Internet Marketing State of the Union (con't)

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Internet Marketing State of the Union (con't)

Before I begin, I need to note that Matthew Sharp has been nominated for Channel Manager of the year. Many of you know Sharpie and how well deserves the nomination and the win. Today is the last day to vote. Please fill out the Channel Partners voting form and help Matt to victory!

On Wednesday, I discussed how Google has changed their search algorithm with the Panda Update and incorporated Social media into their Search Results, today I will conclude with the new Google social network and Paid Search campaigns.

The next major announcement is the Google+ Project, not to be confused with the previously mentioned +1 Button.  Google Plus is the first viable competitor to the dominant social network Facebook.  While it is unlikely this new network will take any real market share in the short term,  the increased privacy settings and revolutionary ability to group friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and family, will more than likely be imitated by other social networks in their next major updates.  Plus is still very limited in its release and Google has specifically asked that businesses refrain from creating accounts for the time being, so we must take a wait and see approach on this until more information is available.  It will be interesting to see how a business can influence search or paid results with a Plus page.

The final shifts that occurred were more tweaks than major rollouts to Google Adwords.  While these changes aren’t fundamental, they are important because this is where ad dollars are being spent.   The first Adwords change focuses on integration between Analytics and Adwords accounts.  It is now seamless to see your Adwords data within your Analytics accounts.  Through this process, you can now easily measure funnels and conversions from your paid search efforts along with your organic keywords.  This data helps show how ad dollars are being spent and exactly what people are doing while on your website.  You can now track precisely how much money you’ve spent to get someone to download a pdf or fill out a form on your website.  Other changes include new Geo-targeting algorithms for more precise local campaigns.  I highly recommend that VARs advertising at a local level investigate the benefits of launching Geo-based ad campaigns.

 Last but not least, Google launched Call Metrics in the 1st quarter of 2011.  This new feature allows Businesses to make phone numbers readily available to potential leads through ad campaigns.  These numbers are included within Adwords campaigns and you can see how many calls have been generated, along with the length of the call.  In doing so, you can measure with even more granularity how your ad dollars are being spent on the internet. 

As you can see, the internet marketing world is an ever changing landscape with constant shifts and innovation.  I would like to remind our VARs that as a member of the Broadvox Partner Program we offer free consultations to active participants on best practices for SEO, Paid Search, and Social Media, we may even provide MDFs to you on a local marketing effort that includes our GO! SIP Trunking products. For more information on this, contact a Broadvox channel director or email [email protected].

See you Monday with an exciting new recipe! Enjoy the Weekend!

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