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Understanding the Underbelly of Online Marketing & Why You’ll Lose if You Don’t

Both Sides of the Table

SEO / SEM are promotional techniques for marketing through the Google distribution channel, which have yielded huge benefits to many companies – Yelp being a prime example. I was talking with a colleague once about how videos go viral. Rebelling is simply a form of snobbery. Look at Viddy & SocialCast. Underbelly.

SEM 379
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Viral Marketing Costs Real Money These Days

Startup Professionals Musings

Every time I see a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. First of all, Seth Godin pointed out a couple of years ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Develop viral content. Seed viral activity.

Viral 141
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Why The Haters are Wrong About Growth Hacking

Both Sides of the Table

In essence Muhammad thinks the “growth hacking” is a charlatan term for online marketing that consists of a bunch of everyday tasks that all online businesses should be doing: SEO, SEM, Content Marketing, Social Media, Referral Marketing, etc. “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

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How Startups Can Use Metrics to Drive Success

Both Sides of the Table

How many through SEM? Measuring viral adoption is obviously important. per click on an SEM basis this is NOT your cost to acquire a customer – you need to add conversion rate. If you can break this down by channel that you’ve acquired them from this is obviously better. How many adds came through organic SEO?

Metrics 346
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Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

Dont worry about selecting particularly good keywords, if youre new to SEM. SEM only gets at one segment of users, and for a brand new product, you presumably need some skill at marketing in general and adsense in particular to get any useful info. Just put in your credit card. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click.

Demand 167
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How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. If you sell an online service that solves a defined problem, you can compete in SEO or SEM. There are other models, in other distribution channels.

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How to Choose Digital Marketing Channels for Long Term Growth

ConversionXL

SEM is great because you can capture people as they’re searching for a solution, which is often some of the highest intent traffic you can find. Virality and Referral. Virality is the key lever of many of the most famous growth examples: Dropbox, Uber, Facebook, Hotmail. If you sell shoes, would virality work for you?

Channel 118