So check it out!

You can have up to 10 participants on a video chat in Google Plus Hangouts, which is pretty substantial, and it provides outstanding opportunity for those telecommuting to work every day.

Whoever is making the most noise (err… I mean the primary speaker of the moment) automatically gets the main video window which makes it very clear who is speaking when.  (Kinda like watching TV a little, actually!)

Currently there is a sneak preview of new Hangouts features for a limited time such as:

• Named Hangouts
• Shared notes and sketchpad
• Google Docs integration
• Screen sharing (ALWAYS a helpful tool!)

What a great way to put “Social” back in to social platforms too.  Use it for catching up with friends and family face to face, sing-a-longs (yak), or any number of social interactions.

Hey, it’s good enough for President Obama.  He logging in on Monday night (January 30, 2012) for the Oval Office’s first virtual “Hangout”.

So, login, create a hangout, check to make sure you look good, and invite some folks from your circles to gab with you face-to-face.

Cheers!

Doug Gebhardt

That small email went something like this:

We are looking for junior talent who would be willing to telecommute. Full-time gig. We will provide a happy salary, 3 weeks vacay. (We didn’t have benefits then but we do now.)

Shane & Doug

And it landed us some pretty big results so we’re taking another kick at the can.

We’re hiring a bilingual search marketing coordinator. A junior role with big aspirations. We call that a cat herder. Here’s why http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

If you can work independently and remotely, respond fast and tirelessly, you might just fit the bill.

Fire off a resume to careers@searchtactix.com and we’ll take a look.

Thx

Shane & Doug (Again)

Myriad web analytics packages exist, among the most popular, Google Analytics, Omniture (Adobe), WebTrends and Coremetrics, but all serve one specific role providing intelligent online business intelligence. Hiring a web analytics consultant or web analytics agency is a first step along the path to digital enlightment and is that much more important as display and search more closely align through real-time exchanges, DSPs and Google initiatives. It has been predicted that Facebook will be the digital market leader for display advertising, something we all know Yahoo, Bing and Google must be paying close attention to. Google cannot have purchased Doubleclick without a vision and a business case for it.

Analytics Certified

The role of analytics, as both Avinash Kaushik and the Google Analytics certification exam would have you know is not of absolutes but of identifying trends – the proverbial canary in the coal mine. But to trust in the numbers the process is paramount. Accordingly, an analytics agency or consultant’s first role if not one of implementation, should be an audit followed by an overview of goals, objectives and desired outcomes. Functionally, the role of web analytics is both reporting and intelligence in the measurement, collection, analysis of internet data as it relates to understanding and optimizing web habituation and usage in search of increased engagement with accountability to metrics, conversions and ultimately, transactions. At the end of the day, web analytics extend well beyond site usage as an intelligence and research tool for social media, mobile, entry and exit behaviours and with increasing frequency, offline indicators.

The challenge of web analytics within organizations is typically one of resource strain as data mining and reporting are time consuming at a minimum and associated costs are closely vetted by procurement officers. Analytics, however, can become a profit center if research and time spent lends itself to actionable insights which in turn can be tied back to budget line items. As some analytics programs are free, the only associated cost is in fact time and hours can be costed back on a project or FTE (Full-time employee basis).

The movement towards analytics as a profit center necessarily depends on success around implementation and the hands and eyes responsible for analytics outcomes, whether internal, a web analytics consultants or a web analytics agency:

• Understand the role analytics will play with your organization
• No metric lives in isolation; what will you measure; how?
• Create custom dashboards and communicate through the organization
• Measure consistently both in time and manner
• Test to a plan with defined hypotheses and benchmarks
• Factor analytics into project costs against marketing
• Align goals to conversions and vice versa

Peter Drucker famously said: What can be measured can be managed. And for digital presence the key element comes down to web analytics.

For analytics capabilities, we’re available at 1-800-994-4568 or info@searchtactix.com.

Have a good one.

~ Shane Wagg

Before the this year’s de rigeur Zero Moment of Truth the bulk of search display eyes were on the last click attribution model. For the coming year cocktail and conference conversation will centre around search and display, real-time bidding, DSPs, exchanges and while I want to say “of course” the truth is, finally, a little more accountability to metrics.

Full funnnel attribution is an accessible model, but challenging to explain in four-year-old terms. For that, we defer to a picture easily worth a thousand keywords… Display and text working together. Courtesy of The Exchange Lab:

Search Display Full Funnel Attribution

Real-time bidding is an auction model and the alignment of search to display advertising, remarketing, retargeting or whatever naming convention you choose to give it is a natural and a win/win/win/win/win. For the consumer, advertising will be more closely aligned to search patterns. Which is great if you’re looking for a hotel, not so great if you’re a teenage girl looking for an abortion clinic on the family computer. For publishers, with quality content, content which has always “been king” will now rule and push itself to the fore. For Yahoo/Bing, if they can get it front of it, display (at which they lead) will more closely align to search (at which they don’t lead). For Google, search (at which they lead) will more closely align to display (at which they will lead).

There will also be room for the Facebooks and the LinkedIns of the work, user-generated, self-defining content plays richand robust in keywords that will effortlessy marry more closely to tactical display advertising initiatives more closely aligned to user habituation than brand folly.

And last but not least, brands will benefit as digital aligns itself more closely to search (consumer driven) than to broadcast (brand manager driven). The risk however, is that brand managers will not fully understand search display advertising opporunities and AORs will not properly educate them based on resource and revenue limitations.

Creating Search Display Efficiencies

• Unsilo search and display managers to better work together
• Identify search and display baselines individually
• Test a keyword based remarketing campaign
• Test a display based remarketing campaign
• Deploy a search display based campaign
• Deploy a search display based remarketing campaign
• Measure benchmarks with accountability to conversion and analytics

That’s what we’re here for. 1-800-994-4568

Somewhere between birth and death, you’ll find God.

Have a good one.

~ Shane

Until the phone started ringing.

Having been an authority with regards to things search marketing, including the requisite PPC, SEO and analytics for more than a decade now, we’re well versed in content propositions. And having tracked Wikipedia, Amazon and Ebay, for well over the same decade, we understand UGN. User Generated Content. Content is still king. But it’s content that must be mastered in 140 characters with a lifespan of seemingly fewer seconds, proverbial Hemerocalis’ of social media marketing.

Of the moment is truly de rigueur as referrals, groupons and other things drive business models into vaunted billion dollar valuations. (See LinkedIn’s IPO, Facebook’s valuation, or Groupon’s $6 billion dollar Google rebuff.) Membership clearly has it’s valuation privileges.

Amazon with its reviews and ratings, and Ebay, with user generated listings, followed by Craigslist and Wikipedia, have become the social media doyennes of a generation already past, but they were in fact, its pioneers. And that’s something that needs careful analysis as both Amazon and Ebay created stratospheric business models that even Google seemed incapable of with it’s shopping portal.

Google, from an operating perspective, has monetized a business on teaching people to leave. It now needs to teach them how to stay and certainly, eyeballs are the crux of the YouTube.com model, another successful user generated content proposition (social media) model celebrating cats playing the piano, squirrels and guys riding horses. Google+ is another access point to owning the user and and his or her content.

Clearly there is something that needs consideration for social media. Williams-Sonoma has done a great job of firing on all social media cylinders and there’s a pretty good chance they know exactly how much Klout they have and they’re singing it on high from their TweetDeck.

To say we’re the best social media marketing agency operating out of Toronto or anywhere for that matter would be a little like saying Simon Cowell is a chart-topping singer. While he understands music better than most… We’ll let you be the judge. But we got to our social media marketing credentials in much the same way by being the marketing company informed by search, invested in the nuance that creates the ultimate success. It’s just that now it includes social search trends.

At the end of the day, a social media strategy is nice, like a beer on a patio on a hot summer’s day is nice. But is it necessary? As with any marketing strategy, social, search or otherwise, KPIs should be the drivers and objectives should be clearly delineated. What are the factors for success? And what’s the cost of getting there. Those should be known. From the outset. A social media marketing strategy is a marketing strategy nevertheless and accordingly it should have the same accountability demanded of other media.

Have a good one.

~ Shane Wagg

Toss about a few of the major Internet names in your head over the past decade. Yahoo (content), ebay (commerce), craigslist (classified), Amazon (commerce), facebook (social), youtube (video content), Google (search). Even for Apple, flash has been panned.

Shouldn’t that tell us something? Commerce is about conversion. Content is about engagement. Both require analysis. And for the most part, the depth of those points of analysis is plumbed by search.

Why then does your search manager report to your digital brand manager? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

The rise of digital was a visual (blinking) experience. Click now. Click now. Click now. Like a neon motel sign. While compelling in labeling the content matter, it did nothing to convey the more often than not seedier side of the contents in general.

Click here. Click here. Click here.

While argument of reach and scale can be posited in digital’s defence, the question must be asked, at what cost if the most compelling metric is either one of time or money, the two things most often in shortest supply? From an acquisition perspective, either of commerce or engagement, search, time and time again proves and provides better insight and efficiencies, well beyond “last click” metrics.

The argument of reach also pales in concert with size. By search standards, impressions (reach) are easily the worst standard of measurement. It’s like calling a classified ad tucked into the back pages of a newspaper an impression. And I would argue the same goes for buttons and banners that are not page dominant or homepage takeovers. An IAB standard banner is not a tv commercial or a full page glossy fashion mag image, it doesn’t take the viewer or their imagination hostage. It, in short, does not make an impression.

And if your digital brand manager is leading with impressions as a driving search metric, move them off the business. Immediately. And yet, from a digital perspective, impressions are thought to be the holy grail. Really? Shouldn’t engagement be the bare minimum requirement? Does the audience engage with your content? Whether content defined as a banner (click) or site content (click-through).

In closing, is it not a little telling that Google, a search company, leads the Internet pack from a stock market POV? Or Apple – sans Flash.

The merger of display and search with accountability to content analysis and metrics is on the near horizon and digital brand managers who continue to allow digital, unexamined and without accountability, to lead the charge, over search, have much to lose when it does.

Have a good one.

Shane Wagg
@searchtactix

For all you businesses out there who are having call centers field customer complaints, you MAY be missing out on the bigger picture.

Being in Toronto, call centers are a plenty and continually competing with each other on a regular basis for coveted awards, such as the CAM-X award for call center excellence and distinction throughout North America. Of course this is an amazing accolade and helps guide potential clients to ethical call centers to do business with. Wouldn’t it be great if YOUR call center was not only a CAM-X award winner year after year, but also a revenue stream for your business?

What if instead of having your call center politely rushing through your customer complaint calls, you empowered them not only with the ability to resolve the complaint, but also to upsell or cross sell your product or service once the complaint has been resolved?

There is a great article on Adage called “Why Marketers are Turning Call Centers Into Profit Centers” which provides some great insights around selling to that cranky caller. The article also goes on to talk about the necessary shift in thinking that will need to go along with this. For example, call duration will no longer be the metric used to measure call success simply by how quickly the call can be ended, but instead on the ROI of generated income while using the call center services. With the added functionality of becoming a sales channel, call duration will need to increase to resolve the issue, calm the caller, and then woo them with products or services that will give them that product or service they need to make life better.

Just something to think about.

Cheers!

Doug Gebhardt

It’s timely because it’s a dialogue we’ve been having with more than one client. With varying degrees of success.

Without a brief, projects lack scope, depth, objectives and, on occasion, common sense. Without a brief, projects require more time to a) get to the most basic of delivery points and to b) get to the endless, neither required, nor relevant revisions ultimating required because the process wasn’t designed by brief, but by a two sentence email, the last sentence being: If I could get that by EOD tomorrow, that’d be great! (Always EOD – as though the EOD acronym is the defining moment of the ask.)

Really?!?!

So, we’ve introduced a brief. And in the process we’ve discovered that not only do briefs already exist, but in some instances, they’re search marketing specific briefs.

That in itself is illuminating and helps to inform us of client search marketing knowledge on a 1-10 continuum. And generally, we’re lucky if we can make it beyond a “2″. Ouch.

In a perfect world, those overseeing search from a brand perspective, should be certified. The engines demand it of agencies, why not demand it brand side of those who manage search marketing agency relationships?

So, we’ve introduced a search marketing brief process which takes into account brand manager search knowledge. Search, it would seem, is the only marketing discipline where we agree to be set up for failure.

Brand managers who know nothing insist on full campaign builds within 24-48 hours without so much as a web site, or the most basic knowledge of competitor presence. And we say yes, explicitly and knowingly agreeing to fail because we’re too afraid to say “no” or, we’re not allowed to say “no” because brand champions insist on selling a bad strategy up the chain.

Imagine turning a radio commercial around for EOD without a script, to say nothing of a production house. A brochure, without imagery? A tv commercial without a script or a production house? A web site without code? A store without product?

A briefing meeting, before the brief, allows and enables us to assess the searchscape, from who’s championing to who’s managing, who’s reporting, and to what measures or objectives. It also allows us to manage timlines.

Tyically, a search marketing strategy will require briefing, strategy, creative and production timelines. Oh, right. A functioning web site also helps.

“Just do it” may work for athletic brands, but for a search strategy, not so much.

Have a good one.

~ Shane Wagg

We’ve seen limited growth in organic results, but continuing growth from PPC. We’ve also seen a number of surprising results as we follow the metrics through the buy, from cost efficiencies on a PPC basis, to engagement metrics off the back-end and in some instances considerably better conversion metrics.

Here’s what we haven’t seen. Scale. And if you talk to anyone in search at Yahoo or Bing, they know it. But they don’t seem to know what to do about it. Few planners seem interested in the story, content to content themselves with the easy way out.

But you have to sit back, have a sip of coffee and ask yourself: Is scale always necessary and the only real requirement behind a search marketing plan? (If you answered yes, take a moment to leave now, you’ve found the easy way out.)

At the top end of search media spends, it’s not unusual for us to find ourselves back at the table with our hand out looking not unlike some waif from the cast of a Victor Hugo novel. “Please, sir, a little more would make us less miserable.” And at the lower end of search media spends, we have local marketers in market barely long enough to see if they’re business name is spelled correctly. (Marissa Mayer doth have her work cut out for her.)

In each case, scale does not a thing for them and frankly, more for their competitors who can afford to maintain a sustained market presence. There is no scale to speak of when you’re out of the market by 9 AM. There’s no scale to speak of when you’ve allocated an ANNUAL budget to run from 5 to 5:30 PM but only on Saturdays in June when the streetlight on the corner where you live is red. And while there is more opportunity that you’ve ever fathomed, at the end of the day, (Or frankly, at the beginning…) there’s no market presence to speak of when your ads are simply not in the market.

As a local marketer, I would have to be looking at all search opportunities to assess the best opportunity. But more often than not, I frankly lack the resources, or the knowledge to know what’s spin and what’s real. (Spin is when your rep promises you a local market campaign but doesn’t tell you how competitive your market really is and that you’re $20 per day budget warrants only 3 clicks in your $6 cpc market. And those other two dollars? Well, those are saved for the times when you call to ask how the campaign is going and they show you by getting you to type your own business name. PS…. those clicks $.06.)

Take that same $20 and move it onto another engine where you might pay $4. Still cost prohibitive but your reach is immediately extended by 40% which necessarily increases your conversion likelihood.

Suddenly you look like you’ve struck gold.

Google is trying to mine the small business market in Canada with free websites and strategic business consultation. Canada Post to a degree with their commerce venture, and Yellow Pages with their 360 solution.

Solutions for small business. Perhaps. But it’s not so much the solution that’s required as the budget. Or the proof.

Doing more with less.

Bing! Why that’s exactly the same durn sound an idea makes just before you slap your forehead at the obviousness of it.

Have a good one.

~ Shane Wagg