The following are 5 of our favourite top marketing stories – though there are many more…

Procter & Gamble produced and sponsored the first radio soap operas in the 1930s. When soaps switched to television most of the new serials were sponsored and produced by the company.

Structured reality TV shows are starting to rival traditional soaps and reality TV shows. The most famous UK example, The Only Way is Essex follows the lives and loves of a group of 20-somethings.

From 1968 to 2003 Milk Tray chocolates were advertised with an action man undergoing hair-raising adventures to deliver chocolates to the woman he loved.

The creation of Marlboro man promoted the appeal of American stories about lone cowboys. In the 1950s filtered cigarettes were viewed as feminine, The Marlboro man changed this perception.

And most recently BT’s soap-opera styled advertising campaign following the ups and downs of ‘Adam and Jane’s romance’ is credited with helping to make BT the leading telecommunications brand for broadband and subscription TV in the UK.

If you’ve got a good story to tell about your product or service and you’d like some help to get it out there – give us a call on 01202 788333

(Adapted from Chartered Institute of Marketing – The Marketer September/October 2011)

B2B Online Marketing, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing

Fast on the heels of our LinkedIn Cheat Sheet comes one for Twitter. This  includes useful tips and explanations of the most popular terms and icons. Statistics for Twitter are more difficult to track down but Twitter themselves state that they have 175 million users worldwide – though how many of these are active accounts is debateable.

Love it or hate it you shouldn’t be ignoring it!

Twitter Cheat Sheet 2

B2B Online Marketing, Blogging for business, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

LinkedIn has 152 million users worldwide, with approximately one million new members joining every week. Get up to speed and join in the fun with this jargon buster!

LexisClick LinkedIn Cheat Sheet 2

B2B Online Marketing, Blogging for business, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Uncategorized

According to a recent study by comScore, you can expect up to 20% of your email list to be reading it on a smartphone, and if the demographic group includes professionals from the business market, that number is even higher. This also means that you stand a better chance of having your email read, as smartphone users typically check their emails more often,  and frequently in down time when they’re travelling or waiting – say for a meeting to start.

So far this is all good news, the fact that customers can now read and follow links in dynamic HTML emails, means that mobile marketing can really drive open rates and click-throughs,.  However, when designing emails, it’s important to keep in mind your smartphone users, so here are some tips from the E-marketing team at LexisClick:
•    As always it’s important to ensure the subject line is relevant and to the point

•    make sure that it’s easy to see calls-to-action without zooming  in

•    include options to add to social media, as readers are most likely to add content to social networks from their mobiles

•    if you haven’t got a mobile friendly version of your website try to ensure that when readers click through to your website it looks good on a small screen

•    Provide view-in-browser options for mobile readers

•    And lastly check on a variety of mobile devices before sending– it’s the best way to succeed

If you’re happy to manage your own email marketing, here at LexisClick we offer access to a market leading email marketing platform. Alternatively if you’d like to hand it over to someone else to look after there’s a fully managed campaign option for both your emails and e-newsletters. Prices start from only £19.00 per month.

Contact us on 01202 788333 for a chat to discuss how we can help you develop and grow your business. Or visit www.lexisclick.com

B2B Online Marketing, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing

We stumbled across a Google+ cheat sheet on Mashable.com The cheat sheet includes most of the common syntax, hotkeys and tips you need to know to use Google+ Cheat Sheet. Let us know if you find this useful, or if you’ve found any other cheat sheets that you’d like to share…!

Blogging for business, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing cheat sheets, Google

This is according to new research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau and accountants PwC.  Display advertising demonstrated the biggest growth with ads placed in social media growing by almost 200%.

The financial sector are the biggest spenders on online display, with 15.2% of the market in 2010, with entertainment and media following closely behind at 14% and consumer goods manufacturers at 12%. For more insight into the way the online advertising market is growing, here’s a video featuring Tim Elkington, director of research and strategy at the IAB.

£1 in £4 now spent on online advertising

Online Advertising Google Adwords, Online Advertising

LexisClick Online Marketing has recently updated its Google Adwords Certified Company status to Google Adwords Certified Partner.

Google have made a number of significant updates to their Google Adwords advertising platform over the past 2 years, with a number of enhanced features. As a result of this they have updated their qualification criteria and launched a new set of exams for certified partners.

Stephen Bavister, Managing Director of LexisClick commented, “Google Adwords management is a very important area of service for LexisClick as it is often one of the primary online advertising channels for our clients. Ensuring our skills are completely up to date is essential. We are very pleased that Google has launched a new set of more challenging qualifications to help businesses such as ours deepen our knowledge of the Google Adwords platform. We are very proud to have been awarded Google Adwords Certified Partner status.”

LexisClick Online Marketing is able to offer a number of Google Adwords related services from one-off campaign optimisation consultancy to ongoing monthly account management services. LexisClick offer simple flat fee monthly management packages, making their services very cost effective for most Google Adwords advertisers.

LexisClick Online Marketing was set up in 2006 to help ambitious businesses grow significantly through harnessing the marketing power of internet technology and online communities. LexisClick’s services include SEO, online advertising, social media management and web design and have helped a number of clients grow very successfully over the past 4 years.

If you are interested in finding out more about LexisClick’s online marketing or Google Adwords management services, please contact us

LexisClick News, Online Advertising Google Adwords

WebProNews has reported on an AccuStream IMedia Research report recently published which found that online video media spend totaled $2.1 billion in 2008 up 36 percent on 2007. The research also indicated that online video media is set to continue double-digit increases through to 2010.

The video spend was measured in different formats. Pre-roll, which shows a video advert prior to the main video being shown, is predicted to experience a 27% growth in 2009, particularly due to growth in inventory with the development of syndication and video indexing engines.

In-banner video impressions grew by 65 percent in 2008, and accounted for $1.5 billion in gross media spend. Overlay executions also proved popular.

It should be expected that over the next few years as connection speeds improve and increased inventory becomes available that video will increase as a popular medium for advertisers.

Online Advertising

Google has decided to walk away from the cooperative advertising deal with Yahoo. They declared that they would rather cancel the deal than mount a legal defense against the law suit filed against them.

Google’s Chief Executive Eric Shmidt said in an online interview, “We canceled the deal with about one hour to go before a lawsuit was going to be filed against our deal. We concluded after a lot of soul-searching that it was not in our best interest to go through a lengthy and costly trial which we believe we ultimately would have won.”

The alliance was designed to funnel some of Yahoo’s search advertising to Google’s platform and up to $800 million in incremental search revenue to Yahoo. That proposal, however, met strong opposition from Microsoft, advertisers and federal regulators.

The US Justice Department’s investigation found that Google accounts for more than 70 percent of the Internet search advertising markets. A deal with its main competitor Yahoo would give the two companies market shares of 90 percent and 95 percent in the search advertising and search syndication markets. Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement:

“The arrangement likely would have denied consumers the benefits of competition — lower prices, better service and greater innovation,”

The question now is where does Yahoo go from here.

Online Advertising

WebProNews reports that Google investors are grieving their losses after comScore’s report that paid revenues were flat in the month of January. Those in the know believe it is more than the impending recession that is the cause of a decrease in earnings.

It appears that revenues began to flatten soon after webmasters began reporting on decreases in AdSense earnings. One theory is that Google decreased the clickable area of AdSense ads to reduce accidental clicks. This change was implemented in mid-November, shortly before some publishers reported a drop in earnings and a few weeks before comScore released its report that AdSense revenues had flattened.

The question on everyones mind is why would Google implement a change that reduced its revenues? One answer posed is that Google plans to make it up by creating a higher value on valid clicks, creating a win win situation for Google. Adwords advertisers pay more for their clicks but get much better conversion rates, whilst quality Adsense partners generate good revenues from higher click prices.

The comScore report authors Magid Abraham and James Lamberti came to a similar conclusion: “The evidence suggests that the softness in Google’s paid click metrics is primarily a result of Google’s own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur.

In addition, the reduction in the incidence of paid listings existed progressively throughout 2007 and was successfully offset by improved revenue per click. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the improved revenue yield will continue to deliver strong revenue growth in the first quarter. Separately, there is no evidence of a slowdown in consumers clicking on paid search ads for rest of the US search market, which comprises 40% of all searches.”

So even though there were fewer ad clicks in 2007, Google made more money and it looks like they’re trying to repeat the model in 2008.

Online Advertising