Latest Posts

Driving Visitation and Tracking Offline Conversions

In today’s world of digital advertising, whether you call it SEO, SEM or PPC; or measure by CPC, CPL or CPM, the goal is one and the same — tracking and conversion. While a variety of tools make measurement fairly mundane, how do businesses attribute conversions to the appropriate marketing source? Let’s explore two methods within Google’s AdWords Program.

Tracking offline conversions

Oftentimes, a click on an AdWords ad doesn’t lead directly to an online sale but it’s the beginning of a customer journey that will hopefully result in a sale or conversion. Whether it’s in-store or over the phone, we need to trace that sale back to its origin. To leverage this method, the prospect must have been driven to your website and submitted data (i.e. lead or subscription form). With the sale tied to its source, the sales team can track the offline activity against the original lead source via AdWords and show not only lead submissions, but how those leads resulted in actual sales/conversions.

Estimated Store Visits

With the relatively new AdWords ‘store visits’ tool, you can estimate the amount of in-store traffic that may have resulted from an ongoing AdWords program. Using an anonymous data set from mobile devices with location tracking enabled, marketers can estimate the amount of traffic that entered their stores and while this tool cannot tell you that X people clicked on your ad, which resulted in Y store visits and Z sales, it can provide greater accountability of your ad words program. Currently, this program is limited to larger businesses with multiple US store locations and a high number of ad clicks and store views such as Office Depot.

As the line between online and offline continues to blur and more people begin their search for products and services on mobile devices, offline conversion tracking will continue to mature. But getting started today will be a critical success factor for your AdWords program.

Apple Watch: Execs’ new ‘remote control’?

Reprinted from South Florida Business Journal

Apple Watches are just starting to make their appearances on busy executives’ wrists. There has been hype about game, stock, news and health apps for the new wearable technology, but not so much about what benefits Apple Watch offers technology-crazed business leaders who bounce from emails to smartphones to tablets to laptops – and not always with the greatest of ease. (more…)

Starmark Celebrates Big Ideas at Summer Sizzler Event

Starmark’s summer BBQ really sizzled as we celebrated emerging technologies; new releases; and clients, old and new! Throughout the festivities, we enjoyed a feast of scrumptious bites hot from the grill. It was a sizzling good time and the grills and thrills were nonstop from start to finish! (more…)

SnapChat Ads, Geofilters and Millennials

Snapchat may have finally found an advertising model that its core millennial users will actually like — custom geofilters with opportunities for companies to brand and sponsor.

Geofilters allow users to add a location-specific filter to photos or videos they post to the network. These filters have become a popular way to tell friends where a photo was taken, and now more than 1 million snapchats a day are decorated with a geofilter.

Since December, users have been able to propose new geofilters however to date, the company stated only one-third of the submissions have been approved for use and distribution. Brands benefit tremendously because they can bypass the regular user-approval process and add geofilters to thousands of locations simultaneously – a huge win for retailers with multiple locations.

While sponsored geofilters will be marked with a small “Sponsored” imprint, they will function exactly as existing filters do. So if your brand is trying to appeal to millennials, Snapchat geofilters may be an effective tool to make a lasting impression for your brand in a new and upcoming channel.

Location Based Marketing Cheat Sheet

Location based marketing (LBM) is a direct marketing strategy that delivers targeted communications based on where your audience is standing. With the proliferation of mobile devices in today’s market, there is tremendous potential to leverage this emerging technology. To help you navigate through the geofences and beacons, we’ve developed a cheat sheet that outlines these and more! (more…)

Weekly marketing tips now at your fingertips with the new Starmark eTips App

Introducing the new Starmark eTips app — an interactive library of hundreds of marketing tips, organized by category (branding, advertising, direct, interactive, mobile, public relations, analytics).

The eTips app complements our fourth edition of the eTips book series, 50 eTips for Market Leaders. With the new app version of eTips, our clients, partners and friends can now receive our weekly tips right on their mobile devices, plus they’ll have instant access to Starmark’s full library of eTips.

From the latest in Google’s mobile algorithm updates to the impact of influential social media celebrities on your brand – you’ll learn from members of our team who live and breathe these concepts every day. From geo-fencing to beacons, the app features several location-based marketing technologies, and when you visit Starmark, you’ll see it in action!

The Starmark eTips app is available at the App Store for iOS and on Google Play for Android. Download today and keep up to date with the latest developments across all things marketing.

Beacons, GeoFencing and Mobile App Location Based Marketing

Marketing with native mobile apps and location based technologies is an important part of any integrated marketing program. Often written about and discussed, technologies like push notifications, Beacons and geo-fencing are a lot easier to understand when you can have a demonstration of them in action.

Before developing any mobile app, at its core it needs to be useful to the users who you want to download it. If the app is not compelling, it will be difficult to expand adoption. So, the Starmark Innovation Lab brainstormed and outlined a mobile app that is not only packed full of cool tech that’s easy to demo, but also a useful marketing reference guide as well.

One resource that Starmark has been building upon for over five years is our library of eTips. Creating an app that could include all of the eTips as a searchable reference helps our technology demonstration app meet this requirement. With over 200 tips, and new ones added every week, we decided to build the Starmark eTips App and make a useful reference guide. 

We also wanted the many location based technology demonstrations built into the app to be useful. 

To demonstrate geo-fencing we created a “Directions” tab in the app to for users to get directions to our office. When users are outside the geo-fence, the app provides driving directions Maps. When users enter the geo-fence – which is about 2 blocks around our downtown office – the app alters the content on the Directions screen to focus on nearby parking, the valet, and the location of the office front door.

To demonstrate beacons, we installed several around the office which are configured to compliment a tour of the office. Not only did we want to demonstrate how beacons work, but also some of the possibilities of marketing via beacons. One is setup to drive users to video content, an example TV commercial produced by Starmark. Another is setup to demonstrate a social connection by driving users to check in to Starmark on Facebook. The third is setup to prompt users to download an App. 

And, if you have not yet downloaded the Starmark eTips app while you are on an office tour, we also setup a demonstration of Smart Posters which have an NFC antenna built into them. This allows Android users to hold their phone over the poster and receive a prompt to download our App. Another demonstration of location based marketing technology that can be applied to any piece of paper, from a poster to a name badge.

Lastly, a feature most people are familiar with but still has a wide variety of marketing applications is push notifications. With the Starmark eTips app we can notify users when a new eTip is loaded, or for other announcements and event reminders. 

The Starmark eTips app is available in the App Store for iOS and on Google Play for Android. Download today and keep up to date with the latest developments across all things marketing.

Virtual reality’s business impact coming soon

Reprinted from the South Florida Business Journal.

A few months ago, the Apple Watch was the new technology on the horizon, and marketers wondered if the timepiece industry would ever be the same. Today, we are looking at another potential game-changer: virtual reality headsets. (more…)

Can you see the future through a Periscope?

Periscope is a new app launched by Twitter that lets you broadcast live video streaming from your phone and because of its integration with Twitter, you have an instant community of followers to share your live streams with. (more…)

Starmark boosts Marine Association’s efforts with State

At the end of June, Starmark advanced the Marine Industries Association of South Florida’s efforts in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale with a major triumph! By raising the association’s profile through news coverage and strategic editorial placements, the Florida Legislature and Governor Rick Scott signed off on an incentive for visiting boaters around the world to have their boat repairs done in the state with a $60,000 sales/service tax cap. (more…)

Keep a Pulse on your Performance with an Executive Dashboard

An executive dashboard has become a very useful tool to help keep executives and key stakeholders abreast of the company’s ongoing performance for a specific effort or for the organization as a whole. In a nutshell, dashboards are a visual representation of performance that gives executives a quick and easy way to view results in real-time. (more…)