BroadVision Marketing Blog

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Guest Blogger Tim Zack

So you want to use QR codes but you’re not sure how to track them in Google Analytics. There are four steps to getting the URLs ready and generating the QR codes that will be ready for tracking using Google Analytics campaign tracking.

1. Plan your campaign

1. Use Google Campaign Builder to build unique URLs for each channel

1. Use your favorite URL Shortener to shorten the link

1. Generate the QR Code

Below are more details about each step of the process as well as links to some powerful tools for getting the job done.

1. Plan your campaign

Planning how you want to track the campaign is the key to making the work you will do to build the trackable QR codes worth while in the end. There would be nothing worse than for you to go to the analytics after the QR codes are in market and wish that you could segment a different way.

Topics: URL, Marketing Plan, Social Media

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You look at this thing and you think, “What in the world is that?” It’s not a crossword puzzle, a bar code doing drugs or postage stamp designed by someone on a hallucinogen. So what is it?

It’s that strange thing called a QR, or Quick Response, code. You have seen them in this blog, in magazines, in stores an even on T-shirts. They have grown in popularity because so many people are purchasing smart phones.

The idea was invented by a Japanese company named DENSO Corp., which is a subsidy of Toyota way back in 1994. Japanese have been using it for years, but only recently has it become popular in the United States.

Topics: Marketing Plan, Social Media

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You have a business or a service. What is the ultimate goal of your website? It’s not to get people to look at it and think you have created a cool landing page. You want to sell them your product or service. To make the sale you want to convert the lookers into customers. This is where the landing page makes a difference. Today your business depends on how well you create your online marketing program and the effectiveness of your landing page.  You want that page optimized.

Topics: marketing, Marketing and Advertising, landing page, Conversion rate, Landing page optimization, Optimization (mathematics), Marketing Plan, internet marketing, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business

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A cook starts with a recipe. A tourist starts with a map. An architect starts with a plan. So why do many small business owners think they can run their business without a  marketing plan?

To many small business owners, marketing means advertising - which means big bucks. And yes, some sorts of advertising are costly, but marketing also includes lots of less costly ways to engage prospective customers. With some research, planning, preparation and execution, business owners can be successful with marketing without spending enormous amounts of their budget on advertising.

Do be sure and include some marketing in your budget, but it doesn’t need to be a high ticket item. A word of warning: as you look at what your competition is doing, remember that it might not work for you. Don’t copy them or customers might mistake you for them.

Here in brief are four main insights that can lead to marketing success:

Topics: marketing, Small business, YouTube, Marketing Plan, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Twitter

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Image via CrunchBase"] [/caption]

Have you been in business all your life, but are new to social media? Have requests from your clients (or your kids) forced you into the 21 ^st Century kicking and screaming? Does the terminology turn you to jelly or send you reaching into the liquor closet or the chocolate box or both?

Believe it or not much of this is so new that it’s just as new to the young entrepreneur as well.

Let’s just look at some of the current terms and see if we can’t turn them into plain language.

Topics: Customer, Online Communities, VoC, Hearing (sense), Voice of the Client, Marketing Plan, Facebook, internet marketing, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business, Twitter