Are Media Buyers Spending More On Internet?

With all the hype and interest of the Internet, you would think it has the lion share of media dollars. Instead it seems that pr clients, media buyers, and pr marketing strategies are still embracing old habits of media—broadcast (TV and radio).

It surprised me a little since I see a lot of pr clients, as well as ad agencies placing millions of dollars into the Internet with ads, keywords, social media money, etc. But I think you need to evaluate what is really happening. First, we are in an election year. And actually last year had many legislative issues that the people voted on which fuels the media in the strongest markets through TV and radio. That could be why these past 18 months have shown a surge in traditional broadcast media buying. There is a great article in iMedia Connection that has a graph and explains further, by the author, his viewpoint on this topic. The title of his article is “Get more relevant with niche media

If you are seeking different ways to grow your business, then maybe this is the time to get noticed. Start developing a social network, a company blog site, or begin using your web site to attract more customers. When one segment of an industry such as TV or radio are scarce with ads of your competitors, then switch back. But keep in mind that timing is everything. If you are a B2B company, or a retailer, or a manufacturer, then check to make sure you are not promoting, advertising your company in a down time. Such as Christmas, unless you are selling hi-tech stuff, or toys.

We are now entering a heavy media buying season for political campaign advertising, re-think where you spend your marketing and advertising dollars. I would recommend that you look into establishing an online campaign. These are much less costly than a TV campaign. And it will generate a lot of customers, as well as create a branding position for your company or products. PR Clients need to be more sensitive to this as do media buying agencies, media buyers and advertising agencies. This goes for publicity professionals as well. PR Agencies need to better understand how to use online publicity as a means to be visible for pr clients. While the broadcast media gets hammered with political campaigns, then immediately following is the holiday season, promotions now can be the best time to develop that needed online campaign.

Take advantage of the next six months by establishing your company to be positioned on the first page of all the major search engines. Even at the top, maybe the top three positions. And it is possible to do this without purchasing a lot of keywords. I can’t go into how to do that in this short blog, but I will be more than happy to explain how to do this effectively and get results. Just call me, George Carson, at 949-477-9400.

Web Sites. Build it and they will come!

Everyone wants a successful web site. But if you build one without a pr marketing strategy plan that includes web marketing and optimization, they won’t come!

pr clients and pr marketing web sitesMany factors determine if a web site is search engine friendly. For example, optimizing meta tags, title pages, text in the body of the site (each page is important), the url, alt tags, among many other things.

If you are a pr client, or a B2B company in today’s competitive Internet business world, you should include social networks. These may include Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and many others.

A PR marketing strategy campaign for a web site should include inbound links, site submission to directories and search engines submission. If you want to outpace the competition, then social media and blogging need to be part of the overall media mix.

Ok, let’s get back to being “user friendly” and “search friendly”. Your site might look good, but is it designed for the crawling of search engines? Make sure you have the following:

1- Use text that is rich in content. Use the keywords and title that are in your source codes. Don’t have a home page that is an “only registered’ page without text.
2- Develop a domain name that says what you do. It is getting more difficult to create a domain name that isn’t already taken. But there are creative solutions to that problem. If you face this issue, give us a call. We can suggest alternate domains that will work for you.
3- Keep the site simple. A lot of content is ok, but if the site has too many pages deep to get to a specific area, then it will turn off customers, as well as SEO’s.
4- Design the site for users. Although SEO’s do not read images, or videos, you can still build a good site with these and have good content. A poorly created site is a sure way of not getting recognized by search engines as well as users.

Those are some of the basic rules to follow. Now all you need is traffic. Be sure to read many of our other tips and topics that can help you achieve your goal. Or contact us for a free, one-hour session on how to build a solid web site.

Marketers Discover Web 2.0

Wow, stop the presses, finally the marketing B2B people are discovering something new…Web 2.0! Well, not to make these slow learners feel bad, but Web 2.0 has been around awhile. It just seemsWeb 2.0 marketing funny how this is big news in publications like BtoB magazine. I like the publication; they are only telling what is happening to the companies who are finally getting smart.

Ok, so what is Web 2.0? It is the new medium of Blogs, RSS feeds, Podcasts, Videocasts, Social Networks, and more.

These are all the pr strategies and publicity tips I have been preaching for over a year to marketers. I guess I was just too excited at the time to not realize that other PR Clients, and local Orange County Publicity firms were not ready to implement these new pr marketing tools. Why, because they just did not appreciate the value it was offering. Now that the “news” is out, will there be over saturation? No. Just means that you need to be smarter, one step ahead of the competition. You need to have a savvy pr marketing professional, like Carson PR, on your side. I’m not bragging, ok, maybe a little, but it needs to be said that if you can’t see the trends or ignore them, then you as a pr client or publicity agency or even an advertising agency, will fall behind. And in this industry, falling behind isn’t that easy to get caught up.

If you have been reading my blogs for a while, then you know that we mentioned all the social networks long before they became “superbrands”. Places like Facebook, once only a college school network, now is a major competitor to MySpace. There are other social networks that pr clients and pr marketing agencies should consider in their overall marketing strategies. If you have been keeping up with these trends, it is now the podcasts, and videocastings that are becoming the “new” social media. These forms of communication are helping small companies as well as talented artists get recognized and become successful. If your a pr client, or have a publicity agency, give George Carson a call to learn how to be part of this growing media. Then maybe, just maybe, you will be the superbrand that others are trying to imitate.

Web Sites and Publicity

Get the most from all your media

It’s time to tear down all those walls in the office that keepPublicity and web sites departments separate. For example, let the IT people, or web people work with the publicity staff. If you source out any of these to a pr firm, or agency then have a meeting where they can discuss their projects and objectives and what plans are set for the future.

Let’s start with your company’s existing web site.

Maybe it is an eCommerce site, or an informative site to explain your services and products. Even if it is a B2B site, you need to break down the walls in your office (figuratively that is) as well as those in your mindset. The site needs to improve sales and visibility. Publicity can help if given the chance. Not all pr clients and professional publicity people can relate or understand how to make this work. Why, because everyone is caught up in doing business as usual, or old school thinking. The saying " don’t fix it if it isn’t broken" does not apply here.

I am trying to get you to think out of the box. There is a simple test to do for analyzing your web sites home page. Jamie Roche wrote an article telling people how to improve their home page visibly. After reading this you may say, well I don’t have an eCommerce site; we sell to distributors, or dealers, etc. You’re missing the point if you think like that.

It’s time to have this meeting I discussed with the PR department and IT department. Need help in trying to find how PR can make things happen for the web site? If you need help, then it’s time to bring in an outside pro. We can discuss this with you and show how to make things happen. I’m only a call away, or an email away. Just click on the Contac Us on the left of this page. And we’ll be right over.

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