The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has followed up on its 2007 and 2008 studies of social media usage by the Inc. 500. Adoption and awareness continue to trend upward, with 91% of firms using at least one social media tool in 2009 and three-quarters describing themselves as “very familiar” with social networking.
Social networking and blogging have seen the most growth in adoption, while other technologies have flattened or even declined in use, including wikis and online video. Twitter usage, of course, has caught on quickly—more than one-half of businesses reported tweeting in 2009. This was the first year respondents were polled about Twitter.
Dr. Taddy Blecher interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold. He is the founder or CIDA City Campus – the first free university in South Africa.
LuAn Mitchelle interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold.LaAn is Canada’s #1 Female Business Woman for 3 Consecutive Years & host of Millionaire Mentor Radio.
The US mobile Internet population is increasing rapidly. eMarketer estimates that 29.2% of mobile phone users log on to the mobile Web at least once per month in 2009, up from 22.3% last year. And according to BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, many of those qualify as “heavy” users—those who go online via mobile more than 10 times per week.
BIA/Kelsey and ConStat put heavy mobile Internet users at 21% of the total US mobile population in October 2009, up from less than 15% a year earlier. And the overall average number of monthly mobile Web sessions has doubled in that time period.
Scott Shilling interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold.Scott Schilling has led the field in training others, presenting as a top professional speaker.
John Assaraf interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold. John Assaraf is one of the experts featured in the film and book The Secret, which he helped launch into a worldwide phenomenon.
Sharon Lechter interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold. Sharon is also known as the co-author of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the Rich Dad series of books.
David Corbin interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold. David has served as President of publicly traded firms, invented award-winning business.
Greg S. Reid interviewed at the Launch of his new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold. Creator/producer on internationally acclaimed films “Pass It On”, and “Three Feet from Gold.”
Tying an online ad or piece of email marketing directly to a customized landing page that acknowledges the initial communication and has a specific call to action can improve lift by 40%, according to a survey by CrownPeak.
Despite the importance of linking to relevant pages, however, the survey revealed that a majority of marketers still do not take the basic step to link their online ads or emails with relevant landing pages, and are missing out on a wealth of post-click analytical data, not to mention sales, reports MarketingVOX.
The recently-released “Holiday PPC Ad Strategies” study found that 66% of this year’s holiday-themed online search advertising drives traffic to a home page or some other landing page that is not obviously tied to the online ad, and confuses and/or annoys potential shoppers. Only 34% of the holiday-themed search-engine ads analyzed in the study directed traffic to specific landing pages that urged shoppers to buy, or were otherwise reflective of the original ad.
Campaigns Not Linked
As part of the research, CrownPeak analyzed search marketing results across 10 different holiday-themed phrases, including general themes such as “holiday deals” and “holiday gifts; specific products such as “Nintendo Wii” or “Elmo Live”; and product categories such as “Halloween costumes” and “Christmas decorations.” Individual ads were analyzed from more than 100 online marketers, all of which used Google Adwords to disseminate campaigns. Advertisers were assessed over a period of two weeks.
The study found that the majority of online ad campaigns and web content were not linked. Of the 66% of advertisers that did not tie specific, relevant landing pages to their search ad, nearly 13% went to the advertiser home page. The remainder sent traffic to general category pages, or canned “searches” that didn’t specifically play off of the advertising copy.
Additional study findings:
Product-specific advertising performed better than its holiday-themed counterpart, though many retailers still failed to direct the majority of ads to a clear consumer call to action.
50% of product-specific advertisements linked either to a canned “search” or “category” page, or the website home page.
Some advertisers – primarily content aggregators – directed ads to specific landing pages, which then featured advertisements for other providers of the product.
Amazon, Target Best Scores
Ecommerce retailers were the winners in the race to tie marketing ads and landing page relevance, Crown Peak reported. When looking specifically at Ecommerce sites, 54% of advertisers had content-specific landing pages paying off a click from a search ad.
Amazon and Target – which also were two of the most-visited Black Friday retail websites – were among the highest scoring advertisers overall, consistently driving consumers to landing pages for products they were seeking.
“The goal of our study was to determine how smart holiday marketers are being with their online PPC spend, and the results were surprising,” said Jim Howard, CEO of CrownPeak. “By driving traffic to irrelevant content or the company’s home page, marketers are virtually guaranteeing that they aren’t going to convert Web visitors to buyers through online ads.”
Reposted from Marketing Charts “Linked Landing Pages Boost Lift 40%” Written by Crownpeak
