Search Advisory

This morning’s keynote at the Online Marketing Summit was a discussion with John Battelle and Anne Holland.  Both are insightful visionaries in the Internet marketing space.  John founded Wired magazine and wrote “The Search”, among numerous other accomplishments.  Anne founded and then sold MarketingSherpa, and now runs WhichTestWon.com.

Their conversation, as moderated by Aaron Kahlow, covered a lot of territory.  Standout points for me included:

• We’ve heard this so many times but still don’t do it…marketers should be focusing on their customers’ pain points, not their own capabilities/services.  (Anne)
• A brand consists of what one person tells another person about a company or product.  Corporations think they own/control their brand, but they don’t.  (John)
• Marketers are publishers/content creators – that is now one of their value propositions.  (John)
• Creative folks should call the media their ads will run in (online or traditional) and ask them which ads performed the best for other advertisers in the past.  This will tell them what really works with that audience.  This would give them such an advantage, but no one ever does it.  (Anne)
• After you get a new email subscriber and you send them a “thank you” email…that email will have the highest open rate of anything you ever send them, so make the most of it!  Don’t just fill it with boring information about when they should expect their first newsletter from you – put important branding/sales messaging in it.  (Anne)
• Say you partner with (or advertise on) Site X to promote your product.  Develop a special landing page just for those visitors – include language such as “Welcome, Site X readers” along with Site X’s logo.  You’re guaranteed to increase your conversion rate.  (Anne)

An excellent panel of social media experts (Jay Baer, Ben Hanna, Chris Baggott, Caitlin McCabe, Lee Odden and Michael Senger) were tasked with answering a slew of questions using 140 or fewer characters.  Yes, their responses were madly tweeted (here’s my live Twitter feed).  Highlights:

• “What’s the biggest myth about social media?” Don’t wait to start until you’re ready (because you’ll never be ready).  Social media isn’t measurable and doesn’t generate revenue.  Since executives don’t use social media, their target audiences must not either.  One piece of social media content can’t do much (just ask Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines about that).
• “What are the biggest mistakes made with social media?” Build it and they will come.  Overcommitment to too many sites – limit them or you’ll never keep up.  Giving social media a month or two to perform and deciding it doesn’t work (this is about building relationships!).  Overvaluing followers – it’s so easy to become a fan that it may mean less than you think (“With friends like this, who needs friends?”).  Outsourcing customer engagement – an agency will never know your customers like you do.  Falling in love with a particular social media channel – let your audience dictate which ones are important.
• “What’s most overrated?” Whatever platform your customers aren’t using.  Facebook ads, since 25% of Facebook users access it from their mobile devices, which don’t display ads.  Twitter in terms of too much focus on the number of followers you have.  A company-sponsored online community – it’s a very slow build.
• “What’s the difference between social media for B2B versus B2C companies?” There’s “more romance” with B2B since it’s a longer sales cycle.  B2C is more immediate and mass market.  Don’t assume Facebook=B2C and LinkedIn=B2B because that’s not necessarily true; the platform may not change between consumers and business buyers, but your message, tactic and offer should.  For B2B, you must be a helpful, relevant resource.  With B2C you can often afford to simply entertain.  With B2B, you usually know who your customers are since they’re in a database, so you can track social media results more closely.  With B2C, that’s much harder (Pringles doesn’t know who their customers are).
• “What about social media and SEO?” They’re yin and yang – social promotes optimized content and provides links.  Use the same keywords and links on social media that you do on your site.  Social media is simply more content to search engines.  Keywords are a good thing – if you want to engage me, speak my language!
• “How should someone new to social media get started?” Listen first, find out what customers want from you and make it easy for them to get it.  Determine your resources and be honest about what you can accomplish.  Blog first – everything else will work off of that “hub” of social activity.  The smartest people in your company are the people you give the phone to – they are used to talking to customers and prospects and should be blogging.

Several noteworthy SEO experts were given very brief time periods to talk about cutting edge topics in search engine optimization at OMS. Here’s a recap of the most interesting points:

• Looking for hot keywords for breaking news? Use Google Trends or even Google Hot Trends, Twendz, or Trendistic. Marshall Simmonds from the NY Times offered these up, along with the example of how the Times was scooped for the “plane in hudson” breaking news item when their headlines used words no one was searching for, like “Jetliner’s Icy Plunge Into River.”
• Yahoo’s Laura Lippay gave an interesting talk about how to determine your search traffic opportunity (how much is each keyword and ranking worth to your business?): http://www.tinyurl.com/smartseo.
• Lauren Vaccarello from SalesForce talked about a technique we’ve been using for clients whose sites are lead gen (not ecommerce) – putting hidden fields onto conversion forms that capture tracking information for people who clicked on an organic listing. In other words, site visitors that run a search and click on an organic listing will have the keyword and search engine appended to their record in SalesForce. Meaning the true revenue generated by SEO is now trackable.

I spent the better part of a day listening to Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media go in depth about social media.  I have discovered that it’s very difficult to boil this much content down into a series of pithy blog posts, particularly after a long day of listening, taking notes, live tweeting, networking, checking email and voicemail, and keeping a business running long distance.  So while I’m passing along the tidbits that seem the most valuable/new/interesting to me, this is far from all the content being discussed at the Online Marketing Summit this week.  (For more, see my live Twitter feed, or search Twitter using hashtag #oms10 to see the deluge of tweets from more folks.)

Here are some random items from Hallie’s presentations you may find useful:

• Dell has free social media guides for small businesses.
• Announce new product/service launches on Facebook – one client found that Facebook fans, not surprisingly, convert at a 20% higher rate than the average corporate website visitor.
• Facebook ads can be very effective, but if you take advantage of all the targeting options, you may be speaking to a very small audience.  Once you’ve tapped out that audience, you’re done.  One thing that helps is to change your creative very often, even once a week, to get attention and test different messaging.
• YouTube videos rank higher when they have keywords in the video filename, title of the videeo, and description blurb.  Same with Flickr photos.
• Use TubeMogul to syndicate videos to 12 channels beyond YouTube.
• Just like you should register negative versions of your brand name in terms of URLs (“www.brandsucks.com”), you should do the same with Twitter handles (“@brandsucks”, etc.).  This keeps them out of the hands of the disgruntled.
• Twitter analytics: Twitalyzer or Klout.
• More Twitter third party applications: Twitpic, Wildfire, Sprout Publisher, TwtQpon, TwtAway, TwtSurvey, TwtPoll.
• Facebook Fan Pages should use keywords in the page’s title, “about us” blurb, info tab and information box.
• Wikipedia: go to http://stats.grok.se and type in your top keywords.  It’ll tell you which Wikipedia pages for that keyword get the most pageviews.  So if you want to try to add new content to a page related to your industry, choose the page(s) with the most traffic this way.

Hallie Janssen from Anvil Media offered a plethora of tactical tips for launching a new blog, including:

• Don’t host ON one of the platforms (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, etc.) because you don’t “own” the platform.  Instead, host your blog on a domain you own.
• Which platform to choose? http://bit.ly/wordpressvstypepad
• Install the best WordPress plugins.
• Best elements to include on the blog as a whole are categories, a cloud widget, blog roll, recent posts, comments, most popular posts, RSS feed, blog search box, and an author section.
• Best elements to include on each post are optimized titles & meta description tags, a customized URL, “retweet this” and “share” buttons, related posts, links to posts by that author (if blog has multiple authors), tags, images and video.
• Blog post checklist.
• Get listed in blog directories.

The Online Marketing Summit in San Diego got off to a great start this morning with their pre-conference training day.  I chose the Social Media track, and the morning was kicked off by Hallie Janssen of Anvil Media from Portland OR, who talked about developing a social media strategy.  Hallie covered a lot of ground, much more than I can cover here.  For my live Twitter stream, click here.  Below is a recap of some of Hallie’s main points.

Before putting together your social media strategy, it makes sense to conduct a social media audit, which should include monitoring these things:

• You:  Brand/Company (frequency, tone/sentiment), Products (buzz, features, issues)
• Your Industry:  News, Trends, Associations, Leaders, Emerging Companies
• Online Influencers:  Reach, Clout, Frequency, Relevance, Category (press, industry, target audience influencer, investors)
• Employees:  Executive Team, Employee-Controlled Sites
• Social Media Properties:  Fan Pages, Flickr Photos, YouTube Channels, etc.
• Keywords (that we’re targeting)
• Location:  Country, Region, City
• Sentiment:  Positive, Negative, Neutral

How in the world would you be able to monitor all that?  A plethora of tools are available, most of them free (or nearly free), including:

• Find out how your prospects are using social media with the Technographic tool from Forrester/Groundswell
• Search for people mentioning your industry/product/interest/hobby in their Twitter profiles using Twellow
• Listen using Alterian SM2 (fka Techrigy) or TweetBeep (which is like Google Alerts for Twitter)
• Ask questions and do surveys using Twtpoll
• See who’s talking about you and how many Twitter followers they have (among other things) with IceRocket
• Compare two products or brands with Google Trends or Google Insights for Search
• Track forums with Omgili
• See how often words/brands/products are mentioned on blogs at Google Blog Search, Technorati, BlogPulse or SiteVolume
• Get stats on website visitors and converters at Quantcast
• See how often you’re retweeted at Retweetist
• Set up sophisticated feeds at Yahoo Pipes
• See a visual of who’s saying what at Trucast

That’s just a small taste of everything Hallie covered – it was a great overview of social media strategy development that offered something to audience members of all experience levels.

We’ve been in business more than nine years now, and the whole time, we’ve been expecting a slew of competitors to come out of the woodworks.  After all, search engine marketing is a great business to be in!  As an effective, affordable and measurable marketing tactic, it’s in high demand, and there aren’t that many SEM firms in the marketplace.

The slew of competitors has finally showed up, but they’re not the agency specialists (like us) that we expected.  They’re established businesses whose core industries are shrinking, so they’re using technology to try to move into a growing market — search marketing — in order to survive.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.  We all have to evolve as technology and markets change.  That said, we are marveling at the fact that Prominent Placement is now competing with the local newspaper, the printed Yellow Pages, the coupon mailer people, domain registrars, local sites and more.

So far, we’re only competing on the pay-per-click (paid/sponsored listings) side, as that’s somewhat similar to the traditional media that these folks are familiar with.  PPC is also an easier nut for newcomers to crack and scale quickly with.  To our knowledge, none of these businesses have ventured into search engine optimization yet.

The pay-per-click services offered by these companies rely heavily on automation.  Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Technology can certainly make large, unwieldy PPC campaigns more efficient and manageable.  But we believe that to do search engine marketing right, you absolutely need a great deal of skilled human involvement as well.

If you’re considering using one of these new services, be sure to ask these questions:

• Who does keyword research and determines which keywords I’ll target?  Can I review the entire list of keywords?  (Many services have templated lists of keywords for different industries and you must use their entire list, even if some of the keywords aren’t relevant to your particular business.  Some won’t even show you the whole list.  Hopefully they aren’t relying on you to supply all the keywords!)
• Who’s writing my ad’s titles and descriptions?  Is it someone with copywriting experience who knows how to entice clicks?  Are you doing research on what my competitors’ ads say to ensure my ads stand out?  Are you tailoring the copy for each group of keywords to the buying cycle stage in which searchers using those keywords are likely to be?  Are you constantly testing multiple versions of creative to see what produces the best result?  Are you testing dynamic keyword insertion as well as static copy?  (Hopefully they aren’t asking you to act as copywriter!)
• What landing pages will the ads point to?  Pages on my site, or custom landing pages targeted to each category of keywords?  Will they be pages designed with usability best practices and a way to convert right on them?  Will the landing pages be regularly tested and improved upon?
• What levers will the technology pull, and how/when will these levers be triggered?  (Levers include match types, dayparting, pausing poorly performing keywords, options for geographic targeting, accelerated delivery, display URL and more.)
• Will the best performing keywords be moved into their own ad groups with their own creative and budgets?  Will variations on successful keywords constantly be added?  Will negative keywords regularly be added, based on actual search history?
• Will there be any synergy with my search engine optimization or other online marketing efforts?  Will keywords be strategically targeted between the two efforts so my site can dominate the search engine results?  Will anyone regularly comb through my web analytics data to find organic keywords that have driven traffic and conversions, and make sure they’re added to my PPC campaign?
• Is the content network available?  Who chooses the sites on which my content ads will be displayed?  Will the copy be different – aimed at grabbing the attention of people reading articles rather than people actively searching for what I’m selling?  Will the bidding strategy be different since these folks are less likely to convert?
• Who will determine my budget and bidding strategy?  Will budgets be moved between different search engines (or to the content network) depending on performance?  Will the bidding strategy be focused on driving the most clicks, the highest click-through rate, the most conversions, the lowest cost per conversion, the highest conversion rate, the highest return on ad spend, or some other criteria?
• If I have a lead generation site, how will success be measured?  Number of online lead forms filled out?  Will you also track phone call leads?  Will the phone calls be recorded so I can listen to the quality of the leads and use them for internal training purposes?  Will your data synch up with my CRM data so I’ll be able to tell which leads became sales and calculate my true ROI?
• Will you supply me with easy-to-understand reports on a regular basis so I’ll know what my results are?  Or will I have to remember to log into your system and try to figure out which data is relevant to me and what it all means?
• What level of service can I expect?  Will I have a dedicated account manager?  How accessible and responsive will he or she be?  How much experience and training will he or she have?

We have had two clients move their PPC services from Prominent Placement to two of the aforementioned services.  Both clients quickly came back to us because their results declined dramatically and they weren’t able to get the level of service that they desired.

Automated pay-per-click services have their place, and they may be the only option for very small companies.  But we believe that the human touch is critical in managing PPC properly and maximizing results.

This is the final post in my brief series about inspiring speakers I’ve heard over the past couple of weeks.  What a blessing to have been invited to so many stimulating events!  The event that moved me the most, however, was not business-related.  And yes, I did cry at this one.

My former employer, Atlanta ad agency Kilgannon, has supported The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for many years.  They invited me to an evening event to learn more about the Man & Woman of the Year, which is a fundraising effort.  The event started out great – mingling with old friends and new, nibbling appetizers and sipping wine, getting a tour of Kilgannon’s amazing new office space.

We heard a talk from a representative of the non-profit, and I was ready to make a donation and then head home.  But they had a trick up their sleeves!  Apparently there’s also a Boy & Girl of the Year, who are kids diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma.  (Here are last year’s Boy & Girl of the Year for Atlanta.)

The 2010 Girl of the Year, a 7 year old girl recovering from leukemia, was at the event (I won’t name her for privacy reasons).  Cutest little thing you ever saw, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room as her mom told the story of her illness, diagnosis, and three year road to recovery.  Then, just as we had all turned into piles of mush, they played a video the girl’s family had made.  It showed her in the hospital, bald from chemo, playing with her brothers, etc., all set to emotional music.  At this point, I was pretending to watch the video, but I was instead staring at the wall next to the TV monitor biting the edge of my plastic wine glass, hoping it would be over before I totally lost my composure.

I told my former boss and current mentor Rena Kilgannon that it was cruel and unusual to invite people over and then make them cry!  But the event served its purpose in terms of generating awareness of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and their Man & Woman of the Year efforts.  I do plan to become more involved with the organization now.

Looking back over all the speakers I’ve heard recently, even though they all presented on different topics, an overarching theme has emerged for me.  There are a lot of good reasons to ensure that your organization has flawless execution, that it is positioned for the recovery and plans for future economic bumps as well as the owner’s eventual exit.  But perhaps the most critical reason to ensure our companies’ success is so that we can support organizations that teach our kids core values and try to keep them healthy and strong.  And, of course, do all this while still maintaining enough of a work/life balance to be present and engaged in our own children’s lives.  It’s a tall order, but at the end of the day, what else matters more?

Here’s the good economic news, as reported by Alan Beaulieu from the Institute for Trend Research.  (Part 1 of his presentation was posted yesterday.)

• The U.S. has a resilient economy – we are not nearly as bad off as Europe nor Japan.  The dollar will be fine.
• Due to our birth rate (2.1) and immigration, our economic base will continue to grow.  Don’t be afraid of immigration – there’s a long line of foreign professionals and workers waiting to immigrate.  If we had let in 1.1 million of them, and required them to buy a home that was in foreclosure a couple of years ago, our entire economic meltdown may have been avoided.
• Relatedly (and this doesn’t actually fit under “good news”), countries with negative birth rates will be in worse shape than we are (China, Europe, Japan, Russia).  Russia’s birth rate is only 0.9 – no country has ever survived when it dropped below 1.3.  With Russia’s rich natural resources, they are a prime takeover target.  Expect China or Turkey (whose regional power is growing) to make a move in the next five years.
• Contrary to popular belief, manufacturing in the U.S. is alive and well, beating China by a 2:1 margin.
• Consumers are saving money, which is good.  Consumers are also spending money, which is good.  The reason they’re spending is NOT because consumer confidence has increased; they’re spending because they’re tired of depriving themselves, and materialism is a habit in our culture.
• Unemployment will remain high for two years (bad news), which means, for employers, there will be a great labor pool available that long (good news).
• The United States is the most competitive country in the world (other than Switzerland), we are among those with the most output per person, and we work less than many other countries.  “We’re good!” as Alan says.
• A sustainable recovery is in place.
• With the economy in recovery, it’s a great time to buy an “Eeyore” company.  You will need cash and courage to take advantage of this opportunity.  You’ll need to be first in line to take the plunge – if you wait for the herd, you’ll miss it.
• Good industries to invest in include medical, anything having to do with aging, alternative energy, food (all aspects of manufacturing, distribution, etc.), water, and security/defense on all levels.  Alan gave the example of traveling internationally in the future – we will all probably make our security arrangements as we make our flight arrangements to ensure that our personal security team meets us at the airport and doesn’t leave our side.

A sidenote – while I took plenty of notes during Alan’s talk and have tried to report accurately, there may be a mistake or misinterpretation here or there.  The information was flying fast and furiously!  And please forgive any political or “non-P.C.” references – I’m just reporting on what I heard.

I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to an economist speak for 90 minutes, but I did at the 2010 CEO Strategy Summit recently, and I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.  As movie reviewers often say, “I laughed…I cried…”  Okay, I didn’t cry, although some of the news was definitely worth shedding tears over.

Alan Beaulieu from the Institute for Trend Research was our speaker.  I had heard great things about Alan from my Vistage colleagues – apparently he and his brother Brian have a 96% accuracy rate in predicting what’s going to happen with the economy.  (Yes, they predicted the current recession.)  First, here’s a recap of what Alan said that brought the whole audience down:

• The recovery will look like a broad “U” (as opposed to a V or W shape).
• Alan predicted “You won’t be as busy as you were in 2007.”
• Inflation is coming toward the end of 2010 and will really hit in 2011 and 2012.  So:
  • Prepare for employees to cost more – they’ll expect raises.
  • Your purchasing power will be diminished, so lock in any long term leases, loans or prices that you can now.
  • You’re going to have to raise prices and find a way to offer more value to do so.
  • It’s a great time to buy commercial or residential property.
• Oil prices will increase.
• Taxes will keep going up, so consult with your tax advisor.
• Stock price bubbles never last more than 5 years.  Things revert back to the mean.  The two huge stock price increases over the last decade were an anomaly – don’t expect to see that again in your lifetime if you’re over 55.
• The economy was recovering before the stimulus package was passed.  Alan says that for every dollar that wealthy people spend, there’s a 9x multiplier, and that for every dollar that the government spends, there’s only a 1x multiplier.  He says businesses bring economies back from the brink of the abyss, not governments.
• “The fiscal strain that lies ahead will be tremendous.”  Alan says the figures President Obama quoted in his State of the Union Address (growth rates, etc.) were off, and that 34% of the federal budget will go toward debt by 2015.
• A global, decade-long depression will hit in 2030.  Alan believes in this so strongly that he is currently building a larger house so that, if necessary, his kids and grandkids will be able to move home again when the depression hits.

At this point, the audience was in a definite slump, so Alan deftly moved to the good news (fortunately, there was plenty of it).  Part 2 of this series will bring a smile to your face…tomorrow.

A sidenote – while I took plenty of notes during Alan’s talk and have tried to report accurately, there may be a mistake or misinterpretation here or there.  The information was flying fast and furiously!  And please forgive any political or “non-P.C.” references – I’m just reporting on what I heard.