We are often asked what defines our integrated marketing strategy. It is a term that is used by many advertising agencies, industry experts and professionals. However, the way it is described will differ from one person, and agency, to the next.

At LeapFrog Interactive, we define our integrated marketing strategy in two ways: philosophy and execution.

Philosophy

We grew up in a digital world. It is in our DNA. We came from a world where a website was once text and hyperlinks and entered what has evolved into highly interactive websites, Facebook tabs, mobile and video. We know at our core that the website could not stand on just text and hyperlinks and thus we involved our creative teams. Our technology teams were coding websites with elements geared towards SEO before it became a marketing channel – because it was the correct way to code a page. Thus, for twelve years, we have combined expertise in technology, creative and marketing to create award-winning, results-driven marketing solutions.

And as other digital marketing channels came along, we were the first to implement them for our clients. From the advent of SEO to banner ads to PPC and now to social media and mobile, we have developed competencies around how each channel works – and how each impacts other marketing channels. As digital marketing has moved execution offline into the traditional marketing space, we have moved with it bringing our knowledge of analytics and measurement along the way. We have tested, and continue to test, the most effective ways all of our channels can work together to provide extra lift in your marketing campaign.

Execution

It is simply not about what we believe, it is also how we execute the programs. We build out strategic documents, which lay the foundation work for understanding your audience and business objectives and then outline how we will meet them with creative messaging and delivery into specific marketing channels. Our road maps don’t just start at developing a plan, but lead to execution. We follow-up our execution with detailed analytics and reporting – proof we have implemented the plan and are seeing results. We continually tweak and test all elements of the creative ensuring not only are you seeing results, but also that we are driving ROI off your marketing spend.

We spend countless hours developing out marketing campaigns for our clients. It is who we are and it is what we do.

2012 is quietly sneaking up on us as we approach Thanksgiving and with Christmas just around the corner. While consumers are planning their holiday dinners, shopping and gift ideas, marketers are heavily concentrating on the upcoming trends for the New Year. Many trends look to be emerging for 2012 from SEO updates to social media channels to the advancement of mobile technology & mobile marketing. Beyond those typical digital marketing arenas, more advanced technologies are propelling digital signage and digital-out-of-home displays forward.

SEO

With the release of the Panda updates throughout 2011, improving content has been top of mind for all search marketers. That isn’t predicted to change moving forward into 2012. Relevant, original content will continue to play a major role in all SEO strategies.

In November, Google rolled out two more SEO updates that will have a significant impact on search and search results pages – freshness and social. The goal of the freshness update is to ensure searchers are getting the most up to date information – specifically when it comes to news and sports. For example, if you search “Olympics,” Google will know you mean the upcoming game in London in 2012 rather than results from four years ago. If your website is a news site or concentrates on current information, this new update may impact your SEO. Moving into 2012, updating content regularly with unique, relevant information will help keep your website from slipping in being found in search results.

The second announcement Google made was in regard to search and social working together. Google can now execute AJAX and JavaScript on social pages like Facebook and Twitter. With this update, Google has the ability to serve Facebook comments and Twitter posts as search results. Making it even more essential for businesses to create posts, comments, and tweets relating to their business and containing keywords.

Watch for continued social medial integration in search marketing and more emphasis on website content moving into 2012.

Social Media Marketing

As mentioned about, social media and SEO will continue to become more integrated moving into 2012. Google and Bing have already begun the integration process. In May, Bing pushed a Facebook integration which allows logged-in Facebook users to “like” search results and sites and brings users personalized results based on information from their Facebook profile. Additionally, Bing shows logged-in users what they’re friends are “liking,” reading and sharing. More recently, as mentioned above, Google’s new update has the ability to push Facebook comments and Tweets into search results.

The rollout of Google+ Pages for Business creates an additional communication channel for business to consumers and business-to-business. Google+ lets businesses showcase their portfolio of work and give additional information and products and services offered.

Social media and social media marketing will continue to be a “mover and shaker” with consumers, business and brands and the communications between them in 2012.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile technology and advanced mobile marketing strategies will continue to move forward in 2012. Mobile marketing moving into 2012 will continue to include local mobile search, mobile app development and in-app ads and mobile coupons. Local mobile search will make its mark as Smartphone users continue to increase and use their phones to search for restaurants and shopping near their current location. Mobile couponing will remain steady as consumers remain pressed in their spending on non-essential goods.

The newest technologies moving forward in 2012 and beyond include near field communication (NFC) and voice search. NFC is the technology behind the “mobile wallet.” It allows consumers to have money in their phone and not have to necessarily carry a wallet or purse. The mobile wallet will continue to rise in 2012 and beyond as more Smartphones include the NFC technology.

Voice search has appeared more heavily on marketers’ radar with the release of Siri and the iPhone 4s. Siri allows users not only to set reminders and have messages read out loud, but it also allows users to search by talking to Siri and not typing in a search engine. Search markets and mobile markets now need to consider the differences in how consumers search when they type vs. how they ask questions. While this may not be an immediate need in 2012, it is definitely something to consider moving forward with mobile marketing strategy for the future.

Outside of SEO, social media and mobile marketing there are additional digital trends to watch for in 2012. Digital signage and digital-out-of-home campaigns create a new sense of interaction with consumers.

In today’s “social” world of ‘liking’, mentioning, and ‘retweeting’, it seems that anyone who is anyone has some form of social media channel. What once was cutting edge now seems to be the norm. This proposes a new challenge in thinking about marketing strategy. Ok you’re on social media…so what? Everyone is. Many companies take the first step of creating social media pages, but then fail to keep their consumers engaged. Companies now face the challenge of ensuring that their social media marketing efforts are relevant so consumers actually utilize it beyond simply ‘liking’ or ‘following’ them.

In late October of 2011, Louisville Slugger decided it was time to shake up their standard social media efforts. Even though the company had been “social” for three years strong, the activity level had become dormant. The recent conclusion of The World Series (with a triumph win by the St. Louis Cardinals), gave the company the perfect opportunity to reach their fans. Slugger’s efforts went beyond the typical Facebook and Twitter contests and not only got their fans engaged, but active.

The Louisville-based company lead their fans on a hunt, scavenger that is, all around the city of St. Louis in search for 45 commemorative bats. They were giving out live “clues” on where the bats were located through Facebook and Twitter. After only one day with this new approach, the brand’s ‘likes’ increased by 143% and ‘followers’ by 161%. Not to mention the enormous increase of 834% of fans “talking about this” on Facebook. This new social chatter feature is a raw number expressing how much activity is going on about a brand which includes status updates, mentions, RSVP’s, photo-tags, and check-in’s.

Louisville Slugger’s digital scavenger hunt caused quite the frenzy around St. Louis and more importantly around Louisville Slugger’s brand. By making their social marketing efforts more engaging, the company was able to reach their fans in a new and physically active way. So if you need “clues” on how to make your social media efforts more effective, try thinking outside box or, in their case, the house.

Have you utilized a digital scavenger hunt for your product? Have you participated in a digital scavenger hunt? Share with us on Twitter or Facebook. We’d love to hear about your experience.

[Contributed by Kara DeLost, Marketing Coordinator]

One question many companies ask when considering mobile marketing is, “Just how large is the mobile audience? How many target consumers will I really reach?” It’s not only important to understand the number of consumers using mobile devices to access information; it is also important to understand what consumers are searching for and how they are searching for it.

More and more consumers are focusing on local searches during their searches for products and services — businesses within 10-15 miles of their location. Most of those consumers are mobile users and are using an app or mobile browser to search. Mobile location-based services help consumers find restaurants, bars and activities close to them on the go. Ensuring your business is integrated with location-based mobile services like Google Places and apps such as Yelp and Foursquare will increase your likelihood of being found “on the spot” wherever your consumers are and helps increase your organic digital marketing.

The infographic below helps explain the rise in mobile location-based services.

In digital marketing there are many analytical reports that can be and are used to determine how well a campaign is working and what digital initiatives should be addressed moving forward to increase the response from a message or digital tactic. Search engine results page (SERP) analysis is one of those and one of my favorite analytical exercises.  Being analytical by nature, I like SERP analysis because it is very objective, it involves several different metrics that play off each other, and while the interpretation is difficult at first, once you get the hang of it, it is quite fun to teach others about.

Without further ado, I give you the steps for a SERP analysis:

Step 1 – Running the Analysis

You input keywords of your choice into a program or the program provides the keywords to itself. I recommend WebPosition and/or SEMRush. The program then scans the search engine results pages to find listings for those keywords.  The program will scan whatever number of search results you designate—I recommend either the top 20 or 30. Once the listings in the top 20 or 30 are found, the position in the search results of each listing is noted.

Step 2 – Interpreting the Results

Following the above process, the metrics that I focus on are the total number of listings, the total number of keywords that produced these listings and the average top position of the listings in the search results.  One important note here is that the real power and insight comes when these three metrics are trended over time.

Let’s wrap up with an example.  Let’s say for the list of keywords we analyzed there were 15 listings for 10 keywords in the top 30 search results and the average top position of those listings in the search results was 6.2.  For the next 3 months we trend these data points and at the end of this time we are now up to 30 listings for 20 keywords and an average top position of 8.2.  Three more months go by and we are now up to 35 listings for 23 keywords and an average top position of 4.3.

 The goal is to have a high number of listings and keywords in the top 30 search results and a low average top position.  In our example above, this is what we experienced.  Over a 6 month period, our listings and keywords increased while our average top position decreased.  If you noticed that the average top position increased at the 3 month mark, give yourself a pat on the back.  The reason for this is that often times when you see a rapid increase in the number of listings in a short time frame, the average top position may bump up temporarily, but over time, the goal is for it to come back down.  This is search engine results page (SERP) analysis in a nutshell.  You will notice if you check out WebPosition and/or SEMRush that there are some additional relevant metrics that we did not discuss here that I encourage you explore.

Maybe this blog doesn’t cover typical digital marketing news, per se, but this is definitely worth sharing. From a creative and product design standpoint, turning the All-American “Chuck Taylor” basketball shoe into walking (yes, pun intended) fan art for some of the most amazing television shows on prime time is truly exciting.

The creative team at Tauntr developed spec shoes for Breaking Bad, Dexter, and Walking Dead.

AdWeek covered these wildly clever Converse shoes earlier this month. To my dismay, they’re not actually for sale (TEASES)—but as AdWeek mentions, it’s something AMC’s product licensing division should consider.

As an avid television-watcher, I think America’s fascination with drugs and the sub-culture of zombie-mania that has swept the nation would probably sell enough shoes to fund 10 more seasons of each show. And I’d wear Showtime’s favorite blood boy, Dexter, on my shoes any day.

I could even go for Sue Sylvester (Glee) or Spartacus (Blood and Sand) on my Chucks. What about you? 

[Contributed by Emily Carroll]

The leaves are starting to fall, which means I need to pull my sweaters down from storage. Dust of that box and clear space in my closet. This annual process got me thinking about digital advertising and the annual planning process marketing departments go through to get their budgets ready for the upcoming year (yes, I am a nerd). What do LeapFrog Interactive clients need to be thinking about in 2012? Where should they be spending their already stretched marketing dollars? I am agreeing with many that mobile marketing will be huge in 2012 and should only continue to grow.

I found some interesting data from Warrior Forum that spells out the digital marketing environment over the next couple years. What caught my attention was that there is expected to be 60 million Smartphone users in 2013. In that same vein, Prosper Mobile Insights reported that most people don’t use their Smartphones for talking - one-in-five (22%) said they use it for texting, followed by using the Internet (17%) and then email (16%). Our clients need to be thinking about mobile-friendly websites and email campaigns with a bold call to action.

“Consumers increasingly expect to communicate, network, browse and shop from a range of devices, and the growing sophistication of smart devices will only accelerate this trend,” said Noah Elkin, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, ‘Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Moving to the Mainstream.’

With all this information at hand, I started looking around at some really successful mobile marketing campaigns and the one that caught my attention was Nike’s Times Square ad featuring their Nike ID shoe. It was innovative, creative and engaged the consumer with the brand. The article about the Nike ID campaign explains that only sending texts, voicemails or video ads won’t be enough. It’s time to get creative!

In the end, it is no long the question of ‘should’ a marketing department and strategy focus on mobile marketing but ‘how’. So roll up those sweater sleeves and let’s get some really awesome and creative mobile campaigns out the door in 2012.

[Contributed by Ryan Bares, account coordinator]

On November 3, Google rolled out its newest algorithm change which they say is an extension to the “Caffeine” update launched mid 2010. The goal of the “freshness” update is to bring searchers the most up-to-date, or freshest, information possible in areas where new information really matters like current events, frequently changing technologies, and regularly reoccurring events. Along with the focus on fresh content, Google can now execute AJAX and JavaScript to index comments on pages like Facebook and Twitter. This means comments made on social media pages could very well pop up on search engine results pages (SERP) – especially if they are in reference to a subject in one of the affected categories.

What This Means for Digital Marketing

Obviously fresh content is going to become more important. While this will have a bigger impact on some websites than others, if the site you’re managing happens to be among those considered to be one in the “freshness” category, then you’ll need to constantly crank out the new content while remaining relevant and unique. In this respect, SEO will become more difficult and time consuming, but hopefully rewarding you for the time spent producing the content with higher SERP rankings and traffic.

Social media can now be considered to be a tool for SEO. With Google indexing comments from social media pages, it stands to reason that relevant, keyword dense comments could achieve high rankings on search results pages. This means more thought and planning will need to go into coordinating our social media campaigns with SEO efforts to incorporate keywords.

On the surface it seems that Google has made it easier to achieve high rankings for sites that constantly publish new content and are active in social media marketing, but as with all Google updates there are winners and losers. The categories considered in this update will become more competitive, and require increased efforts to maintain rankings. However, with a well-planned and executed digital marketing strategy these changes can certainly be used to your advantage.

[Contributed by Sean Matthis, Marketing Coordinator]

We all know how to build an online image for our clients, but if you’re not quite sure what your online brand should be… you’re not the only one!

Join us at the Young Advertising Professionals of Louisville event to learn how to create your online brand. Christy Belden, the Vice President of Media + Marketing, will walk you through exactly what you need to do for the most impact.

When: Tuesday, November 15^th
Time: 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Where: Advertising Federation of Louisville
200 Distillery Commons, Suite 100

From 5:30 to 6, there will be registration and networking (with free food from Jimmy John’s!). Then the presentation and Q & A segment will take place at 6.

LeapFrog Interactive is committed to educating our community on digital marketing.

To register, email Julie@louisvilleadfed.org or call 502-582-2444. The event is free for Young Advertising Professionals, $5 for AdFed members, and $10 for non-members.

In the small-medium business (SMB) realm, clients are always looking for the most cost efficient way to build a website and utilize digital marketing options such as search engine optimization, email marketing and more. The LeapFrog Interactive (LFI) SMB department is constantly implementing new product lines and offering abbreviated versions of digital marketing products that are commonly utilized by Fortune 1000 clients. 

In 2011, not only are we offering content management systems (CMS) through WordPress, search engine optimization (SEO) programs, HTML email marketing campaigns and monthly retainer plans, but we have also added social media management to our line-up. Many of our clients are excited about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but are not quite sure where to start with a social media program. LFI has a couple of plans that allow the SMB team to manage your social media properties so that you can stay current with digital marketing and be on target with your brand and audience.

While social media management will help many clients stay on top of their game, the SMB team at LFI is most excited about offering a template for mobile websites coming in early 2012. The template can be customized with the client’s logo, content and more, making it easy to reach their target market on the go with features like push notifications and live call links.  Users can also connect to Facebook and Twitter from the mobile website.

LFI is planning to roll out even more products in 2012 from the SMB team to their clients.  It is great to continue to grow and offer tailored digital marketing products and services to small and medium-sized businesses.

We’re super happy to announce that another client has completed our L.E.A.P. process! Dant Clayton approached us late last year because they wanted a new website, and they decided to go for the full she-bang and go through the four-stage marketing strategy and planning process.

Before Dant Clayton’s website revamp, it wasn’t being used to its full potential. But now, the website is the number one step in their sales process – bringing in double the amount of leads, and they expect it will only increase when they add in search engine optimization and social media marketing tactics.

If you’re interested in learning more about the L.E.A.P. process, please contact Maury Hill, Vice President of Client Development at mhill@leapfroginteractive.com or 502-212-1369.

When building an email marketing campaign, there are many aspects that are taken into consideration, from creative design to the call to action. There are some additional elements to remember and double check when developing and sending an email message. Pure360 developed an infographic checklist for email campaign delivery to keep those items top of mind when sending marketing emails.

Being in front of a consumer at the moment they need your product should be every advertiser’s goal. If you sell allergy medication, your ad should be there the second consumers realize their allergies are acting up. If you sell swimsuits, you had better be there when the weather is right for swimming. And if you offer financial advice and support, you definitely want visibility when consumers see the need to build or diversify their portfolios.

Dynamic targeting is the growing trend in helping advertisers be there when the vine is ripe for the pickin’.

Over the last few months, many vendors have come to me excited about their new technology that will server my clients’ ads at the precise time consumers need their products. I’m absolutely itching to utilize this technology and might get the chance in 2012.

Undertone was the first to expose me to the dynamic targeting option and I was instantly intrigued. I wondered to myself, “Is the moment it starts to rain a good time to advertise for umbrellas? Wouldn’t it be the day before it rains?” Later, I thought a bit about my own consumer behavior. I won’t pay attention to an umbrella ad until I need an umbrella – and I consider it ironic. The next time I’m at the store and I pass umbrellas, I remember that feeling of, “Wow, wish I had an umbrella now.” It’s not until I have that feeling of need or desire that I associate it with a conscious decision to purchase. Psychology & Advertising 101, perhaps? Could it be that simple?

[Contributed by Emily Carroll]

Join us tomorrow for a presentation on the 2012 Digital Forecast as the last part of the Business First of Louisville’s Power of Digital series. Christy Belden, the Vice President of Media + Marketing at LeapFrog Interactive, will cover trends in display marketing, email, search and lead generation.

We’re offering a special price for this presentation – only $15 per person! To register, just go to http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/event/52601 and enter LFIPREFERRED as the discount code.

We hope to see you there!

When: Wednesday, November 2nd
Time: 8:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Where: Kentucky International Convention Center – Conference Theatre, 221 South Fourth St. in downtown Louisville

Experiences create an interaction and connection between brand and consumer. In the digital world, these connected experiences reach a new level. With the customer always on-the-go and always connected, brands are reaching out to consumers in new ways. Mobile devices — phones, tablets or otherwise — present endless options for connecting with brand loyalists and new consumers. From mobile deals and social media to email marketing, brands can constantly be engaged with consumers.

Social media networks allowsconstant and monitored customer engagement. Customers are able to connect with brands at a more intimate level and brands are able to provide more timely and accurate customer service. Businesses have taken to social media, not only to offer promotions and deals to fans and followers, but also to develop a better customer service and brand reputation. Social media allows for immediate response, creating the ability for brands to connect with customers on a more personal level.

Connecting with consumers is also about getting new patrons in the door. Mobile technology and location-based services offer multiple opportunities for businesses to connect with and reach consumers on the go. Restaurants and retail stores offer mobile deals through apps such as Foursquare and Facebook Places by rewarding first-timers and loyal patrons who check-in on multiple occasions. These mobile deals give satisfaction to the consumer and help the brand build a positive digital reputation.

Digital technology, while it has changed how we interact with one another and how brands interact with consumers, it has also allowed the creation of a new, more personal business-to-consumer relationship. While developing an evolving plan of action in the ever-changing digital world, one thing remains the same: consumer-brand engagement is key.

The original version of this article appeared in the Fall 2011 Logic + Magic, a LeapFrog Interactive publication under the title “Cheers to Technology – New Ways to Engage Food & Beverage Consumers.