THE MAGAZINE FOR ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGIES
Visibility www.visibilitymagazine.com
Summer 2013 | $9.95
By David Rodnitzky
Creating a Social Media Substance Strategy By John Broadbent
Sharing Intellectual Property in Search Marketing By Rob Laporte
Important Google Analytics Metrics to Monitor By Roman Viliavin
departments
06 Editor’s Note
Read all about the latest happenings with this growing magazine.
08 Featured CEO: Rob Laporte
Get to know Rob Laporte, founder and CEO of DISC Inc., and find out how he went from being a literature student to head of a search marketing firm.
12 Quarterly Round-Up
Snapshots of all that is happening in the world of internet marketing. Get the scoop on all the news and views in the world of internet marketing. Latest news related to products, tools and strategies being unveiled.
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22 Legal Corner
Travis Crabtree looks into the different legal issues to do with the ever-changing world of online marketing.
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37 Product Review: Personify Live
Personify Live is a software worth reading more about. Find out more about how this software can add more life to your presentations.
47 Vendor Spotlight: iAquire
As an emerging full service SEO company, we take a look at iAquire in this edition’s Vendor Spotlight.
47 60 Upcoming Conferences
A guide to upcoming internet marketing related conferences around the globe. At these conferences, you can listen to the insightful experiences of the leading names from the internet marketing industry.
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features
13 Creating a Social Media Substance Strategy
Social Media is powerful but its power needs to be unleashed in a strategic manner so as to create a substantial impact, says John Broadbent.
31 Online Marketing: Simplify and Optimize in Complex (and Booming!) Times David Rodnitzky talks about why it’s both a good and a challenging time to be an online marketer and how to make the best of these times.
13 34 Sharing Intellectual Property in Search Marketing: Why (Not) and How (Much) Is sharing always good? Rob Laporte looks into the pros and cons of search marketing agencies sharing intellectual property with clients.
52 Why Brands Should Care About Social Search Optimization
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Christy Belden makes a compelling pitch for integrating social media and search marketing.
58 Important Google Analytics Metrics to Monitor
Roman Viliavin explores how Google Analytics can be used to as a smart monitoring tool to make the most of your website.
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editor ’ s note Hello Readers! I hope all of you have had as good a year as I have so far. There is a lot to share and I am sure you will find this edition of the Visibility Magazine really interesting. We have a wide variety of articles, news updates, opinion pieces, and reviews. Suffice to say, if what you want is a crisp snapshot of the latest happenings in the world of online marketing, this edition will have it all for you. The hot topic for everyone this year has been mobile marketing. But it seems enough has not been said about everything there is to be said about this global phenomenon. If the craze a few years ago was online marketing, then the craze now has been bundled into mobile phones. Everywhere you look people are busy with the latest apps and gadgets related to mobile phones. It would be interesting to wait and watch to see what new trends related to mobile marketing come up this year. Watch this space for more! As promised, we have lined up exciting articles for you. To give you a taste of what we have in store for you, some of the titles are “Why Brands Should Care About Social Search Optimization” by Christy Belden; “Online Marketing: Simplify and Optimize in Complex (and Booming!) Times” by David Rodnitzky; “Creating a Social Media Substance Strategy” by John Broadbent; “Sharing Intellectual Property in Search Marketing: Why (Not) and How (Much)” by Rob Laporte; and “Important Google Analytics Metrics to Monitor” by Roman Viliavin. As always we would love to hear from you so don’t forget to write in to us with your thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations. We look forward to hearing from you and to get your submissions.
Visibility EDITOR Julie Lynn EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jeev Trika SENIOR PROJECT EDITOR Neeraj Kumar ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR Cameron Kriss STAFF WRITER Ajay Govind SENIOR DESIGNER Armando Rangel CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Christy Belden | LeapFrog Interactive Jamie Birch | JEB Commerce John Broadbent | Netmark Diane Buzzeo | Ability Commerce Ray Carboni | Web Talent Marketing Malcolm Cowley | Performance Horizon Group Rudy DeFelice | Bizinate.com JoAnna Dettmann & Kaysha Kalkofen | tSunel Katie Fetting | Portent Lauren Grice | Custard Zach Hoffman | Exults, Inc.
Enjoy!
Rob Laporte | DISC, Inc.
Julie Lynn Editor Visibility Magazine
Michael Prichard | WillowTree Apps David Rodnitzky | PPC Associates David Rush | Evzdrop Roman Viliavin | Promodo SEM Company Robert Walker | Yieldkit Visit us at WWW.VISIBILITYMAGAZINE.COM Mailing Address: P.O Box 1073, Plymouth, IN 46563 Editorial Department Phone: 800-380-4165 Editorial Department Fax: 888-559-8909 Letters to the Editor: editor@visibilitymagazine.com Visibility Magazine, LLC SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INDIRECT DAMAGES RESULTING FROM YOUR ACCESS TO, OR USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THE MAGAZINE AND THE MAGAZINE CONTENT, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY. Visibility Magazine, LLC WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY MISPRINTS.
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Accelerating the Sales and Marketing Funnel
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featured ceo
Rob Laporte
CEO, DISC, Inc.
R
ob Laporte is founder and CEO of DISC Inc., a search marketing firm since 1997 (www.2disc.com). After five years working in marketing, he was writing his Ph.D. dissertation on Shakespeare when one day in early ’97 he read Danny Sullivan’s new SearchEngineWatch.com (before Danny sold it and started SearchEngineLand.com). It all clicked. He was certain that search marketing would become huge and reward his long education, so he switched tracks to become one of the industry’s pioneers.
Tell us about your background and your role in the company
My college and post-graduate studies blended good planning and good luck: a marketing minor, five years working in marketing, and my English literature BA and MA were all to coincide with that nexus of marketing and linguistics called search engines. The terrible market for humanities professors in the late ‘90s had already moved me in 1995 to start “DISC: The Document Imaging & Scanning Company,” which did what the name says. In 1996 I helped produce the UMass English Department’s first website. In early ’97 I placed an ad in the print Yellow Pages’ first year of the category for website design. On the first day the yellow page book was distributed, I got a call from a company that became my first client. Amazingly, the website I built for them--with search engine optimization--still serves the company virtually unchanged (as of this writing) though under new ownership: www.thermosets.com. This website may be the only one in the world that was search engine optimized in 1997 without alterations since, while still ranking highly 16 years later. DISC went on to serve hundreds of clients of all types. My first full-time employee in 1998 was Jessie Stricchiola, CEO of Alchemist Media and co-author of the best SEO book, The Art of SEO. We enjoyed a great year together before she moved to California to work for a hot start-up and in a few years launch her own
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search marketing firm, AlchemistMedia.com. Over the years, I managed to attract equally talented employees who helped DISC prosper.
What are your main services?
SEO: All aspects, with special expertise in technical SEO and CMS-SEO. PPC: DISC’s full partner in the firm, Dale Webb, has 10 years continuous experience in PPC and web development and usability. Conversion Rate Optimization: We’ve compiled all the dos and don’t from the
greats in this field, and we apply the findings of neuroscience. ROI Projection and Tracking: Executives’ growing need to prioritize the plethora of web marketing options moved me to create simple yet powerful spreadsheet systems for projecting and tracking the ROI of all web marketing channels. Social Media Marketing: We’ve found that planning is the best use of our expertise here, while detailed implementation is generally best done by clients in-house.
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Training: DISC believes in passing as much intellectual capital to clients as is practical and safe for them to use (see my article in this edition, “Sharing Intellectual Property in Search Marketing: Why (Not) and How (Much).” Website Development: DISC applies our deep knowledge of usability and CMS-SEO to coding for PCs, smartphones, and tablets.
What makes your firm different from other companies competing in your industry?
Just as the best hip replacement surgeons have long eschewed metal-on-metal devices because of evidence of severe health risks recently made public, so too the best SEM firms do more or less the same things. Logic applied to the available evidence leads to the same conclusions. However, unlike in medicine, anyone can claim to be a “doctor” of SEM, so many firms don’t do what the best ones do. DISC differs from that under-qualified majority in that our core services are done only by highly qualified people with over seven years experience and a propensity to base all decisions on sound
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research. This research orientation emerges in part from my academic background, and it minimizes client risk.
question to ask is: “Who, exactly, in your firm will do the work on our account, and what are his or her background, successes, and client references?
Another difference is that, while we have prepackaged services that are often needed, we tailor solutions based on each client’s unique needs and on our proprietary system for prioritizing by ROI.
What are some of the myths in your field?
The bottom line is that DISC specializes in trust. Trust is earned by proof--the researched proof behind all choices, and the proof in results.
Tell us more about your firm’s success story
The key to DISC’s success is consistently delivering positive ROI within one year, usually much sooner. According to you, what are the most important questions a potential customer should ask a company before choosing a vendor like you? You want to know the qualifications and successes of the doctor holding the scalpel over your anesthetized body. So the most important
There are many myths about tactics that work or don’t, but the biggest overarching myth is that one can learn and do successful search marketing within a minority of one’s work responsibilities. Although some jobs, like SEO copywriting, can be learned quickly enough, most can’t be, especially in technical SEO and keyword research. In PPC, many businesses put a toe in the water, and they lose the toe, or a whole leg, because the most profitable strategies emerge from proficiency with advanced tools and tactics. It will be several years if ever when economical software and ebooks can replace the highly trained professional.
How do you develop your skills in this continuously changing environment?
We at DISC read the best web properties, magazines, and books. We also do in-house research, as when we recently compared the projections of several popular keyword research tools in relation to each other and to actual data from a major client’s Google Analytics. We
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attend conferences too, though less than in our early and middle years.
What do you see as the future of the industry? What will be the challenges? Do you anticipate any drastic changes? As the essential tools and tactics of search marketing become more numerous and intricate, the current trend of bifurcation between large and small business ROI will increase. (See my winter 2012 Visibility Magazine article, “The Hard Freakonomics of Search Marketing for Small businesses.”) The Freakonomic fact is that display systems and the human mind will engage only a few top results of a search within any channel, and in the developed economies the cost of attaining those few positions will continue to increase at a higher rate than the increase in web users. A problem that spiked both in the 2000 dot-com bust and in the great recession will continue during the “new normal” economy of permanent high unemployment in the Occident: people working in web development will strive to escape commodity pricing by fleeing to search and social marketing, producing many insufficiently trained consultants and agencies that hurt the reputation of the whole industry. The industry will still grow rapidly, but less rapidly than if there were a governing body like the AMA or ABA.
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Search marketing will continue to become a standard part of business schools’ curriculum, gradually producing more qualified workers. Social signals will continue to exert increasing influence on search engine positions. However, remember that nearly half of Americans believe the Earth is under 10,000 years old-the search engines will never depend entirely or even mostly on group “likes” to deliver sound information. Specialization will continue to increase. Already, it’s difficult for a dedicated SEO or PPC pro to master one of those fields, and nobody this side of Einstein can master both. A still nascent but soon to be huge field (one I’m exploring investing in) entails the automation of all web marketing according to current search trends and a website’s past performance. Imagine a website that automatically changes design, text, even products and services, in real time automatically as all relevant data is processed. There’s a long way to go here, and the larger corporations will prevail, widening the gulf between the have and have nots in web marketing. Slowing the increase of that widening gulf, search engines and agencies will continue
to find economical ways for small and local businesses to do OK search marketing. An emergent culture of loathing “too big to fail” may accelerate the trend of people seeking-both within and outside of search engines-smaller businesses to fulfill their needs.
Where do you see your firm in the next 5 years? What about you personally?
My ambitions for DISC have been relatively modest, in that I wanted no more than ten employees. However, I seek either a revenue sharing deal with a medium-sized client or to use our skills for a start-up, of which I’m exploring some options now. After I’ve retired in about a decade and passed DISC on to its senior partner Dale Webb, I wish to complete the book that some top scholars said could become a landmark in Shakespeare studies. For fun, I’d also like to dramatize in a novel or screenplay my decade or so of layman study of quantum cosmology and radical concepts of time. Having not had much of a home life after the age of 13, I wish to enjoy the humble pleasures of hearth and home in a stunning 1905 house on a hill I recently bought with my partner. In retirement, she and I will make the third floor and surrounding glades a wonderland for grandchildren. n
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quarterly round up Digital companies, print campaigns According to a report, and contrary to what one may believe in the world of social media, technology companies are increasing their spending on magazines by as high as 21.6 percent. The data released by the Publishers Information Bureau, includes hardware, software, devices, and telecom providers in the technology caterers.
The secret to making Playstation 4 a success Getting women to play games has been a major goal for all big businesses in the gaming industry. Clearly, the key to changing the dynamics was going to be in making the game more attractive to women.
women and that is quite an achievement. Sony realized that they would have to go beyond just having a pink console and they saw the solution in hiring more women to make the games.
Game development and distribution has never been easier with all the materials needed being so readily accessible. Be that as it may, the industry itself still remains largely homogenous. On average, there are more men making videos games than women.
About 71-percent of the audience for core games is male and the game changer is going to be to turn the focus on to unusual games that are not all about ‘shoot em up’ and would then attract women. Collaborations with smaller developers in whom Sony has heavily invested has also been a key reason for them being able to create this shift.
Today about, 47 percent of players are
Microsoft launched significant campaigns in the first quarter for software products, particularly for Windows 8. Other advertisers include Adobe and Samsung. Blackberry also made a big marketing push for the launch of Blackberry Z10 phone in the first quarter. This just goes to show that advertisers recognize that print still works and is particularly effective for building a strong relationship with a brand or complex piece of consumer technology.
A more secure afterlife, digitally speaking The modern internet may be one of the youngest technological innovations around but it’s definitely become an integral part of our lives. We are dependent on it in multiple ways and it dictates our lives in many ways. Which then brings up a very pertinent question, which people for obvious reasons overlook or at least don’t consciously think about. What happens to all our digital connections—all the data—after we are gone, when we die? They say, Google always has the answer and it does this time around also.
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Google’s new Inactive Account Manager allows users to specify what should happen to their data after a set period of time. After this fixed period the system either notifies your loved ones on how the account can be accessed or deletes all the data. This comes as good news for those amongst us who have been worried about the safety of their data after they are gone and definitely something to explore for those others who live their life without a thought about tomorrow.
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Creating a Social Media
Substance Strategy
By John Broadbent
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nce again, you find yourself at the largest annual conference for your industry. You’re there to glean deep insights from the thought leaders who are reshaping the way you and your competitors do business. But more importantly, you’re there to network with other like-minded professionals. You attend all the social functions, engaged in deep discussions that refine the way you think about your business. The conference is one of the most useful you’ve ever attended. At the final social event you’re discussing new ideas and strategies with a few of the brightest people you’ve ever met in your years attending these conventions. Suddenly, one of the vendors approaches your circle in their branded polo and appears to listen for a moment. Out of nowhere, he loudly interrupts your conversation with a sales pitch that’s only slightly relevant to the ideas you were discussing. “Who does this guy think he is?” you
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wonder. “We were having a great discussion until he showed up.” You listen politely, waiting for him to finish, so you can get back to your discussion. As the vendor begins wrapping up his pitch, he tops it off with some ludicrous raffle. He offers to enter each of you in a drawing to win two free plane tickets if you pass out a few of his brochures to your other connections. “The audacity!” you silently exclaim. “What makes these vendors think they have the right to peddle their crap here - let alone ask us to pass out their brochures?” Surprisingly, a few of your new connections take the bait and begin circulating this guy’s brochures throughout the room. You’re appalled by the situation. It has nearly ruined the whole evening. Believe it or not, most businesses are just like this vendor when it comes to their social media strategies. They hide their
people behind a branded “polo” profile, blast superficial sales pitches in digital cocktail parties, and try to generate interest in their brand with hype rather than substance. Too often, they focus on the number of likes, follows, +1’s, shares, and retweets than on true engagement with a qualified audience. Social media efforts that focus on superficial metrics and hype waste precious time and resources, while substance strategies generate meaningful interest and long-term relationships. Most companies want their social media marketing to have a significant impact on their business. To accomplish this, they must change the way they see social media. Their social strategy needs to be ingrained in how they operate their business. While many businesses are missing the mark, others are making a huge impact with social media. Great social strategies involve listening to, connecting with, and educating a targeted audience. Here are a few examples of businesses that have created social media substance strategies:
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Listen & Contribute on Twitter Often a company’s greatest asset is its people. One organization recognized this and decided to champion their employees as thought leaders. Each employee was asked to clearly state who they worked for on their own profile. They “tuned in” to hashtags (#) on Twitter during events, listened, and commented. Through Twitter they were able to “attend” every conference in their industry. The employees made insightful comments and built large audiences of followers. Potential clients began to see a trend that thought leadership seemed to originate from the same company. People wanted to hire the company because its employees were brilliant.
Create Connections via LinkedIn Not long ago, a service company was struggling with sales and retention. They determined that a few simple invitations to connect via LinkedIn could make all the difference to their clients. A plan was drafted and infused throughout the entire organization. Soon after salespeople qualified a lead, they sent an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. After a
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proposal had been sent to a prospect, the sales manager sent another invitation and asked if the prospect had any questions. Prospects felt important and signed up more readily. Once an agreement was signed, the service technician and her supervisor reached out to connect. A few months into the business relationship the president of the company also invited the client to connect and thanked them for their business. Clients had multiple points of contact to voice their concerns. They felt that the company really cared about them and they stayed around longer.
Educate with YouTube A software company recognized that training their customers was key to license renewals. Many of their customers needed repetitive training because of regular turnover. These training sessions also helped them identify bugs and new features. With development costs on the rise, the company wanted to automate their training. They created a YouTube channel with a series of training videos. They allowed their customers to comment on videos and share them with new employees.
License renewals began to increase and new sales came more rapidly. Their efforts had produced a byproduct - training videos were being viewed like demos. Future customers saw the interactions between the software company and its customers. They were sold on the product and the customer service.
Trade Hype for Substance In order to create a social media substance strategy, businesses need to take a step back and evaluate their social media efforts. They should determine how to engage a qualified audience in meaningful discussions. In all of these cases, the businesses looked at their own needs first and used a social platform to solve their problems. They didn’t just employ someone to increase their followers and likes. They used social media in the day-to-day operations of their business. It became part of their company identity and culture. n
John Broadbent works with businesses and brands to infuse value propositions throughout their organizations. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Netmark.com, an internet marketing agency located in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
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content strategy
Why Tom Cruise Should Be Your Content Strategist
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hen he’s not streaking through the Danger Zone on a Mission Impossible, the world’s biggest movie star veers Far and Away from his core competency, occasionally taking a mega-risk with his Eyes Wide Shut. Although it might seem odd, Tom Cruise makes for a compelling model of how to run a brand. While his trademark relates to an über-successful motion picture career, businesses can learn great lessons about reputation management and content strategy from Tom’s extensive film history. And just what is the “content strategy” of Tom Cruise’s career? It’s fairly simple. Mr. Cruise delivers to his core audience while attracting new fans with moderately risky creative choices, still keeping himself fresh for critics and colleagues with strategic, iconoclastic roles that challenge the core Cruise brand. Like Tom Cruise, a brand must manage its identity through choices in content. The days of the “EAT HERE” ad campaign are no more. With the prevalence of social media, TV advertising and paid content, there are too many alternatives. Like it or not, everyone is now in the content business. Brands must involve and evolve—or face the alternative: dissolve.
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The 70-20-10 Rule Defined
When preparing material and web content, companies need guidelines for developing their brand. One useful guiding principle for content is a simple 70-20-10 rule. A refinement of Coca Cola’s famous value and significance strategy, the 70-20-10 rule is a deliberate and thoughtful approach to content management and risk mitigation. The rule is as follows: 70 percent of content should be solid, standard and safe. Staples of the 70 percent include basic advice and how-to’s that are easily justified as supporting SEO and other efforts. This content most appeals to a broad audience. 20 percent of content should riff on the 70 percent but take some chances. This is the content that expands on the 70 percent content, but it may flirt with controversy, appeal to a new audience or otherwise push the limits. It may take a bit more effort, but it offers a higher potential payoff. 10 percent of content should be completely innovative. This content category includes things that have never been done that, if they work, could become part of the 70 or 20 percent. The 10 percent is characterized by heavy audience interaction and plenty of risk. Most
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of the 10 percent will fail, but that doesn’t mean content strategists should be discouraged. Any innovative and successful content strategy needs this element of risk to thrive.
Applying the Rule to Tom Cruise
The Benefits Outweigh the Risks
Risk mitigation doesn’t mean to avoid any risky behavior. Rather, it means to effectively manage risk by deciding when to back off and when to come at content development with a strong and risky approach.
70 percent of his roles represent The Movie Star. The Tom Cruise™ brand: That cocky, loveable scoundrel who is exciting and risky, but inevitably on the side of right. These Cruise personas – Maverick in “Top Gun,” Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible” – often have tragic backstories that enable us to look past their initial conceit, waiting for a denouement that always proves the Cruise character to be heroic, self-sacrificing and truly good.
For example, the role of Les Grossman in “Tropic Thunder” saved Tom Cruise after the notorious couch-jumping incident. The performance made him accessible; it showed people he could laugh at himself. Now they’re talking about developing a Les Grossman movie. After trying and succeeding in that role, Les Grossman no longer represents 10 percent content for Mr. Cruise.
20 percent of his roles represent The Actor. Tom is still Tom – generally looks like him, sounds like him, acts like him – but he’s taking a chance. Maybe it’s a period film like “The Last Samurai,” or working in an unfamiliar genre like “Minority Report” or spending half the movie in a mask (“Vanilla Sky”). Tom does these films both to challenge himself and to increase his “brand reach” to various demographics who may find his 70 percent films cloying or predictable.
The most successful 10 percent content can (and should) be replicated, joining the 20 percent, and sometimes even the 70 percent.
10 percent of his roles represent The Iconoclast. Tom isn’t Tom. In fact, Tom is trying to tear down Tom Cruise™. Here’s where the “art” happens. He takes big risks like ranting about his manhood in “Born on the Fourth of July,” or playing a misogynistic, manipulative motivational speaker in “Magnolia.” Both of those films landed him Oscar nominations, so while there is a huge upside to 10 percent content, but the downside is just as large. This also is where he could fall on his face (see “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Rock of Ages”… on second thought, don’t).
The lessons brands can learn from Tom Cruise’s career and the 70-2010 rule is to take risks occasionally -- not foolishly, but strategically, deliberately, measurably. The audience gets bored of the same old content. Let Tom Cruise be an example for content strategy, or understand that the brand will never attain A-list status. Instead, the brand and company will be relegated to the direct-to-video shelf. n
Katie L. Fetting is the Senior Copywriter at Portent, a Seattle-based, full service Internet marketing company. She has more than 10 years of experience in copywriting, SEO, media and the movie industry.
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crm strategy
How to Create an Effective Location-Based CRM Strategy
I
t’s no secret that competition to win and retain customers is becoming fiercer than ever. More and more businesses are looking for new ways to engage customers and deepen relationships with their patrons through digital marketing. As a result, the number of loyalty programs is growing at a rapid pace. Although these programs can be beneficial and rewarding in the short term, customers are becoming overwhelmed and numb to them. The key to engaging customers and strengthening relationships is to communicate with them while they are in the midst of an experience at your location. In other words, the use of location-based technology as part of the overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy creates an opportunity for real-time communication between businesses and customers where and when it matters most – while customers are still at the venue. The result provides businesses with the ability to resolve issues in real time, recognize loyal customers and deepen relationships to deliver more optimal customer service, and identify new ambassadors capable of amplifying the brand. As location-based CRM strategies are becoming more refined, digital marketers are seeing the benefits. In fact, an eMarketer study reported that the number of businesses taking advantage of location-based mobile apps is expected to nearly double from 2011 to 2012. Part of the challenge when creating an effective mobile CRM solution is differentiating it from existing channels, such as Twitter. Many available solutions do not have location requirements built in because they fear this will restrict the number of data points. However, it actually further commoditizes a limited solution. It is important for businesses to recognize that less is often more when applying location restrictions to content creation. The resulting content can be much more compelling. In order to create a mutually beneficial interaction, businesses need to give the consumer control over when and where they want to initiate dialogue. Many existing location-based mobile applications rely on hovering above the user and pushing out communications when they are not necessarily wanted. This contradicts the spirit of CRM as it invades a customer’s space while he or she is trying to experience the brand. On the other hand, when we give control to the customer but make the process of communicating much simpler, more reliable and provide proper privacy controls, their willingness to share opinions is much greater. Layer on top of this a back-and-forth mechanism to resolve real-time issues, and customers will feel like they have a new voice of impact with the business. When evaluating a location-based CRM solution, it is important to keep your customer’s privacy top-of-mind. Here are four tips that will help to ensure customers feel their privacy is respected:
Create content strategically. A cardinal sin of location-based marketing is blasting out information that is irrelevant. Customers find it annoying, and in some cases it can alienate
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them. Make sure the content you are sharing with customers is appropriate. For example, if a customer is wrapping up dinner at local restaurant, a user-initiated real-time reward for a free after-dinner drink may be more suitable than a generic coupon good for their next visit.
Allow the customer to remain anonymous. Sometimes customers are not comfortable sharing their names. Good location verification solutions will allow customers to share insight yet remain anonymous, as their location still gives them a credible voice.
Let the user choose when (or when not) to receive communications. Look into mobile CRM solutions that allow customers to “pull” information and not only receive push notifications. This solution enables the more guarded consumer to be engaged, but on their own terms.
Let the customer initiate location-verification. Consumers need to feel comfortable about sharing their location with brands. Let them decide when they would like to be location-verified. Once a user feels that his or her privacy has been invaded, it is hard to win back that trust. Play it safe and give them options from the start. Customers naturally experience something each time they visit your establishment. Many existing review platforms and survey methodologies are antiquated and make it difficult for customers to contribute quickly. Emotions change once the customer leaves a location. Without the ability to communicate on the spot, customers are not always sharing the most accurate and relevant information. In addition, sometimes consumers do not even know if their review will be filtered out by a mysterious algorithm. New solutions are emerging, like Evzdrop, that verify a customer’s location so that they become one of the ‘privileged’ few at that moment who contribute a voice of credibility and interest to businesses. In other words, by using location as a filter instead of using it to simply collect ‘check-in’ data, businesses are better able to better manage the enormous stream of information coming at them every day. This real-time communication between businesses and customers can be classified as “location-based CRM.” Using these new digital marketing tools, businesses can now immediately measure the impact on retention and brand affinity by implementing location as part of their overall solution. n
David Rush is the cofounder and CEO of Evzdrop. David has over 17 years of operational and sales leadership experience with early-stage companies in digital media, software, marketing research and technology services. Previously in his career, David held senior management and sales leadership roles at companies such as Akamai (AKAM), Gartner Group (IT), PostX (acquired by Cisco) and Iconoculture (acquired by Corporate Executive Board). In addition to these roles, he was an active consultant and advisor to several other early-stage businesses in social media analytics, financial services software and payments software. David also has experience in private equity and private banking, and has advised high net worth individuals and family offices on various alternative investments. David holds a BBA in Marketing from Southern Methodist University.
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site explorers
Open Site Explorer vs Majestic SEO Setting the Stage (Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!)
The two most commonly known site explorer providers are Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. Competitor backlink analysis tools, such as these, are fundamental for all SEO’s to know and master. Used for analyzing backlink profiles, they are also useful in finding new link opportunities. When choosing between these two tools, it is important to consider the purpose and desired result as each tool provides a unique experience. This post will “explore” the features and benefits of each as well as their individual limitations.
However, the free version of open site explorer limits the usability heavily by only showing the top 5 results and will not be sufficient for even the most junior of SEOs. The lowest subscription package starts at $79/month (which is good package for the advanced SEO) but also includes access to the rest of SEOMoz’s research tools such as On-Page Optimization, Keyword Analysis, SEO Web Crawler, Rank Tracking & Followerwonk. In the Blue Corner-Majestic SEO Majestic SEO’s index is larger than OSE…4 trillion unique URLs crawled and 382 trillion unique pages crawled as of this
post. Majestic’s index, while a bit more cumbersome than OSE, can come in handy if you are continuously checking on backlink profiles. It is split into 2 different categories, Historic and Fresh. The historic index contains all the data Majestic has for a particular URL indexed, while the fresh index contains data for a particular URL indexed from the last 60 days and is updated daily. The fresh index is convenient when link building and seeing what your competitors are currently doing. It provides great opportunities to cherry pick links and also insight on their link building strategies.
In the Red Corner-Open-Site Explorer
OSE is available from Seomoz.org. Robust in size, it has an index of more than 60 billion URLs and more than half a trillion links that update its index every month. OSE touts being free. The home page is focused and easy to use as it clearly shows where to enter the URL. Upon entering the URL to be examined, much can be done. Including: • Title & URL of Link Page • Link Anchor Text • Page Authority • Domain Authority • Filter to show all links, followed +301, no-followed, and only 301 • Filter to show external or internal links • Show Top Pages • Linking Domains • Anchor Text Distribution Open-Site Explorer also allows you the ability to compare various link metrics up to 5 different sites at one time. This tool offers a screenshot of where you stand against your competitors and breaks it down by page specific, subdomain and root domain including metrics: • Page Authority • Page MozRank (SEOMoz’s version of PageRank) • Page MozTrust • Internal & External Link Counts • Follow vs Nofollowed Links • Facebook, Twitter & Google+ Shares
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The indexes filter results by: • Redirects • Frames • No Follow • Images • Alt Text • AC Rank (Majestic’s version of Google’s PageRank) Another popular tool within Majestic SEO is Clique Hunter. Up to ten unique root domains within the same vertical can be entered and clique hunter will seek out domains that link to those multiple sites. It will then visually graph the representation of the top domains that the URLs are linking to. The data can then be easily exported to Excel. This is useful for exploring competitors’ backlinks. Majestic provides detailed reports of anchor text variation, landing page distribution, and branded versus non-branded terms. This is now more important than ever with Google’s latest and upcoming updates penalizing sites with unequal amounts of anchor text distributions. At first glance and for the novice, Majestic will seem a little intimidating and hard to navigate. I went through this
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same learning curve. However, it is time well spent given the index is constantly being updated and larger than OSE. Much like OSE, the free trial is limited profusely offering very little to a free user. The subscription package starts cheaper than OSE at $49/month. With the massive amounts of data, metrics, and reporting, as well as other resourceful tools for backlink analysis, Majestic SEO must be strongly considered for any SEO.
The Decision
These tools essentially offer the same service while packaging and distributing the data differently. For ease and quickness of use, I favor OSE. I always go to OSE first to get a quick glance of a competitor’s backlink profile. I can get a great amount of link opportunities off of OSE alone but if I feel that the competitor is “ripe for the picking” and consistently doing link building, I will take it to the next level with Majestic. If I see a backlink profile that is filled with a small handful, spammy or low quality links, I will not go to Majestic.
For an advanced analysis of your backlink profile, Majestic’s advanced reporting is absolutely necessary. The comprehensive intelligence Majestic has to offer gives you the ability to constantly modernize current SEO strategies by optimizing distributions of anchor text links, landing page distribution and branded versus nonbranded terms. Doing so will keep that “infamous” letter out of your Webmaster inbox and at the top of the SERPs. To be an effective SEO that desires efficiency as well as depth in analysis, both tools need to be used. One without the other will, no doubt, limit the effectiveness of the link analysis. Therefore, my decision, and the decision of all smart SEOs, is SPLIT…with both OSE and Majestic SEO declared victorious.
Ray Carboni is an Senior SEM Specialist at the Internet Marketing Company Web Talent. Based in central Pennsylvania, Web Talent Marketing offers search engine-marketing services to clients nationwide. For more information visit www. webtalentmarketing.com.
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legal corner
The Greatest Column About Deceptive Advertising Ever Written
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e continue our back to basics series—this time, as basic as “tell the truth.” I’ve never had a client come to me and say, “I would like to lie as much as possible in my advertising, can you help me?” It’s never that simple. Regardless of whether you are dealing with the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration or your local Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the general rule is advertising cannot be deceptive – which means it should be the whole truth and fair. In other words, you should not have to justify a claim with a lot of explanations not provided in your marketing. It’s a matter of context and not simply a matter of whether the statement, in a vacuum, is technically true. According to the FTC’s Deception Policy Statement, an ad is deceptive if it contains a statement - or omits information – that “is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances; and is ‘material’ - that is, important to a consumer’s decision to buy or use the product.” An ad is unfair if “it causes or is likely to cause substantial consumer injury which a consumer could not reasonably avoid and it is not outweighed by the benefit to consumers.” The FTC looks at advertisements from the reasonable consumer standpoint. If a scientist may understand the half-truth in your claim, but Aunt Myrtle surfing Facebook would be fooled by it, you might find trouble. The FTC uses the following example to illustrate their contextual, reasonable circumstances approach. If your mouthwash says it kills the germs that cause the cold, that may technically be true. It implies to the average consumer, however, that your mouthwash prevents colds even though you never said that. Therefore, you could be in trouble. Advertising agencies need to be wary as well. You can’t simply rely upon the client to be truthful because you can also be held liable depending on the extent of the agency’s participation in the preparation of the challenged ad and whether the agency knew or should have known that the ad included false or deceptive claims.
The Online Disclosure The same rules apply online and off. You can go to the Legal Corner archives online for special rules applicable to online endorsements.
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Written by: Travis Crabtree
One issue especially applicable to online marketing is the use of disclosures. Disclosures should be clear and conspicuous so consumers will see and understand them. Disclosures tucked away in a small link not clearly identified or on a completely separate page are not likely to be effective. There is no hard-and-fast rule about the size of font or location of the disclosure or link; the FTC generally asks whether a consumer is likely to find it. When using online disclosures, you should place disclosures near, but certainly on the same screen where the claim is. Links are acceptable as long as the link is obvious, appropriately labeled and easy to find. You should track the click-through rates on the disclosure in case you ever have to defend yourself. Make sure the disclosure is made prior to purchase and not hidden on the last page of a multi-step ordering process.
The Comparison – Four out of five clients say my lawyer can beat up your lawyer.* Comparative advertising is legal -- if truthful. You can generally use the competitor’s name and trademarks when making the comparison too. The Lanham Act, however, gives your competitor the right to sue if the comparative advertising is deceptive. If you are going to use comparative advertising and surveys, make sure the sample is large enough to be legitimate. Asking my five best clients and only my five best clients would not be a legitimate survey.
Case Studies
Pomegranate Juice makes you healthy, more attractive and just an overall better person. The makers of POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice claimed their products could treat, prevent or reduce the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction. While there was some evidence to arguably make such claims, the advertising was still considered deceptive by the FTC and later upheld by a judge. The FTC issued an order prohibiting POM from making any such health-related claims unless it is supported by two randomized, wellcontrolled, human clinical trials. POM Wonderful spent $35 million in peer-reviewed scientific research and relied upon “centuries of traditional medicine and plain common sense have taught us: antioxidant-rich pomegranate products are good for you.”
Do you have a legal question you want answered in the next column? Send your questions to legalcorner@visibilitymagazine.com.
Undoubtedly, there are some health benefits to pomegranate juice. Saying the juice helped “cheat death” may have taken things too far. In the ruling, the FTC examined the “net impression” of medical claims (see the mouthwash example above) even if POM did not expressly claim the juice was a cure all. The FTC also did not let POM off the hook for using such qualifiers as “preliminary,” “promising,” “may,” or “can” when it came to health claims.
I take it intravenously 2x a week and it has helped me tremendously. It enabled me to keep cancer at bay without the use of chemo and radiation…Thank you AMARC.” The FDA said “liking” the post was an endorsement of the message and therefore it was as if the company promoted the drug as a cure or treatment for cancer in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
When is a foot long not 12 inches?
If you make a claim, have the evidence to back it up which means a “reasonable basis” to make the claim including “competent and reliable scientific evidence” for health and safety claims.
As first publicized by a teenager in Australia through social media, Subway’s “footlongs” do not always measure up. Now, the lawyers have filed several pending state and federal class action cases. Even product names, as opposed to marketing campaigns, can bring on a challenge. If you are going to call something a footlong, it should predominantly be twelve inches long—even something like bread that by nature will not come out the same way every single time. The results of this case may depend on the percentage of footlongs not actually twelve inches and whether 11 and ¾” sandwiches are deceptive. On the other hand, Subway put lots of stock in branding the “footlongs,” which is a promise to the consumer they should keep.
The FDA is no Friend of Facebook and does not like “likes.” The FDA issued a Warning Letter in February to AMARC Enterprises because the company “liked” a Facebook post from one of its customers. The customer wrote: “PolyMVA has done wonders for me.
So, what can you do?
Stay subjective. Saying your drink tastes great or that this is the best column ever is something the consumers can judge for themselves. Opinions are not verifiable facts and rarely can create liability. Be careful online. Your “liking,” “re-tweeting,” or other actions can be an endorsement of someone else’s comments and violate regulatory rules that govern your industry. If you are in those industries, train the people running the official company channels. The Business Guidance section of the FTC’s website (www.ftc.gov) provides some good resources to stay out of trouble. n *comments made in jest and not subject to verification unless you ask my mother.
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affiliate marketing
Paid Placements in Affiliate Marketing – What are They and Why Should We Use It?
O
ne question that I get from our clients more often than any other is this: “What do we need to do to generate more sales?” If you are a service agency or ever worked for one, it’s a question you are very familiar with, and probably your most common one too. Affiliate strategies and tactics used to grow the success of any program are as varied as advertisers looking for them. They range from the simple, discounts, consumer offers, and more commissions to your partners, to the unique - such as working within the ‘home parties” industry. But one strategy that has proven itself successful time and time again is the use of paid placements. Haven’t heard of this yet? Allow me to guide you through it.
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What is a paid placement? Paid placements are, at their basic level, very much traditional advertising. Many affiliates supply their partners with a rate card that clearly lays out the advertising opportunities for advertisers and a fee associated with each. These placements may include home page real estate, email inclusions, solo emails sent to certain segments of the affiliate’s membership, special holiday sections, and even offline advertising available to affiliates. In addition to the commission you are providing the affiliate, you’ll be required to pay an additional placement fee, ranging from $50 - $90,000, depending on the affiliate, the placement, and the duration.
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I thought Affiliate Marketing was performance only?
Where do I start?
Affiliate Marketing is about performance. It still is a vibrant direct sales channel. But the industry has matured significantly since the wild-wild west days of the early 2000’s. Affiliates, like their advertiser counterparts, have gotten increasingly sophisticated with their analysis and knowing their potential earnings each day from the most sought after real estate. Some of that real estate has transformed into a “pay to play” model. The affiliates know what it earns and want to guarantee that amount.
It’s not nearly as scary as you might think. You most likely are already in contact with many of your affiliate partners, especially the top producing ones. So reach out to them first. Not engaging with them yet? Well now is a great time to start. Communication with your affiliates is the single most important thing you can be doing to increase success. Frankly it’s the foundation of any good and successful program.
Sounds harsh? Honestly, I think it can be a great thing for you. It guarantees your positioning on their site and comparative to your competitors, allows you to better forecast the traffic and sales from that particular partner, and allows you to focus your budget with laser-like effectiveness - not only on the affiliates that perform well, but on the prime spots that perform well with the affiliates that perform well. Knowing what exactly is working allows you to more effectively spend your budget. And isn’t better profitability performance why you got into affiliate marketing?
Outline a budget ahead of time. I suggest having at least $1,000 per month to spend over a three month period for your initial test. Try to work in multiple placements within three different affiliates. If you can expand your budget, I’d make sure to run your tests across multiple affiliate categories (niche, coupon, and loyalty for instance). This will give you more insight into what may work in the future.
How do I know I’ll get a positive ROI? Positive ROI is important, but will be difficult to gauge and/or predict before you start. You’ll need to test. And then you’ll need to test again. We tell our clients that there is “gold in them there hills” but you do have to mine for it. Your first paid placement may not work and your return is rarely guaranteed, if ever. So, how do you set yourself up for success before you start? Follow these guidelines: Start with the affiliates that you are currently successful with now Review their rate cards with them to identify where they feel you would be most successful. They know their customers better than you do, so glean as much information from them as possible. Negotiate your rates. Start small, don’t try to purchase tens of thousands of placements right off the bat. Test different placements and test multiple affiliates. Include an attractive consumer offer to ensure the best possible response. Design new creative for each placement. Use unique links for each placement so you can easily measure the revenue from that particular placement. All too often I see advertisers forget this step and end up not being able to identify which placement was successful.
Many affiliates will have rate cards ready and waiting for you and can get them to you quickly.
After you run your tests, you’ll need to evaluate, find out why one didn’t work and another did, and try to eliminate the underperforming placements and replicate the profitable ones.
What’s the potential of paid placements? The revenue potential of paid placements really depends on so many different things: the advertiser, the consumer offer, the affiliate, duration of the placement, overall strength of the affiliate, etc. Many of the placements we have done for clients ranging from skin care, to apparel, to technology and gear, increase revenue from that particular affiliate by more than 100%. We use paid placements extensively for many of our clients and have been able to generate up to and beyond $300k in incremental sales through this tactic alone. The potential is huge, but too many back away because the cost is up front. That is a huge change to relate to in the affiliate channel, and many advertisers simply aren’t able to make it.
What are the 3 keys to success with paid placements? It’s pretty simple, test, test, and retest. Rarely does your first one work, and rarely do you learn anything from one test. One data point reveals almost nothing. You need a series of tests, over time, and across affiliates, to identify a strategy that you can replicate and reap profits from. Good tests require great data; so don’t miss any of the steps I outlined. Nothing will be more frustrating than spending $1,000 and not being able to report the effectiveness of that campaign to senior management. Paid placements may be new to you, but we’ve been using them for almost as long as affiliate marketing has been around. Laser-like focus, effective use of your budget, increased incremental sales, and a more predictable sales forecast are some of the great reasons you need to look at this strategy to grow your sales in 2013. n
Jamie is the owner and principal of JEBCommerce. His 14 years of online marketing experience includes all facets of online marketing: email projects, paid search campaigns, customer retention programs, and much more. This wide range of disciplines has enabled Jamie to excel as a business leader and JEBCommerce to realize a great level of success for its clients, including winning the 2012 Rakuten Linkshare Affiliate Agency of the Year award..
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The Best SharePoint Training in the World!
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mobile marketing
Optimize and Localize: Five Essential Parts of a Mobile Strategy
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hat do Google Glass and Facebook Nearby have in common? If you don’t know the answer, or worse, you don’t know what either of them are, it’s time for you to take a serious look at the way your business uses local search and mobile optimization to attract customers. Why are local and mobile so important to your marketing strategy? Consider these facts: • According to Google, 50% of all searches have local intent, that is, the searcher is looking for a local business or product, and that percentage is growing. • In 2012, mobile searches for retail products more than doubled – up 132% from 2011. • 95% of smartphone users use their phones to find local information • 88% of them take action on their search within a day • 90% of smartphone searches trigger users to take an action such as purchasing a product or visiting a business • 79% of smartphone owners use their phones to compare prices, find product information and locate a local retailer
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• 88% of searches for the keyword “restaurants” come from mobile devices, but only 5% of independent restaurants and bars have websites optimized for mobile • The keyword “restaurants near me” gets more than 40,000 searches per month So here’s the question every business owner should consider: if someone standing outside your door searched for “restaurants near me” or “movie theaters near me,” would your business show up in their search results? If you’re not optimizing your business for mobile and local searches, chances are they won’t find you. Not sure how to mobilize and localize your business? Here are five vital factors that you need to incorporate into your local/mobile marketing strategy.
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• Facebook Recommend: In 2011, Facebook started letting users Recommend local businesses who list a street address on their Facebook Page. “Recommend This Place” lets you get positive testimonials and connections with Facebook users within 12 miles of your address. • Facebook Nearby: In December 2012, Facebook announced new functionality for the Nearby tab on Facebook mobile apps. Facebook users can now search for nearby businesses by category, connect directly to local businesses via mobile on Facebook, rate Nearby places and share Recommendations with friends. It’s powered by Likes, Recommendations, Check-ins and other Facebook data. • Facebook Graph Search: In January 2012, Facebook started rolling out Graph Search, which takes the game to a whole new level. Graph Search lets users search for things like “stores near me that sell pink dresses” or “restaurant recommended by my mother” – something you can’t do on just about any other platform.
A Mobile Website Mobilizing your website means more than just making it look good on a smaller screen. People use the Web differently on their mobile devices than they do on their desktops and laptops. Your mobile website needs to make it easy for your users to accomplish things, and that means mobile functionality. Visitors to your mobile business website should be able to touch, swipe, pinch and flick their way through your website and find everything they need. If they can’t, they’re likely to leave and find a business that’s more user-friendly.
Customer Research Before you implement anything, dive into research mode. Survey your customers and explore competitor’s websites to understand what your customers expect to find on your website. For example, research shows that when customers search for restaurants on mobile devices, they’re looking for menus and business hours above all else. The ability to order food from a mobile device may be important to you, but your customers want to know what you’re serving so they can decide whether to drop by for a meal. Retail shoppers want prices for comparisons, so give them to them.
Local Search Strategy If you build it, they will come – but only if they find it when they search. Mobile search optimization, local search optimization and local pay per click advertising can all play a key role in helping potential customers find you when they’re looking for a pizza, a fab new outfit or anything else you sell. PPC or mobile SEO should definitely play a role in your local mobile search strategy. Display advertising for mobile is a growing business. In 2012, mobile ads brought in $9.6 billion. Gartner Research projects that volume will grow by 18% in 2013, to $11.4 billion, and more than 400% by 2016, when the company predicts it will reach $24.5 billion. Businesses are finding that mobile advertising pays off, with higher conversion rates than online advertising for desktop search. Local SEO also plays a key role in bringing customers to local businesses. Maps, reviews and local contact information all play a part, along with long-tail keywords to help search engines classify and discover your site.
Social Integration Integrating your website and your mobile site with Facebook, Google+ and other social sharing sites makes your business more discoverable and gives you more tools for promoting it. Three new Facebook features have rolled out over the past several months that make it easier than ever to make sure your business is seen by local customers.
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Local Promotion The final link in your mobile marketing strategy is integration with local promotion. Use in-store marketing to encourage your customers to engage with your mobile website and help promote your business to their friends. Your promotions can take the form of discounts for customers who check in at your location, a gift for those who write a recommendation for your Facebook Page or invitations to share photos of themselves with your location included to Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and other social sharing sites. The most important thing to keep in mind when creating a local and mobile marketing strategy these days is integration. The whole package is so much more powerful than the sum of its parts. When you implement a fully integrated mobile, local and social marketing strategy, you’ll be leveraging all the power mobile and local web has to offer. n
Zach Hoffman continues to keep up with market demand by perfecting and expanding innovative products and services. In 2012, Hoffman introduced Exults, bringing together over 15 years of experience and results to offer a full service internet marketing agency. The University Central Florida College of Business Administration selected Hoffman as a 2012 Rising Star, a prestigious award given to one alumnus every year from the College of Business. He has also won the 2012 Top Work Places People on the Move Award from the Sun-Sentinel and was recently named one of the top 40 Under 40 by Gold Coast Magazine. Hoffman has been published as the guru in the internet marketing space from South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, Lifestyles and Think Magazines and trade publications such as, Bulldog Reporter, CommPRO.biz and MediaBistro’s PRnewser. Most recently he was a featured guest on nationally syndicated shows such as The Daily Wrap on Wall Street Journal Radio, Viewpoints on MediaTraks, The Leslie Marshall Show, Daytime and the Small Business Advocate. For more information about Exults, please call 866-999-4736 or visit www.Exults.com.
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mobile development
Responsive Design
What You Need to Know and How to Decide if It’s Right for Your Mobile Project
B
y 2015, many people in North America will be using more then five separate devices to connect to the Internet, according to a report by Cisco (cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns827/networking_ solutions_sub_solution.html). The majority of those devices won’t be PCs—they’ll be tablets and smartphones, even TVs. We’re talking screens ranging from a few inches to ones that are wider than you can stretch your arms. What this means for anyone with a website is that there’s a lot more room to enhance the way that people interact with your content by customizing it to fit the precise size and type of device. A long time ago (in Internet time) people realized that a website that looked amazing on a 15-inch laptop screen was no good on a small mobile browser. With the proliferation of screen sizes, this is truer than ever. But, it’s not feasible to create a different site design for every possible screen size, and no one wants to build to the lowest common denominator. A smart solution for this multi-device dilemma is an approach called Responsive Design, which automatically reflows the content and layout of a website to fit the viewport size. This concept has been around for a while, but advances in mobile and desktop browsers over the last year have made it an eminently relevant solution for web products that need to adapt to multiple devices. At first blush, it sounds a lot like a mobile website. It’s not. Mobile websites are separately maintained and designed versions of their desktop counterpart. There, the main goal is to optimize web content for mobile use cases and displays. And their main approach to coping with the spectrum of screen sizes and devices is rather simple: if the website detects that you’re a mobile device, you get the mobile website. Responsive design takes this cut and dry, ‘mobile or not’ website methodology a few steps further… Instead of building two separate sites in two separate sizes—desktop and mobile—responsive design creates a single, dynamic website that uses parameters to adapt the content specifically to match the size of the device’s screen and even such capabilities as touch, screen orientation, location awareness, etc. For a convenient example of a responsive design site, visit: starbucks.com
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On your mobile device, the website will automatically scale to suit your screen size. On your desktop, if you bring your cursor to the bottom right corner of the window and drag it to resize your browser, you’ll see how it adapts to various display sizes. Not only does the layout change, but the content order and size as well. Because responsive design uses one website to suit a range of devices, it can be more expensive to implement than a traditional web or mobile site. Over the long-haul, however, you’ll only have one website and codebase and content map to maintain, meaning lower maintenance costs. There isn’t any hard and fast logic for selecting responsive design, but here are some simple guidelines that can help steer you in the right direction: Responsive design will be great for you if: 1) You are building a website from scratch that will see mobile traffic 2) Many of your current website’s visitors use tablets and smartphones to view it 3) The appearance and design of your website (on any device) is an important part of your brand 4) You’re considering building dedicated sites for different devices You may want to avoid responsive design for now if: 1.) You don’t have the cash to shell out for a responsive design site; consider building a mobile site first and scaling it up to a desktop size in the future 2) You have a large, legacy website, with hundreds of layouts. Starting from scratch likely isn’t an option. Instead, start using responsive layouts with the most popular pages for mobile devices. Responsive design can be an elegant solution to making your website shine for everyone accessing it, regardless of device. Ultimately, whether it makes sense for you depends on your unique business case and web development needs. So our best advice is to sit down with a developer or design firm that knows both sides and can give you an informed recommendation for your mobile website needs. n
Michael Prichard is the CTO of WillowTree Apps (WillowTreeApps.com) of Charlottesville, Virginia, an Inc. 500 leader in mobile application and mobile web development. Yes, they do responsive design.
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Online Marketing:
Simplify and Optimize in Complex (and Booming!) Times By David Rodnitzky
I
t’s a great time to be an online marketer! You’ve got incredible job security (perhaps too much – you might be getting tired of the relentless calls from recruiters), the admiration of your friends, and increasing importance in your company as dollars shift from traditional to online marketing.
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It’s also a terrible time to be an online marketer. The number of online marketing channels and service providers is multiplying exponentially, tracking is getting more complex and timeconsuming, and the expectations of ROI are increasing. Life is a lot more stressful today than it was a few years ago, when pretty much all that mattered was Google AdWords.
So what’s an online marketer to do? The answer – in short – is to prioritize and simplify. Trying to be all things to all people – both internally and to customers – is the shortest route to the insane asylum. This article shows you how to minimize stress and maximize your online marketing productivity!
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Multiple Channels, Multiple Screens, Multiple Languages – Help! The biggest challenge today’s online marketers have is time management. There are simply too many marketing opportunities for any one marketing person (or team) to manage. The online marketing ecosystem has changed in three significant ways: 1. From a few channels, to many channels. Life was simpler when all we had to worry about was email, SEO, and SEM. Now, in addition to those channels, we must consider social media (paid and non-paid), display, and video. 2. From one screen to many screens. Laptops and desktops are still the primary computing devices used in the US, but the landscape is rapidly changing. Today, mobile phones and tablets are gaining significant market share, and within each of these categories, there are different devices and operating systems, adding additional complexity. 3. From one language to many languages. While Englishlanguage campaigns will
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still get you a lot of clicks throughout the world, many companies now need campaigns in other languages as well. And don’t forget that within each of these categories, new layers of complexity and nuance are introduced almost daily. Take Google AdWords as an example. Running an AdWords campaign once simply meant buying text ads on Google and its search partners. Today, however, a Google campaign might (and often should) include: • Google Display Network – text and banner ads • Retargeting • Product feeds • Ad extensions • Different campaigns for mobile, tablet, and desktop • Hyper-local geo-targeting So it’s hard enough trying to be an expert at just
AdWords, let alone keeping up with all the other online marketing channels available to you. And most marketing departments don’t have the resources to have dozens of experts on staff to manage every channel.
Choosing Your Battles The only choice you really have in today’s online marketing environment is to prioritize and delegate. Let’s start with prioritization. If you’ve got limited time and budget, you’ve got to focus on the marketing opportunities that give you the most return on your ad spend in the least amount of time. Generally speaking, “bottom of the funnel” channels like SEM, SEO, and retargeting – combined with Englishlanguage campaigns on desktops – are the most common strategies to prioritize first, but ultimately this is a decision that needs to be made specifically for your company’s needs. When prioritizing, there are a few factors to consider: • For which channels do I already have internal expertise? • Where are my customers spending their time online?
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• Are there “arbitrage” opportunities where I can buy traffic at below-market rates because my competitors have not yet discovered them? • Are there channels or mediums that work particularly well for my product (for example, a Facebook app company would focus on Facebook advertising)? Once you’ve decided where to spend your marketing dollars, you next need to decide who is going to manage it for you. Consider these factors: • An expert at everything is an expert at nothing. If a team member or an agency tells you that they can manage multiple online marketing channels at once, they are over-estimating their own abilities, lying, or both! Find experts for each channel in which you decide to invest. • Make sure to set up proper attribution. One of the biggest challenges with a multi-channel, multiscreen online marketing strategy is developing a conversion attribution model. If someone clicks on a banner ad on their mobile phone and then clicks on an SEM ad on their desktop and later converts on your site, which channel and device gets the credit? There are currently many conflicting theories on how to attribute credit to different
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online marketing strategies, and it takes good tracking technology and testing to figure out the right attribution model for your business. The one model you definitely want to avoid, however, is one where every channel gets 100% credit for a conversion. For example, if a consumer clicks on two ads – one on a mobile device and one on a desktop – and you gave 100% credit to both ads, you’d effectively be counting the same revenue twice (200% credit), which would seriously mess up your revenue tracking. Thus, making sure that you can break attribution credit up across all of your strategies is vitally important. • The Need for Outsourcing Increases with Complexity. If you can spend your entire marketing budget on AdWords, in English, on desktops, there’s a fair chance that you can manage your online marketing budget in-house, without the help of an outside agency. As you begin to layer on additional programs, however, the need for outside help increases, for two reasons. First, the cost of hiring in-house experts for multiple channels is prohibitively expensive for most businesses. And second, outside agencies can be used to quickly test new channels and devices prior to making internal investments in category experts.
Let the Good Times Roll? The complexity, diversity, and transparency of online marketing will continue to increase in the future. If the speed and volume of change sometimes make you feel overwhelmed, relax – you are not alone! And the good news is that you don’t need to know everything about every channel at all times. If you prioritize opportunities and delegate some work to outside experts, you can develop a multi-screen, multichannel, and multi-language online marketing program that rocks. So take a deep breath, create a plan, and exhale – with the right strategy, this is an awesome time to be an online marketer! n
David Rodnitzky is founder and CEO of PPC Associates, a position he has held since the Company’s inception in 2008. Prior to PPC Associates, he held senior marketing roles at several Internet companies, including Rentals.com (2000-2001), FindLaw (2001-2004), Adteractive (20042006), and Mercantila (2007-2008). David currently serves on advisory boards for several companies, including Marin Software, MediaBoost, Mediacause, and a stealth travel start-up. David is a regular speaker at major SEM conferences and has contributed to numerous influential publications, including Venture Capital Journal, CNN Radio, Newsweek, Advertising Age, and Search Marketing Standard. David has a B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago and a J.D. with honors from the University of Iowa. In his spare time, David enjoys salmon fishing, hiking, spending time with his family, and watching the Iowa Hawkeyes, not necessarily in that order.
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Sharing Intellectual Property in Search Marketing:
Why (Not) and How (Much) By Rob Laporte
Executive Summary
What is Intellectual Capital?
To what extent should web marketing agencies share intellectual capital with clients? There’s no hard and fast rule, and paid training is often a good compromise. The top arguments in favor of sharing are that it creates trust and impels the agency to focus on services that truly require its knowledge and experience. The top arguments against sharing are that the agency’s cost in producing good intellectual capital must be repaid, and clients often can’t implement the knowledge well enough or before it is outdated.
Sorry Wikipedia, but BusinessDictionary.com has a better definition of intellectual capital: “Collective knowledge (whether or not documented) of the individuals in an organization or society. This knowledge can be used to produce wealth, multiply output of physical assets, gain competitive advantage, and/or to enhance value of other types of capital. Intellectual capital is now beginning to be classified as a true capital cost because (1) investment in (and replacement of) people
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is tantamount to investment in machines and plants, and (2) expenses incurred in education and training (to maintain the shelf life of intellectual assets) are equivalent to depreciation costs of physical assets. Intellectual capital includes customer capital, human capital, intellectual property, and structural capital.” (www.businessdictionary.com/ definition/intellectual-capital.html) Intellectual capital is a major management discipline, with tons of published books and
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other literature. An excellent primer I read years ago is Intellectual Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True Value by Finding Its Hidden Brainpower (1997). Regarding the economics of FREE!, Chris Anderson’s excellent book Free: How Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing discusses economic models and cases, some of which are relevant to search marketing. But giving away core capital, especially when the recipient needs considerable skill to actuate it, is not the focus of Anderson’s book.
Good Reasons Not To Share I list reasons not to share in roughly descending order of importance.
4. A kind of butterfly effect emerges when using complex intellectual capital. No matter how thorough the training documents, there often arises unique little decisions that have big consequences, and experienced agency employees are more likely to handle such decisions well. For example, keyword research sometimes produces anomalous data that the experienced professional will more likely recognize. 5. Clients often overestimate how much time they have to learn and implement intellectual capital in search marketing. The job ends up not getting done, or gets done but cannibalizes what the client should have done instead, like improve their offerings and customer service.
I list the reasons to share in roughly ascending order of importance.
2. Of course publishing intellectual capital on the web builds authority and may produce inbound links and subsequent organic traffic.
2. Search marketing, like law and medicine, is complex and often requires seasoned judgment to implement effectively, so if the client mis-applies it, you risk dissatisfaction and contributing to harm. Like, don’t use The Couple’s Do-It-Yourself Vasectomy ebook.
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Good Reasons To Share
1. Sharing key intellectual capital impels one to focus on the most complex and valuable services that clients can’t learn quickly enough to be practical, thus pushing the agency to develop services that truly add value commensurate with billing rates. Such focus makes vision and wisdom more important than mere tools and unwashed information.
1. The paramount reason not to share is that valuable intellectual capital requires lots of time/cost to produce. It’s like researching, blueprinting, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing a new industrial tool, and then just giving it away to factories. Unless this is somehow a loss-leader, the agency will suffer, which means that sooner or later its clients will too.
3. Similar to the preceding point, clients may use your intellectual capital after enough time has passed that it’s no longer the best way. Popular keyword research tools, for example, have degraded recently, and my firm has had to completely restructure our keyword research process. Another example is that the recommended character count of <title> tags recently became shorter than most free guidelines out there indicate.
a company to do all SEO for their family of websites (for a substantial fee but the lesson here pertains to free as well). By wild coincidence, a few weeks later I learned that the client or someone working there sold all the step-by step documents to a prospect of my firm for about half the cost. Of course I didn’t land that prospect. True, giving it for free implies no strings attached, but such profiteering undermines the spirit of free, especially if no credit is given to the originator.
4. If the client to whom one has given intellectual capital uses it to make more profit, they will have more to spend on the endless list of web marketing tasks for which the agency’s expertise is required.
6. Once shared, the recipients--or their employees and other web marketing vendors--could sell it. My firm once trained
5. Perhaps the best reason to share intellectual capital with clients is to establish trust. The rapid proliferation of web marketing channels and complexity within channels requires that clients trust agencies to prioritize investments optimally. When a client’s mind rests assured that the agency is 100% on their side, the business relationship endures, which builds the agency’s other major intangible asset that accountants increasingly quantify: good will.
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Case Histories and a Good Compromise One case where I decided not to share involves SEO tools. I’ve been sharing with clients and prospects WooRank.com and MajesticSEO.com for getting a quick SEO technical audit and link reports. Yet I recently discovered a fantastic tool for CMS-SEO audits that I feel I need in order to do our core work and sales talks. I’ve spent scores of hours evaluating such tools, and, crucify me, but I just can’t get myself to divulge this crucial discovery now. In general, I feel that search marketing firms should freely share executive-level guidance on how to prioritize search marketing, but keep detailed step-by-step procedures in-house. The detailed steps are too prone to rapid changes these days, so that the sharing can do more harm than good. A recent case of this was a client who, over days of labor, followed HTML title rules built into a popular CMS add-on, and then learned from me that those rules are no longer valid, so he had to spend many more hours rewriting. In a similar case, a business used free intellectual capital regarding keyword research tools, not knowing that those tools are no longer worth using for long-tail phrases. A lot of the business’s time was wasted not only in keyword research, but also producing a demand-based navigation hierarchy and writing SEO’d content. Presently, good doctors know that some popular arthritis medicines actually makes arthritis worse while covering the pain, yet many people still demand that medicine. Complex and rapidly changing professions often must attach caveats to what is shared freely, and a continuing paid relationship can prevent harm. Paid training packages are a good compromise. This isn’t pure sharing, but it often conveys a lot more value than the client pays for. When clients pay, they are more likely to use the knowledge soon while it remains valid. Compromise like this is part of any successful long-term relationship. n
Rob Laporte is founder and President of DISC, Inc., which has specialized in search marketing since 1997. Espousing trust about all else, DISC has clients worldwide, of all types and sizes. DISC prioritizes by ROI and implements SEO, paid search, conversion rate optimization, social media marketing, SEO’d site design and build, and training. www.2disc. com, rob@2disc.com, 413-584-6500.
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product review
Personify EDITOR RATING
Very Good
T
hink back to the times before broadband internet connection, instant messaging and video conferencing. Any business would find it hard to work without these facilities in this day and age. As the world becomes smaller, with even small businesses interacting remotely with colleagues and clients, the importance of and need for advanced online, streaming communication cannot be ignored. In the past few years Web conferencing technology has been used around the world to bring together people at the same time. This technology has changed the way seminars are being conducted. Web conferencing not only allow users from across the globe to communicate at the same time but also allow smaller organizations to organize and conduct global level seminars, which was previously restricted to bigger companies due to the costs involved in organizing such an event. Recognizing this, Personify was founded in 2009 by a creative group of individuals who understood that it was not just enough to have Web conferencing software, but it should be of high quality and should enhance the users’ entire experience. Personify Live, which launched in 2012 and is Personify’s flagship product, revolutionizes the way people have been interacting online. Personify combines the most advanced digital communication technology with the benefits to human face-to-face communication. Personify Live software is especially useful for users without much internet software experience because it is simple to use and was developed to be compatible with programs including PowerPoint presentations, slideshows and webinars. By overlaying a live video of the presenter on to the presentation or other virtual environment, this software is perfect for those who want to enhance their presentations with unique features that slideshow presentations are not equipped with. With this bit of video enhancement it is possible to make a boring, run-ofthe-mill presentation into an engaging, interactive virtual video presentation. However, there is one thing to keep in mind when using Personify Live. To enjoy the full benefits of this software, the user must have a depth sensing camera such as Microsoft Kinect or ASUS Xtion Pro Live. The software has been designed keeping in mind the requirements of the modern day business that needs to reach out to a large number of people in the most efficient way possible. As a result, Personify Live has been designed to easily integrate WebEx, GoToMeeting and other traditional Web conferencing solutions. Though there are many Web conferencing solutions that help create engaging web presentations, Personify Live stands apart because it allows the user to put him or herself in front of their audience along with the digital content. Presentations made using Personify Live are personalized and engaging, a combination not found on other solutions. These presentations can also be recorded and stored on the cloud. Businesses that rely heavily on communication, such as sales, marketing, and customer service professionals, can especially benefit from Personify Live. Since personal connection is often lost in remote business communication, Personify Live gives the user the advantage of embedding his or her video into their presentation to make use of gestures and non-verbal for improved communication. Any business looking to reach out to an audience in an engaging and interactive way though the channel of Web communication will find Personify Live to be a very helpful addition to their virtual communication strategies. The software brings together the best of high tech presentations with the impact of human interaction. What makes the entire experience better is the fact that the software is easily downloadable and is easy to understand and use. n
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Bottom Line www.personifyinc.com/live
Pricing • Free 30-day trial • Monthly service: $19.99/month • Camera bundle: $199 – includes three months of service and an ASUS depthsensing camera
Features • Record, produce and share videos • Special effects on the tool’s control panel allow for semi-transparent mode • Users can change slides with a simple hand gesture • Enable HD streaming and desktop sharing for live, online collaboration tools such as Skype and standard audio bridges • The accompanying mobile app for iPhone and Android serves as a remote control for the presentation • Works with WebEx, GoToMeeting, Skype, join.me and other Web conferencing solutions • Adds important, non-verbal communication into traditional, remote Web conferencing settings • Presentations are more dynamic • The audience is more engaged • Allows the audience to see a presenter’s body language, enthusiasm, persona, etc. • Gives sales and marketing professionals a competitive advantage • Popular with online educators, Personify Live increases content retention of curriculum delivered online along with student satisfaction and allows professors to easily record lessons in advance for flip teaching.
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content marketing
6 Tips to Create Out of This World Content That Will Be Shared
2
013 is all about content. Content, content, content. By the time you have read this article, you will probably be sick to death of the word BUT it is crucial that you take on board what I am saying, because it is the biggest digital trend of the year.
why we have put together this killer post on creating amazing content. If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t currently employ anyone to carry out your content marketing, now is the time to seek expert help in order to create fantastic content that will spread like wild fire.
Whatever business your sector lies in, be it food, entertainment or transport, 2013 is all about creating, optimising and marketing content. It should be at heart of your marketing strategy. However, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just mean any old content.
1. Would you read it?
Content needs to of high quality, be relevant to your business and, most importantly, be shareable. You can do this in various ways; in an offline magazine article, with a video tutorial on YouTube, or with an infographic published on the web. All types of content, in any shape or form, matter this year; which is
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One of the most important aspects of content is that it is interesting and relevant. Ask yourself, would you read it? If the answer is no, then you need to take a new approach. What issues concern your consumer? What do they care about? Some topics are quite mundane but that is where creativity comes in. Be quirky, thought-provoking and write about what you are interested in. If you are enthusiastic about something, it will help your writing to be more passionate.
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Whatever you do, don’t just write for the sake of it. The reader will be able to tell that you were bored whilst writing it.
2. What does it look like? How does your content appear to the naked eye? Is it striking and engaging, or ‘blocky’ and bland? You could write the most out of this world text copy, but if it doesn’t look great, no-one will read it. Simples. The key is to structure it properly. If it is an article, does it use bullet points, subheadings and pictures to break the text up and make it more reader-friendly? Start with the data and consider which format allows the information to be presented in the best light. Information can be relayed in a wide variety of formats, so you have a wealth of types to choose from including; • Video • Infographic • White paper • PDF download • Text copy • Images • Interactive/HTML5 infographics • Tools • Blog posts • Podcasts • Webinars • Microsites • Interviews • Ebooks • Case studies • Research papers
3. What is the concept? What is at the core of what you are writing about? There needs to be a purpose. Take this article for example; my aim is to give you six helpful tips to improve your content marketing. Why? Well because information is best when shared, and because I’m a nice person. Why are you writing? If you cannot find a reason, consider the six W’s (plus one H). These stand for who, what, when, where, why, which and how. You can use these concepts as a fundamental starting block, and you will probably find that a lot of the questions that you come up with, your consumers will want to know the answer to. Example: care fees - Who is responsible for managing care home complaints? - What is the average cost of a care home? - When is the deadline to claim back wrongly paid care fees? - Where are the country’s best care homes? - Why do I have to pay my own care home fees? - How do I choose a care home? Voila! Just by using the six W’s (plus one H), you have automatically created seven article concepts which are relevant and interesting.
Define what the goal is before you create the content. For example; if you want to inform your reader and establish yourself as an authoritative industry source, how-to guides, video tutorials and opinion pieces are ideal.
5. Is it conversion friendly? Given Google’s latest algorithm changes, there has been a big push towards writing and publishing content that is not over optimised. The search engine giant has penalised many businesses for churning out lots of useless content that has just been written purely for SEO. This is bad. Just take Interflora for instance. Google has penalised the flower company amid accusations that the company has been manipulating links to improve its search rankings. Now it has somewhat disappeared off the face of the internet and all their rankings have dropped. That’s the consequence of not doing things by the book. However, it is possible to write informative, engaging content that is relevant, as well as content that is conversion friendly. The answer is balance. How? Don’t try and stuff it with lots of keywords or anchor text links; instead write naturally and on-topic. Don’t try to shoe-horn in a keyword about PPC if you are writing about web design. This will only deem you evil in the eyes of Google (perhaps evil is a strong word, but it is naughty.) Put SEO keywords in where possible but make sure it flows logically and naturally. Remember- if your article appears on page 6 of Google’s search results, most likely no-one will read it, so search is crucial.
6. Have you Facebooked/Twittered/Google+d it? How socially-savvy are you? One of the biggest tips I can give you, and listen closely because I’ll only say this once, is that you need to promote the hell out of your content. And why shouldn’t you? If you have written a really noteworthy article and you are proud of what you have created, shout about it on all social media platforms. Share it on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and target communities that want to read your work. Really consider where your content will be posted to reach the biggest audience possible. Can you publish it on your site or your blog? Can you publish it on a third party’s blog? If you don’t have access to an existing community, can you find one through outreach? So there you have six tips to help you on your way to create out of this world content. There are no two ways about it; content really is the bees knees in 2013 and it’s not a question of ‘should’ I implement these techniques, but ‘how quickly can we get the show on the road.’ Got any more tips on content marketing? Is there anything you do differently? Comment below! n
4. What is your goal? Every business is different and has distinct goals. Some brands want to appear on page 1 of Google; others want to boost their sales; another might want to increase their brand awareness; whereas someone else might want to educate/entertain their consumers.
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This article was written by Lauren Grice on behalf of Custard, an innovative marketing agency based in Greater Manchester that specialises in creative content marketing. We create great content that people will want to link to.
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marketing
Enterprise Technology: A Bridge to Digital Agency Innovation
P
eter F. Drucker, progenitor of modern business management consulting once declared that, “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. This premise hasn’t changed over time, but the speed and scope with which enterprises must execute these functions has. Today, unprecedented competition dictates that true innovators and strategic marketers will come out on top (think Google, Apple, Amazon and Square). The constantly evolving digital landscape demands that CMOs reinvent their marketing campaigns through all channels and on all devices. As with business enterprises, we can further parse the marketing function into two core areas: creative and analytical. Marketing’s consumer-facing creative has always attracted a lot of attention – just look at the buzz surrounding the annual Super Bowl ads. Likewise, each year, brands pour significant dollars and focus into cross-channel integration and consumer engagement through performance marketing channels like search, display, affiliate, social, mobile and video. For digital agencies that manage brand campaigns, the adoption of creative-enhancing technologies has been second nature. However, according to some, brands that view ‘digital’ as just another creative outlet fail to capture the entire technology picture. Darren Woolley, Founder of strategic marketing management consulting firm TrinitityP3 recently wrote a blog post that posed this question to brands: “Do you want a digital agency or a technology partner?” Darren smartly observes that, “The big issue is that marketers are generally viewing digital agencies as simply operating in an extension of the traditional market. That is that digital agencies are often engaged as a ‘digital’ version of their creative agency. This is because for those marketers, digital is seen simply as another media, alongside television, press, radio and OOH.” So, the real question becomes: does choosing a digital agency and technology partner need to be an either/or proposition? When it comes to innovation and success, digital agencies are no different than the brands they represent. Prominent ad agency consultants like Michael Gass, regularly write about ways agencies can fuel new business. In order to maximize value, attract potential clients and create new internal revenue streams, agencies need to adopt and leverage technology that optimizes front-end solutions like the creation of microsites and apps, as well as back-end analytics to track and report data these platforms generate. In fact, many innovative global agencies are already forming relationships with software companies that allow them to shift their clients away from the industry question: “digital agency or technology partner,” to an industry solution: “digital agency and technology partner.”
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Traditionally, brands and agencies were faced with the decision to either build or buy this enterprise-level software. While some brands were able to build their own technology, it often ended up as a patchwork quilt of best-in-breed solutions that operates in silos. Similarly, while it’s possible for agencies to design their own internal solutions, it’s difficult to remain technology-agnostic while doing so, and building sophisticated data tracking and analytics technology isn’t likely an agency core competency. Today, global brands are turning to third-party enterprise software that’s customizable, easy to implement and provides real-time centralized data. As brands put this new “plumbing” into place, there’s an open opportunity for agencies to step in as the “contractor,” effectively “pulling the levers” and operating the software for their clients. Yet, technology is only part of the equation, and service has become an important factor for SaaS companies. Many big brands have their eyes on international growth. According to a recent Food Business News article, for Hershey Co., “China represents a key growth engine as part of the company’s global expansion initiative.” Michele Buck, senior vice-president and chief growth officer said: “We’re placing a big bet in China and anticipate it will be Hershey’s No. 2 market, behind only the U.S. in the coming five years.” For brands like Hershey, performance-based marketing will likely comprise a portion of its overseas budget. With partners driving traffic and sales worldwide, brands and agencies need to think about ancillary services like payments in local currency and tech support in local languages. There’s no question that as brands continue to expand their global footprint, technology will remain the glue that binds the agency-client relationship together. As digital channels continue to increase, and new devices come to market, brands will seek ways to unlock the potential to reach consumers. Forward-thinking agencies will continue to work hand-inhand with CMOs on performance-based marketing – a channel that allows brands to better target consumers and pay only for actual conversions – which ultimately increases ROI. For many agencies, enterprise software is the bridge that leads to a new frontier of innovation, which in turn, results in mutual growth and success for the agency and its clients. n
Malcolm Cowley is CEO and co-founder of Performance Horizon Group (PHG), a leading provider of real-time performance marketing technology to some of the world’s biggest brands. Prior to PHG, Malcolm co-founded the highly successful buy.at affiliate marketing network, which AOL acquired in 2008. As CEO of PHG, Malcolm oversees all aspects of PHG’s global growth.
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social marketing
The Sales Approach Your eCommerce Store Is Probably Missing
O
ver 20,000 e-commerce stores are opened every week in the U.S. Most of them will fail. And most of those will have one thing in common – they neglect to tap their best audience. It is not what they are selling, but who they are selling to, that matters most.
Finding your best audience It has long been understood that social phenomena – fashion, a new band, a viral video – spread through social relationships. Malcolm Gladwell talked about “influencers” in the seminal book The Tipping Point. Influencers spot and adopt trends and through their adoption influence others in their social sphere to do the same. Geoffrey Moore articulated the spread of ideas through early adopters – those that are inclined to try new things early – in his masterpiece Crossing The Chasm. The common thread between these teachings is that ideas are cultivated by planting a few seeds in the right fields, and that only certain fields are receptive to those seeds. As those seeds sprout, they spread seeds more broadly. But you can’t just scatter those to the wind – they rarely take. So what does that mean for the 20,000 e-commerce stores that open each week? Their first, most important market is their own social circles. These are the fields in which they should plant their seeds first. People
that know you – that trust your judgment, that care about your success – are your “early adopters.” These may be friends and family or your broader personal network, or they may be professional acquaintances, depending upon your e-commerce business. But you should have a strategy devoted to tapping this market and enabling them to spread your message.
Why is your social network so critical? Today it is so easy to buy almost anything. Do a search for your product or service and you’re likely to find millions of results. How do you cut through the clutter? A primary differentiator in a purchase decision is the customer’s feelings towards the merchant or brand. When you can buy anything anywhere, the relationship with the merchant matters. Major brands spend millions of dollars to try to simulate that a relationship with consumers. But with your own social and business networks, you already have an authentic relationship. It’s an important asset. So taking advantage of that authentic relationship is the most powerful first step to success in your own e-commerce business. Of course, you can open your store and hope that people find you. That’s what everyone else does. And that’s the problem – you’ll be lost in the great mass of options available. (Try searching for your products in Google – you’ll likely find millions of search results competing with you.). So you should have an affirmative market strategy, where you’re reaching out to a core group of people that know you, and trying to set a viral chain in motion. If you make those people happy, they’ll spread the word to their networks and you’ll be on your way.
How to reach your best market? Knowing whom to reach is one thing. How to reach them is another. Fortunately, it’s never been easier. As the wide variety of
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choices has made connection between a buyer and seller increasingly more important, various social media tools and social behavior have made it much easier to reach people and tap that connection. Consequently, a few simple steps can get you in touch with this important market and should be part of your strategy: • Get personal with social media tools: There have been few areas in marketing that have created more confusion than how to use social media tools. There are certainly benefits to blogging and accumulating Facebook fans, but those are very hard to trace and if they lead to transactions at all, it is usually over a long period of time. • Still, social media tools are quite valuable for reaching large numbers of people you know easily. They make the mechanics of contacting people easier. In a few strokes you can reach a whole network. The average Facebook user has 256 ‘friends’. That means your message can be in front of 256 people, and depending upon their response, their friends, almost instantly. • Have something new to say: It is said that in retail, the product stays the same so the audience must change, or the audience stays the same so the product must change. In tapping your social network, a relatively constant audience, you’ll need to continually change the product. That can be an actual change of the product – let’s say you grew your inventory by adding new products or added some products that complement your services business (an IT service
company that is now selling electronics, perhaps). Alternatively, perhaps there is something new to say about existing products – an upcoming holiday or change of seasons makes an existing product relevant in new ways. The important thing is that when you’re tapping a constant audience over time that you say something new and of value and interest to that audience. • Increase your online presence: Whether you are considering building an e-commerce site or have one already, you should consider existing platforms as possible forums. If you don’t have a commerce site, these platforms can get you up quickly. If you do have an e-commerce site, third party platforms can create an additional online home and give you access to additional tools. Three you can check out are: a)Shopify.com ($29 - $179/mo.). Sophisticated inventory tracking and many plug-ins to manage customers. Imposes limits on products and storage at various price points. b) Volusion.com ($19-$149/mo.). Offers e-commerce sites as well as web design and marketing services for an additional fee. c) Bizinate.com (Free). Simple set up in 3 minutes or less. Offer services or products. Includes an inventory of products and ongoing daily deals you can add to your items. All of these providers will give a professional looking site that offers additional marketing presence and access to social media tools easily. Your goal is to build awareness first from people who know you, trust you, and have an interest in your success. People have a relatively short memory for new things, so you need to keep a consistent, ongoing effort. When someone has a need for your services or products, or someone they know does, you need to be top of mind. By leveraging your broader social network you are tapping your best source of customers. If you live up to your promise with this group, they will help you spread your message. Don’t be one of the 20,000 stores that fail each week. n
Rudy DeFelice is the founder and CEO of Bizinate. Based in Los Angeles, Bizinate’s mission is to launch a million new startups. Bizinate.com is the easiest place anywhere for new entrepreneurs to start and run a business. Rudy was a corporate lawyer for many years at premier international law firms. He served as CEO of a VC-backed software and internet information company for nine years, a position he left to found Bizinate. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School and The University of Connecticut School of Law and lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife Wendy (an attorney and founder of a foundation that is building schools for destitute children) and their three kids.
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affiliate marketing
History of Affiliate Marketing
A
ffiliate marketing is a business model that has been around for a relatively long time, giving shops a new advertising structure. The first integrated and used affiliate program was developed on the Prodigy network, an online service created in 1984, created via a joint venture of IBM and Venture. The Prodigy Network was conglomerated over a broad infrastructure designed to give paying users information regarding news, weather, banking stocks etc. The network aloud users to dial to their local server, which then connected tot he main networks server located in New York. This meant most times dialup was free, due to calling locally, but this ultimately ended Prodigys legacy as costs were ridiculously high. Prodigy had unique design ideas consisting of a GUI and socially intergratable concepts such as chat and email worked as one of the countries (USA) first online communities. One of the first shops/companies to develop a computerized business model over the Prodigy Network was PC Flowers and Gifts which was implemented in 1994, a clear 10 years after the initial conception of the breakthrough network. Pantent Number US5576951 Mar 16, 1994 Nov 19, 1996 system (1. Google Pantent)
Automated sales and services
The first internet patent for an automated sales system took time to clear, there was now the chance for a breakthrough regarding a technology that had never been thought about. „The present server based communications system provides dynamic customization of hypertext tagged documents presented to clients accessing the system. The customization, which pertains to the content of the documents, is based on the specific requirements of a class to which the client belongs to..“ (2. Prodigy History) After a while The Prodigy Network began creating advertisements on every one of its pages, ranging between $10-20k per advert. It became renowned for being the virtual shopping mall, allowing people to view and buy products they may never have. Following this PC Flowers began its patenting to create one of the first affiliate programs. The Prodigy Network ran on extremely low speeds 1200bit/s to 2400bit/s. This meant PC and Flowers had to design a system capable of running optimal functionality with minimal challenges for download/upload speeds. The Prodigy Network was generating greater traffic, and in 1994 alone PC Flowers and Gifts generated $6million in sales. After this they contributed a proportion of their earnings to the network directly. This is when the initial concept for affiliate marketing was developed. Further down the line, PC Flowers and Gifts decided to take their concept one step further, and released the use of affiliate programming to over 2,600 programs. The social impact of such a concept would have been massive. It enabled the growth of e-commerce to a wider scale. At the times shops were dedicated concepts that had to be found uniquely, or through the basic functions in The Prodigy system. Affiliate connections meant advertisements were cropping up, enabling consumers to expand their browsing and purchasing range to try new products – it was the beginning. Even though not many people ran computer systems in 1994, those who, and especially those who ran a service such as Prodigy would have had a greater disposable income, meaning shopping ‚online’ was an added bonus to a unique user experience. Stepping forward ever so slightly, we can focus on the darker side of the internet, an area which has been at the forefront of modern design and implementation. The adult industry. There are rumors that the website Cybererotica was a pioneer in the affiliate world, even though it was developed and integrated after PC Flowers and Gifts patent. The adult affiliate networks ran a CPC model which has slowly diminished into a CPA model due to fraudulent reasons – this is also the case for nearly all adult affiliate networks now. In 1994 Cybererotica saw a gap in the market which could be filled. People had easy access to adult based content for the first time in their
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lives. Affiliate programs saw this gap, and knew that people would be interested in clicking on half naked individuals, just to see where the next page goes, and it worked. Today the same marketing models are still being used to obtain higher click rates on adult based websites, not much has changed.
of her publication in return for a percentage of the sales. From then on, more and more publishers and advertisers were interested, and Amazon pushed forward. Amazon services now cater for a vast proportion of affiliate marketing, covering different products all over the internet.
Stepping forward ever so slightly more again, we enter the bigger picture, Amazon.
These early steps regarding affiliate marketing are key to where we are now. During those times computer use was much lower than now. Advertising agencies relied heavily on traditional media, such as print and television. The cost of such services is incredibly high. Startup companies or products had no easy way of encapsulating themselves in markets that were over flooded with traditional media. Internet marketing gave smaller companies a break, a chance to push their product to different consumers. Affiliate marketing took it one step further, and allowed advertisements to be directed to the relevant audience. Targeted ads enabled niche market companies to not waist money on mass advertising.
â&#x20AC;&#x17E;Launched in 1996, Associates is Amazon.comâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s affiliate marketing program. By linking to Amazon products and services you can add compelling content for your site visitors enjoyment and receive up to 10% in referral fees for doing so. As one of the first online affiliate marketing programs, Associates has a 10-year track record of developing solutions to help website owners, Web developers, and Amazon sellers make money. Our latest innovations include aStore, OmakaseLinks, and Product Previews.â&#x20AC;&#x153; ( 3. Amazon) Amazon took the idea of affiliating and expanded the concept. After starting in 1996, they realized other retailers would be interested in using their platform to sell products. The story goes that Jeff Bezos was in contact with a writer who was trying to advertise her book. Jeff decided to offer the writer hosting through advertisement
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However back in 1996, the form of advertisement a consumer would receive would not be as subtle as todays affiliate programs. They were basic Flash or obtrusive images, based on buy now, in your face advertisements which started putting consumers off. Many times the direction of the advertisement was wrong, this was not something that was controlled at the time. People felt like they could not trust the links. This ideology continued for a long time. Most of the internet was being covered in adult based content,
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connecting to dialers and subscription pages. It wasn’t the greatest way to build a trusting consumer model. The PPC (also known as Cost Per Click) principle was implemented in 1998 by Jeff Brewer of GoTo.com. This was the first time this concept was used effectively. However competitors began spam clicking other peoples adverts to increase their costs. In 2000 Google released Adwords, the common affiliate program many of us still use to advertise on the Google search area with text ad placement. This system ran a CPM method (Cost Per Mille) which aggregates the CTR (Click Through Rate) and the CVR (Conversion Rate). CPM is a common form of advertisement as it judges one click over 1,000 views and estimates how much the campaign would cost you per thousand people. Google Adwords does not focus on this system as much now, and has tightened up its policy and regulations in terms of PPC. Affiliate marketing is changing heavily even now. People are still creating their own affiliate campaigns, building their own links and arranging deals with advertisers or publishers themselves, but there are alternatives.
YieldKit is a great tool, developed by a startup team in Hamburg, Germany. YieldKit is a service that is free to use, and extremely easy to install, it just requires a short java snippet to be embedded into the index.html page. YieldKit allows automatic affiliation, giving you, the website owner, more time to spend on content and placement. YieldKit uses YieldLink, which converts existing or dead links into affiliate links. They also offer another service, called YieldWord. This tool scans your website, looking for keywords that could be converted into a text link.
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„Take a look at the new iPhone 5, it has an amazing new camera“ YieldWord would convert iPhone 5 into a text link, which would forward you to a site connected in some way to the iPhone 5. These text links show the future. They are small, discreet, and still offer a high return to publishers. YieldKit is a product that changes the way consumers view affiliates, and works extremely well on sites that are networked and compiled with high level content due to its discreetness. Through times concepts change and advance, there is only so much people can achieve on a platform that is beginning to stagnate. Hidden affiliation is becoming the new secret weapon with the use of tools like YieldKit. One thing has to be mentioned, it is much easier for the standard everyday user to become an affiliate now. Anyone can create a blog, signup to Adsense, and begin a marketing campaign. In Mid 2000, everyone was spammed with messages like ‚Sign up now and earn $10k per month’. This method has now backfired, and the market is saturated with people trying to become affiliates. For a daily user, its great to try and earn some extra money with your site, install a product like YieldKit and your away. To become a profitable affiliate though, time, dedication and commitment are needed. Times change for a reason, and we have to anticipatethe future. Mobile affiliate marketing is becoming huge, with different networks cropping up all over the web. We have to prepare, because even over the 20 year period since affiliate marketing came about, the implementation methods linked to affiliate marketing have changed dramatically. Planning for the future is essential. n
Daniel Laloggia is a Digital Marketing Manager at Walker Sands Communications, where he develops and implements search marketing strategies for clients.
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vendor spotlight
iAcquire iAcquire, an independent agency with offices in New York City and Phoenix, has established market leadership in search marketing and is rapidly evolving its social media marketing and consulting business. Formed in 2009 by digital marketing pioneers with a seasoned past working with Fortune 1000 companies, Ad Age-ranked agencies, and leading Internet properties, iAcquire offers comprehensive digital marketing services. A completely self-funded venture since its inception, iAcquire employs 100 full-time professionals to service over 100 clients across the globe. In the last year, iAcquire made a significant stride in its earned media business, hiring 20 full-time journalists and editors, plus an in-house team of designers. Change is a constant at iAcquire, and this adaptability serves to benefit clients’ bottom line.
Contact Information
Website: http://www.iacquire.com Blog: http://www.iacquire.com/blog
Mission Statement
iAcquire pioneers digital marketing services that lie at the intersection of organic search, digital PR, and social media to win the competitive battles of search and social marketing.
The Technology iAcquire uses iRank™, a proprietary technology platform driven by content marketing professionals to implement large-scale marketing initiatives. The iRank™ platform is comprehensive, with three components of note: Targeting: iRank™ makes contact and website discovery simple. The data engineering process involves on-demand data mining from popular search engines and social media sites, data filtering (by search and social metrics), and data segmentation (for dynamic list building). Outreach: This integrated CRM manages contacts, email and phone outreach, follow-ups, and general relationship management. Content Management: Organizing all aspects of media, the integrated content management system allows users to manage large-scale volumes of content, images, and video for website distribution.
Employee Evolution The Company’s employee-centric and market-forward philosophy continues to attract impressive talent to its roster. iAcquire recently appointed inbound marketing’s best and brightest, Mike King. As Director of Inbound Marketing, Mike leads the organization’s expansion of enterprise SEO, digital strategy offerings, and in-house marketing initiatives. Other recent hires include: • Brittan Bright – Director of Client Strategy; former Account Director at Mindshare • Tom Harari – SEO Manager; former SEO at Omnicom-owned Resolution Media • Greg Rodriguez – Senior Account Manager; former leader at Web.com • Noelle Schuck – Editor-in-Chief; 10-year content production and marketing veteran • Christa Lebar – Creative Director; eight-year Delta marketing alum • Norris Rowley – Marketing Research Manager former Publicis Modem leader • Megan Brown – Social Media Strategist; former Slingshot SEO strategist • Allie Gray Freeland joined the team as PR Director; former Rasmussen College and Meet Minneapolis • veteran
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Customer Profile
iAcquire’s services are designed for large enterprises, established brands, and premier digital agencies that place a focus on long-term strategic results and value creation. The company has built its team by assembling individuals with valuable experience and understanding into vertical specific teams around technology, automotive, entertainment, travel and lifestyle, business, finance, education, and consumer brands.
Clients List
iAcquire has over 100 clients across the globe.
Company Executives
Joe Griffin: Co-CEO and Co-Founder Jay Swansson: Co-CEO and Co-Founder
Service Offered
iAcquire offers a range of digital marketing services including: organic search (on- and off- page), reputation management, paid search, video SEO, local search, social media, digital PR, and strategic consulting. Essentially, if it affects search engine results, iAcquire provides services for it. The Agency’s process for any and all of these services begins with a foundation of knowledge built up by our market research and audience insights team. This research provides the entire organization guidance and directive throughout our process of strategizing, delivering, and measuring.
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The Top Six Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in the Last Six Months of 2013
I
t’s review time. Client account reviews have us looking at every industry—from every angle—to gauge where to focus our digital marketing efforts for the latter part of 2013. As part of these discussions, we inevitably come up with a list of trends to look out for in the digital marketing space. The below items are what we think will dominate digital headlines and resources in the latter part of 2013.
1.Hello Yahoo!
According to multiple sources, new CEO Marissa Mayer is literally rebuilding the company by modeling the workplace after her former employer, Google. This includes making Yahoo! search more functional, bettering Yahoo!’s mail services, and improving Flickr. There have also been discussions about how Yahoo! can become more competitive in the search engine market. We predict that Yahoo! may revisit their relationship with Bing!, especially in the paid search realm. Right now, Yahoo!’s search results are simply a mirror image of Bing!’s search results because they share the same algorithm. Keep your eye on this; we think this will change soon and, as a result, open up the paid search market a bit more.
2. Goodbye Facebook?
Organizations have come into their own on social media networks in 2012. They’ve created social media internal positions, hired outside consultants, created a pipeline of engaging content, and more. We’ll continue to see advances on this front in 2013, and, as the Facebook generation continues to enter and advance in the workforce, the creation of internal social networks may start to replace internal corporate email. However, the social media king may be dethroned. As was illustrated with Facebook’s stock prices, the giant is not too big to fail. Its failure to diversify, forced formatting, and surprise
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privacy setting changes continue to frustrate users. The time is ripe for a novel social network –and we predict the reveal soon.
3. Content and Links, Penguin and Panda
Google changes its search algorithm around 500 times a year. The two most recent algorithm changes have online marketers and SEO consultants taking notice. Named after black and white animals, the two most significant algorithm changes have been dubbed “Panda” and “Penguin”. Panda was officially released in February 2011, but there have been many updates since its release. This algorithm adjustment focused on high-quality content sites. It punished sites with thin, duplicate, or stolen content proving once again that content is king, especially in the SEO world. Penguin was released in April 2012 and addressed back linking strategies. This update affects the way that Google evaluates links in the ranking process. Before, you could have several links to the same page on your site from other websites. Now, the links must not only come from a reputable site (as determined by Panda), but they also must be coded differently and point to different pages within your website. We predict that algorithm updates will continue to crack down on linking and back linking strategies because it is one of the few remaining areas that produce results through a black hat methodology. Google, through these updates, will continue to encourage and reward white hat SEO strategies through rankings.
4. QR Codes
Last year, we predicted the growing popularity of QR or Quick Response Codes—and we were right. Consumers are seeing these codes everywhere—from playbills to ketchup bottles. By the end of 2013, we will see an almost universal adoption of these –both by
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organizations and consumers. Not only will they become an important part of every company’s mobile marketing strategy, but they will also become an important tool for engagement marketing. In addition, URLs will be created with the same QR content to attract customers who haven’t yet adopted this scanning technology. Look for content to change from recipes and self-promotion to brand-based games, feel-good stories, and coupons. In fact, services will continue to emerge that will enable customers to send QR code-based discounts and messages to friends via text messages and social networks.
5. Location, Location, Location.
Your location, to be more specific. Google places has started to integrate with Google +, making claiming your local business page listing even more important to your search engine results page ranking. Google is striving to connect local search results with the geographic location of the user and the interest level of user (based on previous searches). Since most of these searches will be conducted on a mobile device, mobile search continues to be extremely important. In addition, expect to see an increase in the sophistication of location-based services (the ability to target highly relevant ads to customers who are physically close to the retailer). They’ve got your information…and are going to integrate it more comprehensively.
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Let’s face it. Google+ is not what we thought it would be. However, that doesn’t change that fact that we all need to be on it. Participation on Google+ is still important for search engine optimization so we will continue to see new account creation. However, the window for heavy adoption (and usage) by consumers and laypeople has passed…people are on it because they have to be, but people aren’t using it. Pinterest received lots of publicity in 2012; this won’t be the case as we round out 2013. Pinterest’s adoption rate has leveled off (the people that are going to use it are on there already). It is great for visual businesses and image searches (in fact, Google often ranks images from Pinterest above Google images), but it is no longer the sexy new network on the block. We believe that social networking will morph into social searching as more and more social media platforms create enhanced search options. It will be interesting to see how this will manifest itself in rankings.
A Changing World
One of the most exciting aspects about working in the digital marketing industry is that it is always changing. There is no template, no formula. Search engine strategies for clients can change with one swift Google algorithm release. The end of 2013 will prove this again and again as established giants retool, new competitors emerge, and organizations compete to enhance brand engagement and spark online dialogues. Stay tuned. n
Kaysha Kalkofen and JoAnna Dettmann are co-founders of tSunela, a digital marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization, mobile search marketing, paid search marketing, local search optimization, web analytics, and social media marketing. tSunela is headquartered in St. Louis, MO, with an additional office in Portland, Oregon. For more information: www.tSunela.com or call 314.721.8813.
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Why Brands
Should Care About
Social Search Optimization By Christy Belden
S
earch Marketers understand the importance of optimizing for social media. Both Google and Bing have stated social media is important in their algorithm with some research showing a number as high as 200 social indicators within the Google algorithm. You know when you have two friends who would be great together, but haven’t met yet? It’s all you can do not to thrust them in a room together and say “Here’s your better half! Thank me later!” That’s how we feel about Brands and Social Search Optimization (SSO). It’s a love affair waiting to happen and everyone will be happier when they are together. Even powerhouse search engines like Google and Bing have stated social media is important in their algorithms. They support this statement with research showing a number as high as 200 social indicators within the Google algorithm. This further supports what Search Marketers already knew, optimizing for social media is uber important.
• Google - Google was the first to illustrate how social media and organic search could work together with the launch of Google+. Building a proprietary social media property woven throughout all of Google’s properties underscores the importance of social media and search. Subsequently, Google released Search, Plus Your World – a mixed search engine result page containing not only the traditional blue links from brands, but also results peppered with personal photos, blogs, friends and even friend suggestions. The most recent change Google made was the inclusion of Knowledge Graph, a rich and more robust content search results page. Google’s intent is clear: search optimization, content and social media. With almost 5 billion searches performed on Google a DAY, a brand leaves a lot of impressions and traffic on the table by not putting all three of these in place.
Unfortunately, social media rarely sits within the search marketing or performance marketing team. Rather, it tends to be owned on the brand marketing side, where goals are different. Brand Marketers focus on goals that include growing the audience, impressions and visibility. Search Marketers focus on clicks, traffic and conversion. So why should brands care about integrating the two? Social Media and Search Marketing, specifically organic search, work in a cyclical manner. Social Media sites have large audiences that are actively engaged within the site. Individuals within those sites have needs and organic search can help bring a brand to the forefront, fulfilling that need. On the other hand, when a consumer has a need, a brand can leverage the large database of social media users to appear higher in the page; resulting in increased awareness for the brand. Increased awareness and need fulfillment can help a brand grow their audience and increase relevance for their audience. Several developments in recent years have helped increase the importance of pairing social media and organic search together.
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• Facebook Graph Search – Earlier this year, Facebook stepped into the search game with their announcement of Graph Search. Graph search allows users to query their friends. For example, someone can search for ‘the best restaurant in Chicago’ and find recommendations or posts from their friends. By launching Graph Search, Facebook has placed further importance on search marketing. Brands must heed this ‘hint’ and follow suit by placing similar important on SSO. • Bing and Facebook – Bing and Facebook have worked together for some time. Bing is the search engine Facebook uses for web results, while Facebook posts and status updates are populated on appropriate searches within Bing. Gaining search engine leverage for keywords should include leveraging Facebook and content produced in the space. • Influence – Influence on the Internet is an important topic. Scoring systems such as Klout and Kred, to name a few, help quantify influence on the Internet. Bing uses Klout to determine who has the most influence and will place them in the appropriate search engine keyword results page. If your brand wants to gain influence create
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relevant optimized content and distribute that content throughout various social media platforms. • Content – Content is king. Every existing search engine has placed a premium on quality content. Content drives how a brand is found in search and it drives engagement on social media sites. Content does not have to be static text. Rather, it can be video, audio, or visual. The more engaging the content, the more it can help drive impressions and traffic. Brands can leverage Social Search Optimization in a number of ways. Here are a couple of tactics brands can execute quickly to utilize SSO. • Content optimization and distribution – The most important way brands can utilize social search optimization is through content. Any content created by a brand needs to be optimized for search. Even if the content will not necessarily be placed on a search engine, such as an email, the content can create back links to your properties, which is extremely important to your organic search program. Brands have videos, podcasts, photos, web pages, articles, blogs, email, sales pieces – all of which should be optimized.
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While vital, optimization is only half of the story. The content should be distributed via social media, social news sites and online properties. Social media houses the brands audience. Spreading branded content throughout the social media sites helps increase the likelihood it will be seen and consumed by the brands’ consumers. Content should live, as much as possible, on the brands’ owned properties so organic search can gain lift coming from all of this social media optimized content. • Check-ins on Facebook – The verdict is still out on how Facebook Graph Search will work and it’s implications moving forward. One of the ways brands will be found within the Graph Search on Facebook is via check-ins. Therefore, brands and social media professionals will need to come to terms with the importance of check-ins to their overall goals and develop appropriate content around it. Additionally, some brands will need to consider incorporating POS, collateral or more traditional pieces to encourage Facebook check-ins. • Google+ Presence – The importance of an active Google+ presence cannot be understated. The audience is small but very loyal to Google+. Similarly, Google+ is one of the fastest ways to have your content found within organic search on Google. A brands social media team will need to test which content works. Due to the direct correlation of content and search engines within Google+, it is well worth a brands time and resources to invest in Google+. • Sharing keyword lists across teams – For any organic search program, the keyword list is paramount. It is how the success of the program is measured. Social media can help increase keyword lift by using within the syntax of the posts and content they are creating. For example, the SEO professional is going after the keywords ‘winged widget’ but the prevailing speak of the consumers is ‘widget’. A Social Media program can develop posts and talk about ‘winged widget’ versus ‘widget’. This subtle change over time can have a dramatic effect as the social media teaches the consumer how to ‘talk’ about products or services. • Multi-disciplinary team – Social media and SEO professionals cannot sit in silos any more. Social media professionals create an enormous amount of content. SEO professionals need to understand the value and direction of the content to effectively optimize it for search. Social Media professionals need to understand the principles of organic search and understand how it can help their goals. Brands need to make it an imperative for the two disciplines to work together. • The same goal - Social Search Optimization is they way brands need to think about content and engagement within digital marketing. Brands who can make this leap in thinking and execution and grow their audience and drive traffic to the site. Thus, ultimately leading to brand marketers being able to prove a better return model for their efforts – something we can agree is extremely desirable for all. n
Christy Belden, VP Media + Marketing at LeapFrog Interactive. During her twelveyear career, Belden has spent seven solid years in digital marketing. Her current position as Vice-President of Media+Marketing at LeapFrog Interactive allows her to work with clients on SEO, PPC, Social Media, e-Commerce Marketing, Digital Media, Public Relations, Email Marketing and Mobile Marketing. You can follow Christy on LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter @christy_belden
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www.informationweek.in
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seo
Five Tips for Boosting the SEO value of your Video SEO
O
nline shopping continues to nurture the increasingly symbiotic relationship with online video content. This relationship has been largely fueled by the proliferation of Internet-ready smartphones, tablets and laptops that hit the market in 2012. In the month of July alone, comScore reported that 85.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed almost 37 billion online videos and over 9 billion video ads. Shoppers armed with instant accessibility to both multimedia content and virtual stock rooms are demanding online shopping experiences that combine ecommerce opportunities and high quality video content. A recent study by Google and Compete found that 40 percent of apparel shoppers visited a store or retailer website as a direct result of watching an online product video and that online video ads have more purchase persuasion power than radio, newspaper or brochure
promotions. Video-viewing shoppers even drive higher revenue with 25 percent purchasing more than six times from apparel retailers in six months, and 28 percent spending over $500 on clothing over the same time period. These numbers, in addition to Google’s and other search engines’ push to prioritize video links in query results, dictate an obvious need for online retailers to embrace new media – and more importantly, to incorporate video into their search engine optimization plans. Fortunately, most ecommerce merchants already have video content at their disposal; from product commercials, manufacturer videos, promotional clips and filmed customer testimonials, the building blocks for an enhanced video content strategy are in place. By taking a few extra steps pre- and post-video production, e-retailers can
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transform their portfolio of clips into an SEO monolith.
1. It’s about relevancy, not quantity.
Some vendors err on the side of mass-producing video content to generate more backlinks and keywords. This strategy rarely has the intended effect and ultimately detracts from the retailer’s online reputation. When shoppers turn to the web for a new book or DVD, they don’t want to be greeted with clips for home décor. They want fast and easy access to video content that directly enhances their online shopping experience. Treat online video just as you would email
newsletters, social media campaigns or holiday promotions: by identifying your target audience and then catering the content to their behaviors, preferences and buying requirements. Although you don’t have to strive for Academy Award recognition (luckily, most search engines even qualify presentations and animated Slideshares as video content), there is no reason to post video content simply to increase the volume of video that is available to online consumers. And if you’re concerned about producing feature-length footage – don’t be. The average length of most Internet clips is 6.7 minutes. For retailers, best practices dictate a maximum clip length of 10 minutes. If your video content goes longer than ten minutes, you run the risk
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of boring viewers and potential customers, most of who are conditioned to digest online video in short bursts. If you have lengthy clips, divide them into shorter episodes that can be posted over multiple weeks or months. Serialized video content also creates opportunities for more detailed tags and annotations, which boost search relevancy and total viewership.
2. Host or post?
Brands that attempt to leverage video content as an SEO strategy are inevitably forced to address the hypermodern “hosting or posting” debate. Is it better to house video content on the company website, or is the brand’s marketing agenda better served by farming video footage out to a third-party site like Vimeo or YouTube? If the primary goal of the video initiative is to drive traffic to the company’s ecommerce site, then hosting is clearly the right choice. However, if the primary motivation behind the creation and distribution of video content is to boost viewership and social media shares, then a combined posting and hosting approach may be the best option. It’s also important to keep in mind that each uploading process is unique. Third party sites don’t require you to include “video” in the title or add a description – steps that are necessary when hosting and indexing clips on your own site.
3.Use keywords strategically.
Google is smart, but it’s not a mind reader or a video decoder. Like nearly every other search engine, Google relies on videos tags and keywords to understand your clip’s content and promote it to users who are conducting targeted online searches. So deciding on a name for your video should be a serious, thoughtful process. Since the video title accounts for half of its Google ranking (along with keywords), the naming process should leverage a string of terms that fully encompasses the video’s content and connects with its intended search audience. But naming isn’t the only place where keywords come into play. In addition to including strategic keywords in the video title, you will also need to dedicate time to other backend video details (e.g. video tags, brief descriptions, URL creation) to optimize the search
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presence of you company’s video content. The more time you devote to the planning process, the more likely it is that your video will be seen by the right eyes (e.g., the musicians watching your promo clip for your store’s selection of rare guitars). Another way to leverage keywords to improve the visibility of video content for third party sites and search engines is to attach a text transcript to your videos. Transcripts not only provide added value for special needs audiences, but also offer Google, YouTube and other sites better access to the video’s content.
4. Update sitemaps to maximize search visibility..
Tagging, keywords and a well-crafted title are all important steps in the process of maximizing the SEO potential of video content. But what many marketers and content creators don’t realize is that, uploading a video to your ecommerce site does not automatically link and index the clip. To maximize the visibility of your newly posted video content to search engines, you may need to perform an additional step. Sitemaps are the tools that ultimately lead the Google spider to discover your video URLs. If you don’t have one in place already, create a video sitemap to allow Google to spider the content throughout search. When adding video URLs to your sitemap,
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include the title, description, play page URL, thumbnail URL and location of the raw video file.
5.Share video content with friends and followers.
After you have completed all the technical “housekeeping” tasks needed to optimize your video, it’s time to shift your efforts to social media. Don’t be shy - Take advantage of any and all social media accounts your business maintains to promote your brand’s video content. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, the company blog and even Pinterest – video content should be promoted wherever shoppers interact with your brand. When sharing video opportunities with friends and follower, be vocal about your new content and encourage followers to comment, retweet and forward your clips. By aggressively promoting fresh video content via social media, you’ll give your video messaging the promotion it deserves, driving potential customers to your site and ultimately, improving conversions. Although video content offers important SEO opportunities for all retail brands, a video SEO strategy can be especially useful for small retailers and ecommerce providers that struggle to compete against large, global chains. Unlike traditional SEO, website age is not a significant factor in the SEO value of video content, enabling newer and smaller retailers to effectively compete against entrenched brands.
In many ways, video SEO is still in its infancy. As more and more brands discover how video can increase site traffic while creating deeper and richer customer experiences, it’s likely that Google and other major search engines will develop more sophisticated ways of ranking video content for their users. Over time, the sheer volume of online video content will make it more difficult for retailers to achieve front page search results, creating opportunities for even more advanced video SEO techniques to emerge. But for now, video SEO clearly deserves a larger role in most retailers’ online marketing mix. By recognizing consumers’ preference for video-based content and then carefully crafting content to leverage video SEO best practices, your retail brand can capture a larger share of the online marketplace and become more effective at transforming online viewers into committed brand advocates. n
Diane Buzzeo is the founder and CEO of Ability Commerce. After spending two decades in retail and retail marketing, Buzzeo saw the need to create a company dedicated to creating software solutions for ecommerce retailers and founded Ability Commerce in 1999. Ability Commerce is a leading provider of ecommerce software, offering customizable, turn-key solutions for online retailers including website infrastructure, CMS, customer analytics and multichannel integration. http://www.abilitycommerce.com/
BOSTON SEPTEMBER 30-OCTOBER 1, 2013 A worldwide event series focused exclusively on winning techniques for increasing website conversion rates and making your digital marketing campaigns more effective.
10% full conference passes OFF using code VMRM13
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Important
Google Analytics
Metrics to Monitor
By Roman Viliavin
G
oogle Analytics is freeware application which gives a detailed statistics related to visitors on a specific website. It’s a great feature in analyzing how effective your website is for your advertising campaign. Many of the top – rated organizations use Google analytics to determine their web performance.
site to the total number of visits. The actions can be anything such as commenting on a post, liking an article or even purchasing a product. This ratio is a very important metric because it helps determine how many people actually liked the content among all the visitors. Google analytics can easily track all the actions.
Google Analytics keeps a track of all viewers on the website from sources such as referrals, search engines, adds on the net, pay – per – click networks, email messages and other digital files such a slinks in Word or PDF files.
Visitor / Visitor Type This metric displays the total no of visitors to the site. Not only this, it can even tell the number of users which are returning and those which are new. The numbers can be somewhat higher because search engine bots are also counted. This can be remedied by filtering out visits which just spent two or three seconds on the website. You should then be able to see the actual number of visitors.
Page Views ‘Page views’ determines your server load. It is good only for your IT and networking department. If the load on your server is high, your users will experience slow browsing. This is disliked by everyone, and they don’t bother returning.
Bounce Rate Bounce rate is the count of users which do visit the site but leave it as well without further navigation. This count should be as low as possible. A high rate indicates that users don’t like what they view on the homepage and are not interested in progressing further. Determine all the pages with a high bounce rate. Analyze the format, design and content of those pages and try figuring out the unimpressive parts. Use this information and edit the pages accordingly. The software package is also integrated with Google AdWords. It can easily be determined which advertisements are effective in prompting the organization and which are not attracting clients. Google Analytics allows users to review online marketing campaigns by through specific metrics such as landing pages or conversions rates. There is also a goals feature for tracking progress on sales and leads. Google Analytics has some metrics, which if followed aid in improving the website. Monitor factors like conversion rates, number of backlinks, and the level of engagement your visitors have. This also helps you in acquiring a higher place on search engines results pages.
Conversion Rate Conversion rate is the ratio of viewers who perform an action on the
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Time on Site The time on site displays the total time spent by visitors on your website. The greater the time, the more likable your website is. If the visitors are spending just a few seconds, then they wither don’t like the content or it is irrelevant to them. The irrelevancy part can be figured out by monitoring the bounce rate, but if it’s the other reason, then you need to put in more efforts in improving your site.
Page Depth Monitor Page Depth along with Time on Site. Page Depth determines the average number of pages viewed by a visitor to your site.
Traffic Source Traffic source is very important metrics. This helps you in analyzing
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the amount your efforts on SEO and link building are paying off. Your targeted keywords must be relevant to the landing pages. Monitor the bounce rate on these pages as well to get a deeper insight.
Geographical Summary This metric determines the locality of all users on the site. If your product or service is limited to a few places, then the value for those regions should be much higher than the average value.
Landing Pages Landing Page displays the pages which are visited whenever an advertisement or link to your site is clicked. Singly, only the top few pages are shown. The benefit of this measure is seen when used with other metrics such as keyword, location and source. This allows you to determine if these pages contribute to a good user experience on the site. You can figure out if the web traffic is from within the same geographical region or a different one. Also make sure the keywords used are relevant to the page content. If there is lack or relevancy, the bounce rate will be high.
which have clicked on advertisements to access the website. adCost calculates the total cost from all your ads. adCPC measures the ratio of cost to the advertiser. CTR metrics displays the thorough rate for all advertisements. It helps in deterring the positions of the ads which are clicked most by viewers.
E – Commerce Evaluations If your website has an online store where customers can add items to cart and purchase products through credit or debit cards, then monitoring these metrics is extremely helpful. The names are pretty self – explanatory but are still reviewed here. Transactions display the total transactions on your site. Transaction Revenue provides the total cost of all items. Shipping calculates the total shipment cost. Quantity measures the number of items bought by users.
Custom Variables Even though Google Analytics has plenty of metrics to measure web performance, there are also options to create a user – defined metric for analyzing any factor of your choice. n
In – Page Analytics In – Page Analytics gives a visual representation on the performance of the page. It shows information such as the links which are frequently clicked, the visitors which bounced back, and how users landed on that page in an easy – to – decipher manner. In other words, it determines if your page layout works in attracting visitors to the company so it serves as a highly useful analysis of web performance.
Unconventional Thinker and candidate master of chess. Roman has been working in the field of search engine optimization since 2005 and is the moving spirit of the company. Participant and speaker of all major events in SEO business. Roman has successfully completed dozens of projects and gladly shares his experience with SEO community via articles and various online and offline publications. Follow Roman on Twitter and Facebook.
AdWords Metrics The AdWords metrics allow users to identify which online advertisements are contributing to creating an awareness of their products and services. adClicks displays the number of users
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upcoming conferences Refer to this guide for upcoming internet marketing conferences from across the globe.
June 13 - 14, 2013 | ad:tech Singapore Suntec, Singapore
Over the years, ad:tech has become a true melting pot of industry thought leadership, well-known to be the most successful marketplace which gathers brand advertisers, traditional & interactive agencies, portals, on-line publishers and service providers.
June 10 - 13, 2013 | eMetrics Summit Chicago Chicago IL, USA
If you are responsible for the results of your company’s website, social media, ecommerce, web intelligence, data strategy, audience research and/or measurement, then mark your calendar to attend eMetrics Summit Chicago – June 10-13, 2013.
September 2 - 3, 2013 | TFM&A China ShanghaiMart Shanghai, China
Technology for Marketing & Advertising (TFM&A) has established itself, after 11 years, as the UK’s biggest marketing, media and advertising eventTFM&A China, China‘s largest integrated marketingsolutions event, has been successfully held for three years.
June 12 - 14, 2013 | SES Toronto
Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre, ON, Canada
September 10 - 13, 2013| SES San Francisco
SES Conference & Expo provides marketing professionals, brand advertisers, agencies, and business leaders with the knowledge and tools needed to traverse the dynamic digital landscape. Designed for you by industry thought leaders and innovators, our instructional program will meet your needs whatever your experience level.
The Marketing Show 2012 will convene the region’s largest gathering of marketing professionals to innovate & envision the future of customer engagement through strategies in CRM, analytics, loyalty, social media to achieve greater customer retention.
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San Francisco, CA, USA
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