The day's big news of Google's precipitous drop in share price concealed the fact that Google's average CPC is down 15% from a year ago. This decline in one of Google's key performance metrics has potentially far more long-term consequences than a silly printer's mistake. Yesterday’s premature release of Google’s disappointing quarterly earnings caused a major melt … [Read more...]
Consolidate, Optimize and Maximize
You can maximize the performance of your marketing campaigns by consolidating all of them under a single ad platform. This will save time on administrative tasks, offer comprehensive analytics on campaigns across multiple channels and help you optimize them accordingly. Affiliate software is in a unique position to consolidate campaigns from across different channels because it … [Read more...]
Business Process Improvement
In the past, the utility industry could consider itself exempt from market drivers like those listed above. However, today's utilities are immersed in a sea of change. Customers demand reliable power in unlimited supply, generated in environmentally friendly ways without increased cost. All the while regulators are telling consumers to "change the way they are using energy or … [Read more...]
Successful Smart Grid Architecture
The smart grid is progressing well on several fronts. Groups such as the Grid Wise Alliance, events such as Grid Week, and national policy citations such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the U.S., for example, have all brought more positive attention to this opportunity. The boom in distributed renewable energy and its demands for a bidirectional grid are … [Read more...]
Skinflint Search Marketing
I admit it - I'm a skinflint. Call me a tightwad, a miser - I don't care. Basically, I'm cheap. And even if you're not cheap by personality, you might need to conserve cash by necessity. If that's your situation, don't despair. The Internet is tailor-made for you. Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, is the land of the free. So step up, you skinflints, and … [Read more...]
Leveraging the Data Deluge: Integrated Intelligent Utility Network
If you define a machine as a series of interconnected parts serving a unified purpose, the electric power grid is arguably the world's largest machine. The next-generation version of the electric power grid - called the intelligent utility network (IUN), the smart grid or the intelligent grid, depending on your nationality or information source - provides utilities with … [Read more...]
Improving Call Center Performance Through Process Enhancements
The great American philosopher Yogi Berra once said, "If you don't know where you're going, chances are you will end up somewhere else." Yet many utilities possess only a limited understanding of their call center operations, which can prevent them from reaching the ultimate goal: improving performance and customer satisfaction, and reducing costs. Utilities face three key … [Read more...]
Search Marketing Is Direct Marketing
When I say the word "marketing," what do you think of? Probably some kind of advertising - maybe a TV commercial for Coke. That's brand marketing, and it's gotten the lion's share of attention from marketers for decades. Far fewer people are direct marketers - the folks behind the catalogs and mail solicitations that fill our mailboxes. If you know any direct marketers, you may … [Read more...]
Overcoming Your SEO Fears
Ask nearly everyone and they'll say that search engine optimization is intimidating. Search engine optimization - SEO for short - should be a familiar term and practice for anyone or any commercial company with a website. SEO is what you do to your website to get a higher ranking on search engines,particularly Google,Yahoo and MSN.The higher you rank the more likely someone … [Read more...]
Do Your Metrics Measure Up?
Steve DiPietro is amazed at how frequently he listens to prospective clients parroting clickthrough percentages, Web traffic statistics and conversion ratios with great enthusiasm but little-to-no understanding of their value to their organizations. Increasing a conversion rate from 12 to 15 percent can become a goal unto itself as marketers immersed in number crunching can … [Read more...]
Taking It Offline
If baseball is the thinking person's game, then online advertising is the thinking person's medium. Much like the national pastime, part of the draw of online advertising comes from the ability to break down performance into limitless particles of useful (and useless) information, such as batting average with runners in scoring position after the 7th inning, or the clickthrough … [Read more...]
Hybrid Auctions Are Taking Over
As author Robert C. Gallagher observes, "Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine." And so it comes as no surprise that paid search engines are changing too. The biggest change is one of the most fundamental, affecting which paid ads are shown first in the results. The tried-and-true high bidder auctions, pioneered by Overture (later acquired by Yahoo), are being … [Read more...]
Power Tools
Sometimes even the simplest tasks can only be performed using the right tools. There's no point in using a chain saw when a paring knife will do the job.These are not reviews, ratings or recommendations. It's just a collection of software, services and tools that we've come across and wanted to share with you. Here they are in no specific order.T3Report.comCyData Services Inc., … [Read more...]
Casting a Wider Net
Podcasting is emerging as an interesting and potentially lucrative opportunity for online marketers who want to reach a wider audience.The figures for podcasting vary, but by all counts the podcasting market is poised to explode and online marketers want in. A report from The Diffusion Group, a technology research consulting firm, showed that the use of podcasts is expected to … [Read more...]
Analyze This
Affiliates are capitalizing on the predictable behavioral patterns of consumers by using Web analytics tools to decode customers' habits and boost revenue. So if you're a publisher and want to know who exactly is visiting your site, how different types of visitors come back, what they are looking for when they arrive and what specifically makes them want to leave, you should … [Read more...]