Listen to the other two as well and let us know which one is your favorite!

Listen to the other two as well and let us know which one is your favorite!

Listen to the other two ads as well and let us know which one is your favorite!

Adweek.com’s Top 10 Advertising Stories of 2011 | Adweek.

When potential dates, employers and friends glance at your online social profiles, what do they see? EyeTrackShop, a startup that runs eye-tracking studies for advertisers, helpedMashable find out by applying its technology to the profile pages of popular social networks.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, and the companies they run – worldwide. The awards are one of four Stevie Awards programs, which have been hailed as the world’s premier business awards.

More than 300 nominees and their guests attended the awards dinner at New York’s Marriott Marquis Hotel. The event benefitted Camfed (camfed.org), which fights poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa by educating girls and empowering women to become leaders of change.

In winning the Stevie, Ad 2 Tampa Bay beat out other finalists including the 5th largest PR firm in the world, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, New York for the award. More than 1,300 entries – a record for the competition – were submitted this year for consideration in 75 categories, including Best Executive, Best Entrepreneur, Women Helping Women, and Communications Campaign of the Year.

“The ‘I Own Me’ campaign was developed pro bono by more than 35 volunteers to help educate and empower teens when it comes to making decision in a relationship,” said Lindsey Howe, Treasurer and past Public Service Account Director of Ad 2 Tampa Bay. “We wanted to not just create an awareness campaign, but wanted to send a powerful message to teens that it is okay to value your actions, your heart, your body, your feelings and be who you want to be while in a dating relationship.”

“We are honored to win this prestigious international award but most importantly, the success of the campaign is measured by of all the lives we continue to help through The Spring of Tampa Bay and other domestic violence victims everywhere, said Tamara Whittaker, immediate past president of Ad 2 Tampa Bay.”

Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of honorees are available at www.stevieawards.com/women.

About Ad 2 Tampa Bay

Ad 2 Tampa Bay, Inc., an affiliate of the American Advertising Federation, is a non-profit organization of advertising professionals under the age of 32. Ad 2 Tampa Bay seeks to raise the profile and prestige of the local advertising industry through education, legislation, and public service. As a eleven-time National Ad 2 Club of the Year, the organization takes pride in providing both members and the community with quality educational programs, national award-winning public service campaigns, professional interaction, member employment services, fun-filled social events and much more. For more information, please visit www.ad2tampabay.org.

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at www.stevieawards.com.

Sponsors and supporters of the 8th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business include the Business TalkRadio Network, Coloredge, Infogroup, KeyBank | Key4Women, Melilea International Group of Companies, SDL, and Smart Reader Worldwide.

via Ad 2 Tampa Bay Wins Stevie® Award in 8th Annual Stevie Awards For Women in Business.

In today’s ever-changing technological age, it can be overwhelming to keep up with current trends. The Internet has revolutionized the way in which we do business and communicate with one another. For attorneys, the time has never been more critical to create a web presence. Not only does advertising online increase your visibility and offer creative new ways to promote your services, but it has rapidly become the standard by which a business is judged by potential clients.

By correctly utilizing the tools the Internet provides, you can quickly gain a vital advantage in this highly competitive market. In this guide, we will be providing an introduction to the most popular online marketing strategies, as well as helping you get started on building a web presence of your own.

Attorney’s Websites

According to a study by Pew Research in 2009, 74% of all Americans use the Internet. Of those, 81% use the Internet to research products or services. Here in the 21st century, being without a website is akin to not having a business card. If a potential client can’t instantly find you, they’ll move on to someone else as fast as it takes to click a button.

Read the guide at Attorney Websites

Monitoring Attorney Website Traffic

Web traffic monitoring should be your top priority. You have to determine the incoming web traffic in order to gauge the visibility of your website, and effectiveness of your marketing. Once you understand your user habits, you can definitely increase your market profits.

Read the guide at Monitoring Attorney Website Traffic

Legal Directories and Generating Business Leads for Law Firms

Legal directories are an excellent and targeted source of getting qualified leads. There are several ways by which a legal directory can help you promote your business. A legal directory drives traffic to your website, increases your page ranking, as well as indexes your web pages.

Read the guide at Legal Directories and Generating Business Leads for Law Firms

Publishing Legal Articles Online

There are many sites that exist solely to publish articles. While many of these sites are general purpose and do not focus on a single topic, if you want to reach your target audience, it’s best to go where your readers and peers will be most likely to gather traffic.

Read the guide at Publishing Legal Articles Online

Google Places for Law Firms

Google Places allows law firms to create a page found on Google’s local search. By ensuring that basic information is up-to-date and providing additional details, like photos, hours, and coupons, business owners can stand out on the map to attract more customers.

Read the guide at Google Places for Law Firms

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising for Attorneys

Now that you or your firm has launched a website, it’s time to start advertising. The Internet is quickly overtaking traditional print ads in effectiveness and visibility. This is great news for anybody looking to start an advertising campaign. Advertising online is highly cost-effective, low-risk, and easy to launch. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most commonly used Internet marketing strategies.

Read the guide at Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising for Attorneys

Blogs for Attorneys

There are many advantages to having a personalized blog, but the most important one is that it creates an avenue for fresh content and establishes a personal touch by the attorney. In today’s revolutionized Internet age, businesses without a solid web presence will be overlooked by most prospective customers. Although traditionally old-fashioned in business and marketing practices, attorneys are no exception to the rule.

Read the guide at Blogs for Attorneys

via Marketing for Lawyers – Attorney Marketing – Law Firm Marketing Guide.

As 2012 follows on the heels of such events, what digital changes and trends should forward-thinking marketers anticipate? Here are Optify’s Top 12 predictions for the year ahead.

1. Marketing automation 2.0 will arrive, ushering in mature software and increasing enterprise adoption

Historically, marketing automation has consisted primarily of email and email nurturing. In 2011, however, we witnessed the expansion of social customer relationship management (CRM). Marketing automation is now one of the fastest growing segments of the CRM industry.

In 2012, it will evolve from being an early-adopter tool into a mainstream solution for organizations that want to connect marketing operations, from the very top of the funnel, to online search, and down through sales and customer management.

Industry players like Aprimo, Eloqua, Marketo, and Optify (our company) will continue to shape the marketing automation 2.0 revolution.

2. Customers and employees will become an extended part of companies’ marketing teams

As social networks are used ever-more frequently for aggregating and sharing interests, expect opinions, positive or negative, about products and services to spread with lightening speed. As a result, businesses’ customer relationships will become increasingly focused on creating and managing perceptions.

In 2010, companies began listening to customers’ wants and needs via social buzz. In 2011, they focused on responding to digital customer commentary. In 2012, companies will need to move the needle forward, scaling marketing efforts by creating and sharing information with employees and influential customer evangelists to help define their brands, products, and services from the ground up.

Salesforce.com’s recent extension of its chatter feature, which allows businesses to share information and files with their customers via a hosted network, is early evidence of this trend.

3. SoPo (social personalization) will be on the rise

“Keeping up with the Joneses” has never been so transparent. The power of referrals and recommendations will be fine-tuned and harnessed to encourage and persuade others to follow their friends’ leads.

With an ever-increasing social network footprint, and the explosion of data fueling it, expect networked recommendations to become more ubiquitous (e.g., your friend’s friend likes this product).

Content recommendations on Facebook stores and participating e-commerce sites will be increasingly powered and filtered by friends’ preferences (see “Likes” and “Social TV” below). Social sign-on, group sharing, and universal wish lists will even make personalization on smaller sites possible, and collaborative filtering will create connections between people in unanticipated and creative ways.

4. “Likes” will intersect with multimedia

“Likes” will begin to influence more than just online text content. Digital video content providers will assume friends share “Like” preferences for video content. In turn, they will tailor and filter programming to you based on the “Likes” you and your friends provide.

By anticipating what you’ll be most inclined to watch, digital providers will help you cut through the growing expanse of online multimedia content. It’s highly probable that Facebook, either via acquisition or via a partnership with companies like BuddyTV or Hulu, will explore or invest in “Social TV.”

5. Location-based marketing will grow, and certain customer use cases will shift predominantly to mobile

In specific markets, such as travel, shopping, and dining, customer engagement and purchases will happen more frequently via mobile device. A recent study found that one-third of all American adults use smartphones, and that percentage will continue to rise.

Travel-related click-through-rates are already higher on mobile devices than on PCs, and location-based marketing—fueled by the likes of Foursquare—will continue to soar.

This holiday season, we’ll see the majority of last-minute gift and store searches happen via mobile device. And with 50% of last-minute shopping projected to be done via mobile device in 2015, marketers in 2012 will have to consider mobile in their usage mix as adoption of the mobile smart device becomes increasingly universal.

6. The discount economy will grow even larger

Considering the flagging economy and consumers’ income woes, offers from companies such as Groupon, Living Social, and niche players like One Kings Lane and Zulily, will have an even greater uptick in 2012. Those companies will grow more than many have previously forecast.

Even Amazon.com has gotten into the local deals mix, recognizing the value of even deeper discounts for customers. At the same time, daily-deal offerings will become increasingly hyper-local. Players intelligent about using the mobile market and geo-based offers will be category winners.

via Strategy – 12 Marketing Predictions for 2012 : MarketingProfs Article.

12 Marketing Predictions for 2012

by Brian Goffman

Published on November 14, 2011

By Phil Mershon

Published November 8, 2011

Is your small business “all in” with social media? New research shows incredible opportunity for small businesses.

Keep reading to discover why social media is changing small business for the better:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-promising-social-media-stats-for-small-businesses/