Blog Entries tagged 'Strategy'

Provide Holiday Treats

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

It's that time of the year. We're not talking about sending your customer list a tin of cookies. We're talking about content treats. Hopefully you already have your holiday communications calendar prepared and your pulling together your content treats. Here's a few recipes for some holiday treats:

A little Holiday Cheer

Lik [...]

Email With Social Marketing

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

It's not email vs. social marketing it's email and social marketing. Communicating within social media is basically using it as a distribution method just like we use email as a distribution method. The rules that apply for an effective email program are the same as the rules that apply to an effective social marketing program. P [...]

Web Analytics 101

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:00:00 +0100

No matter which analytics tool you're using you need to make sure you have the basic elements covered. Web site analytics used to be something that was buried in the IT department. Then it was a metric that the marketing department would us but it was still looking at the simple aspects of site visits, unique visitors and time on the site, etc. Today web site analytics shou [...]

VOC - Voice of the Customer

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Most companies have been totally focused on new prospects vs. looking at their past customers as new prospects. Right now customers are cutting through the advertising price wars and looking for a brand they can trust and still receive a fair price. There will always be those that want to buy the cheapest but that's not a characteristi [...]

Chiclet Please!

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Do you know what a chiclet is? You've seen them all over the Web. Now you're starting to see them in emails and within the online ad banners. Chiclets are the small images that represent social media environments such as Facebook, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, etc.

The benefit is to expand the reach of your email marketing and on [...]

Twitter is more like a river than a lake

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:00:00 +0100

So what does that mean? If you look at how people experience various social media you can see that Twitter is a place where you see content as it's moving very quickly in time. A social community that holds items like photos, videos, articles, etc. would be considered more of a lake of information vs. a river.< [...]

Email Helps Traditional ROI

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Too many people separate interactive marketing from traditional advertising. When in actuality the two should learn from each other. Email is a prime example. The Analysis and Reporting part of our Email Marketing service provides vital customer information.

Our analysis starts by first sending out s [...]

Name Your Facebook Page

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

As Facebook starts to make a company page more like a personal profile page it's important to stake your claim. Since the middle of June you have been able to create your own Facebook page name. Unfortunately you can't just create a company page and pick a name. You have to have 100 fans before you're allowed to create your nam [...]

Twitter and Marketing

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

For the younger socially connected audience Twitter is a marketing tool worth taking a look at. There are several ways to use Twitter. Some companies waste a lot of time and money trying to implement Twitter as a social marketing tool. It's important to create a strategy first and then look to see if Twitter makes sense as a tool that fits within the strat [...]

To Flash Or Not To Flash, Is That the Question?

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:00:00 +0100

It's not Flash or no Flash the answer is using the best of both worlds. Flash has been around for a while now. Whenever we ask clients to give us a list of sites that they like they send us a list of Flash sites. Once we talk to them about some of the challenges they lose their interest a little. There are some industry web sites t [...]

Are You Testing Your Marketing?

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0100

It's important to measure your marketing efforts so you can ensure that each one is worth the investment but also so you can improve the effectiveness of each marketing tactic. Consumers and businesses no longer fit into one major medium so we're not trying to compare everything to find the one marketing tactic we should use. Integrated m [...]

The ROI on PPC

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

We're not trying to make a statement for PPC (pay-per-click) over SEO (search engine optimization) in this article. Both are very important and work very well together. This article is about the incredible return on investment you get from a properly implemented and optimized PPC program. I did preface that with a properly implemented and optimized program. Several have tried to do it themselves a [...]

How Much Does A Web Site Cost?

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Thu, 22 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

This should be a simple question but unfortunately there isn't an answer to this question. When someone asks us this question we try to associate a process that they may be familiar with in order to understand where we're coming from. We tell the the person that it's similar to asking a builder, "how much does a house cost."

Just like the builder needs to know a lot of information about you and your family ( [...]

Is the Cost Worth The Risk?

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:00:00 +0100

With all the SPAM blockers on the Internet, it's difficult to impossible for a company to communicate with their customers and potential customers using an internal email system. No one wants SPAM in their inbox. The ISP's don't want SPAM filling up their hard drives either. However, the efforts ISP's have taken to reduce this tremendous overhead on their servers blocks a lot of email from unsophisticated email sys [...]

Turn Your Marketing Green

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0100

This might sound weird but there are huge movements to move away from printed materials with the biggest one being catalogs. Schools are having contest to see how many catalogs a class can unsubscribe from. Take a look at the video here. There are sites that make it easy for people to unsubscribe from company catalogs.

Direct mail postage costs are going up every year. The best way to combat this issue is to [...]

Who's Your Target Customer?

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Unfortunately, this question rarely comes up from a traditional advertising agency. That's why I started Ontarget and made sure that our classification is a marketing agency. This question is very important and should be asked. Without this understanding you don't know where you should spend your marketing dollars.

If you look at all of your customer transactions you'll have those that range from customers that only purch [...]

Social Networks are Focus Groups 2.0

terry@ontargetinteractive.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0100

Smart companies are creating social networks to open up the dialog between their brand and the users of the brand. Most brands use these as a promotional channel but there's another very important use of a brand's social network, research.

The typical way to gain the voice of the consumer has been through focus groups and/or quantitative based surveys. These are still useful tools but they have limitations. [...]