Large consumer giants like Coke and Unilever are switching up their digital strategy again. According to a recent article from New Media Age, Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010. This move comes as no surprise as many companies are now relying on full-throttle, web strategies and not just a corporate website. Microsites will not be eliminated completely, but rather serve as a method to drive users ...

We recently published a white paper for marketing executives who want to understand the risks and consequences associated with not fully embracing the web. As the web has become the central hub of all communications, no longer can marketing executives afford to take a casual approach to the web by relying on an ineffective corporate website. Rather a full-throttle, all-encompassing web strategy must be in place in order for a business to grow. A holistic web strategy includes components like social media, search engine optimization, video and multimedia, campaign based micro-sites, email ...

I recently began reading Malcolm Gladwell's, What the Dog Saw. In the first chapter Gladwell takes an in-depth look at brilliant marketer Ron Popiel, founder of Ronco, and inventor of popular kitchen gadgets such as the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ. While I found it interesting to learn about the Popeil family legacy of inventing and entrepreneurial spirit, what fascinated me the most was the fundamental reasons behind Popiel's marketing success. Gladwell attributes Popeil's empire to the fact that Popeil consistently positioned his products as the star of the show. Popeil designed ...

For marketing professionals, measuring return on investment (ROI) is very important. With the right web partner providing effective tools and analysis, measuring ROI with web-based marketing efforts is easy compared to traditional channels where audience interaction is much more obscure. The first step toward measuring results is setting goals. According to search marketing expert Carrie Hill, “The most successful online marketing campaigns use an idea and a goal and leverage that idea and goal as much as they can before it’s exhausted.” Effective goals need to be SMART ...

For many years a company's website was the most important tool in a marketing director's toolbox.  However, as the web has grown it's no longer enough for a company to simply have a static website. There is a great need for companies to employ a holistic web strategy that encompasses things like social media, search engine optimization, video, and mobile capabilities in order to reach their audience and grow their brand. The need for an all-encompassing web strategy combined with the fact that the web has become the focus of all communications, means that marketing directors (not IT ...