The author of the book The Art of War, Sun Tzu, once said, “Every battle is won before it’s fought.”  With everyone talking about the recession and rising gas prices, it seems that businesses will have to do “battle” in order to get through this downturn.  In my last blog entry, “Recession: Blessing in Disguise?” I talked about the MarketingSherpa report and how businesses can leverage online marketing during these uncertain times.  However, that report has a second part which talks about strategies that marketers are using to get through the slump.  In this blog post, I’m going to talk about those strategies, plus add some data from eMarketer that backs them up. This post will explain how local businesses can use these strategies to their advantage.  It can be your “business battle plan” if you will. (more…)

Three major players in Directory Assistance and Voice Search launched new applications for mobile DA and search use.  Among the newly released applications is a human supported FreeMobile411 for Sprint phone users.

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A new technology called virtualization is coming soon to a cell phone near you. Virtualization allows cell phones to utilize various mobile applications like web browsing, social networking, or gaming on one operating system as opposed to separate operating systems on separate phones.
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The Internet retailer, Bigreds.com is accusing Yahoo! of click fraud. In their filed complaint, they state, “Affiliates of Overture used software programs, employed people, and/or directed people other than actual customers to click on plaintiffs links from keyword search results.”  In 2006, Yahoo! had acknowleded the click fraud but had only offered a refund of $17,000, which apparently was not enough at the time when Bigreds.com had spent an estimated $900,000 over the course of four years (2002-2006).  Hopefully the “little” guy will be able to make a stand against click fraud offenders everywhere.

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Interactive Marketing may be getting a facelift this year according to MediaPost’s “Metrics are the New Black” article. According to a recent Forrester Research Survey, interactive channels are expected to be more effective at “delivering on every marketing goal including selling products or services online, driving traffic to a Web site, generating leads and, most importantly, building relationships and loyalty.”  The survey also shows that the biggest difference between online and traditional marketing is the availabilty of key performance metrics that are not as accessible offline.  However, the tried and true click-through-rate (CTR) may be too simplistic already. Marketers are now focusing on evaluating higher-level metrics–customer engagement, time spent and interaction rates, overall brand sentiment, and true brand conversions on the Web.

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Google just announced that you can now embed local business videos into your business listing on Google Maps.  These videos will be displayed under the “Photos and Videos” tab. Until now it seemed as though Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) had been the only ones looking to harness this potential.  However, this recent partnership may give IYP publishers a run for their money, and hopefully make it more cost effective for businesses to implement this on IYP’s and local search sites such as SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, or Citysearch.com.

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In the past, we’ve written about speculation of a recession and how the current state of the economy will affect online marketing.  Luckily for us, MarketingSherpa came out with a report, titled, “Marketing During a Downturn” that sheds light onto how marketers are feeling the effects of the economy and what they are doing about it.  Because online marketing was barely around during the last recession, there is little research detailing the affects on the industry.  This study provides some good insight on what is happening now in many companies’ marketing departments and what they plan to do in the forthcoming months. (more…)