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Marketing

Why Startups Should Care About PR

    One of the common questions that startups ask is whether or not they should bother with hiring a PR agency. PR agencies are fairly expensive for small businesses to work with, often thousands per month on a retainer basis. The most common complaint I hear is that they’re pricey, and difficult to measure the return on investment. So when does it make sense to hire a PR firm? How PR Can Help Startups SEO: Getting links from news outlets can significantly help generate inbound links from top-tier publications and help your company move up the search engine rankings. Credibility: Many startups… Read More »Why Startups Should Care About PR

    Facebook and RockYou on Performance Marketing for Social Media

      I attended 80/20 Conference, an interesting performance marketing event earlier this week put on by Jay Weintraub. Lots of interesting content there besides this, but posting my quick notes below on a session called “Sustainable Monetization of Social Media Inventory” from Facebook and RockYou. SpeakersSarah Smith, Online Sales Operations, FacebookMihir Shah, VP Ad Network, RockYou RockYou 15 billions ads & 200 million uniques served each month. 60% of social media traffic. A third of their revenus is based on performance marketing The challenges of monetizing the Facebook platform is that there’s a high number of impressions per user RockYou differentaites… Read More »Facebook and RockYou on Performance Marketing for Social Media

      Google Stops the Dance Music

        The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has discontinued Google Dance, their annual search geek party at Search Engine Strategies. I attended Google Dance back in 2007 and was blown away by the scale of the free food, beer and events that Google organized for the search community. While Google cites “cost-cutting efforts” as a reason for ending the dance, I interpret this as a sign that search marketing has grown up. The dance was started back in 2002 when search marketing as a discipline was in its infancy. In its emergence, Google Dance was a brilliant marketing tactic to… Read More »Google Stops the Dance Music

        Free Ringtones(*) With a Catch

          It was heartening to spot the news today that Google has agreed to force search marketers to disclose the subscription fees associated with a lot of the supposedly “free” ringtone ads out there. In a deal with the Florida Attorney General’s office, Google agreed to require search marketers to use copy such as “ad-supported” or “$9.99/month” when they are marketing their free ringtone ads. Basically, free ringtone ads trick unwary consumers into signing up for subscriptions and additional fees in the fine print. Glad to finally see that some regulation emerging for the deceptive ad practices in this space.

          Paralysis By Too Many Choices

            I really hate the decision-making process. Lately I feel like I’m in a state of paralysis due to inability to pick anything, because there’s too many choices to deal with and I’m afraid that somehow I will make the wrong one. In a Consumer Behavior class I took last year with Professor Small, one of our course readings was a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz. It had many interesting insights, but the primary takeaway of the book is that we as consumers are overburdened with too many choices. The ensuing result is… Read More »Paralysis By Too Many Choices