The best part about Internet marketing is that it is relatively inexpensive to get your content out there. The worst part? Everyone else has their content out there too. So how do you make your content and company stand out? The article below offers a few ways to win over the web and get the attention you’re looking for.

Live from #SXSW: 3 keys to winning over the webRead original article

Among multimedia journalists, social media gurus and leaders of mission-based nongovernmental organizations, it’s a common refrain: All our readers or viewers want are images of kittens and puppies. Such junk food for our eyes and hearts is making it virtually impossible to capture the world’s attention on pressing humanitarian matters such as slavery in Mauritania, use of conflict minerals in electronics products we all love, gender discrimination in the production of kids’ toys and the fact that the poaching of elephants might one day make it impossible for our grandchildren to see these animals — which are nearly as cute as kittens and puppies.

At the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, CNN convened a panel of experts: Jonathan Hutson, director of communications for the Center for American Progress’ Enough Project; Amanda Kloer, director of organizing at Change.org; Ben Montgomery, an enterprise writer at the Tampa Bay Times; and John Sutter, an opinion columnist at CNN. The panel’s goal was a challenging one: “How to Make the Internet Care.”

Let’s dive in with the three most valuable tips.

1. Reveal the unseen. Offer fans an element of surprise, or tell people something they don’t know. Montgomery captured the attention of readers and the influential Poynter Institute by live tweeting his father’s funeral, revealing that the man was an abusive alcoholic who left Montgomery’s mom for a stripper, abandoning the family. Hutson, who works for an organization that aims to end genocide and crimes against humanity, offered the example of using the Internet to post images produced by the Satellite Sentinel Project. In this instance, the images revealed the digging of mass graves in Sudan, alerting government policymakers and mobile networks of activists to atrocities being committed.
2. Tell personal stories. It’s heartening to know that online stories about humanitarian atrocities can evoke world outrage. Sutter talked about traveling with a photographer/videographer to Mauritania, the last country to outlaw slavery, to put a human face on a story about life in a nation where slavery continues to exist. There, he captured video of Moulkheir Mint Yarba, a slave who was impregnated her master during rape and who later found her her baby dead, after the master put the infant out in the hot sun to die of dehydration. Sutter’s story appeared on CNN.com, yielding an online follow-up, The CNN Freedom Project. This, in turn, prompted CNN’s iReporters, or citizen journalists, to record personal messages of hope to show their support for a woman at a Mauritanian school for escaped slaves.
3. Provide a clear path to action. Nothing provides a clearer path than an online petition. Kloer, who works for “the world’s petition platform,” cited a campaign by McKenna Pope, whose younger brother dreams of becoming a chef when he grows up. She was irritated that he wouldn’t want to use Hasbro’s Easy-Bake oven because it was available only in a gender-specific color scheme of pink and purple, so she launched an online petition. The petition asked Hasbro to make a gender-neutral oven. Building in a sense of urgency, the toy was to be a Christmas gift for the boy. With the credibility of petition signers critically important, Pope got celebrity chefs to sign. After she delivered the petition, Hasbro invited her to its headquarters, where the company announced a silver and black Easy-Bake oven to be marketed to boys and girls.

My parting thoughts: Whatever social media channels you select — Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr or others — the ultimate goal is not making the Internet care but using the Internet to get the attention of “earned” or “traditional” media, which hopefully will bring even more attention to your cause.

If you want your Reno business to stand out and Internet marketing help  contact D4 for your free consultation.

Integrating an e-commerce solution can be a tremendous asset for any business. It can open up untapped sales channels, increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction and increase search engine rankings. And the best part? We can track the effectiveness of your website through metrics. Below is an article from Search Engine Watch about one of the latest website tracking tools D4 is using.

New Google Analytics Interactive Tool: Customer Journey to Online Purchase
April 25, 2013 | Read original article

After releasing a barrage of new reports to help you understand attribution from multi-channel funnel reports, attribution modeling, and social data partners, Google realizes that site owners need to better understand customer journey from first visit through to conversion, no matter how long that takes. Google Analytics has launched a new tool, the Customer Journey to Online Purchase.

Visitors to your site likely won’t convert on the first visit. And subsequent visits will likely originate from a variety of sources.

Your site visitors may click a display ad, perform an organic search, see a blog post or review or find an affiliate link. The new Customer Journey tool lets you interactively explore the typical online buying behavior of your site’s visitors and see how different marketing interactions affect your sales and conversions.

This tool’s data draws on multiple resources. Data is contributed from all Google Analytics clients that authorized sharing with other Google products. Ecommerce and multi-channel funnel data comes from more than 36,000 Analytics customers across 11 industries in 7 countries.

The data includes:

• Purchase paths based on interactions with a single ecommerce advertiser
• How different marketing channels help get your site visitors to convert better or faster
• How long it takes for customers to make a purchase online (in terms of visits and days)
• Benchmarks of various industries to help you compare your results to that within your industry.

The tool provides “lookback windows” from within the existing multi-channel funnels and the attribution modeling tool so you can go back and look at the typical length of the purchase path in your industry. This means you can compare your conversion times to see if your site is taking longer to convert than your industry’s average.

These benchmarks are compiled together in the Benchmarks Dashboard. Use the benchmarks dashboard to view stats on your industry. Then compare those data points with your own in your multi-channel funnels reports. This gives you the best understanding of where different channels impact your conversions.

Using this data, you can adjust your marketing plan accordingly and change budgets or strategies between channels, if necessary.

If you need help designing a website, integrating e-commerce or planning an Internet marketing strategy contact D4 for your free consultation.

Did you know D4 Advanced Media can help you create an online marketing video? D4 recently created a video for the Redfox & Associates website. Redfox is a Native American owned small business that works with Native American businesses to increase their revenue though training and education. We helped Redfox by creating a video that both aligned with their branding and explains what they can do to help Native American medical clinics. Watch the video below!

D4 Advanced Media is excited to announce the addition of Total Truck Support as our most recent client. Total Truck Support is a complete support system for truck drivers. They offer trucking bookkeeping, trucking tax preparation and trucking compliance help.

D4 will be optimizing the Total Truck Support website for search engine results. We will help rework the site and begin a Total Truck Support blog. This should help create a larger Internet presence and drive more leads. We cannot wait to see the results!

If you would like help with content creation or increasing your Internet presence contact us today!

When using email as a marketing tool, it is important that you are using it correctly. Email marketing can be a very valuable way to reach your customers, but you are not the only business marketing to them. People receive tons of messages in their inbox each day, many of which are advertisements. So how do you make your message stand out among the rest?

Build Trust

If you’re still building up your authority, your emails need to make it extremely clear that you are a trustworthy source of information. Use trust seals and privacy policies on your site and include them in your emails, make sure the language of your emails doesn’t sound like spam and keep your emails relevant.

Personalize

You need to make sure your emails convey that you actually know something about your recipients. You can best capture an email recipient’s attention when you write an email especially for them. If your form asks where they live, or what size their business is, or their role at their company, use that information. Create an email that speaks directly to your customer and they will be more likely to respond.

Offer Value

What does your customer really want? If your answer is an update about your company, you are incorrect. Your customer wants something of value. That thing of value could be anything from a special discount or a giveaway to useful tips for their business. The point is, your customer is not interested unless what you are sending them will be beneficial to them in the end.

Email marketing has to be just right. Your customer can lose interest and click the delete button at any moment. To get your message across you have to send the right content, in the clearest language with the most appealing design. D4 can help you to optimize your emails and help you start increasing your sales . Contact D4 Advanced Media for your email marketing needs today.