Center Parcs provides family short breaks in forest settings in the UK, with a variety of outdoor and indoor activities and the famous Subtropical Swimming Paradise.

There are 4 UK locations (Whinfell Forest – Cumbria, Sherwood Forest – Nottinghamshire, Longleat Forest – Wiltshire and Elveden Forest – Suffolk), each is set in a forest environment, typically 400 acres in size, providing high quality accommodation in fully equipped apartments and lodges, set amongst trees and streams.

Each village offers an extensive range of sports and leisure activities plus numerous restaurants, bars and retail outlets.

Make It Rain won the SEO account for centerparcs.co.uk following a competitive pitch process. Make It Rain’s expertise in developing online strategy for leisure, retail and travel brands won the brief to improve the efficiency of its web campaigns through SEO.

Simon Jarratt, Online Acquisition Manager, Center Parcs comments: “We wanted to take our SEO acquisition strategy to the next level to help drive efficiencies and reduce our reliance on PPC. We had great chemistry with the team at Make It Rain who demonstrated excellent commercial acumen, technical expertise and creative ideas that we felt would benefit our SEO strategy. We believe they are the right partner to take our SEO to the next level and we already feel like they are an extension of our online marketing team.”

Justin Hayward, Managing Director at Make It Rain comments: “We’re delighted to be working with Center Parcs.  They have a great brand and a unique proposition, with our successful experience of travel and leisure SEO we believe we can drive greater customer acquisition through SEO and reduce their reliance on heavy PPC spend throughout 2012.”

Let’s begin with Flowtown’s “How Far does Social Advertising Reach”, a nice graphic that reinforces the idea that as consumers continue to ignore traditional online advertising, the role of social advertising becomes more pertinent.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

One of the key discussions surrounding social media in 2011 has been in how you can effectively measure ROI. The Wall have created the below infographic that looks at the real costs of social media campaigns.

Finally, Bafton’s infographic “Why Content for SEO?” ties Social Media into SEO very nicely, summing up turn that SEO has taken, and will continue to follow into 2012 and beyond:

And those are my personal favourites. Disagree with my choices? Feel free to link to infographics that you like in the comments below.

What Does This Mean For Mobile Marketers?

It’s clear that the arrival of handheld technology has provided marketers with new opportunities to advertise to consumers. In app ads currently account for 5% of mobile advertising spend and is expected to reach $860million by 2014. It would seem that consumers have generally been receptive to this as well, with 52% of smart phone owners being able to recall ads they have seen in apps, good odds by any marketer’s standards. However with so many apps now crowding the market, even the most innovative will be drowned out. Marketers now face the challenge of getting their efforts to stand out above the rest, using the new hand held devices they have at their disposal.

What Does The Future Hold for App Marketing?

It might appear that mobile applications have taken over the mobile Internet market. Are they for everyone though? Research has shown that less than 5% of apps are still used 20 days after download. Mobile websites on the other hand may propose an enticing alternative to many small businesses.  They usually cost less to develop, have access to a wider audience and can easily be found through a simple search engine entry. In the absence of hyperlinks and advertising space is it possible that the dominance of the app is in fact a passing phase? Mobile devices still present marketers exciting opportunities to create buzz and sell to consumers in innovative new ways, and their growth does not look set to slow any time soon.

Celebrating their 125th anniversary this year, Whittard have recently launched a new website with numerous improvements and improved usability as well as features that uniquely represent what Whittards are all about, such as enabling customers to specify exactly how they would like their coffee beans ground and allowing users to blend their own tea – a modern take on the Whittard tradition of creating bespoke blends for customers.

Make It Rain will focus on driving traffic and increasing sales through the new site by ensuring the right messages of quality, heritage and British-ness reach the right audience.

The US campaign will initially focus on both East and West Coasts where Whittard have experienced a rapidly growing demand for the quintessentially British product.

Justin Hayward, Managing Director at Make It Rain comments: “I’m really excited to be working with Whittard, a brand with such heritage and rapid global growth. It is a great opportunity to use our latest multi-national SEO techniques to help Whittard achieve their online sales goals. ”

Source: The Evolution of Making Page 1 [INFOGRAPHIC]

Having launched as a shirt specialist of some repute in Glasgow back in 1987 Ted Baker quickly became the place to buy some of the very best contemporary clothing around. Make It Rain is now charged with promoting Ted Baker’s wide range of collections including: Menswear, Womenswear, Global, Endurance, Accessories, Fragrance, Skinwear, Footwear, Eyewear and Watches across paid search platforms.

Ted Baker’s alternative approach by choosing not to advertise through traditional channels, means they focus on more innovative and fun ways to promote their ranges of products. Make It Rain will focus on maximising the UK PPC strategy enabling Ted to reach a wider audience and driving increased sales through tedbaker.com with the first focus on the new Autumn/Winter 2011 range.

Justin Hayward, Managing Director at Make It Rain comments: “Ted Baker is a fantastic brand to work with, by fully implementing Ted’s quirky style into our PPC campaigns, coupled with our retail experience, this will make for a very strong and successful partnership.”

Social Media books

Inbound Marketing

By Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, David Meerman Scott

An introduction to online marketing for those that are baffled, Inbound Marketing covers a wide range of topics. Offering hands on advice for getting your business found via SEO, blogging and social media, with a particular leaning towards social media.

Recommended by Brian Rogel and Paul Dunay

The Experience Economy

By B. Joseph Pine II, James H Gilmore

Taken from the blurb: “Businesses must form unique connections in order to secure customer affections”. The focus of The Experience Economy is on marketing your brand through creating an experience and engaging with the customer. The premise is that by enhancing the experience you add value to your product and therefore to your bottom line. This book is particularly relevant to new marketing, with the rise of social media marketing being considered by many as a product of the customer’s increasing demand for an “experience” and feeling of affiliation with a brand.

Recommended by Brian Solis

Engage

By Brian Solis

Engage guides you from planning and implementing a social media campaign through to measuring success and ROI. Actionable strategies are given for increasing SOV, growing loyalty and trust, community building and identifying brand evangelists and influencers. A good introduction to social media.

Recommended by Tamar Weinberg whose own book New Community Rules also focuses on social media.

Content Rules

By Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman

Content Rules gives tips and strategies for creating engaging content for blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms, along with tips on maximizing the reach of the content that you create.

Recommended by Jay Baer and Todd Defren

Launch

By Michael Stelzner

A hands on guide to community building and customer engagement with a strong focus on content creation and relationship building – both with customers and also with peers who may help promote your content. Launch also highlights how to retain customers though continuing to hold their attention thereby increasing the ROI of online engagement.

Recommended by Michael Stelzner

Meatball Sundae

By Seth Godin

Answering the question: ‘how can we alter our business to become an organisation that thrives on new marketing?’ Meatball Sundae looks at how the internet is transforming our perceptions of marketing, the way we want to makes purchases and the type of products that we want to purchase before guiding us on how to modify business models to succeed in this new environment.

Recommended by Jennifer Laycock

SEO Books

Art of SEO

By Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie C Stricchiola

Details SEO best practices from the basics to an advanced level, from managing SEO projects to building a competent SEO team. This book really gets to the heart of search engine optimisation, and is very useful both for those who are new to SEO and for seasoned practitioners. The Art of SEO is widely believed to be the best SEO book out there.

Recommended by Zarko

Don’t Make Me Think

By Steve Krug

Written with web designers in mind, Don’t Make Me Think focuses on on-site optimisation and web usability. An invaluable resource for SEOs as success of an SEO campaign should not only be measured on increased traffic and improved rankings, but also on increased sales. This look at how customers interact with a site and how to optimise for conversions is a great starting point. Accessible and easy to read, yet still offers useful nuggets for the more advanced web professional.

Recommended by Linda Bustos and Joost de Valk

PPC Books

Winning Results with Google Adwords

By Andrew Goodman

A comprehensive guide to Google paid search which includes strategies for setting up the account, writing successful ads, and optimising campaigns once they’re up and running. Winning Results with Google Adwords offers tips for getting the best ROI possible on your Adwords spend.

Recommended by Jonathan Allen

Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords

By Perry Marshall

Another guide to Adwords that teaches the creation of keyword lists, setting up accounts, writing copy, targeting, and conversion optimisation.

Recommended by Ashu Jangid

Website Analytics Books

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

By Avinash Kaushik

Written in the same jargon free style in which Avinash Kaushik delivers his presentations, this is a well thought out and easy to understand text. With a focus on the analysis of data, Web Analytics 2.0 lays out what you should be looking for in your analysis, and more importantly, how the data can help you. Giving specific, actionable recommendations and strategies, this is a valuable resource for improving the performance of your website.

Recommended by Mike Grehan

Marketing and Internet Marketing Books

Made to Stick

By Chip and Dan Heath

An explanation of how humans absorb information and what makes us more likely to remember an idea or story, Made to Stick guides you on how to create compelling and memorable marketing communications.

Recommended by David Armano

Buyology

By Martin Lindstrom

Buyology looks into the psychology of why people buy. Citing neurological studies and tests that investigate the subliminal reasoning behind making a purchase decision, Lindstrom illustrates the emotional connection that customers have with products and services. Good to dip in and out of.

Recommended by Murray Lunn

Get Rich Click

By Ostrofsky

An absolutely monster guide to setting up a profitable online business, Get Rich Click guides you through buying a domain, setting up an ecommerce business, promoting your online business through SEO and PPC, selling ad space, affiliate marketing, content creation, social networking, mobile marketing and more.

Recommended by Chris Brogan

Business Books

The Dip

By Seth Godin

A fresh look at running your own business, The Dip looks at what you should do when times get tough. Godin takes the stigma out of quitting by showing that sometimes that is exactly the right thing to do.

Recommended by Ross Hudgens





Thanks again to all those that took part. If I missed you off the list and you’d like to share your favourite online marketing book – please do so below!

Why so smart?

It’s smart because it’s a TV with Internet capabilities, similar to the new wave of Internet capable ‘smart phones’. The Smart TV moves the focus away from broadcast television, towards online interactive media. It allows the user to browse the Internet and directly access on-demand media streaming.

Why is it in our meeting room?

The Smart TV facilitates meetings that require video conferencing, Skyping, discussions concerning web pages, or referring to a large range of media such as graphics, videos, photos, music and television.

The onscreen Smart Hub gives users direct access to all these sources. You can access your files via the inbuilt USB ports, go directly to online TV streams (such as Freeview), connect to any PCs networked (either via Ethernet or the 55D8000′s built-in Wi-Fi), or delve into Samsung’s new apps-driven functionality.

Why a Smart TV and not something else?

The smart TV is ideal for our snug meeting room, as its flat screen takes up very little space, offers a crystal clear image and is cheaper than a projector and screen.

How easy is it to use?

The TV can be controlled either by connecting it to a laptop or via an iPhone app. The laptop is definitely the easier option if you’re going to be switching between lots of different sites/apps, although the iPhone app is usable, after a bit of practice! This is the first such device that we’ve trialed here however – so it would be interesting to see how its competitors fare.

Top position ads are displayed above the natural search results (top of your screen) and side position ads are displayed in a column at the right hand side of the search results page.

The new tool provides clear stats on how your ads perform in each of these locations.

The tool can be accessed at all account levels, Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords. Here’s how to access it.

1. Click on the Segment button in the tool bar above your data.
2. Select Top vs. Side form the drop down menu. See below.

Above, the results have been segmented top/side and the results are astonishing.

The ads on the side have a considerably lower CTR and conversion rate. With the recent introduction of extended headlines we wondered if these trends were influenced by the new ad format.

No change. Looking at historic data the performance trends are consistent.

So what does this mean for Advertisers?

Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian says on the Adwords blog ‘this distinction is important, since, on average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side’.

No change there then!

On a positive note the CPC’s are lower for the top positions.

The obvious tactic is to target the top positions aggressively:

• Increased traffic for a lower CPC
• Increased CTR – helps quality score
• Increased conversion rate – more sales

Not quite that simple. From an advertiser’s perspective the targets haven’t changed. It may not be feasible to target the top positions for all terms.

There will be a spike in clicks when increasing positions. This could lead to meeting your daily budgets quicker. You’ll need to adjust and manage the daily budgets accordingly.

If you don’t have sufficient budget to support the increase in clicks implement day parting tactics so you target the top positions at the right times for your business.