At 10e20, we like to keep on top of things happening in the Internet world and we’ve been keenly watching Tipd.com since its beta launch a few weeks ago.  Today, they officially launch Tip’d 1.0.  Tip’d is a hot new social media site for financing, investing and business topics.  Given the current financial state of the world, we think that Tip’d will quickly become your number one choice for learning about all things financial.

To help ensure that Tip’d always features the latest and the best financial news and content, they’ve been building relationships with publishers in the niche.  These connections have help them get engaging, interesting and factual content.

Based on feedback from their beta launch from community members, they’ve been working feverishly to make changes and improvements.  Here are just a few of the major ones:

• They’ve added two new categories that were in high demand: business and entrepreneurship.
• The ‘topple’ functionality has been overhauled and is more robust.
• Stories now show time made popular along with the time submitted.
• You can subscribe to published stories via email in addition to RSS.
• They’ve made site navigation simpler and breadcrumbs are implemented site wide.
• Upcoming stories can be sorted in chronological order as well as by popularity.
• Duplicated story handling changed.  Users are redirected to the existing submission (the original to their duplicate).
• Overall, there are many general usability and functionality fixes as well as improved spam handling.

Those working hard at Tipd.com say they aren’t stopping there.  They are currently working on creating a private messaging system as well as a Facebook application.  And, they are working on more tools for power users and publishers.

Tip’d looks like a pretty active site and if you are interested in financial topics, you’ll find some great info.  It’s somewhat similar to Digg, so if you use Digg at all, you won’t have any trouble navigating around Tip’d.  Check it out!

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This is a look at Vanessa Fox’s informative webcast called Search Marketing 101 – Does My CEO Really Need A Facebook Profile hosted by Search Marketing Now.

When people think of social networking, Vanessa feels they tend to think of the high profile stuff like MySpace and Facebook and these are great examples, but she stressed that there are all kinds of social networking. Social Networking is anywhere people are talking online. From a corporate perspective, what you are interested in – is where people are talking about you and are talking about the topics you care about (competitor brands, issues that involve your brand).

Examples:

• Digg
• Faves.com
• Amazon (is social networking because of customer ratings and reviews)
• Blogs (big place where people talk about things – voicing opinions, posting comments)

Social networking is an evolution about what has been around – people have always talked about these kinds of things offline, it has just been moving online – the web is an extension of that. It’s just now easier for people to eavesdrop about what others are thinking and marketers can listen in and hear what they are saying.

There are several compelling reasons for getting into social networking…

• Deeper engagement with customers. (An easier way than other methods like comment cards, focus groups). With the new online way, you have an opportunity to be responsive.
• Build brand awareness – help improve how people view your brand.
• Get insights not available any other way.
• Can provide more scalable ways of supporting your customers.
• Your customers are online already.

• When you pay attention to what people are saying online, you can make product improvements.

Example – Dell has a site called Ideastorm where people send their ideas and people vote on them. It is a useful way for Dell to find out what their customers like – and they get market research for free and from their customers!

Example – Vocalpoint is a Proctor and Gamble site for moms gives them a chance to see what their target market is interested in, learn more about them, and provide information to their audience that will help their customers evangelize for them.

People are always asking Vanessa if they should get involved with Facebook. It is really big right now so you don’t want to ignore it. One thing Vanessa pointed out is that she doesn’t see many discussions happening on Facebook right now. You can go on there and do a search and see if people are talking about you – but don’t be discouraged if people aren’t talking about your company or brand. What she’s noticed is that if a company has a page, people can subscribe to that page as a fan because it shows on their profile page all the groups they are subscribed to because they think it helps their profile give a more complete picture of them.

So, from a marketing perspective – this is great for brand awareness because it is basically free advertising. You have a page, people say I’m a fan of you and then on every profile page of those who are a fan, it is a free ad right there. Since it isn’t done from an advertising perspective, it is more of a compelling ad for people when they see it. ‘If this person likes that – maybe I should go take a look at it too’.

There are discussions happening on all topics. 75% of Americans go online, 88% of Americans 29 and under go online, so everyone is out there. One thing Vanessa said she has learned is that as broadband is available it causes people to go online. Broadband spurs adoption of new behaviors online. When the Internet is slow – people don’t do much on it, but when access is speedier, they are willing to try more things. The U .S. has had double the growth of broadband this year over last year. 88% of Americans use the Internet to pursue hobbies (example knitting blog). The Internet now spans just about anything you can think of.

Types of Sites

Remember, not all types of sites are right for all brands. Vanessa stressed that you really need to take a look at the sites and determine ‘where is my audience’. Here are the main types of sites out there…

• Broad Based Discussion Sites – Many have been around for a long time. Ex. discussion forums. Do a Google Search and see if you can find forums on your topic or go to Yahoo Groups and Google groups to see who is discussing you.

• Niche Forums – Pretty much any kind of company that you are involved with or any topic you care about, it is highly likely that there is a discussion site out there. These are great sites because these people are passionate about your topic. They specifically go and sign up and really want to talk about whatever topic. However, it is important to know that they will likely be very vocal about negative feedback. But, negative feedback can be helpful because it helps you address any issues that need dealing with.

• Verticals – If you sell a consumer product Vanessa suggests checking out the consumer shopping sites that are out there to see what people are saying.

• Community Answer Sites – Yahoo is most well known.

• Traditional Social Networking – My Space, Facebook – Good for traditional marketing. You can engage to a degree, but these types of sites really depend on particular topics that do well with engagement. Ex. bands do really well with sites on MySpace.

• Social Media Submission – Digg is most popular, but there are social media sites for almost anything out there. At the very least, listen to what people are saying, you can start replying and try to become a valuable resource on a topic.

• Social Bookmarking – Delicious, Stumbleupon – it is a lot about the discussion. Don’t want to create a profile on these sites and start submitting your own stuff. Don’t just bookmark all your own pages, it looks spammy and it isn’t going to cause people to be interested in you. With social bookmarking sites, 28% of all Americans have used them to create a tag or bookmark.

• Micro Blogging – Email has become really noisy. Younger people think email is for old people and what they use instead are things like micro blogging. If you do email marketing, think about what parts of my email campaign can I use for micro blogging. Examples of organizations using micro blogging…
  • Technorati – find out when their power was out and why
  • New York Times – find out when new stories are out
  • Dell Outlet.com – for sales info and exclusive sales that is available only to those subscribing to the RSS feed
  • Southwest Airlines – using it to let customers know they are changing gates.
  • Need to subscribe to the feeds and it is a way to engage in a dialogue with your customers.

• Photo & Video Sharing – Becoming very popular ex. Over 2 billion pictures on Flickr. Everything has comments – you can get a ripple effect.

• Reviews and Ratings – Been around for a while, TripAdvisor, Epinions, Amazon – all give opportunities for people to review things. These are examples of places where people are talking about you.

• Blogs – Almost ½ of Americans read blogs. One thing that is interesting in blogs is that it is creating a new behaviour in people that they never did before. Examples of types of blogs.
  • Blogs that are written about general topics – ex. boing boing.
  • Have your fan / hobbyist sites – MustangBlog.com
  • Then you have corporate blogs – CEO of Sun
  • All of these are ways about learning about your customer, providing information to your customer and then letting them have conversations about you.

Important Tips

• You don’t want to go out and start spamming. What you instead want to do is put yourself out there as a valuable resource / show that you are an expert in the area and that you want to add value and that you care about your customers. Then, you can go in and talk about your brand.

Getting Started

• Evolve What you Do Already
  • Assess your customer
  • Who are they?
  • What do you want to know?

Have a Plan

• What are your goals? – Define this at the beginning… What will you do if you don’t reach your objectives? Set up milestones that say ‘o.k. I’m hoping to get here at this point – if you aren’t there then make adjustments. Need to continually measure to see if you are meeting your goals.

• What are the guidelines? – Help by setting up some real clear guidelines. Can anyone post or are there certain people who can post? Is there an approval process – i.e. Do things need to be approved before they get posted? Take a hard look at what you are comfortable with. Set up guidelines as to how you will respond to negative feedback. Don’t get defensive – if you come across this way, that’s bad for the customer and for anyone else who is reading it. Remember you are talking to everyone, not just a particular customer.

• What will you measure? – Based on your goals, you should be able to come up with a set of measurements. Keep in mind with social media that it is difficult to come up with a specific ROI. There are hard metrics you can put in place, but keep in mind the softer measures that are just as important. I.e. What value are you adding by simply being involved?

Where Are Your Customers

• You can do searches or look at third party recommendations.
• Look at Google Groups
• You can subscribe to RSS Feeds.
• Can hire a firm to research and tell you.

Being Effective

• Be authentic and add value – be a part of the community and not there for the advertisement
• Join the conversation and add value (start as a lurker first, watching and learning what goes on).
• Be responsive
• Know you can’t control the community
• Watch for pitfalls.
• If you get involved, recognize that this is a commitment. If you get involved – stay involved.

Examples

• Wal-Mart fake blog is an example of how a good idea can go bad. Jim and Laura went across the country in their RV blogging about their trip and it was then the public discovered that they were being paid by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart ended up having a lot of bad publicity from an unauthentic social media idea.
• Another example of an idea gone badly was when Target paid college students to spam Facebook with notes about how cool Target is.
• Dell Hell is an example of how one company turned it around by their response to people voicing their opinions about problems associated with Dell. Dell openly stated, “Our goal is to join the conversation and speak directly and candidly with our customers. The more we engaged, the more we learn and the better we can do for our customers.”

Conclusions

• Your customers are out there talking about you. Understand who and where they are.
• Create a plan with goals, guidelines and metrics.
• Listen and be responsive.

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This is a recap of a teleseminar I attended which was given by Steve Harrison. It was “Seven Things You Absolutely Must Know to Get Publicity in Major Magazines and Newspapers.” The intent of this call was to give information on how to get publicity and to impart this information; he provided mini interviews with various people involved in PR. Based on the information the speakers provided – there were actually more than seven things to know – there were 14!!

Silent Endorsement

He stressed that just one feature article about you in a major publication can bring you a flood of orders – overnight. When you get publicity, you get something that no other kind of marketing can give you – a ‘silent endorsement’. People assume that if you are the one who has been written up in something like USA Today, they figure you must be the best at what you do. It is a silent endorsement.

Publicity is free exposure without having to spend thousands of dollars on advertising. Publicity has great staying power. When you are written up in a publication, the people who read that eventually pass that on to other people by giving either the article or the entire magazine.

You can easily add reprints and copies of the media to your marketing material so that people can see the story and be impressed. Major TV Shows like Oprah on down have producers that are constantly reading newspapers and magazine to discover people. If you are quoted in one place, people are comfortable quoting you in other places.

People who book speakers for meetings and conferences, will often book people that they have read about. It creates an instant celebrity credibility.

The interviews started off with Anne Frith – Fashion and Beauty Editor at Women’s Day – Her magazine is looking for new products, experts and trends. She provided the first ways to get publicity in major magazines:

1. Target your pitch. Know the magazine; refer to a recent feature or column. Keep it focused to get the Editor’s attention. Read the publication and be familiar with the entire magazine to give an on target pitch.

2. Work with the Editor in the way that he/she likes to be worked with. Build a relationship with the Editor. They should understand a column that you do; they should ask you about follow up, meeting face to face is always helpful. If she’s met them face to face, there is more a chance for her to take their call.

3. Have a good name for yourself. Names that are memorable are more likely to get her attention. She gave an example of someone she met at the Publicity Summit – “The Clothing Doctor” and he ended up being a great fit for Women’s Day.

Features Editor Jamie Kissell (Women’s World) was the next one to speak. She is responsible for the sidebars of the feature articles that are located in the magazine. She has to find experts, and what she needs depends on the article that is featured that week. She also added to the list:

4. Know the magazine as well as possible. She said that she knows if someone hasn’t ever read the magazine. She doesn’t want to feel like the person is in it for himself or herself. It should feel like a two way street. They need to understand where in the magazine there might be a fit. You are judged by that first pitch – you need to go about it the right way.

5. Become friends with Editors. The experts she uses over and over are the ones that become friends. Be friendly – send an email every once and a while and just be friendly. Not everything has to be intrusive and you don’t always have to sell yourself. She gave an example of Eileen Silva, is a Naturopathic Doctor that she met, who is friendly and easily accessible. Jamie continually goes back to her and she gives her perfect bite sized information that she can use.

Jennifer Kushell was next and she spent the last 12 years working with young people to help them get the tools they need to be successful. The book they created ‘Secrets of the Young and Successful – How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime’ has had phenomenal publicity success.

6. Need to think about the marketability of your book. Have to think about what will make a mass market book. Her book has the distinction of hitting the NY Times Bestseller’s List before the publication date.

7. Help the editor or writer out as much as you can. She wound up being in Cosmopolitan and ended up getting a 4 page article out of something that was only supposed to be one or two pages. By helping the editor out by providing experts, interesting facts, interview etc. you can really extend the amount of publicity you get.

8. Think very carefully as to who is the reader. What’s the broad range of issues they will be dealing with. Think about it beforehand and before approaching a magazine/newspaper etc.

9. Remember that editors are busy. Jennifer prefers to contact media by using email because emails get more of a response than phone messages. Editors are busy, so she will follow up. Be persistent but respectful. She’s now at a point where media will contact her when they are writing a story. You need to build a relationship with the media, because they will call you again. She will always go the extra mile to give a journalist what they needs – because they will come back to her. She has to make sure that what she is talking about is relevant to them. Need to focus on what they need for that story and how to make it great.

10. PR is more than just press releases. When most people think about publicity – they think about a press release. The problem is that everyone is doing that. The strategy just puts you in the pack with everyone else. It’s tough to expect you’ll get much out of it. Steve also stressed that you don’t have to wait until your book is finished to attend.

11. Pitch to freelance writers. Another idea is to pitch to freelance writers that write for a bunch of different magazines. Then Steve presented freelance writers who also gave some interesting ideas on how to get publicity in print publications. Sheri Simco was first and she has written 21 books for major publishing houses and loves writing magazines.

12. Tie in with a major news angle. If you have a great selling idea and want to write articles – it is important to tie in with a major news angle. When you are pitching an articles editor, get the name of the editor before sending info. If you are writing on something that is in the news, you’ll have a better chance of getting a response.

John Grossman was another freelance writer on the call. He has been freelancing for over 25 years and writes for any number of publications depending on what interests him.

13. Content is important. It is obvious; it is the basis of getting published. Magazines publish stories. It is important to ask ‘what is your story’. You have to be able to summarize and get a good grasp as to what exactly is your story. Come up with the headline, and follow the headline with a sub head- in the process that helps bring the idea into sharper focus. A great story makes your eyes get wide with wonder, it makes the rest of the world around you go quiet; it makes you want to know more.

14. Use Google Alerts. If you are an expert on something, get Google Alerts on that topic and when news arises – get in touch with media in that area immediately and tell them you are an expert in that area. They are looking for experts and if you come to them, you have an excellent opportunity of getting publicity.

Overall, it was interesting to hear from a variety of perspectives from Editors, and writers and to people who have used media publicity successfully. Each had an interesting viewpoint and provided to the overall list of ways to get publicity in major magazines and newspaper. Thanks to Steve Harrison for organizing the call!

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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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On Thursday, Christine Churchill, President of Key Relevance presented an informative webinar on How to Select a Paid Search Management Application.

This session presented by Search Marketing Now and sponsored by Marin Software was an excellent introduction in how to determine whether you need a third party search management application and if so, what considerations you need to make when selecting the application.

Ms. Churchill started by demonstrating that the projected growth of paid search is high. In fact, US paid search advertising revenues were $11.76 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $26.79 billion in 2011 (JPMorgan and Company reports “Nothing But Net”).

All indications point to paid search continuing to grow. New players are entering into the market and those involved are increasing their spend. Double digit growth is expected.

Yet – with all this growth, there are still many difficulties associated with managing PPC.

Difficulties Associated With Managing PPC

• Complexity of running paid campaigns has grown.
• Bid prices and ad positions are now longer transparent.
• Increased competition.
• Dynamic industry where change is the norm.

In the past few years, complexity has grown in PPC. The relationship between bid price and ad position has become less transparent. Now, the quality score affects the bid price and the position of the ad. Relevant ads are rewarded over less relevant ads.

The move away from transparency has made it more difficult for the PPC manager. More and more competitors are driving up the bid price, which created a tipping point where running PPC efficiently was very difficult and required a high level of proficiency.

Options for Managing PPC

Companies have many options as to how they manage their PPC campaigns.

• Train/hire in house staff
• Outsource management
• In house staff with outside consulting
• Above choices along with PPC management application.

Christine commented that as the complexity grew as noted above – companies realized that they needed trained personnel to manage the PPC. All of the above are options for your company; she says that each company needs to determine which one works best for their organization.

She then went through each of the potential options.

Train / Hire In House Staff

• Can be difficult/time consuming.
• MarketingSherpa survey (Sept. 07) found that filling in house SEM specialists was very challenging.
• Almost a third of respondents in the survey said it was very difficult to attract qualified employees.

• More difficult to fill SEM roles than filling other roles in marketing. Short supply of trained staff.
• Requires ongoing resources and commitment from company management.
• Most in house staff wear multiple hats and are pulled in many directions.
• SEM skill set portable and in demand – need incentives to keep good people.

Christine stated that if you want to make the in house staff option work for your organization – you need to support your staff in attending industry conferences and allowing them to read up on the area so that they stay current since the industry is constantly changing. The cultures of companies can make it difficult to keep good staff so management needs to be willing to provide ongoing support and resources to the internal search marketing area.

Outsource SEM

• The MarketingSherpa survey (Sept. 07) found that the number of companies getting outside help has increased in the past 12 months.
• More than half of the big paid search spenders use full service search agencies.

Churchill commented that outsourcing is a popular option for many companies. In paid search, more than ½ of the big spenders use full service search agencies. Many clients like one stop shopping and will hire for services in addition to paid search.

In House With Outside Consulting

• This is an excellent option because both sides can help each other. The inside staff can learn from the knowledge and expertise of the outside company and the outside company can have internal players to draw on for internal business information.
• The agency recommends high end tactics and strategy.

PPC Management Using Software

Churchill cautioned that 3^rd party software is not the total answer. While the tools are useful – they do have limitations such as:

• PPC management is more than just bid management.
• Some PPC management software is outdated:
  • Some engines incorporated dayparting and other features into their standard interface.
  • Bidding games don’t work anymore with the advent of quality score in the main engines.
  • One engine dominance – Google has nearly 70% of search volume.

However, there are some definite benefits to third party software:

• The software allows the marketer to be more effective.
• Saves time and simplifies management – lets you create ads, adjust bids, budgets and creatives across search engines.
• The 3^rd party tools have the capability to optimize for ROI or other metrics across campaigns and provide consistent reporting across ad networks.
• They provide better performance insight by providing a better understanding as to what is working across engines.
• Keep data private.

When To Consider PPC Management Software

Christine went through many scenarios where it would make sense to invest in PPC management software:

• If running an extremely large or complex campaign.
• If running campaigns across multiple engines.
• If media spend is in excess of $50k per month.
• If you want to optimize in bulk.
• If the manager is spending more time doing the math than being creative, planning, or doing other efforts to improve performance.
• Have well defined metrics and goals.

What To Ask When Selecting PPC Management Application

Breadth of Service

• Which engines does the application support?
• Does it scale to the size and volume of my business? Is there a limit on the number of ads, keywords or changes per day?
• Is the reporting sufficient? Can it email reports? Does it generate graphs and charts? Does it track different digital media types and conversions across different engines?

Churchill stressed that these questions are important. For example, if the software doesn’t support your most important engine, then it doesn’t make sense to investigate it further. As for reporting, different managers will want different reports – make sure the reporting will meet your needs.

Features

• Does it offer features not supplied in search engine interface (i.e. dayparting for engines that don’t offer it, monitoring competitors bids, performing global campaign changes).
• Is dynamic keyword insertion supported?
• Does the tool support how you measure conversions? Are these separate conversion tracking modules?
• Does the tool include keyword generation options?
• Does application offer click fraud monitoring?

Bidding Related

• Transparency – is it a black box or is there defined logic for the bid change?
• Does the tool learn over time and automatically adjust bids?
• How does the software handle low volume tail phrases or infrequent success metrics?
• How does it hand the Google minimum bid?

Ease of Use

• How difficult is the tool to learn to use? Is training available?
• Does it provide one centralized platform to manage the account?
• Does the application provide a dashboard for top level metric tracking?
• Does the application have mature help text and online documentation?
• How difficult is it to import or export data?Can the software adapt quickly and easily for seasonal campaigns.

Maturity/Flexibility

• How long has the tool been on the market?
• What are the demographic characteristics of targeted tool user?
• Does the application stay in sync with the search engines?
• How does it handle changes made by the search engines such as when they suddenly upgrade their systems with little warning?
• Is it an online or downloadable tool?

Christine suggests that mature software tends to be more stable and have more of the features that people really need. Ask the questions above to help you determine the maturity.


Pricing and Support

• Is there a free trial to test out the application?
• What are the terms of the contract?
• What is the pricing model?
• What level of technical support and customer service comes with the tool?
• Are there service level agreements regarding the performance and availability of the tool?
• What rollout support is included?

Other Factors

• How much testing time should be allotted after initial setup to confirm that setup is correct?
• Is it a management service or tool? (For a company wanting to do it themselves, the service may be overkill. Paying for a service you may not want is an unnecessary expense. For others, a full service experienced team to handle the account may be desirable.
• Confidentiality – is the data kept private?
• Does the tool act as handcuffs? Is it easy to leave application without hurting or rebuilding the campaigns?

After reviewing everything a company should consider when selecting a 3^rd party PPC management tool, Christine discussed whether PPC management software is a replacement for the human in the campaign.

Is PPC Management Software A Replacement For The Human In the Loop?

• Christine emphasized that absolutely NOT – the software is simply a way of reducing the drudgery of managing a large account – it is not a replacement for the human brain.
• It frees up the human to do more creative work such as:
  • Developing and testing new landing pages and ads
  • Strategizing and planning out new campaign ideas
  • Focusing on the big picture instead of the minutia

The tools are a great way of removing much of the tedium of managing a PPC campaign.

• Several options exist for managing a search marketing campaign (hiring, training, outsourcing, doing a hybrid solution, all of these options and combine with PPC software).
• PPC management is more than just bid management. Bid management is just one variable of successful search engine marketing – it involves bidding, using effective keywords, creating successful landing pages etc.
• PPC management software can be an effective way to optimize a large complex paid search campaign.
• PPC management applications can save time and free account managers from the drudgery associated with managing a large campaign. This allows managers to make better use of their time, increase creativity and make better decisions.

I found Christine Churchill’s presentation to be very informative and provided the audience with excellent information to have on hand when selecting a paid search management application. I would like to thank Christine Churchill from Key Relevance and moderator Claire Schoen for another excellent Search Marketing Now webcast!

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13907 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2008/01/21/how-to-select-a-paid-search-management-application/How+to+Select+a+Paid+Search+Management+Application2008-01-21+16%3A33%3A21Shannon+Bowden

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On Tuesday, Seth Godin, author of bestselling books and agent of change presented an informative session call 14 Trends No Marketer Should Ignore. This enthusiastic and informative presentation, sponsored by SEMpdx and Corvent provided a wealth of info on New Marketing.

According to the promos on this session, Seth was going to question if our marketing is out of sync. HE wants us to make the most out of today’s new marketing technologies – without making ‘meatball sundaes’!

I must admit the title of this session was intriguing (albeit a bit disgusting – a meatball sundae – YUCK!) and I was excited to find out what Seth had to say.

Seth started out by telling us that he has discovered that there is a disconnect between the people doing the work and the people writing the checks. The people doing the work recognized that it wasn’t working. They realized that the time was being wasted in meetings etc.

His book tries to combine the idea of the breathtaking opportunity when we deal with Internet marketing along with the sad side effect when people abuse the power of the Internet.

The Internet is everywhere – everywhere you go all people want to talk about is the Web and how it is impacting them. The web is an evolution – just like other evolutions like transportation, assembly line, mass marketing. He believes that right now we are in the middle of the next, possibly biggest industrial revolution. This represents a tremendous opportunity for people who understand it.

The Meatball Sundae. So, what about this term meatball sundae? He wanted to use a term that we can all use when someone suggests something you think is wrong – a meatball sundae – a meatball’s are delicious – the sundae is the fun stuff, the whip cream etc. Each one works great together – but doesn’t work so great when you mix it up.

If you are a mass marketer, you are used to making products that the mass wants to buy (Pop Tarts, Cap’n Crunch, Skippy). What made them successful is that they got good and selling stuff that people wanted no matter what type of industry. Being in the marketing, interrupting the market and selling average products for average people.

Now new marketing comes along and you want your share. Example, the Yellow Pages – one of the most popular marketing medium every invented. Good for being a directory. How come we go to Google and not Yellow Pages.com?

Another example, if I want to buy a piece of art I go to Sotheby’s. How come if I go online – I don’t go on Sotheby’s – but EBay?

TV Guide was the ultimate directory for what was on TV. How come when I go online to look for video – I go to You Tube and not TV Guide?

America Online – in the 1990s was supposed to be the winner – how come when I go online to find friends I don’t go on aolbook?

The truth is – it’s really hard for existing players to give up what they got.

The First Marketer. Godin provided an interesting example of what he calls the first marketer. We all know Wedgwood – that blue china that we know from their grandmothers. Founded by Josiah Wedgwood. He was the first marketer. It was invented by this man. Grew up in a small town in England, son of a potter, brother of a potter – knew he was going to be a potter. Wedgwood looked at the changes and he started a factory. He hired people how to do things and didn’t hire potters. He realized he needed to add value to his brand; he shipped china to the crown heads of Europe (equivalent of $2 million in today’s dollars). More people bought his stuff. He was the first one to open a showroom. He was famous for walking around his factory and if he saw something that didn’t live up to his expectations – he would smash those pieces (quality control). He understood that transportation was changing things so he lobbied parliament to build a canal by his factory so that he could ship items around the world.

It could be easy to say – that’s not marketing. That’s exactly Seth’s point. Josiah’s brother made pottery and he died poor. Josiah Wedgwood died with over $40 million (current $) in his bank account. The difference between the two of them is really simple – the difference is the pyramid.

The Pyramid. Marketers think we are the most important people (top of the pyramid) the bottom (strategy, manufacturing, customer service) exists to serve us at the top. We wait for the guys at the factory to give us something good, we sell it – we take credit when it succeeds. We’ve figured out how to take money, apply it to average stuff, and market it – that’s what marketing has been about for hundreds of years.

Godin wants to argue that being at the top of the pyramid is overrated. Anyone who views marketing as isolated from what’s being made is going to fail. There are going to fail because they don’t have something that’s worth marketing. It’s the meatballs – are coming from the bottom – from the factory. If you are going to stand still and wait for the meatballs to arrive – you are going to fail – because you are going take average products for average people that are designed for the masses and you’re going to put on top of them whip cream and the toppings of new marketing and they don’t work – they don’t go together. Example. When Wal-Mart tried take on MySpace – WM is clearly a meatball company and they are great at it – but when they tried to put the stuff on top – the culture clash was too great; they couldn’t succeed at doing it.

Just because you have a lot of cherries doesn’t mean you should succeed.

SEO. SEO – if you need to trick the search engines into finding you – you aren’t going to have a long term advantage. The long term advantage is going to belong to people who don’t make meatballs. It’s going to belong to companies that make stuff that people seek out in the first place.

Godin exampled that what we are seeing is that marketers are discovering lots of ways they can get the word out for free. If what they are selling isn’t interesting to us – we are going to ignore them – no matter how much they yell. If what they have to say is boring – we’ll ignore them… boring is invisible, boring doesn’t get found, boring doesn’t show up on the Internet. A traditional marketer may be feeling some momentary panic. Maybe new marketing means the end – but Seth wants to argue that there are 20, 30, 50 trends that are making up this new marketing. He discussed 14 of them (and a bonus one).

He believes that if you put some of these ideas below and organize around them – the web and the world of new marketing will embrace you. Once you organize for these trends as opposed to fighting them, you discover that your products and your marketing are in sync. You discover that this is the greatest arsenal of marketing tactics ever – but only if you organize for it the right way.

1. Direct Communication – between users and the people who make stuff. Your organization should be open to this direct communication to users. Make it easy, seductive, and fun to contact your company.

2. Amplification of Consumers – every consumer has become a critic and every consumer has the power to speak loudly. If you own a restaurant, every person that comes in is the potential reviewer because of the power of the Internet. If you run a hotel – every guest has the potential to be a reviewer for Fodor’s. If you run a cable TV company and one of your installers falls asleep while he’s supposed to be installing cable and it ends up on You Tube – it will undo millions of dollars worth of advertising.

After discussing these two points, Godin switched gears for a moment to stress that we always have a choice – he am not suggesting you stop making meatballs- he is suggesting that you choose that you either make meatballs or you don’t. Need to pick an integrated solution that is coherent.

3. Authentic Stories – what we know now is that you can’t tell two different stories to one person. The constituents are going to talk to each other. Your stories must be authentic and consistent. If the story is coherent and is shared – then the story will last fall longer than the facts ever do. People buy stories – good stories hold up under scrutiny.

4. Speed – has reached whole new levels. Two types of organization – one’s that are organized around speed and those that have competitors who have organized around speed.

5. The Long Tail – simple law of physics/human nature. As you add choices – sales go up. If you can own all of those choices – you win. Example. Amazon gets ½ their revenue from titles that Barnes and Noble doesn’t even carry. The ones that go down the long tail the faster – wins

6. Outsourcing – we are no longer in the factory business. The businesses that you own that make the meatball is old fashioned – outsourcing takes the factory out of the picture. Ex. Jott.com – you call and say you want to Jott something to yourself. Within 20 minutes, you get an email written what you said. A great way if you want to remember something when you are on the road. Godin wanted to know how they did this – and it turns out that they outsourced it to the third world where people listen to your Jott and then send you that email.

7. The Dicing of Everything – Google has shred the world a little big. The internet allows Google to take front doors and bust them open. They take things that are in bundles and they unbundled them. When you need information, you go to Google for your information, no need to go to bundled sites like cnet for your info.

8. Infinite channels of communication- Now there is an infinite number of ways to get information out there. Ex. look at the selection of analgesics, brands of beer, you have to understand that scarcity is no longer the power there used to be. Those scarcity rules are gone – you have to come up with a different way. It isn’t branding – we are branding our ways to death. You aren’t entitled to my attention.

9. Consumer to consumer – the fact is that your consumers are ganging up on you. They are talking to each other. You can enable that (Kiva, EBay) you can create industries where industries never used to exist. Connecting people who didn’t used to be connected.

10. Difference and the shift between scarcity and abundance – A good example is 6 years ago – a disposable cell phone seemed like a good idea. Today – we’d be queasy about the environmental impact. Used to be that fresh water was abundant – but today it isn’t. Take a hard look at what’s in short supply, and what’s not – and realize that our business is busy trying to make scare what is abundant and trying to use things that are abundant as if they are scarce – we can turn those things upside down.

11. Big Ideas – Big ideas are far more powerful than they were previously. Big product ideas. Example, the iPhone was hyped by the users because it was fun to talk about. When someone has something fun to talk about (example Numa Numa video) – it spreads like wildfire – Not because it’s a big marketing idea – not because it’s a big advertising idea – but because it’s a big idea in and of itself. Big reward for people who can find those ideas and bring them to market.

12. Who vs. How Many – Companies pay a premium to advertise on the Superbowl because of how many are watching. It used to be if you were selling to the masses, it matter a little bit that you reached the masses. Now, you care a lot more about who. A blog that only reaches a 1000 people could very well be more useful than the Superbowl.

13. The New Rich – The difference between the old rich and the new rich. The old rich were all the same – they were easy to find, they lived in Newport, they played polo, they played golf, they all read the same magazines etc. The new rich are like us – they are much more democratic, they do stuff that rich people didn’t used to, this idea means that there are some rich people in every demographic which changes the way you segment your marketing and the stuff you choose to make.

14. New Gatekeepers and No gatekeepers – People who used to have power as gatekeepers are finding their power disappearing. Instead, you have people having enormous of power and they are the gatekeepers. In addition, there are no gatekeepers, if you have a great idea, put it on YouTube – no one can say no, build your own website, your own Squidoo page – no one can say no.

15. The death zone between scarcity and ubiquity – In an inverted bell curve, there is a death zone between scarcity and ubiquity. Godin suggested that at either end of the spectrum, you win. You win if you are everywhere (Jerry Seinfeld) you win and if you are only a few places – but are in high demand – you also when. It’s when you are in the middle that you have trouble.

Conclusions

The scary thing about everything he has said is that many of your clients are going to want you to make better meatball sundaes. What he is hoping is that we can now embrace the fact that only can we say no to these people and that we should. But, the window is not going to be open for long, if we have a choice between clients and employers that get it and clients and employers who don’t, if you look back at this window in time – you are going to look back that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. This sundae is really big, extraordinarily powerful and leaving you lots and lots of options. You can embrace them now or regret them later.

At the end of the session, Seth answered a few questions.

Questions – What do you do when your sales force is older than your customer based and is technologically lacking (real estate). Do you recruit new ones? What we need to do is measure people on metrics that make sense today. Your job as a manager- how can I make this tactically simple but strategically important.

Given the power of the amateur reviewer – how can we determine between authentic and fake stuff? It is difficult to detect – people pretending/shilling obviously is going to happen. We are going to make our circle smaller – you are going to want to interact with people who you know from life or who you can trust through the respect of reputation.

Clarification – to choose one the meatball or the sundae? How do you make that choice? Starbucks is about the story and the experience. Didn’t try to reach the masses – once they tried to look more like McDonalds and a whole bunch of things changed about Starbucks. They tried to make meatballs and have the topping – now they have to try to pick and choose one.

With all the channels – how do we get noticed? That’s a pretty selfish question. It’s not how do we get noticed. How do we make a product or service that people choose to talk about. Because it helps their life/planet etc. If we make a remarkable product, we will be talked about in tons of different places.

Why is branding dead? People need to differentiate with all these choices? Branding isn’t dead. Brand is the shortcut that we use to remember the attributes of the product we love. If branding is the act of creating all the things that people will associate with your logo and name.

Why are BtoB companies behind BtoC in using the web? Starts with what kind of person goes to work for a BtoB companies. There is a lot of top down thinking. BtoB suppliers tend to respond by making commodity products, do RFPs etc.. BtoB buy that stuff only when they can’t tell the difference between brand a and brand b. There is culture problem in typical BtoB companies (there are exceptions).

Are there any older companies getting our attention effectively on their websites? Microsoft – told the truth and went online and told the truth to business customers about what was happening at their company. No one wants to hear a product manager blather about legally approved info about marketing brochures. We are seeing pockets of truth telling, pockets of authentic stories that are usually happening when the boss isn’t looking. But these are making a difference in BtoB companies.

It was a really informative hour and Seth Godin was a terrific and enthusiastic speaker. Thanks to Seth, SEMpdx and Corvent for a very worthwhile hour!

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135730 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2008/01/18/14-trends-no-marketer-should-ignore/14+Trends+No+Marketer+Should+Ignore2008-01-18+14%3A27%3A42Shannon+Bowden

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On Thursday, January 10th, Chris Sherman, Executive Editor from Search Engine Land spoke at a very valuable Search Marketing Now webcast entitled ‘Paid Search For Big Sites’. This event was sponsored by iProspect and provided pertinent information regarding paid search programs for big brands and big sites.

At the onset, Chris indicated that the goal of the presentation is to help those attending to better manage their paid search efforts.

Mr. Sherman started by stating that all big brands do have big sites – but that not all big sites are big brands. The presentation was broken into two segments – what you need to do to set up your PPC program for success and the marketing end of things related to search.

Know Your Goals. First off, Mr. Sherman counseled the audience that the first thing anyone working on a paid search program needs to define is the goals. With any search marketing campaign, it is crucial to look at goals and understand what you are trying to accomplish. Without knowing goals – you cannot measure success. Ask yourself these questions:

• Why are you doing PPC vs. SEO or even other types of marketing?
• Are you measuring the right things?
• Is PPC the most effective use of marketing resources?

Beyond The Basics. You need to get the right keywords, budgets and bids – however, when you are working with big sites and big brands, other things are equally important.

• Running a paid search campaign for a big site means far more than managing keywords, bids and budgets.
• Basic blocking and tackling is important, but there are several other key factors for running a successful campaign.
• You need a strategy that focuses on your own success metrics, yet fully accounts for the competitive landscape.
• You need an array of tools to automate manual tasks, offer feedback to fine tune strategy, and ideally, automatically adjust to constantly changing conditions.

Chris stressed that we need to understand what is we are trying to accomplish with PPC. Need to look at the competitive landscape and ascertain what our competitors are doings. For the big brands – whatever the competitors are doing will influence what you will do. You have to adapt and be flexible.

He also noted that you need to automate things wherever possible. Spend your time thinking at the higher level and leave the day-to-day work to automated tools (if you can). These tools are very sophisticated now and they can adapt in real time to changing conditions. Based on the business rules you supply, the tools will change the campaign and respond to what is happening with competition.

Leadership is Important. One of the important things that Chris Sherman feels is overlooked is the critical importance of leadership. In order to be successful, you need to work with all different groups to make sure all the stakeholders are getting their needs satisfied and that you are in alignment with other areas in the campaign. You need to influence not just the team – but top management as well. Top management is critical as they need to buy into your efforts for budgets etc. You need to show them that the campaign is working.

Managing Expectations is Key. Mr. Sherman posed the question …what happens when you find you are in a battle for position – against another group in your own organization? How would you deal with those types of challenges?

He feels that it is important to manage expectations amongst everyone.

You need to identify the owners vs. influencers. The owners own content and have the final say over specific campaigns. Equally important is mapping out the role of the influencers. Just make sure everyone has clearly spelled out roles, responsibilities, and evaluation metrics. If you can get these roles clearly mapped out it can really help drive the design and implementation of the campaign.

Global vs. Local Control. Another important area to define is whether the campaign is controlled globally (head office) or down to the local level (field office). One idea is to segment keywords and creative. For example – corporate could have the responsibility for general brand terms (a searcher just beginning an info quest) and local could have control over more specific, less branded terms (where the searcher knows what they are looking for).

Bidding Strategy. Chris suggested thinking of your keywords as you would your financial portfolio. Just as with your investment portfolio, some keywords will be winners while others will be losers. You will need to continually rebalance your portfolio after you understand how they are performing (trim the losers, invest more in winners) to maintain proper exposure to achieve business goals.

Automate Bid Management. As mentioned previously, Chris stressed how automation allows you to increase volume. With these powerful tools, you can perform rapid testing of ad strategies, position, time of day, day of week and other variables. Automation works well with both concentrated and localized strategies. With good bid management solutions, you can learn from testing and adjust your campaign in real time – 24/7.

Watch – Learn – Then React. You need to use your own goals and metrics as a baseline and then based on the feedback from the metrics you know when to raise bids, keep an eye on the status quo or dump the underperformers.

What to Do If Your Organization Has Separate Terms for SEO and PPC. If you organization has separate terms for SEO and PPC – communication is key. It is so important for the separate departments to share data and to beware of inconsistent or conflicting messages. The organic and paid search side must share data and be consistent and not competing.

PPC vs. SEO. One is not better than the other – instead big brands should use each for maximum effort. PPC is best for fluid, changing content, promotions and the beginning stages or search. However, it is less effective for getting people to evergreen or static content. PPC on the other hand is great to test creative for SEO campaigns.

Testing is So Important. Don’t assume PPC reinforces SEO – sometimes one strategy can undermine another. It is important to note that 70% of all clicks are still coming from organic results. Use organic search to help resolve conflicts between teams and dominate SERP (search engine result pages). If searchers see you in the natural listings and sees you in the paid search – it does reinforce legitimacy for the searcher.

Marketing Issues. After focusing on the tactical issues that need to be resolved with paid search, Chris switched gears and focused on marketing issues that are unique to big brands. He started by stating the branding is not direct marketing. With direct marketing, your focus is on conversion and outcome. However, with branding – it is more complex and takes place in stages. Branding can lead to conversion, but it isn’t the primary goal.

It is important that the paid search messaging should be tailored to match each of these stages.

Chris also stressed the importance of the role of perception. That is, the perception of what is in the searchers mind will ultimately influence what the searcher does. It doesn’t matter what keywords we have – but what the searcher has experienced leading up to sitting down at the computer.

Four Stages of Branding. Mr. Sherman then presented his perception as to what the whole branding process is about. It is a useful model to think about as you are creating your marketing messages.

• Building brand awareness (early stage – overcoming low recognition and emotion. Your marketing messages need to raise awareness.
• Reinforcing brand awareness (middle stage – emphasis on solidifying brand attributes and positive associations).
• Enhancing preference and favorability (late stage – emphasis on persuasion). Really want to reach out to consumers at this stage.
• Reinforcing brand loyalty (post sale). Here your messages are reinforcing their purchase decision to help them stay brand loyal in the future.

He also mentioned that search ads are only one part of the branding message – direct mail, radio, TV and online graphic ads are important too. Remember that your other types of brand messages can have a huge effect on the way people respond to search results. Search ads should complement your other efforts – they are important, but they are just one part of what you are trying to do. A good rule of thumb is – if you are doing an effective job on the other fronts, you should have a positive response to your paid search efforts.

It is a mistake to silo your ads. If you have a big brand, search ads are just one other component of all the other methods and techniques you have. Search ads should complement all your other efforts. They are important – but they are just one part of what you are trying to do.

Other types of brand messages have an impact. If you are doing an effective job on other fronts – they are likely to respond to your PPC.

Leveraging Online Strategy. Consider a mix of search and display ads. Chris sited the Microsoft Lending Tree study (11-07) where people who were exposed to both search and display advertising were:

• 556% more likely to visit LendingTree.com
• 650% more likely to fill out an online qualification form (so that the company could continue the sales process).

Use Your Search Data. Use your data! The data from your search campaign (demographics, time/day of search etc.) can help refine other brand campaign elements, and vice versa.

Get information from your search campaign – mine your data to find out important information that can help you relate to the prospects in ways that they have expressed through their search engine behavior. Remember to filter this information back to all your marketing efforts. It is a great testing ground because you get immediate feedback from people using it.

SERPs vs. Content Networks. SERPs are where all the direct marketers want to be. Content networks are when the search engine distributes ads to partners (ex. Google to the NY Times). Branding works both on SERPs and on content partner pages.

Since your conversion goal is less important – it is useful to be on both. There haven’t been any studies to determine effectiveness, but Sherman believes that they work in the case of branding. Again, he counsels that the only way to really tell is to go out and test with your own campaigns.

Conclusions

• Paid search for big sites requires leadership, not just skilled search marketing techniques.
• Search can be an effective part of a comprehensive branding effort.
• As with all types of search marketing – success will be determined by the quality of execution on your goals.

At the end of the presentation, there were a few minutes for questions.

• What tasks can be automated?
  • Tons of tasks can be automated. For example, the bid management process, what time of day should an ad be running, what parts of the world do you want the ad to be running in. More and more of the processes are lending themselves to automation.

• How do you manage crossover keywords – how do you do that when you share amongst multiple departments?
  • It’s is important to define the owners and influencers. Those issues are quickly diminished if the owners and influencers are identified. The ruthless approach is necessary to determine who owns the keywords.

• How do you rebalance your portfolio of keywords?
  • It involves taking a hard look at all your keywords and how are they performing relative to the goals you have set for them. It involves going through the entire portfolio and matching each keyword against your goals. It is driven by bottom line but also by how those numbers relate to the business goals established for each individual keyword.

Thanks to Chris Sherman, Search Marketing Now and iProspect for an informative web seminar.

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133012 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2008/01/14/paid-search-for-big-sites/Paid+Search+For+Big+Sites2008-01-14+17%3A49%3A50Shannon+Bowden

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Last week Chris Sherman (Executive Editor from Search Engine Land) spoke at a very valuable Search Marketing Now webcast entitled ‘Leveraging All Search Marketing Channels’. This event was sponsored by 24/7 and provided pertinent information regarding various search marketing channels, both traditional and emerging.

The speaker challenged the audience to think of how many channels we are using and where we might be missing opportunities. Mr. Sherman believes the evolution of search has many parallels with television in that at the beginning there were a few big dominant players and ads were only available to big spenders. Later, as the medium developed smaller niche players and opportunities for smaller advertisers emerged.

In the world of search, at the beginning, we had three or four large search engines and now we are seeing opportunities in smaller, niche oriented markets.

There are two groups of search marketing channels: traditional and expanded.

1. Organic Listings

Natural search results derived from the full text of all pages found on the web

2. Paid Listings

Carefully worded advertisements consisting of 2-5 word title and 2 very short lines of text

1. Content Options

News and Press Releases – Many people aren’t taking advantage of PRs. By optimizing the press releases, companies can drive people and journalists to their site.

Always optimize PRs with hyperlinks to the URL to your site.

Remember to submit PRs to wire services (different crawlers).

Bonus – journalists writing about your news may drive more traffic than the releases itself. Opportunity to have your news picked up on 2 different channels – journalists and web.

Social Media

Simple definition: Internet way finding tools informed by human judgment. There is currently no good industry standard definition of social media. They do have some component of search involved but they are involved by human beings (voting on stories, answers questions, contributing content).

Why bother with social media? Social media sites are attracting huge audiences that have a memory (book marking). If you do well on these social media sites, people might find your content when they aren’t actively searching.

Types of Social Media

Collaborative harvesters – People on the web are trying to find content and recommend it to other uses (Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Sphinn).

Collaborative Directories – ODP, Wikipedia, Prefound – These sites are created by human beings and not search engine crawlers. Wikipedia can be used for search marketing because you can add content you want (with caution – as the editors are suspicious of anyone changing content for marketing purpose) or at the end of all Wikipedia entries there are links to external sites. Wikipedia is heavily trafficked and the links can send traffic to your site. IF you have images about your product or service, you can upload those images and those images can have a link to your particular product or service page.

Social Q&A sites – Yahoo Answers, Answerbag – They have less value than the other types because of the Q&A format so you don’t have much opportunity to influence people.

Local Search

Likely to be the next big thing.

Relevant for both small location based businesses and large companies relying on locally purchased goods or services. (Even large companies can take advantage of local search because most people are still buying their products locally instead of online).

Many players, so try to submit to as many as possible. Most are free or minimal cost.

Feed-Based Search Marketing

Allows you to have a direct dialog with search engines (if you have a product based inventory or a large site that you need control on what gets to the search engines).

Gives you control over what the search engine sees and indexes.

Types of Feeds

Web based inclusion

Shopping and product comparison

Local search and directory

2. Ad Options (beyond traditional)

2nd tier or alternative search engines

Operate just like Google, Yahoo – but with less reach.

Be careful: traffic quality can be poorer than with the majors (may not get the same level of qualified buyers and poorer conversion rates – monitor to make sure you are hitting your performance goals.

Advantage – usually less expensive and can target searchers not using the majors. Examples: (Looksmart, Enhance, Epilot, Marchex, Miva, Mirago (Europe), Search123, 7Search, PageSeeker).

Contextual ad networks

Backend works just like the search advertising platforms, but ads are distributed to content sites on the web rather than search results pages.

Be careful: potentially less engaged users.

Consider all the majors, plus the smaller players like Kanoodle.

Ad exchanges

Auction style exchanges designed to facilitate exchanges betweens advertisers and media buyers (no middleman & potentially better audience targeting).

Players include RightMedia (Yahoo), DoubleClick (Google), AQuantitive (Microsoft), & Context. AdsDaq is a new player that will be launching soon that has recently launched.

3. Platform options – the web is now an object based platform, instead of just a text based platform.

Video

Two ways to use video in a search marketing campaign.

Optimize meta data to be found by the search engines (because the search engines can not see video – only text). 98% of videos aren’t doing this so it is a wide open area right now.

Embed URL in titles and inserts on video for people to type into their browser – simply by having your video out there you can drive a lot of traffic.

Podcasts

Are increasingly being picked up in general search results.

Optimize metadata (ID3 tags), but also optimize web site (content information (overview), unique landing pages, transcripts). Gives crawlers more text to chew on.

Create and submit RSS feeds with embedded podcasts (content).

Mobile

Similar to, but also very different from web based search marketing (difficult because of small screens and keyboards).

Crucial difference: mobile searchers have different needs and wants (big opportunity because of the number of users – definitely something that everyone should have on their radar and start experimenting with it). Need to optimize content differently- for example the navigation structure should be at the bottom instead of top. These users want an immediate action; they don’t want to scroll through dozens of links etc.

Two other key players – device manufacturers and network operators.

Big Five Areas for Mobile (verticals) – these are the players that should be involved in mobile now because of customer needs.

• consumer packaged goods

• fast food restaurants

• entertainment

• travel/hospitability

• financial services

Opportunity to get a big leap forward than competitors

Mr. Sherman concluded with posting the global question…

You need to ask yourself that question.

If you answer yes – you’ll need to spend more time researching the channels (e.g., The Digg of France is Scoopeo and Brazil is Linkk).

Take into account local customs, local laws. Remember what plays well in the U.S. may not in other countries. Don’t make the presumption that if something is big here it will be elsewhere (ex. Google is not the dominant search engine in China).

Chris Sherman asked the audience to consider how you put it all together. Answer these questions to help guide you along…

Is your SEO strategy aligned with your paid search initiatives? If you have that solid foundation, you are ready to go out and experiment with newer channels. However, SEO needs to be aligned with paid search first.

Are you leveraging all relevant search marketing channels? Not all channels will be relevant to all businesses. Ex. top five categories for mobile are very relevant for those industries and not for others. If it’s not relevant to your business and won’t impact your business goals – don’t move forward.

Are you integrating online and offline marketing efforts? Because we are moving into these peripheral areas with search marketing, we need to make sure our campaigns are integrated in online and offline efforts. To really gain the maximum leverage you possibly can, make sure all your campaigns are integrated and play off each other really well, reinforce each other.

Mr. Sherman counseled that we have much richer opportunities for search and we will continue to see it evolve. Keep aware of the new things coming down the line and keep an open mind and take advantage of all the new things that are coming on the web as that will make it easier to reach our customers.

There was a few minutes for questions at the end of the session.

What are some of the newswires?

Business Wire, PR Newswire are two of the biggest. Search or look for online news release services. Most are fee based, some are free and they’ll give you instructions on how to do it. Relatively inexpensive and painless.

Can you be penalized for duplicate content when on a newswire and on your website?

No, the search engines know that you’ll be on a newswire and you won’t be penalized for duplicate content. Newscrawlers and webcrawlers work independently. Not to be concerned.

Are Podcasts are more useful for staying in touch with existing customers or acquiring new ones?

Both, it is easy and cheap to do a podcast. Great way to keep channels of communication open with new and existing customers.

What do feeds cost?

It depends on the pricing structure. They could be content based (yahoo) i.e. Based on number of pages on your site. Could be based on the number of clicks on the site. Shopping feeds are the same thing and depends on the comparison engine you are submitting to. Consumer products cost one thing, another product category costs another.

What is the best social media option for someone just getting started?

Get out there and lurk, don’t jump in right away. You’ll find the sites are dominated by people who have been on the site for some time – you need to make sure you are familiar with the community and be careful not to promote in an overt way. The social media loves lists (top ten reasons to do x), if you have content that will help the page achieve their goals that is helpful. Tread cautiously. You might want to start with smaller, niche based sites first as the communities aren’t as hard core and a little more inclusive and may accept newcomers. You will get focused and relevant traffic.

What effects to you see on human powered search marketing?

People in search is very promising because human beings can watch videos, provide tagging etc. Yahoo Answers has introduced a rating system where good answerers get good ratings and are higher rated.

Thanks to everyone for putting on an informative web seminar… Chris Sherman, 24/7 Real Media, and Claire at Search Marketing Now!

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11388 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2007/10/19/leveraging-all-search-marketing-channels/Leveraging+All+Search+Marketing+Channels2007-10-19+16%3A05%3A54Shannon+Bowden

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