Uncategorized

Photo by Bizo

Targeted display advertising is one of the best ways to market to the largest possible audience for your target demographic.

Display advertising gives you the ability to market to your potential customers no matter where they are in the sales funnel. It can help build awareness as well as build trust and drive purchases.

One of the best things about display advertising is how measurable it is. You can measure how many people have clicked on the ads, and you can also measure how much of a lift you got from your other advertising efforts, such as website traffic, branded search queries, email marketing conversions, etc.

Display advertising can bring significant lift to all your other advertising efforts. In a report from Online Marketing Connect, targeted display advertising can bring a 30% increase in conversion rates from online forms. Additionally, comScore said that display increased lift to an advertiser’s website by 46%.

At AdsUpNow, we offer a variety of display advertising options to help maximize the impressions from every dollar you spend. We continually adjust and optimize your campaign to get the best results. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation.

In new research from eMarketer, CMOs predicted that their ad budgets would rise 8.1%. This shows renewed confidence in the economy, and shows a general upward trend since the end of the recession in 2009.

Out of that extra 8.1% of marketing budget, most of it will be spent on digital marketing. In fact, digital marketing spend is expected to increase 12.8% over the next year. This is the highest change out of all marketing channels, beating traditional ad spending, brand-building and customer relationship management.

Traditional media spending is expected to drop 0.8% over the same period. This reflects the larger trend of traditional ad spend decreasing, while digital ad spend is increasing.

eMarketer also estimates that digital advertising spending will rise 23.3% this year, while traditional budgets other than TV are going to remain steady.

Now is a great time for small businesses to market themselves online. Digital marketing and advertising channels offer access to a large audience, but offer things traditional marketing channels can’t offer such as targeting and better analytics data.

If you have any questions about digital adverting or marketing, contact us today for a free consultation.

When shopping for a service or product, one usually focuses on things like price, features, etc. The size of the company usually isn’t taken into consideration.

The reason I bring this up is that company size doesn’t matter too much when things are going smoothly, but when the chips are down and something isn’t working right, having a smaller company can make getting something fixed much easier.

An example of getting lost in the shuffle of a big company happened to us when we tried to switch Internet service providers a few weeks back. We’ll refer to this company as Fomcast.

We’ve had a few outages in our Internet service over the last few months, so we decided to switch to a new provider. When we called Fomcast to explain, they neglected to mention that we were in the middle of a three-year contract and that if we broke it we would be paying a hefty cancellation fee.

So, unaware of the contract, we made the switch and went with a smaller company that promised a turnaround time of 2 hours for businesses. It all seemed good until Fomcast came back around and told us that since we cancelled we needed to pay their cancellation fee. So, we decided to call up Fomcast to try and negotiate.

This is where we started to encounter what I’ll call “Big-Company Syndrome” or BCS for short.  We called Fomcast and spent more than three hours on hold before talking to a representative. We spoke with this representative, explained the situation, and tried to see if there was a way out of the mess we were in. No dice. The person on the phone explained all sorts of “company policy” rules and said the situation was out of their hands. The supervisor was either on lunch or conveniently never around when we called.

Finally, after spending countless hours on hold and getting nowhere, we decided to just cancel the contract, forget Fomcast forever and vowed to never do business with them again.

You must be asking what this has to do with your business. The answer is: everything. Every company you trust to help you with any aspect of your business should treat you with care and respect.

At AdsUpNow, we’re a small company, and every customer matters.  We take the time to ensure that every campaign is up to our standards, and if you ever have a problem, you can contact us directly and talk to a real person right away.

We work with a lot of small businesses, so we know the importance of being able to make changes on the fly, and talking to someone right away.

We strive to deliver the best possible digital marketing and advertising campaigns for our clients. If you don’t currently do business with us, but would like to, go to our contact us page and let us know what we can do to help with your digital marketing and advertising.

Consumers are using more media than ever before, but their attention is more divided than ever before as well. In a new report from eMarketer, consumers are spending more than 11 hours with media on a daily basis.

Coming in first is TV and video, with 4:34 spent watching at least some kind of video. That’s a huge number, and shows that even in today’s world, traditional TV spend shouldn’t be counted out.

Even more telling than TV is that Internet came in at 2:47 per day. That’s an amazing statistic for a technology that has only been around for a few years. That’s also good news for digital marketing, because Internet usage has been increasing and shows no sign of slowing down.

The flipside to this increased time spent consuming content means that more of that time is spent multitasking through different forms of media, so there’s less dedicated time spent interacting with one form of media.

This is especially apparent with people watching TV. More than 16% of respondents said they visit the websites of companies’ ads they see, and 19% of tablet and smartphone users said they searched for information on commercials they see as well. This shows the importance of having an integrated marketing campaign, because people don’t just watch TV or go online anymore, they do them all at once.

An easy way to integrate your campaigns is Retargeting. By referencing a special or discount in your radio and TV ads for online shoppers, you can drive more traffic to your website. Then, after people visit your website, you can target them with display advertising, increasing the chance of them returning and converting.

Contact us today to find out how to reach more Internet users with Retargeting.

More and more people are going on social networks. In fact, Facebook wins one in every five page views, and accounts for nine percent of all visits online.

Those are huge numbers, and the steadily increasing amount of people on Facebook, means more advertising dollars will be spent on the social-networking site in 2012.

According to eMarketer, 59% of marketers are planning on increasing social media advertising in 2012, compared to 31% planning on increasing on ad networks and exchanges.

eMarketer also estimates that US online display advertising will grow an astonishing 24.1% this year to $15.4 billion.

This is good news for small businesses everywhere. Social network advertising and display targeting can be narrowed down to pinpoint only those people who might be interested in your product or service.

The Internet gives you the ability to appear larger than you are, and give you advertising scale you might otherwise not be able to afford.

Contact us today and we can help get you on the path to marketing success.

In a recent survey from research company Warc, digital and mobile ad budgets are growing, while TV, radio and press budgets are shrinking.

The budget sentiments are based on a system of 0-100, where anything over 50 is generally improving, and below 50 is generally declining.

Digital and mobile received scores of 78.9 and 71.2, respectively. TV received a score of 48.8, Radio a score of 42.1 and Press a score of 36.1.

Now is a great time to be spending more on digital and mobile. More and more people are accessing the Internet from desktops and mobile devices, and those numbers are only going to grow.

Contact us today if you want to get your digital advertising efforts of the ground.

Every time you get a website hit, that’s a potential lead. Aside from the people who accidentally click on your site, all your visitors are at least somewhat interested in your products or services.

So why do you get so much website traffic and so few leads? Because shoppers today go to Google and compare everything about your business with your competitor’s at the click of a button. That means you only have a few seconds to sway them in your direction, or just hope your website was memorable enough that they’ll re-visit it.

How retargeting works

We’ve already written some posts on retargeting, but here’s a quick recap: First the user visits your website, and your website places a cookie in their browser. Next, they leave without converting. Then, the cookie in their browser tells the websites they visit to display your ad. Finally, they see the ads, are reminded of your website, and come back and make a purchase.

So what’s so great about retargeting? Well it follows-up with your prospects automatically. As they surf the Internet, your ads appear and remind them of your services. Also, to increase conversions, you can even promote a special deal for people who click on your ad.

As a full-service ad agency in Seattle, we have a retargeting program that delivers return traffic to your website, guaranteed.

Retargeting allows you to cater to website visitors no matter how far into the buying cycle they are. Whether they’re just doing preliminary research, or almost ready to make a purchase, retargeting works in the same way: it reminds them of you.

Let your web traffic bring you results. More than 98% of your website visitors leave and never come back – give them a reason to.

So Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, which means millions of couples around the U.S. will be purchasing traditional Valentine’s Day things such as flowers, jewelry, candy and clothes. So how can you use this to your advantage? The answer is with digital marketing and advertising.

Even if you don’t sell any of the traditional Valentine’s Day gifts, use this holiday as a chance to offer a special promotion, and perhaps even persuade your customers that a new car or hot tub is a better alternative to blowing money on an expensive dinner and diamond bracelet. Sending these kinds of updates through email gives you an easy way to tell all your customers that you’re offering a special.

Follow these three tips to make your Valentine’s email blast successful.

1. Target men

Segment your email list to your male customers. The reason you do this is simple: men spend more than twice as much as women on Valentine’s Day. That means you need to use language targeted to males. Stress the importance of coming up with a gift for their special someone, and highlight the idea of giving a unique gift, depending on what it is that you’re selling.

2. Timing is everything

Depending on how much your product costs, you might want to send the email out a couple of weeks in advance. If your product is a little cheaper, a few days before – or even on – Valentine’s Day will work because it will be fresh in their mind about buying a gift for their significant other.

3. Promote it via social channels

Social Media is a great way to promote your Valentine’s Day offer. Provided that you have a fair amount of followers, sending out timely updates leading up to Valentine’s Day can give your fans and followers a reason to check out your store.

There you have it. Follow these three tips, and you could capitalize on thousands of local Valentine’s Day shoppers. For more tips on local marketing and advertising, check out the rest of our blog or go to our website.

For those of you in Antartica last weekend (or non-sports fans), the Superbowl took place last Sunday, and the best football players competed with the best ad agencies for the limelight. You might think Superbowl ads don’t apply to your business because there’s no way you would ever be able to afford one, but all the ads had takeaways that can help with advertising and marketing for any budget.

1. Add a social layer.
If you noticed, almost every ad in the Superbowl had a social media element to it. Some had hashtags associated with them, such as Audi’s vampire commercial’s #SoLongVampires. Others, such as Bud Light’s commercial, encouraged watchers to go to Facebook for more content. While you don’t necessarily have to have a hashtag, promoting your specials on Facebook, or offering extra discounts to users who share your content can help add a social layer to any promotion you do.

Audi’s Vampire Commercial

2. Make it unique.
Every Superbowl commercial has a unique factor to it – usually humor. Do your ad spots say or show anything to separate your business from your competitors? Beware of bad jokes or going overboard, however. Your commercial may go viral for the wrong reasons.

3. Don’t just sell your product.
Not many people want to hear numbers about how your car has 6hp more than the other guys’, or why the hot tub you sell has jets that deliver 26psi more than your competitors’. Instead, focus on the lifestyle aspect of your product. VW’s commercial showed a dog getting in shape so he could chase a New Beetle, and became one of the most watched TV spots because of it’s unique approach.

VW’s Dog Commercial

4. Don’t jab at the competition
Chevy learned that lesson the hard way this year with their Superbowl ad that said Ford drivers didn’t make it through the Mayan apocalypse, but Chevy drivers did. While it generated some buzz, it didn’t do anything to help the brand at all, and Ford released a statement taking offense to the ad as well.

Let us know of any other Superbowl commercials you enjoyed in the comments.

Have you tried doing Facebook ads in your latest display advertising campaign? Facebook is getting huge, and they own about a third of the U.S. display ad market. If you want to get the most out of your display campaign, forgetting about Facebook would be a huge oversight.

Facebook ad impressions and budgets are growing substantially according to Kenshoo, a software company.

In fact, Kenshoo said their customers spent 109% more on Facebook in Q4 2011 than they did in Q3. That makes Facebook ads the fastest growing section of online advertising for Kenshoo’s customers.

Another large statistic is that ad impressions on Facebook grew 47% in Q4 2011 versus Q3, and clicks were up 105%.

To go along with these fantastic figures, Kenshoo created an inforgraph, which you can see below.

AdsUpNow is a local digital ad agency in Seattle. We are a full service agency offering solutions from desktop to mobile.