A Marketing Mix

Robin Good: Cory O'Brien writes on his blog: "...Over time, as trust shifted and consumers were more willing to look outside of the traditional sources for new content, additional verticals started to adapt to this trend, including ad networks and daily deal sites.

... [here] I’ll give a few examples of daily deals sites that have harnessed the power of content curation."

And then he presents three online services that are making the best of content curation for marketing products.

From the article conclusions: "By becoming the source of curated content, brands can shift some of their energy from push to pull marketing.

Instead of constantly pushing out messages through banners spread far and wide, they can pull in their desired audience by sharing content those customers will enjoy, and then retain those customers for long-term interaction with the brand.

This gives the brand additional opportunities to develop a deeper relationship with their customers without additional media spend, and puts the focus on a channel that they have much more control over.

Curating content that customers will enjoy does take time, and you can’t be everywhere at once, so brands need to choose channels wisely, but for those that have the personality and the resources it takes, content curation can be a great way to attract and retain an audience that will trust the brand for more than just a one time sale."

Insightful. 7/10

Full article: http://thefutureofads.com/a-shift-to-curation ;

On Wednesday, Google gave people 20/20 vision about a secret augmented-reality project called Project Glass. The glasses are the company's first foray into wearable computing.

"The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures."

People condemn targeted advertising for its "creepiness" but the real issue is that we are giving private companies more power.

"Rather than caring about what they know about me, we should care about what they know about us. Detailed knowledge of individuals and their behavior coupled with the aggregate data on human behavior now available at unprecedented scale grants incredible power. Knowing about all of us - how we behave, how our behavior has changed over time, under what conditions our behavior is subject to change, and what factors are likely to impact our decision-making under various conditions - provides a roadmap for designing persuasive technologies. For the most part, the ethical implications of widespread deployment of persuasive technologies remains unexamined..."

For something that’s been around for just a few years, PayPer Click advertising, or PPC has become an established part of online marketing for many companies. Put simply, “Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.” (Source: Search Engine Land). Yet while PPC seems to have become a staple of online marketing, there are clear signs that it is dying out as a lone marketing resource. For example, recent research has revealed that just 18% of SMEs using Google Adwords actually recoup their investment (Source: YouGov).

Last December I wrote of the need for more brand ambassadors.

The ZippyCart.com Contact Information.(RT @servicenoodle: Understanding Google PageRank | Google PageRank Infographic | http://bit.ly/c5INWb...)...

The iconic image of Don Draper in a sleek suit, martini in one hand, ad campaign in the other, will return to TV screens around the world when the fifth series of Mad Men airs at the end of the month.

But for America's real-life Drapers, the advertising executives of Madison Avenue, their jobs may soon be a thing of the past.