Industrial buyers laughing? If this keeps up, they'll be dancing the Indium jig ...

An old joke from my childhood in Australia to start with: Why do Methodists disapprove of sex? Because it could so easily lead to dancing.

Industrial buyers are real humans! They buy with the hearts as well as their minds.

That's not news to the smart marketers at Indium Corporation.

They've developed a series of fun videos about their buyers' obsession with their solder paste. Like the one below, they're delightfully tongue in cheek and a bit dorky. Indium realizes its solder paste may not be everyone's cup of tea, but chances are, it has many business buyers who are passionate about getting the right paste for the job. That's turns a commodity product into a very different thing altogether.



Why use videos? Why use humor?

Here's what Rick Short, the company's marketing genius, said when I asked him about the videos that he's developed and produced.

"It is NOT my job or assignment or goal to be “average”. Every company seems to be promoting themselves the exact same way (trade show, print ad, small rolling banner ad, etc.).

"I knew, if I were to rely solely on these tactics, that I would be “average” – and fail. You know the old saying, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”? Well, I think that a lot of people feel that, if they do Marcom like everyone else, they’ll be safe. They won’t. They’ll blend into the crowd and be “average”.

"So, having been in the industry for over 2 decades, I know this market. I know the people. And guess what??? They’re real humans!

"They have a sense of humor, they watch TV, they see state-of-the-art movies made by award-winning artists, they know good media, and they know bad media. I figure, why should these people be forced to switch off their soul when they come to work? So, I set out to get my message into their hearts by using a little emotion and a unique angle."

What kind of results are you seeing?

"I have never received so much unsolicited feedback on any promotional program in my career (and I’m not even really doing a great job of it).

"I literally get stopped in the aisles of trade shows, worldwide, by people who tell me they’ve seen these ads. Interestingly, people don’t call them ads."

"They refer to them as “videos.” I even have people talking about the body of work (the entire series of ads) and letting me know which one is their favorite. Last month at a trade show in Shanghai I had two people tell me that their favorite videos were not in the rotation (in our exhibit videos) and request that I add them in for the next time. In addition, my Sales teams all tell me that they want these videos included in the package when we exhibit in their regions. To me this is exciting."

That is exciting. Here is a company that knows its buyers well enough to know they're not only interested in specifications.

They want to buy the best product, but turning the transaction into an experience makes it something they'll want to do again and again.

Now if only other marketers would believe that ...

By the way, Rick's blog is worth a visit.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Wednesday May 20 at 8 a.m.

Duplicate content puts company in time-out

Duplicate content takes its toll

What a difference a few weeks make online. A site can go from good to bad in a matter of days

That was what happened to a small Honda car dealership, SLHonda, in San Leandro, California that we reviewed to show our readers you don't need big bucks and a huge staff to get great online results.

When we reviewed the site in April, their organic search engine results were impressive.

They were ranking high on Google, even ranking above some very big dealerships. And they were doing very well on Yahoo! too.

But yesterday, they'd virtually disappeared off the Web.

What's going on? It seems this company got too greedy, and tried to double its traffic with two URLs (www.slhonda.com and www.sanleandro-honda.com) and got penalized by Google for duplicate content.

It's okay to have two Web sites, but to avoid being penalized by Google, use a permanent 301 redirect like these experts at WebConf suggest. You can also check for duplicate content using the free tool (see results for these two sites in image on the left) they provide.

What's happened? Many of the dealership's duplicated Web pages are no longer being indexed.

Impact: Its results have dropped by more than five pages.

What a pity.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Tuesday May 20 at 8.00 a.m.

Quotes we love

"Most managers say they want to hear from customers. They don't. They like the idea of a mass of consumers but individually, customers are quirky." -- Josh Bernoff talking to Church of the Customer's Jackie Huba.

Fighting the Friday blues: A viral video that shot around the world

I love Friday's e-mail because this list of the top five viral videos for the week arrives.

This week's "winners" included Apple Mac, Senator Obama, Bill O'Reilly flipping out and a guy jumping (literally) in to his jeans.

My favorite: This funny video by BLU shows the power of a clever idea
to spread in a flash:



Each listing includes a chart and links to blogs illustrating how the video has taken off.

The list is compiled each week by Unruly Media. It also offers a new feature, viral videos by verticals (car companies, for example).

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Friday May 16 at 9 a.m.

A quick two seconds

and our gratitude. It's only a few seconds to complete this quick headline survey for the print version of IMR.

Take the survey.

Thanks!

Search firm cold-calling you? Time to duck and cover ...

9-point checklist from Hubspot may help

What should you do if you get a cold call from a search engine optimization consultancy promising leads, sales, fast cars, diamonds and riches beyond your wildest dream?

Duck and cover.

Why? Because any search engine optimization consultancy calling you is not worth its name, said Hubspot's Mike Volpe giving a Webinar yesterday on search engine optimization.

If these experts are any good, you would have found them already online. Their name would have shown up prominently in search engine results, in blogs, in forums, anywhere and everywhere that people like you go looking for advice.

Many of my readers often call in panic, asking how they can tell if a consultancy is as good as it claims.

Here's a great checklist from Volpe that may help you find your perfect match:

1. Ask them what determines rank? If they can't tell you in language you understand, start worrying.

2. Ask them about the relative importance of on-page and off-page SEO. If they can't explain, start frowning.

3. Can they explain everything to you in language you understand? As Volpe says, it ain't rocket science. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to understand. If they sound like they're talking a foreign language, put your running shoes on.

4. Listen to what they say about content. As you may know already, content is king (and queen) of the Web. If you have a small site and they suggest you can improve your organic results without increasing the amount of content, tighten your laces.

5. Do they practise what they preach? Put their Web site through HubSpot's Web site grader. (Okay, Volpe had to get a few plugs in.) If the company scores less than 85 out of 100, start running.

6. If you're still willing to put in some time talking to them, put their clients and references through Hubspot's Web site grader. If they flunk, they're dead in the water.

Don't be caught out
like these folks ...

7. Ask them how they measure results? Do they talk about leads and sales?

8. Can they commit to giving you a set quantity and quality of leads each month?

9. Will they do some of the hard work like linkbuilding?

Volpe has lots more advice here in this white paper on when and why you should run screaming from a search engine company pitch.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online editor Julie Power on Thursday May 15 at 7 a. m.

What's your favorite B2B search engine?

Here's a great resource for any B2B marketer.

SearchEngineLand has just published The Big List Of Major B2B Search Engines by Galen de Young of FrancisSEO.

In the article, Galen writes:

"While business searchers may start their quest on a general search engine like Google, as they become more informed and progress further in the buying cycle, they often turn to other sources for additional and more detailed information.

"Many turn to general B2B search engines or head to niche-oriented search sites, where they hope to find fewer extraneous search results and other types of content, such as white papers, case studies, and other content marketing vehicles. The searcher's aim is to get better information and to get it more quickly."

Which b2b search engines do you like? If you are a time-starved, resource-deprived business marketer, which search engine delivers the biggest bang for its buck? Do you only optimize for Google and Yahoo and forget about the verticals?

I'd love to hear how you do it, and so would your colleagues. Please let us know.

By the way, thanks to Anita Campbell at SmallBizTrends for giving me a heads up on this list.

FrancisSEO has lots of useful info. If you are looking for a white paper to help you build internal support for your SEO efforts, check out Five mistakes CEOs Make.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor, Julie Power, on May 14 at 9 a.m.

Quotes we love

When folks ask me where I get my ideas, I say they’re a big gift that I am busy unwrapping," -- Victoria Roberts

I think I've fallen in love ...

with Animoto.

It takes about two minutes to turn ordinary slides, photos or PowerPoint presentations into an interesting video with Animoto. And doing a 30-sec clip is free.

It makes video easily accessible for any company, any non-profit, any family. If you forgot Mother's Day, grab some photos and send her a lovely little sentimental video.

I scoffed when Amazon's Jeff Bezos said Animoto made it really easy for anyone to create videos with their own photos. Then I saw a lovely little film made by a nonprofit to encourage people to donate organs.

So I decided to try it. My first attempt was awful. (It did only take two minutes.) My next attempt was better, see below. I asked Jim Hare at GodwinPumps to email some company slides of his company's monster industrial pumps, I stole a couple of nice looking slides from the Web (for experimental purposes). I uploaded them and here it is:



Another great thing: Uploading the videos to YouTube is extremely easy and automated. And it easy to embed the url of the video anywhere you want. (If I can do it, anyone can.)

How does it work? It has some "special sauce," coding that synchronizes photos, even awful ones like mine with music. They're working on adding words.

You could use a clip like this:

• to showcase products on your Web site
• to celebrate your customers (like these Harley-Davidson's fans in this video)
• to start a sales presentation, seminar or a speech
• to highlight a new product,
• to celebrate an achievement
• to mark a retirement
  
• to turn a boring old PowerPoint presentation into something that won't make prospects go to sleep. The Sparta Schools District used an Animoto video to brighten up a board meeting and promote its school, and
• to turn a podcast into a video. It's possible to load your own sound track so why not load a recording over some interesting photos for a double whammy?
  

Why bother? Because universal search is changing the landscape. Video is showing up more and more in search results and companies who have optimized these sorts of digital assets are more likely to get better results.

Creating this sort of content has never been easier.

Animoto I love you!

A great way to broadcast the voice of the customer

An update on podcasting ...

Podcast listeners are highly engaged and motivated, as I said in this post, "These people are 73% more likely to buy."

But podcasting also provides marketers with something rare: The ability to load the voice of the customer on any Web site. Nothing more powerful than hearing a real customer talk about a company's service or product.

I neglected in my last post on podcasting to provide some examples of how companies are using them. Here are five:

Oracle uses them extensively to talk about everything, from interesting applications to broadcasting speeches by its executives. And it gives its customers another avenue to talk about what concerns them and how they're using Oracle's products.

Marketer John Jantsch at DuctTapeMarketing uses them to showcase interesting ideas and marketing ideas, often demonstrating a point he is trying to make. In this broadcast, he showcases a small business owner who shows you can use social media in any industry (an argument that Jantsch has been trying to make.)

The Small Business Administration uses them for how-to sessions. A recent podcast included a checklist of 12 things someone needed to know to start their own business.

SimonSays (Simon & Schuster's Web site) has a monthly podcast that lures readers (online and offline) like bees to honey with readings of new books and interviews with authors.

MarketingEdge uses podcasts to position its public relations and marketing firm as an industry leader through interviews with influential marketers like Joseph Jaffe.

For a long list of business podcats, check out Anita Campbell's list at SmallBusinessTrends.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online editor Julie Power on Monday May 12 at 8 a.m.

Amazing what you can do for free these days

This took two minutes using Animoto. Watch out Spielberg.

Quotes we love

"Customer service is the new media department." - Joseph Jaffe

Got a cause? Three ways companies are giving back online

If you're going to link your company with a cause or a big issue, this is one way to go.

Retailer Kenneth Cole isn't mucking about.

The company's Awearness blog lets visitors nominate and rate ideas for making the world a better place.

You can also see that the company has linked to the blog from a prominent spot on its home page.

The blog's awfully gloomy though. Call me Pollyanna but I'd like to see some ideas for making the blog a lighter place.

For another two examples of sites driven by a business trying to give back, check out business credit card company Advanta's IdeaBlob and Kivab4b.

By the way, thanks to Andy Sernovitz' blog post for tipping me off to the Kenneth Cole site.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Wednesday May 7 at 10 a.m.

These people are 73% more likely to buy

Podcasting caters to niche audiences, but there are riches in those niches ...

A new study by eMarketer finds that people who listen to podcasts are much more involved and are much more likely to remember the ads and content.

“The studies showed a 73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product," said Velvet Beard, vice president at Podtrac. "The studies showed that 69% of audience members have a more favorable view of in-show advertisers."

It makes sense to me. Every morning my much better half spends a long time finding the right podcast to listen to on his way to work. He loves them. He's the one on the Metro who isn't tapping to music but drawing on an imaginary whiteboard as he listens to complicated economics' broadcasts. And he says many of his colleagues who commute do the same thing.

No reason you couldn't load a podcast of your expert talking about a new process, the latest speech by an industry leader, a how-to on a new process or product, etc.

Interested in trying a new podcast or thinking about doing something new with one, take a look at this update I posted today (Monday May 12) with links to some hardworking podcasts being used by business marketers and others.

New to the blog? Thanks for visiting!

Put a smile on your face and mine by taking a little look at our other posts containing great marketing ideas that'll lift conversions and get visitors to stick around.

Click here to go back to the home page.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Tuesday May 6 at 11.40 a.m

Quotes we love

"Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different." - Albert Szent-Györgyi.

It's a great quote, but looking at the same old thing with a fresh perspective takes a certain something.

There's a great post by Paul Williams over at Marketing Profs' Daily Fix talking about how to discover new ideas, often in old things, by using the scamper technique. Scamper is an acronym for a set of techniques that'll help you see ideas in a new light.

Williams says you can apply this to a problem, a potential innovation, or to explore ways to make your weekly staff meetings more effective.

His post includes info on scamper, its background and how to apply it.

Published by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Tuesday May 6 at 9 a.m.

Harnessing the wisdom of busy execs to find the best stuff online

Taken a look at BizSugar?

It's a place for business owners, managers and entrepreneurs in small and midsized businesses to "discover, share and vote for the best business tips, trends, news and strategies on the Web."

The idea: If you find a business story, tip or video that you like, give 'em a little sugar!

I liked it immediately (thus the reason why we added the BizSugar button below) because it squares with our philosophy: Give busy execs info that's easy to read, easy to understand and easily accessible.

BizSugar isn't about geewhiz fads, or the latest tech trends. Instead, it's trying to simplify life for busy execs who don't have time to sift through mountains of stuff.

I asked its founder John Holsen by email how it was going. If you are marketing to small to medium size businesses, you may be particularly interested in his comments about how business is using the Web.

Any trends that have emerged?

John's answer: Yes, but it’s almost like an anti-trend. There seems to be two distinct business segments out there: those who actively use the web to help them do business and solve business problems and those that don’t. I always knew this, but didn’t realize how large the second group still is until I started bizSugar.

“Are you familiar with Digg?” All but a couple of them said no.

For example, I’ve probably given my little elevator speech about bizSugar to fifty or so people since the launch – most were business owners and quite a few were younger than I am. I usually like to start by giving them a point of reference such as, “Are you familiar with Digg?” All but a couple of them said no. I’d throw out the names of a few other social media sites and get the same answer. It’s not that these people are complete Luddites – they use email daily and many, but not all, have some type of basic website.

They think of the Web as a convenient “answerbox” for quick questions and nothing more.

However, after asking a few more questions, I realized that they think of the Web as a convenient “answerbox” for quick questions and nothing more. Most rarely, if ever, read blog posts, and those familiar with online social networking think it’s the domain of kids.

Therefore, it seems like there are two parallel business communities happening here – each with their own economy and way of doing business. I’m hoping that bizSugar can be one of the services that can bridge the gap between these two communities, but I realize it won’t be easy. Luckily, every year a new generation of young entrepreneurs emerges who grew up understanding the full advantages that the Web has to offer.


Why did you start it?

John's answer: When I first heard about social news and bookmarking sites, I thought it was a great idea and immediately started checking them out to see if they could help me in my business. I was disappointed to discover that their business sections had a lot of useless information and much of it had nothing to do with business. The focus of these sites seemed to be on technology and anything funny or controversial – at least that’s what got the most votes. Still, I liked the concept and knew that a site targeted to the SMB community could save business owners a lot of reading time.

John's email is admin@bizsugar.com. He's getting ready to launch a weekly round up by email of the best stories on his site.

Click here to read more about him and BizSugar.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Monday May 5 at 9 a.m.

Bad logos: Revenge of the designer

Warning: You may be offended

What did these companies do to deserve these logos?

Please do not click through if you are a sensitive soul, who is easily offended.
Thanks to Casie Gillette of KO Marketing Associates for a great round up of funny search engine marketing.

These made my day.

Yucky Nasty Bug Facts: This guy's marketing rocks

Who knew an entomologist could be this much fun?

I love this guy's marketing.

Hal Coleman runs North Fulton Exterminating Company, an exterminating business down in Alpharetta, GA.

To promote it, he uses e-mail and a video blog called Yucky Nasty Bug Facts with episodes like this one about mosquitos.



His videos are fantastic. And they work. They're converting prospects (businesses and consumers) and keeping his nine employees very happy and very busy with new jobs.

He's a great example of a small business that's really blowing away local competition by jumping on the latest Web marketing tools.

And his copy is fun, engaging and .... well, I just want to read it.

Take a look at the email that just arrived promoting the video blog:

"I don't know if you like frogs or not, but I absolutely love' em. I have
3 ponds (water gardens) a few feet away from my screened porch and, at night in the summer time, the frogs will blow you away.

I have 5 species of frogs that I have cultivated through the years and they make quite a chorus. When guests are sitting on my porch at nite, someone will invariably ask, "Where did you get the soundtrack of all the frogs?"

They just can't believe it's real.

One thing I have to remember to do is treat my ponds for mosquitoes.
Beginning in May, I place a "Mosquito briquet" in each pond. These little pellets release a bacteria into the water that kills the mosquito larvae before they can emerge as adults and bite me. Oh yea, it works great! (Don't worry, it won't hurt the fish."

Great stuff Hal.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on May 1 at 1.30pm.

No need to call emergency: This site has a fine heart

In every issue of our print publication, we review a site.


On the Internet, real stories about real people will always out-trump facts, figures, features and benefits, says Web guru Seth Godin.

And here’s a great example of a Web site that’s taken up his call.

Subscriber Deb Thaxton, who's just started reading our print publication, from Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughter asked us to review her site. We jumped at the chance. We like to say thanks to our readers when we can. Thank you, Deb.

And this is a nice looking site that even an industrial company could learn from.

Here’s why:

• It tells a story. This site uses beautifully-chosen and optimized images (with descriptive alt tags) and appealing case studies to explain why families and professionals should choose this hospital over its rivals. Take the home page’s case study on Iron Man Ian who you can see in this photo. Sure, a b2b company’s average customer may not be as cute as this three-year-old toddler. But every company has buyers with an interesting problem, an unusual application, etc.

• It doesn’t confuse the visitor. This site doesn’t confuse visitors by cramming everything on the home page. It aims to grab attention and interest with stories that encourage visitors to click on. B2b parallel? Focus on one call to action instead of overwhelming visitors with too much choice.

• It uses images well. This site has a lovely clean layout and the images jump off the page. The flash is kept to a minimum so the pages load quickly.

• It streams visitors into two clear groups: Visitors and health professionals.


We had a few quibbles ...

The Web may be global in reach, but prospects still prefer to shop locally.

That’s why local search engines are growing in popularity. This site looks good but it doesn’t do enough to reach local prospects, a natural target audience.

Here’s how it could be losing patients to rival providers:

1. Where’s the phone number? These days many people reach for the Internet to find a doctor, to find the closest hospital or in a medical emergency. Yet the hospital’s phone number is hard to find online.

2. What’s the local angle? It’s not immediately obvious where this hospital is located and details are buried down in the page’s footer. Consider appealing to local visitors by adding a line like, “The best hospital in Norfolk for kids!”

3. Where is it on local search results? Remember to check your company’s rankings on local search engines. This hospital may not make a direct appeal to locals on its home page, but it’s done all the right things to rank near the top for all local searches for hospitals and children’s hospitals in its area. Only trouble, it hasn’t done enough to make sure it appears in search results using synonyms for children like “kids' hospital, Virginia.”

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor, Julie Power, on Wednesday April 29 at 9 a.m.

Famous art on your desktop

Google's now making world-class art accessible and affordable, in fact, free. You can now add designs by artists, designers and innovators like Jeff Koons (see photo above), Michael Graves, Philippe Starck and Anne Geddes to personalize your iGoogle page. There's even stuff by Rolf Harris and the Wiggles for Aussies like me. I would've preferred Arthur Boyd or Fred Williams (really great Australian painters) but I quite like the Rolf Harris stuff.

Too much green for an ecogeek in ecotopia?

Don't know about you but this green marketing craze is making me feel, well, a bit green about the gills. My inbox is crammed everyday with press releases about green marketing initiatives, online and off. Sometimes it seems too cynical for words. By the way, there are 96 million results on Google for "eco" and only 54 million for "poverty."

One sign of how everyone's rushing to go green: Green trademarks have gone through the roof, reports Trends in Trademark. Applications for trademarks with "green" doubled to 2400 in 2007, while "green" and "clean" appeared together in 74 would-be trademarks. "Go Green" appeared in 100 different applications.

The prefix ECO was superhot, appearing in 900 new applications. So hot that Glenn Gundersen, the author of Trends in Trademarks, paints this image for summer:

"Next to your backyard ECO POOL, you could mow your ECO LAWN, with an ECOMOWER, and water your ECO PLANTS and ECO FLOWERS with an ECO HOSE. Your ECO BABY could play with ECO DOLLS, while you sent your ECO TOTS off to ECO CHILDCARE with an ECO LUNCH, including an ECO APPLE, ECOMILK, ECO YUMMY SNACKS ...

"On the weekend, you could go fishing for ECOSALMON, get some ECO LIFECOACHING, play ECO GOLF (but don't forget to pack your ECO-UMBRELLA.) Or you could pack your ECOBAGS and fly ECO AIRLINE through the ECO SKIES to an ECOSAFARI. Perhaps you could relax with a cup of ECO-JOE ... It would be the ideal life for an ECOGEEK in an ECOTOPIA until you were laid to rest in an ECOCOFFIN."

Me? I may have to take up ECO surfing (pollute my office not the sea), attempt to have an ECO-vacation with my kids by staying at home, try to do fun things with lentils (cooked in my own ECO pan which has already been patented) and make our own ECO-friendly fuel. See previous reference to lentils.

This was posted by the editor of the Internet Marketing Report Online blog Julie Power while NOT chewing environmentally-friendly gum (isn't that an oxymoron?) on Tuesday April 29 at 8.30 p.m

PS. If you are serious about green marketing and organics, check out my friend's blog http://www.organicmania.com/

Quotes we love

"Criticism is not your enemy; apathy and indifference are,"

- Joseph Jaffe in an interview with TopRankBlog's Lee Odden.

Love that glove: A b2b viral marketing campaign that delivered

In this post, we give you the chance to judge the success of this campaign. Read the post and then cast your vote using the three-second survey underneath the video.


Can a viral video contest generate results for a business to business company when the pool of prospects is much, much smaller than for a consumer campaign?

It seems it can, especially when you think about the power of video to keep on generating hits for months, even years, after the original launch.

I recently interviewed Alvin Chapital, marketing segment manager, at Kimberly-Clark Professional in Roswell, GA, about the "Love that glove" contest. It was launched earlier this year to promote Kimtech Science Sterling Nitrile Exam Gloves (a new product by Kimberly-Clark).

Q. What was your challenge?

A: We wanted to see if we could raise awareness for a new b2b product, a lab glove, with a viral video campaign. And we wanted to kick off the launch of this new product by generating excitement for end users and our sales team.

Q. What sort of marketing have you done to business prospects in the past?

A: The usual dry b2b approach stressing features and benefits. Historically, we'd provided non-emotional stuff, a cure for insomnia. In the past, we'd used print, trade shows, direct mail and public relations.

This time, we wanted to tap into our buyers’ emotions with a video contest.

Q. Why the big change?

A: We only had a tiny budget, a fraction of what we'd had in the past. The b2b division of KC operates nearly like a small business with a small budget.

Q. Were your prospects Web savvy?

A: Yes, we knew our prospects, lab technicians, surfed the Web and watched YouTube in the lab. They often had some free time between experiments. And many were in their 20s and 30s.

So we decided to break with tradition with a video contest.

Love that glove, love those sales

Q. Did you provide any guidelines?

A: Yes, each video had to use our gloves to demonstrate a benefit compared with rivals’ products.

We suggested contestants:
• show how they loved our product and used it in the lab
• do something crazy with it, and
• let their imaginations run wild.

And they could also ask for a free sample of our gloves.

Q: How many entries did you receive?

A: We didn’t get a huge number of entries, just 10, but they generated the attention we wanted.

Q: What was the ROI?

A: We spent $15,000 including prize money. For that, a total of 4,000 prospects out of a potential 40,000 potential users visited our microsite. The videos have been watched thousands of times on YouTube. We’ve sold $1.4 million worth of the new product, about 30% more than forecast.

You can see the winning video below:





What do you think of this campaign? Vote here.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Monday April 28 at 9 a.m.

Quotes we love

“The Internet turns everything into a series of tiny clicks that are simple in isolation yet extraordinarily complicated in aggregate.”
– Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch.

Social media for pets: Look who's talking now

Get this: A contest by Hallmark to get pet owners to design and submit the best birthday card (for their pets, silly!) generated 7,093 entrants within three weeks. This one here was submitted by Deana Tackett of Nashville, TN. Click here to read the cute caption and the dog's story.

I was just talking to Sara Steever of Paulsen Marketing Communications in Sioux Falls, a reader of our print publication, who told me about the phenomenal success of this social media site that her company had designed for Hallmark.

One of the cool things about the contest is the way it keeps interest going with mini winners and mini contests like, "Which pet is the biggest stinker?"

What's next?

Facebook for cats?

Twitter for dogs?

Woof woof.

By the way, 67 entries will be released as a new line of Hallmark cards.

Posted by Internet Marketing Report Online blog editor Julie Power on Thursday April 24 at 1.20 p.m.