Marketing

Home Depot is getting ready for its own version of Black Friday. For the second year in a row, the DIY heavyweight will roll out regional promotions that include doorbusters, as well as special pricing on lawn and garden, patio furniture, and grills.

Online retailing is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Marketers have access to information about every aspect of customer interaction: number of website visits, time spent on the site, email open and clickthrough rates, conversions, and purchases. With today’s sophisticated analytics, marketers can fine-tune their messaging and offers to optimize results and move beyond a simple first-click visit.

For many, it's already too late to change direction on a rudderless ship that has been left in the wake of the rapid decline in hard copy book sales. Barnes & Noble on the other hand, is using a change in strategy to help weather the storm.

Customer engagement can be broadly defined as when a targeted consumer focuses their complete attention on a particular brand’s message in an uncluttered environment. Then, this attention is accounted for and recorded. True engagement is a long-term play that encourages repeat customer value through purchasing actions and the generation of word-of-mouth interest.

Following recent research demonstrating coupon distribution in the U.S. increased 6.8 percent in 2010 and that more coupons were distributed during the year than ever before, Coupons.com Incorporated issued its Digital Coupons Trends Report for 2010, releasing data about consumer use of digital coupons.

Now ranking as the second largest search engine online, YouTube's reach and influence on consumers can't be understated. Consider the following: over 2 billion videos a day are viewed on YouTube; there are over 480 million YouTube users worldwide; the average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube; and, most importantly, partner ad revenue on YouTube more than tripled in 2009. Then why is it that the social networking site is often overlooked by marketers, taking a backseat to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?

Who would turn down the opportunity to work on an iconic retail brand that spent nearly $500 million last year and ranked No. 22 among all U.S. megabrands in 2009?

Old Navy debuted its spring advertising campaign, called “Old Navy Records: Original hits. Original styles.” Shoppers will experience a new Old Navy as it ventures into pop music and introduces an interactive brand experience across stores, online, television and mobile devices.

Between Jan. 1 and the present, searches for the term “presidents day sales” have increased by almost 100 percent. Queries for “presidents day deals” have grown over the years, and this observation is worth advertisers’ time. Creating new ad text and having a coupon code for shoppers looking to score a bargain this weekend may be valuable.

So-called "augmented reality" is the overlaying of digital information onto the real world, and everyone from game designers to retailers to health care companies to estate agents are gearing up to use it. While the potential for such technology to change the world is vast, the biggest challenge for its backers will be to convert this virtual revolution into rock-solid profits. Fortunately, there are countless ways this can be achieved, but not all are immediately obvious.