Search Engine Marketing

Over the past few months, we at Catalog Success have been hard at work to further develop a hefty well of research data for our readers. In October we launched the Catalog Success Latest Trends Report, a quarterly series of original benchmarking research we’ve been conducting with the multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing. In the coming months, we’ll also be running a series of mail volume charts provided by several catalog co-op databases. Like the Latest Trends surveys, these will run in the IndustryEye section of our print magazine. And for the past year or so, we’ve been running a regular reader poll.

In the second installment of this two-part series on how to effectively use search marketing through less-traveled options, we continue with more techniques provided by author Amber Frensley, a client strategist for search-engine marketing and optimization agency MoreVisibility, in her whitepaper, Marketing Strategies Beyond Traditional Search. Tips 1-4 can be found in the first part of this series in the 12/18 edition of Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips (formerly Catalog Success Idea Factory). 5. Display advertising. A tool used to enhance the user’s engagement, display advertising uses static and animated images (banners), as well as interactive media, including audio and video elements. Typically, online

The 2nd Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Key Issues (January 2008)

The 2nd Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Key Issues (January 2008)

The 2nd Catalog Success Latest Trends Report on Key Issues (January 2008)

We bring you our exclusive new Catalog Success Latest Trends Report, the second quarterly joint venture with multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing. This one focuses on the key issues in the catalog/multichannel business. As with our inaugural report last October, this survey contains a statistical analysis of a questionnaire we sent to the Catalog Success e-mail list in November. The responses came from 80 B-to-C and 45 B-to-B catalogers. You can click on the separate B-to-C and B-to-B charts below, as well as the cumulative chart. Some percentages don’t quite add up to 100, due to rounding.

In the IndustryEye section of this issue on pgs. 12-13, you’ll find our second quarterly Catalog Success Latest Trends Report, a benchmarking survey we conducted in late November in partnership with the multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing. This one focuses on key catalog/multichannel issues, and we’ve included most of the charts there, so I encourage you to take a look. You’ll be able to find some charts only on our Web site due to magazine space limitations. We also didn’t have the space to include the numerous comments that you — our readers and survey respondents — wrote in response to two of the questions.

Are you on top of today’s hottest ideas in free and paid search? Here are 14 easy-to-implement ways to get your site to the top of everyone’s results. Each could support a full article in its own right, so I’ve also provided additional links to help you dig in further. Free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 1. Social media sites drive links; links drive rankings. Get familiar with Digg (digg.com), StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com), Netscape (netscape.com) and Reddit (reddit.com), because these social-media sites can drive huge traffic. More importantly, that traffic leads to numerous inbound links, which are the rocket fuel powering your organic rankings.

As the influence of search engine giant Google, and to a lesser extent Yahoo! and MSN, continues to grow, many multichannel marketers have been left to wonder if there are any other avenues to reach an online audience. In a recent whitepaper from search engine marketing and optimization services provider MoreVisibility entitled Marketing Strategies Beyond Traditional Search, author Amber Frensley provides several ways to effectively market to your audience through less-traveled roads. Here are some options she advises trying out. 1. Contextual advertising. This involves advertising your product/service on such digital media as Web sites and mobile phones, primarily on a cost-per-click basis.

Your phone buzzes just after lunch. Your boss is shouting, “Some new Web site appeared today out of nowhere and it’s advertising heavily against us! Who is it? Find out everything you can about it and report back by day’s end!” Today’s Web provides easy tools for competitive research. This month’s column provides a road map for sleuthing a competitor in a few of hours, at no cost, using just a Web browser. This is a link-heavy article. Once you finish reading this, you can go to the CatalogSuccess.com Web site and find a sidebar containing all the links mentioned. First, ready your browser.