by Daniel Hadaway

If you’re planning to begin marketing your business online, there’s a chance you’ve got a plan laid out for all the different types of marketing you’d like to utilize. It’s important to note, however, that while most businesses will see success from all online marketing channels, different types of online marketing lend themselves more favorably to specific vertical markets.

Remember, that at the end of the day, the purpose of marketing is (most of the time) to generate sales for your business. The best way to do that is by finding users who may be already prepared to buy your product or service. With this in mind, we can look at how the behavior of consumers in specific verticals is uniquely influenced by online marketing and popular website formats.

Mashable recently posted an infographic called How to Influence Purchasing Decisions on the Web, which outlines how consumer behavior is affected by different online channels. For example, we can see that the top influencer in the automotive category is brand websites, followed by search results. So, if you’re an auto dealer you might want to consider focusing your initial efforts on creating an awesome website, optimizing it for SEO, and investing in paid search ads. The influence for baby products is much more social, with the top influencers being forum comments, Facebook, and blog posts. So if you’re ready to launch a new line of baby pacifiers, you might want to invest in reputation management, off-page SEO (inbound links, etc.), and Facebook advertising.

Your business category may not be listed in the infographic, but it’s important to start your marketing efforts armed with some knowledge of the buying behavior of your target audience. The best source for such knowledge will be an experienced digital marketing company (hint hint!) who is willing to help educate you based on their past experience in your vertical market.

Starting out your marketing efforts with thorough knowledge of your target audience, and then acting based on that knowledge is the best method to ensure success from your digital marketing efforts!

by Daniel Hadaway

Search Engine Land just posted an infographic based on some research they recently wrapped. The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report provides some key insights into how marketers are viewing the roles SEO, Search and Social Media play in effective marketing:

SEO currently has the biggest impact on lead generation. Marketers (both B2B and B2C) currently view SEO as the most effective tool for generating leads, which isn’t surprising considering the positive perception and emphasis the digital marketing world has placed on it during the past 5 years. But, the current emphasis and “trendiness” of social media as a marketing tool is driving change on this front…

Despite SEO currently generating more leads, social media will receive the biggest increases in spend next year. This marks a significant sea-change in the digital marketing world. Generally, marketers will find out what is generating leads, and plan on spending more on that next year. But in this case, almost as many marketers are planning to maintain their spend on SEO as are planning to increase. Compare this to 60% who are planning to increase spend on social media vs. 36% who are maintaining, and you’ll see an industry that believes social is the future of marketing.

Even though the allocation of spend is shifting to different mediums, people are most interested in learning more about comprehensive, cross-promotional digital strategies- which is a great sign for the future of digital marketing! A comprehensive plan, spanning not only SEO, social media and paid search, but also landing pages, email marketing, display advertising and more is key to effective long-term marketing.

Based on the infographic, the state of digital marketing is as strong as ever- but look for social media to become a more prominent aspect of comprehensive marketing strategies moving into the future.

TechCrunch has an interesting article (and accompanying video) about some of the behind-the scenes info from Google on what goes into providing search results and constantly revising the algorithms to make results more relevant.

You should definitely take four minutes and check out the video, but here are a few key takeaways:

Google changes things constantly. Early in the video it is mentioned that last year alone, Google made over 500 changes to its search algorithm. Some changes were major, and many were minor; but staying abreast of all the latest changes Google is making- and knowing how those changes will affect your search engine ranking is a very important part of maintaining your digital presence.

Google doesn’t arbitrarily change its code. Somewhat conversely from the previous point, Google spends many hours researching every change and its potential impact on users and results. So rest assured, that your page’s ranking isn’t resting on the whims of a corporate giant (well at least not a volatile one). In the last minute or so of the video at TechCrunch, Google explains an anecdote of how one change is monitored and refined. They definitely do their homework!

Lastly, Google does control your fate. The bottom line is that Google does have ultimate control over your ranking within its search engine. They don’t answer to a higher authority than their share holders, as any business would. The whole point of this video being posted is to show the public how responsible and trustworthy Google is with all of this power. But still, it’s not a good idea to place all of your eggs in Google’s basket.

Try dedicating some resources to decidedly non-Google-controlled marketing means like Display, Paid Search (still owned by Google, but you’re paying them so you know you’ll get results!), Social Media, or even a Website designed to convert.

It should be remembered that Google does still control what happens on their search engine, even though it reached critical mass a long time ago. But, be reassured: it does seem like for the time being they are dedicated to constantly improving search results for users, and providing clear concepts on how to rank higher in its results!

The answer is behavioral targeting. Behavioral targeting is simply a method of customizing the content of ads shown to you, based on your past behavior online. The advertiser knows you’re interested in canine dental cleanliness because you searched on one of their network’s sites for ‘toothpaste for dogs’…

The advertiser keeps track of this and uses it to provide you with ads that you will find more relevant and useful. The upside for you is that ads become an actual useful tool for improving your quality of life. If you’re going to see an ad anyway, why not make it useful to you and your unique likes and dislikes?

As marketers, what excites us about behavioral targeting in advertising is that it is much more effective than standard display advertising. A recent study by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), and reported by eMarketer tells the story:

The study, which looked at ads run on member networks during 2009, showed that among users who clicked on a behaviorally targeted ad, 6.8% converted. That compared with only 2.8% of those who clicked on a run-of-network ad.

Behaviorally targeted ads are more than twice as effective! And they’re effective simply because they are simply more useful, thus more compelling, to the users.

So go ahead and buy that doggy toothpaste! That ad you see could be custom-tailored for you!

Read on to find out how…

In the early days of digital marketing, online display advertising was virtually the only kind of advertising being used on the internet. As time went on, many sizes and formats have provided additional creative opportunities for advertisers looking to create awareness, build brand and generate response.  The problem for most small and medium sized businesses is that buying advertising on any one website provides minimal opportunity to reach their best prospects.

People spend enormous amounts of time on the Internet, but there isn’t one website they spend a majority of their time on.  This is a problem for online display advertising because space for such ads is generally sold by the individual websites. If you’re an advertiser, you simply don’t have the time to go to multiple websites and make deals to place ads individually on each one. And then of course, there is the need to design and develop compelling creative. This is where South Central Media provides a solution.

In addition to developing effective creative, South Central Media simplifies the media buying process by forging relationships with the largest advertising networks powered by Google and Yahoo in order to reach over one million websites that collectively reach 90% of all Internet users. Through a real-time auction process, online publishers bid to accept advertising from South Central Media clients. Layer on top of that the ability to target advertising based on user interests within a geographic area and you’ve got the most cost efficient way to buy online display advertising.