The Blog on Branding

Having A Successful Viral Campaign Can Generate Buzz

The idea of viral marketing is simple. Create something, and then have it spread like wildfire. Or like a virus (Ohhhh, get it?). Either way, you need to understand the ways viral marketing works before you can effectively use it for your business.

“But it’s not as dangerous as it sounds!”




Let’s look at some examples of great viral marketing campaigns to get the full effect on how useful viral marketing really is.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Age of Online Advertisements: What we Want to See

Believe it or not, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day! From billboards to commercials, bus ads to print ads, online pop-ups to street flyers, we unconsciously see many, many more (whether you like it or not). But let’s stick to online advertisements: the average person spends anywhere from 1-4.5 hours on the Internet each day, so while you’re surfing the web or checking your e-mail, how many online ads do you see? Hundreds!
Read the rest of this entry »

Unique Website Content is King

Websites are very useful for easily connecting people to products, services and information online. Even more useful is having unique content on a website. This is increasingly important as there are literally hundreds of millions of websites on the internet and the number keeps growing everyday.

“Meanwhile, we struggle to pick from a collection of 30 CDs!”


Read the rest of this entry »

Tweeting in the Marketplace

What makes a good tweet, and why marketers should care

It is sweeping the nation, attracting attention with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah. You guessed it, the phenomenon is…Twitter!

Okay, old news? Perhaps. But despite the buzz, few marketers today seem to know what to make of it.

“Their icon is equally perplexed.”


(In case you have been locked in a closet for the last couple of years, you can check out this whole “Twitter thing” via Wikipedia, another internet sharing database professionals love. Not.)

By the end of this blog, I hope to explore:

• What makes a good tweet
• What branders can learn from the technique behind the tweet

(If I were a true Twitter fanatic I could have covered both of these topics in under 140 characters.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Measuring Micro-Conversion Actions

Conversion rate is often seen as the number of customers purchasing a product vs. the number of customers viewing your website. However, there are many smaller events that encourage customers to continue viewing your site or remind them of your products after they’ve left. These are also conversion actions, and are critical in keeping potential customers coming back for more. In order to use them effectively, you need to clearly define each conversion action, how to measure it, and what its value is. This article discusses several micro-conversion actions and their use based on the advice of internet expert Tim Ash.

“I did want that watch…”



Read the rest of this entry »

Ins and Outs of Link Building

Unless you clicked on this article by accident, you’re probably looking for the answer to at least one of these questions:

• What is link building?
• How can link building help you and your website?
• What types of links exist?/How are they acquired?

What is link building?

Link building is the process of establishing internal and external links to a website. It’s an integral part of search engine optimization because links can attract users to different websites.
Link building is all about increasing the number of high quality, relevant links to a website in order to raise its visibility in search engine results.

How can link building help you and your website?

“Building confidence, one link at a time!”


Read the rest of this entry »

How to SEO - What is PageRank?

Welcome back, oh faithful, reader! You previously learned the history of PageRank, which should’ve left you thinking, “Well, that’s nice…but what is PageRank anyway, and what will it do for me?” Luckily, that’s what you’ll learn here.

“Get ready to take notes!”


Read the rest of this entry »

Shopping Cart Abandonment

In this day and age, marketers should not only be using the online option to sell their goods and services, but using this new outlet to the fullest extent. But how many times do you think your customers find themselves muttering to themselves about all of their frustrations concerning the online checkout process? Probably more than you think.

“Customers mutter to themselves about their frustrations.”



Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve Got A Friend In Me: How to trust a website

“Unfortunately, we’re not talking about this duo.”




What’s more important than your PageRank? Okay, not a lot. But the ability to trust your Web site is definitely up there. In fact, the SEO Book recently said trust is the new competitive advantage in Web sites. Imagine you’re writing a research paper about George Washington Carver and how he invented peanut butter. Which source would you prefer - Jif.com or an old Geocities site called “george washington carverz world!!!”? Some of us are a little nostalgic and may want to choose the latter, but we all know a professor would only accept a professional source - one which people know they can trust.

So how do sites become trustworthy? Read on for the Branding Blog’s Top 5 Trust Techniques
Read the rest of this entry »

Creating a Successful Web Advertisement

You know them. They sponsor most of the sites you visit on the Web, but despite this, you probably feel no gratitude and still hate them. That’s right. I’m talking about Web ads.

Web advertising is becoming increasingly popular as the Internet becomes more and more critical in our everyday lives. And why not? There are several benefits that advertising on the Web offers that other advertising mediums lack, including:

• Being able to target a specific niche
• Immediate statistical return for how the ad is doing
• Building brand awareness and customer relationships

“Targeting specific niches makes bank!”


Read the rest of this entry »