Copious Blog

Budgets everywhere are being trimmed. But the smart advertisers are keeping in touch with their customers, making sales, and improving ROI with interactive.

Unlike traditional media, interactive can target a customer who is ready to buy. If a person is poised to purchase a pink widget, and they're doing a Google search for that product, it's smart to put yourself in front of that consumer - especially if you sell pink widgets. One of the ways to do that is with performance-based ads.

The beauty of performance-based advertising is the ability to shape your results. If it's not working, you can quickly make adjustments, alter the message, increase frequency across many channels, or change the offer. And if it's still not working, you can find a new, online home for your ad dollars, which might include email marketing.

Use email to your advantage. When done right, email is inexpensive and personal. Plus you can target specific segments for positive results. Throw in analytics and you may better understand how your customers respond to your marketing efforts now and in the future.

Optimizing your search engine ranking results is like money in the bank. While your website is important, it's useless if your customers can't find it. The old saying "Build it and they will come" does not apply online. That's because there are billions of websites all vying for your customer's attention, like finding a needle in a Texas-sized haystack. Using search engine optimization, pay per clicks or another form of search-based advertising can help achieve a positive ROI, even in times of economic slowdown.

Take a look at mobile and social websites. Depending on your customers and their needs, there can be reasons to build a mobile version of your site. If your customers are fast-moving executives whose time is worth gold, it makes sense to add mobile to your marketing strategy. But social applications and blogs are different stories. Today, nearly every one of your customers has a blog or two they read on a weekly or daily basis. And with younger customers, you can find almost all of them participating in a social networking site. In a nutshell, extending your brand into social networking sites or similar applications is a smart move if your customers are already there.

Give us a call. We'll talk about other ways to add some armor to your budget, including your own company blog, search engine optimization, email marketing and other proven methods of improving your ROI.

We've all been witness to ups and downs of the mobile world. One month mobile web is hot, and the next it's lukewarm. So, which is it? Listen to the biggest minds in the business and you'll clearly see that mobile web is here to stay.

Some of the largest online brands have been building mobile sites for their customers over the past couple of years. Obviously, they have seen the need for anywhere-anytime web surfing. Now, mobile providers as well as advertisers are lining up to cash in on the mobile future.

As this new future takes shape, online advertisers will be ramping up their spending to reach the new, mobile population. According to a Sterling Market Intelligence forecast, mobile ad revenues could exceed $5 billion in the coming years.

Consider your own mobile web use. We've all employed a mobile device to look up a phone number, get directions or even link our laptops to the Internet. The way things are going with the iPhone and other devices, it's only a matter of time before all handheld devices will be web-ready and service plans come hard-wired with online access. Whether you're checking the weather, the news or buying movie tickets, mobile will increase its push into your everyday life as more and more companies add mobile to their marketing arsenal.

Where does this leave business? The same place we all were about a decade ago. A lot of businesses looked at the online world and decided to dive right in. A few years later, they had to rebuild their websites to be more profitable.

In the coming years, smart companies will do their research, hire smart people to craft a customer-centric mobile presence, and then dominate the marketplace. Whether the first success story will be an online book reseller or something entirely different is anyone's guess. But one thing that's for certain, mobile web is not going away. And if anything, it will become an integral part of our everyday lives.

Stay tuned. We'll be launching a number of mobile sites for our clients in the coming months.

If you'd like to talk about your mobile project just drop us an email or call.