Interactive marketing

We belong to a consortium of advertising/marketing agencies that share ideas, documents, industry pricing standards, etc.

One of the hot topics this year is the move of small/midsize agencies to add interactive marketing to the list of services. Interactive meaning anything internet related....SEO, SEM/Google/Yahoo advertising development and management, banner advertising, email marketing, wikis, corporate blogs, etc.

Since most of our clients are small cap companies, I researched how we can use these "Web 2.0" strategies. What's important is that we've interviewed clients and customers in the B2B and B2C markets we target. The top of all client's list is how to drive traffic to their websites and convert them to a customer.

Web 2.0 is designed to do that...but the message that we so often want to be in control of...is less controllable in the web 2.0 space. As users and channel partners of our clients products and services speak out about their experiences, whether good or bad, we need to continue trying to integrate the client's brand in as much online exposure as we can.

Kevin

Media Trade Shows

In addition to traditional marketing and Web 2.0 marketing we've started managing "media trade shows," solely targeted to generate media attention for exhibitors.

Our shows:

Gift Guide Show (Show for holiday gift editors)
http://www.giftguideshow.com

&

Green Products Expo (Show for editors who cover consumer green products and trends)
http://www.greenproductsexpo.com

The shows are held in New York City and are only open to media attendees. 2007 shows were well received by both the exhibitors and media.

Kevin
http://www.starklmc.com

Value of Pay Per Click Advertising

Our agency has been using Google AdWords and Yahoo Marketing for various clients over the past few years. We've found that success in driving traffic to client sites has been phenomenal for some clients, where other client experiences were mediocre.

After tweaking keywords and phrases, reviewing Adword rankings and changing the actual Adwords, we found that some clients have such a niche product, that the searches on these keyword phrases are so small and that the "organic/FREE" search engine listings were already populated by our client through diligent search engine optimization.

So...we typically run a 2-3 month test for any Pay Per Click (PPC) program and always, always using PPC in conjunction with regular Search Engine Optimization and the rest of the marketing mix including product PR, trade show marketing, direct marketing and e-blasts.

The Lean Marketing Communications program we designed is based off of Robert Lauterborn's "Integrated Marketing Communications" model of identifying a unique marketing message and utilizing it across all marketing communications....whether it be advertising, PR, brochures, etc.

Google Adwords, SEO, other PPC tools have popped up rapidly in the last 5-8 years...and it's now considered to be a serious part of most of our client's marketing program.

After explaining how Google AdWords works (keyword auctions, keyword popularity, Google Analytics Goals, etc.) our client's eyes tend to glaze. PPC is the best game in town to actually track media buys and efficiency and we've developed an "executive summary" report we provide to our clients monthly. It's the best way to quickly provide real value to their marketing dollars.