|
Latest Blog Entries
Seems everyone and their dog has a blog these days. It goes without saying that a search marketing blog should provide commentary and insight about search engine marketing; practices and principles; heroes and villains. We like to think of ours as a reflection of who we are. And of course, as a platform for putting blog marketing theory into practice.
-
I am sitting here with a coffee and a powerpoint deck entitled Why Search Is Important.
At this point, I think the deck should be titled Why I Am Giving The Same Presentation To Your Organization For The 10th Time.
It feels a little like Groundhog Day.
I am more than aware that search and explaining search can be a learning curve requiring patience. I am also aware that I have a tendency to speak over people’s heads as I have been both doing and explaining search for more than 14 years now.
In today’s presentation, I will be speaking to three audience segments. Senior management stakeholders who know that search is now a requirement because of competitor market presence. They will not show up.
Then, there will be middle brand managers. Search is maybe 1% of their overall marketing budget so not really enough to warrant undivided attention as they check and recheck incoming emails because they could be missing something important, but they know they have to be there if only to say they attended.
And finally, that one familiar face from the IT department. Of course, search and analytics is not part of your job description and you’re tired of hearing about search.
In short, no one, for the 10th time will be invested in the process.
There’s a simple solve. Invest in one person. One single person within your organization who can become a search ambassador between all three audience segments. One single person who understands the challenges of your myriad flash web sites; or the fact that your secure server which won’t allow for brand presence can be easily solved; or one single person who gets the value and importance of analytics and how they apply not only to your individual sites, but to the aggregate learnings across all of your sites.
One single digital mind who need not be told why search is important because they already know.
If you break it down into ROI metrics, the cost of that person is less than $200 per silo per month.
Have a good one.
~ S
By: Shane on November 6, 2009 in Engines, Light Reading, Marketing, Search, Tips
full post
-
I watched with great fascination the HBO Documentary Schmatta – Rags To Riches To Rags the other night, a telling film about the rise and fall of the garment industry in the US and specifically New York.
There were a number of interesting facts, but chief among them, the fact that during the Kennedy years, 95% of all garments in the US were US made. Today, only 5%. And the industry has all but collapsed. Not only does one struggle to find the union label but the union employee as well.
A cautionary tale, to be sure.
But it’s not just the garment industry that has run the risk of commoditization taking industries with it. For a couple of years, it seemed every day a spam email would come in offering offshore SEO services because they were ultimately cheaper. And by ultimately, what I mean is exponentially.
In the recent AdAge article How EBay Is Winning With Bid to Enhance the Customer Experience author Natalie Zmuda essentially points out that in only a few short years the market has changed so much as to turn the machine that commoditized retail into a commodity itself, one that struggles to compete with the likes of Amazon, Zappos and others who have more capably succeeded chasing the lowest price every day.
A focus on price and price alone is fraught with risk that extends, far, far beyond retail. And in the descent from 95% to 5% share, management teams change and CEOs come and go.
New managers seek to make their mark within their first 100 days. Even US presidents are measured by their first 100 days. In creating impact, we most often seek to create efficiencies but the net result may, in the long-term, prove little more than a commodity.
Just ask ebay. Or the schmatta industry.
In the end, the cost may prove significantly more than the lowest price every day.
As marketers, we need to be aware of that. Not simply for our clients. But for ourselves as well.
Have a good one.
~ S
By: Shane on October 21, 2009 in Channel Surfing, Light Reading, Marketing, Search, Trends/Insights
full post
-
It’s the busiest time of year, with 2010 strategies and the holiday season coming on. In either instance, the hope is that budgets will increase to meet an ever-growing digital market.
But that isn’t always the case.
In a client dialogue over the past few days, we were asked by a client to assess possible budget savings for an already underfunded campaign prior to 2010 strategies. Over the years I’ve finally been trained that the client is always right.
Except when they’re wrong.
In assessing the client strategy, one suggestion tabled was that we should look at day-parting as some clicks were potentially more valuable than others. It is my fervent belief that the client strategy was off-point, however, because we have been unable to introduce analytics, it remains only opinion on either side of the table as the analytics can’t bear it out.
In the end, I was left scratching my head because two years in, the issues and ensuing challenges remain the same.
I am, of course, a stalwart fan of PPC and of search and digital in general. And I struggle with understanding how brand managers don’t understand that every click increases brand awareness, thus doing the same job as TV or print. And in fact, every click does more for brand awareness than traditional media in terms of providing insight and action.
This is not to say that traditional media is dead or dying. Traditional media has always been predicated on reach and frequency propositions. And certainly, in Canada, reach is still best accomplished by TV, Twitter and Facebook aside.
That said, search offers response and engagement and post-click, it does so in a vacuum as competitors have no real estate on your site. So the dialogue is necessarily one of brand awareness. Even a seemingly negative or ambivalent search is an opportunity to construct a dialogue to advantage by mitigating risk through acknowledgement and solution.
Morever, a “broad keyword” search that compells a click is a direct marketshare steal from those of your competitors on the same keyword, again moving the dailogue solely to your online poperty.
Every click provides value, even those with constistently high bounces rate inform and suggest that the promise is not living up to the provision, allowing opportunity for a dialogue more in line with consumer or prospect need state.
 Search Versus Traditional Budgets Though consumers spend more than 30% of their time online, digital and search budgets remain less than 10% so for 2011, perhaps the dialogue shouldn’t be one of cutting budget on a campaign that performs to objective daily, thwarted only by budget, but of culling one single magazine or broadcast insertion and adding it to the search budget.
Ask not what your search marketing can do for you. Ask what you can do for your search marketing.
Have a good one.
~ S
By: Shane on October 11, 2009 in Canadian, Eh, Channel Surfing, Engines, Light Reading, Marketing, Search
full post
-
Very interesting article in Adage this morning: Google Lures Local Advertisers by Subverting Its Own Search Policies.
I’m sure everyone will be focused on the “local search” and click-to-call part of the equation but to me there’s something more intriguing in the equation. Flat fee click. Very intriguing indeed.
For the longest time, I’ve been left scratching my head as it seems to me that there’s a whole lot of money being left on the table for a number of relevant searches.
 Money In The Bank Moreover, for larger brands, there is often the issue of ad score quality and relevance primarily because the brand focus of “traditional” advertising is typically solutions (Get a better quality of life) or brand message (You deserve something today) focused. These are not key drivers for search or for relevance.
Flat fee clicks would seem to me to be a way to solve that. Hello Mr. X, you have a product, we have a sizeable amount of search volume that we’d like to talk to you about and we’d like to offer it to you at the low, low rate of X for Y clicks.
Such a proposal would of course involve human interaction. Let’s call it sales, A salesforce.
They’ve already changed the model at the low end, why not apply it to the very high end. Trust me, Google knows where the gaps are in their model. They have to know there’s money left on the table.
This would solve that.
Yahoo… Bing… Are you listening?
Hmmmm.
Have a good one.
~ S
By: Shane on October 8, 2009 in Canadian, Eh, Engines, Light Reading, Marketing, Search
full post
-
So the other day I was ambling to a client meeting (When the weather’s nice, I sometimes amble.) and I chanced upon a transit shelter that said Search: 2012.
I was intrigued and mentally lauded a marketing effort clearly meant to track offline stimuli to online use.
On arriving home, I did. I searched 2012.
On Bing.
And found myself staring at a Wikipedia entry in the first result.
How odd, thought I. Who wants me to find out that 2012 is a leap year and has been designated Alan Turing Year.
 2012 - Alan Turing Year (That in and of itself is not a bad thing as he is a personal hero but it seemed to me a simple email would have sufficed, a full transit campaign wasn’t really necessary to capture my attention. In fact, I shall email my brilliant programming friend Brian and let him know, or perhaps I should just email him to suggest he walk by innumerable transit shelters until he finds one that captures his specific attention, and he’ll know which one it is.)
I was, of course, corrected and informed that it was for a forthcoming movie: 2012.
Ah, now that makes complete sense to me. There’s a movie about the London Olympics coming out in the next few days. Boy, do I feel like an oaf.
Um, no, idiot, I was chided by a friend, you’re using the wrong search engine.
How so? said I. I always use Bing.
There are a lot of things I like about it, not the least of which include that by tripping over a transit shelter and doing a simple search at their request, I was able to find information I wasn’t previously aware of.
HAPPY FORTHCOMING ALAN TURING YEAR, EVERYONE!!!
Have a good one.
~ S
By: Shane on October 7, 2009 in Canadian, Eh, Channel Surfing, Light Reading, Marketing, Search
full post
|
Quick Response Form:
1-800-994-4568 |
