This Photoshop Tutorial will walk you through the creation of a killer abstract sports poster design. While I am using this tutorial to show a sports subject, the techniques used can be effective for a wide variety of subjects.
If you complete this exorcise, please be sure to share your results in the comments below.
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Serious budgets tend to be involved when looking to create the kind of widespread brand awareness and buzz required to heighten consumer interest and lead to mass conversions from searches, and when big money is involved, mistakes can be very damaging.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tips and strategies to improve your AdWords performance and ROI. A search for “improve adwords” on Google returns over 1,760,000 results. Most of these tips however, are not rocket science and almost all boil down to a focal understanding of the three most important aspects of any AdWords campaign.
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Google has announced they will be holding their third webmaster live chat event. The event is set to take place on Wednesday, October 22 at 9am (PST) or noon (EST).
Registration for the event is free and painless. Google will be using their new tool, Google Moderator to manage questions. Adam Lasnik, Google’s first Search Evangelist, is introducing the event, and John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst with Google, will be presenting for 15 minutes on “Frightening Myths and Misconceptions.”
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There is a lot of buzz this evening about a new list of the Top 100 Web Designers to follow on Twitter, and I am very happy to have made the list. If you’re looking to connect with other web designers on Twitter then this top 100 list will be a great start. There are some very talented web designers on the list and following our updates will key you into a wide collection of web design talent and resources.
Conventional wisdom says that if your Web pages appear outside the first few responses on a search engine, most people will miss you. The chart below, however, explores an exception to that rule – the niche searcher.
In this case, niche searchers were industrial engineers – who often find themselves forced to dig deep into SERP to find what they’re looking for. Their searches on the general search engines go significantly deeper than most. And they’ve come to expect that finding relevant results may take them onto the second page or even deeper. The same applies to other highly-specific searchers.
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If you manage a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you may be pleased to learn that Google has lowered the eligibility threshold for using their Conversion Optimizer. This will make it much easier for small business owners to take advantage of the tool’s potential. Improved technology is being credited for the change in policy.
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When writing direct mail it is vital that you understand what direct mail is and how is intended to work. Direct mail is in essence a written brochure with a twist. It is a form of direct-response advertising, but unlike other printed ads it has the added goal of asking the reader to follow a specific call to action (such as send a reply card, visit a website, call you back, use a coupon, etc.). One of the most common forms of direct mail is a personal letter. Writing a direct mail letter may sound very simple, but this is hardly the case. Sales letters are one of the most complex and least understood of all direct mail.
If your first sentence does not hook the reader they will toss it aside before they ever get to your message. If the call to action is not clearly stated your response rate will suffer. As a guide for those taking on the task of direct mail advertising, I have provided the following top 15 tips for how to write a direct mail sales letter:
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One of the most fundamental rules in marketing when taking on a competitor it to always understand your strengths and your competition’s weaknesses. When hired to develop a marketing for a client that wishes to challenge a competitor(s) position in the market, I first evaluate the company’s strengths and weaknesses and look for all the areas that my client excels in and their competitor(s) are weak in. Identifying this kind of disparity often becomes the backbone of this type of campaign.
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