…respondents don’t like to waste time or effort. If an extra click actually saves them time, by quickly navigating them to the content that’s most relevant to their needs — if you can properly set those expectations and then fulfill them — many will indeed make that click. It’s about keeping people in a flow that serves their interests.

American Greetings ditched software it had been using to run multivariable tests and optimize landing pages and started using a tool from i-on interactive. “The big difference is [the i-on tool] is marketing managed, not IT managed,”

Search agencies must turn this equation around and be in the business of selling conversions, where clicks are just one component of that—and not necessarily the most important one.

A little lesson in economics could move agencies to the top of the search supply chain. ion interactive President & CTO Scott Brinker gives a micro-economic look at the relationship between search agencies and the search giant in “Is A Search Agency’s Biggest Competitor Google?” for MediaPost’s Online Marketing Daily.

Post-click marketing is a powerful, multidisciplinary competence that most organizations now see as a competitive advantage.

Do you design you search campaigns in-house with the sharp skills of a surgeon? or do you market to the masses using a shotgun approach hoping something will stick?  Whether you are driving volume or searching with the long-tail, either way ion CEO Justin Talerico provides a post-click strategy for gaining a competitive advantage in the article “Driving keyword strategy based on post-click”.

In the article “A Completely Different Kind of Landing Page Optimization” for Search Engine Land, Scott Brinker offers a new approach to segmentation.

The benefit of a well-defined maturity model is that it gives practitioners a common framework by which to assess their organization, benchmark it against others, and develop a plan for improvement.

How sophisticated is your organization’s paid search? Scott Brinker let’s us categorize the evolution of our search programs in “A Search Marketing Maturity Model” for MediaPost’s Online Marketing Daily. 

Whether you are the business professional or the creative professional for your company, ion President and CTO Scott Brinker’s byline article for MarketingProfs will move you to take a second look at your marketing creative. In the article, Scott digs into the truth we all know: leverage the tools, but don’t skimp on the creative.