Biznology Blog: August 2008

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August 29, 2008

The REAL Key to Search Marketing Success

by Frank Reed

If you read my post on small business search marketing, you recall that I talked about how difficult it can be for small businesses to make search marketing work for them. Many simply don't understand the opportunity that exists. Some don't think that they have the technical know-how. Even more believe that they simply don't have the time. Well, if I might be so bold, I can give you the most important key to success in search marketing.

The real key to search marketing success has nothing to do with technical know-how. For those of you looking for a magical search technique that will garner rankings and conversions for your business, I am sorry to disappoint you.

Let's be honest here. There is no one sure-fire way to write copy that will be effective with the engines. There is no one sure-fire way to write a title tag or meta description tag that will ensure strong rankings for your most important keywords. There is no one sure-fire way to build one-way inbound links to your Web site that will make it a license to print money. Now, of course, these are all important techniques required to get you in the game, but by themselves produce limited success, making you wonder why you even bothered.

The real key to search marketing success is contained in one word: commitment. That is one power-packed word that means different things to different people on different days. For the small or medium business (SMB) marketer, however, it can be defined more narrowly. I am contending that in the vast majority of the cases in search marketing, the players that are the most committed to success will reap the most rewards.

Go ahead and say it out loud for me: "That's it? That's the big secret you have? I don't need you to give me that kind of wisdom, Frank." So give me a chance to explain further.

Commitment in search marketing is quite different than in other areas of business. The biggest reason is since it is a virtual unknown to most SMB owners there has to be a commitment to learning. More importantly, you must commit to saying, "I don't know anything about this, so I will have to make an extraordinary effort to either hand it off to someone I trust or to learn it on my own." If you can't check your ego at the door, then don't bother knocking, Mr. Entrepreneur. Search marketing is a humbling experience for even the most seasoned veterans.

A commitment to learning demands a commitment of time, which is the most valuable and scarcest resource of any business owner, especially in the current economic climate. Many rail against the need to spend time on something that is not tried and true. Many even view search marketing as more speculative, because of the time it takes to get traction in the engines. It takes time to learn search. It takes time to implement techniques. It takes time for results. If you can't commit to the time it takes, then you will not have the success you desire.

For those of you who have decided that this commitment already seems like too much but you still want to get in the game, you need to commit to a partner. You need to find a consultant or an agency that desires to be your partner, and then commit to doing what they say.

If a consultant gives you a task that needs to be done by your team (like uploading new title tags, for instance), you need to commit to doing it immediately. Don't sit on the item then be disappointed when you don't get the results you wanted. If you do not put something into effect when your partner has handed it to you, it is no longer the partner's problem. It's yours. Commit the resources to get the work done, because delaying only puts off your success.

So take a stand. Commit to success with search marketing. If you decide to not get involved because it is too much for you, then consider what you are really committing to. Your commitment to being "safe" or "prudent" could come at the greatest cost imaginable: opportunity.

Posted by FrankReed at 10:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 25, 2008

Personalized Search on Internet Evolution

Even though I am on vacation through the U.S. Labor Day holiday, I wanted to point you to my first post on Internet Evolution. I'm pleased to announce that I will be contributing there a few times a month, but don't worry, I will always cross-link from here so you'll see them right away. Today's post is about how personalized search is on its way. I hope you'll check it out, and hang around to read the posts from the entire roster of contributors to Internet Evolution.

Posted by MikeMoran at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 22, 2008

E-mail Marketing Podcast with Simms Jenkins

If you've never heard of Simms Jenkins, today is a great time to change that. Simms is the CEO of BrightWave Marketing and author of The Truth About Email Marketing. I had a chance to interview Simms for a three-part podcast recently and Simms posted Part 1 in his blog last week. So, pull up a chair and listen to the wisdom of Simms Jenkins on e-mail marketing. (For those of you looking for Frank Reed's regular contribution, he's away this week and will return in this space next Friday.)

Posted by MikeMoran at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2008

Social Media Measurement Is Here

I spoke a couple of weeks ago at Converseon's round table for Social Media Measurement. I've been on vacation so it's taken a bit of time for me to link to this video, but a few people asked about it, so here goes. (Thanks to my colleagues at Converseon for the hard work of shooting, editing, and posting the content on YouTube.) My presentation is in two parts, with the first part focusing on reputation measurement—showing the kind of tool that average business people need to monitor the ongoing conversations about their brands and their industries. Part 2 focuses more on the organizational issues in social media, as marketers, market researchers, and public relations professionals each focus on a different aspect of social media, rarely involving their fellow specialists in what they do. We "experts" must take the responsibility of providing the needed tools and helping different professional disciplines work together if we expect social media to become a measurable part of the marketing strategy for the average company.

Posted by MikeMoran at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 20, 2008

An Olympic Workout for Your Browser

by Carlos Hoyos and Monica Piccinini

Growing up, the Olympics were a time of magic and excitement; a time to dream and a time to watch this uniquely human drama unfold. New stories were created minute-by-minute while old glories of Olympics past were retold and polished ever brighter with each passing year. Interestingly enough, although one of us grew up on the western coast of South America and the other on the eastern coast of North America, our Olympic experiences were not dissimilar: families gathered around the TV each day or night to share the experience; the opening ceremonies were not to be missed and were much discussed at school the next day; and, whether an American athlete or another athlete won a particular event, there were always the stories of triumph or heartbreak to capture our attention and hold us rapt. The Olympics were, and remain, magic.

This Olympics has brought with it an aspect of technological magic that is breaking as many records as Michael Phelps. According to an NBC press release the day after opening ceremonies, NBCOlympics.com garnered 70 million page views, which is 10 times more than the opening day of the Athens Games in 2004 and, in just the first week of August, had more than 127 million page views, nearly half the total for the entire Athens Games. Why this dramatic increase? And what are the implications for the would-be Olympic viewer?

Technological Impact

Although there are multiple factors that contribute to this increase, such as a larger online population, or an increased tendency to get our news online, the single biggest factor here is online video. And not just any video, but high-definition video streamed to the tune of 250TB on a single day, according to the Microsoft site. What Microsoft has done, in essence, is to use a mainstream event to push their technology, Silverlight, and they have done it quite successfully. From a user perspective, this more welcome than the previous autocratic approach one has come to expect. After all, if you give me something I really want and you don't make it too difficult for me to get it, I am much more likely to try your new product or download the latest version of your software, for example. On the other hand, for those of you that are not Microsoft fans (and according to Mashable's pool, 20% of you would still boycott Silverlight, despite its undeniable success during these Olympics), YouTube has an Olympic channel, and Adobe can still claim that 75% of Web video is broadcast in Flash. With 10 million downloads a day, Flash is still the most ubiquitous video plug-in for the browser.

This leaves the folks who are very attached to their iPhones at a bit of a disadvantage: although users already hacked their way into watching the Olympics on the iPhone using Quicktime movies, the video is not HD, so the viewing experience, already limited by the size of the screen, is further degraded. Although Steve Jobs claimed in March that Flash doesn't quite cut it yet, the other side of that coin might be that allowing a proprietary third-party application on the iPhone is not in Apple's current plan of control. And what is true for Flash might be equally true for Silverlight. We'll have to wait and see.

The good news here is that competition from Microsoft's Silverlight will ultimately benefit us, the viewers. In recent years Adobe has released improvements to Flash as well as a runtime platform (AIR); still, with their virtual monopoly under attack, we should see the pace of innovation pick up, with better features like video, and local storage—crossing the line between browser, desktop and mobile platforms.

Advertising Impact

Who amongst us was not happy when Tivo and other DVRs came along, allowing us to zip by those pesky commercials? Many Tivo owners skip commercials, although they might find the occasional Super Bowl commercial quite entertaining. An interesting aspect of the delivery mechanism for the Olympics (and other video streaming) is the reintroduction of the viewer being a captive audience to commercials. Just watch this tiny little commercial snippet and they will let you move on to the main event. Fortunately, the producers of the videos seem to be learning from their mistakes and not abusing the captives too much with lengthy or boring commercials.

There are even better possibilities for targeted marketing, as well, since there is a lot of information that can be inferred about a person in a non-intrusive manner. For example, in order to download the NBC videos, you are required to enter your zip code, your cable company, and the local TV station that is the NBC affiliate. Once you do that, it is not too far a stretch of the imagination that you could be shown advertisements based on the type of channel you usually watch. If you spend 10 hours a week with Home and Garden TV, ads from Home Depot would be more assured of reaching a receptive audience and would, therefore, be more effective.

Security Impact

The Olympic broadcast contracts are negotiated on a per country basis (e.g., NBC in the US, and CBC in Canada), with Web broadcasting subject to strict use of geo-blocking technology to keep the feeds local. Still, there are ways to circumvent this restriction, and all over the blogosphere a "cat and mouse" chase ensued of users posting and proxying transmissions from the games in China. The Olympic organization was very keen to enforce these agreements and mandated that all networks limit their transmissions. The German network ARD was briefly banned from Olympics Internet transmissions because it didn't properly secure broadcast of the opening ceremony, allowing many users outside Germany to view it live.

In our eyes, one of the least effective measures for NBC to prevent out-of-country viewing was to request Internet viewers to supply their zip codes, cable companies and local TV affiliates. As a matter of interest, we used Google search to locate a valid combination in approximately 3.5 minutes, including a dead end or two. If the networks are going to protect their broadcasting rights, some more stringent security measures might be warranted.

Viewer Impact

But should we take those more stringent security measures? Do the Olympics not belong to the whole world, rather than a broadcasting company? What about the people in Kenya or Laos who might not have a TV but just might have access to a mobile device where they can see their own hometown heroine competing in the Olympics? Would not making it easier for everyone to see and, in their own way, participate in the magic of the Olympics be the worthier goal than breaking a record number of software downloads or page views for a site?

Putting aside those broader concerns, another interesting aspect of the Olympic broadcast over the internet was the use of PIP (picture in picture). A viewer could track what was going on in two events at one time. The temptation for ads to be placed in that small PIP window is strong. While this is a technological bonus, how effective is that marketing attempt on the viewer? For that matter, if a viewer is trying to watch two events at one time, how can attention be fully paid to one or the other? If I am trying to capture the attention of a potential customer, would it not be better to have their undivided attention for a short period of time, rather than their divided attention over a longer span?

Conclusions

The 2008 Olympics have certainly marked a turning point in the technological ability to deliver more images, faster, through more devices and methods. On the surface of the Olympics, what we see is competition: one athlete against another athlete, one team against another team, one country against another country. What is not so obvious, perhaps, is the massive and overwhelming amount of cooperation of all countries involved to bring their teams to the same place, at the same time, to live side-by-side in friendly competition for sixteen days. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here. It is, in the end, about human endeavor and we in the technology industry should always keep that in sight.

For the Internet marketer, finding the right balance between intrusive marketing (which customers try to avoid) and marketing which strikes the right tone (by providing potential customers with information that might interest them) is a constantly evolving challenge. As new technologies like Silverlight, come onto the scene and information channels, such as video, grow in use, sometimes explosively, the Internet marketer needs to be prepared to adapt and respond to different ways of doing things, while achieving their ultimate goal of interesting the customer in their product or service. This requires responsible and creative use of information about the customer, a willingness to strike a balance between your customer's needs and your own, and a demonstrated concern for security. Failure to pay attention to these aspects of Internet culture could lead to Olympic-sized mistakes.

Posted by CarlosHoyos at 10:01 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 19, 2008

Welcome New Biznology Bloggers

Yesterday, we welcomed Carlos Hoyos and Monica Piccinini with their first blog post. Today it is Eva Lyford. Thanks to all our new contributors—please help us to improve what we do. I am still out on vacation through September 2, but will try to keep posting our new bloggers until I return.

Posted by MikeMoran at 5:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How Microtrends Change Your Internet Marketing

by Eva Lyford

Having trouble focusing on everything all at once? Identify a few microtrends and get moving on setting up matching landing pages to capitalize on them. You may find with a bit of segment tweaking that your widget will succeed in entirely new segments than you have addressed before. Microtrends are not Paris Hilton's latest choice in swimwear. Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne covers a variety of trends that could be useful to anyone setting up segmented online marketing. Many businesses have a clear vision of who their customers are and how to speak to them about their products. Other businesses don't, or have spent so long trying to figure it out that they've forgotten what they set out to accomplish in the first place. If you're struggling trying to identify what landing pages to create and what groups to target, try a few of these on for size.

How can Internet marketers use knowledge of microtrend groups? Penn calls it Microtargeting, which is really just exquisitely tiny segmentation—something that search engines like and customers love. Not all of these will fit your product or niche service, but experiment with one or two and carefully track your conversions to see which one works better. You may find that your manly Handheld Cordless Dremel Tool is a favorite among Pet Parents for filing Fido's nails, and you could open up a whole new segment just by re-targeting. (It is true about the Dremel, btw!)

Penn covers a large range of microtrend groups. In the spirit of scientific inquiry I subjected myself to the Microtrend online quiz and it parsed me into the following microtrend group, shared (in part) here to give you an idea of the many categories Penn covers.

Your Results:

• Social Geek. You love Blackberrys and phones and IM—how else would you know how to meet up with your friends? You're part of the growing group of Americans who've made computers (and their offshoots) incredibly cool—not geeky and loner-ish like those machines used to be.
• Tech Fatales. You're a major driver in the technology field—women actually outspend men on technology 3:2. But chances are, you don't feel that way. Aren't you bored with the designs, functionality, and marketing of most tech products in America? Seriously, aren't there any colors out there besides gray and black ...?
• Video Game Grownups. Welcome to the growing group of grown-ups who love video games—and are tired of being made to feel like that's somehow shameful. Games are challenging, exciting, and creative, and a LOT more adults are doing them than the ad-makers would have you think. The average age of computer/video gamers in the U.S. is 33!
• Numbers Junkies You may not be a math and science genius, but you truly love numbers in your daily life. Whether it's watching Numb3rs on TV or solving Sudoku puzzles, you find that science- and numbers-based entertainment challenges you and sharpens your thinking.
• Pet Parents. As you arrange the family for the annual holiday photo, Fido is front and center. If you have kids, your pet probably gets at least as much attention as they do—and if you don't have kids, well, all the more reason that Fluffy gets birthday parties, manicures, and kitty vacations. The best-loved pets in America live better than 99 percent of the world's population.

In the good ol' days, we worked with a careful set of customer segments in mind: the urban-up-and-comers, the empty-nesters, the barely-making-its. It was helpful. It was unifying. And most interestingly, it was measurable; having the customer segments identified, we could easily see whether a new central office product such as privacy manager was doing well or poorly in any group. Marketing spends could then be shifted to put momentum into a growing segment, or support a slacking one. And then you measure again, and start the cycle once more.

So, let's say your widget is easy to install, has above-industry-average safety features, and looks really neat. All of these features are vaunted on the product page, each given equal time. Why not make a landing page focused on the Pampering Parents microtrend, and focus on the safety features? Make another page focused on Second-Home buyers, touting the ease of installation into a second residence. Make 30 pages if you like, and make each uniquely search-engine friendly and time will be on your side as traffic starts to flow. Don't forget to measure what's going on; Google's Web Optimizer is a good tool to work with if you haven't got something else set up already. As Sun Tsu says, know your strengths in order to succeed. Go Darwinian; kill off the non-performing pages and build up a microsite around the ones that are excitingly active. Stand back and receive the applause at the next staff meeting. (Well, my co-workers don't applaud at meetings but maybe yours will.)

points to the authors for tapping into social marketing and setting up the spiffy facebook quizzes—so much more interesting than simply the "I'm a fan of" applications. For a quick idea of the microtrends, check out that facebook quiz. And Microtrending staff, take note: Why not add a feature to the quiz so that I can send the results to my friends and have them confirm my self-assessment ? Or tell me I'm wrong?

That would cover one microtrend that got missed in this book: the Hypercritical Fan. You know who you are, whether you watched Star Wars frame by frame or got agitated over a literary character's inexplicably changing eye colors in a George R.R. Martin book. Speaking of hypercritical fans: Mr. Penn, the Wii game is pronounced "Whee!" as in fun and together, not "Why" as in "Why did the audiobook fact-checker miss this?"

So, if you have a perfectly well-oiled hinge of a segmentation strategy set up, let me know because I would love to see such a unique creation. For the vast majority of us who are working on setting up segmentation, or refining our existing targeting, take a look through this book for some ideas on where to get some traction.

Posted by EvaLyford at 4:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

August 18, 2008

Web 2.0 Hide and Seek with Search Engines

by Carlos Hoyos and Monica Piccinini

Welcome to the world of Web 2.0 where the old maps of the Internet have been updated to help visitors find their way to new content! After reading this article you will understand the challenges which new dynamic technologies such as AJAX pose to search and content discovery, as well as how to avoid some common problems.

What do we mean by "the old maps of the Internet have been updated to help visitors find their way to new content"? In the early days of the Web, pages were static. Pre-assembled content was served in the same way to all visitors, and a Web site was often nothing more than a replacement for a brochure about a company or product. Then came the first leap, as Web servers were able to dynamically assemble a page on the fly. Web sites became functional tools with which the visitor could interact through applications such as shopping carts, email, and others. Although a huge step forward, it still had a disadvantage in that any time an action was taken, the visitor would have to wait for the entire page to load before starting to work with it.

Up to this point, the browser played a minor role of rendering pages that had been assembled by the Web server. But with the browser war over, a new breed of browsers emerged with better support for JavaScript (a scripting language that runs in the browser), allowing Web pages to load and execute code in addition to content. With client side scripting (aka DHTML or AJAX), code is loaded as part of the page, powerful enough to manipulate the page and render specific parts of it without reloading. A more responsive experience is possible, where you can now drag maps to explore your route, mouse over books and movies to preview them, and manipulate pictures and data as if they were part of a standalone program in your desktop.

Congratulations, your site is more responsive and reacts to the visitor's input, making them happy. This is a Good Thing.

The Search for New Content

But wait. If some of your content is only rendered in response to user actions, will search engines be able to find it? Chances are this won't happen, unless you have necessary steps to optimize for search in this new environment.

At its core, the Web is a collection of different kinds of content, displayed in a Web page and contextually linked together. Users follow these links to load Web pages and discover other content, a behavior that search engines emulate, creating an index or map of linked content as they go. Pages using client-side technologies, such as AJAX and DHTML, can break this paradigm, since now content is not necessarily reached through a specific URL.

Now the goal becomes ensuring that the search engines can still find your content, even though it may no longer be "on the map". One way to find out what is no longer visible to a search engine is to simply disable JavaScript; any content you can't see, a search engine won't be able to see either.

Tips for Optimizing AJAX for Search

You can assess how well your site will fare by asking two questions: "How will my site degrade?", and "What is the content and context of my features?".

The first question will tell you how well you followed the principle of graceful degradation: When leveraging new technologies, provide an alternative method so that anyone who won't support these technologies can still access your site, usually through a more basic experience or limited functionality.

Applying this principle makes business sense, as otherwise you might not only be hiding your content from search engines, but also preventing visitors with older browsers or accessibility needs to use your site.

The next step is to understand the content and context of your features, which will help you decide what items are important when it comes to optimization. As a rule of thumb, features that pull in new content or that help with navigation need more attention than ones that merely enhance the base experience.

For example, a like "look ahead" functionality—where typing some characters in a search box will reveal a list of suggestions—doesn't require optimization, since it plays a supporting role on the page that degrades well and will not impact search crawlers by not directly linking to additional content.

On the other hand, AJAX is also commonly used to enhance a page with supplementary content, such as ads, product details, related content, or simply to "view more" information by opening collapsed sections or moving through tabs, where this extra content is only loaded when the user needs it.

Consider instead loading all content with the page, and use JavaScript to hide what you don't want to show immediately; this way search engines and users with JavaScript disabled will see complete information. And what if all the content can't be loaded at once? You can create and link to extended pages that contain the extra information, and use JavaScript to hide those links or replacement with the nicer asynchronous experience.

By focusing on loading more of the right information and supporting links that can be used to degrade complex dynamic functionality, you can avoid hiding from search engines and clients that might not support all technologies you use. And on this last point, having a site map or content index is also recommended, in case everything else fails.

You can have a site optimized for organic search and for user responsiveness. Just make sure you know what you are doing.

Posted by CarlosHoyos at 5:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 15, 2008

LinkedIn Gets the "Old School" Stamp of Approval

by Frank Reed

While I am not old by any stretch of the imagination, I definitely fall on the "I did not grow up with the internet" side of the ledger. All that means is that I have needed to adapt how I do business to incorporate blogging and social media among other "unnatural" acts. In fact, for a good portion of my career I had to depend on newspapers for "up-to-date" business information and I have grown fond of several sources that have themselves had to adapt to the internet economy. The business section of the New York Times has been one of those trusted venues that have been able to bridge the gap well. One of my new media favorites is LinkedIn. Now, as a result of a partnership between LinkedIn and the NY Times I get the benefit of two favorites of the past and future as they combine forces to help me stay informed and connected all at once.

LinkedIn has hit a new media equivalent of a grand slam with this type of deal. Not only do they have the chance to get their brand in front of over 17 million unique users per month, who are at the very least well-educated and at best quite well-heeled, but they also get validation from an industry giant. When the whole social media phenomenon started to gain traction, there was little talk of it being legitimized by the traditional media powerhouses like the Times and the Wall Street Journal. LinkedIn has crossed a line that probably surprises many but is welcomed by folks like myself, who don't relate to the aloof approach of MySpace and Facebook.

In fact, MySpace and Facebook may never get a real chance to be mentioned in the same breath as the icons of traditional media. In all honesty, I doubt either of these two high-profile new economy giants gets a serious second look from many of the readers of the New York Times. It's just a bit too irreverent and often times downright silly to be considered legitimate to this demographic. Enter LinkedIn, with its focus on professional networking combined with its no-nonsense look and feel that allows grown-ups who have real jobs and actual careers to connect with each other in ways that were not imagined just a decade ago. If I sound like a cynic regarding the business value of MySpace and Facebook, then you are perceptive. I know there is value in branding and buzz for a specific demographic via these avenues, but as a true professional networking tool, I think the two darlings of the new economy just don't cut it. I am sure that I will be accused of "not getting it," but I am OK with that. LinkedIn and its approach make more sense to me and I can see the value there for my business needs.

Besides, it takes way too much time to keep all of these options up to date, so you are almost forced to decide where the greatest benefit will be for your particular business goals. I haven't even mentioned Twitter and other buzz creators. If it feels like a lot to keep track of today, I can only imagine what lies ahead. It was just 10 short years ago that e-mail was revolutionizing how we communicate in business and life in general. Now e-mail is just "normal". It's almost mundane.

So what lies ahead? I don't have a clue. I am not a prognosticator or a visionary. Heck, I wouldn't even call myself an early adopter when it comes to new media. For those of you who have some kind of crystal ball, what do you see in the future for the next generation of social media and networking? Where will this go? I'm not sure, but by the time I have this new world communication and networking figured out, the rules will change. Could you please "tweet" me in the old marketers' home when they do?

Posted by FrankReed at 3:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 13, 2008

Always Be Reading "Always Be Testing"

New Internet books come out all the time, but few are as important as this one. Bryan Eisenberg and his merry band at FutureNow have created THE book to lead you through testing using Google Website Optimizer. Now, you use a free tool, plus get a free book—the $20 book comes with a $25 Google AdWords gift certificate. If you're still not convinced, read my review on Search Engine Guide, called "Always Be Reading Always Be Testing."

Posted by MikeMoran at 10:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 11, 2008

Creating Your Own Viral Video

Perhaps you've heard of some companies creating viral marketing videos, but you never thought you could do it. The truth is that many of those successful marketers never thought they could do it, either. Find out the basics of creating a video that your customers can find and pass on in my latest article for Revenue Magazine called "Lights, Cameras, Action!"

Posted by MikeMoran at 10:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 8, 2008

Search Marketers Think YOU Know It Already. Do You?

by Frank Reed

As with any business, it can be important to step outside of the business, so to speak, to see what might actually be going on. That's why consultants exist. Good ones allow you to get the objective position from the other side of the desk so you do not lose perspective on what the market is actually asking for, or even how you may be perceived in the market. Search marketing is a classic industry for this kind of approach because it's very easy to assume that everyone knows a lot about search. I am beginning to think I could be a bit off.

So, since this is Frank Friday, I am looking for some honest opinions. I spend most of my waking hours playing at this internet marketing thing. Even more to the point, I work on the search engine marketing side of the coin. As the marketing/sales face of my company (you can see my picture in my bio so tell me if I should take a back office position), I encounter every type of small and medium business owner and employee that you can imagine. From the solo insurance salesperson to the landscaper with 50 employees to the online entrepreneur to the traditional manufacturing business, and everyone in between, I talk to them all.

Business people are often hurried, overworked, stressed, and a bit scattered. As a result, many end up with a business knowledge that is a mile wide and an inch deep. They need to know a little about almost every aspect of business from accounting, sales, HR, janitorial, marketing, public relations, accounts receivable, and on and on. So why should I expect them to have any true understanding of search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, and blog marketing?

I am starting to feel like I have become a bit myopic in my view of the SMB marketplace and the profile of the average owner. I have convinced myself that most if not all of these folks are at least aware of search marketing. Then I actually go a step further and suspect that they would know some of the basic precepts of this important part of their marketing mix. If I am really "buying into" my own stuff on any given day, I may actually get a little self righteous about their absolute NEED to be involved in the greatest marketing tool since the dawn of commerce. Then, if I get what I deem to be an inappropriate response (read: a "no"), then I am sure to wonder how that company will survive through the next quarter, because they refuse to do what I know to be absolutely right for their business.

You see my point? I think I have been on the service delivery side of the ledger for so long that my view is truly askew when it comes to the marketing needs of the small-to-medium biz folks out there.

So here's where I need your help. If you are an SMB owner/operator reading this post, tell me what you truly feel (or even know) about search marketing. Is it a mystery? Is it hype? Is it even necessary, in your opinion? Please be sure to explain your answer so that I can learn here. I'm depending on you!

For you fellow search marketing providers out there: how do you think you are perceived by your clients and prospects? What do you think the reputation of the search marketing industry is in its current state? Are there changes needed and, if so, what might they be?

I suspect you came here for some nugget of wisdom but I am asking you for the assist here. What does it look like from your side of the street? I am interested to know your POV (point of view) because I think mine may be just a little too biased. Excuse me now, though. I am going to Google to search for an answer to this question. Would you expect anything else from a search marketer?

Posted by FrankReed at 5:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Can We Adapt to Internet Marketing?

Human beings don't naturally adapt to anything, despite what Darwin says. We're wired to trust the tried and true, which typically works out very well for us. But some of us miss the sunsets, when we do that. Read my latest blog on Small Business Unleashed, "Can We Adapt to Internet Marketing?" to find out why.

Posted by MikeMoran at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 5, 2008

What's In a Brand?

by Aaron Kim

Is there any way to capture a brand's essence and find out what people really feel about it? That's the question I pose in my first blog post for Biznology, where we'll look at a way the Web can tell you more about how the public perceives your brand.

Several months ago, Mike Moran blogged here at Biznology about an interesting
way to measure brand awareness changes as a result of a marketing campaign, not by the means of conventional surveys, which could take weeks or months, but as they happened, using keyword tools to monitor changes in searchers' behaviour.

Back in May, Noah Brier came up with another way to get a feeling about what people think about a brand. His project, brand tags, is a site that captures "the first thing that pops into your head" when you see a company logo and then displays the collective input as a tag cloud. I tried it out, and compared the tag cloud for the company I work for—IBM—with some other IT companies. Can you guess the companies by their corresponding clouds?

Oddly enough, the first word many people think about when they see the name of the company is the name of the company, so you probably can guess by the position of the smudged tag in each cloud. The companies are, from left to right, IBM, HP, Intel, Microsoft and Apple. As you can notice, I had to bleep some of the tags for HP and Microsoft as those may qualify as R Rated. Being on the business consulting side of IBM, I wanted to add Accenture, CGI and other consulting firms to this comparison, but they are not available yet in that Web site.

Connecting the dots between Mike's and Noah's experiments, it would be nice to see brand tags adding one feature: a slider allowing us to see how the brand clouds change over time and determine the time span (e.g., the last 6 months). This way, one could start tracking if there is any clear correlation between brand perception and financial performance, or changes in the brand perception as a result of a marketing campaign.

You may also find their battle of brands concept interesting. This is the top 20 list as of this writing:

1. Pixar has 135 wins out of 150 (90%)
2. Adidas has 263 wins out of 313 (84.03%)
3. Ferrari has 266 wins out of 323 (82.35%)
4. Google has 259 wins out of 321 (80.69%)
5. Lego has 288 wins out of 363 (79.34%)
6. M&Ms has 258 wins out of 329 (78.42%)
7. WWF has 245 wins out of 316 (77.53%)
8. Nike has 257 wins out of 332 (77.41%)
9. YouTube has 249 wins out of 322 (77.33%)
10. Canon has 240 wins out of 311 (77.17%)
11. National Geographic has 235 wins out of 305 (77.05%)
12. Levis has 248 wins out of 322 (77.02%)
13. Apple has 245 wins out of 321 (76.32%)
14. Heineken has 238 wins out of 312 (76.28%)
15. eBay has 215 wins out of 282 (76.24%)
16. UPS has 232 wins out of 306 (75.82%)
17. BMW has 248 wins out of 328 (75.61%)
18. Amazon has 226 wins out of 299 (75.59%)
19. Guinness has 239 wins out of 317 (75.39%)
20. BBC has 253 wins out of 337 (75.07%)

IBM is #62, with 203 wins out of 289 (70.24%). Make sure you check out the cloud for the top IT brand, Google (#4 overall).

Should your company worry if some of these word associations are not exactly flattering? It's not very scientific, and it reflects the average opinion of a skewed group, so nobody should panic yet. But the information there is relevant—in a web-two-oh kind of way—and should not be ignored either. It's very telling to see that many people still link GE with home appliances, even though they've become much more than that since their early days, and may in fact be leaving that business soon.

Thinking further about brands, I went back to my Marketing text book and found the following quote about brands:

The most enduring meanings of a brand are its values, culture, and personality. They define the brand's essence. The Mercedes stands for high technology, performance, and success. Mercedes must project this in its brand strategy. Mercedes must resist marketing an inexpensive car bearing the name; doing so would dilute the value and personality Mercedes has built up over the years.

Just to test how successful Mercedes has been about their brand strategy, I also checked their brand tag, and found it to match the values above almost perfectly. Despite its limitations, Noah's service seems to be as good as any other technique to capture the public's perception about a brand:

I also compared two companies in somewhat different lines of business, sneakers and sports apparel: Adidas and Nike. Here's the head-to-head comparison:

It's interesting to see an old urban myth showing up in the Adidas cloud. Furthermore, even though both companies have been associated with child labor stories in the past (like in here and here), apparently only Nike continues to be associated with it by the public.

The bottom line is that a mismatch between brand strategy and perceived values may severely impact a company's ability to reach their business objectives. The examples above just illustrate some possible ways to measure such an elusive concept like a brand's essence. As tools available to marketers become more sophisticated, relying solely on surveys may prevent companies from seeing the whole picture and being more responsive.

Posted by AaronKim at 1:47 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Aaron Kim is Joining Us

I'd like to welcome Aaron Kim to our roster of contributors. Aaron is a consultant with IBM who regularly works with clients on the impact of Web 2.0 and social computing on business, and he will be sharing his views with us on a regular basis. I hope you'll check out his first post today.

Posted by MikeMoran at 12:56 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 4, 2008

The Dual Agency Duel: How Not To Do Search Marketing

by Josh Greenfield

When it comes to search marketing, are two agencies twice as good as one? Or are two agencies actually worse than one? Some believe that a diversity of opinion gives you better ideas. Others think that each agency will work harder to compete. But as someone who recently worked at an agency, I have my own opinion.

First, I'd like to thank Mike for this guest blogging opportunity. I've been following his writings for some time now, and I'm very excited to have the chance to contribute.

During the past year or so, I've been focused primarily on search engine optimization. One of the most common questions my clients were asking was, "How are you going to work with our PPC provider?" Now that I've left that agency, I feel like this is the best time answer that question with the least amount of bias. Here it is: I don't want to work alongside another agency. It's inefficient, full of back and forth, and it limits each vendor's ability to give their best work. It's my opinion that the dual agency approach to search management leads to a disconnected search campaign.

The first problem is that both agencies don't always work well together. Each agency would love to get that additional revenue from the client, but then everyone involved is forced to play nice. Playing nice tends to result in a product that is much more limited. I have seen and heard horror stories of bad work coming out of competing agencies, and it's not fun to take the blame for poor results. Things like this lead to tension, finger-pointing, and increased inefficiency.

Furthermore, by moving to a unified approach your company benefits from integrated reporting. Both SEO and PPC have essentially the same goal. Drive high quality traffic at the best price. When one agency is managing the whole search program, they can report on and take responsibility for the successes and failures of the whole campaign. Getting reporting like this also makes things much easier for client-side marketers who have to base decisions on complete, integrated data.

The final and maybe biggest benefit of using a single agency is that it eliminates a huge amount of overlap. A page optimized for organic rankings is a page that is focused on a single premise. Ad groups targeting aligned terms will be able to drive more efficient traffic because they will have an increased quality score. Destination URL paths will end up being obvious and making sense. Keyword research will be more thorough and data driven. And finally, both client and agency can commit less staff to the total project as a result of the increased efficiency.

I can understand the thinking that two heads are better than one, and by spreading the business between agencies you're mitigating risk, but I've yet to see two agencies treat a client better and show better results than a single well staffed agency.

Posted by JoshGreenfield at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Welcome Josh Greenfield

Another day, another new blogger joining Biznology, Today marks the first post for Josh Greenfield, a digital marketing agency account manager turned serial entrepreneur. I hope you'll enjoy Josh's viewpoint on Internet marketing, starting with today's entry.

Posted by MikeMoran at 3:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 1, 2008

Small Business and Search Marketing...a Rare Match Indeed

by Frank Reed

Do small business owners take advantage of search marketing the way they should? Often, they don't. If you own a small business and you're wondering what's passing you by, and more important;y, what's stopping you, read on. Small businesses that ignore search marketing might find their competitors leaving them behind.

First, let me say thank you to Mike Moran for giving me the opportunity to talk to his Biznology audience. I admit that I feel a bit like a substitute teacher but don't think you can slack off while I am at the helm! Pardon me....I am a little woozy from the power.

I'm going to share with you an all too common occurrence I encounter. You see, as a search marketing provider to small and medium businesses (SMBs) I am all about helping the "little guy" use the search engines to level the playing field. There literally is no other marketing discipline that can put you in front of a prospect at the exact moment that they have asked for the solution you provide. A small software company with a great product can do the right things to get them mentioned in the same breath as Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft etc. within a SERP (search engine result page) and have a chance to win a client from industry giants. That happens all the time in search.

Here's the catch though. In order to make that happen they have to invest themselves into the process of search marketing and precious few small guys do. I can't tell you how many times I have seen clients ignore suggestions or back burner implementation of search marketing techniques that will eventually earn them bottom line results. I don't get it but it happens.

Do I think it's because they don't care? No, not at all. In fact, most small business guys and gals care so much that they make themselves too busy to tend to the basics. Search marketing is now basic marketing. If you don't think so, then I would suggest that you are going to be eating the dust of your competition in the very near future. Small biz folks are often so busy working in their business that they forget to work on their business. This is a critical tactical error that costs many businesses dearly. Interesting thing is that they often don't even realize it. They have never even calculated the opportunity cost of not showing up in Google's search results for their product or service. They just go about the business of doing their business day in and day out.

If you are a business owner, just take a moment to calculate the revenue that you would receive from a new client over a year's time. Now imagine that you have hired a sales guy who literally works 24/7 for you and never takes a vacation. He knows that his only job is to bring you business and he has all the right contacts to do so. He works tirelessly to network and move your business forward by acquiring new customers from all over the country (or world for that matter) and he never complains. He is there to even support your existing client base by reassuring them that you are one of the leaders in your area of expertise. His name is Web. He works out all day to be seen above the rest of your competition because you give him everything he needs to be heard in the search engine marketplace.

Oh wait. You haven't helped him in a while? He's not performing up to your expectation? Web just doesn't make the grade when it comes to bringing new business in? Why do you suppose that is? Hate to tell you but it's not his fault. It's yours because you have neglected him and not given him the makeover that he needs to be attractive to one of the most powerful marketing tools available to SMBs on the planet; the search engines. Shame on you, Mr. SMB Owner. All he needs is some attention and he'll work for you while you sleep. Don't confuse being busy with being productive. Give your best sales guy a chance to shine. Your bottom line will thank you.

Posted by FrankReed at 6:11 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Frank Fridays

I warned you that even though I'll be scarce during August, I have some new contributors lined up. Frank Reed is an Internet marketing expert who writes for Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim blog and his own Frank Thinking. He'll be writing a post each Friday for Biznology, which I must christen "Frank Fridays"—we're not to be trusted the rest of the week.

Posted by MikeMoran at 5:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack