Advertising is figuring out what people want, helping people realize what they want, then convincing them that you can give them whatever that may be.
While that concept hasn’t changed, advertising has been forced to evolve as society, technology, and consumers’ expectations change.
The concept of advertising really began to take off after World War II. America was in a very prosperous state; soldiers were coming home and starting families which created a great opportunity for advertisers to sell products. Most advertisements at this time were print and art work that were not very specifically targeted.
In the late 1960s, more ads moved from artwork to photography. As televisions became more of a household item,more brands used television advertisements to market their products. This is also when marketers started to look to psychology to help better target customers.
Over the next 40 years, marketers concentrated more of their efforts on market research and a greater focus on consumer behavior became a common theme in advertisements.
The advertisement landscaped changed as the internet evolved. The first types of advertisements on the internet were very simple banner and pop-up advertisements. As the internet evolved into more of a marketplace, advertising evolved as well. Now, advertisements on the internet can be catered specifically to a user by tracking other sites they have visited. The types of advertisements have evolved as well. The most popular type of advertisement now is advergaming, where consumers can play product driven games that are meant to promote a certain product or brand. Pretty amazing!!
Don Draper, 1960s ad man.
When I first encountered a retargeting ad catered towards me, I felt uneasy. I was on YouTube and the ad was for the exact guitar I was just looking at on Amazon.com. I knew how cookies worked, but for some reason when I saw the ad for the guitar it became all to clear that I was being watched. As soon as I saw the ad and realized why it was being shown, I immediately went to my browser options and deleted all my cookies.
As a marketing major, I can appreciate the ability to target ads to a specific person. The ability to know exactly what a potential customer is interested in and advertise specifically to that interest has clear benefits. It’s like attaching a used car sales person to any product you you are trying to sell. It may be annoying, but the persistence of the sales person, or in this case the ads, ultimately prevails.
While this type of targeting ability is powerful, its hard to ignore the controversial issue; what privacy rights is this type of technology violating? We all know that the internet is a very public platform, but people tend to ignore this fact. We can generally surf the web without any indication that someone may be tracking our activity. When an ad shows up that is so specific that it feels like big brother is watching, a certain degree of paranoia sets in. What good does that do a company who is trying to sell a product?
There is a middle ground for this kind of advertising. If companies can show ads that will interest a consumer without making them turn around in their chair to see if someone is watching, retargeting will 
be an effective way to advertise. If retargeting continues to strike paranoia in the hearts of internet shoppers, privacy laws will be set in place to combat this type of advertising.
Google Analytics…Analysis
Google Analytics Visits From Feb. 1 - April 23
For as long as this website has been up (the past three months), I have used Google Analytics to monitor the traffic to my site. The results are as follows:
Visits: 161
Avg. Visit Duration: 00:01:32
My overall reaction to these statistics leaves my pleasantly surprised. When I created this website I expected a few of my classmates, my professor and me to be the only ones to visit this site. I can credit the high number of visits to my Google Adwords campaign. As it shows in the graph above the number of visits spiked in late March because that is when I decided to jump start my three Adwords campaigns by pumping money into that I didn’t have and putting my ads on the display network… whoops. While this caused the number of visits to spike for a few days, it increased my bounce rate, and caused the average amount of time per visit to only be about a minute and a half.
But like I said before I am surprised by the amount of traffic I was able to generate. If I could do it over again, I would spend more time trying to generate traffic with SEO rather than PPC. Obviously it would be nice to drive traffic without having to pay for it but by formatting my site for SEO, I would be able to avoid the large spikes in page visits and lower my bounce rate.
A Semester in Review
Marketing 470, Strategic Internet Marketing with Dr. Clarke has been the most interactive course I have ever taken in college. The barrage of homework assignments along with the nearly daily class exercise forces every student to learn the material. Between Google Analytics, Google Adwords, WordPress, HTML and general internet marketing knowhow, the amount of information I have learned about Internet Marketing is unbelievable. As I conclude this course, I cant help but feel like an expert on the subject. The key takeaway from this class is that Internet Marketing should be a part of just about every business.
The Future
Without a doubt, this course has opened my eyes to a whole new set of options as a future Marketing Graduate. I never saw myself working primarily as an internet marketer, but now that I have some experience with it, the web may be my new calling. Along with being a major in Marketing, I am also minoring in Computer Information Systems. The combination of the two seems like a match mate for marketing on the internet.
Over the course of the semester, I optimized one of my pages using the phrase “Love JMU.” At the beginning of the semester, the page was not even in the first twenty pages when you typed “Love JMU” into Google. Now the page comes up on the sixth page as the eighth result.
I used several on page factors in an attempt to improve my position on the Google Search engine results page. I used the phrase “Love JMU” in the title of the page as well as in the header. The target phrase was splashed through the content of the page as well. I added a picture on the page and I named the picture “Love JMU” along with using the phrase in the description of the photo. Finally, I was able to use the phrase “Love JMU” three times within the description of the page.
When I used HubSpot’s Marketing Grader
(scored a 51/100) and Crawler FX (scored a 30/100… yikes), it became easy to see how I could improve my page’s visibility to search engines. HubSpot suggested that I used alt tags in my photos in order to help search engine crawlers know more about my page. Crawler FX liked the way I used my headers and descriptions to optimize my page but I needed more external links to my site.
If I had more time to optimize this page, I would do a few things differently. First, I would pay more attention to my social media tools and try to drive traffic to the page through things like Twitter and Facebook. Second, I would try to create external links pointing to my page. Finally, I would add alt tags to my pictures to help the search engine crawlers better view my page.
I have to admit, before taking Marketing 470 I was intimidated by online marketing. But after familiarizing me with all the tools available to online marketer throughout this semester, marketing on the Internet is more straightforward than I could have imagined. This is due largely in part to the array services that Google offers.
Google Webmaster Tools is the latest Google online marketing tool I have had a chance to familiarize myself with. Webmaster Tools is a free tool that allows users to check the indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. Some of the tools include the ability to check and set the crawl rate, view statistics about how Googlebot accesses a particular site, list internal and external page that link to the site, see what keywords searches on Google lead to the site being listed in the SERPs, and click through rates of such listings and view statistics about how Google indexes the site and if it found any errors while doing it.
I do not understand all of the beneficial features that Google Webmaster Tools has to offer, but some of the benefits are immediately apparent. As an example, a user can set keywords and see which keywords lead to more impressions and clicks, allowing the user to optimize the site to generate a higher rank on the SERP.
How the crawl rate and how the Googlebot works is very intriguing to me. I understand that Google “bugs” crawl a site and determine how relevant the site is to certain search queries but I don’t understand how changing the crawl rate will affect the SERP rank.
It is clear that Google Webmaster Tools is very powerful. I am excited to learn more about this tool.
Oh, by the way, check out how I was able to optimize my page using Google Webmaster Tools to optimize one of the pages on my site in this blog post
.
After all of this pay per click stuff that we have doing MKTG 470, it is pretty cool to hear from someone who does PPC for a living.
Lindsay Crone, a JMU class of 2008 alumni is a Creative Editor at The Search Agency in Baltimore, Maryland. Her job is to basically do what we have done for the past half month, but on a bigger scale. And when I say bigger scale, I mean Lindsay eats, sleeps, and breaths PPC advertising. As a Creative Editor, she is in charge of writing Google ads for her clients, picking the keywords, and bidding on those keywords in a way that will optimize her client’s campaigns. I was most intrigued by the amount of maintenance and planning that goes into what keywords to select for each campaign, and when to bid higher or lower for a specific set of keywords.
The Search Agency
It is clear Lindsay loves what she does. She explained how addicting optimizing PPC advertisements can be. After having some experience with PPC on a small scale, I can see why; knowing that every time you tweak an ad or ad group, the results are almost instantaneous. Having a job where you have to critically think every day to solve problems is the best kind of job.
That being said, Lindsay shared her story with us about how she eventually ended up with The Search Agency; it wasn’t such an easy path. Graduating in 2008, Lindsay was thrown right into the heat of one of the worst job markets in recent history. She did not find her passion right away, which is a fear any college senior can relate to. It was very refreshing to hear about someone who was once in my position and is now doing what they love as an account manager at The Search Agency.
This is the best time of the year for basketball fans, hands down.
The Men’s Division one NCAA college basketball tournament is unlike any playoff in sports. The format of the tournament and the nature of the game makes for one unpredictable game after another. But the reason why this tournament is a fan favorite is because it is interactive; anyone and everyone tries to predict the outcome.
For nearly the entire month of March, ESPN and all other sports channels have nearly 24 hour coverage of the games. In between the games, every sports analyst tries to explain how each game will end up. Yet, it seems every year the person who predicted the tournament results most accurately is someone who has absolutely no basketball knowledge at all.
Never the less, I think I have picked out the best bracket and here is why…
As you can see from the bracket below, I have Kentucky beating Ohio State in the final with Kansas and Missouri as the other final four teams.
The common theme this year has been the dominance of teams with solid big men. That is why all of the teams I have in the elite eight have a dominant post at there core. I have Duke falling to Kentucky because while the Plumlees have a great inside presence, they can be inconsistent at times and that’s when Duke falls apart. Duke is also a team that lives or dies by the three-point shot and they have been struggling with their outside shooting game as of late. Kentucky will prove to be to much for Duke to handle.
Missouri is the team that I know least about out of all of my final four teams. What I do know is they are the overall most athletic team in the tournament. While Michigan State is also a well rounded team, I think Missouri will play at a pace that Michigan State will not be able to handle.
As far as Ohio State and Syracuse is concerned, this will be the most unpredictable game of the elite eight. I give a slight edge to Ohio State because Jared Sullinger is the most skilled post in the league and because point guard Aaron Craft will be able to find Sullenger through the Syracuse zone.
I have Kansas topping North Carolina Because like Duke, North Carolina has struggled against teams who have a real inside post presence.
The Kansas Ohio State match up in the final four is a tossup. I expect the team who controls the offensive glass to win the game. I give the slight edge to Kansas because they play a little more physical inside.
When it comes to the final game, Kentucky is simply to talented at each position. The team is loaded with future NBA players and while Kansas will play them close, Kentucky will be in control the entire game.
As far as the rest of the bracket goes its anyone’s guess on where the upsets will come. That is the beauty of March Madness.
I was the biggest Twitter skeptic out there. I could not grasp the idea of how anyone could be vain enough to talk about him/her. I understood how Twitter could be used as a marketing tool but I did not understand the advantages of Twitter over other social media sites like Facebook. That all changed THIS VERY NIGHT.
Keep in mind that tonight is the first night I have ever used Twitter
I just happened to be attending a Washington Capitals game so I logged on to Twitter during our drive into DC (I was in the passenger seat, of course). I proceeded to read tweets as they came in and I found myself very entertained. Many of my classmates that I was following were completing the same assignment I was for Mktg 470 so it was fun to see them tweeting about the class. I also checked out posts from some of the marketing professionals who I follow. And I saw a lot of tweets about the Capitals game that I was about to go see.
After about an hour of reading tweets in the car, I was making my way to my seat at the Verizon Center. Here I composed my first tweet. I was simply cheering on the Capitals.
After that first Tweet, I was hooked.
Besides tweeting the required content for this assignment, I felt the urge to tweet about pretty much the entire game as I watched it. At this point, it was easy to see why Twitter seemed so addicting to some people.
By the end of the night, it became obvious to me how Twitter can become the ultimate marketing tool for businesses and individuals alike. Twitter is instant information that can spread like wild fire. This is because Twitter is much simpler than other social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. The profiles that come with Facebook and LinkedIn distract users from information that can be conveyed between them. There are only two things to do on Twitter: give information or receive information. Therefore, any company or firm that would like to relay information can do it directly and at a very low cost (free). There is also the premise if re-tweeting, where users are encouraged to relay information from one group of followers to another. This leads to a kind of reach that has never been seen before in marketing.
So, I have come to the conclusion that Twitter is something worth paying attention to…I guess. It is safe to say that I am now on the Twitter bandwagon.
For my new theme, I chose Dirty Blue 1.43 by Blogtap.net. I browsed through the available themes for my WordPress site and many of them were very plain and business-like. Other themes were eye catching but a little to elaborate for my taste. The Dirty Blue theme stood out to me because the dark background and the light blue lettering provide a good amount of contrast without being too overwhelming to the reader. While the blue background is dark, it gives off more of a relaxed feel to the site than it does gloomy. Besides the color, the site’s format is still as straightforward as the “White House” theme. The Dirty Blue theme is conducive to blogging and the navigation bars are straightforward. My only concern is that some of the pictures that I posted look a little out of place in the new theme. I will have to re-size and relocate some of them but that should not take too much effort.
Some parts of my website did change when I switched from the White House theme to the Dirty Blue theme. First, my favicon
is not showing up. I believe that I just have to re-upload the favicon for it to appear but I’m not sure. Second, the Twitter widget is not working. I will play around with this widget as well as the favicon but I don’t think this theme allows the Twitter widget.
All and all I like my new theme. I think it is aesthetically pleasing and it will make my blog stand out.
Welcome to my blog. I am currently enrolled in Strategic Internet Marketing (MKTG 470) taught by Dr. Theresa B. Clarke at James Madison University. As one of the course requirements, all students will be completing some of the assignments as blog posts. This is my first official blog post for Dr. Clarke’s course in the JMU Department of Marketing.
