Lead generation is really about generating leads at the most cost-effective price possible. Display advertising is a great channel to achieve this because there is a lot of inventory on various, relevant Websites that can be utilized on a monthly basis. To succeed, it’s all about understanding how the game’s played and taking the necessary steps to win. The starting point is to buy the advertising space at the most efficient price possible. The first thing to look at is if the site is charging a fixed rate for the month or charging on a CPM (cost per thousand) impressions basis. To compare different display advertising options, work the numbers back to a CPM basis. For example, if the vendor quotes a fixed rate but your ad is one of four ads running in the ad space, ask for the total number of monthly impressions for the page that you are considering advertising on, divide the number of impressions by four, then work it back to a cost per thousand.

The next thing to keep in mind when comparing ads is placement. You want to compare apples to apples. You also want to stay away from ad space below the fold unless the price is considerably lower. Once you have an understanding of pricing from the various vendors, develop a short list and ask them if they have any remnant inventory or if they can discount the pricing. The bottom line is if you want to make display advertising work for lead generation, not brand building, you can’t pay rate card pricing.

After you have negotiated the best possible price, you want to work on your creative. Start by reviewing the competition. Many of your competitors may be running ads that they have already tested and are working well for them. Look for trends in what the market may be responding to. If you have tested messaging and creative for the same audience through other channels, try to test similar messaging that has worked in the past. Start with two different ads with only a single element that is different and split test two ads. You want to make sure that you are learning what works and what does not.

A great example of testing is when we were marketing a product to the engineering audience. We tested an animated banner versus a static, single frame ad, with the same message. Which one do you think won? If you guessed the static ad, you are right. This does not mean that animated banners do not work. It just shows that sometimes less is better and you don’t know until you test. We also tested innovation versus tradition and heritage in terms of look and feel. Heritage beat innovation and there was no way for us to know without testing. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say, that I thought the innovative look and feel looked considerably better from a design perspective, but it simply did not produce an optimal result.

So now you have negotiated a great price. You have developed multiple ads and tested them. What else should you look at? The answer is your landing page. Whether you are driving the traffic to a landing page (squeeze page) or Website, you want to ensure that it is converting at the highest rate possible. So how do you achieve this? The same way you do with banner ads, split test and don’t give up. It’s a continuous process.

Lastly, don’t forget that you are selling something and you are telling a story. And it all starts from your advertising and your Website. If you have any questions regarding any of these steps, feel free to ask. We’d be happy to help!

What Google had in mind when designing the Google Wallet was to develop an “open commerce ecosystem,” in which mobile phone users could store all of their card information while simultaneously keeping a record of payments, loyalty cards, receipts, tickets, boarding passes and believe it or not, even your keys. The advantage? No more bulky contraption full to bursting out of your pant pocket.

Google Wallet allows users to use Citi®, MasterCard® and Google’s own Prepaid Card, allowing individuals to tap into hundreds of thousands of merchants. But wait – it gets even better. At its launch date, Google technology permits compatibility with Nexus S 4G (to all Sprint users), and will expand to more phones in the future.

So what does this mean for the future of commerce? One aspect that may change is how business transactions will be made faster (and perhaps easier) than usual. As we continue to propel forward into a more socially enhanced society with advancements in technology, people are feeling more confident and less intimidated about doing business on the Internet. Business may not only be quicker and easier), but more inviting with the open commerce system.

One risk is fraud, which has always been ever-present and a factor in deterring people (especially older people) from using the Internet to carry out personal financial information. Although Google has always strived to make things more simple and easy-to-use than its competitors (not to mention topping the list for being innovative), Google Wallet is yet another application for users to properly understand and navigate. Such skills are required before, say, accidentally sending credit card information to a stranger!

As Google attempts to make its Google Wallet “the one thing that holds everything you need to carry,” the mass conglomerate continues to push the envelope with new technological innovations, whether is being the number one search engine or replacing your wallet with your phone (how do they do it!?).

In an interview with Bloomberg News outlining the trends shown in a recently released survey of top advertising agencies, Shelton remarked that, overall, the industry feels “very good about where advertising is going.”

“The recession for advertising is over,” Shelton observed, while adding the cautionary note that it is not a boom per se. Rather, “we’re in that place between bottom and top.”

While traditional advertising outlets – print, television, radio and (yes) online media buys – reported substantial gains, Shelton noted that both social media marketing and mobile advertising struggled somewhat, as advertisers struggled with how to best implement social media marketing strategies and how to tap into the growing mobile market.

“What we’re seeing,” said Shelton, “is that social media is sort of staying with the advertisers and not going off to the agencies. And, secondly, we don’t believe that the ROI for social media is quite as obvious. So while (advertisers) know that something is good there, they are not quite able to put it back to the bottom line so they are being a bit more careful.”

“There was (also) a lot of expectations for mobile advertising,” he noted, “but right now we don’t have the technology that makes it useful. The blowout isn’t there yet. Lot’s of people (are) looking at it, but when it comes to putting dollars there, we don’t see it.”

According to a recent study on social network IDs used by web users to sign-in to websites to share content, conducted by Janrain, Facebook surpassed Google to become the top choice for social sign-in the first quarter of 2011. In the last quarter of 2010, Google was still the top choice being used by 38% internet users and Facebook ranked second with 27%.

According to the latest report, Facebook is the most popular choice for sign-ins being used by 35% consumers, while Google ranks second with 31%. Other networks make up the rest with Yahoo! at 13%, Twitter at 7%, Windows Live at 6% and others (like AOL, LinkedIn and Myspace) at 8%. Twitter, although used by only 7% consumers for social sign-in, is used to share 32% of the total content distributed by users through social networks. This indicates that consumers use it extensively for content sharing although they are not comfortable in using it as their principal social login.

Facebook is the most preferred content sharing platform and accounts for 58% of the total content shared via social media. Twitter accounts for 32% content, LinkedIn 13%, Yahoo! 9% and Myspace 4%.  Social sharing is important for company internet marketing as it spreads word of mouth. Being equally beneficial for both marketers and consumers, social sign-in is likely to gain further popularity in near future.

Choose the right forum

The first thing you need to do is find out which online forums are popular among your target audience. You may find multiple such forums. Start by becoming an active member of just one forum. Once you establish yourself as a prominent member, you may consider joining another forum.

Post frequently

It is unrealistic to post many times a day for just a week and expect it to bring you traffic forever. Being active is essential to get traffic from online forums. You need to post regularly and frequently. Once you get the hang of it, forum posting can be fun. Forums are also a great place to get ideas for your blog posts.

Provide quality content

Regardless of whether your website provides some information or sells some products/services, you need to ensure that the content at your website is of top quality. The quality of content represents your credibility in the eyes of customers. This holds true for forums as well. It’s a good idea to create content specifically for forum posting. If you need to answer a question, avoid single word answers, instead offer informative and useful replies. This will help in establishing yourself as a subject expert and drive targeted traffic to your website.

Ensure that the search box is easy to find

There are a number of websites, where you need to search for the search box. Make sure that your website is not one of these. The search box should be large enough to be easily visible, but not too large. It should be so placed that it’s impossible to miss it.

Offer filtered navigation

Filtered navigation is especially important, if your website offers a number of products. It can enhance your website usability considerably. There are many internet users, who prefer using navigation menus, rather than your search box. Filtered navigation ensures that such visitors are able to find desired products easily.

Match your landing pages and promotional messages

It is important that your landing pages offer visitors exactly what they expect based on your banner ads, paid search ads and email campaigns. It’s best to make use of the similar imagery, headline, pricing and offer.

Speed up your web pages

Page load speed is one of the determining factors for website usability and customer satisfaction. In a Forrester survey, 79% participants said that the possibility of repeat purchase from a website with slow loading pages was less, 75% were less likely to return to such a site and 40% said that they would move away from a site that didn’t load within 3 seconds. These figures should be enough to convince you to speed up your web pages.

Product reviews

According to several studies, displaying product reviews on your product page can increase conversions by as much as 30%. So if your product has enough reviews, make use of them to boost your sales. If your product is new, you may not have many reviews. In this case, you will have to wait until you collect enough number of reviews before displaying them on the product page.

Product descriptions

Effective descriptions can increase your conversions significantly. Many website owners make use of descriptions offered by product manufacturers. These descriptions usually stress product attributes rather than its benefits for the customers. As a result they may not give desired result.

Also, competing websites selling products from the same manufacturer may end up with similar descriptions on their sites. Preparing a custom copy of product descriptions and testing them against manufacturer provided descriptions will help in optimizing product pages.

Product availability

Ensure that your product page provides information on its availability. An effective way of displaying this information is to inform customers about limited stock and encourage them to make an immediate purchase. Linking your ecommerce website to an inventory system will help ensure that your website provides up-to-date information about product availability.

Last, but not the least, taking the help of a SEO company can prove to be invaluable in optimizing your product pages.

Increased importance of social media metrics

According to a Harris Interactive study, overall 87% of adult internet users are active on social networking sites. 22% spend at least 1 hour per week on social sites, while 17% users, in the age bracket of 18-34, spend as much as 6-10 hours on social networking per week.

Today social media marketing is an essentials part of the overall marketing mix for a majority of online businesses. Marketers are no more merely testing social media waters, but plunging into it headlong. It has become more important than ever to optimize social media efforts by monitoring social metrics with the use of analytical data and tools.

Over the last one or two years, there has been a considerable hike in social media marketing budgets. With the growing budgets, the need to measure ROI from social media efforts has also assumed greater importance.

Greater usage of video marketing

Video marketing is rapidly gaining popularity. It is not only one of the most effective means of communication, but also provides SEO benefits. As a result, video marketing platforms like YouTube are getting greater attention from marketers.

Comeback of direct marketing

Direct marketing is one of the oldest methods of marketing. After being out of fashion for quite some time, it is making a comeback this year. But this time around, direct marketing will involve use of new methods like social networking and email.

The only way to find out for sure what works best for your website is through testing. There are some tried and tested guidelines that many marketers have found useful. But no two websites are same, so testing different colors, formats and positioning is the only way to identify what is best for your website. Here are a few tips you may find useful.

If your website has a dark background color, ad units with contrasting border and background may give better results than the units that blend in. But if your website has a light color scheme, ad units that blend in may be preferred. Ad blindness is an issue for websites having many repeat visitors. You can reduce this by rotating the color used in ad background.

Blue is believed to be an effective color for links. But you can match the color of your Adsense links to that of the other links on your website. For instance, if all the links on your website are green in color, you can use the same color for your Adsense links. It is best to avoid use of borders for ads placed inside content, but you can use them for ads not placed within content. For such ads borders help in drawing more attention to them.

Highlight various benefits in your headline

Headline is the first thing noticed by your website visitors. It needs to be effective enough to attract their attention and get them interested in reading your sales copy. The best way of making your headline effective is by highlighting the problem faced by your target customers and stressing on benefits of service or product that you offer in solving it. Meaning, the headline should not only convey what the product is, but also what it does for the customers.

Instill a sense of urgency in your sales copy

A sales copy that conveys a sense of urgency to the readers encourages immediate purchases. Especially at the end of the copy, you need to instill urgency in your call to action. You can make use of phrases like ‘limited period offer’ or ‘buy now and win exciting prizes’ for this purpose.

Offer a single service or product on your home page

If your website offers a number of products, you can try this strategy. Many marketers find that offering less number of products/services at a place translates into higher sales. You can make changes in your sales copy accordingly, describing these products/services in greater detail. This means that rather than trying to increase sale of all your products, you will be concentrating on few products to boost your overall sales. The strategy has been found useful by many marketers and is definitely worth trying out.