If your business involves on-line marketing services or on-line advertising, you may experience income growth through the rest of 2008 and throughout 2009.

One marketing expert contends that as marketing budgets get tighter, more of that budget will continue to move on-line. He even calls the move from off-line media to on-line media “a media revolution.”

Marketers Like On-line Marketing Services

In the July BtoB newspaper (p. 14), Carol Krol reported the results of a survey of 574 marketers, conducted by the Direct Marketing Association. The survey found that on-line marketing services is growing in favor with marketers and will get an even bigger chunk of off-line businesses’ marketing budgets.

E-mail marketing has already surprised direct mail as the favorite marketing media. Although most off-line businesses originally reach new prospective customers through direct mail, they follow-up by e-mail and then telephone sales.

The survey revealed that e-mail trailed direct mail by less than eight percent for revenue generated. It returned almost twice its revenue.

Integrated Marketing Campaigns Use On-line Marketing Services Most

The media most used in integrated campaigns are topped by on-line marketing services, with e-mail used most:

E-mail 79%
Direct mail 75%
Campaign url 35%
Web banner/pop-up 34%
Search engine 33%
Telephone 32%
Events 25%
Magazines/Newspaper25%
TV/Radio 19%
Catalog 16%

On-line marketing services lands four of the first five most used marketing media. Direct mail got the only top five spot for an off-line media.

On-line Marketing Services Will Continue To Capture More Of Marketing Budgets

Most off-line businesses are using more on-line marketing services:

78% more e-mail
61% more online video
63% more search engine marketing

In a front page article, Krol states that “Internet advertising remains the one bright spot in the otherwise bleak [advertising] picture.”

In that article, Krol predicts search, social media, online video and mobile on-line marketing services to grow almost 30 percent before 2008 ends and another 26 percent during 2009. On-line video will grow the fastest during 2009.

Most marketers plan to use more on-line marketing services. The percentage of marketing budgets going on-line is expected to grow during 2009 when marketing in off-line media is expected to decline.

On-line marketing services overall will grow almost 27 percent, finally surpassing ten percent of overall marketing spending. This percentage will continue to grow by at least one percentage point per year.

So if you’ve got an on-line marketing services business, you’ve got potential for great years in 2008 and 2009.

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Posted 8-5-08: On-line Marketing Services
Gobble Up More Marketing Budgets

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One form of marketing research is keeping records of your marketing efforts and their results. On July 8, I joined EntreCard. So today I want to post my statistics for my first month and interpret those statistics to see how to improve.

Converting Four Entrecard Graphs Into One

To get this multiple line graph, I took the data from the four graphs on Entrecard’s “more stats” page. I typed the numbers into a worksheet in Microsoft Word, then went to the graphing menu and selected a line graph.

Too much trouble, you think. Read my interpretation to determine if this kind of marketing research can help your business.

Relationship of Entrecard Drops and Organic Search

The most notable relationship on the chart is between the number of cards dropped on my blog (the blue line) and organic clicks (the green line). In fact they follow the same path so well that you can’t really see the blue line except at the three times when I ran advertisements.

This relationship is expected. I didn’t implement my first ad until the 21st. I got 3, 30 and 53 drops on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd respectively. This was the result of ads purchased with Entrecard credits. The other ads raise the blue line slightly above the green line for the last three days of the month.

The Results of Ads That I Ran

This table tells me that UnconventionalMarketingBlog brought me the most traffic for the least amount of credits per drop. This is provided in two tables in Entrecard, but I like having the two together. I wouldn’t go to the trouble for just one month, but as I continue to keep records and advertise on different sites, these statistics will help me to get the best return on my investment.

Relationship Between Entrecard Drops That I Made And Those Made To My Blog

Now back to the line chart. I see a slight relationship between the number of cards that I dropped and the number dropped on my blog. While my dropping has been a bit inconsistent, it has generally risen throughout the month. Drops on my site indicate a steady rise, but not nearly as dramatic as the rise in my drops.

You can see that when I decreased drops the last three days of the month, drops on my blog also dropped with about a day’s delay.

Summary And Insights From Entrecard Statistics

So what can I learn from this analysis.

First, there is a slight relationship between dropping and getting dropped on, but the number dropped on me tails my drops. This indicates that as I drop more, I should get more drops.

The question is if the number of visitors that I’m getting is worth the time that I spend dropping. So next month, I’ll keep track of my time so I can see how many drops that I get in return for my time. Once I determine the average number of drops per hour, I can compare that to other traffic methods that require time instead of money. Then I can compare which method provides the best return for an hour invested. You can see the results for August, by clicking the link below:
Interpreting Entrecard Statistics - August 2008

You can use a similar approach to interpret your entrecard statistics and improve your business in the process.

Top Droppers

People You Need to Know 17
Internet Business Ideas 16
Article Specialist 16
The Success 14
Online Social Networking 13
A Marketer’s Ramblings 12
CDubMarketing 11
Money Maker Times 10
BloggerHitz 10
impNERD 9

Thank you top ten droppers.

If you’d like to be listed in one of my posts with a do-follow linkback. Check the numbers by the top droppers. If you can beat it next month, you may get one of their spots in my Top Ten Entrecard Droppers list.

For more on entrecard, see

Blogs Get a Boost With Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership

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If you’re an Internet marketer, you need to know your target market. But this can be especially difficult for Internet marketers.Market segmentation can give you vital information about your target market.

Trying to market on the Internet without knowing who your target market members are, is like shooting blindfolded with a bouncing target.

Unfortunately, many Internet marketers depend totally on keywords without trying to discover anything about the people who use those keywords.

I call that marketing madness because it just throws time and money at marketing with little return on investment.

What Do You Know About Your Target Market?

The easiest way to work with a target market is to target a market like yourself. You already know how you react, and many of those reactions can be generalized to others like you.

The problem comes when your target market is not like you. This is often the case today if you, like many Internet marketers, select a niche based on the number of searches for a keyword and the number of competing sites.

How do you know how target market member’s in these niches will react?
How do you know the best appeals to reach them?
How do you know how to focus your Web site or blog to appeal to them?

You must conduct research.

What Type of Market Research Do You Do?

As an Internet marketer if you want to succeed online, good market research is vital.

Keyword research, monitoring forums and groups, and talking to people are important first steps, but are not enough. Once you’ve learned demographics from these types of research, you can use those demographics to discover much more about your target market, by using market segmentation.

Market segmentation provides a way of using demographic information to determine psychographic, sociographic and behavioral characteristics that enable you to discover the best appeals for your target market.

You can read about the role of gender in internet marketing.

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Posted 7-28-08: Internet Marketers Need To Know Their Target Markets

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Too often good blogs go unnoticed. But last Tuesday the partnership between Entrecard.com and Sezwho.com promise to bring attention, traffic, and comments to bloggers who write good posts and leave good relevant comments on other people’s blogs.

Why Is This Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership Important?

At one time just blogging brought you traffic. Today more than one million blogs make it hard for even the best blogs to get noticed. I’ve been blogging for about 3.5 months. I’ve posted more than 100 posts. Yet few people visit my blog and even fewer people comment on my blog or go to my Web site from my blog.

I post five days a week, do keyword research, and write posts relevant to marketing, market segmentation and target markets. These are topics that should interest all small business owners. Yet, I’ve had trouble getting people to visit my blog.

How Can Entrecard Help?

An Internet marketing friend recently recommended Entrecard, and I’ve been pleased with it. The traffic hasn’t been great, but two of my Entrecard new acquaintances have joined my affiliate program, and several have visited my site multiple times.

When I visit Entrecard blogs, I always read enough of the post to determine if I can contribute to the information. When I believe I can, I leave a comment. Otherwise, I just drop and go to another site.

What Does Sezwho Add To The Entrecard Experience?

With the partnership between Entrecard and Sezwho, I will now get credit for leaving relevant comments that contribute to a post. I’m excited about that and about the potential of more people actually reading my posts and commenting on them.

If you’re a blogger who came here from Entrecard, I hope you share this excitement and will also join Sezwho. If you just somehow found my blog without coming through Entrecard, welcome. If you’re also a blogger, I recommend that you check out Entrecard and Sezwho for yourself.

You can read statistics on my first month using Entrecard (July) and the second month after which I discontinued using Entrecard (August).

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Posted: 7-22-08: Blogs Get a Boost With Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership

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