Break All The Rules (and Still Be Successful)
Feb 15, 2008 by Patrick Winfield | Design, Social Networks
With great design and implementation you can break all the rules and still be successful. This, by any other means, shouldn’t have worked. It shouldn’t have reached the ridiculous number of 3,338 diggs after being posted just 4 days ago. It was Flash animation. It was an advertisement for a product. It was selling you something. But as the submitter ‘ad-hater’ #1 stated :
If all advertisements were done like this, I might actually start reading them.
What happened? It was a healthy combination of good design and smart implementation of a beautifully created product that spawned a much deserved buzz. Pink Floyd was selling their limited edition 40th anniversary 14 album box set called ‘Oh, By The Way’. The Flash animation was designed by a London digital creative agency called Bloc.
If we look at the presentation and design of the interface that the user controls to view the various albums in the set we see that it is very minimal.
The names of all the 14 albums are on the bottom along with an option to purchase the set. The content area is predominantly black, allowing the eye to move directly to the album cover which is centered in the screen.
Behind the album, and in between each transition, is a beautiful rainbow type color spectrum that is from the ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ album cover, created by graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, possibly the most iconic Pink Floyd cover of all time. The color spectrum also moves in sync with the music that is being played by each album selection and shifts each time another is selected, creating a beautiful and subtle distraction to the transitional emptiness.
To navigate through to the next album, with out clicking on the name on the bottom navigation, you can choose to click on the right or left side of the screen. As you hover over either side a large white arrow appears. This is an extra element of navigation possibly for the more advanced user but becoming more common.
You can also flip the cover to view the track list of each song and launch the music player to shuffle through some of the tracks.
With so much information packed into this presentation…I mean promotional advertisement, you feel more informed or educated about the band and the music than you feel you are being sold to. With clean, sharp design and spot on implementation you can easily soar to over 3,000 diggs in little under 4 days while doing all the things that usually will render your content buried in under 3 hours.
Looking at some of the comments, over 400, and you will get an idea as to how people reacted to this wave.
Did you see it? What did you like, if anything, about the ad?
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I’ll admit it, I am a search addict. I search all day long morning, noon and night; on the move on my mobile, at home and at work.
Each day, 7 days a week, I spend no less than 4 hours conducting well over 150 queries, searching and scanning search engine result pages 2, 3, 4 even 10 pages deep. Organic results, I can’t get enough of them. Descriptions, domains, URLs, Titles; I’m sick and obsessed with them. I search at least 4 different search engines , 6 social media and bookmarking sites, 3 social news sites, 2 blog search engines and 3 comparison shopping sites every day. Web, images, video, books, you name it, I search it.
I search until my eyes hurt and are bloodshot, ’til I have a headache, my fingers hurt, my arms tingle with pins and needles, my elbows are sore and my legs feel numb. Then I search more, almost until I forget to go to the bathroom.
I search until my laptop crashes. I pull up my other computer and search until I’m hungry, skip eating until I can stand it no longer and then search with food falling out of my mouth. I wake up in the middle of the night, out of nowhere in cold sweats with great vim and vigor, to search something never searched before, and I squint in the dark quiet of the night at search results until my body shuts me down again. I go late to personal events so that I can search more. I miss important events, family milestone events, to search more.
I simply cannot get off this search thing. Why? Because it’s everywhere and I’m an addict.
I don’t want to give it up. I can’t give it up; I LOVE it. Why? Because it helps me live and keeps me vital. What does the addiction help me with and why is it so powerful?
- I conduct research on almost any subject and learn more to become well-informed.
- I discover products and services.
- I uncover good deals and better prices.
- I connect with new businesses and business solutions.
- I generate new business.
- I meet new people.
- I identify personal entertainment solutions.
- I decide which tools are most refined and best to feed my addiction.
- I learn more about my client needs.
- I understand more about competitive search niches.
- I become a better search marketer.
- I feed my need for search and get my fix.
I will never give up this wonderful addiction. Sometimes it’s painful and causes hurt and affliction, but it’s too good and too powerful and keeps me too happy to let it go. I will never give it up. I am search addict.
I wonder who else is an addict? And, how do you satisfy your addiction to search?
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Multi-National Search Marketing: Effective Strategies for Global Marketers
Feb 13, 2008 by Shannon Bowden | Coverage, Pay Per Click, SEO
Yesterday, Chris Sherman from Search Marketing Now presented another webinar jammed packed with useful information. This session entitled ‘Multi-National Search Marketing: Effective Strategies for Global Marketers‘ was sponsored by iProspect and moderated by Claire Schoen.
Chris was a perfect speaker due to his experience covering search and search engines since 1994. He is the author of several books, including ‘Google Power’.
Chris started out the presentation by outlining that he’ll cover why we might want to go global, what types of campaigns work best and how to do it.
The first slide discussed the fact that a lot of people perceive that Google has taken over the earth. Yes, Google is dominant and if you are running a search marketing campaign, you understand that Google’s reach can give you that global coverage. Chris said we may ask ourselves why should we should bother going multinational since Google has a global reach. But, Chris believes there are other opportunities out there.
comScore does a monthly report on worldwide search share. Google does have the dominant share – about 63% – that’s just under 2/3 of all the market share worldwide. Despite the all the media about the Yahoo/Microsoft merge, the reality is that Yahoo worldwide, they are number one in terms of the number of people who visit them. In terms of search – they are number 2. If you aren’t using Yahoo, you could be missing out on certain benefits – particularly worldwide.
The number 3 player is Baidu.com – they are the dominant player in China. Over time as the Internet expands in China, Chris believes those numbers for Baidu will go in the double digits very quickly.
There is a tie for number 4 – Microsoft sites and NHN Corp. Finally, the other 90+ search engines have a 13% market share. If you actually start drilling down you’ll find some of these players are dominant in certain regions.
- Google totally dominates North America and most of Europe.
- Yahoo is dominant in Asia, except for:
- China (Baidu 61%, Google 20%)
- South Korea (Naver 74%, Google 4%)
- Russia (RIndex 57%, Google 23%)
Almost 1/6 of the population is out there searching and doing about 61 billion searches per month. If you drill down, 75% of all searches are outside North America. To Chris, that is the most compelling reason you want to consider doing a multinational search marketing campaign.
Chris posed the big question…‘do we have to go through the details of translating?’
- Depends on your goals. You can have a strictly English campaign and it will work best for global brands and products with the same name in all cultures.
- An alternative is to mix campaigns that mix and match English and target market language (keywords, ads, creative landing pages, etc). Takes a bit of experimenting to discover what works best with this mixed approach.
- Varies from country to country.
- Chris discussed how people use different search terms, have different eye tracking, and result scanning patterns, different click through styles. Studies have proven the differences between North American searchers and others – like those from China.
- This means you will likely need to do translation, search optimization and cultural optimization. You need to make your content appealing to the search engines and the searchers through their various needs that they are expressing through their search behaviour.
- Chris counseled us that if we are going multinational, we will have to commit a reasonable amount of resources to ensure the campaign is successful. Even before we being, we should consider whether a paid search or natural search campaign is more likely to be effective in a given market.
- Sherman feels that in larger markets – you are probably o.k. to do either – or both if you have the resources.
- However, for smaller markets, you should consider each individually. (In smaller countries where you could be targeting the millions or hundreds of thousand of people – you need to carefully consider who is the market leader in those countries).
- Use your marketing department to carefully weigh the probability of ranking with both country size and internet reach. Remember that Internet reach varies greatly (example, China is under 20% while other countries have much greater Internet reach – but with a smaller population).
- Do you have sales and logistics resources in a market? May not need them and may be able to successfully do it all online, but if you can’t you need to have the resources in place.
- Are we able to handle shipping, different currencies, duties and taxes?
- What about support? Do our support people speak the language? People may want to call or send an email. Do we have the people in place to handle this?
All of these things will impact whether the search marketing campaign can be successful.
- First thing is to find good translators
- Must know local idioms (need to understand the local dialect, terms etc).
- Must be able to translate unique or technical terms for your product, service or brand
- Translate text, images and navigation. A lot of people overlook translating images and navigation – you need to make the user experience rock solid.
- Crucial – Make sure SEO is involved from the beginning. Don’t want to do SEO as an afterthought – get them involved right from beginning so that you’ll end up with a more effective website and the SEO specialists can help you avoid potentially costly mistakes.
- Chris warned us that English content that’s optimized does not automatically become search friendly when translated. Translation is an art and may alter the content in such as way that it doesn’t rank well at all in your target market.
- Similarly, you can’t simply translate English PPC ads and landing pages.
- Tip: Translate your keyword list first, before any other content. Get a good sense of those critical keywords that you are hoping to capture with the searchers.
- The long tail means targeting less common keywords or phrases – that long tail exists in all other languages but it is not the same in all other languages.
- Romance language searches tend to use fewer, more common words.
- English & Dutch/German searchers tend to use more terms and less common terms. Right now, long tail will probably be more effective in those languages.
- Paradox? In the UK – nine keywords account for 5% of all searches.
- Chris said he is often questioned about duplicate content in multinational campaigns. If you have the same language content on multiple servers in different countries, you may be subject to duplicate content penalties. Be aware, but don’t necessarily be alarmed. They may only be trying to find the main source of your content, regardless of where you are located in the world. However, if you are finding that search engines are getting confused, you may need to do some work changing content, or putting it into other formats etc. Really boils down to your individual situation.
- Content translated into different languages and hosted in different countries is not duplicate content to search engines (at least today…) May change but today isn’t a concern.
What should the right domain be – a dot.com or a country specific domain?
- Boils down to your intent. If possible, go for both – especially for companies trying to target regions with regional pride, you will want to go for country specific domain.
- For example, IBM has one global website, with subdomains for individual countries.
- Sony, by contrast has local domains in all countries.
- Be careful of those ‘choose your country’ top level pages! If you have a dot.com and are going to redirect to another country – don’t make those pages search engine hostile! You want the search engine to be able to find the country specific domains. Make sure navigation on homepage – no matter what you do with it -better not block the crawlers from finding the content on all the different websites you create.
IP Address gives the physical location of where the server is based.
- Chris said he has found that when search engines are ranking content, they will look at the IP address to decide whether it should give more weight in country specific results to sites with local IP addresses.
- Challenge: legal or residency requirements in some countries. In some cases, you may need to prove you have some legal presence in that country before you can get a local IP address.
- Google’s webmaster tools allow you to specify country, and Microsoft says this capability is coming.
- Localized links are crucial when you are going into a multinational campaign. It is not enough to translate and set up a site in a different country.
- As with any site, it needs links pointing to it to rank well in search engines.
- And most of these links need to come from local authority sites, not from the mother ship or out of country sites.
- Can be the most cost effective way to have multinational reach.
- Geotargeting can be very precise.
- Translate both ads and landing pages.
- Use PPC as a research tool to help identify most effective keywords in a specific language/country.
- For global brands in multiple countries, Chris suggested we trust the offline brand experts here.
- Some cultures like and accept global brands (ex. China) – others prefer homegrown, localized brands.
- Especially important – emphasizing brand attributes in a culturally appropriate way. You have to be sensitive to that and don’t neglect images!
- PDF report ‘Global Search Report 2007′ by einternet is available online and has a wealth of information.
- Ex. China is on track to become the number one in terms of searches on the Internet but they have a low penetration of the population. Conversely, Denmark has 70% penetration and there is another search engine beyond Google that is popular. Report is full of good information that can help companies choose smaller markets.
- Chris concluded by stating that multinational search marketing offers a very appealing way to reach more customers, but it is not for everybody.
- Success requires deep, localized knowledge of markets. If you don’t have that knowledge, you need to reach out to a partner that has that knowledge.
- Campaigns must be optimized and tailored for both language and culture. Not enough just to take optimized content, translate, and expect it to work in another country. Have to tailor that information for the language and culture you are trying to target.
After this very informative presentation, there were a few minutes for questions.
How would we find out about legal residency requirements? – If you are trying to establish a site in a specific country, the hosts in that country will spell out what is require. For example, in Australia you need an Australia Business Number. Go directly to a particular host based in a country and find out the requirements that are necessary to actually register a site there.
How do you find translating services in a specific country? You can go on the web and find translation services, the key there is to get a translation service that can also work with an optimizer. The best thing to do is seek out a local SEM firm or a global SEM firm and see what they can do because they are probably going to have the contacts to do this type of work. Do not rely on automated translation systems – these are rough only and will backfire in an overall search marketing campaign.
Directories? They are emerging as a good resource and they are gradually becoming better at accommodating advertising needs. Directories are very good if you have the time and resources to find the good ones. They can give you very good reach for not a lot of cost/effort.
Thanks to Chris Sherman and iProspect for a very informative and worthwhile session. I learned a lot about going multinational and I’m sure everyone else who attended appreciated the wealth of information! You can listen to entire recorded version by clicking here.
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Chris Winfield in Newsday: ‘Yahoo-Microsoft merger could benefit Web users’
Feb 12, 2008 by Chris Winfield | Microsoft, Press, Yahoo!
Last week I spoke to Richard Dalton from Newsday and gave him my thoughts on Microsoft and Yahoo coming together for a story he was doing. The article ran in today’s paper and can be seen here. Here are my thoughts from the piece:
Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, an Internet marketing company based in Fleetwood, agreed that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo can effectively compete individually against Google.
Microsoft’s search capability is a few year’s behind Google’s, while Yahoo’s search engine is good but lags Google’s as well, he said.
“Personally, I would much rather have two really strong options than just one really good option and then two OK ones.”
Rich ends the article with the most recent news about Yahoo! turning Microsoft down (for now): Even though Yahoo’s board has rejected Microsoft’s initial offer, some experts believe Microsoft will inevitably work out a deal to obtain the company – and then deal with an issue the software giant is familiar with – antitrust.
This will definitely be an interesting story to watch as I believe it is far from over….
Check out the full article here @ Yahoo-Microsoft merger could benefit Web users.
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6 Successful Elements For Social Media Success
Feb 11, 2008 by Patrick Winfield | Design, Social Media Marketing
The web is competitive. You need an edge. Social media marketing is becoming an essential tool to optimizing an online presence and creating strong connections with your audience. It is undeniable.
With billions being spent online each year, social media is gaining in popularity as a valuable resource. 4 out of 5 Americans read blogs and 57% of adults online watch or download videos. The stats keep going on.
Marketers are utilizing these tools to the best of their abilities and attracting more consumers than ever before. OK, sure- you need to have good content based around your idea, product or service. But some elements, when put in place, can add tons to that content. What are some of the elements that make a social media piece a success?
The first thing would be to know your audience and understand their specific online habits and interests as well as things like lifestyle, age, geography and profession. Discover how your audience communicates best and start a conversation. Maybe you are reaching out to the busy commuters that like to absorb information while in between the office and home. A podcast may be the easiest way to deliver your content or a blog.
Creating video is a perfect way to reach a wide audience and get people talking about your product. Does your product have a great visual appeal? Would it benefit for a video demonstration such as ‘how to use it’ or new and ‘improved features’, tutorials are a great way to build trust and relationships with an audience. If your content is created with your audience in mind then more than likely they will blog about it, discuss it and link back.
A blog created for an individual, company or product can create interest especially if it is rich with content. Video, images/photography and links to events all make the experience enjoyable and keep consumers or audiences coming back and ’sharing’ with friends. Social media should be about creating a sense of community and involvement.
RSS feeds are an important way to keep people informed and updated automatically with the latest products or services offered. Displaying a graphic on all social media pieces is critical to giving the viewer a chance to utilize this way to keep in touch. When your content is missing this element, it just might be loosing another consumer.
Less page views is an important thing to consider when creating a piece with lots of images. When companies break out an article into 25 different “slidesâ€, for example Entertainment Weekly is famous for this, they make things into a slide show to increase page & ad views. So that people have to click through 17 times on that example above. This is frowned down on by social network users.
A clean design is also very effective. Imagine opening a drawer that has all your silverwar emixed up and a drawer where everything is in its right place. Yeah, big difference. A clean design can facilitate the viewer’s eye to flow around the content in a specific way and make the experience pleasant and controlled.
The ability for the viewer to enlarge an image or photograph is great if the content is geared around images. A simple option to click on an image or an icon such as a magnifying glass can keep the original content size down but still offer a more in depth look to specific things. Thumbnails are a great utilization of this, especially when they are able to be clicked and the full image is shown.
When your content is focused and to the point you aren’t wasting space or the audience’s time that it takes to view or read. Leave all the mumbo-jumbo sales and marketing speak out. Speak in a language your desired audience knows and they will respect you for it.
As you can see there are many ways to make your social media piece gain momentum and build on relationships with your audience. Some of these elements are obvious and simple to include while others take more creative thought and energy.
What do you think is the number one element for success in social media? How do you make that element work for you?
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On Tuesday, I did my friend Shoemoney’s show on WebmasterRadio. We talked about how to get started with public relations, how to create a “USP” and most importantly how to become a great resource for reporters.
Check out Jeremy’s post here or listen to the full podcast below. And be sure to tune in to Shoe’s show every Tuesday at 6pm EST on WebmasterRadio (it’s always entertaining and informative).
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When Neil H. Borden came up with the Marketing Mix and Professor E. Jerome McCarthy grouped the Mix into “the 4 Ps†they were probably not considering 21st century marketing and promotion channels on the Internet.
After all, this was in the middle of the 20th century and Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.com search engines and Internet Social Networks did not exist at that point. Still, this enduring and universal marketing concept applies to the web.
I’m always focused on how the 4 P’s of Marketing apply to Internet Marketing. So how do the 4 P’s apply to the Internet?
The first P in Marketing: Product
Product can be an actual product or service that you are delivering to you the market weather direct to consumer (B2C) or to businesses (B2B). On the web, it’s crucial to show your product on your website. If you are a retailer with an E-Commerce site, make sure you spend the money to show your products up close and in detail. Spend the money to get good photos of your products and make a great design on your site. It doesn’t need to be flashy (or Flash!), but make sure that a potential customer can come to your site and see the main products that you offer and see them in detail. Take the time, spend the money effort and resources to accurately describe your products and services.
If you are selling a service, this is something that a customer cannot touch or feel, so make sure you have some case studies on hand. Show your case studies, trials or demos on a website and please make sure you do all of the above in a search engine friendly manner. If you leave out the search engines in the equation, you losing a big opportunity on Placement and Promotion; P’s 3 and 4.
The second P in Marketing: Price
Don’t be afraid to show your prices online and in your Internet advertising. In most cases, displaying a price on an ad, whether a PPC, Contextual, Banner, or even in your organically listed search links in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you’ll get better click through rates and likely more inquiries and conversions if you come right out and display your pricing.
In high-end service businesses this can be a bit tricky, but even there, to grab a potential customer’s attention, it can be valuable to display your price. Who cares if the competition sees your pricing. If you have a high quality product or service you can stand by…your going to win. Further, in a high end service business, by displaying your price, you can thwart contact from unwanted customers who don’t fit into your requisite budget ranges.
The third P in Marketing: Place and Placement
Placement on Major Search engines – Google, Yahoo, Live etc…Placement from a discovery perspective is controlled on the web really through search. When someone uses the web, it’s critical to make sure you show up in search for relevant terms. If you are not on the major search engines for terms related to your business, you are not taking care of placement and you’re likely to not be found or discovered in this important pull-marketing channel.
Placement on vertical search engines / guides and Local Search – finding the right vertical search engines like a business.com can make or break your placement. Trade and business directories and vertical search is one of the most important channels. Don’t miss this. Localized search submissions to places like www.local.google.com can make all the difference in being found and being successful as well.
Placement through affiliates - working with affiliates and developing a large and profitable network can be tremendously productive for many businesses.
Promotion through Display Advertising – Media buying for display, banners on CPM or CPC basis and email drops can be tremendously effective if properly placed and designed with the user and target audience in mind. Create outstanding design, powerful and unique copy-writing and make sure you have effective landing pages (tested with a group) to handle your display or “push” types of Internet advertising.
The fourth P in Marketing: Promotion
I don’t care if your business is retail B2C or B2B, you need to leverage nearly every promotion channel and strategy online.
Promotion on topical, industry and trade sites – seeking out the right industry sites is ever more important as the web user becomes more and more specific with their bookmarks and areas of the Internet that want to visit over and over. Get in front of the target audience in an effective way.
Promotion through Search Marketing - Put a big focus on search weather SEO, or SEM / PPC, it’s crucial to have strong search engine promotion and placement (full disclosure – we do SEO). On the organic side, Strategic Link building and high quality directory and article submissions can go a long way.
Promotion through Social Media – levering groups on the major social sites, promoting viral content and developing and strong following in social media is critical to long term success and properly placing your product or service in front of the right people.
Promotion through Public Relations – PR and reputation management is important. Don’t be shy to get out in the media and blogs and be mentioned for what you do and the quality of your products. Leverage the newest and best available channels. Make sure you are paying attention to the most influential corners of the Internet. As a side note, Steve Rubel did a fun post about the 4 P’s of Blogging which is worth a read.
Nowadays marketers are considering 7 P’s, but I figure if you tend to the “original” 4 P’s, it’s a good start.
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