49 ways to build your brand using online marketing
September 13, 2007
Building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. How does one start to rise above the noise to distinguish themselves as a heavy hitter? What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.
Video Marketing:
1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.
2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.
3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.
4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.
5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.
Conversational Marketing
6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.
7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.
8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.
9. Contribute to online groups like google groups and myspace groups.
10. Market yourself by adding a blog.
11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.
Pay Per Click
12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.
13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.
14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3rd tier networks.
15. Utilize keycompete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.
16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.
17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.
18. Mind your ad quality.
Social Media Marketing
19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.
20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.
21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.
22. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.
Email Marketing
23. Team with companies with double opt in lists
24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.
25. Try to leverage DBA lists
26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.
Mobile Search Marketing
27. Create a click to call campaign
28. Develop a mobile version of your site.
29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization
30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.
31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.
32. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.
33 Develop quality internal linking structure.
34. Create optimized html source code.
35. Create optimized robots.txt
36. Create optimized XML sitemap.
Affiliate Marketing
37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.
38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program
39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.
40. Incentavize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.
Banner Advertising
41. Examine potential sites demographics.
42. Get media break outs
43. Consider Portal Advertising
44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.
Application Marketing
45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers
Contextual Advertising
46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.
47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.
On to offline Marketing
48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.
My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your sponsored reviews..
New Website Launched!
May 14, 2007
Finally, the new and much improved CarbonGraffiti v 3.0 website has launched. This new version’s highlights include a better, cleaner look, improved functionality, and [much] more emphasis on both the work portfolio and blog posts. Come back soon for upcoming email marketing campaign templates (to be open source, of course), continued email marketing and online marketing blog posts, and much more.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and Microsoft may be discussing a possible merger in a bid to take down the giant that is Google. According to MarketingVox:
“Microsoft’s online division is suffering from a failure to compete with Google on search. They recently missed an opportunity to acquire online advertising giant DoubleClick, which was quickly snapped up by its Goliathan competitor. The talks with Yahoo preclude a company on the verge of big change.”
It’s about time MSN realized that their search and Pay-per-click programs are no where near up to par with Google’s or Yahoo’s. After using all three PPC programs for quite some time, the amount of times I became frustrated with MSN’s lack of features and simple lack of an intuitive interface always pointed to them resorting to other tactics to try and rule the PPC and search roost. It didn’t take a genius to see something was up when we all noticed Overture powering search results on MSN search sites, including msn.ca.
Also according to MarketingVox:
“Microsoft may be poised to change its executive roster or consolidate some units. It may also decide to repartner with Yahoo. Yahoo briefly provided search and ad technology on Microsoft’s behalf through its product Yahoo Search Marketing, formerly Overture. The relationship ended last year when Microsoft released a competitive offering, Microsoft AdCenter.
Yahoo’s may depend on “Project Panama,” a delayed upgrade to their ad system. The model could reportedly use Microsoft’s technical expertise; in another potential arrangement, Microsoft could manage the back-end of both companies while Yahoo handles the consumer end.”
Google Adsense to enter your outbound email
April 26, 2007
According to Chad Mauldin:
‘Google recently filed for a new patent, here, on technology to display ads in email. Some may disregard this, seeing as Google already displays ads inside of Gmail, but this is somewhat different. This is Adwords for email, essentially allowing anyone to place Adsense inside of their outgoing mail, specifically mentioned in the patent, newsletters.
What impact will this have? This will allow advertisers to target certain websites email newsletters, provide publishers on more avenue for revenue, and with that provide Google with an even broader reach. Imagine opening your yahoo/msn/hotmail/any mail account and seeing Google branding and ads.’
The more relevant questions are… how was this not going to happen eventually (I can definitely imagine seeing ads in my hotmail/yahoo/msn account), and are Google pretty much on course to dominate your entire online life? (… and maybe your physical world too?)
This might be well-timed though, considering Outlook 2007’s inability to show rotating gif’s/banner ads in email, Adsense might put money in advertiser’s pockets and see the banner ad go the way of the dodo.
Aizlewood 2.0 - Email and Online Marketing 