Last week, we pondered the state of online shopping. On one hand, it seems simply unstoppable with brands like Zara finally opening virtual department stores. On the other hand, there still seems to be a disconnect. There is that generation who doesn’t want to shop online because of security concerns or because the thought of using the technology wears them out. But maybe it isn’t just people of a certain age who are turning away from online shopping.

Marketing Pilgrim ran the results of an iPerception study about online shopping and the results confirm that folks of all ages aren’t feeling the love. iPerception reports that only 60 percent of shoppers who visited a site with the intention of buying came away with what they wanted. Forty-two percent said they abandoned ship because they couldn’t find what they wanted, while 30 percent found the item they wanted but it wasn’t available. All of this adds up to major shopping frustration for people who honestly wanted to spend their money but because of a website’s downfalls, weren’t allowed to.

As marketers and small business owners alike, these statistics are a wake-up call. A big part of digital engagement is making sure the website we’re directing folks to from social media actually work. We can email market our little hearts out but if the dang website is hard to use, it’s a lost cause. While thankfully most of us marketing types are in charge of sparkle (and we’ll keep it that way, thank you very much) it is our responsibility to check and see if our client’s websites are working and easy to navigate.

So let’s hear from you, dear readers. Tell us your online shopping nightmares. Share your tips on keeping your site in shape and easy to use. And lastly, what sites do you love/loathe to shop on.

It’s curious watching the trends and tides of marketing. Sometimes we see formerly much-used channels (goodbye, MySpace!) drift out to sea, never to return. Some tread water and bob in place (somebody throw article marketing a life-preserver!). And there’s the rare marketing and branding platform that seems like it’s on the brink of extinction but rises again like a Phoenix. This is precisely what email marketing has done over the past several months, and we think we know why — and how anybody can put email marketing back on their branding to-do list.

Not since the early days of Internet marketing have consumers been so feverishly obsessed with checking their email. Thanks to Groupon, Living Social and other Daily Deal of the Moment websites that send out announcements of the latest and greatest and cheapest thing we never knew we needed, email marketing is relevant again. With or without the site-specific apps, anybody can be privy to these deals as long as they have an email account. Shoppers are just a click away in these emails from buying the day’s hottest discount — and the explosion has just begun. Other non-deal specific sites are returning to email marketing to alert followers of cheap stuff, free goodies and the latest products. Ans with email being more accessible than ever with smartphones, the options are endless.

We think email marketing should be given another look for brands of all sizes, especially since now it’s easier than ever. Thanks to technological advancements and handy email marketing services like Constant Contact, it’s not nearly as laborious as it used to be. But the ease isn’t the only reason why email marketing is more relevant than ever: Email marketing fits with the busy lifestyle of tech-savvy consumers who want their deals and favorite products to come to them. With thoughtful and fun-to-read content, email marketing can actually turn into something people look forward to getting in their inboxes.

It gets a tad tiresome seeing marketing and advertising watchers reward the same big companies for their amazing digital marketing and online branding. Each time we read those articles, you can almost hear the collective chorus of small business owners say, “Yeah, well, if I had that big advertising budget, I could do the same thing.” Buck up little campers — you can play the marketing game just like the big boys, and for next to nothing. We’ve rounded up some of the best marketing ideas from heavy-hitting brands and came up with ways to copy their campaigns on the cheap.

Get Liked like Corona Light: Last year, the lower-calorie version of everybody’s favorite chips and salsa beer launched a campaign to become America’s most “Liked” light beer. The company bribed beer drinkers and Facebookers alike with free merchandise and fancy trips — and it worked. The company has garnered nearly 300,000 Facebook likes under its belt. So while you might not be able to give away trips to get likes for your Facebook page, we’re sure you have something to entice FBers to like your page. From free cocktails to free tickets, every business has something to give away and we’ve seen small businesses thrive using the bribes for Likes model Corona popularized.

Tap into Radio Shack’s Superpowers: The electronics retailer made headlines with its campaign last year that turned Twitter followers into superheros with a sponsored hashtag — #ifihadsuperpowers. Followers sent in photos on Twitter and lucky winners were featured in a Radio Shack video and even got goodies. While sponsored hashtags ain’t cheap (about $15,000 and up), hosting interactive photo contests on Twitter is nearly free. A catering friend of ours had a Twitter photo contest with her followers where users sent in pics of their favorite dishes and the winners won free meals. She had over 100 entries! Not bad for a one-woman operation.

Give Old Spice the Rinse Off: Almost no small business owner I know can replicate the viral success of the Old Spice commercials. After all, that’s a pricey, carefully-orchestrated campaign. But everybody can make eye-catching videos if they have good ideas and a tiny budget. Hint to video success: Craigslist an ad for free or cheap filmmaker to help make your ad and you’ll be surprised how many young artists will work on campaigns just to help their portfolio grow. Plus, budding film auteurs know that a good viral project can put them on the map.

Mega-brand Marketing Synergy: Pepsi, Levis and the like all have these incredible digital presences that seem to cover YouTube, Facebook, email marketing and every other base imaginable. And this wide-reaching digital dominance is something your brand can definitely do! The big boys put links to their social media pages in the email newsletters and links to their blog on their YouTube channel while their websites have ways to reach all of the channels. Become your own Oprah and have your videos, social media and email marketing all working for your brand and website. All this requires is time spent, creativity, and a no-stone-left-unturned attitude.

Now get out there and start marketing like the big boys!

A little over a year and a half ago on these very pages, we pondered the power and appeal of Groupon. At that time, Groupon was a well-timed social and marketing stroke of genius which seemed to simultaneously tap into our collective broke-assedness and our love of bragging about saving money. We had a feeling it was here to stay and didn’t really bat an eye when the stampede of LivingSocials, DailyDeals and the like swarmed the Internet. It appears there is enough room for all of them as we are a nation hooked on saving big. We’re so addicted to Groupon and all of its money-saving clones that we’re sure some Janice Dickinson type will enter Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab next season for online deal dependency.

Yet those of us in the marketing and digital branding universe wonder if shoppers actually return after the deal is done, if Groupon actually helps or hurts a brand’s image and if the days of denying our clients’ requests to come up with a daily deal marketing strategy are officially over?

Consider this: A recent Harris poll found that 68 percent of daily deal site users reported using the websites for impulse rather than planned purchases. Translation? They weren’t planning on going to the Olive Garden ever again but, what the hell, they got a Groupon for it! But another study from Rice University found that only one in five Groupon users return to the business they purchased the deal for. So, no, chances are people won’t return to your business after the Groupon glitter fades.

Most brands aren’t too worried about this, though. For new businesses and companies that have seen better days, being part of Groupon means being part of one of the most read and beloved email marketing campaigns on the planet. There’s a cache of being part of the daily deal scene which most brands find hard to resist. But this doesn’t mean marketers should pimp all of their clients to Groupon just yet. Many big brands are coming up with their own daily deals advertised on Facebook and their own web pages, meaning forking over profits to a deal service may be unnecessary.

In the end, though, our addiction to Groupon is going nowhere. We’ll continue to chase down deals on bungee jumping and vegan crepes into the gates of consumerism hell as long as companies keep feeding our need.

The problem with crowdsourcing our every little move with audiences is that the well-intentioned “we want your feedback” attitude can quickly turn into a “sorry we asked” lament. Take Hillshire Farms for example. The sausage company had a hit with its four-year “Go Meat!” commercials, which became textbook cases of viral marketing done right. So when the company decided to ditch its old slogan, a pre-campaign was launched essentially warning viewers it was going away. And apparently that was a big mistake.

You can’t blame the sausage makers’ instinct for choosing to prepare HF loyalists for the fact that they would never see their beloved meaty commercials again. Yet you have to wonder if this “get ready because it’s going away” technique didn’t set Hillshire Farms up to fail. When the new commercials were rolled out this week, YouTube viewers reacted harshly. As noted by Adweek, comments ranged from “this sucks” to “bring back Go Meat.” Being social media-savvy and hip to digital engagement, the brand has offered apologies and promises if Hillshire fans give the new campaign a chance, they might like it.

Again, we appreciate HF being sensitive to its customers’ wants and likes. But when it comes to marketing, let them eat sausage. It’s a commercial; people will move on. Listening to audiences is one thing… but not having faith in our campaigns and throwing our creative vision under the bus every time the masses are unhappy is a little ridiculous. Once upon a time, brands released new campaigns with zero warning and fans never saw their favorite ads ever again. Guess what? We all survived; people continued to spend money and the world didn’t stop spinning. The downside of being hyper-connected to consumers is that brands are also hypersensitive to every move and mumble of the masses.

So what say you, dear readers? Has the crowdsource craze inhibited daring marketing? Let us have it in the comments section below.

In Google’s ongoing quest to become Facebook, we’ve seen some big-time social media misfires and plain old bad ideas (Google Buzz, anyone?). But this is Google we’re talking about, so failure at becoming the next big social media star hasn’t hurt them one bit, and the pockets are deep enough they can experiment with bad social networking until the end of time. So social media marketers, digital branders and PR junkies alike cautiously awaited this week’s arrival of Google+. The reviews of + are pretty much on point with other social media products released by Google and go something like this: “kind of sucky but, hey, it’s Google, so we’ll wait and see if gets better… and if not, we always have Facebook.”

Greg Finn of Search Engine Land said this about Google+: “All in all, this is the best social product put out by Google to date, but probably not enough to convert existing social users away from their current service.” And that, right there, is the issue. As social media marketers, we see our clients huff and puff and roll their eyes back into their heads at the mere mention of joining yet another social network. Granted, Google is so powerful that anytime it releases something social, there are the masses who queue up to hurl barbs at them before even learning about the new product. But I truly don’t think this is the case with Google+. Like Finn and several others have pointed out, the name is just bad and it doesn’t fit with the brand. Also, maybe it’s okay if Google doesn’t rule at everything. Maybe being the most powerful search engine ever is enough.

We’ll wait to give our opinions on it, though, until we get our own hands on Google+, which won’t be available to the general public for a few months. And if Google+ is a fail, we have no doubt the tech and media giant will keep searching for the right social media answer.

Every summer as the County Fair is held in towns across the country, food lovers, festival fans and oddity collectors marvel at the latest food creations sold to fairgoers. From barbeque pork sundaes to Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers, food blogs have taken a liking to spotlighting a new and slightly terrifying treat every year. The fair food phenom of 2011? Hands down, it has to be deep-fried Kool-Aid. Yes, the beloved Kool-Aid man has been kidnapped, dipped in batter, dusted in powdered sugar and served up for thousands of adventurous eaters.

While the head scratching machinations of such a treat are cause for many a tweet (as of this writing, “Deep Fried Kool-Aid” is trending on Twitter), the real story here is Charlie Boghosian, the marketing marvel and mad genius behind these devilish delights.

For the last five years, Chicken Charlie’s has wound up in every national newspaper and online news website for throwing odd food items in a deep fryer and selling them at highly-attended summer county and state fairs across America. Twinkies, Girl Scout cookies, s’mores, avocados, Oreos and now Kool Aid have all taken the deep fryer plunge and wound up on Charlie’s menu. Conan O’Brien, ABC News, the Los Angeles Times and scads of food bloggers have covered the culinary “oh no he didn’t!” adventures of Boghosian. For a business that only operates during the summer, Charlie relies on his newest menu items causing a sensation.

During the summer months, Facebook and the company’s website work overtime in tempting hungry fairgoers with deep-fried delicacies. Deep fried Kool-Aid, which is something like donut holes with the drink mix added to the batter, have caused a stir, with mentions in the San Diego Union Tribune and the LA Weekly.

Charlie and his frying factory might not be for everyone’s palette, but the story of a guy who loves to fry any and every thing is one news outlets haven’t gotten tired of. The story is timeless and entertaining — in other words, it’s PR gold.

So, my lovely readers, let me ask you this: What story, product or service does your business have that is marketing and media magic? Holler back in the comments section below!

We here at Brandsplat are big fans of following the latest online marketing and social media marketing campaigns unleashed by some of the world’s biggest brands. It’s always fascinating to see how a once universally loved and now slightly tarnished brand uses the powers of the Internet to claw its way back to the top. So when Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the 2012 presidential election, all eyes turned to social media as politicos and marketers alike wondered if Obama could once again become an unbeatable brand.

“It Begins with Us” is a new YouTube commercial which dropped this week just in time for the announcement. The “Yes We Can” and “Hope” spirit has washed off a little since his initial bid for the Oval Office in 2010. Instead this video has a realistic “sure things still stink but they could be worse” type of vibe. Rightfully, this early campaign is trying to get the people who voted for him the first time to become mobilized to vote for him again. As the only clear contender in the race on either side of the political coin, Obama’s campaign can’t be judged too harshly and as far as Internet political ads go, this YouTube video is far from offensive or cloying — it’s a little boring.

Like any good brand, Obama hopped right on Facebook the minute his re-election was announced.

“Today, we are filing papers to launch the 2012 campaign. Say that you’re in,” said the President early Monday morning. The message didn’t fall on deaf ears. Obama has more the 18 million followers on the social network and will undoubtedly be remembered as the “social media” president. But things in social media have changed since 2008 so this time the Prez will have to bring his A game to keep up with the increase of followers, the growing number of platforms and the suddenly fickle nature of social media users.

While Obama’s actual website looks a little empty right now, we can be sure that one of the world’s best digital marketers will once again leave no stone unturned when it comes to reelection — even if we can’t be sure he’ll win again.

Remember email marketing? Collecting addresses and sending out notices about your businesses happenings via email now seems such a sentimental practice when you look at our reliance on the ease of micro-blogging and social media. And yet the practice of email marketing has endured. I often envision it as being pounded out conveyor belt-style while those on the receiving end use their ninja-like reflexes to press the delete button. Much like that flyer that gets crammed in your mailbox for a suspicious Thai restaurant you are never going to try, email marketing continues despite serious reservations about its efficacy.

A bounty of articles addressing the state of email marketing has surfaced online in recent days. Many are saying the marketing technique needs tweaking. For starters, the big trend in email marketing seems to be tailoring our emailed messages and newsletters to fit the needs and demographics of our readers. Much like how search engines “magically know” what to advertise and to whom it should be advertised, company-produced emails look to reach clients with customized content. Relying on high-tech metrics is another trick we can expect email marketers to employ. Big-time retailers and marketers will leave no stone unturned as they rely on metrics to comb everything from e-commerce to social media in order to learn more about their customers. The travel industry, for one, now is looking for new ways to reinvent the marketing crutch they’ve so heavily relied on in the past. Network television, on the other hand, reportedly is scaling back its emphasis on email marketing in favor of aggressive social media campaigns.

But what do you guys think? Is email marketing still an effective tool? What are some of your email marketing triumphs and failures? And what company email do you actually love seeing in your inbox? Sound off below!

It is always intriguing in this new age of marketing who “gets it” and who doesn’t it.

There are brands that you are sure would utilize the latest and greatest in social media marketing, blogging, online PR, intelligent brand marketing but they seem to miss the boat entirely. And there are those who smartly play the whole game and are willing to change along with latest techniques while still remaining uniquely themselves.  So I would like to salute more…