What is E-Marketing?


How would you define e-marketing?

How do you spell e-marketing, emarketing, E-marketing, e-Marketing, eMarketing?


Wikipedia, "Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web-marketing, online-marketing, or e-Marketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet."

Ohio State University, E-marketing is "moving elements of marketing strategies and activities to a computerized, networked environment such as the Internet. It is the strategic process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing goods and services to a target market over the Internet or through digital tools."

IT Architects, "e-Marketing is the term applied to the presentation of company's brand, product and services on the Internet to help build strong, ongoing customer relationships."

Cariad Marketing, E-Marketing is "the use of the internet and related digital information and communications technologies to achieve marketing objectives. Broadly equivalent to digital marketing."

MasterBase, E-marketing is "the study of technical uses of Internet to advertise and/or sell products and services. It includes hits from advertisement, banner ads in web pages, massive mail sending, search-engine marketing (including optimizing of search engines) and merchandising of blogs."

eMarketing Dashboard, "E-marketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet."

Read more about the benefits of e-marketing.

Book: eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Ardath Albee has provided a comprehensive guide to help B2B marketers drive decisions to buy in their favor. It talks of how to differentiate your company with contagious content strategies that produce more sales opportunities and how to find out how to get the tangible proof you need to prove marketing effectiveness.

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale shares methods to help you:

    * Create eMarketing strategies based on customer perspectives
    * Use a contagious content structure for competitive differentiation
    * Establish trusted relationships
    * Continuously measure, tune, and improve your effectiveness

Read more and order online.

Windows 7 Is Taking Share From Vista

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system has had an encouraging start in the US and globally according to web analytics firm, StatCounter. The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that Windows 7 weekly share went from 1.75% of the US market pre launch to 2.82% by the end of October. Results for the rest of the world were comparable.

"Windows 7 has hit the ground running and the underlying trend is positive for Microsoft," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "The new operating system should be further boosted by December holiday season sales of computers which will have Windows 7 preinstalled." He added that as expected it looks as if Windows 7 is taking market share from Vista and to a lesser extent XP. "In the US Vista has declined from 35.78% to 34.52% at the end of October.  XP has seen a smaller fall from 48.92% to 48.47%."

Data is based on an analysis of 4.7 billion page views (1.1 billion from the US) which were collected during the three week period 12th October to the 1st November 2009 from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

Watch for even more share to be taken from Vista.  Many people who recently purchased a computer were promised free upgrades to IE 7.  Those upgrades should be shipping soon.

You've been invited to Google Voice

"You are invited to open a free Google Voice account. To accept this invitation and create your account, visit ..." This is the email message I've been waiting to receive.

If you have to ask, what is Google Voice?
Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text. Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls.  You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM. 

Google Voice Setup Screen Shots

Once your are invited, the first step is to choose a new Google Voice phone number.  You can search for available "vanity" numbers that include keywords as a part of the new number.  You can search by word or number and area code or ZIP code or just one or the other. Yes, all the good ones are gone but I was able to select a number in my area code that ends with 3-6584 or "e-mktg".

After confirming your new number and accepting terms it is time to tell Google Voice where to forward calls.  You can choose as many
numbers as you like.  You can change the numbers anytime through the online interface.  I started with my home, office and cellular numbers and temporarily added a hotel room number. 

For each phone number you will need to be able to answer a phone call from Google and input the  confirmation code that is provided online.

It's that easy.

How can you get Google Voice?
Go to http://www.google.com/voice and wait for your invitation.  Unlike Gmail, Orkut and Wave, Google does not let current users invite new users. UPDATE as of November 5:  Google Voice is now letting some users send invitations to up to 20 people.

Specific Benefits Of E-Marketing

E-marketing gives businesses of any size access to the mass market at an affordable price and, unlike offline media like TV or print advertising, it allows for highly targeted marketing.

• A Web site can reach anyone in the world who has Internet access. This allows e-marketers to find new markets and expand globally for a relatively small investment.
• A properly planned and effectively targeted e-marketing campaign can reach the right customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods.
• E-marketing efforts provide easily trackable, measurable results. E-marketing by e-mail, banners, search engine keywords or social media advertising makes it easier to measure the effectiveness of a campaign - as it is happening.
• E-marketing is 24-hours-a-day, 7-days a week marketing. With a Web site your customers can find out about your products even if your store or office is closed.
• E-marketing can be highly personalized. Connect your customer database to your Web site so when a customer visits your site you can greet them with targeted offers. As they buy more from you, their customer profile is refined so that your future efforts are even more effective.
• E-marketing is one-to-one marketing. This allows you to reach people who want to know about your products and services in a way that speaks to them as individuals.
• E-marketing allows for more interactive campaigns. Customer interaction and involvement with aspects of your message leaves a stronger, lasting impression.
• Purchase conversion rates are higher with e-marketing. When customers access your Web site they are only ever a few clicks away from completing a transaction.

Together, all of these aspects of e-marketing have the potential to add up to more sales. If you would like to know more about e-marketing strategies and their potential then please contact me.

"Free" As An E-Marketing Strategy

Everyday I download "free" white papers from the Web in exchange for my contact information. I usually read the "free" newsletter that inevitably follows, at least once, but I never answer the follow-up calls that ring on my fax machine. Occasionally I make a purchase as a result of this exchange. This is how the "free" economy works for me and the businesses who court me.

Twitter continues to be free. But Twitter hasn't ruled out charging for future services or keeping it free by adding advertising. Hopefully Twitter will conclude that "free" can be a successful e-marketing strategy much as Google has with Mail, Analytics, YouTube, etc.

In a 2008 special report in Wired Magazine titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business“, author Chris Anderson presents a few case studies in detail that still make sense today. The article includes an analysis of six broad categories of business models leveraging the free economy:

• Freemium: What’s free: Web software and services, some content. Free to whom: users of the basic version.
  
• Advertising: What’s free: content, services, software, and more. Free to whom: everyone.
• Cross-subsidies: What’s free: any product that entices you to pay for something else. Free to whom: everyone willing to pay eventually, one way or another.
• Zero marginal cost: What’s free: things that can be distributed without an appreciable cost to anyone. Free to whom: everyone.
• Labor exchange: What’s free: Web sites and services. Free to whom: all users, since the act of using these sites and services actually creates something of value.
• Gift economy: What’s free: the whole enchilada, be it open source software or user-generated content. Free to whom: everyone.

A related article can be found on trendwatching.com. The Amsterdam-based trendwatching agency, published a Trendreport titled “Free Love” which is all about the ongoing rise of ‘free stuff’, and the brands already making the most it. The report is free to read online or to download as a PDF.

In a soon to be release book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Free is the business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival.

In Free, which will be released on July 7, Chris Anderson also points to the growth of the reputation economy; explains different models for unleashing the power of Free; and shows how to compete when your competitors are giving away what you're trying to sell.

Put Your Business On The Map

The Google Local Business Center (LBC) allows you to put your business on the map, literally.

The LBC is a free tool that enables business owners to control the content of their business listing as it appears in Google Search and Google Maps.

When someone searches for your type of business along with a geographic tag, your business information can appear at the top of Google Maps or the Google Search page. The image above is what appears first when searching for e-marketing in Eden Prairie.

If you run a brick-and-mortar business or even if you have a mailing address and phone number for your virtual business, you should get started by claiming a new listing, or optimizing your existing business listing on the Local Business Center page. As usage of Google Maps increases on the desktop and on mobile devices it is important that you are listed and that the information describing your business is accurate.

On June 2 Google rolled out a new dashboard feature in the Local Business Center. Once you claim your listing in the LBC and go through a quick verification process you will gain access to the following kinds of data:

• Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
• Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business' website or requested driving directions to the business.
• Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for "tea" or "coffee"?
• ZIP codes where driving directions come from: Which ZIP codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

The new dashboard will also let you dig into that data using all kinds of lists, maps, and graphs much as you can in Google Analytics for your Web traffic data. To learn more about accessing and using the dashboard, take a look at the video found on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Contact me for help with your local or national online marketing.

How The Mayo Clinic Uses Social Media

Lee Aase's presentation at the Community 2.0 conference in San Francisco discusses Mayo's efforts to use social media to increase brand awareness. Lee is the manager of syndication and social media of the Mayo Clinic.

Since word-of-mouth was found to be the top source of information influencing preference for the Mayo Clinic, extending this to social media was the logical next step.

The presentatin includes claims such as “Total Cost for Mayo Clinic Facebook, YouTube and Twitter $0.00.” that overly minimizes the time cost of employees to develop and maintain their online efforts.

Energizing Word of Mouth through Social Media

View more Microsoft Word documents from Lee Aase.

Free Search Keyword Suggestion Tools

Keyword research is one of the most basic steps in the search engine optimization and paid search engine marketing processes. Without keyword research SEO efforts may fail or SEM opportunities will be missed. Ideally keyword research should be conducted prior to building a site or new page. It is essential for determining the URLs, page titles, link titles, headlines and copy on your Web pages.

While this article does not explain the best practices for using keywords in e-marketing, it does assume that you recognize the need for keyword research and are looking for free assistance in this pursuit.

Wordtracker Tool (Free Version)
Wordtracker periodically compiles a database of over 330 million search terms which is updated on a weekly basis. All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers - Dogpile and Metacrawler.

To use their free keyword research tool submit a keyword and the results are displayed using actual search engine data complied for the past 160 days. You can then click on each keyword in the results to get additional suggestions.

You may find many terms that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself or maybe not. All of the results will contain the keyword phrase that you placed in the search box. With the paid version of Word Tracker you will also see keyword suggestions related to your search term as well as misspelling.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
With the Google Adwords keyword research tool you can decide how you want to generate keyword ideas; either enter a few descriptive words or phrases, or type in your Web site's URL and the results will be based on Web site content. You can choose to include synonyms or not. While an AdWords account is not necessary to use the tool there are additional features if you do log in.

In my opinion the results are much more comprehensive than WordTracker (either free or paid). Google results include search volume of the past month for your specified country as well as global. These results come from Google and the Google Search Network. It also includes Adwords advertiser competition which shows the relative number of advertisers bidding on each keyword relative to all keywords across Google.

Google Search-based Keyword Tool
Still in beta, the Search-based Keyword Tool can be used to generated keyword ideas for your Web site or specific Web page (or for a competitors for that matter). It can be used to generate suggestions by category or simply for the specific keyword(s) that you place in the search box. It can be tailored to the language or country/territory that you specify.

When it looks at your Web site it will suggest keywords and the landing page that best relates to each keyword, if any. It will also produce a broad list of keyword ideas that are also relevant, but aren't necessarily based on your site. These are opportunities for further SEO.

Whether searching by Web site or for a set of keywords, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides detailed data for each keyword including monthly search volume (based on the prior one to two months of data), category information, suggested bid that may place an Adwords ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share in Adwords. While the last two data points are intended for AdWords advertisers, knowing how much advertisers value a particular keyword can be valuable intelligence, especially for AdSense content publishers. If your are looking for keywords that are trending up in the search engines click on any keywords and see the trends in Google's Insights for Search.

Google continues to update and revise their tools based on user feedback. In my opinion, these improvements will further marginalize the paid services just as Google Analytics has for Web site traffic metrics reporting and analysis.

Yellow Page Advertising Drives Web Site Visits

Proving that traditional media drives online leads, Telmetrics, the leading provider of advertising call measurement solutions, released data demonstrating that many Yellow Pages users visit a business’s Web site after reviewing their print ad. Since launching a pilot program to test the use of unique URLs in print advertising campaigns in 2008, Telmetrics measured consumer Web activity generated by more than 1,200 print Yellow Pages ads from November 2008 through April 2009. Each ad included both a unique URL and phone number.

Telmetrics found that on average, URL visits represented 44 percent of leads, while call traffic generated 56 percent of leads.

“Evaluating the impact that print advertising has on Web activity is critical. Without tracking unique URL traffic, Yellow Pages advertisers would not know the total number of leads the print product is driving, as those touch points could be attributed to online ad channels,” said Bill Dinan, president, Telmetrics. “Our URL tracking data confirms that traditional media complements the digital media mix and echoes consumers’ use of multiple media and platforms in their purchasing decisions.”

Unique URLs Perform Best
During the timing evaluated, the ads that used unique URLs (for example: florists2.com) were more often visited than client-specific domains with URL extensions (for example: publisher.com/florists).

Read more at Telemetrics.com.

And The Winner Is... Marketing Excellence Awards

Clickz has announced the winners of their Marketing Excellence Awards for six categories; Ad Management, Analytics, E-mail Marketing Tool, Mobile Marketing Tool, Search Ad Management and Social Media Marketing Platform or Tool.

And the winners of the 2009 Marketing Excellence Awards are...

Winners were judged on four criteria:
1. Ability to help marketers innovate and execute
2. Ability to help marketers measure and achieve goals
3. Ability to integrate with other digital marketing tools
4. Overall approach and category relevance

The solutions that were considered were limited to those who paid for the privilege to be judged so some of the top solution providers are not even mentioned i.e. Google Analytics. While I wouldn't rely on this list for deciding on a vendor, you should at least consider these vendors in your selection process. You may also want to consider last years Marketing Excellence Award winners.

Social Email Initiatives On The Rise

According to new research from Ball State University, the Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget, the number of social email initiatives is expected to grow 367% in 2009. In 2008 only 13% of marketers leveraged social networks in their email marketing strategy. In 2009, that number is expected to grow to 46%.

One example of this cross media integration is the tactic of letting email subscribers share messages with their social networks in hopes of driving increased email program registrations.

Insights from the Social Media Pioneers

Several social media pioneers have shared what they’d learned in the past year and offered several tips for those who are considering integrating social media within their email marketing programs.

1. Currently, there are very few established best practices, so trying new things is the key to learning what works and what doesn’t.
   
2. Consumers are sensitive to “marketing speak”; therefore, stay away from traditional marketing lingo and focus on relevance and authenticity.
   
3. Social networks represent a distinct audience and mindset. As a result, organizations should think about this medium differently than traditional marketing channels. Develop unique strategies specifically for social networks, keeping in mind that users engage in each network differently.
   
4. Consider broadening your definition of success. Traditional direct marketing metrics are not necessarily a good measure of success in social media.
   

Read more details of this research by requesting the whitepaper, Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks,” from ExactTarget.

Ad Agencies Not In Sync With Marketers

Ad agencies are more optimistic than marketers about short term ad spending according to the latest tracking study from Advertiser Perceptions Inc., which measures various aspects of the industry’s confidence levels during the recession.

31% of agencies and 42% of marketers believe they will reduce their ad spending over the next six months, reports Media Post.

The differences in expectations are even more apparent when it comes to particular media. Agencies expect a 35% cut in Broadcast TV spending verses 55% for marketers. Cable TV will be cut by 18% according to agencies but 33% say marketers. Newspapers continue to fall into disfavor with agencies seeing a 54% drop and marketers a whopping 71% drop. Outdoor is expected to lose 22% by agencies and 44% by marketers.

Ad agencies and marketers are more optimistic about online media with 17% of marketers and agency execs planing cuts in that area. Search engine marketing fairs better than most with 10% of agency execs and 11% of marketers expecting cuts.

Mobile advertising is still a very small part of most integrated advertising plans but 52% of agency executives and 58% of marketers expect to increase spending here.

Source: The Advertiser Optimism Report is a new series of bi-monthly polls tracking the confidence top ad execs have in spending budgets across the major media.

Integrated Marketing Communications

The overall goal of integrated marketing communications is to drive new revenue growth and profits by maximizing the return on total marketing investments and resources while managing the overall brand experience thus building brand equity and future sales.

Many companies have separate online and offline marketing efforts, with distinct budgets. Some even treat online marketing as an IT expense rather than a communications expense.

Two recent books attempt to enlighten marketers on this situation. I highly recommend them.

Steve Woods in Digital Body Language says "Marketers who continue to pursue their mission with a disconnected set of communication tools and non-integrated data sets cannot gain the multi-perspective visibility into their prospects that is required to understand and leverage their digital body language."

Sandy Carter, an IBM vice president, describes the challenge in The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market as follows: "In an integrated campaign, marketers define the role of each channel. … The integrated campaign moves down a purchase funnel across a series of elements of the campaign. What is challenging is how to measure the success of that integrated campaign. … The way you measure the integrated impact of tactics is difficult, in particular, how the channels are synergistically working together is incredibly difficult."