We live in a world teeming with signs, labels, advertising on TV, radio and the Internet, YouTube videos, text messages...heck, even our cell phones play ringtones that have contextual meaning. It seems everything and everyone is trying to grab our attention and make some point. So how do you as a marketer break through this sea of stuff? One good way is to be entertaining. Some advertisers are creating mini-movies to tell a story in which their product only plays a minor role (BMW's nearly 10-minute movie starring Clive Owen, James Brown, and Gary Oldman), others are creating online games or interactive experiences (Burger King's create your own Simpson, Wendy's meatatariansunite.com.

Another way to entertain your prospects is to make the very display of your products an engaging, humorous and fun experience. HEMA is a Dutch department store, with a terrifically entertaining website. It's all in Dutch, but just wait 30 seconds and watch what happens. It gets you involved and before you realize it, you're familiar with the wide range of products they sell: http://producten.hema.nl/

If you haven't already given a lot of thought to your website's Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP), chances are you will soon. It can mean a world of difference to how many potential buyers visit your website and learn about your product or service.

A recent study shows 92% of buyers research online first before making a purchase decision. And you probably know from personal experience that you don't click through more than two, three or four of your search results. How important is it to be in the top 3? Check these statistics based on a study of Google search results:

The #1 position gets 42.3% of all clickthroughs! Even the #2 position gets just 11.92% of all clickthroughs—that's nearly 75% less attention than the top SERP. Attaining the #1 position for your keywords and phrases can send you nearly 4 times more traffic than your nearest rival gets. That's a huge difference in both traffic and potential revenue.

A #3 placement in the SERPs results in a 8.44% clickthrough rate, almost a third fewer than the #2 and more than 80% less than the top result.

The #4 spot gets 6.03%, #5 drops to 4.86% , and #6 has less than a 4% click-through rate (CTR).

The lesson here is that people trust the search engines to give them results in order of value, so they're four times more likely to click on that first result than the second one and ten times more likely to click the first result than the sixth. Obviously not every company can afford to be #1 or #2 for every potential key word. The art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to pick search terms that make sense for you, your product(s) and your current marketing campaign. One of our clients recently occupied the #1 spot (beating out a much larger rival) because we optimized specifically for a campaign, rather than their site as a whole.

Source: http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/

SERP used here stands for Search Engine Ranking Position, but can also refer to Search Engine Results Page.

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I was at a conference about Online Marketing recently and one of the speakers impressed on us that there has been a major shift in human behavior with the rise of the Internet. I mean MAJOR, like the shift from not having fire to having fire. Think of the thousands of ways life changed for our cave-dwelling predecessors thanks to that simple discovery. Food could be cooked, you could stay warm in cold weather, expand your territory and live in more Northern climes, see things at night, scare away animals with a torch, and much more. Same goes for the dawn of the Industrial Age--it brought about huge changes in human behavior.

With the Internet now a ubiquitous part of almost everyone's lives, it has changed the way we shop, learn, research things, connect to friends, pay bills, buy a car, discover music, find a date, play games, make travel plans, etc. Think of how often you send an email versus pick up the phone. How much action is your fax machine getting these days? By 2010, 100% of high school grads will have spent their entire life online.

So what's the point? The point is: the heart of marketing is all about human behavior...getting humans to do something your company wants them to do. And today humans behave very differently than they did just 10 years ago, but for the most part marketing hasn't changed much. Your budget probably hasn't changed more than a few percentage points over that time. And, if you do marketing planning, you probably do it once a year. Today, that's not often enough by a long shot. Think about how your consumers have changed how, where and when they learn about and make decisions on your product. It could lead you to some new and more effective marketing ideas!

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