Tag Archives: Internet Marketing

Visualizing Visitor Data on Google Analytics

March 31, 2011    Internet Marketing, Web Analytics

Internet marketing is supplanting traditional marketing. The UK made headlines in 2009 when, for the first time, marketers spent more on internet advertising than on television. The trend continues. ZenithOptimedia predicts ad expenditure to fall by 2% for newspapers and magazines while “internet advertising grows three times faster than the market as a whole.”

Internet marketing appeals to advertisers because it is easy attribute a sale if it comes from an internet campaign. This is almost impossible to do in traditional advertising (the phrase “spray and pray” comes to mind). Read More

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Emerging Trends in Web Design

February 16, 2011    Branding, Design, Fun & Facts, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Web Development

We're gazing into the future to identify new trends in web design

We’ve been extremely busy around the office lately. We launched our new site and are gearing up to celebrate 10 years in business. Looking at our old site and the past 10 years got us thinking: what will the future be like? As a marketing and digital design agency it is our job to stay current. We subscribe to industry publications. We attend conferences and seminars. Some of us are even pursuing advanced degrees. All of these activities provide insights that help answer the important question: what’s next in the world of web design? Read More

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Old Spice Guy Returns!

January 27, 2011    Branding, Fun & Facts, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Old Spice has resurrected last year’s smash youtube sensation “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. The original campaign was novel because the Old Spice guy, played by actor Isaiah Mustafa, would film short replies to people leaving comments on the video in YouTube. While I heard from an inside source that people Mustafa replied to were not chosen by random, it still made for a reflective experience that proved large ad campaigns can still engage the customer and, by engaging the customer, get the message out further.

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Internet Wide Google PageRank Update

January 20, 2011    Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Early this morning Google began updating the PageRank score for web sites all across the internet. PageRank is an alogrithm used by Google to determine the importance of a website. A high score (10 is the highest) represents a highly respected, relevant and important site.

At Alter Imaging, we noticed a PageRank increase in almost all of our internet marketing clients’ sites. Is this cause for celebration? Not really. Here’s two reasons why we’re not popping the champagne yet.

1.) The PageRank that google uses internally is not the same as the PageRank that displays on the toolbar.

2.) Google has told us to stop worrying about it.

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Social Media Monitoring and The Zodiac

January 18, 2011    Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Analytics

Your sign? Social Media Monitoring will tell us the answer!

Recently there was a kerfluffle on the web when astrologers announced the introduction of a 13th zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Another word for “kerfluffle” is buzz.  In social media marketing, where there is buzz, there is an opportunity for savvy marketers to expand their customer base.

For this case example, we are going to pretend to be a modern day Psychic Reader’s Network, aka Miss Cleo (remember her?) We are also going to assume that our fictional Psychic Network is active in social media…namely Twitter and Facebook.

So here’s how they could have marketed the event. Read More

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Choosing the Right Agency

January 3, 2011    Branding, Design, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Development

choosing a web development agencyAt Alter Imaging, we think that the best type of customer is one that is well-informed. There are literally hundreds of web design and marketing companies in Charlotte and, to a novice eye, we all pretty much look the same on the surface. For starters: it is hard to tell the difference from a web design that was built from scratch versus one that was based on a template. With millions of business sites on the web, it is important to stand out by using unique, original content, images, and graphics.

With that in mind, here is a handy guide to help you vet potential web design agencies and avoid some of the common pitfalls.
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Google’s Site Preview Going Mainstream

November 10, 2010    Design, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Google Search resultsAt Alter Imaging, we keep an eye on new developments with Google’s search results page. The last few months have seen huge changes with the introduction of instant results and, more recently, the incorporation of local results into the non-sponsored section.

Google is trying to make us search smarter and faster. If we search smarter, we find what we want and thus keep coming back to Google for more answers. If we search faster, Google gets to display more ads. In essence, Google wants to increase average ticket size (number of searches) and frequency (how quickly we revisit)…just like any other business.

Google’s latest development is the ability to view previews of of a website by mousing over its search result. This feature is currently available on the Chrome browser. Edit: It now is appearing on Firefox, too (but with a slightly different implementation).

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Increasing Conversions Mixes Art and Science

October 22, 2010    Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics

For a time, when it came to internet marketing, many marketers would claim that their only job was to get a website to rank for competitive keywords and increase traffic. “What happens to the traffic”, they would claim, “is up to the website designer and manager.” But some search marketers (myself included) have held the belief that our main responsibility to the client is to increase sales, not just traffic. We call this practice conversion rate optimization or CRO and it is becoming more mainstream.

A flood of traffic does not always mean greener pastures. You have to convert that traffic into sales.

For me, I’ve focused on conversions out of necessity. My internet marketing career started over 5 years ago working in house for a large real estate agency. After about a year there, we achieved the top rank for almost every major phrase. Traffic was abundant but the expected increase in sales did not come. It became my job to find out why and thus began my education on conversion rate optimization. Here is what I learned:

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R.I.P. Flash

October 18, 2010    Design, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Development

When considering a new website or a website redesign, it is easy to get lured by the glitzy showiness that a Flash-only site can provide. Before you go that route, stop and read why we at Alter Imaging think a Flash-only site is a bad idea.

A Little Background on Flash

Adobe’s Flash is a multimedia platform that allows designers to create interactive and animated web graphics (or even entire pages) for a wide variety of devices and browsers.  Many web designers use Flash because of its “design once, run anywhere” functionality and for the past 15 years (Flash debuted in 1996), this had been true.

Welcome to the new landscape….where Wired Magazine [October 2010] boldly proclaims “the Web is dead.” While their headlines was clearly hyperbolic and intended to sell issues, it does illustrate an important change in internet use:

More and more people are accessing internet content outside of the traditional desktop/laptop browser. Hand-held (iPhone, iPad, iPod) and set-top devices (iTV) are the new way we access content.
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Internet Marketing vs. Yellow Pages

October 4, 2010    Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics

Traditionally, a Yellow Pages print ad was a no-brainer; if you had a local company, part of your advertising budget was set aside to purchase an ad in the phone book. If you were aggressive, you would purchase a half-page ad or larger. On average, a half-page ad costs over $15,000.

internet marketing vs yellow pages - a red phone

These phones went out of style the same time as advertising in the yellow pages.

But in 2008, a major shift happened. According to ComScore, this was the year that Internet search surpassed the yellow pages in terms of consumer usage. In 2008, 31% of all local search enquiries for a commercial business originated online.

If you run a business, this is not news. You’ve probably reduced your print budget to focus on more modern forms of advertising, like Internet marketing. You are not alone. Wells Fargo/Wachovia forecasts almost a 40% drop in print and online spending on yellow pages over the next 4 years.

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