Feb
19th

Oneupweb : Word Of Mouth ROI And Brand Equity

Posted by Vern on February 19, 2010 at 9:58 am

Today’s Analytic Packages Are Creating False Hope That All Online Interactions Are Attributable.

Blame it on Google Analytics, Omniture or even WebTrends for that matter. The perceived ease in which we track online marketing data has created unrealistic expectations in the minds of online marketers. Don’t get me wrong, many online marketing activities have a measurable spend and corresponding sales value. You spend $0.55 for a click on your Google PPC ad that results in a sale of $12.00. At its very basic level your ROI is $12.00/$0.55=2,181%. That sale can be attributed to that particular ad and keyword.

When the only game in town was PPC on Google and Yahoo, attribution was pretty cut and dry. We became programmed to the certainty that sales/spend=measure of success. It was so easy to assume that we could apply the same model to other online marketing. This is where the digital marketing analysis picture begins to get cloudy. If you’re running PPC along with an ongoing SEO effort, you may argue that attribution is precise. Well, what about ad impressions (not clicks)? Maybe the searcher you’re tracking post-click viewed multiple SERPs, saw many variations of PPC ads along with your organic listings and finally clicked on the 10th variation. Since you can’t attribute that sale to impressions, how do you really know what induced the sale?

Add social digital marketing and attribution becomes almost impossible. Social digital marketing is essentially 21st century “word of mouth.” Oneupweb does a wonderful job of tracking interactions across all digital channels. Heck—PodTractor, Oneupweb’s podcast tracking system, was ground-breaking in 2006 and to this day, remains unmatched in its functionality. Our Twitter and Facebook reporting documents interactions in these two venues like no other analytics available. But how do you track/document the conversation between two friends who “saw it on Facebook” or “looked it up on Google” that resulted in direct navigation to your website for a purchase? You can’t.

Every dollar a CMO spends online can generate word of mouth marketing and is an investment in building brand equity. This concept is very often lost in the buzz of attribution. We’ve become slaves to micro-managing ROI at the keyword level, never giving credit to that SEO project or Twitter effort in adding to brand equity and building market share.

I encourage you to take a step back and look at your marketing budget as a vehicle to drive word of mouth, increase brand equity and improve total sales. Take off the blinders. Stop concentrating on ROI by keyword and know that whatever advertising and marketing you’re doing online can’t be totally compartmentalized. Get back to the simple ROI calculation: $25,000,000 in sales/ $1,000,000 in online spend = kick ass results, no matter where that money was spent.

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Feb
8th

Oneupweb : Try Not To Get Lost Out There

Posted by Nick on February 8, 2010 at 10:02 am

I am, as my sister recently called me, a “Lost Junkie.” You know, that television show about a plane crash on a mysterious island full of whispers, monsters and all sorts of other crazy stuff. With the recent start of the show’s final season, I’ve switched back into full addiction mode, which has naturally caused my pondering of the show to cross over into my day-to-day thinking about digital marketing. Specifically, it got me thinking about marketing strategies as a whole, which led to the following idea:

When it comes to your marketing strategy, don’t get stuck on an island.

Yes, it sounds cheesy, but hear me out. What I’m basically saying is that from time to time it pays to step back and take a look at the big picture. Take a look at your marketing strategy and ask yourself what’s working, what’s not and whether there any areas of your business that could benefit from additional marketing efforts. There are a variety of exciting, new marketing methods available to businesses today, but not everyone is utilizing these channels to reach their existing and potential audiences.

So what do I mean when I say, “Don’t get stuck on an island”? I’m talking about not being afraid to try new marketing initiatives and not focusing so much on a single marketing effort. Sure, a single method might be working like gangbusters for you and that’s great. You should continue to pursue it. Just don’t be afraid to try something new. Perhaps you’ve already established your business in its specific natural search space. But have you thought about branching out into social media? Maybe you’ve promoted your business through PPC for years and have never given much thought to your site’s natural presence in the engines, or the site’s design and how it might be affecting your user experience. Some SEO or design work might be just the thing you need to establish yourself in the natural space.

The overall lesson here is that there’s a lot of opportunity out there. While your current efforts might be working great, if you don’t take some time every once in a while to look at your total marketing strategy, you may find that you’ve also become stranded on a veritable marketing-island. And monsters or not, that sounds a little scary to me.

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Jun
10th

SEO Haiku with a Touch of PPC

Posted by admin on June 10, 2008 at 7:56 am

In a previous post, I had the pleasure of presenting you with SEO themed haiku.

Since I had so much fun writing that post, I knew exactly what to write when I found out it was once again my turn to post on StraightUpSearch.

While the haiku found in my prior post focused mostly on social media and natural search engine optimization, I thought it would be fun to diversify and focus on paid search this time.

So without further adieu, I present you to you, SEO Haiku with a PPC theme. I truly hope you enjoy!

analyze metrics
google, msn, yahoo…
who performs the best?

exact match, broad match…
paid search terminology
paid survival guide,

latent conversions!
I must not forget your clicks;
you still may come through.

method to madness -
marketing analytics
lights my campaign’s path.

trademark infringement,
I am I! You are not I!
our tools can protect,

for this last one, a couple of my talented coworkers wanted in on the fun, so I proudly present some coworker contributed haiku:

wants and needs you search
ad copy lures you to site
then I sell you things

Again, as with last time, I invite you to share in the creativity by commenting with your own original SEO or SEM inspired haiku!

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Jun
6th

Yahoo! Sponsored Search Mirroring Google AdWords?

Posted by admin on June 6, 2006 at 9:44 am

Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search platform is getting a makeover, a makeover that should allow paid search advertisers to utilize features currently offered in Google AdWords. The makeover isn’t scheduled to launch until this fall, but it already seems to be slowing down Yahoo!’s advertiser interface; I won’t get into that now though.

With Google holding the title of reigning champ of search engines, it’s no surprise that other search engines are trying to chip away at Google’s share of the pie. But is Yahoo! going as far as mirroring the reigning champ’s search platform? You be the judge.

According to a company announcement, the new Yahoo! Sponsored Search is going to offer fast ad activation. Advertisers will no longer have to wait anywhere from 1-3 days for ads to go through the editorial process; they will go online within minutes. Hmm, sounds a little like Google AdWords to me.

With the new Yahoo! Sponsored Search, advertisers will also be able to test multiple versions of ads against each other. And yes, you can choose to show the ad that performs best more frequently. Need I say who else offers this feature?

Yahoo! also plans to offer Geo-Targeting and Campaign Budgeting for greater control over your advertising dollars. Yahoo will even help advertisers forecast how much money to spend based on the keywords they’re bidding on. Very original.

And finally, Yahoo! will offer a Quality Index for each ad to help advertisers understand how well an ad is performing against a competitor’s paid listing.

To be completely honest I am excited for these changes; I feel that the new Yahoo! Sponsored Search platform will make it easier to effectively manage paid search accounts, but only time will really tell. I just hope that Yahoo! works out whatever kinks are making its interface perform so slow before the new sponsored search launch this fall. And you tell me, is Yahoo! sounding a little too similar to its rival?

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May
31st

1 in 2? I Need Better Odds Than That!

Posted by Vern on May 31, 2006 at 3:33 pm

According to a recent Nilesen/Netratings Inc. analysis, Google’s market share is now 50%. That’s huge! One out of every two searches is a Google search. If you’re in the paid search marketing game, my advice might be to keep your search marketing simple and advertise only on Google. You’ll be exposed to half of all search traffic.

One out of two is great odds. How can you go wrong with a strategy like that? Why even bother advertising on any other search engine when success is practically guaranteed? We can look to the current NHL Stanley Cup playoffs for the answer.

Being from Michigan and a hockey fan, of course I root for the Detroit Red Wings. The Wings were the best team in the NHL during the regular season and expectations were running high for another championship. The Red Wing franchise is a juggernaut. Great ownership, well funded, a huge fan base, and arguably the most talented players in the game. A real power play!

If you follow the NHL you know it all went terribly wrong for the Wings in the playoffs this year. They drew the lowly Edmonton Oilers, the #8 seed, in the first round. Pundits predicted a sweep for the heavily favored Detroit squad. Well guess what? Detroit lost to Edmonton in the first round. The Wings are now practicing chip shots and doing yard work instead of heading to the Stanley Cups finals like the Oilers.

How could this have happened to the vaunted Red Wings? They ran up against a team of young, motivated, well-coached, never-say-die players with a burning desire to beat the best. That sounds like a new player in the SEM game to me.

Microsoft AdCenter has Google in its sights and aims to chip away at Google’s audience share and someday dominate the paid search market. Google, Yahoo, Ask, and now more than ever, Microsoft are the significant players in search marketing as I see it. Sure Google dominates, but it needs to react to the competition and improve its performance to stay #1. Underestimating the threat of competition, especially a young upstart with a heritage of success, could prove fatal.

A word of advice to paid search marketing practitioners: maximize your results by using the other teams in search as well as Google. Improve your odds by betting on more competitors than the favorite – Great advice in search engine marketing or hockey. Come to think of it, how’s Barbaro feeling these days, eh?

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