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With a chrome sheen and glowing blue streams of intellectual power flowing throughout, the presence of a brain attracted lots of attention from attendees at the DMA09 Show in San Diego. Somehow, it also managed to tweet on Twitter, collecting a fan base that even included Scott Monty, head of Social Media for Ford Motor Company.

“The Brain” is the star of a new marketing campaign Starmark created for client AccuData Integrated Marketing, a leading database marketing services company. As the brain was suspended over AccuData’s booth, visitors were treated to fun giveaways, like World Tour t-shirts with slogans such as “Does This Shirt Make My Brain Look Big?”

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In creating a web presence, there are a lot of different ways to go in terms of layout, text, images, colors, offers and so on. So how do you know which direction help you reach your goals? AB Testing allows you to test two variations of a webpage or email blast in order to determine which is more successful. (Think of it like bracketing for the NCAA finals.) For example, does an orange “buy now” button work better than a green one? Does a subject line with a freebie offer work better than one with a discount offer? Is it more effective to place the navigation bar at the top or on the left? These may seem like trivial differences. However, once your AB Testing results come in, you’ll discover they’re huge.

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How do your consumers get to your website? Where do they go once they get there? And when are they leaving? These are the basics. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you need to download and install an analytics package. Whether you are running a large or small website, there are powerful tools you can use to uncover visitor preferences and track their journey through your site in order to optimize a website or marketing campaign’s audience response.

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In your industry, you’re an expert on something. And people want to read about it. Perhaps it’s “event planning,” if you’re a restaurateur. Or it could be  “saving in a recession,” if you’re in the financial industry.” Whatever your area of expertise, the Internet has forums that allow you to share your knowledge with the world.

Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com make it easy for people like you to compose articles on interesting topics. Within this community, you can also create a personal profile about you, your business and your accomplishments. Both of these sites allow you to create content related to your business and expertise. And if done in a thoughtful, compelling way, and updated or new content pages added (they are called ‘Lenses’ in Squidoo, and ‘Hubs’ in Hubpages) can create quite a following that could lead to new customers for your main business.

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Nowadays, marketing budgets are hitting a plateau, if not careening downhill. Everyone has to closely watch where their money goes – and hope it comes back bringing customers. When it comes to any type of marketing, it’s important to track ROI (Return on Investment). And with what is happening to budgets, it’s even more important to track all campaigns across both online and offline channels in order to know which tactics are working and which are not. Then, ramp up the good efforts and shut off the bad ones.

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