Over the past few months, we’ve taken a closer look at new media marketing, and the latest opportunities for retailers looking to reach out to customers beyond traditional print and broadcast media.

In response to the questions we frequently receive about how best to utilize these new technologies, we’ve collected some of our favorite articles on five of the most important new media for innovative marketing efforts.

Take a look, and don’t forget to share any thoughts or questions in the comments section at the bottom of each posting!

Founded in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary will be celebrated on April 22, 2010. While your store may not be green through and through, Earth Day is a great holiday to celebrate in-store for several beneficial reasons.

Not only does Earth Day help support environmental programs and renew the public’s commitment to sustainable living, it is also a great way to maximize sales and kick off green marketing program initiatives. Here are five ways to increase add-on sales and promote green marketing in your store(s) as April 22 approaches…

Some 3.5 billion text messages are sent and received each day according to a recent estimate by CTIA, the wireless industry trade group. Approximately 97% of all of the text marketing messages sent are opened. So why aren’t more retailers utilizing text messages to reach out to their customers? Why aren’t you? If you’re lacking clarity on this relatively new form of marketing, here are some of our answers to a few of the most common frequently asked questions we hear…

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.”—David Ogilvy

“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”—Jack Welch

Effective advertising attracts an audience and motivates them to action. It drives customer traffic, differentiates your store and your ad from your competitors’, and always supports your store’s strategic position. By creating ads that accomplish these four things, you’ll achieve the short-term goals of increased sales and customer count while developing advertising that will become the building blocks of tomorrow’s success and prosperity.

Take a look at your website. Is it the best it can be? Sometimes it’s easy to spot the deficiencies that are preventing a website from performing at optimum levels; other times, a little investigating is required. A web audit is an invaluable tool for taking an objective look at your website’s performance. At DW Green Company, we use the audit outlined below to assess the effectiveness of our clients’ websites in five key areas of performance: User Experience and Search Engine Optimization; Content; “Clickability”; Traffic; and Credibility.

Take a look at the web audit below—you might find some new opportunities for improving your site that you haven’t considered before!

For those of you who attend NGA each year, there’s a chance you heard me speak in workshops in 2003, 2004 and 2006 about the same topic: namely, what is the future of the printed ads in supermarkets? If you are going to depend on print advertising to deliver your marketing messages, you best have an outstanding printed piece that attracts new customers.

Throughout your store you carry many nationally branded products sold at every one of your competitor’s stores. Do your customers prefer Hunt’s Ketchup or Heinz Ketchup? It really doesn’t matter to you which brand they buy, as long as they buy it at your store. You can’t help Hunt’s or Heinz differentiate their brands—the only way you can differentiate them is with your shelf price.

It’s a different story in your deli department.

How can you track visitors to your website? What are they looking at? What are they ignoring? Do they “click-through” on your email promotions? How much time should you invest in studying your website traffic? What do you do with the information once you have it?

A website tracking system shows you exactly how your website is performing.

A consultant group we respect recently recommended that companies wait to get involved in social media because there are “no clear and obvious benefits.” While they may not be “clear and obvious,” we believe that the benefits of social media are significant. Here are three of them…

We’ve previously addressed what social media is and how to get started, yet with anything that’s as hyped as this new platform, the questions that often need addressing are: “Why should I care?” “What does this have to do with my business?” and “What are the benefits?”

A consultant group we respect recently recommended that companies wait to get involved in social media because it changes so often, most companies do it poorly, and there are “no clear and obvious benefits.”