendous gains with conversion focused Internet marketing. On the flip side, the clients that we do work on, who focus on branding, do see great success. And their success is seen across all of the marketing initiatives on an aggregate level. It is these types of large clients that covet even just a minimal overall increase who realize the importance of brand building online.

Press releases, if used correctly, can be very effective for increasing awareness about a company or product on the Internet. One of the press releases that eVisibility distributed for New Foreclosures Online was picked up by an ABC news affiliate in Palm Springs this week, for example. Lately, however, it seems they are often used solely for SEO purposes to build links to a company’s site. While it can be very effective, releasing too many can begin to have negative effects.

Since press releases have the potential to gain a lot of exposure in a short period of time, it is important that they are relevant and well-written. This topic was discussed in a blog post by Red Fly Marketing recently, and I couldn’t agree more. SEO strategies can get people to read press releases and help build links to your site, but they will not help build the brand or catch people’s attention unless they are topical and interesting. Sometimes it’s better just to wait for something really interesting to talk about, and spend a little more money on a distribution site with higher authority.

Remember the audience

Assume that the same people will be exposed to your press releases on a regular basis; they may be involved with or interested in your product or industry, or subscribe to a wire service. Seeing press releases from the same company on a regular basis will raise awareness about your brand, but if they are not newsworthy, that sends a negative message about your company. You will find that when you actually do have real news, no one will be listening. Your brand name will no longer be taken seriously if you saturate the market with irrelevant press releases.

Sometimes Regular Press Releases Do Work

Usually, you will have to wait for something to happen before you can write a press release, such as when you win an award or something happens in your industry that you can comment on. That being said, there are a few exceptions where press releases can and should be released on a regular basis, such as once or twice every month:

• Charitable Contributions
• Company Programs
• New Staff Members
• Ongoing Research
• Product Launches
• Promotions and Contests

Regular events that promote your brand, such as contests or company sports teams, deserve regular releases. Galas or company outings might also make good press release topics. It will get old really fast if you publish a press release about your company luncheon or a cheap giveaway every week, though. The same can be said about charitable efforts and product launches. It might be newsworthy to publish regularly scheduled press releases about these, but only if significant progress is made.

Informative reports that are relevant to your industry will also be newsworthy and can build the credibility of your brand. The team at eVisibility did a report on the Fortune 500 companies that don’t rank high in search engines for their industry keywords, for example. If your team does research frequently, there’s no reason you can’t publish press releases about it. Product launches can also make for very relevant press releases, even if they come out once a week. The key is to make sure that every press release has something new and newsworthy, even if you have to wait.

If You Don’t Have Anything New to Say, Don’t Say Anything At All

If you find it difficult to come up with press release topics, maybe it’s time you start getting involved in charitable efforts, doing relevant research, or getting involved in other things that will get your name out there. You still might not have relevant news to report every month, though. Therefore, it might be better to save the money you would spend on monthly press releases through a site like PR Newswire and wait to release a higher end piece of content on a distribution company like Business Wire. The cost difference can be considerable; $1000-$2000 compared to $100-$200. The credibility you gain from a really good press release can be much more effective for building your brand. January 31, 2008 Media 3 Comments

For any smart internet marketing company using PRWeb to get visibility for your web sites, I have some great tips for you. I have figured out a simple yet clever strategy to make sure that your press releases are seen by cities and regions that are looking for your specific keywords.

The next time you get to the MSA field when submitting your press release and it says “Your release is currently targeting All Regions/International and the following Cities / MSAs:” take your top keyword or keyword term and use Google trends to see where in the US or worldwide you can add to your targeted region.

Say you own a web site dedicated to selling after market Jeep car parts, for example, and you are about to send out a press release about a new product line your will be carrying. Before you send out the press release go to Google Trends and search “Jeep“.

Now it is essential to refine your search. Make sure to select your region and time scale. I always try to select “Last 30 days” so I get the most relevant results.

After narrowing down the search it will shoot out the top searched cities for your keyword of “Jeep”. If your keyword or terms comes back with no results, try to simplify them until you get results.

As you can see Denver, CO and Phoenix, AZ are the top results. To find out more about how Google calculates the top results, read this excerpt from Google Trends FAQ:

For counting and ranking cities, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the cities from which we received the most searches for your first term. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio. When cities’ ratios are fairly close together, the corresponding bar graphs will be roughly the same length, and the exact ranking between these cities is less meaningful.

So, I should include them in the MSA field when submitting the press release.

After you have filled out everything else correctly, submit the press release and watch the targeting work its magic.

Hopefully, this will help you target your press releases to cities and regions that are looking for your specific keywords or phrase.

This post was written by Mike Cheslar and edited by Stephen Peron.

Check out this post, if you are looking for other ideas on how to write a Press Release?