UPDATE! Suspect apprehended, MIT Cop Shot. 4/19/2013 1:23:28AM PST

Crowdsourcing is a practice that gathers together services, ideas or content from a large group of people. These days they are typically done online where it is easy to gather together a large group of people using social media networks.

Solving crime is no different than any other crowdsourcing task. Everyone may not be trained in crime investigations, but the sheer amount of people that can contribute might just get the work done faster.

Keen Observation & Deductive Reasoning

Just looking at how Sherlock Holmes solved crime, it was mainly based on deductive reasoning, the ability to put a number of facts together, connecting the dots and being a keen observer of all factors. Sherlock Holmes is aware of all possible outcomes with strong knowledge of physical sciences, human behavior, statistics, anatomy, the law, and many more fields of study. This is so interesting that it has inspired many book readers and movie makers to come up with similar stories like The Mentalist TV series.

Unfortunately Sherlock Holmes is a fictitious character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who was a physician and writer who lived from 1859 to 1930. It is very rare to find a single person with such a high amount of knowledge and such diverse skillsets like Sherlock Holmes. If only we had such people, they could seemingly help solve crime in a very easy manner. In reality, there are people with different talents, and strengths, and weaknesses that work together to solve cases. Different people also have different observational habits than others and can see things differently.

Analysis of Photos and Video Coverage of the Boston Marathon Explosions

It can take many hours, days or even weeks to find each and every minute detail in a photo or video from a large number of content contributed online by many  people. But when this task is crowdsourced, this can help get the task done faster.

With the online communities of 4Chan, an image sharing community and Reddit, a social bookmarking community, a group of people have been contributing and further promoting this on Facebook, helping solve the Boston Marathon Explosion crime. The main images were posted on imgur, an image sharing site. Below are some of the photos, the complete photos are found here.

Even if these images look compelling, of course nothing is really conclusive yet at this point in time, but as more people help out, the easier and faster this crime can be solved.

UPDATE! FBI Primary Suspects posted online. April 18, 2013 9:36PM PST

More information can be found on CNN’s website.

UPDATE! Suspect apprehended, MIT Cop Shot. April 19, 2013 1:23AM PST

The Boston Globe reports one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings has been apprehended, but the other suspect remains on the loose in Watertown after a firefight with police. More here.

Social Media has Already Helped Solve Crime

Photo of a car part posted online by Matt Hardigree to help solve crime.

Last year, a woman named Betty Wheeler was killed by a hit-and-run accident and the only evidence was a small car piece. The photo of the car piece was posted on Jalopnik by Matt Hardigree and the car was able to be identified by a deductive process from a number of comments.  This was added to the evidence used by the Waynesboro Police Department in Virginia to help solve the crime.

Philadelphia Police Department’s official Pinterest boards give the online community help to solve crimes by uploading photos and video footages.

According to Corporal Frank Domizio of the Philadelphia Police Department, approximately 200 videos shared online and promoted in social media sits led to 112 arrests as of December 2012.

Tweets-by-Beats page of the Seattle Police Department

The Seattle Police Department has already recognized the power of social media that they created their own Twitter feeds that online users can use to ping the police.

In a survey by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, they found that 4 out of 5 people in law enforcement agencies use various social media platforms to assist investigations. 67% honestly believe social media does help solve crime and 85% of the time search warrants using social media to establish probably cause hold up in trial courts when challenged.

Going a step further, some people have dedicated their lives into using social media to uncover truths such as Scott Rickard who distributes most of his investigations on Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider audience.

It’s Online! It must be true?!?!

But always remember… just because it’s online, it does not necessarily mean it’s true. When looking at online evidence, use your best deductive reasoning, don’t believe everything right away, investigate yourself and listen to what others are saying.

Solution to the Bing Ads and Tag Manager Code not working problem

There is a solution, which requires a slight modification to the code provided by Bing. I have created a utility which makes this adjustment easy to complete and has been tested with Google Tag Manager and Bing Ads accounts. Simple input the code provided for conversion tracking from your Bing Ads account, provide the Macro you are using within Google Tag Manager for your transaction total (revenue) and hit submit. The Output code will be adjusted to work properly within your Tag Manager setup using the custom HTML tag type. If you do not have a revenue macro, you can use an integer value instead.
  

Bing Ads Conversion Code Utility for Google Tag Manager

Why might you want to use DSA’s in your Google AdWords paid search campaigns? Perhaps you’re looking for:

• More traffic
• New, broader keywords
• A method to quickly update AdWords campaigns with frequently changing services or products
• A method to quickly update AdWords campaigns to take advantage of seasonal product changes
• Up to 5-10% more clicks and conversions with reasonable ROI
• Missing less searches that are relevant (16% of all Google daily searches are brand new terms)

Where might you not want to use DSA’s?

• Daily deal/coupon sites
• Smaller websites
• Comparison shopping engines/affiliates
• Customizable product/gift websites
• Anytime that  you don’t have time to add in negatives keywords(which bleeds spend)
• Setting Up A DSA Campaign Quickly

Getting setup with dynamic search ads  is pretty easy. In the Campaigns tab in Google AdWords, click on New Campaign > Search Network Only. Make sure you select the Dynamic Search Ads radio button. Give your campaign a name, select a geographic location, set your default bid and budget, decide to activate ad extensions, set a start/end date, and determine when you want your ads to show. Finally, select your exact and phrase match options, we choose to include plurals, misspellings, and other close variants.

Next, name an ad group, fill out description line 1, description line 2, a display URL, and allow the destination URL to dynamically select.  If this is a catch-all campaign, allow the auto-target to go after all pages, save the ad group, and your first DSA campaign will be good to go! Find out more about DSA’s here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2471185?hl=en&ref_topic=1713901

Benj Arriola at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Toronto 2013

International SEO ideally needs International Links

There are many factors that search engines are looking at when evaluating a link such as anchor text, PageRank, relevancy, adjacent links, surrounding text, popularity, traffic, etc. For a website to rank well in specific countries in a specific language, it is ideal to gain links from websites that are also from the same country and in the same language. This maximizes the relevancy of the link for the targeted country and language.

In the eyes of Google, it could be looking at a variety of metrics to get a good idea what geographic area the website is targeting.

There are a number of backlink metrics Google could be identifying. The ones highlighted above are some that give specific geographic location information.

The Penguin Update Made Link Building Harder

I talked about the Penguin Update in depth during the 2012 Online Marketing Summit, and IMI team members Yichen Liu mentioned 5 ways to avoid getting affected negatively by the Penguin update and Melissa Braden compiled thoughts of other SEO industry leaders on the Penguin update. Today link building is really content marketing, which can be loosely referred as link baiting, viral marketing, or link baiting. Link building today is more about influencing others to link to you which decrease the level of control you have over building links.

Now that link building is more about influencing where you have less control over a link, targeting a specific country or language decreases the amount of websites you can influence adding into the additional difficulty.

Thus if you want to target a specific country and/or language, you have to make sure you are influencing the right people from the right countries to maximize these links for international SEO.

Content Creation and Content Promotion

Creating the right content for the right target country and language requires you to have a local speaker of the language that knows not only the language but the culture and country situation. This way, you can avoid having issues of your content not connecting properly with your target audience. As for the content promotion, it is all about reaching out to the right people in the right geographic areas.

Reaching out to bloggers, building relationships and also looking for guest blogging opportunities can be done with the aid of prospecting software like Buzzstream. As for using paid social media advertising, many of the social media sites already give lots of geo-targeting capability. I recommend using the following for targeted content marketing:

• Facebook Ads
• Facebook Promoted Post
• LinkedIn Ads
• Promoted Tweets
• StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
• Reddit Ads

Case Study of a Client in the Construction Business

An infographic was created for this client and promoted within social channels and through blogger outreach. Looking at the analytics of the page of the specific infographic alone can clearly see when the infographic was launched and at this current time, most of the links are from the US.

This client is specifically targeting the US, but since linking building is more of influencing others to link to you; you can’t avoid it if it gets links from other places. For this specific infographic, it also has links from websites targeting Germany, Italy and Singapore, but the majority of the links are from the US.

A few months later, the infographic was translated into Spanish. This time, we reached out to bloggers and used social promotion in the targeted area, Latin America. Below, you can see the changes in links we achieved from this.

The infographic was translated into Spanish to target the Latin American market and possibly gain links from websites also targeting the same area. It was a success where majority of the links to the specific infographic were coming from Mexico rather than the US.

Below is the entire presentation I presented at SMX Toronto:

Photo Credit: Thanks Ryan Cruz for taking the photo at SMX Toronto and sharing it with me.

So why is Reddit still a worthwhile social site?  As of 2012, Reddit has about 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visits, 30 million posts, and 4.4 million page views. The site got up to 1.6 million unique visits in one day.  In 2011, Reddit received a Quantcast US rank of 66 (out of all the sites on the web), and an Alexa US rank of 43.

Popular Reddit Terms

Despite its plain interface, Reddit is a sophisticated site with its own lingo. Some commonly used Reddit terms are listed below:

OP: Original Poster

“According to the OP, the image was taken from The New York Times“.

TIL: Today I learned…

“TIL that taxonomically, modern-day birds aren’t just descended from dinosaurs, but are considered to BE dinosaurs“.

DAE: Does anyone else…

“DAE think that Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street should have their own full-length sitcom?”

IAmA: I am a….

“IAmA Police Officer in Arizona, AMA”

AMA: Ask me anything.

“I have had 2 ACL reconstructions. AMA.“

TL;DR: Too Long; Didn’t Read

“[After a long, detailed story] TL;DR I went to Vegas, found a monkey in my hotel room, and lived ‘The Hangover’ in real life.“

FTFY: Fixed that for you.

Term used when someone makes a change to another user’s post or image, often with humorous results.

Famous People Who Use Ask Me Anything on Reddit

• President Barack Obama
• Larry King
• Molly Ringwald
• Bill Gates
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
  (Who also happens to answer questions
  in r/fitness from time to time)
• Zach Braff
• Jimmy Kimmel
• Ron Paul
• Stephen Colbert
• Bear Grylls
• Firefox UX Design Team
• Mars Curiosity Rover engineers and scientists

Ask Me Anything – Upcoming  Chats

• 98 Degrees (Band)
• Charlie Rose (Talk show host)

Before posting something on Reddit, you want to make sure that you post it in the right category. The more people that “upvote” your post, the better chance it has at reaching more viewers.  Some of the most popular and active categories are listed below:

What is Karma on Reddit?

Karma reflects how much good the user has done for the Reddit community. The best way to gain karma is to submit links that other people like and vote for, though you won’t get karma for self promoted posts. So, what can you do with the Karma you receive on Reddit? Nothing, but with more Karma, you gain some credibility with other users.

Top tips to get Karma:

• Cat pics … and more cat pics
• Random Wikipedia article and /r/TIL
• Random famous person and random quote
• Post to /r/atheism
• Funny GIF files (nostalgia can work)
• Original meme content
• Bad Parking Job Pictures
• Reposts (wait 2-4 weeks)

The Reddit site categorizes topics very effectively and prioritizes stories by how many upvotes they receive. This distinguishes them from Facebook or Twitter.  For internet marketing news, for example, you may want to check out these subreddits:

• /r/seo
• /r/google
• /r/wordpress
• /r/facebook
• /r/twitter
• /r/adwords
• /r/gmarketing (guerilla marketing)

Content Promotion on Reddit

With so many people using Reddit every day, it is a great way to promote interesting content. For example, let’s say you have an infographic you want to share. There is an infographic category that you can share it in. We recommend interacting with a community and commenting and voting up other members’ posts besides just sharing your own. Like anything, the better the content is, the more it will get shared.  For example, pictures with funny text on them, or memes, do really well on Reddit.

As Philip explained in his presentation, Reddit  is a great site and when used regularly, can be an effective source for content promotion. What has been your experience using Reddit? Leave a comment below.

Facebook

Facebook announced three big updates in Q1:

• Graph Search [Beta ] – January 15^th, 2013
• New Looks for News Feed – March 7^th, 2013
• Improvements to Timeline – March 13^th, 2013

Facebook Graph Search was created, “to make the world more open and connected,” according to Facebook.  This differs greatly from a web search in the sense that users won’t be searching by keywords, but rather by combining phrases. For example, you could do a search for a “Pages liked by fans of Internet Marketing Inc.” (See below) to help you find other pages that interests your fans. Take this a step further and start sharing articles from those pages as your brand page and you’ll become even more popular with your fans. Get on the waitlist for Facebook Graph Search today! 

As an attempt to reduce clutter and focus more on stories from people you care about, Facebook created new news feeds for users to explore. Users can choose from all friends, photos, music, and following (where brand page posts lie); with bigger and more vibrant photos. You’ll also experience the same look and feel across all devices (see right). Get Facebook’s new news feed today!

The most recent announcement from Facebook relates to a new timeline design that helps users express what’s important to them.  Instead of scrolling down the timeline, reading from left to right, the left side will showcase a more detailed about me section, followed by apps you choose to feature. Facebook gives the following example, “If you’re an avid reader, you can keep track of the books you want to read or add more with Goodreads” (see right). The right side of the timeline is where your posts and posts from friends will be displayed.  Facebook is continuing to roll out the new timeline to personal pages in the coming weeks.

YouTube

Google recently announced a complete redesign for YouTube channels, what they are referring to as “YouTube One.” The new design has three distinct features. First, brands can now win over new subscribers with a trailer video that only appears to non-subscribed viewers. Second, similar to Facebook’s new design, branding works across all devices (see right).  Lastly, brands can organize and present their videos and playlists to reflect their one-of-a-kind style. You can see an example of the new YouTube One design below; notice the social icon links to help with cross-promotion. YouTube has even created a “Channel Setup Checklist” for brands to follow to ensure they are getting the most out of the new design. Make the switch today!

Pinterest

Pinterest users are now given the option to “Switch to the new look” (see below). The functionality within Pinterest all stays the same, just a sleeker design in my opinion. The real update is Pinterest web analytics. Brands can now track their pinning activity by reporting how many people have pinned from their website, the number of impressions versus the number of clicks. Brands can also learn what pinners like by analyzing the Most Repinned tab to find out which pins get the most repins, and then tailor your website and Pinterest boards based on the information gathered. One thing to note is to make sure you’ve verified your website on Pinterest and switched to the new look in order to view Pinterest Analytics. Analytic reporting will not begin until you’ve verified your website. 

Social Media by the Numbers

Now that we’re aware of what’s been happening in the social media space this past quarter, check out where the channels stand against their competition in regards to number of active monthly users:

Source: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/

If  you know of any other  big updates, I’d love to hear them in the comment section below!

Elements of a Tagged URL

To understand how a tagged URL works, it is first important to know how to properly compile a tagged URL. There are a few elements of a tagged url. Let’s break down a sample URL and examine the various components of a properly tagged URL.

Sample Tagged URL

The first component of the URL is the domain. With most websites, this will include everything before the question mark (?). However, it is important to note, some website are using parameters to trigger elements on a page, so always look at the URL and make sure that the domain does not already have a question mark in place before you add destination url tagging.  Having two question marks in a URL can cause the tracking to fail.

The question mark is the indicator to start looking for URL parameters. When doing destination URL (Campaign) tagging, you are simply setting up parameters for Google Analytics to read. The question mark is the signal for google to start looking for these parameters.  With Google Analytics, there are three required parameters; utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign.  Each parameter is setup to be passed a value, in the example above, utm_source is being passed the value of Facebook (utm_source=facebook). Between each parameter/value pair is an ampersand (&). The ampersand is telling Google that you are done passing the first parameter/value pair and to keep looking as you have another pair coming up for Google to look at.

Valid Campaign Parameters for Google Analytics

As mentioned above, there are three required parameters to setup when tagging any link for Google Analytics. However, these are not the only accepted parameters.  Below is a table of examples as provided by Google.

Let’s take a look at a URL sample that has all of the available Google Analytics campaign parameters:

http://www.internetmarketinginc.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mar2013analyticspromo&utm_term=campaign-tagging&utm_content=blue-version

Tools to Make Tagging Easier

Google has a URL builder utility (bit.ly/url-builder) which is great when you are building a single url and want to confirm you have the tagging setup properly.

This utility allows you to enter your website URL and all of the values for each parameter. With all of the inputs filled in, it will generate a tagged url for you.

When you want to build multiple urls, it is very helpful to have something like an excel spreadsheet that you can use to build lots of urls at once.  The spreadsheet I have created and use is http://bit.ly/bulk-url-tagging please note that you should always test your tagged urls, the sheet is not perfect, but it does the job and is the best one out there (I may be bias, I made it) To use this link with the shortener functionality, you will need your bit.ly username and api key.

When to Use Campaign Tagging

Campaign tagging should be done any time you have a link from a marketing effort that you want to track (take credit for). Specific examples often include email marketing, social media posts, display advertising, and paid search. It is important to note with Google adwords, auto tagging is often used, and when in place, you do not need to tag the campaign urls manually. With the case of SEO, most links will NOT be tagged, as links that are occurring naturally are most likely not tagged links.

The End Result, Tag Your Links

Tagging your URLs will help you make better business decisions because you will be able to see evaluate the exact success of each marketing initiative. You also want to get the credit for the hard work you do to make a campaign successful (take credit where credit is do)

Remember, if you don’t tag your URLs properly, PPC traffic can be lumped in with organic traffic in Google Analytics(when auto tagging is off, or you run ppc on non-Google properties), and the data you get will not be an accurate depiction of how the campaign performed. Thus, the SEO campaign can take the credit for the increase in organic traffic.

Even with social media, it is important to tag the URLs that you share.  Analytics can show traffic from Facebook, but not necessarily from what was shared by you (vs. what other users shared). With most social media sites, the only way to properly identify success of YOUR efforts in Google Analytics is by tagging the URL.  This data will help justify the expense of running a campaign and show what types of content return results.  The successful marketer engages with users and is also able to be analytical and understand the ROI of their campaigns. While tagging URLs takes extra time and diligence at the beginning of a campaign, it is essential for getting accurate data and will assist in deciding how to spend your marketing budget in the future.

1. Gatorade – Gatorade is a brand that has a lot of sport and celebrity relationships and lots of opportunity in the social space. So how did they take advantage of this to create content that their users will like and share?  They had PR, media, and brand managers listening and learning from their followers online. They didn’t just look at the number of fan increases every month, but instead really listened to what their fans were saying. They also analyzed their web traffic to see how their consumers were finding the website.

One of the things they learned was that people were mentioning on Twitter that Gatorade was a hangover cure. They then created campaigns that identify with this and  engaged with their consumers. They also started a #winfromwithin campaign that encouraged followers to share how they emit strength using that hashtag. They created images that inspire that included their logo.  Their fans associate Gatorade as a drink for the workout warriors and a brand that implies through imagery – Drink Gatorade and you can be like Dwyane Wade!  In this case, they didn’t ask fans to sign up for something for “a chance” to win free product. They created content that people wanted to share – without being asked to.

2.    Whole Foods 

At this year’s Online Marketing Summit, I heard an innovative case study from Michael Aaron Bepko, the community manager for Whole Foods. He explained how important it is to really listen to your fans and give them what they want. By doing this, they decided instead of just having 1 Facebook and 1 Twitter account that they needed to segment out different topics and create more brand accounts by topic.

For example, they noticed a lot of site traffic came from Pinterest based on people searching for recipes. So not only did that encourage more pins, but also a Whole Foods Twitter account just for recipes. They also segmented out their meat posts into a whole new Whole Foods meat account – to please their vegetarian fans who were complaining on the main brand’s feed. They also started a Twitter account just about cheese. I would even suggest doing a Google Plus hangout with their cheese enthusiasts and talk about their cheese selection and how to cook with them.

They also noticed that users in different parts of the country have different needs and topics that concern them. So, different Whole Foods stores’ around the country made their own Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts. This created a sense of community for the followers and also sparked competition between the different stores to get the most amount of likes and engagement. For this strategy to work well, they closely monitor and regulate who is posting on behalf of the brand and what is being posted.

By extracting data from the social space and segmenting out their user activity to figure out what people are actually saying, Whole Foods discovers what their followers are passionate about, and learns more about what is important to them.  They then create engaging content that their users enjoy. This creates an emotional bond and relationship with their customers, one that might make them loyal to Whole Foods instead of another grocery chain. Again, here they are not creating sweepstakes or giving away free products, but ultimately getting to know their fans.

3. Samsung – “The Next Big Thing is Already Here”

Samsung did something out of the box and it resulted in a huge profit and growth for the brand. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on a boring and flashy TV commercial, they paid attention to what consumers were saying online before even releasing their product.

They closely monitored what people were saying in real-time about their competitor’s product, the Apple iPhone5 on Twitter. Then, they shared that feedback with their product development team. The result was The Samsung Galaxy S III, a product that fixed some of the issues that people complained the iPhone 5 didn’t have. In this case – taking the time to listen to people online and give them what they wanted had a massive impact on their success. Samsung then translated this into a TV commercial that showcased what they learned from listening to people on Twitter and Facebook.  Below is a commercial that not only did great on TV, but also went viral on the web – with over 17 million YouTube views.

Notice the actors in this commercial are mimicking what people were saying online about the iPhone5. This contextual advertising is the direction more brands need to take to reach their customers.  If you are creative enough to come up with a great TV commercial, people will share it and talk about you online.

However, they won’t necessarily buy your product unless it is a great product that does what they need. For example – would you buy a Dodge Ram based off on an entertaining commercial they made about farmers? See the engaging Superbowl commercial – So God Made A Farmer. This commercial has over 14 million views on YouTube and many rip off videos – but not many that are associating the Dodge brand and truck with the content.

4. Oreo

Speaking of Superbowl advertising, a highly engaging and relevant ad was done in the spur of the moment that fans went wild for online.  Marketers were sitting in a room watching the Superbowl during the black out and came up with:  “You can still dunk in the dark”.

This was a simple yet effective way to engage with people as they waited around for the lights to come back on. They were able to do this because they got approvals quickly and thought on their feet. As the web changes, marketers need to change how they reach their audiences. In this case, Oreo seized the day and capitalized on an opportunity that their competitors did not, and got over 16,000 re-tweets from it.

5.     Coke

Coke has been around the block for awhile –so engaging with their audience is not their first rodeo. From creating the image of the modern day Santa, to dancing polar bears – they are masters of creating great content.  So what are they doing online? They have content that is created by full time employees, over 40 freelance writers and photographers, many people throughout the Coke system, marketing, and public relations teams coming up with engaging content.

This is a collaborative internet marketing strategy that all brands can learn from. Don’t just have one stressed out person come up with all your advertising collateral.  Instead, utilize the minds of different people to get ideas of what will work. As one of the fastest growing agencies in the country, we have access to diverse teams and the best tools that strategize  for you.  We also work with you to create engaging content.

An example of a great Tweet by Coke was done by a creative writer: “When you open a Coke, 12,352 bubbles are born. Happy Birthday bubbles.” Another great piece of content I found was a video they made for Valentine’s Day and posted on Twitter saying, “Our #Valentine to you. Love, @CocaCola”.  The video below called, “Love is in the Air – a Coca-Cola Valentine” creates an emotional bond with viewers. It shows happy couples getting a balloon magically at their feet arriving with a fresh can of Coke.

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So how should you spend your marketing dollars online? Start by really getting to know your audience and building relationships with them. Figure out your organic brand advocates and utilize them for ideas, product development, and content. Reward your online customers for their loyalty by letting them be the first to know about new products. Whether you are promoting your Instagram pictures on Twitter or sharing your TV commercials on YouTube, being contextual, collaborative,  and creative is the path to success. We know you might not have the mega marketing budgets that these 5 brands do, but we can help you grow with our integrated SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Reach Customers at the Zero Moment of Truth

During the session, we were introduced to ZMOT – the Zero Moment of Truth: that instant when customers open their laptops, pick up their smartphones or their tablets, and search the web. They may read a review, look for a coupon, watch a video, or read a blog before making a purchase. With the right digital marketing strategy, you can reach shoppers more often at the right time, in the right place, and with the right content.

At the Zero Moment of Truth, today’s shoppers bounce back and forth at their own unique way in a multi-channel marketplace. They switch devices to suit their needs at any given moment.

The challenge for businesses today is to meet customers where they are online with exactly what they are looking for. For example, regarding YouTube videos, it is a much younger audience curating the content and determining what is cool. So if your target audience is on YouTube, running True View video ads would be a good way to reach them.

You also want to make sure your brand messaging is consistent across TV, tablets and mobile phones and create a good experience on all devices.  So, what can you do to appeal to this growing tablet audience at ZMOT? Find ways to give shoppers the information they want at the time they want it online. Do they want reviews and ratings? If so, a simple way to reach them is to write ad copy that boasts, “Five stars on Yelp.”  You want to give the users what they are looking for by answering  their questions in your content and ad copy. You can also build relationships with your customers through videos, Google Plus hangouts, and social media.

Reaching Your Customers through Mobile and Tablets

Website traffic from tablets and mobile devices increases every day. Therefore, you want to be sure to create tablet-friendly ads and use them in tablet-targeted campaigns. As the Google Mobile Playbook notes, a paid ad that states: “Shop now from your tablet” is a stronger call to action than “Shop online.”

While images on iPhone listings are very small, they also play a big role in leading to conversions. Through eye tracking, Google researchers could tell that users would pause on a listing with positive reviews, then look at the image before making their decision to click or not.

MAT™ – Multi-Attribution Technology

With customers finding your website through so many different channels, it is essential to segment out where they are coming from and trace the click path they used to see what made them buy a product.

If you’re just relying on the last click, you’re missing out on a whole lot of information about user behavior.  Our MAT™ , or multi attribution analytics tool  tracks all the marketing sources that customers are exposed to before making a purchase, thus measuring the success of each digital campaign.

Couples Resorts is a client of ours who has a successful fully integrated digital marketing campaign with Display, SEO, SEM, and Social Media campaigns.  Through using our MAT™ technology, we found that display media is a great introducer to the website.  MAT™ helps us understand the performance of each digital marketing campaign by reporting on the introducers, the influencers, and the closers.

How Our Google Partnership Can Help You

So what can IMI as an agency help you with?  We work with our Google Reps to help our clients reach their goals. Google provides us with a vast amount of data, tools, and education.  Our Google reps help IMI by providing us with their own market research and data of online habits across many industries. We use this information to create a strategy that leads to optimal results for our clients.  For example, Google researchers found that users really pay attention to social signals like reviews.  They found that listings that averaged three or more stars in reviews took 41 out of 47 clicks. Also, the volume of reviews matters. 29 of 47 clicks went to listings that had at least four reviews.

As Google releases new tools and research, we are the some of the first to know.  We help our clients implement these new trends and tools and link their campaigns together across multiple channels.

We also help businesses to engage with their users. At IMI we have a comprehensive data-driven approach to internet marketing.  With our tools, partnerships, and expertise we extract data from all of our clients’ digital channels to help understand user behavior, create content that meets their needs, and ultimately increase ROI and bottom line.

At our Google Engage event, our audience walked away with valuable knowledge and enthusiasm. We look forward for the next Google Engage event and hope to see you there.

Here are 5 things any brand can do to leverage contests for successful marketing campaigns online.

1. Give your customers something they want, then praise THEM for THEIR creativity.
2. Extend a TV spot or radio ad online using social media.
3. Give clear direction so that the message being conveyed is one that is in line with your brand.
4. Use images, pic of the day, video of the week type contests to evoke emotion and provoke sharing.
5. Have some fun! There was an eye doctor in Florida that did a contest “Most creative way to destroy your reading glasses”. One person turned in a video of an alligator eating his glasses! Now, that’s what we’re talking about.