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Category Archives: Channel Surfing

1. Under New Management

   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

   

   Posted by: Shane on October 21, 2009 in Channel Surfing, Light Reading, Marketing, Search, Trends/Insights

   
   

2. Every Click Increases Brand Awareness

   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

   

   Posted by: Shane on October 11, 2009 in Canadian, Eh, Channel Surfing, Engines, Light Reading, Marketing, Search

   
   

3. Search: 2012    Find: Wikipedia

   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

   

   Posted by: Shane on October 7, 2009 in Canadian, Eh, Channel Surfing, Light Reading, Marketing, Search