Don’t know why it has taken me so long to do this. I think the inspiration came from a good friend of mine, Mr. Stull, owner and operator of www.exceptionalconsultants.com. He and I were having a talk about the power of blogging the other day and it was probably one of our best discussions about the power of the internet and getting your name and business out there.

I’ve been in marketing, sales, and eCommerce for 6 years – it’s about time I just start recording ideas that come to mind, share them with the internet community, and start implementing all of them. The purpose of this blog will be to do just that: “To share eCommerce SEO information, creative advertising ideas, and unique marketing opportunities with individuals and businesses.

I found this cool article at howstuffworks.com and it really hit me about Branding and Advertising:

A company buys advertising for one of two reasons:

• Branding
• Direct sales

Branding refers to the process of impressing a company name or a product name onto society’s collective brain. Let’s say you have come up with a new brand of soda, or you are opening a new restaurant, or you are selling a new widget. You want to get the product’s name (and sometimes the product’s features and benefits) firmly planted in people’s heads. This is branding.

Branding happens with both new and existing products. When you see a billboard that says nothing but “Coke” on it, or you see a NASCAR car that says “Tide” on the hood, or you see a feel-good ad on TV about a car company or an oil company but there’s no mention of a product, that is branding. The advertiser does not necessarily expect you to do anything today — the advertiser simply wants to impress itself on your consciousness.

On the other hand, a direct sales ad is an ad that is trying to get you to do something today, right now, as you look at the ad. The advertiser wants you to:

• Click on the ad
• Call an 800 number
• Drive immediately to the store

…or do some other active thing so that you buy something, download something or sign up for something today. The advertiser counts the direct responses to the ad and measures the effectiveness of the ad by those responses.

What branding advertisers came to feel about banner ads is that banner ads are not the most effective vehicle for branding. Relative to a magazine ad or a TV ad, banner ads are small and easily ignored.

What direct sales advertisers came to feel about banner ads is that the response rate for banner ads is low. For most banner ads, the industry average seems to hover between two and five clicks per 1,000 impressions of the ad. That is, if a banner ad appears on 1,000 Web pages, between two and five people will click on the ad to learn more.

Those five clicks per thousand impressions don’t have much value to most advertisers. The reason is because those five clicks will not all generate sales. Out of 100 clicks, perhaps one person will actually do the desired thing (buy something, download something, etc.). To read more Click Here.

All I can say to this is AMEN!! These are things I have passion for: advertising, branding, target audiences, marketing, sales, commerce, ecommerce, win/win situations, partnerships, joint ventures. Another friend of mine, Ron Robinson of www.awakeandarise.com told me recently, “Being passionate about what you do is so very important to success in any endeavor. That’s one of the reasons your success is increasing.”

So anyway, this is a start of something new (as if I didn’t have enough to do already!)
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