In Response to Hayley's Blog Regarding Earth Day Advertising

I applaud what Starbucks did on Earth Day, especially since they've held back on giving stuff for free lately. I remember getting many coupons for free items at Starbucks before but not so much now.

Starbucks's way was the proper way to approach "green" marketing strategies, whereas other companies simply capitalize on this "trend" by changing the appearance of a product to mislead their customers into believing that they've changed their product for the better.

Dan posted about McDonald's incorporating "healthier" products to appeal to new markets but in reality, these new salads are just as unhealthy as their burgers, so who are they trying to fool?

Many companies lack social responsibility which should be taken into consideration when creating a marketing strategy, in this case Starbucks did it in such a way that it benefitted them, the earth and the consumer.

SEO as a Powerful Marketing Tool

I'm sure you've heard me about a billion times in class - It's been a handful of times that I've mentioned the significanceof Search Engine Optimization as a marketing tool for any business. The internet has made businesses available to just about everybody with a computer. All that an interested party needs to do is to type in words to find a product that they're looking for.

Oftentimes they'll also use the search engine provided by Google, and google uses very complex algorithms to rank your site's popularity so that when you type in "best vegan restaurant in Keene, NH" Google will use those keywords and bring you the site that matches most of those keywords.

The algorithm is so complicated that it even looks at spelling and grammatical errors to rank any website.

For photographers, this is a specially important marketing tool that we must take advantage of.

Zach Prez has a blog with tips and advice for photographers about S.E.O.

Ever since I implemented his 20 quick tips I've been getting inquiries from new clients interested in photography services. The results are visible almost instantly. I also recently began testing adwords and in the past week I've received 4 different inquiries about wedding photography and two more for portraits.

I cannot stress the importance of Google enough.

How do you think we could implement Google tools into Country Life as a way to increase traffic online and offline?

In Response to Jackie's Blog Regarding Content Marketing

I'm glad you brought this up because I think that an important part of online marketing is understanding in what stage of the buying process a potential customer is.

What companies now want to do is reach customers when they are ready to make a purchase but in my opinion that's extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Google offers ways in which businesses can try to reach customers when they are ready to buy a product. They have made agreements with several businesses and created a network that advertisers can analyze on the internet to see whether or not their should spend money advertising their product on certain websites. Sounds complicated but I'll try to explain.

For example, if a business sells bicycle clothing, they can choose to advertise on websites that are all about bicycle accessories or even forums that people use to discuss cycling, etc... this way, instead of spending money on advertising to a global audience, they can advertise to a very specific and small group of people that is much more likely to be ready to buy their product.

Here's the Google Display Network

The statistics are quite amazing... Just the other day I searched for statistical data about The Knot which is a website that provides resources primarily to women who are engaged. They have a very expensive and prestigious vendor program that costs a lot of money if you want to advertise with them. Just our of curiosity I looked to see what their audience's interests were and none of them are photography services so now I know that as a wedding photographer, if I ever wanted to invest advertising money at the Knot, I would be wasting my time.

Are there any other tools provided by Google that are powerful for marketing? How could else could you use Google's Display Network to improve your marketing plan?

Abstract Marketing

One of the photography blogs I subscribe to for tips and inspiration recently interviewed a celebrity photographer who has implemented an incredibly unique form of marketing for his business. This photographer's name is Kareem Black and he calls it "Abstract Marketing"

Here's a video interview where he explains his way of marketing his photography:

His product is flexible enough that he has the ability to use this kind of marketing. However, I think that other products might not allow this kind of creativity because it would not reflect the brand.

This was his method of abstract marketing. Can anyone else think of any other ways that a company can use abstract marketing to create "buzz" about a product?

In Response to Dan's Blog about Fast-Food Promoting Health...

We see this time and time again not only with fast-food companies but with any company that is trying to capitalize on the popularity "green and healthy" products.

At the grocery store there's soaps, chips, beauty products and even desserts that are marketed to appear "healthier" or "good for the environment."

I don't think that these companies should get away with it. They're not actually providing a better product, they're simply manipulating its image to convince consumers that they've changed their product. This is misleading and as consumers we should not allow them to get away with it.

Unfortunately, legislation only goes so far in monitoring and controlling these misleading marketing tactics but as consumers we should do our homework before we purchase a product and not fall prey to these lies that continue to make these companies richer at the expense of our money and health.

Using Google Analytics to Benchmark & Track Progress

I've been using Google Analytics to track the behaviors of my visitors when they visit my website. This helps me identify pages that they spend the most time on, which pages they visit and which ones they don't. It also helps me identify how much of my web traffic is new traffic and how much of my traffic are returning visitors. This way I can see whether or not any changes I make to my site to increase its ranking are working or not.

When William Faulkner visited our class one of the things that he said that I found most memorable was that we needed to set measurable goals as a way to determine whether our marketing plan is working.

For my photography business, one of the ways I measure the success of my marketing strategies is through Google Analytics and its benchmarking tools.

What better way to track progress than through numbers? These tools are completely free and incredibly powerful.

In Response to Chris's Blog Regarding Egypt

I absolutely agree that countries should take a marketer's approach to encourage interest in their country. After all, so many countries rely on tourism as a large source of income and the better they're able to market themselves the more people will want to visit.

Take Australia, for example: A while back they had a contest that would allow two people to live on the coast of Australia, all expenses paid for two years so long as they would blog their experience.

This was a very creative and unique way of Australia to get people interested in their tourism industry. They had millions of entries, which suggests that they were able to reach a huge audience and they were able to promote themselves in a way that is memorable.

How could Egypt use a creative marketing strategy to create revenue?