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Looking Back at 400: Top 10 Posts

As I recently passed 400 posts on this blog, here is a look back at the 10 most popular items here of all time. The list has changed considerably since the last look back after 300 posts.

#10: Best of 2007: Website Design, February 4, 2008

Reviews of articles and tools on website design, including a couple of pieces from the brilliant and frequently cited Stoney deGeyter. Not sure exactly why this one remain so popular, but here it is at #10.

#9: How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy, March 4, 2009

A summary of research from MarketingSherpa, Eloqua's Steve Woods, and green marketer Lorna Li on how marketers should approach social media strategically. As the old saying from the financial world goes, no one plans to fail—but many people fail to plan.

#8: Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 4: B2B Traffic Building, May 15, 2007

Original research on the quantitative impact of social bookmarking on b2b site traffic. Much has changed since then, and social media is now an integral part of SEO efforts. But this post was one of the first to provide hard data on the benefits.

#7: How to Write a Strategic Marketing Plan, December 6, 2007

A guide to crafting a strategic marketing plan, starting with target markets and working through high-level strategies, specific tactics, and the tools needed to implement planned actions.

#6: How to Use Twitter for Business, May 6, 2009

Detailed summary of an outstanding presentation (includes video) delivered by Chris Abraham of social PR firm Abraham Harrison and Anamitra Banerji, product manager at Twitter, on how to develop a targeted Twitter following, develop a strategy, improve productivity with Twitter tools, and other Twitter best practices for business.

#5: The 8 Layers of a B2B Web Marketing Plan, October 8, 2008

Another strategy piece, this one on working outward from a solid website design, SEO and SEM through broader marketing tactics and media.

#4: The Social Media Email Signature, Septenber 18, 2008

Thanks to some Twitter luv from Guy Kawasaki, this post produced the largest single-day traffic spike ever on the WebMarketCentral blog. It shows creative examples of Web 2.0 / social media email signatures from early adopters of the now increasingly common practice. A more recent post here explained how to create a cool graphic social media email signature.

#3: Google AdWords Average CTR and Best Practices, September 20, 2007

Hard numbers to help benchmark the performance of Google AdWords campaigns is hard to come by, which explains the popularity of this post. Based on recent data, the average CTR for b2b AdWords programs remains in the 1.1%-1.3% range, with a typical conversion rate of around 2.8%.

#2: Average CTR for Banner Ads - New Data, September 16, 2008

As with AdWords, benchmarking data for banner ad performance is also difficult to find. This review of MarketingSherpa data holds up well against more recent figures. Typical CTRs for banner ads remain in the 0.15% to 0.3% range, with any performance above 0.5% qualifying as outstanding. The conclusion presented here holds true: banner ads are primarily valuable for branding, not direct response.

#1: Email Campaign, Newsletter and Banner Ad Click-Through Rates (CTR), August 14, 2007

The all-time most popular post thus far on the WebMarketCentral blog remains this piece providing industry data to help set goals and benchmark the performance of email marketing, newsletter sponsorship and banner advertising programs. Clearly, marketers love benchmark data.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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All Time Greats

7 Reasons Every Business Needs to Twitter

This post has been moved to 7 Reasons Every Business Needs to be on Twitter on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter del.icio.us tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter icerocket tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Getting More Out of Each Click with "Post-Click Marketing"

With the economy now officially in a recession (as if we didn't know that), marketers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. On the interactive marketing side, few marketers will get budget increases enabling them to drive more clicks. The challenge, then, is to maximize marketing productivity—to get more leads out of the same number of clicks. This is the first of two posts that will look at how to improve conversion rates to get more value from each click. One answer to this challenge is provided by "post-click marketing," a.k.a. lead automation management vendors. While the specifics of each service vary, all of them essentially: automate the process of extracting visitor IP information from your log files; match the IP address to an organization; filter out ISPs; and map the company name to one or more external databases to provide additional information (company size, industry, key contacts etc.). The better services also use geo-location filte

How to Use SEO: Leverage SEO To Be Found Online and Boost Your Online Marketing

All businesses that want to attract customers online, no matter the business size or age, have few options other than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO In The Box™ by Results Driven Marketing®, LLC There are roughly 1.8 billion websites online, and basic SEO allows Google to find and index or catalog your webpages.  After that, Google serves you up to searchers in the organic section.  The question remains: where they list your site, on page one or page 22 or further back? SEO controls your positioning. Do you want to be found online or not? If your business is online or you want your product or service to be found online, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must, and knowing how to use SEO to leverage the power of the internet is vital. Arguably, an effective SEO strategy gets you on the organic results section of the search engine results pages (SERP). Organic traffic is highly valuable and requires high-quality SEO. But even businesses that use l

Book Review: Website Optimization

This post has been moved to Book Review: Website Optimization – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool del.icio.us tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool icerocket tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Google AdWords and PPC

MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing strategy or social media tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! The Pure Unfettered Power of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and PPC Campaigns Just like optimizing your site to rank for keywords, you can use our online marketing tips to pay to run advertisements on Google so that your business is shown on the first page of search engine results. Ranking this way is instantaneous whereas SEO (Search Engine Optimizati

Feedback Friday

Give us some feedback on how we are doing! We would love to hear how we can improve our website and the advice we dish out to our readers. And while you are at it, check out some of our favorite articles from the past few weeks: https://www.digitalrdm.com/5-components-successful-branding-strategy/ https://www.paulandpaul.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-trademarks-and-trademark-laws https://www.lawfirmmarketingcompany.com/content-marketing http://saffwein.com/concussions-car-accident/ http://www.newsworld.site/space-force-future/ http://www.newsworld.site/what-to-do-if-you-are-involved-in-a-forklift-accident/ http://www.newsworld.site/trump-sanctions-russia-election-meddling/ http://www.newsworld.site/bracket-busted-no-13-buffalo-upsets-no-4-arizona/ http://www.newsworld.site/candidate-alvin-de-levie-demands-change-and-transparency-at-psu-board/

Email Campaign, Newsletter and Banner Ad Click-Through Rates (CTR)

When planning online advertising and email promotion budgets, it's critical to calculate the likely ROI upfront whenever possible, as well as to establish campaign benchmarks. The first step is understanding the average and likely range of CTRs for various programs. The growth in online advertising, the proliferation of enewsletters, the emergence of new forms of information delivery such as RSS and the emergence of social media sites have all affected CTR, so planning based on current data is crucial. It can be challenging to find current statistics, but based on several studies, these are typical CTR ranges for email newsletter ads, email campaigns (blasts or internally-produced enewsletters), and banner ads. Email newsletter advertisements Open rates range from 28-40%, with an average of about 33%—meaning that roughly one-third of the subscriber base is likely to see your ad. The Advertising Is Good For You blog tracks these statistics from DoubleClick . The average CT