WebMarketCentral

DECEMBER 3, 2009

What's the real the optimal cost per lead for your SEM program? How can you improve conversion rates? Keep your search marketing program growing? Assure you that aren't overlooking any important opportunities for optimization? Discover the answers to these questions and others here in some of the best posts on search engine marketing (so far) this year.

Search Engine Marketing 20

Search Engine Marketing Search Marketing Adwords SEM 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Is Big Brother watching you? Books like George Orwell's classic 1984 and films such as Minority Report and Eagle Eye present a nightmarish vision of an omniscient government watching our every move. The reality is far different story, paranoia about the Patriot Act notwithstanding. As recently as 2004, FBI agents still used laptops with Intel 286 processors.

Social Media 20

Social Media Web 2.0 Eye-Tracking Media 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Looking for a more powerful way to share presentations online? Consolidate your online profiles and social networking presence? Create a cool Twiiter background even if you're not the artistic type? Generate word-of-word referrals? Use social media more effectively for research? You'll find tools for all of those tasks and others in this collection of more of the best cool online tools.

Tools 20

Tools Best Practices Adwords Word of Mouth 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

Last week I asked the question: will content marketing kill trade publications ? Gordon Plutsky seems to answer in the affirmative, contending that marketers need to set up their own content distribution channels , bypassing the trade media. Ted Bahr, on the other hand, not only won't concede the death of trade magazines but isn't willing even to give up on print versions of them.

Social Media 20

Social Media Aggregators Thought Leadership Media 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 17, 2009

Marketing automation / demand generation software provider Manticore today announced the release of Manticore Technology VII, which includes a fully customizable user interface, email and landing page folders, an email delivery wizard, and drag-and-drop list building functionality. The company made the announcement at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

Manticore 20

Manticore Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What two simple words answer almost every SEO question? What common SEO mistakes should you watch out for? How do you create a 301 redirect? Better yet, how can you avoid having to create one? What key trends in search should you be aware of, and how can you adapt to them? Discover the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on the practice of SEO so far this year.

SEO 20

SEO Forrester Best Practices Adwords 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 11, 2009

I recently did a little test to determine whether Twitter or LinkedIn was more effective at driving traffic to a few specific posts on this blog. While the results aren't scientific by any means, they are enlightening. Various posts were promoted on Twitter (with retweeting encouraged) and to three relevant and popular LinkedIn Groups focused on social media, PR and b2b lead generation.

Traffic 20

Traffic Twitter Linkedin Web 2.0 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

How can you utilize rich media ads to take advantage of the coverage provided by Google's content network? Which AdWords reports are the most critical, and how you can take full advantage of the information they provide? How is AdWords Quality Score calculated, and how can you improve that score in your campaigns? How can you calculate the potential advertising value of AdWords before making a costly investment?

Adwords 20

Adwords Tactics SEM Tips 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Content marketing is all the rage. Check out Joe Pulizzi's Junta42 blog , pick up a copy of Ardath Albee's wonderful new book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (which builds upon the foundation laid by David Meerman Scott and others), follow @Mike_Stelzner on Twitter—it's everywhere. Marketers are becoming publishers, writing valuable thought leadership and how-to content in order to build name recognition, credibility, and even sales pipelines.

Marketing Management 20

Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership Microsite Planning 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Social media, and discussions of its value for PR and marketing, have become ubiquitous. But which social media tool do marketers find most valuable? What's the best tool for social media research and learning? How can you maximize the business value of tools like LinkedIn and Twitter? How can you explain the value of social media to skeptics? Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on social media marketing from this year so far. 11 Reason

Social Media 20

Social Media Social Marketing Web 2.0 Paid Search Agency 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

It seems like so much of what is written about search engine optimization (SEO) assumes that you're writing a blog post, or a news story, or the next great "how to" article that's going to be syndicated far and wide on article marketing sites. Sometimes that is what you're doing, but often writing for the web—and SEO—involves less glamorous pages like product or service descriptions.

SEO 20

SEO Product Digg Tagging 20

WebMarketCentral

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Given the continued high unemployment rate and uncertain prospects for economic recovery, marketing budgets will be tight heading into the new year. Most B2B marketers are likely to find themselves with fewer dollars to spend but more pressure to spend them carefully. In this environment, what are the three or four areas where marketers should focus scare resources ?

Marketing Budget 20

Marketing Budget Budget Programs Allocation Emarketing 20

WebMarketCentral

OCTOBER 15, 2009

I'm normally a positive, upbeat kind of guy, and as someone who's been writing professionally since the days of disco, rarely at a loss for words. Yet mention the "nofollow" tag, and that all changes. I, like many other many other web marketing professionals, am left sputtering with a mix of disgust and rage, fumbling for an adjective that conveys sufficient contempt: despicable, vile, loathsome, abhorrent, abominable, wretched, odious, detestable, downright evil.

Tagging 20

Tagging SEO Wikipedia PageRank 20

WebMarketCentral

OCTOBER 13, 2009

How can you attract more traffic to your blog? Generate more comments? Increase the effectiveness of guest-posting opportunities? Find free and legal images to add to your blog posts? Crank out posts more quickly? Make money from your blog? Discover the answers to these questions and others here in the first set of the best posts about business blogging so far this year. 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community by Community and Social Media Chris Brogan shares more than two dozen tips for att

Forrester 20

Forrester Landing Pages Business Best Practices 20

WebMarketCentral

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Note: This is a guest post written by Christopher Angus, an award winning Internet Marketer. While Google and social media are two separate entities, they are closely intertwined. Google ranks its results based on several hundred quality signals. These range from website backlinks to the actual words on a particular page and whether a website has trust and / or authority.

Social Media 20

Social Media Web 2.0 Google Media 20

WebMarketCentral

OCTOBER 7, 2009

What common mistakes made by AdWords marketers should you avoid in order to optimize your results? What are some AdWords myths you shouldn't believe? How is the AdWords quality score calculated, and what can you do to improve scores in your campaigns? Which element of campaigns is often overlooked, but should be optimized and tested just like ad text or landing pages?

Adwords 20

Adwords PPC Tactics Landing Pages 20

WebMarketCentral

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Welcome to the first best-of-2009 (so far) compilation. This year will feature expanded, finer-grain categories (such as separate best-ofs for Twitter- and Facebook-related posts) and some renamed categories ("social media marketing" will replace "social media optimization" which in turn replaced a varied basket of terms before it). In the posts and articles below, discover how to map your social media communities, how to monitor your company's social media buzz on a budget, a dozen common socia

Social Media 20

Social Media Marketing Budget Social Marketing Web 2.0 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

One of the biggest challenges b2b marketers face is what to do with all of those "names" that come into your system that aren't really "leads" yet; contacts collected from white paper downloads, webinar registrations, trade shows and other activities. How do you separate hot leads from long-term leads from tire-kickers? How can you efficiently nurture those long-term prospects, learning more about their interests in the process, until they are really ready to engage with sales?

Marketing Automation Services 20

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Every company wants their website to show up well in search engines, and their marketing teams understand the importance of search engine optimization. And after the thousands of articles and blog posts written about search engine optimization , SEO is no longer the black art it once was. It's still a blend of art and science, but the basics should be well understood at this point by web marketers and designers.

SEO 20

SEO CAN-SPAM Tagging Keywords 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

As I recently passed 400 posts on this blog, here is a look back at the 10 most popular items here of all time. The list has changed considerably since the last look back after 300 posts. #10: Best of 2007: Website Design , February 4, 2008 Reviews of articles and tools on website design, including a couple of pieces from the brilliant and frequently cited Stoney deGeyter.

Banner Ads 20

Banner Ads Web 2.0 Eloqua CTR 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

According to research by Schneider Associates , only 38% of b2b product launches are rated "successful" by the companies introducing the new products. After decades of new product launch experience, why such a dismal rate? Why does the following still sound familiar? "Traditional launches act as big corporate Lighting Bolts, the big Ta Da. We plan big events, create loads of new sales tools and collateral, place those all important ad campaigns.

Web 2.0 20

Web 2.0 Product Public Relations Tagging 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

How can online video help with SEO and online reputation management ? Which social bookmarking sites have the most clout? Can social media really increase revenue? What common mistakes should you avoid in social media marketing? Get the answers to these questions and others here in the final set of the best posts on social media marketing from last year.

Social Media 20

Social Media Optimization Media Web 2.0 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 21, 2009

Marketing automation / demand generation software enables marketers to build microsites and use content marketing to capture leads and nurture them through the buying process. Companies evaluating established providers such as Marketo , Eloqua , Silverpop's B2B Engage and HubSpot would be well-advised to check out a relatively new contender as well— Genoo Marketing Automation.

Marketing Automation Services 20

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Microsite Salesforce.com 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang running an ad agency. How Internet marketing is like a ruptured disc. Bizarre yet real images on the web. Ads that never should have seen the light of an LCD screen. What do all of these things have in common? They're all here in the final best of funny, creative and just plain strange blog posts from the past year.

Creativity 20

Creativity Paid Search Agency Best Practices Adwords 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

In SEO `Best Practices' Are Bunk , Adam Audette rants about the supposed uselessness of these tactics, and by extension the concept of best practices in any realm. Audette writes that "`Best practice' is a stale buzzphrase that offers zero competitive advantage.best practice in the enterprise? To me, that is nothing but useless marketing-speak. It doesn’t say anything about creating a competitive advantage.

Practices 20

Practices SEO Best Practices Blogger 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Need a tool to help you collaborate with colleagues online? How about one to automatically create animated GIFs? Or one to help you find just the right word, or submit content to all of your favorite social networking sites at once, or grab screen images, or test landing pages, or instantly perform special searches on Google? You'll find all of these and others in this final set of cool web tools and resources from last year.

Tools 20

Tools Best Practices Web 2.0 Adwords 20

WebMarketCentral

SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

Google's content network can be a valuable addition to any AdWords search marketing program. It gives you the opportunity to very cost-effectively display text or graphical ads across Google's network of AdSense partner sites, many of them industry-specific online publications and blogs. These ads have both branding and direct response value. The click-through rate is typically lower (as it is for display ads in general, as prospects see your ads while reading content rather than specifically se

SEM 20

SEM Adsense Adwords Google 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 31, 2009

Looking for some off-the-beaten-trail ideas for driving more site traffic? Getting more out of those expensive marketing conferences? Doing a better job of training employees and qualifying leads? Meeting the biggest challenges in b2b marketing head-on? Then you're in the right place! You'll find all of that and then some here in my final list of brilliant but uncategorized posts from the past year.

Paid Content 20

Paid Content Paid Search Agency Best Practices Advertising Agencies 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 26, 2009

One of the most popular posts ever on this blog was The Social Media Email Signature , in which I noted that "In the old days, email signatures pretty much just mirrored business card information (which is still the case for most people).A growing number of Web 2.0-savvy executives, however, are breaking out of the old mold and creatively integrating social networking into their email sign-off.

Social Media 20

Social Media Web 2.0 Media Tagging 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 24, 2009

Signs that you need a break from SEO. Poking fun at Web 2.0 naming conventions. Copywriting mistakes to avoid—and tips for writing better copy from a standup comedian. How not to use PowerPoint. Search engine rap (oxymoronic, but true). Clueless tech support. What do these have in common? They're all here in this collection of amusing, creative and strange posts from the last year.

Web 2.0 20

Web 2.0 Creativity Copywriting Best Practices 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 5, 2009

If you write a blog on Google’s Blogger platform—or have any plans to—you need to pick up a copy of Blogger: Beyond the Basics: Customize and promote your blog with original templates, analytics, advertising, and SEO (From Technologies to Solutions) by Lee Jordan. This is the definitive guide to planning, designing, pimping out, promoting, monetizing, measuring and SEO-ing a Blogger blog.

Blogger 20

Blogger Adsense RSS Tagging 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 4, 2009

Marketing automation provider Marketo has just published The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing , a white paper that provides real value, covering the lead nurturing process from the basic how and why through ROI measurement. Unlike most white papers, this guide is very light on marketing (selected pages have sidebars headed "How Marketo Does It" rather than embedding marketing copy in the content—a nice touch).

Lead Nurturing 20

Lead Nurturing Lead Ranking Lead Scoring Sales Qualified Leads 20

WebMarketCentral

AUGUST 3, 2009

A low-cost web analytics package with features that can't be matched by that free one everybody uses. A search engine just for faces. An easy tool for automatically creating music videos. Helpful Firefox plugins and SEO analytics tools. Discover all of these and more here in another set of the coolest web tools. Clicky While there are lots of website analytics programs out there, Clicky combines powerful functionality with affordable pricing in a way few others can match.

Tools 20

Tools Best Practices SEM Adwords 20

WebMarketCentral

JULY 30, 2009

Understandably, as businesses begin to invest more marketing/PR dollars into social media, there is great concern over the ROI of these activities. No company, big or small, can afford to spend scarce funds inefficiently, particularly in the current economic environment. So no matter how much "buzz" there is about the promise of social media marketing or how excited you may be about it, if it hasn't already happened, sometime very soon your boss or client is going to start asking you about the R

Social Media 20

Social Media Paid Content ROI Media 20

WebMarketCentral

JULY 23, 2009

MarketingSherpa just released its new search marketing benchmark report ($447) and companion executive summary (free PDF). Some of the key findings and observations from the report. Despite the economic downturn, paid clicks are increasing. "U.S. paid click volume (is) up 18% from January 2007 to March 2009.In a sign of industry health, the volume of paid clicks has been steadily increasing over the last two years.

Paid Content 20

Paid Content Search Engine Marketing Advertising Benchmark Search Marketing 20

WebMarketCentral

JULY 21, 2009

There's a tremendous amount of interest in Twitter among b2b marketers. I'm frequently asked by clients and prospective clients, "What should I tweet about?" Nobody wants to be a dork. Everyone wants to do it right, but b2b social media marketing in general is still so new, and rapidly evolving, that it can seem like the rules are being written and rewritten on the fly.

Twitter 20

Twitter Web 2.0 RSS B2B 20

WebMarketCentral

JULY 20, 2009

Resources for starting a new business, ideas for naming that business, mistakes to avoid, lead generation strategies to embrace, how to apply some of Warren Buffet's wisdom to online marketing efforts.find all of that and more here in this final collection of the best posts on strategy and branding from the past year. What's in A Name? by MediaPost Online Publishing Insider Kory Kredit explores the inexact science of business naming, from descriptive ( AdBuyer.com ) to ont-quite-real words ( Aqu

Marketing & Strategy 20

Marketing & Strategy Brand Identity Branding Best Practices 20