What Researchers Discovered About Print Ads And Articles

When developing your marcom strategy, you should be selective about where you place your ad within a publication. Print ads on right side pages get better response than left side pages. And ads that appear in the first 1/3 of a publication are more likely to get attention.

Now here's one more thing to consider in your marketing communications strategy.

In an experiment conducted by the University of Illinois and Chinese University of Hong Kong, researchers found an interesting relationship between a print ad's topic and an article's topic.

They discovered readers who found an article difficult to comprehend gave ads with similar topics a negative assessment.

The easier the article was to read the more likely readers were to give similar-themed ads a positive evaluation.

David Coyne
131 Ways To Boost Response to Your B2B Marketing

Wall Street: Twitter Worth $1 Billion. No Logic Required.

Apparently the Wall Street wunderkinds (do these guys really have any credibility left?) estimate that Twitter is worth $1 billion dollars. All this despite the fact the social media site has zero profit and no source of revenue. Go figure.

It makes me wonder if it can escape the fate of GeoCities -- a forerunner to the social media sites of today. At its peak in the late nineties, GeoCities was the third most visited site on the Internet. In fact, it was hot enough to entice Yahoo to drop a whopping $3.6 billion to purchase it in 1998.

How times have changed. At the end of this month, Yahoo is shutting down GeoCities. For all its fantastic web traffic, no one could figure out how to monetize any of it into a sustainable, profit turning service -- even though it introduced a fee-based hosting option.

You can have all the traffic in the world, but if you can't make money from it, you're not going to sustain yourself as a profitable business entity.

Facebook did announce in the last few weeks that it has made enough money to cover operating expenses. When I log into Facebook, I'm immediately greeted with copy promoting its advertising services. Perhaps this is a sign it's taking a more urgent approach to generating cash. But will it be sufficient to cover Facebook's growing infrastructure costs?

In August, News Corp laid the blame for a $380 million dollar loss to its bottom line squarely at the feet of one of its acquisitions, MySpace.com -- the once hot social media site that's now yesterday's hero.

Twitter better not take too long to launch a revenue strategy. If history is any teacher, social media users aren't particularly loyal.

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net

Google Research Reveals Search Habits

Interesting article reveals research Google conducted on Internet search and search advertising for vertical sectors.

http://tinyurl.com/yefykve

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net

An Offline Marketing Piece from a Surprising Online Source

Last Tuesday I fetched my mail and was intrigued to find a letter addressed to me from an unlikely source. Not only was I surprised by WHOM it was from, but also the MEDIUM they used to reach me: old fashioned direct mail.

I've been hearing about the "death" of direct mail for at least a decade. I remember in the late nineties when email marketing was the marketing du jour. The online "experts" predicted that email would be the death knell of direct mail marketing. It wasn't.

Sure, the deluge of spam didn't help the email marketing cause. But there's more to it than that. Email, like most marketing communications, reached maturity. It reached a saturation point. This doesn't mean email marketing is now ineffective. But, like direct mail, it has to share the stage with other marketing mediums. The current hot marketing tool is social media. And I believe it has an appropriate place in a marketer's toolbox.

However, I'm not ready to throw out all my other tools just because of a shiny new gadget. Despite all the Internet hype, -- and the Internet is the most virulent hype machine on the planet -- I still believe in an integrated marketing model. The only way to know if a marketing medium is going to work for you is to TEST, TEST, TEST.

And, to their credit, that's what the ultimate online company is doing. The direct mail package I received was from Google. Their familiar logo was on the outside of the envelope. Inside, was a basic direct mail package...

-Sales Letter
-Coupon
-Tri-fold brochure

And what were they pitching? One of their biggest revenue sources: Google AdWords. They offered me a $100 credit to sign up for an AdWords account. The coupon had a special redemption code so they could track response to their campaign.

That's smart marketing...online or offline.

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net

B2B Lead Generation & Social Media

B2B marketing consultant Mac McIntosh has posted an interesting blog entry on B2B lead generation and social media. View it at…

http://tinyurl.com/cnzgs4

Business Survival During A Recession

Chad Moutray, chief economist with the U.S. Small Business Administration, recently posted a timely question at Linkedin.com. He asked "What measures should small businesses take to weather this economic downturn?"

He received over 1,000 responses and posted a summary of the top 10 answers on his blog. While the question related to small business, companies of any size could benefit from some of these strategies.

My answer was #5 - Keep your number one focus on existing customers. New customer acquisition is five times more expensive than servicing existing clients.

To see the other top 10 answers, visit Chad's blog...

http://tinyurl.com/6j3ugb

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net

Marketing In An Economic Slump

Marketing Sherpa has published a special report
called "Marketing During A Downturn: 10 Insights
Into How Marketers Are Handling The Slump."

Get it here...
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/Reports/DownturnReport.pdf

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net