The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Choosing Complimentary Colors January 25, 2012 – 5:59 pm				Aurélien Uster

Choosing complimentary colors is a gift innate in many. The ability to pick various colors and gradients that appeal to a large variety of people is what makes many people great interior designers, fashion designers, and web designers.

Creative collateral serves two purposes. First and foremost, it has to be able to garner the attention of the consumer. A logo for instance, has to rely on its basic shape and color to be noticeable from a distance and at a quick glance. Then it has appeal to the consumer for a long enough time to effectively guide their eyes through its message. In digital marketing, these messages often act as an instantaneous call to action – a precursor to a successful conversion.

The importance of solid creative cannot be underestimated. Color contrasts are chosen at times for particular reasons. There’s an old rumor of a fast food giant that uses alternating colors to promote desired consumer action. Red and yellow were rumored to have been chosen for their abilities to quickly grab the attention of a potential consumer.

The colors were also said to have tested positively for hungry customers (red) and to then successfully turn them off to the point of leaving their facilities upon finishing their meal. This was based on the time spent looking at the unfavorable tint of yellow in contrast to red. While the colors used to pull them in were bright and vibrant, and same colors used indoors carried a slightly duller tint. As the consumer leaves the facilities, they have freed up space for a new customer, improving the restaurant’s turnaround time, allowing them to seat more, serve more, and thus earn more.

Weather this was an implied strategy or not, it’s no secret that something as simple as two colors together can influence the way in which a person views, reads, and interacts with a website, a banner, and more. Colors that promote various actions and deliver conversions require various degrees of market testing. Having a wide range of variations to choose from is where any designer wants to start. For those that have a limited imagination outside their current train of thought, the Color Scheme Designer can help you mix things up.

Here is a quick tutorial to guide you through the website that may be very useful:

You can choose the background color with your mouse (step 1) and then compare the different combinations given when you pick 1, 2, 3 or 4 colors (step 2). As you choose the first color, you will be able to see immediately the complementary colors given by the website (step 3).

When you like a color combination, you can click “Light page preview” or “Dark page preview” (step 4) to see how those colors would look like on a web page, as it will display a fake web page using the colors you have picked.

If you like those colors, put your mouse over them (step 5) to get the color code and start using them!

Finally, the top menu allows you to choose from various options (such as RGB or Web colors), to randomize a palette to get a complete random range of colors. It also even allows you to export your palette in order to use later (you can export it as a HTML+CSS file, an XML file or even a Photoshop or GIMP palette)

Remember to use these popular color variations to perform AB and multivariate testing on your website. This can be done simply with Google Website Optimizer. While you can test for several things on any page you want, the webpage color scheme that allows for the lowest bounce rate, the highest conversions, and most time spent on your site is probably the winner!

Posted by Aurélien Uster
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Digital Media, Graphic Design, Interactive Marketing, Website Design | No Comments »

Where did Google make their money in 2011? January 24, 2012 – 7:37 pm				Damjan Arsovski

The internet marketing software company WordStream published an interesting infographic about Google’s 2011 revenues. The data in the infographic is based on Google’s investor reports and financial tables and is stating the facts in a very nice visual format.

Google’s 2011 revenues were a total of 37.9 billion dollars… yes, 37.9 billion, with a B. The most interesting fact is that 96% of the revenue came from advertising.

Thanks to companies like StateFarm, Progressive, Amazon, Macy’s, Sears, Quicken Loans, Lowe’s, Booking.com and many others like them that spend millions of dollars per year bidding for keywords like “new york hotels” with average CPC of $7.68 (used by Booking.com), “zumba dance dvd” with average CPC $5.18 (amazon), “self employed health insurance” with a extremely high CPC of $43.39 (eHealthInsurance), “cheap hybrid cars” bidding for average CPC of $15.57 (Cars.com) Google made its billions.

Below you can find the infographic with all the breakdowns and stats…

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/01/23/google-revenues

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tags: advertisers, Advertising, AdWords, cost per click, cpc, google, google revenue, google revenue 2011, paid search, pay per click, ppc

Daily Deals will Die by 2016, says Forrester’s report November 21, 2011 – 7:47 pm				Damjan Arsovski

By 2016, advertisers will be spending $77 billion on interactive marketing, as much as they do on TV nowadays, the interactive marketing components (SEM, display ads, mobile, e-mail marketing and social media) will grow to 35% of all advertising spend as they get highly involved in the marketing mix, and the daily deals will switch from winners to losers… these are some of the interesting predictions in the latest US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016 published by the Forrester Research Group.

The forecast, free to download, explains that in the upcoming years, advertisers will spend more money on interactive marketing because of the excitement about emerging media, the effectiveness of the interactive marketing and the overall customer obsession with online media and mobile devices.

The report contains many interesting predictions, some of them a bit controversial and very doubtful, but still worth taking them in consideration when working on your next strategies and business spending.

Beside concentrating on the mobile and social media expansions, one part of the report that I really was surprised to see was the prediction that the daily deals would die.

The reason for this statement, Forrester is putting in these words:

“Standing out above the clutter becomes harder for marketers as ad exposures grow. So some marketers unable to differentiate will rely on spontaneous coupons through more and more urgent Groupon-like “daily deals” as one way to drive notice. Consumers will grow so conditioned to micro-impulse offers that they’ll lose practice at considered decisions — in all walks of life, not just when buying spa treatments. Facing a cultural descent into maladroit judgment, employers (and spouses) will blacklist impulse deals to keep people intentional.”

Controversal, but yet very interesting forecast. What do you think?

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Business News, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, web 2.0 | 2 Comments »
Tags: daily deals, forrester, forrester research, Interactive Marketing, marketers, marketing agency, marketing company, moble marketing

Welcome back Delicious! September 27, 2011 – 4:53 pm				Damjan Arsovski

The two YouTube co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen through their mutual company Avos, are now restarting the famous Delicious, web service for bookmarking and sharing that they recently bought from Yahoo.

The refreshed version of this service keeps a lot of the same characteristics that in the past attracted millions of users, but it also features a lot of new additional settings and options, making this good-old website even more attractive to active web users.

The YouTube co-founders consider this website a new one, completely redesigned with new homepage and interface. They add that the idea behind Delicious is to keep it’s original purpose, but they seriously plan to fix the way users find out new links and web destinations.

Through settings and features such as “Stack”, users will be able to group their favorite links, which later they can share with other friends and Delicious users. The collection can be public and other users can subscribe to it and get notifications every time new website is added to the stack. Each of the stacks can feature their own profile images and description.

The new Delicious also introduced improved tags and keeps all the past API calls the same.

As an active Delicious user, I’m very happy to see this refreshed version and even happier to know that this website is no longer in the hands of Yahoo, which is really surviving some tough times… but that’s really a discussion for some other times.

Check out this video with on the new Delicious.com:

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Business News, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0, Website Design | No Comments »
Tags: avos, bookmarking, chad hurley, delicious, delicious welcome back, delicious.com, new design, web, web 2.0, web designw, web service, YouTube, youtube co-founders, youtube cofounders

Facebook continues to copy Twitter with “Subscribe” September 15, 2011 – 3:11 pm				Damjan Arsovski

Facebook introduced a new feature that will enable users to follow public content from other profiles, even if they are not friends with them. The new service is called “Subscribe”, and is almost an exact replica of Twitter’s “Follow” function.

You will be able to find the “Subscribe” button right on user’s profiles, on the right side next to the profile name.

When you press the button Subscribe, you can choose which updates you want to receive, and Facebook gives you 1) All Updates, 2) Most Updates, 3) Only Important as main options, with filters available per update category (life events, status updates, photos, videos, games…).

And of course the subscription option doesn’t work for every status update you publish, but only for the updates that you make public.

To active this new feature, head out here.

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: facebook, facebook profile, facebook users, follow, Interactive Marketing, new features, smm, social media, Social Media Marketing, subscribe, twitter, twitter users

Websites Made of Pure Chocolate September 7, 2011 – 2:13 pm				Damjan Arsovski

If you were told that in order to promote your product better you should make a website made only of real images of your products, you might throw out that idea as insane… but shortly after we show you these two awesome case studies, I’m sure you will reconsider your initial decision and will be more open to such creative suggestions.

Whittaker’s Chocolate, a New Zealand chocolatier and the Portuguese Sagres Preta, maker of chocolate stout beer, bravely decided to create their website only using chocolate, their main ingredient.

Everything from the interface design to the navigation and the social icons on their website is made of chocolate!

The idea is brilliant, and with this approach these two companies are showing that advertising should be fun and honest, not boring, false or evil.

To better promote this initiative, the companies also accompanied the campaign with videos of how the websites were done – from idea to execution. Check out one of the videos that went viral on the web:

Delicious, isn’t it!?
If you would like to reinvent your own website and find a creative way to promote your products like these two brave companies, feel free to get in touch with us.

As a final thought, I’ll just share this excellent quote from the great Jerry Della Femina, who said:

“I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in Digital Media, Graphic Design, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Online PR, Photography, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, web 2.0, web development, Website Design | 1 Comment »
Tags: choco, chocolate, chocolates, creative ideas, creative web design, Interactive Marketing, sagres preta, social media, video, video production, Website Design, whittaker

LinkedIn Stats & Demographics, July 2011 August 8, 2011 – 9:57 am				Damjan Arsovski

After the recent IPO, LinkedIn decided to post their financial results and stats for the second quarter of 2011. During Q2, LinkedIn managed to get record amount of users, unique visits and pageviews.

With more than 115,8 million users and counting, about 61% increase compared to same period last year, and revenue of $121 million in Q2/11, compared to $54,9 million in 2010,  this professional social network is really onto something….

Check out the following First Earnings Announcement PPT by Jeff Weiner and Steve Sordello for more details on how this social network is becoming a key player in the online business world:

Furthermore, take a look at the following PPT by Amodiovalerio Verde, in which he outlines some very interesting stats about LinkedIn, such as:

• 58,5% of the 116 million users are male
• The users from the following 10 countries represent 80% of all LinkedIn members: US, India, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, France, Australia, Italy and Spain
• About 68% of users come from Europe and North America
• Almost 50% of the users have titles such as managers, principals, owners, CEOs or vice presidents
• About 40% of the users work in companies with more than 10,000 employees

For more LinkedIn facts, check out:

Posted by Damjan Arsovski
Posted in blog, Business News, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, web 2.0 | No Comments »
Tags: LinkedIn, linkedin business network, linkedin demographics, linkedin first earnings, linkedin ipo, linkedin marketing, linkedin statistics, linkedin stats, linkedin users, linkedin.com, social networks, statistics

Google & Local Marketing August 3, 2011 – 11:41 am				Aurélien Uster

Local marketing is most often the life-line of many businesses, and the concept for many business owners exists whether or not they are aware of or acknowledge local marketing in its professional concept. For instance in a village or neighborhood, businesses promote themselves by taping posters to telephone poles, on their windows, or just by chatting with the locals. Millions of small businesses still operate in this fashion, and produce results that carry their businesses throughout the year.

However, technology evolves (especially in the Internet field) and we can easily see that more and more customers are looking for information on the web, even when pertaining to interactions with local businesses. “Where is the nearest hardware store?” “Where can I find someone that will fix my bike?” are questions that you may ask yourself sometimes. Is your first reflex to check the internet? The change in reactionary behavior is an interesting development in the past 20 years and one of the main reasons one must reconsider the manner in which their marketing efforts are directed. Many don’t have enough capital to launch huge marketing campaigns, so how should they begin to approach local marketing?

Google can play a huge role with just 2 of their many tools: Google Adwords and Google Places. Adwords allows businesses to create a PPC (Pay per Click) advertising campaigns. These ads can be found almost anywhere on the web, more than just on Google searches. Depending on your communication needs, you can launch a campaign that would target only the people you want to visit your business, and convert the visit for profit. This works very well when for local campaigns, as you will appear only on the results pages and on websites in your area. Obviously, it makes no sense to display an ad for a hardware store in San Francisco on a New Yorker’s screen, unless the business is virtual.

Less popular but effective is Google Places, a great tool that allows you to add your business address on Google/Google Maps so that you can share your information more easily – location, hours of operation, pictures of your store and deals or discounts you may be offering to entice customers. When someone does a local search, Google provides the information you’ve submitted to let users to find the business most able to suit their needs.

Now with these two tools, let’s imagine a combination of them to create a super efficient PPC campaign. You would be able to appear in the results pages thanks to the Google Adwords campaign, but also in Google Maps when someone is looking for “places near them”. As a result, you gain a better visual impact on Google as the user can see your business twice, and is given relevant information pertaining to their search. You can obtain greater efficiency in your marketing campaign without having to spend a lot of money.

Posted by Aurélien Uster
Posted in blog, Interactive Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Small Business, web 2.0 | No Comments »

Weekly Blueliner Newsminer July 1, 2011 – 4:37 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Welcome to a holiday version of the Weekly Blueliner Newsminer.  I wish everyone safe travels during this festive moment in time.  I have a few things to run through, so let’s get started.

1.  Twitter Elevates an Unfinished Book to No. 1

Indiana author John Green hasn’t finished his next manuscript. It won’t be published until early next year. Nevertheless, his social media community is feverishly waiting.  According to the headline from the Journal, Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s e-commerce portals have the writer of Paper Towns as a No. 1 entry due to endless viral connections.  Publishers have long known that social media can be influential in delivering written content. Like any industry, however, the segmentation is affected on a greater basis than other penetration. Green already has his young-adult base entrenched through online lead generation. Publishers, be careful who you tweet.

2.  MySpace Sold For a Note

NewsCorp sold the once seminal MySpace to an online advertising firm for $35 million.  The media giant was seeking offers above $100 million, but nobody took the bait.  MySpace’s descent into digital oblivion is hardly shocking anymore. It lost relevancy once Facebook rose to public conscience in 2008.  Several cases of digital pedophilia also soured the website for users. It’s hackneyed website design also did not help matters.  Specific Media along with entertainer Justin Timberlake look to refurbish the company’s value and open it to public bidding.  It may be too late to replenish the brand, but people are trying.

3.  Marketers Using More Psychographic Data

Jamie Beckland discusses the fragmentation of today’s generation. He argues that due to all the new digital measurement tools which graph human behavior in more sophisticated contexts, we have psychographic profiles instead of demographic. Demographic profiles were targeted by mass-marketed producers.  I highly recommend reading the article by clicking on the headline. Fascinating.

4.  Google In the News

Techland has more of the details on Google’s system wide website redesign.  Executives want the interface to represent a cleaner, minimal aesthetic.  These were segmented into “Preview” and “Preview” (Dense).

Google is still trying to gain market share from Facebook and released Google + this week. The search engine has thrown the kitchen sink at the social media sector, to only come up short.  I think history repeats itself. Wired has a sobering take on the whole ordeal.

5.  I’m The Tax Man

Today in California, a new state law levies a tax on affiliate advertising. The law was intended to break up a huge business revenue stream from e-commerce giants like Amazon.  CEO Jeff Bezos made clear that the U.S. Constitution protects interstate merchants from state legislation.  I’ve spoken here a few times about the impact of e-commerce on state coffers. They feel it by customers avoiding brick-and-mortar shops and saving fuel by navigating with a point and closing with a click. The debate will only grow larger once venerable institutions are stuck with declining property mortgages.

That’s the Blue news for now. Keep it clean.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Digital Media, Interactive Marketing | 1 Comment »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, new york interactive marketing, weekly blueliner newsminer

Digital Tool of The Day: Social Plug-in Tracking June 30, 2011 – 4:40 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Google Analytics offer a new tool which allows a data report that shows how people share your content online.  It could fall in line with influencer websites such as Klout and Peer Index.  This plug-in has unique differentiations.  They use the social media buttons already located in your dashboard.  You can look at the activity through three phases, analyzing these categories:  Engagement, Activities, and Management.  This link goes further in depth on the execution.  The video below will help agencies leverage the updated dashboard.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, Content Marketing, Interactive Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, google analytics news, Social Media Marketing, social plug-in tracking