Biznology Blog: October 2007
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October 31, 2007
Brighter, Cleaner, Cheaper Marketing
I spoke before an interesting group last night at the Westchester Advertising Club, a 40-year-old organization of marketers from that suburban county north of New York City. My slides for my talk, "The New Internet Marketing," are here, but regular readers have seen most of this stuff before. What I found fascinating was some of the conversations I had last night, especially one in particular.
A veteran marketer approached me after the session, after everyone else had spoken to me. He looked as though he had seen it all over his years in the marketing game, but he started out by sheepsihly admitting, "I know nothing about the Internet." Still, he had decided to come to the meeting, knowing what I would be talking about, so that shows me that he still has that desire to learn.
He went on to compliment me on my talk, but then his concerns came pouring out. "You said that Internet marketing is still marketing, but it seems very different to me—like there are more steps. You said that we have to address the problems that our customers have so that they find our message, but that could be lots of problems. I am accustomed to skipping that step and just talking about 'brighter, cleaner, cheaper'."
It's a great question.
And he's right. All marketers have been doing "brighter, cleaner, cheaper" marketing for decades. Forget what the customer needs, because we don't really know what each customer needs. Instead talk about what our message is and hope that the customer whose need it fulfills will figure it out.
He's right. Internet marketing has an extra step of appealing to people based on their problems. And yes, there could be multiple problems that each need separate pages—separate pitches. He really is right.
But the Internet also helps you skip steps.
Because you can target based on problem (need), you can skip a lot of the "qualify the lead" steps. And you can target based on where the customer is in the sales cycle—seach marketing keywords can reveal the early stage from the comparison stage from the buy stage. And you can answer John Wannamaker's lament, "Half of my advertising spending is wasted, but I don't know which half." On the Internet, you do. And you can stop spending it next week.
So, Internet marketing is different from the "brighter, cleaner, cheaper" marketing of other media, but not dramatically so. You still segment your markets, understand them, and send your message. You do those things differently than in traditional marketing, but you still do them. On top of that, you can target more granularly (by need and by moment in the buying cycle) and you can measure the results of what you do (the way direct marketers do).
So, ask yourself if you're ready to try to apply what you know to something know. That man, with all that experience, was ready to try. As he left me, he said, "Now I have to go wrestle with this." Internet marketing isn't always comfortable, but it's sure more comfortable than blowing your business by avoiding it.
Posted by mikemoran at 8:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 30, 2007
The Secret of Good Copy
It would be annoying for me to link to grokdotcom every day, so I don't. But if you don't have it in your regular rotation of RSS feeds, what are you waiting for? Here's a great example—a post that pulls together over a dozen great articles on writing winning Web copy. It's taking some of us a while, but we're finally figuring out that Web marketing can really depend on your words.
Direct marketers understand this. Every time you open your mailbox and get a letter offering you yet another credit card, every word in that letter has been tested to evoke the maximum response for its target market. Direct marketers don't write one letter and send it to a million people—they write dozens of letters and send them to a small list of people to test the response rates. They send the winner to the rest of the million on the list.
Web marketing is no different, except you can do even more testing for less money in a shorter amount of time. You may not need to subject every word on every page to testing—I know that you have a life—but most companies don't do any testing at all.
Put the page up. We're done.
Well, yeah, you're "done" but in a different way than you intended. You're cooked. Your page won't work. Because it never does on the first try.
So, yes, use all the tips you can to do a better job of creating the right words. But remember too that the most important tip is to get feedback on your customer's response and try something else. Over and over again. Eventually you will get something that really works. (And then you keep tweaking that, too.)
So stop the "one and done." Pick just one page on your site designed to convert (no, not the home page). Pick a page that you know the purpose of—maybe the latest special offer for your top product. Come up with several versions of that page and use multivariate testing to test them all. You'll find that some of your new ideas are undoubtedly better than what you have on the page now. Some companies report 30% gains in conversion rate after a year of multivariate testing.
So what are you waiting for?
Posted by mikemoran at 8:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 29, 2007
Wanna Try Semantic Search Yourself?
Most of you know that my job focuses on IBM's OmniFind enterprise search and text analytics products. And I've written before about semantic search—I've even written about what semantic search isn't. I keep talking about it because semantic search is probably the easiest to understand application of text analytics. But maybe you need to stop hearing about it and actually see it for yourself.
If you've never seen semantic search in action, check out a free facility to search your e-mail—OmniFind Personal E-Mail Search. Maybe you already use a desktop search product, but using this one will give you a clue as to how semantic search is better.
Try to find the PowerPoint file that Rob sent you with your desktop search engine. Then type "PPT from Rob" into our e-mail search and see the difference.
Can't find a phone number that you know someone e-mailed to you? Try " Pat phone" and find all the phone numbers for people named "Pat."
No matter how good your desktop search engine is, it finds only keywords. So it will find that PowerPoint file only if the e-mail has the words "PPT from Rob" and it will find the phone number only if the e-mail literally says "Pat phone" in it. But usually they don't. Usually they don't have the words "PPT" or "phone" in them. They just have the PPT attached. And they say "Call Pat at 332-456-5624."
I could talk about this until the cows come home. (I'm not sure when that is, but trust me that it's a long time from now.) It's better that you try it yourself. Go ahead. It's free. Download it and try it out—and let me know what you think.
Posted by mikemoran at 8:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 26, 2007
Adobe Luminaries Webinar
Steve Gehlen of the Internet Strategy Forum brought me to the attention of the folks at Adobe who run the Luminaries series of Webinars, and I was honored to deliver the Webinar yesterday. Thanks to all those who attended—you can grab the slides for Marketing 2.0.
Posted by mikemoran at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2007
10 Tips for Internet Marketing
I thoroughly enjoyed particpating in the Online Marketing Update held at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia yesterday. Corporate executives rubbed shoulders with MBA students and were treated to an array of guest speakers including Hugh McLeod and Avinash Kaushik. I gave the closing talk yesterday, on the ten things you should do now in Internet marketing.
One anecdote that struck me during the day was told by Michele Hughes, Director of Consumer Solutions for Procter & Gamble, on a campaign P&G ran in the Phillipines for its Pampers products. 
P&G is motivated to cultivate loyalty in diaper customers, rather than having them use multiple brands throughout the first three years of their child's life. Through analysis of their target market, they realized that Filipino mothers are very concerned about the education of their children, and they highly value American education. So they decided to have a contest where US scholarships are regularly awarded to Pampers customers that entered by keying in a code found on each package. This program engendered loyalty among the target market as they eagerly entered the contest each time they bought a package. P&G had the moms use cell phones for entering the key codes rather than Web sites, because phone penetration is three times that of computer Internet access.
Michele's story is a good example of how the "new marketing" is very much the same as the old marketing. You must understand your market, you must know what connects with them, and you must use that to get the buying behavior you want. New technology, whether it is the Internet or cell phones, just offers new ways to do that.
In fact, that message is how I started my wrap-up talk yesterday. Check out the slides for "Web Marketing is Marketing" to find those ten tips.
Posted by mikemoran at 9:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 24, 2007
How Do We Deal With Internet Marketing Risk?
Risk. It's hard to talk to anyone in a medium-to-large company about Internet marketing for more than a few minutes without hearing what their lawyers think of "the risk." Cut that down to a few seconds if it's a regulated industry, such as pharmaceuticals or financial services. So what do you do when your company is petrified by "the risk" of Internet marketing? Ad Age asked me, so I answered.
Posted by mikemoran at 6:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 23, 2007
Online Reviews Mean Sales
Earlier this year, I asked whether manufacturers would post product reviews. Many retailers are doing it, of course, but too many manufacturers think allowing their customers to review their products is "risky"—there's that word again. So, does the risk outweight the reward?
Yet another study came out yesterday with a resounding, "no."
Deloitte's Consumer Products group says that 62% of consumers refer to online product reviews and 80% of them say they influence their purchases. (I think the ither 20% are in denial—I can't see how you can read anything that has no affect on your decision, even if it just confirms what you thought you knew.)
Every time a new study come out, it's confirming that ratings and reviews are a key persuader. Have some bad reviews mixed in? Conversions are higher, probably because your customers believe the reviews are honest. Not sure that the effect will be positive? I've never talked to a company where conversions went down after adding reviews.
Your customers are seeking out this information, Why not keep them on your site to get it?
Posted by mikemoran at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 22, 2007
Ask for Help From Your Critics
I'm still in the middle of reading Outside-in Software Development
This technique works for Web sites, too—for both your real customers and the other folks in your company whom your Web site must please. Often, you'll know that your Web site isn't working for a major constituent group—you've heard the complaints. It might be an important group of customers, or perhaps it's an internal stakeholder group (such as the product managers for your top-selling product line).
The natural behavior for a lot of us in that situation is to be defensive (not you or me, of course—other people). We say, "Well, the site is working for everyone else—you're the only ones complaining." Or, "If we did exactly what you want, then it would break the experience for everyone else." Or (my personal favorite), "If you think this job is so easy, then maybe you should try doing it for awhile."
These rejoinders might make us feel self-righteous. They might even successfully push the critics away (for a while), but they don't serve to make things any better. They don't open up true dialogue to figure out what to do. They keep the discussion in terms of what happened or why it happended instead of the crucial, "What do we do now?"
Instead of defensiveness, we need to admit that everything we do is somewhat wrong. Nothing is ever perfect, much as we wish it was. When someone takes the time to criticize what we do, it means what we do is important to them—otherwise they wouldn't bother. And we have the opportunity to listen and draw out more feedback, and maybe even get a few ideas.
Now, if all that was required was listening, your job would be rather easy. I realize that if you lined up all your customers end-to-end, that they would all point in different directions. So there's no way to listen to everyone and do exactly what each one asks for—their needs conflict with each other and with your internal needs.
But how about involving the biggest critics in the ongoing work to improve your Web site? Why not show them early versions of what you are working on? Why not explain to them which ideas of theirs you tried, showing them the tests that worked and did not work?
I find that few critics turn down the opportunity of more involvement. Not all critics turn out to be useful in improving your design, but at the very least you diffuse some of their ire, because at least they know they have your ear. (I think I just discovered the "ear or ire" principle of customer relations.)
It's more work to operate this way, but you might find that you get better ideas and happier customers. In the long run, you might even have fewer critics.
Posted by mikemoran at 7:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2007
Podcast with Lee Odden
I returned home late last night from an eight-day business trip (longest I have ever been away from my family) and I am taking the day off today. I did want to post something for you today, however, so it is fortunate that IBM Press released the first two of eight podcasts where Lee Odden (of Online Marketing Blog and the TopRank Online Marketing consulting firm) interviews me on a variety of marketing-related subjects. Lee was a joy to work with and we had a good time chatting about subjects we are both passionate about. Each one is just 10-20 minutes long, so you might be able to squeeze them into your busy day. The first two podcasts are about the marketing changes occuring on the Web and the second is on how you think about the new marketing communications possible now.
Posted by mikemoran at 12:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 18, 2007
You Ain't Gonna Need It
I am a big fan of agile software development methods, because they provide much more control for marketers and other business types over technology teams—and they make technology projects more successful. But I came across a new term for something I have found to be true. Alan-Rimm Kaufman talks about YAGNI, which means "You Ain't Gonna Need It."
I am a big believer that concepts need names. Human beings are language-oriented, so when we can plaster a name on an idea, it helps us internalize it.
And YAGNI is a big idea. I've seen it over and over in projects that I have worked on, which is one of the most important reasons that agile development works. The basis of YAGNI is the illusion we all have that we "know" what will be needed in the future. We are all planners, so we plan a new Web site, or another new piece of software, we always know what we want first, but we think we know what we want second, third, and fourth.
And sometimes we do.
But often, by the time those priorities can pop to the top of the list, we've changed our minds. Not because we're fickle (although there's some of that, too), but because we've learned more and what we thought we wanted might not be a good idea. Or because we discovered something else more important. Or because we realize that we should solve that problem, but in a different way.
So, when you develop in agile fashion, you develop the very next most important thing, get that working, and update your Web site with it. Then you can see how that works while you are developing the next thing. By doing that, instead of doing a six-month "site redesign," you develop fewer features that you don't need and you update the right features based on how well they work.
If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed about the whole idea of development processes, you might benefit from a new book I am reading, Outside-in Software Development
Posted by mikemoran at 6:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2007
Alfred Sloan, Internet Marketer
Today, I am traveling to Michigan to meet a customer, passing through Detroit on the way. You can't think about Detroit without thinking of the car business, and it made me think about how the roots of some of these "new" techniques we've "pioneered" in Internet marketing are nothing more than warmed-over ideas that great marketers already know.
I think Alfred Sloan might have been a great Internet marketer. Sloan was the architect of the GM business model who ushered the company into its heyday. (I'm honestly not sure what a "heyday" is, but maybe it is so named because people pass you on the street and say, "Hey, wasn't that Alfred Sloan?")
Sloan's insight was that a single company could have multiple brands that each targeted a discrete market segment. So, Chevrolet could be pitched to the "value" consumer looking for a solid car at a good price. Pontiacs, Buicks, and Oldsmobiles likewise had their segments of higher-priced, higher-fashion models that appealed to more prosperous consumers. And Cadillac was, well, the Cadillac of cars, back when that meant top-of-the-line luxury.
Sloan's brand marketers could draw you a picture of the kind of buyers they expected for each brand. Chrysler and Ford did the same thing, on a more modest scale, with the Dodge and Ford brands competing with Chevrolet and others (such as Plymouth and Mercury) that went after more upscale buyers. Procter & Gamble pioneered similar ideas for consumer packaged goods.
So, what does all this have to do with Internet marketing? (I was hoping you'd ask.) Well, these elaborate descriptions of target customers for specific products sound a whole lot like personas. Web experts tell you to create personas, describing each kind of visitor who comes to your Web site, even going so far as to give each one a name that you can use as a shorthand for that type. If you select carefully, you can design your site around those personas and appeal much more deeply to your customers.
Personas make a great deal of sense, and they do take the concept of target marketing deeper than simple demographics, focusing on needs and attititudes and testing how your Web site pays off for each distinct type. But personas are really just logical extensions of target market segments. That's not to denigrate any of the excellent work that has been done on personas—rather, I just want to point out to marketers that they already know a lot about Internet marketing.
They just don't know they know it.
Posted by mikemoran at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 16, 2007
So, how did you get into marketing?
I have been doing a lot of interviews lately because of my new book, and I normally don't get thrown by an interviewer's question, but I really wasn't sure what to say to that one. I write a lot about marketing and have two books out on marketing, so people assume that I am a marketer, but I am not sure that I am.
If you get my business card, it says that I am an IBM Distingusihed Engineer, which doesn't sound a whole lot like a marketing job. And it's not.
And my previous job at ibm.com said I was the Manager of Global Web Experience—still doesn't sound like marketing, although it was closer.
But I think that's OK. I mean, who says that I need to be a marketer to write about marketing? I got a professional certification in marketing, so at least I am trained. I wonder, though, if it is helpful to marketers that I am not a professional marketer. I wonder if that helps me see past the ways marketing has always been done to help everyone get to where we need to go.
After all, part of my message to marketers is that everyone in your company needs to be a marketer. They all need to be out there in public helping your customers. That's what Web 2.0 is all about. So, in that sense, I guess I am a marketer because we all are. Maybe that's the answer I should have given to that question.
Well, if you want to see the dopey answer I really gave, check out the full interview I did with MarketingCrossing.
Posted by mikemoran at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 15, 2007
"Look at me" Marketing
I'm in Las Vegas for the first time in many years, and I am struck by the sheer opulence of the various hotels. I admit that I don't know what causes gamblers to choose their venues, but it seems as though each hotel is in competition to look bigger, better, and fancier than the next. It's classic "look at me" marketing. Until the Web came along, most companies didn't know there was any other kind of marketing.
"Look at me" marketing works. That's why marketers do it. It conveys an image to the customers that the marketer is successful—they must be making money if they can afford this—so you should consider this market-leading product for your needs.
"Look at me" marketing is rampant in the gambling industry—er, the gaming industry—I'm sure that those marketers know what "gamers" are looking for. But many industries use "look at me" marketing. Every trade show is "look at me" marketing—companies use anything they can think of to get you to stop at their booth.
The problem with "look at me" marketing is that most companies can't afford it. Small businesses tend to focus much more on what the customer needs rather than drawing attention to themselves through lavish spending or attention-getting events. The weekly circular trumps the store makeover.
That's where the Web comes in. Many small businesses couldn't afford much marketing at all—maybe a few brochures. But now they can afford to use the Web, and the Web rewards customer-focused marketing rather than "look at me" marketing.
"Look at me" marketing is focused on the seller rather than the buyer. It wants to interrupt the customers from whatever they were doing to attract attention. Web marketing, on the other hand, relies on customers choosing to hear the message. Choosing to search for something, subscribing to a blog, or opting in to an e-mail newsletter. And viral marketing depends on your customers becoming marketers and passing your message along.
To be part of Internet marketing success, you need to think about what your customers need. To consider what story they'd want to pass on. In a sense, you should be thinking like a newspaper reporter, by providing information that is truly helpful, that solves your customer's problem.
Now understand, there's nothing wrong with "Look at me" marketing. I'm here in Las Vegas at an IBM conference where some of our customers are being dazzled by entertainment. But I think it depends on what kind of attitude you bring to it. I just spent the weekend huddled with some of our customers to find out what unmet needs they have, so that we can create better products to meet them. This week IBM will present hundreds of informative sessions to explain where technology is headed and how our customers can get business value from those changes.
So, examine your motivations. There's nothing wrong with inviting your customers to play in a golf tournament. Or paying their way to a trade show at an exciting location. Or showing off in any other way you can think of. But when customers give you that attention you crave, what do you do with it? Do you use it to learn more about your customers? Do you back it up with real problem-solving approaches, online and offline, that truly cement your customer relationships?
If you do, then "look at me" marketing is just part of your approach. You know that you must focus on your customer, not just your own image. When you do that, you make the most of every customer relationship started when they looked at you.
Posted by mikemoran at 8:08 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 12, 2007
Fear and Marketing
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of addressing 100 marketers from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Marketing Association. As I began to speak, I found that the PowerPoint file was corrupted on the conference's laptop. And so was the copy on their flash drive. I was faced with doing my presentation with no slides. That experience was enough to put me in a mind to talk about fear today.
No, not the fear of public speaking, although that is a common fear. I want to talk about fear and marketing.
Usually when we talk about fear and marketing, we are talking about how to sell life insurance or some other product where fear motivates our customer. But I want to talk about fear in marketing—the fear that marketers bring to their own jobs.
When I talk to groups about how to "do it wrong quickly," marketers usually understand the idea intellectually. But often, people are gripped with fear. After all, no one really wants to do it wrong. If you're afraid of what the Internet requires of you, maybe it's time to take a deep breath and just give it your best shot.
That worked for me yesterday. I took my deep breath and just started to talk to the audience. They were very understanding and appreciated that I did my best—and that I did not make them wait for it to be done right. After all, I could have fired up my own computer and taken several more minutes to start so I could show them the slides. Instead, I did it wrong quickly, by just speaking extemporaneously without the slides. Maybe I would have done a better job with the slides, but it was best not to leave people waiting.
As usual, here are my slides from my talk, Step-by-Step Search Success. It's just that I am used to having shown them already before I post them. Still, it gave me an adrenaline rush to be reminded that sometimes I need to do what I am exhorting others to do. I know it's not easy or comfortable to cast aside fear to "do it wrong quickly." It's just necessary.
Posted by mikemoran at 7:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2007
Interview with Bulldog Reporter
I had a great time talking to the Bulldog Reporter in a wide-ranging interview about my new book. Lots of good questions on how people can really do this "do it wrong quickly" stuff—I hope you enjoy the answers.
Posted by mikemoran at 7:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2007
Press Release or News Release?
David Meermen Scott says what you call it makes all the difference. In his great book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR
David points out that the whole idea of a press release has been to provide a story to the media. The stories are designed to appeal to reporters and to editors. These are the traditional gatekeepers—the folks that keep your story from getting to the audience you want to reach.
But the Internet changes everything. David advises that you rethink your press releases to go direct to your audience. That's why he advises you call them news releases. Sure, reporters and editors will still receive them and, just as always, might print a story. The news release, however, is also designed to go direct to your audience—the Internet way.
When you distribute your news release on the Internet, a service such as PR Newswire uses RSS feeds and other means to send your release all over the Web. It shows up in Google News when your audience searches for the right words. What this means is that Google is the new gatekeeper.
And that changes what you need to do.
Writing press releases (er, news releases) is becoming just like every other search marketing campaign. You pick the right keywords and you make the story interesting enough to draw links. And you think carefully about how to entice readers to use social bookmarking, social networks, and other social media to pass your message along.
"News release" is not just a new name. It's a new way of thinking.
Thanks, David for pointing this out. If you haven't read David's book, what are you waiting for?
Posted by mikemoran at 9:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 9, 2007
Why Search Marketing Is So Hard
Thanks to Lee Odden for publishing some of my rantings on his outstanding Online Marketing Blog, which you should subscribe to, if you don't already. Lee said I could write about anything related to search marketing, and I guess the subject closest to my heart (after the publication of my new book) is why is it so hard for people to start?
Posted by mikemoran at 1:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 8, 2007
"And that's not all..."
You could be forgiven if, after listening to the excerpts of my interview on Beet.TV, you thought that my favorite television programs are infomercials. But I was trying to make a point. Infomercials, and other direct TV campaigns, have a lot to teach us about video for the Web.
Infomercials are just the latest (and longest) form of direct TV campaigns—commercials that rely on the same direct marketing principles used for direct mail and catalogs. When I was a kid (back in the 1500s), I remember listening to the breathless announcer hawking that great-granddaddy of the Cuisinart, the Veg-O-Matic. ("It rices, slices, and dices"—and just look at the prices.)
Whether you wanted to cut up vegetables, or go fishing with the Popiel Pocket Fisherman, Ron Popiel and other TV pioneers showed how to do direct response on TV with those two important words, "Call now." (Or "Call now and get, free, an ice crusher. But even that's not all...")
So why are these techniques important for Web video? Because they at least show one way to combine direct marketing with video. Now, I don't think the breathless copy pitching Chia Pets and other TV direct order classics is appropriate for most businesses, but we do need to think about video as producing measurable response.
So what kind of videos should your company produce? Well, here is a purchase I really want a video for. I like the Verizon cell phone network and I am ready to move up to e-mail and web surfing when I replace my five-year-old phone. The iPhone looks nice, but I would have to switch to AT&T and its slower data network (and its service in my area wasn't as reliable as Verizon's when I used to use it). So, I've been waiting for Verizon to come out with a phone that I thought I could use—I especially want a QWERTY keyboard big enough for my clumsy fingers to tap out e-mails, text messages, and blog entries while on the run.
So, I was intrigued when I heard about the new Voyager phone from LG. But I want to see it. If Verizon had a video demonstration on their Web site, they might have signed me up on a waiting list for when the phone becomes available. But they didn't—just some Flash animation that showed the phone moving around.
I ended up looking on blogs to see the phone in action. And the bloggers don't really care, so there's no way for Verizon to know that watching a video was a real convincer for me. That's the old way. Blast out advertising and PR and see if sales go up. Exactly what you did that worked—who knows?
If Verizon produced a video demo of their new phone and linked that to a sign up list of interested customers, then they be using video for direct marketing. Some things just need to be seen, and I will want to see it in the store when it is available, but in the meantime, watching a video was very persuausive. Maybe next time, Verizon will be the one doing the persuading (and the counting) so that they know which messages are most effective.
Posted by mikemoran at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 5, 2007
The Suggestion Box
Gord Hotchkiss weighs in with another of his well-thought-out columns, this one on Yahoo!'s new search suggestion capability. Gord makes excellent points on how this function might affect searcher behavior, and I think he is right on. I want to ask search marketers a different question—how will it affect your behavior?
That might seem a silly question, but I believe that widespread use of search suggestions will have a dramatic effect on keyword research for search marketers. Are you ready for the change?
Search suggestion is one of those features that sneaks up on you. It's been around for years, so search marketers have grown accustomed to it, but we are all just waiting for the day when Google decides to implement it in its Web interface—Google already has the feature in its toolbar. At that point, when the great majority of searches use suggestion (Google, Yahoo! and Ask), then we'll wake up and understand the effects.
A smart search marketer should anticipate those effects now.
Searchers have two qualities that make search suggestions irresistable. First, the single most-difficult aspect of search is thinking up the words to search for. Searchers get better at this each year, but you know that you have trouble thinking of the right words sometimes—you know the information is out there, but you aren't sure what it's called.
Second, searchers hate to type. That's why so many one-word queries are so popular. People thought of the first word only, or their fingers got tired and they thought, "Maybe that one word is enough." Often it's not, and the searcher looks at the top search results, picks out another word, and searches again.
Search suggestion could be a huge game-changer. One-word queries will probably become less common. So, if your search success is built on your dominance of broad queries, you'll find a smaller percentage of searches in your sweet spot. Searchers intent on typing one word will see suggestions for deeper queries that match what they want and they'll select them. If your search campaign does better with broad terms than The Long Tail
But the Long Tail will change, too. Today, the Long Tail contains loads of searches that are entered exactly once. They may be full of misspellings or strange combinations of words caused by the searcher being unable to remember the words he is really looking for. Search suggestion will change this behavior, too. Some of these weird keywords will disappear, replaced by the more popular keywords suggested.
So, the most popular keywords will become somewhat less popular and the very least popular keywords might drop to zero. In addition, the words of middling popularity might begin to be skewed toward more popular variations, because those are often presented at the top of the suggestion list. If your business focuses at the every end of the Long Tail, you may need to move up to somewhat more popular keywords—not the most popular, but more popular.
And that is the Search Suggestion Box. Search sugestion features draw a box around current searches—the box cuts off some of the volume of the most and least popular keywords, adding volume to that fat middle set of keywords that get suggested the most. Focus on those keywords now so you reap the benfit when the change comes.
And if you don't think Google will implement this, think again. No one knows when it will happen, but it is coming. If you don't believe me, take a look at that little device in your pocket. As mobile search using cell phones and other handheld devices gains in popularity, you notice that search is one of the few interfaces that works well on a small screen. And who wants to type on those devices? Search suggestion features will be very important for mobile search...at least until voice recognition search becomes popular.
Search marketing never stops changing. But if you think ahead and pay attention to trends, you'll be ready for more of these changes than you'll miss.
Posted by mikemoran at 12:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 4, 2007
Do we know how to use Facebook?
I came across a story today that summed up some of the challenges of social networking: "My boss wants to be my friend on Facebook." I am already on Linked In, and I know how to use it for business networking because that is all it does. Facebook started out for personal networking, and after waffling for a while, I finally signed up for it. But I only want to use Facebook for business—I'm old. (I searched for classmates and found one person I knew from my high school, except a closer look revealed the Facebook member to be his son, now attending the same high school we did.) This story points out how difficult it can be to use Facebook for both business and personal networking.
Facebook is becoming more and more of an advertising platform, advertising that begins to take on a "Google meets Amazon" character. Not only can ads be personalized, but ads might also be shown to people in your social network because they are appropriate for you.
It would seem even more important, for Facebook to do this personalized advertising well, to separate business and personal contacts. My friends might share very different interests than my businesss colleagues, although there is lots of overlap, I am sure.
It's amazing how dumb these questions will sound in a few years, when we've sorted it all out, but this what I am struggling with now. How can computers analyze social networks to see what the connections consist of? It's almost the personal equivalent of anchor text--it is not enough to know that two documents are linked because we need to know why they are linked. Similarly, do computers need to know why two people are linked?
I have friends that I went to high school with and who love baseball and we've stayed in touch all these years. So if you want to find people of my age and background (Facebook knows it was a Catholic high school), then those folks would be good links for a personalized ad campaign. But I have business contacts who I know because they are in the search marketing business and they could be any age and any background and I don't think most of them like baseball.
It's a moot point with me for the moment, because I think I have exactly one friend in Facebook, so they aren't spending a lot of time thinking about me. But when someone has thousands of friends, how does Facebook use that information? Sure, it can look at each friend's profile to learn more, but search engines could always look at all the pages and that was never good enough.
Maybe these problems are different, but I wonder if Facebook will need to move to a system where you have several views into your information that you can allow people into. That in itself will be a social negotiation, but right now there isn't much distinction between what different friends can see. (At least I don't think there is.)
By setting those boundaries, Facebook can become a way to socialize across all parts of people's lives and probably harvest more information about the connections between people (relationship anchor text) that can only help their ability in targeted advertising.
And it will stop people from getting the advice to give up Facebook. That's what the poor woman was told whose boss wanted to "friend" her, and it sure isn't the solution that Facebook wants her to choose.
Posted by mikemoran at 12:24 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 3, 2007
The Risk of Blogging
When I speak to audiences, one of the most popular questions is how a company can deal with the "risk" of allowing employees to blog. I like to tell people that there is no risk at all with blogging—none. Rather, it's an absolute certainty that someone will eventually do something stupid. The question is what do you do about it when it happens, not how to prevent it. Because the only way to prevent the damage is to give up the monumental benefits that come from improved brand image and improved customer relations that stem from the human face that blogging puts on your company.
But I also recommend that you have blogging policies that lay out what is allowed and not allowed. And I was brought up short on that while reading David Meerman Scott's new book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR
David modestly says that some of the chapters could be skipped if you already understand this stuff. Don't! Even experts can learn things here. Because I didn't skip his chapter on what a blog is, I had my eyes opened to a great point about blogging.
David says that it is not necessary to have a blogging policy. Instead, have a policy that covers employee behavior regardless of the media. So, for example, employees must not divulge confidential information and they must not sexually harrass anyone. Not just in blogs, but using any means.
That is so simple and it makes so much sense and it covers any new thing that comes along, not just blogs. (You proabably don't want employees harrassing anyone on Twitter, do you?) I wish I had read David's book before I finished mine so I could have fixed that piece of advice. Well, there's always the second printing.
David also has a great point on the "risk" of blogging. He asks if you allow your employees to send e-mail. It's a great question because so many companies were slow to adopt e-mail because of fears that corporate secrets would be divulged or that employees would insult customers and ten other scary things that lawyers are paid to obsess over.
Are the lawyers wrong to worry? No. But we must train our employees to behave properly rather than walling off employees from our customers. So, do your employees send e-mail? Even to angry customers? If they do, then expect some of those e-mails to get posted on blogs—to be made public in some way—whether we like it or not.
We might as well accept that marketing and PR can no longer be left to the specialists. Yes, marketers and PR professionals are the experts and must lead those activities, but they must also evangelize, train, and coach the rest of the company to engage with the public, too. The communication experts must communicate within the company to teach communication to all employees. That way those employees can blog, participate on message boards, and interact directly with customers—always knowing how to conduct themselves to help the company's image.
Does that risk errors? Yes. But the biggest error of all is to hide from the conversation and expect that customers will somehow respect that. They won't. In fact. they may even get mad. So do a search for your company name. Is the #3 result yourcompanysucks.com? If it is, it's time to start listening, to start engaging, and to start responding. And if you're one of the lucky companies that has no hate site, maybe you can reduce the risk of one starting up by doing the exact same things.
And a great way to start is by buying David's book. Blogs don't have to be scary and David's book is full of ways to get the most out of blogs, whether all you do is read 'em, or you take the plunge and start writing one yourself.
Posted by mikemoran at 4:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 2, 2007
How Do You Improve Your Existing Web Site?
A lot is written about new Web sites and redesigning Web sites, but what about plodding gradual improvement to an existing Web site? Avinash Kaushik likes to say that you don't need metrics reports, what you need is answers to your questions. But what kinds of questions should you be asking? I was challenged to put together a list of Web site improvement questions which you can use as a checklist to go over your site (and to jostle your brain into thinking of more like them).
Posted by mikemoran at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 1, 2007
Management by Embarrassment
In my speaking engagements, I often talk about my experience working at ibm.com, a huge Web site any way you slice it—millions of pages, dozens of languages, over 90 countries, thousands of people. It's those thousands of people that proved the most challenging for Internet marketing, because most techniques must be coordinated, but they can't be centralized. (You'll never have a blogging department, for example.) So, how do you coordinate hundreds or thousands of people across a company to do the right thing for Internet marketing?
Unfortunately, Internet marketing in medium-to-large companies can require more of a background in organizational behavior than in marketing itself. When you need dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people to move in the right direction, you've got a real challenge on your hands.
You can't centralize or outsource blogging. You must create an environment where your rank and file employees can blog effectively to improve the image of your business.
Search marketing is similar. Sure, you can hire an agency to manage parts of your paid search campaigns. You can centralize or farm out search strategy and maybe keyword management, but the basic blocking and tackling of organic search must be done throughout your organization—Webmasters, writers, and lots of other specialists must do things right every day on every page.
How do you respond to customers who complain about your company on message boards? It won't help to assign customer service people to the job—what you need is experts who are part of the community. They'll have the kind of credibility you need when a crisis hits.
Add in social media marketing and wikis—so many forms of Internet marketing require coordination across the organization. How do you do it?
Your basic tools are:
- Evangelism. To get people to change behavior, they must understand why they must change. You need to convince people that the tasks you want them to do are important—important to your company and important to them personally.
- Policies. Sometimes, you need policies to address what is needed. Bloggers should know the rules before they start. Webmasters should know that they are expected to perform search marketing tasks as part of their jobs. Larger companies need policies and procedures, but smaller companies might just need checklists. Regardless, you need to fold new tasks into the fabric of existing jobs.
- Training. Don't expect people to know what to do or to "pick it up on their own." Conduct training to explain exactly how to do things so that each person knows what is expected.
- Coaching. No matter how much training you provide, you'll always run into unexpected situations. Provide experts who can be summoned for sticky problems, such as helping a poor blogger who is under fire for something she said.
- Tools. To whatever extent you can automate the policies and make training simpler, do it. Can you remind people to blog each week? Can you provide an internal community to find partners to blog with? Can you offer a message board to converse with experts to aid learning?
But how do you police it? How do you compel action? To really get everyone on board, you need some kind of corporate governance, but that sounds so heavyweight and painful. My preference is what I call "management by embarrassment."
First decide what actions you want people to take and figure out how you can check up on them. For example, organic search depends on having good titles on your pages, so once a month check on how many pages have titles. (At ibm.com, we wrote a program that crawled all pages on our Web site to check.)
Then, collect all your numbers and divide them up by organization. So, to continue our example, perhaps 93% of pages from Department A have titles, 98% from Department B, and 83% from Department C. Then decide how to color code what you found—perhaps any department with over 97% of the pages titled is rated green, while over 95% is yellow, and under 95% is red. Choose targets that are achievable in a relatively short period—perhaps a year. Sure, you might like 99.7% of pages to have titles, but if you make the job too hard, people will give up hope of succeeding before they even try.
Then you create a chart that lists all the departments with their color-coded scores and you call a meeting among the department heads. You explain to them how important organic search is (that's the same evangelism stuff discussed above) and why titles are so important to success, and you show them their scores. You also explain what their folks need to do to raise their scores and offer to meet them and train them.
And you do it all over again next month. And the month after that. When I did this at IBM, I was working with executives in charge of country Web sites or Web sites from whole divisions with thousands of people in each one. And I tackled many areas at once, not just page titles. But the idea is the same.
And what I found was that the executives, by and large, could tell this was important but they had no idea what I needed their folks to do. That didn't matter. After just a couple of months of being told they were "red" they went to their teams and said, "I don't know what Moran wants, but just do whatever it is so that I am not called 'red' again next month."
Basically, they did not want to be embarrassed in front of their peers. That's a very powerful motivator for executives—far more powerful than if we had told all the executives that only 87% of our pages across IBM had titles and this was awful and we need your help to fix it. They all would have yawned and gone back to their Blackberries. But when an individual executive is failing on a scorecard in front of her peers, well, that gets her attention. Splitting the scores by department or division places accountability with one executive—that brings action in response.
So, in about a year, ibm.com went from having 87% of our pages with titles to over 97%. And everyone rejoiced that they were all "green" now. So then I raised the bar. Now green became 99% and yellow 98%. And on and on you go.
You can use this technique to compel any behavior that is measurable. And you can stop measuring things when you don't need to anymore. (IBM stopped measuring page titles when we were consistently at nearly 100%, for example.)
So, get smart about getting medium and large organizations motivated. When you can identify the behavior you want and you can measure compliance, then you can divide your measurements to apply peer pressure to get the organizations to comply. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but once you get the system established, you can apply it to anything you can measure. And it's a lot less work than wheedling and cajoling people one by one.
So what Internet marketing tasks in your company do you need to embarrass people over?
And speaking of embarrassment, I am embarrassed by the continuing problems with my mailing list software. We thought we had them corrected, but some of you are still getting dopey messages from our old server. We are redoubling our efforts to fix that, so if you get any more messages after today that don't seem right to you, please forward them to me—it will help us track down any remaining glitches with our Web hosting company. Also, if you got this post twice, it probably means you are subscribed to the daily blog e-mail feed and this monthly newsletter. You only need the daily feed, so you can safely unsubcribe to the monthly newsletter. Thanks for bearing with me on this one.
Posted by mikemoran at 8:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
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