Coincidence? Maybe. More likely is that you may have caught a glimpse of a new tool offered by Google called Remarketing.

I most recently ran across this tool a couple of weeks ago when I was doing some research into help desk management software  Zen Desk. Within minutes of leaving the site, I began noticing Zen Desk banner advertisements on nearly every single site I visited for the rest of the day and most of the following week.

While the experience didn't entice me to buy something I wasn't yet in the market to buy, it certainly cemented the brand in my mind as the number one choice. Well, that and, they have a beautifully designed and developed web site.

So what exactly is Remarketing?

Remarketing is another Google Web Tool that integrates with your web site and your advertising campaigns just like a combination between Google Analytics and Google AdWords.

It starts when you place tiny snippets of code on your site that let you track any pages, products or work flows that a visitor to your site lands on. Lets call those people "interested anonymous prospects"

Then, you setup your banner advertising campaign that will display your banner ads on other web sites through-out the Google Content Network (basically, any web site using Google AdSense to make money off advertising).

Where the magic happens is that Remarketing will target that group of "interested anonymous prospects" with the banner ads of your choice while they surf other people web sites.

What this results in is a uniquely targeted advertising experience that lets you tailor a message to a prospect that has already expressed a certain level of interest in what you have to offer.

What does this mean for your conversion rates?

Two days ago, Forbes.com reported that conversion rates for targetted ads were more than twice that of non-targeted ads. A difference between 2.8% (non-targeted) and 6.8% (targeted). Combine that with the fact that you'll find yourself spending less money on serving ads because you have refined your focus to people that you know are already interested.

An example of how Remarketing might work

If your web site was selling vacations to the south, you might track which vacation destinations potential visitors were looking for but not purchasing. Each vacation destination would be tracked with a different Remarketing code snippet; one for Florida, one for Mexico, one for the Bahamas, etc.

Suddenly you find yourself with a sale on tickets to Florida, using Remarketing you can start running banner ads with information about discounted prices on Florida vacations and be confident that a large number of people that previously priced trips to Florida on your web site will see the ads as they surf other sites.

That's powerful targeted marketing.

Read the official announcement here: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/03/now-available-reach-right-audience.html

Recently, they sent me a free copy of a white-paper they created called "101 Business Applications for Using SMS".

The white-paper quickly covers a number of ways that Click-A-Tell customers and others world-wide are using SMS messaging to interact with their customers, employees and prospects. The document is about 2 years old, but the ideas behind most of the (more than) 101 examples are timeless examples of smart business communication.

Topics covered include: sales, marketing, customer service, process management, transportation, travel, financial services, social media and more. Basically, there's something available for everyone.

Here's my favourite example from the paper of a useful and live-saving usage of SMS and short-code messaging:

In Russia, the sale of counterfeit vodka is a huge problem. Not only because it hurts the sale of major brands, but also because the counterfeit drinks are often filled with cologne water, antifreeze liquids or pure alcohol. These counterfeit bottles are reported to be responsible for 40,000 deaths each year.

State run company Rosspirtprom, who is responsible for the sale of 60% of strong alcohol in the country, developed a system to help combat the problem by developing a unique text messaging application.

By sending the serial number of the bottle of vodka they are drinking to a designated short code, Russian citizens will get a response by SMS certifying whether or not the product they are drinking is legit.

Brilliant.

You can download and read the entire document yourself here:

http://www.clickatell.com/downloads/101_Business_Applications_Using_SMS_Clickatell.pdf

Over the 2 months leading up to the event I had the pleasure of working with the organizers - The Art of Productions - to put together the web site and some of the interactive marketing strategy for the conference. In this case study I've outlined a couple of things that we collaborated on together that I think worked out well for them.

Before I get too deep into this case-study, I'd like to briefly mention that the guys at The Art of Productions are some of the smartest and easiest to work with clients that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Their willingness to listen, understand and experiment with new things made them a treat to deal with on a regular basis.

Now on to some of the steps we took to put together and promote a great site which sold-out the 1600 attendee event in less than 60 days.

Test your design before you move into production

A limited time frame isn't an excuse to ignore performing useability tests on your designs before moving from PSD to HTML. There were two primary tests that we ran that helped us fine tune the design before launch.

• We ran some written feedback tests using FeedbackArmy.com that helped us get some ideas about what people seeing the site for the first time thought about the content and the messaging. Their reviews proved to be very helpful in moving us forward in the direction that we wanted the design to take and made sure that every site visitor could find what they were looking for easily.
• We also ran various versions of the designs through FiveSecondTest.com which helped us to quickly identify which parts of the site were drawing the most attention from peoples eyes and mouse fingers. This helped us to refine the design slightly so that people focused more on the things we felt were important.

Read more about some of the other inexpensive tools I like to use for testing a site.

Building buzz and reciprocal links quickly

Since theartofmarketing.ca domain name was brand new, we needed to get the word out quickly and get ranked in Google for the very common "Art of Marketing" name.

A couple of things helped accomplish this:

• A small "name only" AdWords campaign was run until the site reached number one on Google for the name "The Art of Marketing". This made sure that potential attendees always found what they were looking for at the very top of the search results page.
• All of the speakers were kind enough to link to the site from their blogs,  newsletters and twitter pages. This let their fans know when and where they would be speaking (which generated sales) and also helped act as great in-bound links from several high-traffic web sites.
• A block of tickets was set aside for interested bloggers who wanted to run ticket giveaway contests on their own blogs. This also generated lots of inbound links very quickly and even resulted in residual referral sales after the ticket give-away contests were over.
• Templated emails were crafted and shared with all the partners, sponsor and media outlets so that those individual groups could control the deployment of  messages to their house mailing lists. All partner emails that went out were tagged with additional Google Analytics tracking codes to track exactly where sales were coming from.

Offering incentives to get people interested

Two main incentives were used to either convinced people to buy a ticket or convinced them to talk about the conference after they had already bought a ticket. One additional incentive was used to help collect email addresses for a house mailing list.

• Unique promo codes were assigned to each partner, sponsor, sale person and media channel. These discounted promo codes were for varying dollar amounts depending on the code and allowed the team to track which online and offline advertising, sales channels and incentives were working the best. We even made sure that links could be shared that automatically applied the promo codes without the visitor having to remember to type anything in during checkout, which helped remove a barrier in the purchase process.
• Every visitor that bought a ticket to the conference online was provided with their own unique referral url that they could easily share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any where else.  This let attendees tell people about the conference and earn a free book by one of the authors whenever someone used their link to sign-up for the conference. Approximately 4% of the ticket sales were generated through this method and the people that visited via a link from a trusted friend was nearly twice as likely to convert as a visitor from an mass email campaign.
• In order to build the house mailing list, one of the sponsors (Sony), generously donated a free prize for anyone that signed up for The Art of Productions newsletter. This helped grow the house list even if people didn't purchase a ticket to the Art of Marketing event.

Being a good social citizen

It's never enough to set something free on the social web and hope that it will come back to you. A couple of additional steps were taken to help make sure that everyone one involved in promoting the event felt appreciated.

• An eye was kept on each of the bloggers give-away contests, and comments and follow-up emails were made when appropriate. This helped build more buzz and stronger relationships with the individual bloggers & their readers.
• An attempt was made to try and individually thank all of the people on Twitter that shared their unique referral links with their friends. This put the spotlight on all the individuals that shared their links and helped them get some attention from other Twitter followers.

There were a dozen more big things and little things that were a part of what made the marketing for this event successful, but I thought I would focus on just those few that I played a role in.

Thanks again to the Luca, Rick, Chris and the rest of the team at The Art of Productions for putting on such a great event and letting me be a part of it.

This video is hysterically funny and does a great job of shining a spotlight on the damage that you will do to your project if you decide to design-by-committee. As bad as that can be, stopping it will not help guaruntee success on your next web project.

The way that you can save your next web project is to ...

Test your design early & test your design often

It shouldn't matter what the all the opinions of everyone in the room are. It doesn't matter if the designer is "right" and the client is "being difficult" or the client is "right" and the designer is being "difficult".

What matters is: Does the design do what it needs to do?

Did you notice how late into the process the team waited until they tested their design?  If they dad they tested the first version against any of the following ones they would have likely noted a significant difference that would (or should) have lead them to rethink their position on making more frivolous changes.

Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion

The next time you're working on a web-project consider all of the steps that that you can pause at and solicit user feedback. Feedback can come from either your existing users or from users that have never seen your product, brand or web site before.

The point is: once you have something that is at least a working prototype or theory, get feedback from someone outside of the room. Not another designer, not another product manager, a real person that doesn't know what the corporate message or marketing objectives are.

My personal favourite user testing tools

There are plenty of inexpensive tools out there that will help you test various parts of your design if you spend the time to make sure you're asking the right questions.

• 4QSurvey by iPerception
• Feedback Army
• UserTesting.com
• Five Second Test

Ideally, I'll use all except 4Q Survey on any given web project. 4Q Survey comes in handy either before a site is redesigned and/or as part of a constant feedback and interative development plan to keep a site properly tuned.

I'll cover what tools to use during what parts of the web development process and how to ask the right questions in a later blog post.

For now, if you have any questions about any of those tools or any other tool to solicit user feedback, let me know in the comments.

Using these tactics together will lead to increased search engine traffic, and despite what you may have heard, some of the most effective SEO tactics cost next to nothing.

Here are 3 essential tips for launching an effective SEO campaign.

#1 – Spend time researching your keywords

Nothing will stop your SEO campaign in it's tracks faster than poor keyword selection. Having content that contains the keywords people will use to find your site is the single most important part of optimizing your site for search engine find-ability.

There are a number of tools (free and paid) available to help you find the words people are using to search for content like yours. Your two best options are likely to be: Google Adwords Keyword Tool (Free) and WordTracker.com (Paid).

Look for variations of words that you are already using, look at what words your competitors are using and keep an eye out for long tail phrases that could help direct specifically interested readers directly to the parts of your site that you want them to find.

#2 – Create an abundance of quality content

When it comes to creating a budget-friendly search engine optimization strategy, you can't go wrong with good quality content. Write your own blog posts, articles and reports on topics you are knowledgeable about. Hire a copy-writer or ghost writer to work based on your drafts or outlines. Use private label content (PLC) from third party sources and tweak it to meet your needs. Do whatever you can (short or plagiarism) to produce content that your visitors will want to read.

Make sure you follow the two golden rules of posting content on your site:

1. Only post content that is relevant to your readers
   Nothing will send potential repeat-visitors away faster then a web site full of content that they aren't interested in. Keep an eye on your analytics and read other similar blogs and industry publications to find relevant and interesting topics to write about.
    
   

2. Don't forget to include your keywords
   There's little point in creating great new content if it's not going to get found in the search engines by your target audience. Make sure that whoever is writing your content keeps a list of your most valuable keywords next to them as they write.

3 – Get the word out

Links from other sites to your site generate traffic and boost SEO. Links from popular, heavily trafficked sites boost SEO even more. There are a number of ways to increase the number of links pointing to you site:

• Participate on social networking sites and market your website and your content. Include a link to your website in your profiles and link to new content in your posts.
• Write press releases and submit them to online press release websites, which will create incoming links and media attention.
• Submit your site to as many business and aggregate directories as you can. Business directories create relevant, high-quality links to your website. You can start with Yahoo Business Directory and DMOZ.
• Partner with other business owners in your industry to link to each other, guest blog or article swap. Partnering with others is a great way to get exposure and increase your SEO for next to nothing.

Follow these steps and constantly strive to improve your keyword research, content creation and inbound link building. Before you know it, your web site will be generating more search engine traffic than you know what to do with.

In this article, I will explain how using job posting and resume sites (like Monster.com) will help you answer a number of important questions about you potential site visitors and influence how you speak to them.

By the end of this exercise, you will gain insight into the following factors that will affect how you speak to your site visitors:

• Which keywords and phrases to use when speaking to them
• What motivational factors would lead them to purchase your product or service
• Whether or not they are decision-makers and are able to purchase your product / service
• Various demographic information such as: age, education and salary
• What their level of familiarity with technology is

This article will not help you identify your target audience—that’s your job—but it will help you research information about them, once you have already determined (or guessed) who they are.

Step 1 - Define Your Audience

Before you can create a profile   of your site visitors, you must first figure out who they are (or at least, who you think and hope your web site target audience is going to be).

If you've been in business for a while, you should already have a good idea who your target audience is. Pull information from data that have you already collected through forms, registrations, orders, surveys, business cards, etc., and make use of that wealth of contact information.

If you're developing a new site or product, you might not know who your exact audience is going to be. In this case, you should resort to brainstorming and researching businesses that sell products similar to yours in order to determine who your target audience might be.

At this stage, the three most important characteristics that you should be looking for when trying to determine a very general target audience for a business-to-business web site are:

1. Industry / market
2. Job title / position
3. Size of company

Since your site will likely focus on more than one audience, you should list as many combinations of the above that make sense for your business.

Step 2 - Learn About Your Audience

Once you have prepared a list of target audiences from Step 1, it's time to get started with your research, using job posting & resume sites.

Most job posting sites like Monster, Workopolis and Dice will let you browse job postings for free. Start by looking for job positions that match exactly with the criteria you developed in the first step, and widen your net incrementally if you are having trouble finding enough matches.

You might notice as you search that the industries you are targeting use slightly different names for some of their job positions than you originally thought. This is fine, as long as the job descriptions closely match what you had in mind as you were defining your target audiences. This is the first of many opportunities that you will have to refine your target audience profiles.

Collect 5-7 of the most detailed job postings for each of your target audience profiles. You should be looking for well defined and sufficiently detailed examples of:

• General job descriptions
• Lists of job responsibilities
• Knowledge, skills, abilities required
• Desired qualifications / education

Other important fields to keep an eye out for that are not always listed but can still provide valuable insight, include:

• Whom the position reports to
• Whether they are part of a team or work independently
• What the salary expectations are
• Whether the position is part-time or full-time
• Whether the applicant can always or sometimes work from home

You can always resort to searching through more industry-specific job posting sites or browsing through the "Now Hiring" sections of individual companies if you are having trouble finding enough job postings.

Step 3 - Gain Insight into Your Audience

Now that you've collected a wealth of information about each of your target audiences, you're going to want to read over the files a number of times. You will quickly start to see patterns and trends emerging for each of the individual audience groups.

Here are the some of important pieces of information you will want to keep an eye out for, where you can find each of them and why they are useful:

• Keywords and Phrases: As you read many of the job postings (especially in the descriptions and responsibilities), you will start to notice similar phrases and industry terms specific to each target audience. Mirroring this language when you speak to that audience will assist in building your credibility and getting them to trust that you understand their industry.
  
  
• Motivational Factors: Most job description and roles & responsibilities sections are very clear about what the expectations of the candidate are. Knowing the criteria that job candidates are being measured against within their own companies will help you to promote  your products and services to align with those measurements.
  
  
• Decision-making: Again, this is usually alluded to in the Job Description / Roles & Responsibilities section.  It will help you determine if this target audience group is able to purchase your product without authorization or if they will only be able to recommend it to their boss for purchase later.
  
  
• Familiarity with Technology: This information is easily teased out of job postings from the "Skills Required" section when they explain the proficiency required with certain software programs. Phrasing such as: "basic knowledge", "working knowledge" or "advanced user", will give you clues to the expected technical proficiencies. This information is important when building web sites to determine how tech-savvy your average user will be and knowing what phrases they will be familiar with.

• Education: Almost all job postings will list a required or preferred level of education. This will help you determine the readability level you should be targeting your writing at as well as to help guess at some of the topics that your readers might be knowledgeable about.
  
  
• Salary: Not all postings will list an expected salary, but enough of them might for you to get at least an idea of what each audience type will be earning.
  
  
• Age: This one can be a little tricky, but if you compare the education required with the number of years of experience and the general seniority of the position, you can usually determine the average age range.

Armed with a better understanding of each of your target audiences, you should be able to build a more detailed profile for each of them. These profiles will help guide you through many tough decisions that will need to be made over the course of planning, designing and deploying your web site.

Extra Credit

If you want to go a step further than just searching for job listings, you can search as though you were an employer looking to hire an employee and start browsing through potential candidate resumes. Keep in mind, though, that most sites will not let you browse through individual resumes unless you want to pay a monthly fee.

Including this technique in your research will be much more time-consuming and will require a larger sample size before you can start seeing trends amongst many individual employee demographics and skill sets. Resumes can also be helpful if you want to create detailed single user profiles or to help you determine target audience average age and gender.