MarketingSherpa Blog

Most of you know that one way to drive people to a website is by putting the address on everything that might get in front of the eyes of potential customers.

I’d like to provide another suggestion: Give people an incentive to actually go to the website.

If you’re a college or university trying to increase admissions, for example, try including an MP3 card in direct mailings. You could have whatever message or logo you want printed onto the card, which looks like a credit card.

It could say visit our site to receive one free MP3 music download. That gets your target audience through the gates, so to speak. Hopefully they will look around the site while waiting for the song to download.

“This has been incredibly useful for private schools and colleges,” says Fred Snyder, VP of Sales, Eastern Region, for Geiger, one of the oldest and largest privately held promotional products companies in the world.

Snyder provided some background information for a Sherpa report on how to maximize the ROI of promotional products in a tough economy. He also provided this tip!

I had the pleasure of speaking with Dennis Hernreich, EVP/COO/CFO, Casual Male Retail Group last week. We mostly discussed how the U.S.-based big and tall male apparel retailer is expanding into Europe, England in particular, and the lessons Hernreich has gained from the experience.

Read more…

I love hearing about Google’s early days and its meteoric rise. When National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” segment ran an interview with New York Times columnist Randall Stross, author of Planet Google, I was all ears.

Much of the interview was old news for search marketers, but I heard some good tidbits:

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Even though more B2B marketers consider a role for social media in their marketing strategy, I still hear them express confusion about measuring the impact of creating blogs or participating in social networks. Typical questions:

How do you measure engagement? What’s the value of one Twitter follower? What’s the direct ROI of that blog post you wrote?

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Is this marketing genius? Pontiflex, the self-dubbed first open and transparent cost-per-lead (CPL) market, yesterday announced the revealing of a free Online Advertising ROI Calculator.

It allows online advertisers and marketers (Pontiflex’s target audience) to compare the costs of online advertising campaigns based on CPM, CPC, and CPL pricing models.

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Finally, finally, finally. I’ve been waiting for someone to enlighten me about the ways journalists and PR professionals are using Twitter to interact with each other. Thanks to the launch of a new Twitter resource called MicroPR, I can  really see the value.

MicroPR was developed by Brian Solis, Stowe Boyd, and Christopher Peri. Here is a quick guide provided by Brian’s blog post:

• Journalists, bloggers, and analysts, send a tweet to @micropr (www.twitter.com/micropr) with what you need help with. The PR subscribers will read it and only those who can help will respond. Always start your message with @micropr.

• PR, follow @micropr to monitor the inbound requests from the media and to determine how you can help. This is a listening and response service for you, not a broadcast channel. Do not send a message to @micropr unless you need the assistance of the PR community.

• If you want to refer to micropr on Twitter, please use the hashtag, #micropr.

It didn’t surprise me to find out that Brian was a key player behind this wonderful tool. He is the person who inspired me to write, Essential Guide to PR 2.0: Social Media Dos, Don’ts. Thanks to him for allowing me to interview him for that article.

I should also mention, this tool reminds me of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) created by Peter Shankman. The idea is similar though Peter uses a different medium, namely email, to get requests from journalists to a list of experts and PR professionals.

For more information on HARO, check out the Fame article I wrote in March. Check out MicroPR as well. Both wonderfully useful tools from innovative thinkers. Thanks guys!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. The holiday crunch has arrived.

As I mentioned previously, consumers are looking for deals this season. That poses a challenge for premium brands that don’t want to discount. One brand, Zappos.com, sells shoes at a discount through its other brand, 6PM.com, to maintain its premier image.

I sent a comment request to Zappos, but did not get a reply in time for the previous post. However, Graham McCulloch, Senior Buyer, Zappos.com, did get back to me last week and elaborated on the topic. Here’s what he had to say:

“Zappos.com is a premier brand and customers choose to shop on Zappos for the premier service. Price is a secondary consideration. In order to maintain the integrity of our brand, we chose to funnel the vast majority of our markdowns through 6PM.com.

6PM.com is price and selection driven. To offer these prices to our customers, we have shorter customer service hours, a $6.95 flat rate ground shipping, and a 30-day return policy.”

On the other hand, Zappos has 24/7, 365 days-a-year live customer service, a 365-day return policy, free overnight shipping and free return shipping. (That is astounding!)

McCulloch further mentions that 6PM.com customers want value, while Zappos’ customers want the newest, most diverse assortment of footwear, apparel, and accessories on the Web.

As you can see, the difference between the two brands goes beyond pricing. Zappos and 6PM have two completely different online strategies, and that give its marketers far more reach than either brand could alone.

Regularly connecting with clients and customers on social networks can be a lot of work. You have multiple accounts to log into, feeds to watch, messages to respond to, etc. Can it be fun? Sure. Can it be tedious? Absolutely.

I stumbled on a free Web-based tool that helps eliminate some of that tedium. Fuser will take all your messages from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and your email accounts, and put them into one, easy-to-use interface. (Unfortunately, I did not notice LinkedIn as a supported platform)

I just gave the beta service a quick test and it’s definitely fast, easy, and free. Fuser takes your messages–everything from wall posts on Facebook to Tweets on Twitter–and lays them out like emails. You can view and sort all the accounts at once, or select which you’d like to view.

So if you’re struggling to keep up with your business contacts’ online banter, Fuser can help eliminate a few steps. Hopefully it will give you more time to contribute to the conversation.

According to a Nov. 20 article in The Wall Street Journal, eBay Inc. is going to leverage the technology they acquired with the six-week-old purchase of Bill Me Later by testing a holiday credit line for consumer users of their PayPal service. Each consumer in the PayPal system will be allotted credit based on an assessment of their finances.

Like with Bill Me Later, people who use the credit will not have interest accrue on their account for a few months. PayPal was to begin the service on Nov. 21, according to the article.

What does this mean for online marketers? Read more…

Teens are using social network sites, video-sharing sites, online games, iPods, and mobile phones. That’s no news flash.

What’s new is a study of 800 interviews with youth and their parents that has shed light on why young people use digital media. Here are the major findings:

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