Kevin M. Ryan

THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

We hope this book ends up on your desk, coffee stained with some combination of pizza and/or salad dressing on its pages. In fact, if your copy becomes unusable due to a high mileage scenario not unlike the one with food stains described above, the publisher would be happy to replace this book at no cost to you. Just send your grape-juice-stained, gravy-soaked book back to Palgrave Macmillan, and the company will send you another one on the house. OK, well maybe that last comment was a little exaggerated, but we’re sure if you send the authors a copy of your overused book along with a request for a new one, we will find it hard to say no. We’ll reserve the right to exploit your extensive hard use of the book in social media with self-congratulatory posts about our super useful book.

The Social Media Universe

Social media can easily connect brands and consumers. That doesn’t always make for an easy relationship. While the evolution of the World Wide Web dramatically changed the way we do business and gain access to information, it was the arrival of social media that really started to change how we all interconnect. In short, social media platforms were able to give us quick and immediate access to one another.

Search Engine Advertising

Searching and finding should be the simplest thing the connected digital marketing world has to offer. You can’t imagine the joy a search can represent. Enter a word in the box, and the most relevant information the world has to offer is returned to you, gift-wrapped with an endorsement from people just like you. At its core, search marketing isn’t any more complicated than a simple equation: declared intent + information consumption options = efficient Internet.

The Mobile Marketing Conundrum

Mobile channels are exploding and creating huge opportunities for marketers. Unfortunately, many of those opportunities are hiding. The simple reality is that the rapid development of mobile devices is changing the entire playing field of human communication. From the freedom of being untethered from largely stationary computers to the ability to have easy access to information virtually anywhere and near instantaneous communication with nearly anybody—all this is not a minor shift. Unlike traditional media and even the early Internet, mobile isn’t about how people consume media but about how they interact with one another and with marketers.

The Digital Advertising Big Bang

It’s incredible how the simple idea of connecting computers together changed the behaviors of people all around the world. The slow progression of the Internet came from very humble roots. Initially created as a defense initiative so that military minds around the world could quickly get on the same page at the same time, the Internet then evolved into a useful tool for the scientific community to be able to share research and ideas.

Setting and Measuring Digital Campaign Goals

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there , said Lewis Carroll. This goes for marketers too. There’s an old story about a guy who’s out walking his dog one night when he sees another man walking around in circles underneath the streetlight and looking down at the ground. So the dog walker approaches him and says “Did you lose something, friend?” “Yes,” the other man replies. “I dropped my wallet!”

Defining Online Audiences

If the secret to effective online advertising is reaching the right people with the right message, how do we find the right people? Imagine you are attending a baseball game in a stadium. Around you are thousands and thousands of other people. As you scan the crowd, you see men and women, some old and some very young. You see people of different ethnic heritages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and political leanings. Some of them are rooting for your team, and some are rooting for the other team. Some are watching the game with a deep intensity while others are talking with friends and not paying much attention to the game.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

If the search engine robots can’t tell from your site what you do, they can’t share it with the world. Organic search optimization (aka SEO or natural search optimization) means modifying your site and landing page content to make it more likely that those pages appear higher on the list of the search results for relevant searches. It is referred to as “organic” because you are not paying directly for the placement.

Digital Display Advertising

Digital display ads are the core of online advertising. Th ey are also one of the most misused digital advertising tools. When we talk about digital display advertising, we can either look at it from the perspective of what channel to choose or from a strategic perspective.

Tactics and Strategies for Creating Effective E-mail Marketing Campaigns

Despite its quiet and subtle manner, e-mail is a powerhouse of digital marketing potential. As a marketing tool, e-mail doesn’t get a lot of respect. It’s not very glamorous and showy; it doesn’t have glitzy and cool, cutting-edge features or a “coolest thing since X” buzz. In fact, e-mail doesn’t exactly shine like the brightest star because while not everybody uses e-mail as a marketing channel, all of us are recipients of a seemingly endless parade of unwanted, irrelevant, and often distasteful e-mail messages and offers. We’ve all seen a wide range of misuse and abuse by the less scrupulous marketers among us. What’s hiding behind this rather tarnished veneer is one of the most powerful direct response and point-to-point communication tools that has ever been created.