The thing about internet marketing is that there is no “one right way” to solve a single problem. So much of the advice and commentary about content optimization for search engines at conferences and on blogs is tactical. Five tips for this and 10 ways to do that. We do it too, because people that are new or just dipping their toe into the stream of internet marketing knowledge need information packaged in an easy ...

Fellow Business-Builders, You are going to love the rest of this success story! If you haven’t read the first half, make sure you go back to last week’s article and go through the details. Brendan Ready shared with me his brilliant strategy for selling a commodity type product for huge margins over his competitors. Some of the things he covered in our last week’s article … Do what your competitors aren’t willing to do to ...

For our Landing Page Optimization Workshop here in Santa Monica, we're "testing" a new approach with blogging the sessions. Instead of posting session wrap-ups from our own team, we thought it would be interesting to get a participant's perspective on this live workshop. So we've teamed up with one of our favorite bloggers, Linda Bustos, who helms the must-read Get Elastic ecommerce blog. While Linda is "getting schooled" and certified in Landing Page Optimization, she'll ...

Barack Obama should keep his smile and not adopt the scowl that Vice President Richard Cheney often deployed to tenderize his victims, but he should pay careful attention to the way that Cheney animated hundreds of followers to move the Cheney agenda across the national security bureaucracy. If one were to score "influence" within the G.W. Bush administration, Cheney would get top prize -- higher than G.W. Bush himself. No one knows how the incumbent ...

A look at what makes a recession BRITAIN has entered its first recession since the early 1990s, and many other economies seem bound to join them. But what exactly do we mean by recession? On the occasion of Britain's last fling with contraction, The Economist wrote: The most overpredicted recession in history is now underway-or so say the majority of businessmen and economists in America and Britain. But a Martian reader may be puzzled why ...

There's a difference between mythology and marketing. Mythology is what makes people say "I don't know why, but I just need a web site". Or "We should add some social media stuff to our site". Marketing is what makes people say "We have a national audience. A web site will help us reach them". Or "Our customers want to talk to each other. Let's add a comments feature." Mythology makes blogs seems like their own ...

Yesterday I (and my family) were home sick. I had already watched LifeChurch.tv’s Saturday night service online, but ended up worshipping with 3 other internet campuses while home sick. I actually saw a 4th internet campus, but was not happy with it and decided not to call them out. In the next 2 blog posts, I’ll share with you the 4 churches that blessed me this weekend: LifeChurch.tv: I think the “Mix & Mingle” Lobby ...

I'm ranting again. I got up bright and early this morning to try and grab some good domains in the big .ME landrush. I was pleasantly surprised when I landed about 2/3 of the domains I wanted. GoDaddy charged my PayPal account, sent me order confirmations and said "Hey! Good job!". Then, a few hour laters, they started sending me these: Evil? Probably not. Stupid? Definitely I don't think GoDaddy would be stupid enough to ...

Photo sharing site Flickr is one of the leading lights of Yahoo - but cofounders (and husband/wife team) Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield won’t be around to keep driving the product forward. They are both joining the mass exodus of executives from the company. Fake officially left last Friday. Butterfield (who still officially runs Flickr) will leave on July 12. Kakul Srivastava, the director of product management for Flickr, will take over Stewart’s role as ...

Marketers, we've got some good news: You don't need to fear the "fold" any longer. (Tell your designers, too.) Many, if not most, of our recent Landing Page Optimization Workshop attendees were convinced that their call-to-action, email capture, or sign-up form must appear "above the fold" on a page. The concept is easy to understand. As a carryover from long-established newspaper and direct-mail design principles, this has been considered a best practice online for years. ...

One of our students recently asked that great question. Given that different business models can expect different bounce rates (visitors decided to hit the back button or otherwise ignored your Call to Action), what are some of the top reasons visitors abandon landing pages? Our research has revealed several major causes for high bounce rates, but first I want to share what a recent article by Nikhil Swaminathan on the Scientific American Web site said ...