Social Media has opened the door to a host of new marketing opportunities. Where major advertisers like Unilever were once limited to print, radio, television, direct mail and billboard advertising, the internet has opened up a host of new promotional opportunities for brands large and small.

Unilever, you may know, is the company behind such iconic ice cream brands as Breyer’s, Good Humor and Klondike Bars. They have long been ahead of the curve when it comes to advertising and marketing (“What would you do for a Klondike Bar?”).

It shouldn’t be surprising that Unilever understands new media as well as they do old media. They are now reaching out to influential bloggers, offering them free tastes of some of their classic products. Today, a virtual cornucopia of ice cream products arrived at the offices of Blue Fountain Media. When the feeding frenzy was done, the ice cream was gone, but the good will remains.

Does this kind of marketing work? The fact that you are reading this should provide the answer.

As marketing specialists, we at Blue Fountain Media appreciate creative work done by others. Our hats are off to Unilever for their blogger outreach!

We regularly counsel clients on how to leverage social media to enhance their marketing efforts. We help our clients with blogger outreach, Twitter and Facebook promotions and dozens of other social media platforms. If you are looking for help with social media outreach, online marketing or any web-related project, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

Again Unilever, well done!

Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Marketing, Alhan Keser, was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and Smart Money’s SMSmallBiz.com in a story covering Pay-Per-Click advertisements. In an extended interview, Keser helped explain why paid advertisements resulted in higher conversion rates–the ratio of users who actually make a purchase–when compared to the organic, unpaid search results.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

The reason for the differential: Conversion rates tend to improve as shoppers progress through the buying cycle, says Alhan Keser, an SEM specialist at Blue Fountain Media, a boutique web site development and online marketing firm in New York. Although search engine users typically troll organic results to conduct online research, they start favoring sponsored links when they’re ready to buy, he says. “Most people who click on ads are ready to be sold to; they are at the buying stage,” Keser says.

Keser is a certified SEO and SEM expert, meaning he is well versed in all aspects of marketing through search engines–both improving organic results and paid results. Keser has previosuly been featured on Entrepreneur.com, in the Google section of About.com and is a guest expert for Ultra Light Startups–a forum for technology entrepreneurs.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which allows anyone to send messages directly to a pre-determined list of users. (For more info about what email marketing is, check out this post, “11 Reasons to Use Email Marketing”)

Not all email delivery methods are created equal.

Everyone with an email account knows how to send an email. Most of us send out dozens every day. When it comes to sending out bulk emails, though, you are far wiser to rely on a professional email marketing service.

Using a consumer- or business-grade email account to send out your marketing emails can lead to big problems. Systems like Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. are simply not equipped to send out bulk emails and lack the features necessary to execute a successful email marketing campaign.

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What is Email Marketing?

If you have an email address, you’ve seen plenty of examples of email marketing. A clothing store might tell you about some new styles, a car dealership might let you know about a special financing deal, a local restaurant might let you know about new menu items.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which allows anyone to send messages directly to a pre-determined list of users. These messages can be anything from simple, plain text to rich, graphic-laden pages (similar to normal websites). Email marketing messages are delivered right to the recipient’s inbox, just like normal email.

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A while back I went over the basics of search advertising, or pay-per-click. These are still the best place to start, and can be broken down into four areas:

• Keywords: do keyword research, and use keyword groups to segment your audiences. Also use different match types to make sure you’re targeting the right users at the right times in their buying cycle, but not overpaying for lower-performance phrases.
• Ad copy: Use keywords in your ad copy, and prioritize the relevance of what you’re advertising (in relation to the search terms) over branding or your company name.
• Landing page: Make sure your landing page is relevant to your keywords, and ads.
• Performance Tracking: Know what metrics are important to your business; monitor and improve your campaigns over time through controlled testing.

But what if you’re already doing all that? Here are the next 8 steps:
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In 2010, Facebook will develop new tools to measure the ROI of marketing and advertising on their platform.

During the first day of Social Media Week 2010, Fabio Freyre (Facebook’s VP of Advertising), hinted that Facebook is currently in advanced stages of “developing additional tools and analytics” to measure online and offline engagement within their own platform. These tools will be stronger and more robust than the tools Facebook has previously made available, which merely poll users about brands.

One of the biggest questions regarding social media and engagement is, “how do we measure this stuff?” There are professional agencies that are dedicated to measuring social awareness, buzz, engagement, and ultimately return on investment (ROI).

Specifically with Facebook, how does one know how much value to place on a “fan” (a person who has attached themselves to the Facebook page of a company, brand, or organization) of a particular brand? How much is that fan worth? What is the scale of engagement that fan has with his “community”?
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There’s been a lot of speculation about Google Caffeine. When will it launch? What will change? What will happen to my results?

The speculation needs to stop. Caffeine is almost certainly live right now—the next query you type into Google will probably reflect Caffeine’s changes.
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New Single-Day E-Commerce Record of $913 million part of $27 Billion In Online Spending for 2009 Holiday Season

Back in early December I noted that holiday sales were off to a good start. Now that the holiday shopping season is over, it’s clearer than ever that having a strong e-Commerce strategy is more important than ever. While brick and mortar stores saw little or even negative growth this holiday season, e-commerce enjoyed a 5% increase in sales over last year.

And all of these numbers only account for sales within the United States!

$634,027 Per Minute

Tuesday, December 15 marked a new single-day spending record as consumers spent an average of over $600,000 per minute. By the end of the day, a staggering $913 million had been spent online, the first such day to surpass the $900 million threshold.

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The Dangers of Not Having A Website

Not having a website is like voluntarily wearing a muzzle.

Clients regularly come to Blue Fountain Media looking for help with their online reputation. These clients fall into two categories: a) Those who want to build their online presence in general; and b) Those who want to build an online presence in response to specific events.

Problems inevitably occur in business, and it’s important to be prepared. Having a web presence means you have a forum to communicate with the outside world. If When something happens, people will turn to your website and blog for information.

Here’s an example of a big company neglecting their online presence and (probably) regretting it:

An Example: AT&T Has Trouble Communicating

iPhone sales have been halted in New York City and AT&T has given no explanation.

Over 500 news articles about the New York iPhone debacle

Last night The Consumerist & CNET reported that AT&T had stopped selling the iPhone in the greater New York area. News immediately spread though the internet and the story was almost quickly picked up by the main stream media (e.g. New York Times, CNN). With no direct channel for finding out information about AT&T, the media ended up quoting numerous conflicting sources.

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Last week one of my colleagues posted an article to BFM’s Business Learning Center entitled “How To Write a Blog That Drives Traffic to Your Website and Revenue to Your Business“. The article is a fantastic guide to creating a great blog for you business. If you still aren’t convinced that your company needs a blog, here are some numbers that should help you make up your mind.

An analysis of 1,531 web-marketing clients showed a huge difference between those who blog and those who do not. Here is the key info:

• 55% More Visitors for Companies That Blog (a measurement of the number of people that visit any page of a company’s site)
• 97% More Inbound Links (other sites linking to any page of a company’s site)
• 434% More Indexed Pages (how many of a company’s pages can be found on Google/Yahoo!/Bing)

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