8 May

Native Ads vs. Banner Ads

Native Ads - Native Advertising You are more likely to die in a plane crash or win the lottery than click on a banner ad. You may have heard these statistics being discussed around the web, see more here. So, is native advertising any more effective?

Lately there has been a lot of excitement surrounding native advertising. Below we will explore the effectiveness of native advertising beginning with the difference between native and banner ads, followed by an infographic that details the effectiveness of each, and an example of a controversial native advertisement from The Atlantic!

by Lindsay Brown
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1 May

Trademarks – The Biggest Name Development Roadblock

Trademark Issues in Name Development One of the biggest difficulties, indeed roadblocks, to name development is the high likelihood that the brilliant name that came to you in your sleep last night is already trademarked.

In saturated categories like consumer products, healthcare, and technology, trademark “knock-outs”, or eliminations from consideration due to existing trademark conflicts can approach 90%! What’s more, in the United States, even if the trademark does not show up in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database, a trademark conflict can still exist. Finally, if the trademark will be used internationally, various trademark laws must be considered.

by Lindsay Brown
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24 Apr

Inbound Marketing in 2013 – Survey Findings

Inbound Marketing 2013 - Statistics DataToday Hubspot released their 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, shedding insights into what inbound marketing means to marketers and their companies. In this fifth anniversary edition, they asked 3,339 marketing professionals from 128 countries to share their perspectives on everything from strategy and organizational alignment to budget and channel management.

Overall, marketers are increasing their inbound spending nearly 50%, for the third year in a row! No question, the marketing mix has has significantly changed, shifted, and evolved from traditional marketing to Internet-centric approaches. Below are Hubspot’s 10 key takeaways from the State of Inbound Marketing 2013 report.

by Lindsay Brown
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17 Apr

B2B Buyer Personas – Development Tactics and Content

B2B Buyer Personas“A buyer persona is a composite of different factors that affect your buyer and motivate him/her to buy. Your prospect’s buying cycle and buying decisions are situated within a larger context that must be understood in order to motiveate his/her buyer behavior” (MLT Creative). For B2B, buyer personas are especially complex due to typical B2B sales cycles.

MarketingSherpa found that 41% of B2B firms have established buyer personas, while 47% of organizations have not (See more). A complete understanding of your buyer is critical in the development of communications, marketing materials, and content. Below we will share tactics in developing buyer personas. In addition, we detail what type of content to develop for four different B2B personas.

by Lindsay Brown
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3 Apr

Paid Search – Advanced Techniques

Paid Search Campaign - Advanced Techniques In our three-part Paid Search Series, we have shared a variety of tips for winning the search war, including details on both paid search, or PPC, and organic search.

Part one covered some the basics of PPC including keywords, placements, and rankings. Part two detailed the differences between paid and organic search. In our final post, we will be discussing more advanced techniques, including 3 critical components of starting a new campaign: choosing a campaign type, keyword match types, and bids and budgets.

by Lindsay Brown
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20 Mar

MMP Recognized as a Top Agency By BtoB Magazine

Top B2B Agency MMP Modern Marketing Partners was recognized as a top business-to-business agency by BtoB Magazine in its March issue. Founded in January of 2012, Modern Marketing Partners is extremely proud to receive this honor after it’s first year of operation.

The 2012 Top Agencies report by BtoB magazine includes four categories: Small agencies (revenue up to $10 million); midsize (revenue between $10 million and $99.9 million); large (revenue of $100 million and up); and interactive agencies. The finalists in each category were selected based on percentage of total business that is b-to-b, revenue growth, new client wins, innovative work and expanded service capabilities.

Modern Marketing Partners was distinguished as a top small agency in the magazine’s special report dated March 4, 2013.

by Lindsay Brown
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13 Mar

Paid Search vs. Organic Search

Paid Organic Search Results Organic search results, also known as natural search results, are based on the relevance to the search terms of the user. High rankings are achieved through free search engine optimization techniques, as opposed to paid search, or PPC.

As mentioned in our last blog post, Paid Search – PPC Basics, paid search or PPC refers to when advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. But how do paid search and organic search compare? This post, part two in our Paid Search Series, will detail differences between paid and organic search results.

by Lindsay Brown
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6 Mar

Paid Search – PPC Basics

Paid Search - PPC Basics With over 100 billion global searches being conducted each month and 75% of search engine users never scrolling past the first page of search results, the search war is heating up (SEJ)! How can you leverage search to drive traffic to your website?

In our three-part Paid Search Series, we will share a variety of tips for winning the search war, including details on both paid search, or PPC, and organic search. This post will detail basics including what paid search is along with the benefits, keywords and placements, and how your ad is ranked in search results. Part two will provide a comparison of paid and organic search, and part three will share some advanced paid search techniques.

by Lindsay Brown
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27 Feb

Website Tips for International Markets

Website Localization - Tips for International Markets Is your company or brand looking to expand into international markets? Consider that more than 1/3 of all Internet users are non-native English speakers. To optimize your website for a global audience, you will need to adapt your existing website to local language and culture in your target marketing. This is called website localization.

Website localization is important for a variety of reasons. According to Forrester Research, visitors stay for twice as long (site stickiness) if the website is in their own language (Languagescientific). A properly localized ecommerce website can increase sales by up to 10 times (Locayta). Below we will share 3 considerations for website localization including functionality, cultural difference in online shopping behavior, and payment methods, followed by 10 tips to launch your global website.

by Lindsay Brown
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20 Feb

Catalog Marketing Best Practices

Catalog Marketing Best Practices Despite rumors of its demise, catalog marketing can be successful when properly executed. Because of incumbent printing, production and postage costs, catalog marketing can be quite expensive and unprofitable if not implemented correctly.

Beside high profile, big budget consumer catalogs like Crate and Barrel or Victoria’s Secret, what are effective techniques for business-to-business or niche market catalogs?

In the new whitepaper, “Catalog Marketing Best Practices”, we share the Top 10 Catalog marketing best practices, along with some examples, and additional resources.

by Neil Brown
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