The Best Web Marketing of 2008

Which types of online advertising provide the highest ROI? Who's really clicking on your PPC ads? Why do PPC costs keep rising? How can you convert more clickers into buyers? Are Web 2.0 technologies now mainstream?

Learn these answers and more from this collection of blog posts and articles, some of the best reporting on online research topics so far this year.

Online Marketers See High ROI from SEO by Marketing Pilgrim

Blogger, SEO expert and PR pro Janet Meiners reports on an MarketingSherpa study detailing the growth in paid search and organic search engine optimization. Read her post to discover which types of online advertising get a thumbs up—and which are losing favor with interactive marketers.

Who's really clicking? by iMedia Connection

Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Professor of Marketing and E-Commerce at the University of Washington, paints a bleak picture of the future of PPC advertising—then gets blasted for it in the Comments by some fairly high-profile sources. My take is that he does miss the distinction between B2B abd B2C here (PPC ads are very productive, especially for software and computer hardware products) but he's absolutely correct that search advertisers often underappreciate the value of branding and PR to enhance PPC results.

The Main Factor Necessary to Convert Visitors to Customers by Marketing Pilgrim

In another enlightening post from Marketing Pilgrim, Internet marketer and online entrepreneur Greg Howlett reports that the average conversion rate for an online retailer is 2.5%—then explains how leaders like Office Depot, QVC and Lands' End are converting at a 16-20% rate.

Direct sales, branding primary SEM objectives: SEMPO survey by DMNews

Ellen Keohane highlights findings from a SEMPO study showing how marketing budgets are shifting, what marketers think of the branding value of search engine marketing, and how they feel about experimenting with new forms of media.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1

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Contact Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com

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All Time Greats

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the fastest-growing categories in all of advertising, because it is both measurable and logical: present your ads when people are searching for what you're selling. A well-crafted search marketing program can provide not only broad brand exposure at a very reasonable cost (with CPMs of $10 or less), but also high-ROI lead generation. As with any other type of advertising, however, a poorly-designed campaign will be a disappointing waste of money. In addition to best practices in search engine marketing , the following articles and blog posts were among the best of 2007 at providing helpful guidance for creating and managing effective search marketing programs. Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign by Search Engine Guide Blogger Jennifer Laycock explains how common mistakes such as "ego bidding," writing a single ad for all keywords, and directing all of your traffic to a single landing page can limit the res

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

The 8 Layers of a B2B Web Marketing Plan

One way to think about designing a B2B technology web marketing plan is as a series of layers, like an onion. At the core is SEO—simply making your website "findable" through organic search to buyers who are looking for what you offer. Working out from the center are concentric layers of additional investment and sophistication. Small companies and start-ups with modest budgets will focus most of their efforts on the inner layers or rings, which are primarily designed for lead generation. As the company and its marketing budget grow, efforts can be expanded to the outer layers, which are aimed more at branding but support lead generation efforts. Ideally, a company eventually reaches the outer layer where pure branding activities (such as print advertising) help to maximize the effectiveness of lead generation programs (such as SEM) near the center of the circle. This diagram shows how different types of web marketing programs can be prioritized in order to maximize the retur

Best of 2007: Web 2.0 Sites

A number of new social networking, social search, social bookmarking, and other Web 2.0-related websites and tools either got their start or got traction in 2007. Here are some of the most notable new sites and tools that made it onto the radar last year. Go2Web20.net Billed as "the complete Web 2.0 directory," this site has cataloged more than 2,000 Web 2.0 applications and services, searchable by an extensive list of tags and sortable by date and name. Snitter Snitter is a small desktop application that makes it easy to keep up with those you are following on Twitter, a social networking site that lets you keep "followers" up to date on what you're up to, and stay in the loop on what they're doing. KickApps A hosted web-based platform that enables webmasters and site owners to create, deploy and manage a branded social media community on any website. Socialtext An enterprise wiki tool that enables workgroups or organizations to create secure, group-editabl

Don't They Know Who You Are? Why Reputation Management is Critical

This content has been moved to Don’t They Know Who You Are? Why Reputation Management is Crucial on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCrunch, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Twitter, Wikio, Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Tim Young, Socialcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Jigsaw, Plaxo, ZoomInfo, CrunchBase, VisualCV, Scott Monty, Christopher Barger del.icio.us tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCrunch, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Twitter, Wikio, Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Tim Young, Socialcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Jigsaw, Plaxo, ZoomInfo, CrunchBase, VisualCV, Scott Monty, Christopher Barger icerocket tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCru

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 2

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis del.icio.us tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis icerocket tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foe

How To Use the Tools of Social Media Optimization

The term "social media" encompasses several different types of sites, and it's important to use all of them properly in order to really be effective at social media optimization (SMO). Blogs are of course one of the most common forms of social media, and there are significant benefits to having your own blog as well as building name recognition and credibility for your company through other industry blogs . But what separates SMO from SEO is that search engine optimization is about owning a top spot in the search engines for your website on a specific term, while social media optimization is about owning the entire first page of the search engines for multiple sites that point back to you for a specific term. So, here are some tips for using different types of social media sites for SMO. Discussion Forums These are a place to showcase your expertise in a non-promotional way. For example, in an SEO forum, telling everyone how great your agency is at SEO is suicid

MarketingSherpa Releases 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide

MarketingSherpa recently published its Search Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2008 , providing data on cost per click (CPC), conversion rates, SEO and other key online marketing metrics. The study is designed to help online marketers set PPC and SEO budgets, forecast results, test online marketing programs, and even (toughest of all)—explain search marketing plans to your client or CEO. Among the key findings: Search marketing continues to grow at an incredible pace, with spending up 39% globally in 2007. A third of respondents anticipate double-digit spending increases on both SEO and Google PPC programs in 2008. Marketers rate SEO second and search engine marketing (PPC) ads third in terms of ROI, behind only house-list email marketing. Online banner ads and print advertising receive the lowest grades for ROI. The return on PR spending is viewed as the most difficult to measure. Thinking of bringing SEM and SEO in-house? Nearly a third of corporate respondents said that finding ta

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