According to people who understand the marketing market, the decline in print ad spending in the U.S. is expected to fall $33.8 billion this year while the amount of money funneled into online advertising is expected to seesaw upwards to $39.5 billion. Online adverting spending already grew 23% in 2011 and this year’s speculation would see an additional growth of 23.3%. Actually, barring any paper robot revolution, print ads are looking to remain static from here on out.

If bar graphs aren’t your thing, eMarketer explains:

“Advertisers’ comfort level with integrated marketing is greater than ever, and this is helping more advertisers—and more large brands—put a greater share of dollars online,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst.

The growing amount of time consumers spend with digital platforms and advertisers’ view of the internet as a more measurable medium—especially as the soft economy forces businesses to be more accountable with their ad dollars—are both significant contributors to digital’s growing footprint, Hallerman added.

TV advertising spending, however, forecasts sunnier skies if you’re looking to sell some ads. eMarketer estimates that spending on TV advertising is expected to grow 6.8% this year and will continue to generate growth over the next few years.

One reason eMarketer states that TV advertising will continue to grow is “a result of the rapid rise of digital advertising and brands’ continued confidence in television advertising, despite increasingly fragmented viewership and the soft economy.” Duh. The television market will always be a fertile ground to plant ads because people will never stop watching television. Hasn’t anybody ever seen Wall-E?

Register your class for the Google Online Marketing Challenge

Or is this something more than a contest? Maybe it is Google planting the seed of online marketing, AdWords and general SEO into the minds of college marketing students. Right on the sidebar of the contest page you have a link explaining what Google AdWords is:

The Google Online Marketing Challenge > About Google AdWords

Digging deeper in the FAQ’s for the contest you find:

Is the competition about Google AdWords?

Partially; the competition is about online marketing. Google AdWords serves as a vehicle for gathering real world data and discussing online advertising’s role in online marketing. Teams, however, must discuss other aspects of online marketing such as website layout and offline promotion, in both written reports. The competition is about real-world applications of online marketing; Google AdWords is merely the platform.

What if I have never used AdWords?

As Google’s flagship advertising product, setting up and running an AdWords account is simple. You and your students will have ample AdWords material in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors. All things equal, the more you know about AdWords, the more fun for your students and you, and the better their chances to win.

So you pretty much have to use AdWords in this contest:

How do students win?

Students compete on three criteria, two short written reports and the most effective Google AdWords campaign for their business.

The most effective campaign is judged by looking at over 30 different factors from account structure through to use of budget.

Details on the report format and a guide to creating a successful campaign will be available in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors and students, and on this competition website in late 2007 / early 2008.

More about the Google Contest:

The challenge is a global online marketing competition developed by professors from across the globe in collaboration with Google. It starts in February 2008 and is open to any higher education institution from anywhere in the world.

Student groups will receive US$200 of free online advertising and then work with local businesses to devise effective online marketing campaigns. They will outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess their results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing.

It’s a great chance for students to gain practical, real world online marketing experience whilst getting all the excitement of competing with other students from all over the world.

We’re looking for professors and institutions to register for the challenge now.

I think the funniest part of the contest is the “Tips On Selecting Businesses”

Tips on Businesses to Avoid

When searching for likely candidates, remember that regardless of the business’ size, you may compete against many companies who have large advertising budgets to spend on the same keywords you want to use. With this in mind, there are a few businesses you should avoid:

* Web Hosting
* Web Design Agencies
* Insurance Companies
* Mortgage Agencies
* Debt Consolidation Companies
* Multi-level marketers
* Distributors
* Affiliate Companies

Also bear in mind that Travel and Finance businesses can be difficult to utilise for this competition – many of the big players in these industries have advertised and optimised their campaigns for years, and have significant online advertising budgets. It might be tough for you to compete against them.

I am wondering what’s the angle here? What is Google trying to get from this?

1. Better local SERP results for localized queries?

3. Teaching SEO from the ground up? Maybe G finally realizes the disconnect SEO intrinsically has with most of the public, namely college students. Realizing that no colleges really offer a satisfactory SEO course, that can be properly maintained, Google might feel that this type of contest will help the next generation of college students become more familiar with the practice of SEO.

I will say number 3. By plugging an SEO contest into many college curriculums that otherwise might not have it, could be good for Google AdWords bottom line long term. This will also cause a dependency from the local business on Google if they have success in the initial spending, Not bad thinking Google.

What do you think?

Comments

Session description: Google, Yahoo, Ask, and other search engines have changed the way they present search results, and the changes have major implications for interactive marketers. The still emerging trend, referred to as unified search, integrates vertical content into the main natural search results page. Images, videos, news and blog posts, previously accessible only by clicking between tabs in the results, now appear in the main query results. How can you adjust your search strategy to capitalize on the changes? Learn what types of content have grown in importance and hot to capitalize accordingly.
Moderator: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing and publisher of the TopRank Online Marketing blog

• Chris Heuer, Partner, The Conversation Group
• Paul Bruemmer, Director Search Marketing, Red Door Interactive
• Bridget Shea, Director of Account Services, SendTec

Lee Odden
Explanation of universal search. Execution is different: Ask 3D—3 columns; disambiguation/results/images & video
Live: harder to prompt video
Yahoo & Google: video mixed in
(examples: Shrek III, Nintendo Wii—integrating Google News, Blog search results (as of yesterday))
1/2-2/3 of the audience executing universal search right now
Pushing site on several different channels: Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Chris Heuer
Search is the beginning of a conversation. Social media is also a conversation—search is the end, social is the beginning. Text, audio, video & stuff by people and for people. You’re people, corporations are people.

Success requires clarity of purpose. The original idea round SEO was to help people find answers (ie your content). Universal search is a natural evolution—provide many different types of info. It’s in the best interest of the searcher. Universal search simply requires search marketing professional to apply keyword optimization to all channels. It’s still about “filling the funnel.”

Put the searcher first. Serving their interest is the purpose, form which you leverage the “because effect.” Interruption isn’t welcome. Roadblocks are . . . blocking.

Serve the market and you serve the marketer.

Making media optimized to engage searcher in the conversation is the optimization of marketing. Universal means thinking about other media in the same way you used to think about landing pages.

Paul Bruemmer

Have you responded to capitalize on the changing face of search engines?

How can you adjust search strategy to capitalize on these changes?

Learn what kinds of content have grown in importance (and how to capitalize on those).

Is Google Backing off from universal search? (15 Oct search insider column, Mark Simon). Very thought provoking

1. Are users confused by natural search?
2. Does universal search make Google money?
3. What about Google’s tabs image/video/etc?
4. Does it erode relevancy?

He’s going to rebut those arguments.

Understand Google’s culture: It was created as a research project; heavily anchored in math. Large amounts of free, relevant info. Successful search & advertising DNA created off the back of organic listings. It’s not about paid search; all about user experience.

Google’s marketing and PR people do a very good job of distracting analysts and journalists from Google’s core activities (it’s all analytical, mathematical—not emmotional)
infolab.standford.edu/~backrub/Google.html — their initial abstract/plan in 1997, got them the grant at Stanford

Is research history?
Google wants to bring DGM, video product reviews, catalogs, books, local, maps, products, web, finance image blogs etc etc etc. Research probably isn’t history.

Do people trust consumers’ opinion? yes—he expects a big growth pattern in video
Video customer reviews
Yideo product demos—videos go viral, videos in conversion
He who hesitates is lost—get to work on universal search

Bridget Shea

She’ll play devil’s advocate. Any shift in the organic listings will have affect on paid listings. We can see that visually the SERP is going to change. For any of you that read the Enquiro research with 2010 SERP, the changes are certainly even more drastic.

It looks like a major shift, but I think this will have a very small impact on the core fundamentals of search campaign management.

We’re always getting back to the fact that it’s nothing new that search has all these dynamic variables. We always have to look at “cost allowable” CPL, etc. Core fundamentals—if you have that intact, you’re ready. It’s just another variable to deal with. Like seasonality—holiday season doesn’t mean you have to scrap everything you’re doing the rest of the year. Like competition—new companies or products don’t mean everything you’ve done is completely irrelevant.

It’s very math-driven, especially in paid side.

The image is most obvious. If you put the image in the middle of the organic listings—it changes the way the users’ eyes go. If you’re getting more consideration on the organic side, you may get less consideration on the paid side.

Another thing that might change is average position. Ask3D—overall average position. We might have 2 average positions—overall and within each individual media category.

Things that impact consumers can then impact marketing. One idea: price comparison within SERP—you might start to see a shift that could be big. If consumers can find all the info that they need and there’s a corollary B&M—if the SERP has reviews, specs, info, local address and store hours could drive your online sales offline.

Some agencies will be better positioned already, but I don’t think we need to scrap everything we know—make improvements and upgrades to move quickly with it. Agencies and SEOs that have full service are better prepared—already doing paid, SEO, video, etc.

An area where agencies could make up some ground, certainly with video in SERPs—take the same video for a tv campaign, cut it up, get it online and add online CTAs, voila.

Additional data points mean we need to not rely on our old ways of doing analytics—big upgrade there.

You can’t rely on one great high-caliber analytics guru—find systems to make all those analytics replicable and scalable to grow business and not get bogged down in data.

Flexible technology. If we’re gonna throw in other variables, think about all the different parameters in query strings—agencies with proprietary technology and those that can modify and track parameters and conversions will definitely be in a good place.

Lee’s question: What do you think is the low-hanging fruit for the organizations that are already publishing different kinds of content to take advantage of universal search.

Paul: certainly along the lines of what Bridget was saying. Those who have the materials need to just get them up and get it going. That’s very low hanging fruit

Chris: the linking behavior around it—having an index page of your images, give images relevance

Paul: Weather.com did a great job implementing their video for earth forecast. Their video pageviews have increased 400% by essentially creating a site map of their videos with thumbnails, links, text, etc.

They’re doing a great job of organizing that data.

Bridget: It’s kind of the last check on the box is once we go live on their TV campaigns is that we launch is on Google video as well

Chris: there are all these sites where you can put up your content for free (blip, flickr, youtube) and link back to the brand

Lee: promoting those different media types—upload your video to your site and submit it to those free sites.

Chris: it’s about serving your clients’ needs. They need this, they demand it, someone is going to serve those needs. Are you going to find a way to serve those needs or will you partner out?

Paul: you’ve gotta have content, and if you don’t you have to look at all the other media and find a way to provide the content or be lost in the sea of data.

Is there a preference if there’s something appropriate, tagged appropriately, it’s more likely to come up in SERPs (if video or image)?

Paul: Universal search is not where it’s gonna be 12 months from now. They’re throwing a lot of switches. There will no doubt be a mathematical algorithm to find what people want.

Bridget: they’re smart about how they’re testing. There’s a reason why the page isn’t filled with just video and images. You only see maps when doing a local type search.

Lee: Google Blogoscoped posted screen shots of universal paid results. Very much dynamic and in flux.

Paul: it’s embryonic at this point. Not a foregone conclusion about its direction.

Chris: I don’t see a future where you’d see 10 video results. It comes down to individual preferences and learning styles. Some people are number-driven, some story-driven. 5-1 difference in video v. audio downloads. Yeah, they’re going to other tabs and just listening to it play. It’s a matter of individual preference—may set in profiles.

Paul: You hit the nail on the head there. Gord interviewed Marissa Mayer a while ago: people are tired of network television telling them the news. People want the news the way they want the news and they’ll get it from Goolge. Google provides it to you in a vast, universal way. That’s the direction.

Lee: difference between choosing your content and random access content.

Paul, you showed a shot where there was a right-rail video pd search. Was that live?

Paul: That was live and it was gone the next day—one ad, two “videos” results, two “products” results (very like Ask 3D).

Video is easier—like to be entertained. It’s a lot less of recall and retainment. The advent of more advertainment is going to make it harder to get ROI than it is today. The world may be bigger, but I think it would be harder to dive good ROI through video

Paul: Marketers have their centric POV in getting ROI, but that’s not consumers/searchers POV and goal.

Chris: people don’t want to be advertised to. It’s an interruption. Social graph—how do we monetize it? I’m there to be social, not to transact. Same with YouTube. People don’t want marketers in a lot of their conversations because they’re trying to get them to do things they don’t want to do. But helping them do what they want to do? That’ll work.

Followup: but why should I, then, work on my entertaining video when it doesn’t help?

Bridget: It’s not just entertainment. It should have a strong CTA, it needs to be clear what you want the do after they view it.

Lee: it’s the content that gives them value but also has a CTA

Chris: this shift is NOT about selling, it’s about helping people buy. When they’re ready, they need to be able to find it

Search is a textual medium—Ask 3D commercial. I’m just wondering if this is what the searcher wants, I would submit that if someone’s going to a search engine, if they want an image or video (which they often indicate in query). If it’s not indicated in the query, I don’t think it’s what they’re looking for. There are some improvements that universal does great, but are we getting away from the simple elegance that search provided?

Lee: I have to believe that search engines are looking at click stream data—for this type of query, what type or result they go to, and factoring that data in future SERPs.

Bridget: Huge shift on local with maps onebox for local search. It comes down to preferences and local.

Paul: remember the common denominator. Google is anchored in math. As humans, we can’t do Google’s calculations. It’s gonna be very complex, how they arrive at this.

Followup: from the users’ perspective, what do they want? Are they looking for a rich media experience every time?

Paul: that’s what they’re trying to find out. Google has 30 data centers costing $2b/yr, 400k servers—they’re into it.

Chris: people often don’t know what they’re searching for. They think they can search and just find it. See what they want in SERPs. Helping to direct them more specifically to the things they’re looking for. [requiring less query refinement]

From the advertisers’ standpoint, and working with our clients, it’s around what are people doing when they’re at your site. Are they watching your test drive video? Put it in Google video and drive traffic there. A lot of this going around keyword up there. Not every result gives a universal result. It’s back on you—what are people doing on your site?

Chris: Marketing has popularly become associated with selling. The original idea of marketing is matching the value of a product/service with the audience, the people who will drive the most value from it. If we get back to that, it will changes things drastically.

Would you say our low-hanging fruit should be not only including images in Flickr and video on YouTube, but creating a universal LP—include images, video, etc. If you have a product, you want to show everything on that same page—blog, review, text, video, image.

Bridget: you’re gonna want to test that. When you have two product offerings, we do a lot of landing page testing where we give them a very clear decision. You might offer both paths. We don’t know if it’s termite or pest control. If we let them choose. If it’s a broader term that’s a brand term, again it’s going to follow the same principles. More likely: take whether broad or specific query to match to pages like you’re doing now.

Paul: example—Amazon. Long long product pages, everything on there. Do well in organic and paid.

Chris: social media allows you serve a/b markets. Helps you create serendipity—long tail keyword. Those 20 people at the end of the spectrum that call it something else. More content is better!

Yesterday we heard 80% of clicks are on organic. One more tool bar on Ask, no organic results ATF (well, images and video are probably organic results)

Lee: Clicks on search results are on organic side. For folks who aren’t doing SEO, it’s moot. But if you are, and landscape is changing on types of content represented, what’s getting clicks—it’s an opportunity for you

Gord: We understand images much faster than text. It’s a much longer cycle to understand & process text. Spend a little less time with the spreadsheets, spend a little more time looking at what makes your customer tick.

Comments

Since I’m an optimist I try to imagine they do it mainly to encourage innovation and better solutions to the world’s problems both on and offline. Even if that’s not the whole story, it’s very feel good. It infuses a sense of fun and open-mindedness since they are always a bit quirky are aimed a broad age and range of people.

Contests can be a good way to get things done and you don’t have to fly people to company headquarters either. Guy Kawasaki got his book cover designed by running a contest.

Here is a list of some Google contests (feel free to fill me in on any I’ve missed):

• Google Highly Open Participation Contest
• Doodle 4 Google competition
• Google Moon Contest
• Build Your Campus in 3D Competition!
• Google Desktop Gadget Contest

Here’s another Google contest for college students who want to assist local businesses about online marketing. It’s called the Online Marketing Challenge.

Here are some details for the Online Marketing Challenge:

• It was developed with college professors around the world
• Students get $200 worth of free advertising dollars to spend on a campaign
• Groups of students find local businesses to run an internet marketing strategy
• Starts in February 2008 and participants run the campaign on a three week timeframe

If you teach a college course (this makes me want to actually) this is a great way to give students practical experience on Google’s dime. The contest winners get a trip to the Googleplex and get to meet the developers of Google AdWords. Probably some swag too. No cash, but a bit of fun.

Comments

The first paper, to be published in the December 2007 issue of the Journal of Advertising Research, suggests that advertisers should focus on "old fashioned" word of mouth tactics, where the collective spreads the message, rather than a "few elite and highly connected believed to have the most persuasive power." 

The findings contradict traditional advertising practices, where celebrity endorsements are standard practice. But people are not only more likely to trust an endorsement coming from a friend, but are also eager to pass the message along.

The study was co-authored by James Coyle, assistant professor of marketing in Miami’s Farmer School of Business and of interactive media studies, Elizabeth Lightfoot of CNET Networks, and Ted Smith and Amy Scott of MedTrackAlert.

“We find that trying to track down key influencers, people who have extremely large social networks, is typically unnecessary and, more importantly, can actually limit a campaign or advertisement’s viral potential,” said Coyle, in a statement.

“Instead, marketers need to realize that the majority of their audience, not just the well-connected few, is eager and willing to pass along well-designed and relevant messages.”

News of the study comes just a day after another bit of research, conducted by Saint Joseph’s University’s Dr. Natalie Wood and published by the Journal of Political Marketing, found that celebrity endorsement of political candidates can actually drive voters the other direction.

“In terms of voting behavior, family and significant others are more influential than celebrities in engaging support for a political candidate,” said Wood. "At first glance, it would appear that the money and time invested in celebrity support is wasteful.”

Wood also says that young voters sometimes rebel against political endorsements, and that it may be better if celebrities encouraged voters, rather than whom to vote for.

Hat tip to Guy Kawasaki

 The largest budget increase will be in online marketing, with 79 percent of marketers planning to increase their online budgets next year, up from last year’s survey that found 75 percent of marketers planned to put more dollars toward their online budgets in 2007.

The online areas that will receive increases next year are Web site development (cited by 74.0% of marketers); e-mail (70.1%); search engine marketing (64.3%); video (39.5%); webcasting (39.1%); banners (36.4%); sponsorships (29.6%); and social media (26.2%).

Along with online budgets receiving a boost, event marketing will also get an increase. Forty-nine percent of marketers are planning a budget increase in this area compared with 44 percent last year.

In 2008 direct mail marketing is expected to continue to grow with 40 percent of respondents planning to increase their direct budgets next year, down from 50 percent last year. Increases in print budgets will also be down. Twenty-seven percent of marketers expect to increase their print spending compared with 33 percent last year.

The survey also revealed that 69 percent of marketers will launch new ad campaigns in 2008 and 36 percent will hire additional staff.

Our next post in that series is about micro blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

At first I balked at the idea of Twittering like many others but eventually signed up and have been tuned in ever since. Like blogging, there are many misperceptions about the productivity potential for Twitter. Those unfamiliar will often say, “What’s up with telling people: My flight is leaving. We landed. Getting in cab. Etc?”. Trust me, there is a method to the MicroMedia madness as both an individual and a commercial communications tool.

There’s both a social/play and a social/communicate aspect to Twitter that makes it productive as a promotional tool for pointing to interesting things you’ve found on the web as well as a tool for building credibility and influence. On their own, such updates can be blasé and uninteresting. However, followed over time, you can gain insight into people you may end up hiring, getting hired by, working for, partnering with or simply socializing with.

It’s true that some people do use Twitter as if they’re trying to copy the most boring blog on the web. However, many others are sharing links to timely resources or things they’ve found on the web that they’d like to share/promote immediately as well as tidbits of personal/business information.

A variety of commercial applications for Twitter have begun popping up including political candidates posting updates from the road as has happened with Barack Obama & John Edwards. Other commercial and marketing use examples of Twitter include JetBlue promoting special offers, the BBC posting news items, Apple posts it’s own news (bypassing the media – hmmm) and online retailer Woot posting deals throughout the day.

From a personal brand building and networking standpoint, the key is not to look at microblogging as individual posts, but think of the overall impressions and value that can be created over time. Each 140 character or less entry serves as a seed of an idea for an overall objective. It’s tempting to post something to get it off your chest as I did when a bike was stolen outside my office window and I pulled it out of the truck as the thieves drove away – all during a conference call. I felt I had to tell someone and I certainly couldn’t interrupt the guys from Intel, Ogilvy and iProspect I was on the call with.

Rather, consider an overall objective and keep that in mind as decisions are made about what kinds of personal info, links to useful resources and promotional items are posted. Over time, you’ll build a footprint and identify within the Twitter community. Building that footprint will be far more effective if you keep overall objectives in mind, rather than random information.  Unless of course, your objective is to build an identity as a scatterbox.

Now for the Twitter tips.

Biz Stone via the Twitter Email Newsletter:
Jott, has created a way to send a Twitter update by speaking into your phone–your voice gets converted to text and sent out to all your followers. This is a
much safer solution for people who insist on updating Twitter when their attention is required elsewhere–like driving!
Twitter by Voice and more Twitter Apps.

“Rhea” – Skim for links. They are often only used for passing news, as an action alert or resource grabber. It’s worth 5 seconds. Rhea Drysdale

“andybeal” – I tweeted that I was looking to hire a new blogger and found Janet – so I guess Twitter followers are a good job pool Andy Beal

“TDefren” – Mix it up: share news, pontifications, reaction, blog posts. Aid in others’ discovery & contribute to the conversation. Todd Defren

“SebastianX“ – Often Twitter sends folks to new stuff way faster than RSS, and it’s a persistent link, valuable despite the tinyurl/nofollow crap, as long as you promote your profile a little. Sebastian

“graywolf” – Use the twittertools plugin to automagically post new blog entries to Twitter. Michael Gray

“trishussey” – Connecting your blog feed to Twitter and posting events and breaking news. Twitter is a great way to announced time-sensitive events like radio shows, etc. Combine with Twitterbar for Firefox and you can post right from your address bar. Tris Hussey

“bhartzer” – Like a lot of other services, it’s important to add or follow other people first and then most likely they will reciprocate. Find your favorite twitter profile and view who they’re following…and follow them. Follow people and they’ll (hopefully) follow you. Also, when editing your profile on twitter, you can add more than one link in your profile. Turns out that http: link URLs are treated as links. Bill Hartzer

“PeterHimler” – Fun to follow thought-leaders and journalists who often tweet their forthcoming thoughts on the site. Peter Himler

Additional resources on using Twitter as a networking, PR and communications tool can be found at:

• Caroline Middlebrook: The Big Juicy Twitter Guide
• Jeremiah Owyang – What The Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter
• B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next Blog: How to Write Kickass Twitter Posts
• PR Squared: Using Twitter To Create & Inform Communities
• WebProNews: Microblogging What’s it Good For?
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County: Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities
• Red66 – Using Twitter as a Marketing Tool
• Eleven Marketing- Add Twitter to Your Internet Marketing Toolbox

Tools to make your “twittering” more productive:

• Twitter Groups – Allows you to tag your followers into different groups. Then you can send a message to those groups without needing to send the message to each person one at a time.
• TweetVolume – A frequency search tool to see how often a unique name (person, brand, etc) is mentioned on Twitter.
• Twitter Tools – A huge collection of Twitter tools by platform as well as plugins, web services and widgets.
• All Twitter Tools and Mashups in One Place – Maybe not all, but a very large list of desktop clients, mobile apps, mashups, plugins, tools and widgets.
• Twittown Unofficial Twitter Community which includes Twitter Forge, a listing of Twitter plugins, Ttools, mashups and services.

Thank you to everyone that contributed! Do you have a great Twitter use or marketing tip to share? Please share in the comments.

Comments

Tag:

I thought that was a great idea and with so many smart marketers reading Online Marketing Blog, I’d like to invite you to share a few of your favorite books on the subjects of marketing online, social media and new media public relations.

I’ll start with the list I sent Rohit which includes a few books that are several years old but most are fairly new or soon to be released:

• The Long Tail - Chris Anderson
• Join the Conversation - Joseph Jaffe
• The New Influencers – Paul Gillin
• The Search – John Battelle
• The New Rules of Marketing & PR – David Meerman Scott
• Now is Gone – Geoff Livingston & Brian Solis
• Do It Wrong Quickly, How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules – Mike Moran
• Search Engine Marketing Inc – Bill Hunt, Mike Moran
• The Corporate Blogging Book – Debbie Weil
• Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Jeff & Bryan Eisenberg
• The Eyes Have It – Kevin Lee & Steve Baldwin
• Lead Generation for the Complex Sale – Brian J. Carroll
• Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch
• Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae – Is Your Marketing Out of Synch?” is scheduled for release in December

You can find and order or pre-order all of these books at Amazon or BN.com.

Do you have a recommended reading list of books for better online marketing and PR? Please share in the comments.

Comments

Tag:

"It starts in February 2008 and is open to any higher education institution from anywhere in the world. Students will work with local businesses to devise effective online marketing campaigns. They will outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess their results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing. It’s a great chance for students to gain practical, real world online marketing experience whilst getting all the excitement of competing with other students from all over the world."

Haochi writes that, "Global winners will receive a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View and meet the AdWords developers, and regional winners are invited to their local Google office." Teachers who wish to register their class for this challenge, click here.

Comments