Mason Munching

With the internet becoming more open everyday, marketers are finding very personal information and tracking internet habits to use in their campaigns. Although this retargeting is not new, it is becoming more pervasive with individualized ads of items you may have looked at that “follow” you from site to site.

The Controversy:

Helpful and Genius Advertising?

From a marketers point of view, companies can now target the perfect potential customer with ads that are placed where the consumer is sure to see them and when they need the product the most. As everything posted on the internet is instantly public and connected, some say consumers might as well embrace it. Retargeting can help us find exactly what we need faster.

Or Stalking?

However, many people are becoming uneasy about retargeting ads and believe it is an invasion of privacy. As Michael Learmonth puts it in his article “The Pants That Stalked Me on the Web”, ads are now stalking viewers. They’re tracking you where you’ve been and following where you’re going. Every click, search, page view, etc. that one makes on the internet is being closely monitored and becoming public knowledge.

Future Targets

Some believe restrictions should be put in place to limit the information marketers can use to target potential customers. The FTC is considering a “do not track” list, like the “do not call” registry, to allow consumers to opt out of this behavioral tracking without individually clicking each box on sites that’re targeting them.

Marketers also may begin to question if they should use this strategy. As retargeting becomes more obvious and tactless, it may deter customers to shop with companies that support this type of invasion. By putting one’s name on this type of ad, it could relate a bad association and hurt profits rather than help.

Mason Munching Analytics

The time has come and the semester is wrapping up. Throughout the past months, I have used SEO techniques, Google AdWords PPC campaigns, and social media marketing to promote Mason Munching. Since I linked my Google Analytics account on February 9, Mason Munching has had 188 visitors (110 unique visitors) and 1,052 page views with an average of 5.59 pages viewed per visit. 57.98% of these are new visitors and 42.02% are returning visitors. I hope to continue driving traffic to Mason Munching and create more of a 2/1 ratio for new/returning visitors in order to increase site growth at a healthy rate.

As you can see from the chart to the right, my search, referral, and direct traffic are near equal, with less traffic coming from my campaigns. This balanced intake of traffic from each category ensures that Mason Munching is not reliant on any one source of traffic. I believe if I ran my campaigns longer, this source would increase as well.

My New-found Online Marketing Skillz

MKTG 470 has been one of the most useful classes I’ve taken at JMU! I’ve not only created my own WordPress website but am now skilled in basic HTML coding, Google Analytics, Google AdWords (PPC), Google Webmaster Tools, Search Engine Optimization, e-mail marketing strategies, and more. I’ve even been able to test out my expertise in real online campaigns.

MKTG 470 = Career Changer

MKTG 470 has shown me a career path I had no idea existed. I find myself using online marketing lingo in every day life and I love it! I think I finally found my calling. If you can’t tell, I’ve kind of been the epitome of a nerd in Strategic Internet Marketing. I find myself spending hours surfing the web to learn new optimization or HTML techniques, and spent an absurd amount of time on the Google AdWords and SEO assignments. But to me, none of the homework in MKTG 470 is work.

Quantitative research, consumer behavior, and design are three areas of high interest to me, and online marketing combines them all! With online marketing, I’m able to utilize my analytical and problem solving skills, while exploring my creative side. Online marketing has so many different avenues to explore, and I can’t wait to test the waters in the career world to see which one is the right fit!

We received an assignment to optimize one page in our site using the exact phrase love JMU, and try to get as high on the search engine results pages (SERPs) as possible. I chose to optimize my Why I love JMU Page.

When I added a new picture to my optomized page, it somehow corrupted the file and erased all the content. However, it looked normal in WordPress, so it took me a few weeks to notice. During this time, my site fell from SERP #6 to SERP #30. When I realized this, I immediately tried to fix the problem and ended up having to re-do the page.

Even after this setback, I was still determined to excel in this project and make it to the top SERPs. I went to work. I turned all the love JMU keywords in my page into links, re-did my pictures with love JMU as the title and alt tag, and added love JMU in the title tags, meta tags, keywords, and descriptions. After a written request, Professor Dr. Clarke was kind enough to provide a link on her site to my page. I tweeted and +1 my page. I also commented on every person’s JMU blog post in Professor Dr. Clarke’s classes with my JMU web post as the referring page. Within around two weeks, I was able to move my site back up to SERP #7!

Although I haven’t made it back to SERP 6 yet, my Websitegrader.com reviews increased dramatically. My Marketing Grade improved from 46% to 66%, ToFu from 26% to 66%, MoFu from 8% to 42%, and Analytics from 57% to 67%!

According to the Crawler FX Report, I need to improve on my search traffic, domain authority, and the number of incoming links. However, I excel at keyword page density, title/meta tags, server friendliness, and have solid heading and image summary.

I wanted to give a special thanks to Lindsey Crone, Creative Editor at The Search Agency, for coming to speak to our MKTG 470 class last week about succeeding in the marketing industry. Lindsey’s welcoming and helpful personality shined through her presentation, as she shared the following main points.

An online marketing career has many directions. 

Lindsey discussed the different types of online marketing by breaking it down into paid, organic, social, consumer experience, and feeds. Her advice while searching for a job is to focus on a specific area of interest and show your passion for that area in an interview.

Now potential customers are using multiple media devices at the same time.

I also loved her perspective on marketing’s new cross media challenge. With the development of new devices, marketers are now reaching customers on numerous screens at a time. Therefore, it is crucial that they test which campaign strategies are best for different devices.

Everything is testable.

With internet marketing, everything can be tested, and discovering how people think search is a constant job. As opposed to traditional marketing, every aspect of online marketing can be analyzed to find techniques that direct the most traffic to a landing page and create pages that are user friendly. Lindsey described how The Search Agency uses Google and Bing to analyze which keywords, ad copy, ad placement, and screen layouts are the most effective.

Love what you do.

Lindsey’s enthusiasm for her work made me even more excited to pursue a career in online marketing! I want that thrill of hunting down the perfect keyword or finding the cause for a spike in hits on Monday afternoon. When Lindsey explained that curiosity to solve problems and drive to succeed are the two top qualities that will enable one to go far in this industry, I knew I had found my future career path. I hope that one day I’ll have the opportunity to work for a top-tier online marketing firm like The Search Agency.

During our 15 day campaign window, I created an AdWords campaign for my Resume Page and my Twitter Blog Post. For my Resume Page campaign, I created three Ad Groups. The “JMU” Ad Group focused on attracting JMU alumni and other employers seeking to hire JMU students, and the “Marketing Student” Ad Group focused on employers looking to hire marketing majors. The most popular was the “Resume Example” Ad Group, which drew people who were looking to find examples of resumes. The Twitter Blog Post Campaign consisted of two Ad Groups. One attracted people looking for information on Twitter as a marketing tool and another for information on Twitter as a news forum.

I began by allocating more money into the Resume Page than the Twitter Blog Post to jump start the Resume Page Campaign. After day three, I reallocated a higher percentage of the daily budget to the blog post in order to increase its traffic. I chose to run both campaigns only on the search network and not the display network so that my impression count would stay low and I could maximize CTR.

Throughout the week, I’d check the performance of the campaigns and note which ads and keywords were performing best. I’d pause ads that were receiving low clicks and created new ads to replicate better performing ads. Keywords that were getting a high number of impressions with a low number of clicks were also paused. I constantly added new keywords and adjusted bids in order to stay on budget. Every keyword I added to the campaign was set for broad, exact, and phrase match. After viewing Google Analytics, I saw what keywords people searched when they clicked my ads. When I added these keywords and similar phrases, my click count quickly increased.

In the end, my campaign results were at the top of Dr. Clarke’s students in terms of achieving a high number of clicks and a high click-through rate at a low cost-per-click! #winning

Social Media instantly connects billions of people to information throughout the world, opening up huge opportunities for every kind of business. Here are a few things social media gives companies the ability to do:

 1.  Spread news instantly

As opposed to using snail mail, purchasing ad space, or calling a press conference, social media is instant. Businesses can send a tweet or post a Facebook status and their followers will be instantaneously updated with the latest news blast. Special deals, promotions, and advertisements can be broadcast right away with no lag time.

 2.  Find and directly target customer base

Like Hitz points out, when using social media sites, businesses can keep track of their fans, followers, users, and members. They can send news and advertisements directly to their customers. It’s also much easier to find out personal information about their customers in order to create ads aimed towards their target market.

3.  Track and respond to feedback

It’s crucial for businesses to follow their online imprint and hear what their consumers are saying. Social media makes it simple for businesses build a relationship with their customer base, as brands and individuals can interact directly. They can find unhappy customers and locate problems with their product/service much easier through customer reviews. Businesses can also reward loyal customers and promote positive word of mouth advertising. There is little to no customer interaction with traditional marketing besides subscriptions.

 4.  Measure marketing efforts

By using social media tools, business’ marketing efforts can be measured with immediate results. This enables companies to see what’s working and what needs to be changed. AdWords and Google Analytics can show you exactly which PPC ads are working and what keywords potential customers are searching. In addition, when companies post a Facebook message or tweet, customers can instantly respond. Traditional marketing takes time and its results are not easily measured.

It seems like all I’ve been hearing lately is Google+, Google+, GOOGLE+. The “next big social site” is getting lots of publicity, not only through word of mouth but also recent TV and social media ads. Google+ is battling it out with Facebook and Twitter for top social site and man are they putting up a fight!

So, I decided to check it out and signed up for my very own Google+. The layout is very similar to Facebook, in that there is a thread (or Stream) with status updates and picture/video posts from people that you follow. You visit people’s pages and can comment directly on their posts as opposed to Twitter’s RT or reply system. It also has the +1 feature, which is similar to the “Like” button but more dynamic and can link all of the web to your Google+.

Google+ is like Twitter in the way that you follow friends; everyone you follow may not follow you back. This is cool because you can follow big names, famous people, and businesses of interest that may not add you as a friend. Posts in Google+ also have hash-tag support like Twitter and can be shared from user to user easier than Facebook or Twitter. These features enable information to spread faster. This will be a huge marketing tool for businesses and brands. They can set up pages that instantly target their customer base, allowing them to spread ads/news faster and gain valuable customer feedback.

Google+ offers much more variety than Facebook and Twitter when making posts. Posts can be formatted (bold, italicized, and underlined), saved as drafts, and edited after they have been posted.  Google+ makes posting information more private through their circle system. You can add specific friends to a circle and post information that only certain circles or individual friends can see. You can even alter which friend’s status updates you see by viewing only certain circles on your stream.

The main downfall to Google+ is the effort needed to learn the new lingo and privacy controls. Even with the video tutorials, the privacy controls can be confusing. You also need a Google account to create a Google+, and once created, everything is instantly linked throughout your Google+, Google email, Google searches, Google’s associate pages, etc.

In general, Google+ seems like it is combining the best features of both Facebook and Twitter. I guess we’ll see if the public picks it up!

Our homework today was to spend one full hour on Twitter and tweet at least four times..probably one of the best homework assignments I’ve ever had! I’m not new to Twitter so during my hour functionality wasn’t an issue. Almost all my friends are obsessed with Twitter, checking it multiple times a day. I try to check it every few days, so three of my four tweets were replies to previous mentions.

I’m learning to love Twitter more and more everyday! I can find all the top news and stories I wanna hear in one place. I follow comedians like EpicTweets and TFM, top social media news like Pete Cashmore, favorite brands like Starbucks, interesting tidbits like OMG Facts, inspirational quotes like TheNoteboook , health blogs like WomensHealthMag, and more! Plus my friends are constantly tweeting and re-tweeting news that they’ve found so I’m always in the loop.

Twitter has become more than a wannabe Facebook status site, now it has become an instantaneous news forum. You can follow any of your interests and constantly be updated on their latest news. People now have jobs as “professional tweeters” attempting to get as many followers as possible.

Businesses need to capitalize on this huge asset, as it is free instant marketing to an unlimited amount of viewers. Twitter is an excellent way to spread the word about a new deal, ad, study, or business. Like Spinsucks.com points out, the 140 character limit forces you to be concise and get your message across in less words, which can tease your follower, sending more traffic to your site. Using Twitter businesses can now generate more word-of-mouth advertising, improve customer service, notify customers, become in touch with more of their customer base, and overall build a better brand.