Category Archives: Online Advertising

3Sixty Interactive Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by
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WARNING WARNING WARNING  this is a advertisement for a promotion that we are having over the next few months.  I strongly believe that our blog is for education only, but I also believe this is too good of  deal not to tell everyone about.  So hopefully you will excuse me this one time.  From now until June 20th, we will put $150 of our own money towards any new pay per click customer.  Some other restriction apply see website for details. www.3sixtyinteractive.com/ppcgiveaway

So you may be asking yourself, why do you need to use pay per click advertising.  Everyday people are relying on search engines to help them find products and businesses that fill their needs.  If they doing know a specific company they are using generic business catagories or products with their location to find what they are looking for.  Pay per click is the fastest way to make an impact online, since it allows you to target your exact customer.  One of the biggest mistakes we see in online marketing is going into it with out a plan.   Especially with pay per click advertising, not have a strategy is really just throwing away money.  

At 3Sixty Interactive we put together a strategy that will get your Google ads to appear to potential customers and entice them to visit your website.  We are able to specifically target these ads to users who are searching your area of exactly what you offer.

3Sixty PPC Coupon

 

  

 

 

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Categories: Online Advertising | Tags: , , , ,

Lead Generation Using Social Media

Posted on April 12, 2012 by
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Marketing Integration

Everyone wants more business and more and more people are looking to social media to help them generate leads.  But the question is how do we use social to get leads.  We first must look at what social media is good at, conversations.

Getting involved in conversations is a great way to begin building your social media presence.  It isn’t that far from real life.  If you’re the person at the party that sits in the corner and waits for people to come talk to you, you might have 1 conversation all night.  However, if you are active, approaching others, LISTENING to what they have to say and responding intelligently and authentically, you are talking all night.  You are engaging.  You are memorable.

The same is true in social media.  Listen to what is being said and participate, authentically.  This is not the time to “sell”.  This is simply a conversation.

Know Your Audience

Understand how the people you’re conversing with work.  What are their likes and dislikes.  Where do they spend their time online. What sites do they use.  While your audience may not be on facebook a lot, they might be on linkedIn.  They might comment on popular blogs, forums, etc.

Develop Your Social Media Strategy

Dale recently wrote a blog about why you need a strategy for digital marketing.  You must have a plan and then execute that plan.  We don’t want to roaming around the digital landscape and not know where we are going.  Spending all our time on one platform when another is the fertile ground.

Consistency Is Key

Some say absence makes the heart grow fonder but in business it makes the mind wonder.  Wonder what happened.  Ever find your self thinking I wonder what happened to them….  When people stop hearing from you, they assume the worse.  They don’t assume you are so busy you can’t talk.  They assume you are so dead you don’t want to talk.  Make sure you are talking, consistently.  This is hard, I know.  We struggle with it too, but it is something we are constantly working on.

Be Authentic

In the day and age of 24/7 information, anything is a simple google search away.  You must be true to who you are and don’t try to fake the details.  Just be you.

In the end, social media is a relationship building tool.  You aren’t going to gain a new customer from social right when they like you.  You are just getting started.  You then use that platform to let them know what you are about, what you stand for, and how you think.  You grow that relationship over time.  More importantly you learn about them. Who are they, what do they like, etc.

So, I encourage you to start the conversation below.  Let’s get the party started!

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Categories: Online Advertising, Online Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Strategy

Online Marketing Best Practice #1

Posted on March 14, 2012 by
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Have you ever felt desperate to do “something” to get more business?  Of course you have, we all have.  During these anxious filled days we are just looking for action!  We want to make something happen so desperately that we are only focusing on tasks.  When this anxiousness in then translated to the online community, disaster can happen!  There are 3 ways that you can hurt yourself if your marketing online without a plan.  First, your going to waste money, second you will be creating a false perception of this channel’s abilities and third, your going to be sending an entirely wrong message to your customers that see the results of your un-planned effort.

Let’s take a closer look at these:

  1. Wasting Money:  One of the fastest ways to make an impact online is through pay-per-click advertising.  This advertising method can create a lot of visibility in a very short period of time.  However, if your running ads without a strategy or long-term plan there is a better than average chance that your paying too much for the wrong key-phrases and probably not getting your ad in front of your best customer. Now, you may drive a LOT of traffic but if it’s not the right traffic (i.e. your customer) and they don’t convert into customers your money has been wasted.
  2. False Perception:  ”Yup I tried that in the past and it didn’t work for us”.  Boy, I can’t tell you how often we’ve heard this one.  There are a lot of reasons why an un-planned online marketing effort won’t work…the primary reason is that it is un-planned!  If you run an online campaign without putting together your strategy it will fail and then that experience will keep you from realizing the true success that your company or organization could gain with a well planned campaign.
  3. Wrong Message: One of the greatest advantages to marketing your products, services, message, or cause online is the ability that this channel has to get the right message in front of the right customer at the right time.  Increasing the relevancy of your message increases your success!  It really is that simple.  If your not putting together a strategy before you start buying pay-per-click ads your not going to be able to get the right message in front of the right targeted customers and that will leave a bad taste in their mouth for your brand.
The first step in creating a “Best Practice” online marketing plan is to get your strategy, in writing, before you start to spend any money with online advertising.
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Categories: Marketing, Online Advertising, Online Marketing Strategy

VW Uses Online To Assist Brand Growth

Posted on December 9, 2011 by
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As the story goes at last years auto show in Detroit the President of VW America predicted that VW sales would double by 2013.  A bold prediction in any industry, let lone the auto industry that has been rocked by poor performance in the recent economy.

Apparently, VW knew exactly what they were talking about.  For the first 10 months of this year sales are up over 24%.  So what does that have to do with online marketing?  Much of the credit for this growth is given to the Darth Vader campaign.  And the success of the Darth Vader campaign’s success is attributed to the online channel.  VW decided to air the Darth Vader commercial on the Super Bowl but couldn’t get a full :60 second spot so they trimmed the commercial in half to fit the Super Bowl, but the overall impact of the spot wasn’t as powerful so VW put the full :60 second spot on the Internet and as they say the rest is history.

The :60 second spot is the spot that is most remembered when customers are surveyed.  A last minute idea to fix the limited time available through the traditional channel attributed to the us chess of a campaign.  In fact the Darth Vader spot has had more than 43 million vies on YouTube.  The perfect integration of online and offline.

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Categories: Integrated Marketing, Online Advertising

Online Advertising Is More Than Just Clicks!

Posted on November 7, 2011 by
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I’ll be you never thought you would hear that coming from a digital marketing agency!  It’s like everything else in marketing, you can’t just focus on one channel or one objective, everything is integrated.

If you’re going to just evaluate the value of your online advertising around the ‘click’ metric, and we assume that your getting about a 15% click through rate, then you’re completely dismissing the 85% of the people that have seen your ad and you’re not assigning any value to them.  A real mistake.

Let’s think about this in the context of a potential customer out there that sees your online ad, preferably multiple times, but he/she is in the awareness phase of the buying cycle.  They’re not ready to ‘click’ on your ad yet because that’s not where they are in their decision process.  However, thats not to say that your ad didn’t leave an impression on them.  In fact in this context, your ad has accomplished just the opposite, because of the awareness that your online ad left on this potential customer, they are more likely to seek out your company name in a search engine when they are ready for that purchase.

When you’re evaluating online marketing its time that we take what we know from the traditional advertising world and start to apply it to our online marketing in conjunction with the current online marketing measurements.  We can and should measure our online advertising success with measurements such as Reach and Frequency in conjunction with ‘click’ measurements to gain a real perspective on the ROI of our online marketing efforts.

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Categories: Online Advertising, Online Marketing Strategy