Reworking your business and marketing to better fit your customers’ needs is generally wise–and it looks like Wal-Mart is testing how to better serve Hispanic customers in two markets.
The largest U.S. retailer plans to open two Hispanic-focused supermarkets this summer, dubbed Supermercados de Walmart. The stores will be in Hispanic neighborhoods in Phoenix and Houston. They will have different products, layouts and a bi-lingual staff.
The U.S. Hispanic population has grown by 20% over the last four years, according to a free report from Experian. Some other tidbits from the report:
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The database marketing agency Merkle released their 2009 ‘View from the Inbox’ email marketing report last week. The survey, conducted on behalf of Merkle by Harris Interactive, surveyed 2,505 U.S. adults who check or send email at least once a week.
Judging from the report’s highlights, it looks like consumers are more skeptical and demanding of messages hitting the in-box. However, they’re willing to receive email from a slightly greater number of companies. The report is free if you share your email address.
Here are a few findings:
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Third-party shopping comparison sites such as Shopping.com and Shopzilla can get products to consumers who aren’t visiting brands’ sites directly. However, these sites pose challenges: they have different audiences, data requirements, bidding requirements, and capabilities.
Mercent, a Seattle-based company founded by former Amazon execs, has built a platform to help marketers sell across a range of third-party sites. I chatted last week with Mercent CEO Eric Best and several marketers from specialty retailer Brookstone.
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Google Audio Ads — a service that sells broadcast radio advertising over the Web — will end on May 31. We covered how marketers were using the AdWords-based system for airing ads across the country at a low cost. I thought it was an interesting service that illustrated the breadth of Google’s advertising ambitions.
The marketers we talked to for the article thought the service was much cheaper and easier than buying ads direct from radio stations. Read more…
If you love Flash or SEO, keep an eye on our search newsletter. A two-part report that describes how to reconcile the two opposing forces should be published in the coming weeks.
I found a ton of great information while researching the article. Some of it just didn’t fit. One interesting tidbit involves the value of images in search engines. Read more…
Yikes. Sometimes one letter can make a huge difference.
I was glancing over our blog today and something didn’t sit right with my post for last week.
“Only 85 million searches at Google Sites last year? That seems really low. I feel like I searched Google 85 million times last month.”
And sure enough, that stat should be “85 billion.” My bad!
Google is a growing giant. Some stats from comScore’s 2008 Digital Year in Review (a free report if you surrender some info):
– Nearly 85 million searches were conducted on Google sites in 2008
– Google sites captured 63.5% of the searches among the top five engines in December 2008
– Google captured about 90% of the overall growth in search volume last year. Read more…
MarketingSherpa members got a preview of our 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR Benchmark Guide last week. An executive summary, table of contents, and some great charts and analysis were released to them in PDF form.
The complete guide will be released the week of Feb. 9. Here are a few interesting nuggets for all of you to contemplate right now. Read more…
More marketers are testing the world of Twitter and shaping their strategies. Last week we reported how a unique discount retail site, Woot, is using Twitter to promote products.
Then I came across the mother of all lists of brands on Twitter. The list has more than 200 links to feeds run by fast food companies, manufacturers, hoteliers, eretailers, airlines, publishers and many more. The companies are as large as GM and as small as online startups.
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I’ve heard of marketers doing strange and wonderful things, but this weekend’s episode of This American Life on Chicago Public Radio described, by far, the strangest marketing campaign I’ve ever encountered.
The episode, called “Numbers,” described people’s attempts to quantify the unquantifiable, such as emotions. The fourth segment described marketer Will Powers’ efforts to better market himself to his wife (Powers’ boss at Brand Solutions thought the task would teach him the principals of brand loyalty)
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