IMEDIA CONNECTION — Paid search has, and continues to be, one of the most effective ways of driving online sales. What you may not know is that paid search may actually be much more effective at driving in-store sales than it ever has been for ecommerce. Data from a comScore and Yahoo study (PDF) actually suggest that consumers exposed to search only spent $16 in store for every $1 they spent online. Analysis of cross-channel conversion data by RevTrax has yielded the same conclusion -- that each paid search click for a multi-channel merchant is far more valuable for in-store revenue than it is for online revenue. Given this data, it's no surprise that marketers are looking more and more to paid search as an incredibly cost-effective tool to drive in-store sales via use of a printable coupon. By combining paid search with consumer-initiated social media and email to facilitate virality, marketers can set the stage to make a big impact at a low cost in a way that is impossible with other marketing strategies...

EMARKETER — US marketing executives were much more optimistic about the economic outlook in February 2010 than they were the year before, when the recession was in full swing, and many were planning to increase budgets, according to the “Marketing Trends Report 2010” from Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). But they have become even more focused on getting a good return on their marketing investments. Anderson and MENG found that “marketing ROI” had jumped to become the most important trend to marketing executives. Social media cracked the top 10 this year, when 72% of respondents were planning a social strategy...

SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMINER — Let’s face it, LinkedIn is a very underutilized social media network. Most people believe that it’s too hard to make connections, and therefore use it more as a résumé site. There is so much more potential with this professional social media network. How many of us have created a LinkedIn account and left it dormant for months? It was my goal recently to attend more LinkedIn webinars and teleseminars to learn more about this mysterious network. I have often thought to myself, "I’m a professional. Why am I not utilizing this site?" I’ve even heard LinkedIn referred to as the "red-headed stepchild" of social media. Here are some interesting facts that I learned about this often misunderstood network...

MEDIAPOST — A client recently presented us with the ultimate challenge: over a short time frame (one month), show us what social media can do in comparison to AdWords. If you have any dealings at all with social media, you'll know this is nearly an impossible task. Social media is, by definition, social. It is designed to result in earned attention and permission marketing. This means that social media strategies tend to fall into one of two camps: "stunt" or "sniper" strategies (where a dramatic stunt or campaign is implemented in the hopes it will go viral) and "relationship" strategies (where time is invested up front in earning the right to leverage the relationship for business results)...

E-CONSULTANCY.COM — Is social media a threat to paid search?For a while now people have been speculating whether ‘social media’ sites, in particular Twitter, pose a threat to Google search as people increasingly choose to ask their network for help rather than search. I can see this happening in a small way but it is certainly nothing like a Google killer. However, based in part on our own experience, I have been wondering increasingly how social media could impact negatively on paid search spend, which might be some cause for concern at the search engines?...