SES Magazine June 2012

Sneak Preview

SES Toronto

June 11–13, 2012

SESConference.com

June 2012

Download the SES mobile app.

Breaking Out of the “+1” Mindset Canada is Losing the Digital Innovation Race. How Can It Become More Competitive? 6

The Impact of US Internet Laws on Canadian Site Owners 9 Make Your Client-Agency Relationship Work 10 The State of Google+, One Year Later 12

LEARN AT YOUR OWN PACE Led by industry experts, ClickZ Academy provides practical knowledge and hands-on experience to maximize your potential in this industry.

COURSES: Online Marketing Foundation Search Engine Optimization Paid Search Strategies E-Mail Strategy Social Media ...and more

Enroll today: www.clickzacademy.com

contents

Follow SES at twitter.com/SESConf

COVER STORY

6

BREAKING OUT OF THE “+1” MINDSET Canada Is Losing the Digital Innovation Race. How Can It Become More Competitive?

COLUMNS

9

10

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

3 16

SPONSORS & EXHIBITORS SAMPLE SESSIONS AT SES TORONTO

11

BEYOND THE BORDER The Impact of US Internet Laws on Canadian Site Owners MAKE YOUR CLIENT-AGENCY RELATIONSHIP WORK Three Considerations When Choosing a Partner DOING FORENSICS ON FRUIT SALAD The Challenge of Developing Practical, Client-Friendly Strategies in the Unpredictable Social Media Environment

June 2012

12

THE STATE OF GOOGLE+, ONE YEAR LATER Google Hasn’t Yet Carved Their Niche in Social, but Do They Even Need To?

14

THE CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION LIFE CYCLE Which Advice Should You Follow, and Which Should You Avoid, in Structuring Your Optimization Program?

Cover art via Shutterstock

How ClickZ Academy Can Work for You Workshops, Online and In-House Courses, and Recorded Sessions Suit Every Schedule and Knowledge Level

by Paul Fegan

S

ES conferences are a great place to learn about the digital marketing industry, but how do you get the most out of them if you are new to the business? To help you maximize your time at SES, ClickZ Academy offers workshops on the Monday preceding every conference. Running in the morning and afternoon, these four-hour workshops provide a thorough introduction to the various elements of digital marketing, and are included in the SES All-Access Pass.

ClickZ and SES are both part of Incisive Media. ClickZ is the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off. With over 400,000 visitors a month, it has become an indispensable tool for marketers. ClickZ Academy’s faculty are drawn from the pool of ClickZ contributors and SES presenters. The instructors are the same industry experts who shape our conference program and contribute articles to SES Magazine and ClickZ.

Sharpen Your Skills with e-Learning and In-House Classes In this constantly evolving business, keeping up with recent developments can be difficult.

Also, a large number of practitioners are selftaught. Formal training to provide a solid foundation and clarify industry best practices is vital in this environment.

Since pre-conference workshops are not convenient for everyone, ClickZ Academy offers a suite of online courses. With a library of over 40 e-learning modules, it covers every aspect of digital marketing.

The foundation course discusses the various disciplines at an introductory level; the five specialist courses explore social media, paid search, SEO, web analytics, and email. You can take the courses at any place that has Internet access, and at your own pace. You can purchase modules individually or in bulk.

At the end of a course and after successful completion of an assessment, you will receive a certificate and be able to network through the ClickZ alumni group on Linked­In. Membership in this group will show in your LinkedIn profile, so anyone searching for you will see that you have been formally trained in online marketing.

At one end of the spectrum are individuals working for small to medium-size businesses who want to fine-tune their skills or continues on page 15

Onsite Training Workshops SES Toronto—Weds., June 13 Hyatt Regency Toronto 8:00am–12:00pm •• Online Marketing Foundation—SEO •• Email Marketing: Driving 51% Engagement 1:00pm–5:00pm •• Social, Local, Mobile (SoLoMo) Marketing •• Link Building to Get Rankings!

Register

staff Matt McGowan MD, North America Mike Grehan Global VP, Content Sharon Morabito Head of Events, Americas Program Development Conference Program manager Conference Producer

Laura Roth Anna Lee

Operations Operations Manager Registration Associate

Kim Kiedaisch Charisse Rosales

ClickZ & Search Engine Watch Executive Editor, ClickZ Director, SEW Senior Editor, News Staff Writer Copy Editor Asia Desk Editor

Anna Maria Virzi Jonathan Allen Kate Kaye Christopher Heine Caitlin Rossman Adaline Lau

Sales & Marketing Sales Directors

Account Executive Director, Client Services Marketing Director Marketing Manager Marketing Associate Web Designer Online Operations manager Online Operations associate

Andrew Katz Elaine Mershon Elaine Romeo Peter Westerholm Elizabeth Huston JoAnn Simonelli Angela Man Amy Xu Ploy Tangtrakul Rebecca Holz Louise Laberge Aleksey Gershin

Magazine Editor Contributors

Dawn Cavalieri Julie Batten Dave Davies Paul Fegan Andrew Goodman Jim Hedger Miranda Miller Garry Przyklenk

Corporate Chief Executive Group Managing Director

Tim Weller James Hanbury

SES: Volume 6, Issue 3 | June 2012 © 2012 Incisive Media plc To subscribe, contribute, or view past issues, visit www.sesconference.com/ses-magazine To advertise, contact sales at sales@sesconference.com or +1 (212) 457-4993.

Comments? Want to unsubscribe? E-mail us at magazine@sesconference.com Incisive Media, U.S. 55 Broad Street, 22nd fl.

New York, NY 10004-2501 tel +1 (646) 736-1888 fax +1 (646) 390-6612

Incisive Media, head office 28-29 Haymarket House London SW1Y 4RX, UK tel +44 (0)20 7316 9609 fax +44 (0)20 7930 2238

about SES Welcome to the Toronto issue of SES Magazine. This issue features a roster of Canadian writers, several of whom will be speaking at the SES Toronto Conference & Showcase. SES Toronto, to be held on June 11–13 at the Hyatt Regency, will consist of three days of breakthrough sessions covering search, social, mobile, and display, and will include these Canadaspecific sessions: •• Made in Canada: Marketing Online Worldwide •• Conquering the Growing Canadian Affiliate Marketing Industry In addition to bringing back the very popular Meet the Experts Roundtable Forum, we’re inaugurating the SES Eliminator Quiz, a networking event in which participants will compete to see who is the savviest marketer while enjoying an informal pub atmosphere.

See pages 16–17 for sample sessions.

To make the most of your time in Toronto, be sure to download the SES Toronto app. The most up-to-date agenda can also be found on the conference website, SESToronto.com.

And don’t forget these upcoming events: •• SES San Francisco, August 13–17, Moscone West (SESSanFrancisco.com) •• SES Hong Kong, September 10–12, The Mira Hong Kong (SESHongKong.com) •• SES Berlin, October 10–11, Kosmos Berlin (SESBerlin.com) •• SES Chicago, Hyatt Regency (SESChicago.com) SES Toronto will provide a singular opportunity to learn actionable strategies and mingle with over 1,000 C-level executives, directors, marketers, and engineers from leading brands such as Google, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Bell Canada. See you there!

Best regards, Mike Grehan, Chair SES Advisory Board Chair Global VP, Content Incisive Media

Matt McGowan Managing Director, North America Incisive Media

SES ADVISORY BOARD

Comprised of both industry thought leaders and real-world practitioners, the SES advisory board brings together top players in the field of interactive media and search. The team works to deliver continually cutting-edge search techniques, more integrated and relevant content, and professional development resources to SES attendees.

Mike Grehan, Chair Global VP Content SES/Search Engine Watch/ ClickZ

Bryan Eisenberg Bestselling Author bryaneisenberg.com

Jon Myers Head of Account Management Yahoo! UK & Ireland

Jonathan Allen Director SearchEngineWatch

Paul Fegan Head of e-Learning Incisive Media

Lee Odden CEO TopRank Online Marketing

Matthew Bailey President Site Logic Marketing

Andrew Goodman President Page Zero Media

Giovanni Rodriguez Digital and Social Strategy, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Chris Boggs Director, SEO, Rosetta

Bill Hunt President Back Azimuth Consulting

Laura Roth Conference Program & Training Manager SES Conference & Expo

Mikel Chertudi Sr. Director, Online & Demand Marketing Adobe

Aaron Kahlow Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing SummiT

Crispin Sheridan Sr. Director of Search Marketing Strategy SAP

Eddie Choi Managing Director Frontiers Digital

Anne F. Kennedy International Search Strategist Beyond Ink USA

sponsors & Download the app or visit SESToronto.com. exhibitors Sponsor Showcase Hours: Monday, June 11, 10:00am–6:30pm | Tuesday, June 12, 10:00am–3:00pm

PLATINUM SPONSOR

EXHIBITORS

Google Engage with Agencies

AdLeads

www.google.com Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users.

Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www. google.com.

Table 4 www.adleads.com AdLeads is the industry’s first self-serve mobile signup ad platform.

With AdLeads, businesses of all sizes can run ads on top iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. They only pay when someone signs up to hear from them—and never for wasted clicks or impressions. Hundreds of businesses and agencies like children’s publisher Paper Hat Press, Brooklyn-based restaurant Nita Nita, and Australian mobile marketing agency Mobile Marketers have used AdLeads to get new customers and grow their businesses.

GOLD SPONSOR Bing Sponsored Sessions www.bing.com Search advertising with Microsoft helps you efficiently reach your next best customer—within your budget and with the support you need to get started and optimized and measure your results.

SILVER SPONSOR The Search Agency Table 5 www.thesearchagency.com The Search Agency is a global online marketing firm that combines high-tech and high-touch online marketing strategies to deliver new customers and measure ROI beyond a reasonable doubt. Services include paid search, SEO, landing page optimization, display media, social media, and affiliate program management. As the largest and fastest-growing independent search marketing agency in the US (Advertising Age May 2012), and among Deloitte’s 2011 Technology Fast 500, The Search Agency is now bringing over a decade of experience and expertise to Canada. Founded in 2002, The Search Agency has grown to more than 200 employees worldwide with Canadian headquarters in Toronto, and additional offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, East Greenwich, Baltimore, Tampa, London, Sydney, and Bangalore. For more information, go to http://www. thesearchagency.com.

ClickZ Academy and Recruitment Table 10 www.clickzacademy.com ClickZ helps develop the careers of professional marketers, either through its education program or its recruitment web site. This builds on its position as the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off. From search to social, technology to trends, our coverage is expert, exclusive, and in-depth.

gShift Labs Web Presence Optimizer™ Table 7 www.gshiftlabs.com gShift Labs’ industry leading SEO software system, Web Presence Optimizer™ (WPO), helps marketers and agencies more efficiently and effectively monitor and report on SEO campaigns. gShift’s patent-pending WPO software provides insight into an entire web presence—website, blogs, press releases, social media and analytics—by reporting organic rank data, backlinks, social signals, and competitive intelligence, all of which contribute to the goal of ranking higher organically in the search engines.

The fundamentals of SEO still matter; however, SEO in 2012 is about social signals (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest) and fresh content (blogs and press releases).

Track, manage, measure, and report web presence analytics data all in one place using gShift’s SEO monitoring and reporting software. Organizations of all sizes benefit by reducing the time and resources required to analyze and improve organic search optimization. gShift Labs can be contacted at 1-866-743-5960, by emailing sales@gShiftLabs.com, or by visiting www.gshiftlabs.com.

sesconference.com • SES 3

sponsors & exhibitors SES Toronto | June 11–13, 2012 Marin Software

Reprise Media

Table 1 www.marinsoftware.com Marin Software is a leading provider of online advertising management solutions, offering an integrated platform for managing search, display, and social marketing. The company provides solutions for advertisers and agencies of all sizes, enabling them to improve financial performance, save time, and make better decisions. Marin Enterprise, the company’s flagship product, addresses the needs of online marketers spending at least $100,000 per month on biddable media. Marin Professional delivers the same power and ease of use as Marin Enterprise, through an application designed for marketers spending less than $100,000 per month on paid search. Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices worldwide, Marin’s technology powers marketing campaigns for over 850 customers managing more than $2.5 billion of annualized ad spend in more than 160 countries.

Table 3 www.reprisemedia.com Reprise Media Canada is a full-service search marketing agency.

Our core business is based on search engine marketing (pay-perclick), search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing. Reprise Media Canada offers best-in-class search marketing strategies employed by a team of industry-recognized talents and applies an agenda of innovation to produce breakthrough results for our clients. Come see us at Table 3 on June 11/12!

9th sphere Track Sponsor www.9thsphere.com 9th sphere is a full-service web design and Internet marketing solutions provider, focused on delivering a strong ROI for our clients.

Since 1997, they have put their award-winning expertise to work, earning recognition for effectiveness in design, development, and marketing results–driven websites. 9th sphere is proud to offer top industry experts, state-of-the-art technology, and exceptional customer care that produces smart and powerful website solutions and real results for a wide variety of businesses. This ultimately provides a solid service value from which clients prosper. Learn about the 9th sphere Advantage at http://www.9thsphere.com.

NVI Solutions Sponsored Session www.nvisolutions.com NVI is a full-service digital marketing agency. We leverage our internal tools, our broad and diversified experience, and the largest bilingual staff of experts in the country to serve our customers.

NVI is known for its resourcefulness and business ability to execute strategic plans that are performance-centric.

NVI relies on the ingenuity of its web marketing strategies and the collective energy of its employees to offer the best return on investment to its customers.

Page Zero Media Reception Sponsor www.pagezero.com Page Zero Media is a full service digital marketing agency focusing especially on paid search (SEM), display advertising, and other forms of effective audience targeting. Led by founder and president Andrew Goodman, the company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Clients include Postmedia Digital, Canon, Direct Energy, Wave Accounting, and Nuts.com. Page Zero is a Google AdWords Certified Agency.

4 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

Search Engine People Inc. Table 2 www.searchenginepeople.com Search Engine People Inc. is one of Canada’s oldest and most respected search agencies. Since 2001, SEP has helped a wide range of clients (from Fortune 500 to small and medium-size companies) secure business from the web. SEP is a Google Adwords Qualified Company and Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador, and is Microsoft adExcellence certified. The company was also named one of the “Top 25 Up-and-Coming Canadian IT Companies” by the Branham Group in 2006.

SEP’s services include search engine optimization (SEO), paid search management (PPC), social media marketing (SMM), online reputation management, usability, and more. Whether you’re looking to compete in an ultra-competitive space, or to dramatically increase your local presence, SEP can help.

Stop by our booth and talk to our knowledgeable experts.

Get Found™!

SEMPO Canada Table 8 www.sempo.ca SEMPO is the largest nonprofit trade organization in the world, serving the search and digital marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it.

Whether you are a search or social marketing professional or use search and social as part of your profession, SEMPO provides the programs and resources to help you succeed.

Our activities center on education, networking, and research. To support our educational mission, we provide a professional webinar series, 101 webinar series, and quarterly education programs.

Our local groups provide opportunities to network throughout the world, and we also conduct the industry’s most respected research.

We provide members with discounts to training programs and industry events, and a robust job board.

Learn more at www.SEMPO.org / info@SEMPO.org.

SEMRush Badge Booklet Sponsor www.semrush.com SEMRush provides users with invaluable competitive intelligence— tracking the top 95 million keywords and 42 million domains.

SEMRush data currently includes 10 of the most popular regional

product & service guide Affiliate & Performance-Based Marketing Solutions The Search Agency............................. 5 Training Business Pros..................... 6 Display Advertising Marin Software....................................1 Page Zero Media................... Sponsor General Search Engines Bing............................................ Sponsor Interactive Marketing Agencies 9th sphere................................ Sponsor Interactive Marketing Associations & Publications SEMPO Canada................................... 8

Internet Associations Society of Internet Professionals.................................... 9 Link Building Search Engine People Inc................ 2 SEMRush.................................. Sponsor Local Search Marketing Services & Directories Bing............................................ Sponsor Marketing Optimization Solutions Marin Software....................................1 Training Business Pros..................... 6 Mobile & Rich Media Advertising Solutions AdLeads.................................................. 4

Table #s on right.

Organic Search Marketing gShift Labs Web Presence Optimizer™.....................7 9th sphere................................ Sponsor NVI Solutions.......................... Sponsor Page Zero Media................... Sponsor Reprise Media...................................... 3 The Search Agency............................. 5 Search Engine People Inc................ 2 Pay-Per Click Networks & Management Services NVI Solutions.......................... Sponsor Search Engine People Inc................ 2 Search Marketing Agencies 9th sphere................................ Sponsor NVI Solutions.......................... Sponsor page Zero Media................... Sponsor Reprise Media...................................... 3 The Search Agency............................. 5

Search Marketing Software gShift Labs Web Presence Optimizer™.....................7 Marin Software....................................1 SEMRush.................................. Sponsor Specialized Search Engines (Multimedia, Mobile, Shopping, International, etc.)

Bing............................................ Sponsor Training Courses & Certification in Search Marketing ClickZ Academy and Recruitment..................................... 10 Training Business Pros..................... 6 Web Analytics gShift Labs Web Presence Optimizer™.....................7 Reprise Media...................................... 3 SEMRush.................................. Sponsor

Google databases, as well as US Bing, and returns extensive metrics relative to both organic and paid traffic (both AdWords and AdSense), as well as backlink info.

SEMRush can reveal just what keywords your competitors are ranking for, what campaigns they’re running, what their budget looks like, and what kind of traffic they generate. Thus, it can provide all the ammo one needs to effectively optimize, run impactful campaigns, and increase overall traffic and revenue.

As part of our 14th anniversary celebrations, attendees of the SES Show who sign up at www.sipgroup.org will be eligible to receive a discount of 50% for the first year of Professional Membership dues.

For more information and to become a member, visit www. sipgroup.org.

Contact: Max Haroon, President, tel (416) 891-4937 (info@ sipgroup.org).

Society of Internet Professionals (SIP)

Training Business Pros

Table 9 www.sipgroup.org The Society of Internet Professionals (SIP) is an international notfor-profit association based in Canada. Since 1997, SIP has upheld professional standards for Internet professionals. Our ongoing activities include spearheading strategic partnerships, offering educational programs, and running networking events.

Becoming a professional member of SIP and abiding by our Professional Code of Ethics gives you instant credibility and competitive advantage in the marketplace. You gain access to exclusive members-only information, privileges, and offers, and you secure a place in a network of serious individuals and organizations focused on success through excellence.

Take the first step today by signing up for a free SIP Associate Membership (no dues). Join 10,000 SIP Associates who benefit from Affinity Programs and stay informed of upcoming events and valuable offers via our monthly newsletter for FREE.

Table 6 www.trainingbusinesspros.com Training Business Pros is Canada’s leading internet marketing training company offering over 100 intensive business training opportunities throughout North America every year. Our clients have exploded their sales in the millions and trainees have increased their personal market value exponentially.

Since 2007, Training Business Pros has helped over 22 thousand businesses adopt and adapt internet marketing and social media strategies. Whether you are a start-up or a Fortune 500 company, it is essential to get valuable information fast in order to get massive results within a short period of time.

Visit Table #6 to claim your free introductory training.

Or learn live from our CEO, Paul Tobey, on stage June 12th at 2:35 pm to 2:55 pm.

You will learn how 20 minutes a day can dramatically boost your rankings and how the social media wheel can be the secret sauce to your back-linking strategy.

sesconference.com • SES 5

focus

COVER STORY

Breaking Out of the “+1” Mindset Canada is Losing the Digital Innovation Race. How Can It Become More Competitive?

by Andrew Goodman

C

anada has weathered the economic downturn better than any other G7 nation. With a high level of economic, cultural, and technological development and a favorable trading relationship and cultural integration with the US, it can hardly be described as hurting. Since nothing’s terribly broken, creating a sense of urgency around living up to our true potential is hard.

Some of us feel a constant urge to do better; most of us do not. The most likely way to propagate this feeling is to deliberately and systematically push one’s peers to improve.

That’s how it is in organized sports. That’s how it is at SES conferences. And that’s how Canadians ought to behave when it comes to technological innovation and business competitiveness.

Caution Rather Than Competition Canadian caution is dangerously close to an insidious disease: complacency. For over a century, we’ve contentedly enjoyed the benefits of our “+1” relationship with the powerful innovator to the south. We’ve sat back and waited while dynamic enterprises and innovations were created in the US. Instead of competing, our businesses have often dawdled, watched, and withered as companies like Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot moved in and took over.

In high technology, the decline of a single leader like Research in Motion (RIM) is enough to throw the entire country into a panic. Without the Blackberry, what have we given the world? Sidney Crosby and maple syrup? (Ok, a few other things, like insulin and the telephone.)

The situation isn’t that bad. But it is a function of a complacent culture that others’ successes (the successes of bold, non-Canadian tall poppies) are claimed as one’s own as long as it’s convenient, with very little done to create an atmosphere that fosters innovation—until it becomes painfully obvious that a single flagship high-tech success story isn’t going to cut it.

6 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

Unfortunately, many of the traits that help entrepreneurs feel relatively accepted in the US aren’t baked into Canadian culture.

As a result, it’s harder to develop a critical mass of digitally savvy companies, tech talent, investors, and other elements that create clusters of innovation and dynamism. If you massage the data enough (as Richard Florida does), you can refer to the broader region around the Greater Toronto Area as a creative cluster. However, this region is punching well below its weight when it comes to the je ne sais quoi of creating great growth companies. This ultimately causes relative backwardness in a whole range of interrelated realms, from soft skills needed to staff up fast-growing startups, to consumer expectations of online retailers. The commonality is expectations and standards: unless they’re raised, they stay too low—if there are any at all.

The e-Commerce Lag Where do Canadians shop when we do buy online? One of our largest homegrown retailers—Canadian Tire, which absorbed apparel and sporting-goods giant Forzani Group, forming a retail empire of a decent size—only recently relaunched its website with the capacity to order items online. The company had taken a two-year hiatus from e-commerce, reverting to a website that offered information about products available in physical stores, and various episodic microsites (see article in The Globe and Mail). Frankly, management is living in the same time warp that many other top managers of large Canadian enterprises are in. Slow growth in a high-growth area like e-commerce is unacceptable if Canadianowned companies want to survive; it opens up the playing field to US companies that are good at plugging in their existing, highly optimized operations.

Retail may not be the only measure of the health of a nation, but online retail is surely the bellwether for the state of a digital nation.

Here again, average Canadians couldn’t care

less, and would dissent from this obvious point. In their view, because more of us have broadband, use Facebook, send text messages, etc., we’re more digitally savvy than other countries, including the US. Sure—but that’s like saying that buying a cute new gym bag makes you a fashion pioneer. It’s nice to enjoy what’s made available to you, but it doesn’t compare at all with, say, investing in a company that grows into a global fashion label. (On that note, kudos to Lululemon, a wildly successful Canadian brand that is one of the exceptions that prove the rule.)

Canadians, all too often, like to participate in the excitement of advanced trends and taste the fruits of others’ innovation, but wouldn’t have a clue how to spearhead anything. Nor do they quite understand why you would need or want to. That’s the kind of mindset that develops during a century and a half of living in a branch-plant economy.

A November 11 article from IBM (citing Forrester research) notes that Canada is behind the US in e-commerce spending, and growing more slowly. The percentages—5.4% of total retail sales in Canada versus 6.0% in the US—make the two countries seem fairly close, but 6% of $3.2 trillion is immense compared to 5.4% of $370 billion. Since ad spends, website infrastructure, and consulting time don’t make economic sense below a certain size, a chicken-egg problem sets in: customers aren’t served as well, research isn’t done, ads and content aren’t crafted well, checkouts don’t work as they should, and so on.

The domestic Canadian e-commerce market poses a huge challenge for all but the largest players. This makes it all the more frustrating that those large players, at least, don’t recognize the need for urgency and investment. Instead of comparing themselves to their peers, they should compare themselves to strong players around the globe.

Weak, Unprofitable Online Marketing Strategies Only a handful of Canadian retail website owners and managers know the key

COVER STORY

to reaching the big leagues: after testing and optimizing your model, you can power your way into the top-grossing elite largely through an aggressive, targeted online marketing spend. That’s no sales pitch; that’s how the math works. Many businesses appear to forget the enormous cost of the infrastructure and overhead that get them to the table.

Once they are at that already expensive table, the investment is wasted if the resulting revenue remains pitifully low because the method for actually getting new customers is “hope, pray, and DIY on-page SEO.” Winning online businesses have growing revenues (and, to be sure, marketing spends) that eventually reduce overhead and infrastructure costs to manageable (ideally, trivial) proportions. Losing ones build a large infrastructure and do nothing with it. Since only a few companies are getting it right, there is a very small pool of exemplars to show the way, and wishful thinking substitutes for action.

We don’t find a Canadian company on the Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide (as of late April 2012), which ranks B2C retailers in the US and Canada based on online sales, until number 152: The Shopping Channel, owned

by Rogers Media. Lululemon Athletica is at 229 now—for them, the sky’s the limit.

ALDO Group (shoes) and Mountain Equipment Co-Op (outdoor gear) deserve props at 390 and 395, respectively. Unfortunately, many Canadian entrepreneurs—to say nothing of large retailers—aren’t aiming at making lists like this; many haven’t even heard of them.

Government’s Share of Blame Canada is falling behind in the global innovation race because “Canadian business itself … choose[s] deliberately not to pursue business strategies that rely on innovation, as there [are] easier ways of making profits.” So argue Marcel Côté, founding partner of strategic management consulting firm SECOR, and Robert Miller, engineer at École Polytechnique de Montréal, in a recent report

(citing research by the Council of Canadian Academies).

Unfortunately, many of the traits that help entrepreneurs feel relatively accepted in the US aren’t baked into Canadian culture. As a result, it’s harder to develop a critical mass of digitally savvy companies, tech talent, investors, and other elements that create clusters of innovation and dynamism.

Certainly, government has played a role in allowing Canadian companies to be weakened, largely through inaction and misappropriation of subsidy funds. All governments sit on and distribute—in the aggregate—large pools of business development capital and research funding, and Canada is no exception. Yet funds often trickle out to laggard players or subsidize the operations of established, noninnovating companies.

Powerhouses like RIM return far more to the economy (in the form of jobs, spinoffs, R&D, and tax revenues) than any breaks and incentives they receive. A business columnist recently described the high-ROI government incentives that help create blockbusters like RIM as “federal largesse.” Largesse?

To Research in Motion? I think we got our money’s worth.

The lack of similar “largesse” to identifiable, very tall poppies has led to repeated missed opportunities and the lack of role models and good jobs in manufacturing, R&D, and software. The denial of incentives to high-tech firm Mitel in the early 1980s is a salient example (see Donald J. Savoie’s 2009 book I’m from Bouctouche, Me: Roots Matter); the deal would have created thousands of

focus

new telecommunications equipment jobs in Atlantic Canada. This attitude has also resulted in the bankruptcy of companies (like Mitel) that could have become global leaders and precursors of other successful companies.

What We Can Do If government won’t make the right moves, how can Canadian companies improve on our own? We must leave behind the old +1 instincts and the peer pressure to do just well enough. Here are some suggestions: •• Avoid the grand narratives. Coverage of traditional monopoly sectors such as financial, mining, and telecom­ munications dominates the Canadian business media, and only obvious successes are deemed noteworthy. In terms of trends in advertising and digital culture, little insight or encouragement is to be found in traditional media.

Look for validation elsewhere: in your peer group, at industry events, among your customers, and yes, even in other countries.

•• Q uit scoffing at data. Yes, our clients’ customers really do buy pecans, switchplates, furniture, dishwasher parts, soil remediation equipment, and paella pans, online. Canadians—even those making digital marketing their career through formal certification courses—have a nasty habit of assuming that because people like them “would never click on that” or “would never buy something like that online,” it’s helpful or insightful to share this preconceived notion. The easy work is to hop onto the coattails of some large, hip brand and recommend very gradual approaches to budgeting the marketing spend, despite the millions in sunk costs (infrastructure, office continues on page 8

sesconference.com • SES 7

focus

COVER STORY

Breaking Out of the “+1” Mindset continued from page 7 space, website buildout, etc.) that make the operation wildly unprofitable on the whole (though seemingly cautious when only the variable costs are taken into account). Do the hard work, and stop dismissing what is in fact real consumer behavior screaming for granular analysis.

•• Know the role models. Many young Canadians I’ve encountered in formal business courses were not aware of Techcrunch, Yelp, Zappos, and many other mainstays of digital business culture. This is inexcusable. The best students are the self-taught exceptions.

There’s no guarantee that these selfstarters will get great jobs out of the gate, but over time, they usually prevail.

to reach the next level. You do have to have the entrepreneurial, 24-7 mindset.

•• Embrace digital jobs as normal. If ordinary Canadians don’t become conversant with the leading edge of technology and digital enterprise, the best minds will continue to drain away due to a lack of both opportunity and peers. Our industry needs to be normalized and valued as simply a part of the economy.

Today we’re still seen as representing either of two extremes—taking insane risks and living in a cardboard box, or lucking into lottery-like wealth—as if the profession is worth discussing only for its financial upside, not for its substance. Until people get it, it’ll be up to us to evangelize the merits of things like search and display advertising (better targeting), online procurement (reducing friction in the economy), and all of that good stuff. Yes, it was obvious in 1999, but that doesn’t mean people are quite comfortable with it yet.

•• Look for smart partners and communities.

Canada is full of half-baked digital companies that go nowhere, fueled by family money and vanity investments.

Dumb money loses out to savvy, skill, and passion.

Conclusion

•• Risk your own money. Funding at the appropriate stage can be an important accelerator, but the founders of companies like FreshBooks, Acquisio, PlentyofFish, and HomeStars put in their own money, perhaps with the support of family and friends, before they did formal fundraising. It’s not always possible to bootstrap, but companies like these prove that you don’t have to raise huge sums of money

Not everyone is going to create the next Radian6. The Internet Retailer’s Top 500 is pretty rarefied territory and represents more success than the vast majority of startups— let alone well-known, established retailers— can attain. However, Canadians should at least be benchmarking themselves against these success stories rather than the semisuccessful company down the street. The real problem, of course, is that the comfort level of doing “just so well” is tempting. It may even seem irrational to want to reach a

Canadians should at least be benchmarking themselves against the Internet Retailer’s Top 500 rather than the semi-successful company down the street. The real problem, of course, is that the comfort level of doing “just so well” is tempting.

The driven minority, though, seek to have something more impressive than “+1” engraved on their tombstones. levels of success far ahead of what is needed to maintain a great lifestyle.

The driven minority, though, seek to have something more impressive than “+1” engraved on their tombstones. If and when they do succeed, you can bet that the average Canadian and the creators of grand narratives will be only too happy to take partial credit … not to mention taxing the bejeesus out of them.

Andrew Goodman is founder and President of Toronto-based Page Zero Media, a full-service marketing agency founded in 2000. He is also co-founder of Traffick.com, an award-winning industry commentary site, and author of Winning Results with Google AdWords.

Don’t miss these Sesssions at SES Toronto: •• Made in Canada: Marketing Online Worldwide—Monday, June 11, 2:00pm–3:00pm •• Conquering the Growing Canadian Affiliate Marketing Industry—Tuesday, June 12, 3:00pm–4:00pm

8 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

Register

MARKETING INSIGHTS

focus

Beyond the Border The Impact of US Laws on Canadian Site Owners

by Dave Davies

I

f you live and work in Canada, you may think of the Internet as a free space in which to share ideas, sell products, and interact with others, with no restrictions other than those imposed by the Canadian government for the protection of its people.

It’s reasonable to believe that if you comply with these laws, you will maintain the health of your website. Unfortunately, this isn’t entirely the case. The United States government has significant power over how the Internet functions, right down to how you use your domain name and how the 1s and 0s on which your site travels are treated.

Domain Name Ownership Many people don’t realize that they don’t actually own their own domain names; they rent them. It’s a subtle difference, but when combined with the fact that the US government owns and controls the .com top-level domain (TLD), it brings up a whole new set of concerns, as the owners of Bodog.com discovered.

Bodog.com was a Canadian-owned online gambling site. In February, the US Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations seized the domain name, while a US federal grand jury charged its four owners with conducting an illegal sports gambling site and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment alleges that Bodog moved at least $100 million from offshore accounts to bettors in Maryland.

“Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country,” stated US attorney Rod J. Rosenstein (quoted by USA Today).

As this case shows, the US government can seize any .com site regardless of the location of the business operation or its hosting provider. This principle of government ownership is logical for country-based domains (such as .ca), where the issuing government can take control of a domain rented by one of its citizens, but .com is the Internet go-to for countless non-US businesses. You may think, “That’s OK. I don’t run a poker site.” Just bear

in mind that since you don’t own your .com domain, the US government could confiscate it, however unlikely that may be.

websites across Canada passed through the US at one point or another. Net neutrality legislation would have an influence on these paths.

SOPA and PIPA You’d be wrong to think that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) would not affect your Canadian business. If you use or provide resources (or, let’s be honest, are believed to provide resources) that are deemed unacceptable by the US government, your site could be blocked, your search traffic eliminated, and more. Although neither bill has passed, similar legislation probably will.

“I’m not worried. I don’t run an illegal torrent site,” you may say. The laws as they were drafted apply to any copyright infringement and designate the website owner as the culpable party. For example, if you operate a forum and one of its members posts content from, say, a movie script, your site could be blocked and search engine traffic eliminated.

This would be a big punishment for adding a forum to your site in hopes of engaging visitors. While I’m not stating that the US government would go to this extreme every time, a law like SOPA or PIPA could make your site a target, however innocent your intentions.

Net Neutrality Legislation While I hold the unpopular opinion that ISPs have a right to charge what they like for their bandwidth and that the free market should sort out what this means, there is no doubt that US rules and regulations regarding net neutrality would have a major impact on Canadian site owners. The speed of your site is dependent on the speed of the Internet between your web host and the visitor. If your visitors are in the US or if your site is hosted there, you would be affected.

You may point out, “My site is hosted in Canada and my clients are in Canada.”

Unless your clients are in close proximity to your host, your data is going to take various routes between the site and visitors. Many tests I ran from my office in Victoria, BC, to

Data Security Many of us collect data on our sites; many of us store this data on our servers. Under the law, the US government can seize or review this data at any time if your site is hosted at a US hosting facility.

You may ask, “But I’m not storing anything illegal, so who cares?” Your clients may. If you’re a lawyer or doctor, or if you store any other information on your server that may be deemed confidential, you may be violating the law in hosting it in an environment that is subject to seizure.

What You Can Do The purpose of this article isn’t to scare you.

I’ve done business primarily in the US and hosted the Beanstalk site there since the company was formed, and I haven’t had any issues stemming from these laws. That said, it’s extremely important to understand and monitor the direction that legislation is taking and the potential impact, and to safeguard yourself against litigation, embarrassment, reduced or eliminated traffic, slower speeds for your visitors, etc. Knowing what’s happening and how it affects your website will help you react quickly.

For example, if network neutrality legislation fails and ISPs are given more freedom in how they charge for bandwidth, ensuring that you’re hosted on a network with priority should be step one. And you might as well buy that .ca domain as a backup. After all, just because you’re being paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

Dave Davies is CEO of Bean­stalk SEO Services, an organic SEO firm in Victoria, BC. He wrote the second edition of SitePoint’s s Kit and hosts a weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio.

sesconference.com • SES 9

focus

MARKETING INSIGHTS

Make Your Client-Agency Relationship Work Three Considerations When Choosing a Partner

by Julie Batten

S

earching for a new digital agency is a lot like searching for a mate: you spend a lot of time seeing other people (the RFP process); you eventually narrow it down to a handful of prospects (the short-list); and eventually you think you’ve found “the one” (the winning agency). After much wooing and negotiation, you agree to move in together (onboarding), and the real

for in an agency, and consistently apply that as a filter when evaluating potential partners. It is critical that you choose an agency based on a realistic evaluation of your needs and whether their core competencies align with these. If you’re looking for a digital agency that can offer innovative solutions to engage your audience, don’t let yourself get wooed by a flashy creative presentation

“getting to know each other” officially begins (the client-agency relationship).

The first couple of months are usually pretty blissful: both parties are filled with hope and positivity about the exciting adventures (programs/tactics) to come.

But you inevitably find out things that you didn’t know before and that you may not like. Things get a bit bumpy, and you start to become disenfranchised with your partner. Gradually everything starts to unravel —all of a sudden a year has gone by and

unless you’re sure that they have the chops to deliver on the technology side. Alternatively, if you already have a skilled IT team in house and really need a strong strategic and creative shop, be sure that they can bring their creative A-game.

you’re threatening to break up if your mate (agency) doesn’t get his or her act together!

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a way to maintain the honeymoon period indefinitely. It really starts with choosing the right partner in the first place. Onboarding a new agency is a huge investment, so make sure that the agency you choose is going to work out in the long term. Ask the following questions about a prospective agency before making your decision:

Do the Agency’s Skills Closely Align to Your Needs?

Relationship Buster: While this may seem obvious, often client-agency relationships fail due to mismatches between the clients’ needs and the agencies’ competencies. Agencies do a good job of downplaying their weaknesses and selling their strengths, sometimes giving clients distorted representations of their capabilities. Clients can also become enamored of specific strengths that aren’t even top priorities for the firms.

Relationship Saver: Have a clear understanding of what you need and what you’re looking

10 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

Have a clear understanding of what you need and what you’re looking for in an agency, and consistently apply that as a filter when evaluating potential partners. It is critical that you choose an agency based on a realistic evaluation of your needs.

Does the Agency Have the Proven Ability to Deliver?

Relationship Buster: Clients sometimes underestimate the importance of delivery in digital programs. It is easy to get distracted by cutting-edge solutions and fail to consider whether these programs can realistically be deployed on time, on budget, and at a highquality level.

Relationship Saver: Verify agencies’ track records in deploying similar solutions in a timely and efficient manner. They should be able to provide case studies of similar work successfully delivered for other clients, and clearly articulate their process for taking a high-level solution/strategy to detailed tactical implementation plans. Strong project management competence is critical to

ensure that projects are delivered within budget and timelines. They should also be able to demonstrate that they have sufficient resources in place to deliver on multiple concurrent work streams.

Does the Agency Play Well with Others?

Relationship Buster: Most clients have multiple agency partners—typically, at least a creative/offline agency and a media agency in addition to their digital agency. Clients sometimes assume that all partners will work towards a common goal and that integration will naturally take place. However, some agencies tend toward a protective or even combative nature when working with other agencies, creating a host of problems when interdependencies are present between both agencies’ initiatives.

Relationship Saver: Prospective partners need to be able to demonstrate the ability to get along with others. Your agency should be able to point to specific examples of how they have worked with other agency partners in a harmonious and mutually beneficial way.

They should demonstrate the ability to take a leadership role in coordinating cross-agency collaboration and integration, and have an established process for helping to define and document roles and responsibilities among agency partners.

There are many other factors to take into consideration when choosing a new digital agency partner, but avoiding the pitfalls above should increase your chances of a long and successful union. Happy hunting!

Julie Batten is VP strategy, digital media, at Klick Health, focused on online media and digital. She brings a wealth of experience in search marketing, digital media, and all facets of digital strategy to bear, helping Klick’s clients develop innovative digital solutions.

SOCIAL INTEGRATION

focus

Doing Forensics on Fruit Salad The Challenge of Developing Practical, Client-Friendly Strategies in the Unpredictable Social Media Environment

by Jim Hedger

S

ocial media is public relations. Social media is inclusionary. Social media is necessary to compete with your competitors. Social media is today’s big thing.

Social media is also tomorrow’s next big thing. More appropriately, some form of social media application is tomorrow’s next big thing. Yesterday’s appears to have been Pinterest, which is threatening to displace Foursquare as the mayor of forgotten places.

As digital marketing experts, we are calling on our clients to invest increasing amounts of time, staff, and money in an area that is evolving too quickly for us to fully understand. The benefits of increased traffic are obvious, but the return on investment on a wide spread of social media profiles can be somewhat harder to quantify.

The Changes in Social Media With over one-third of the adult population using Facebook, Canadians constitute one of the largest national social media footprints in the world. Being early adopters, Canadian Internet users became amazingly social amazingly quickly. Unfortunately, many, if not most, Canadian businesses have not kept up. This isn’t just because Canadian companies don’t fully grasp the social part of the medium; it’s also because the budgeting and planning necessary to create an effective social media presence is daunting on paper without a clear understanding of benefits.

Social media applications have existed for almost as long as the commercial web.

Early social media applications such as Classmates and Friendster acted as basic connectors. They weren’t great for communication among users, but they provided an ideal foundation on which all subsequent social media applications could build. Web 2.0, which came on the scene in 2003, was a breakthrough that allowed users to interact with websites and with each other. This was the dawn of the user-generated content (UGC) era. Nearly ten years later, we’re just

beginning to understand the fuller implications of UGC on search and the web.

Many of the sessions at SES Toronto will address social media measurement, engagement, and techniques. Each of the speakers addressing social media has developed his or her own techniques and tactics based on personal experience and shared knowledge.

Each of them will say that every social media experience is unique. Each will maintain that the very best social media experience is one that promotes authenticity and earnest connection over marketing and promotion.

As the digital marketing environment changes, so must the priorities of digital marketers and the clients we serve. While it’s always about driving good traffic, the digital marketing landscape is transforming more rapidly than ever before. Social media is continuously extending frontiers, and new areas are expanding as rapidly as UGC can be created and user intent can be ascertained and harnessed.

To say that social has had an impact on search would be an understatement; for search marketers, this shift has not been subtle. Moving away from its fascination with search, SEO has for the last two years focused on social. From studying how Facebook alters user behaviors to finding correlations between social signals and search engine placements, social media has dominated search marketing discourse by becoming a more popular form of public directory.

To say that you understand the impact of social media on search would be a vaguely worded lie. Nobody understands exactly how social meshes with search. Witness Google+.

Getting Clients to Be Social Trying to figure out how to integrate social into search is akin to integrating apples with oranges, kiwis, strawberries, grapes, cottage cheese, and bananas. It’s easy to spot, identify, and describe the effects of an apple; it’s not as easy to do forensics on fruit salad.

This creates yet another problem for digital

From studying how Facebook alters user behaviors to finding correlations between social signals and search engine placements, social media has dominated search marketing discourse by becoming a more popular form of public directory.

To say that you understand the impact of social media on search would be a vaguely worded lie. marketers when trying to convince small businesses and corporate clients that budgeting time and money for social media is important.

To be authentic in the truest sense, clients would do the work in house. However, in-house SEO/SMM is often impractical for the smaller businesses that make up the vast majority of clients. This means that the service must be either outsourced to a third party or performed by a digital marketing agency. It is a huge challenge for digital markers to help clients be authentic in a constantly evolving environment that none of us fully grasp.

Digital marketers face a number of other issues when guiding clients in the social sphere. It is really difficult to know whether the plethora of random information linking to clients’ websites is beneficial or detrimental. We have to push our clients into actively participating in an arena that they don’t fully understand, or we have to try to recreate their voices ourselves, and authenticity is very hard to engender in the second- or third-party voice. Lastly, we have to quantify a return on investment that translates to continues on page 13

sesconference.com • SES 11

focus

SOCIAL MEDIA

The State of Google+, One Year Later Google Hasn’t Yet Carved Their Niche in Social, but Do They Even Need To?

by Miranda Miller

A

s the first birthday of Google’s latest baby draws near, the organic search and paid advertising behemoth con tinues to struggle to find their niche in social. A year ago, Google+ was just a rumor; Google would deny the existence of a social project until the very day it launched in late June.

In that year, they’ve launched, expanded, experimented, and redesigned the service, incurring the verbal wrath of competitors Facebook and Twitter on a number of occasions. It’s been a whirlwind for Google+ and all fifteen of its loyal users.

I kid. To be fair, there is a small but dedicated group of core users in the Google+ network. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Vic Gundotra, and the rest of the crew have become old pros at dodging questions about the number of actual active users, but we can safely assume that it’s nowhere near Facebook’s 850 million. Does it need to be?

Google’s Busy Year What Google has accomplished with Google+ in under a year is nothing short of amazing.

June 2011 saw the launch of Google+ as a social network. Over the summer, tech journalists and analysts were positively wooed, keeping a watchful eye on every indicator (precise or not) of increasing traffic and user activity on Google+. The Washington Post even announced in August that “Google Plus could be the fastest-growing site in history.” In all of history! Well, as long as we’ve had websites, anyway. (The original comScore report noted that it was the fastest site to reach 25 million unique visits. In what can only be described as a bizarre game of cyberjournalism, this report morphed into Reuters’ claim that Google+ “attracted 25 million users” and The Washington Post’s assertion that “Google has 25 million users.”)

Google+ launched business Pages on November 7. Pages were already popular on Facebook, and since Google+ hadn’t included them at the start, there was a lot of

12 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

anticipation around the launch. In the weeks following, however, Google+ would struggle to connect with brands; their brands, in turn, would struggle to connect with a user base worth marketing to within the Google+ network.

Google doesn’t need to seek out partners, who offer services users might opt into, to share data back and forth. They already have the data; they’re collecting it from millions of websites and user actions.

Whereas Facebook’s data pool shows more intent on the part of users, Google reigns supreme in the low-intent market.

As Google began integrating brand Page results in seemingly dominant positions in the organic search listings, other companies began to cry foul. Hot on the heels of that development, Google made their latest foray into social search, Google Search Plus Your World (SPY World, anyone?), in early January. Twitter, for one, lost it quite publicly, announcing, “We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.” Their concern stemmed partly from the possibility that Google might have been abusing their dominance in their core industry, search, to excel in the realm of social, largely Twitter’s and Facebook’s territory to that point. The old grumblings of antitrust resurfaced, only to peter out again within a few months.

Later in January, Google again stunned users and analysts with the announcement of an amalgamated privacy policy, one that would bring user data from all 60+ of their

services under one umbrella. They said that this would be better for users. Many disagreed, some agencies threatened to investigate, and users protested, yet perhaps the widest-ranging and most important change in Google’s policies went off as planned on April 1.

Also in January, a month marked by a flurry of announcements from the search giant, Google changed the sign-up process for many of their services. Those signing on for a Gmail or YouTube account were automatically assigned a Google+ account. Prominent markers appeared in the navigation bar every time users visited a Google property, urging them to check out their notifications on the social network.

Why Engagement Is Incidental Only Google knows how effective this was at actually getting people to the site, although I suspect that user engagement was only a secondary goal at best. In response to a scathing WSJ.com article ticking off the “mounting minuses” at Google+, I wrote an article explaining why low user counts and engagement might not matter to Google.

Facebook has had to find outside partners, nurture (and invest heavily in) the app environment, and build out their ecosystem over a period of years in order to gain access to the type and depth of user data they need to power their advertisement business. Google is transitioning the other way: from an advertising and data powerhouse to a social platform. They already have an incredible reach, largely through their DoubleClick ad network and dozens of properties.

They don’t need to seek out partners, who offer services users might opt into, to share data back and forth. They already have the data; they’re collecting it from millions of websites and user actions, often without the users’ explicit knowledge that they’re being tracked at the time. Whereas Facebook’s data pool shows more intent on the part of users—they liked something, they shared something else—Google reigns supreme in

SOCIAL MEDIA

the low-intent market. They know when and where you check your email on your Android.

They know the types of videos you search for and watch on YouTube.

This is a fantastic thing for advertisers.

For users … not so much. Yet users sign up for Google accounts in droves, opting into Google+ without a second thought. Tracking goes beyond the actions users take while signed in to a Google service; interacting with a +1 button on a website, for example, could set a cookie allowing tracking over all Google properties for a period of time.

The efforts of the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group will have huge ramifications for the online advertising industry, especially for Google. If users click a +1 social icon, is that really an interaction with Google? Have they really indicated the intent to share data with Google for the next 24, 36, or 48 hours, from every website they visit that might show Google ads? These questions have no answers right now, but the

focus

working group aims to define first and third parties. Advertisers will not be satisfied with poorly targeted paid search and display ads, so Google and other ad companies need the data. However, users need their privacy.

and all manner of things are being shared, or overshared, on the front end of Google+, the real action occurs behind the scenes. Google doesn’t really need you hanging out on the Google+ site all day long; they just need you to have an account and do everything you Conclusion would normally do on the web in the course What we are seeing in the current online of a day—and don’t mind if they tag along advertising environment is a precarious while you do it. balancing act, with Google perched square Google VP Bradley Horowitz said it best in the middle, teetering from side to side. in September when he proclaimed that Everyone in the industry and even in the “Google+ is Google itself.” Indeed. mainstream media has their eyes on Google+.

Google has certainly given us plenty to talk A staff writer with Search Enabout: Hangouts with Obama, seemingly gine Watch, Miranda Miller coconstant updates and new features, and even ordinates the annual Translita recent redesign, complete with new navigaeracy Conference for Ontario tion and profile pages. educators, manages a small We can’t forget, though, that Google+ is number of social media camjust one cog in the wheel that drives Google’s paigns through an agency, and serves on the Ca44% stake in the $486 billion global adver- nadian Hemophilia Society’s Advisory Board for tising market (see report by ZenithOpti- their Code Rouge awareness project. media). While slick photos, funny updates,

Doing Forensics on Fruit Salad continued from page 11 common sense better than to the dollars and cents that our clients’ creditors understand.

In practice, my firm generally limits our recommendations to the big three of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, placing other social networks into an “advisably optional” category. Our clients have enough difficulty wrapping their heads around Facebook and Twitter without worrying about other networks. We include Google+ in the mix only because of the “rel=author” support, and because we believe that Google actively favors websites associated with Google+ profiles.

Training businesses to promote their ideas and images on Facebook and Google+ is relatively easy, and teaching them Twitter behaviors and etiquette is only slightly harder. Even though we limit our advice to

the big three, we still end up chasing clients to convince them to monitor and maintain their social networks. We do recommend secondary social networks such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Foursquare as they apply to clients and as clients can afford our training and application rates.

We know that we are missing traffic, but we balance this drawback by being practical.

In cases where we have to act as social media coordinators for our small to medium-sized business clients, exposing them to only the big three limits our need to bill for out-ofcontrol charges for allotted work time. It also helps to ease clients into expanding their own social media participation and interaction.

social media learning curve. By sticking to the most trafficked social networks and deploying assets in secondary ones as necessary, my company believes that we’ve found a balance our clients can live with.

SES Toronto will provide a valuable forum for Canadian practitioners to discuss the problems inherent in social media marketing.

Jim Hedger is a founding partner of the Toronto-based search and social media marketing agency, Digital Always Media. He has an extensive background in SEO dating to the late 1990s. He leads the SEO and content creation teams at Digital Always Media.

Conclusion Digital marketing professionals have to make a lot of choices as we steer clients along the

sesconference.com • SES 13

focus

CONVERSION & ROI

The Conversion Optimization Life Cycle Which Advice Should You Follow, and Which Should You Avoid, in Structuring Your Optimization Program?

by Garry Przyklenk

C

onversion optimization has been around for a while, but its benefits are hard to ignore. These include reduced cost of acquisition through digital marketing, increased customer satisfaction and retention, increased average revenue per order, and improved search engine rankings. In order to reap the rewards of an optimization program, you need to know where to start, what to avoid, and how to develop your program for long-term success.

Getting Started Do-it-yourself small business owners, digital marketers, and web analysts tend to inherit a lot of excess baggage, so focusing on only one or two sore spots on a website is often difficult. Consider these top five places to start: 1. Optimize paid search landing pages. Looking for big impact right away? Optimize those paid search landing pages and start counting the money you save on search marketing immediately. Vary your value proposition, urgency, pricing, product mix, and form length.

2. Examine internal search results pages.

Searches performed on your website often yield the best (and cheapest) way to judge the voice of the customer.

These searchers are committed visitors who probably aren’t finding what they want intuitively. Look at queries with no results, top queries that should be satisfied through navigation, and perhaps synonyms you didn’t consider when writing creative.

3. Enhance your help sections. Areas on a website dedicated to helping people are most often frequented by loyal customers who would rather solve problems on their own than cost you money by calling or emailing support staff. Help them help you by optimizing help docs, downloads, and public service messages.

14 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

4. Test product and service recommendations.

The art of the upsell is best exhibited by e-commerce giants such as Apple, Amazon, GoDaddy, and Dell. If you’re able to measure cart abandonment on your site, you’re ready to start testing product and service recommendations to increase your average revenue per order.

5. Evaluate pathways from top entry pages.

Entry pages to your site are a bit harder to optimize because referred traffic through search or other websites isn’t always continuous or predictable, but it’s usually free. Measure common pathways from entry pages to determine how content can be changed to reduce bounce rate; you may just improve your search rankings at the same time.

Growing the Base Once you’ve started building quick wins in your conversion optimization program, you’ll want to maintain that momentum and expand your effort to other areas of your site.

Unfortunately, many marketers fall into the trap of overoptimizing based on bad advice, so try to avoid or at least question the following five optimization tips that can hurt conversion rates:

across the rest of your site may compromise new visitors’ trust and result in higher abandonment.

3. Tip to avoid: Add trust marks to your landing pages. While I certainly can attest to the conversion lift that trust marks can provide on an e-commerce site, landing pages are somewhat different.

In most cases, getting visitors to click on links deeper in your site to privacy statements and certificates can be a more powerful way to convert skeptical prospects.

4. Tip to avoid: Boost your brand with testimonials and client logos. In B2B campaigns, association with large-scale brands with which you do business can boost conversion, especially for startups, but do your due diligence by seeking written approval for logo usage and recommendations. The last thing you want is conflict with a long-term lucrative client.

5. Tip to avoid: Incentivize your prospects with freebies, calls for urgency, and promotions. While these tactics can elicit a strong positive reaction among firsttime visitors, they can have very undesirable effects on lead quality. Many visitors are conditioned to perform microconversions such as lead forms without reading anything else on a landing page. Don’t be afraid to lose a few cheapskates on your landing pages who would otherwise sacrifice your profitability.

1. Tip to avoid: Keep your copy short, sharp, concise. It’s hard to argue that trimming the overall content on a landing page would be anything but successful for most campaigns, as it reduces the probability that a landing page will overwhelm a prospect. However, providing less information may hurt overall conversion rates over time or, worse still, lower average revenue per order.

Planning for the Future

2. Tip to avoid: Remove or de-emphasize primary and secondary navigation from the template of your landing page. Fewer escape routes make prospects more likely to continue along your chosen path. However, a lack of consistency

Now that you’re well on your way to optimization nirvana, you’ll want to expand your program beyond online impact and start leveraging your online success for dramatic cross-channel maturity. Here are five things to consider when bridging conversion optimization to business process optimization:

CONVERSION & ROI

1. Relate online customer pain points to front-line personnel. Some of the best online optimizations can result in a cultural shift or reimaging of the offline sales process, and vice versa. Keep your sales and support members in the loop of online optimizations because your cross-channel prospects are often very similar.

2. Try some of your company’s own products and services. The importance of stepping into your customers’ shoes cannot be overemphasized. I’ve done it on numerous occasions with a high degree of success. It helps to assume an angry persona and pretend that you have less than five minutes to do anything that you need to do.

3. Build new products and services with optimization in mind. Build a culture of

conversion testing by baking it into the product or client life cycle. Let’s face it—a lot can go wrong from initial conceptualization of a product or service to delivery, especially when development cycles are really wrong.

4. Leverage web analytics information and customer relationship management systems (CRMs). Integration of web analytics data with CRMs is much more common these days because businesses usually have a significant portion of their operations or interactions with customers through nonline channels.

5. Analyze the competition. Sometimes the best original score is a remix. Think you’re smarter than your competitor?

Prove it by testing their ideas with your audience to find out what they might be doing better or worse.

focus

Although no two websites are exactly the same in terms of customer experience and behavior, similarly structured products and services likely attract similar prospects and customers.

For more guidance on conversion optimization, be sure to visit one of the many optimization sessions at SES this year.

Garry Przyklenk, manager of analytics implementation at TD Bank Group, is an expert in lead generation, search engine marketing, web analytics, and social media marketing. He has successfully championed creative marketing campaigns and executed on actionable insights in several vertical markets.

How ClickZ Academy Can Work for You continued from page 1 learn more about a different aspect of the industry. For example, if you’re an in-house SEO, you may find yourself responsible for your company’s social media. You already know about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but you may not know which is right for your industry and the ways in which success will be defined. Since a social media program is not just about “likes” and “followers,” aligning it with corporate objectives to generate revenue is not a simple matter.

At the other end are large organizations rolling out training to their employees. Some allocate specific courses to individuals and make completion compulsory, while others give employees access to the library of content and encourage self-study in the areas that would be the most beneficial. Online training is perfect for companies who do not

have the budget or time to send everyone to a course, and allows each employee to receive a tailored syllabus.

This kind of program can be complemented by an in-house training session—a course tailored to meet the specific objectives of the organization and held at the company’s offices. By blending online and classroom courses, ClickZ Academy makes sure that employees from different offices arrive at the in-house portion with the same basic understanding so that their time together is maximized.

Catch That Missed Session with Conference Recordings Because several concurrent content tracks run at SES conferences, you may find that you are not able to attend every session that you would like. Therefore, we now offer recorded sessions from some conferences.

The recordings sync the PowerPoint presentations and the videos, simulating the experience of being at the sessions. This is a convenient way to catch up on any session that you missed or to share sessions with colleagues.

Available for purchase on the ClickZAcademy website, recordings cover a number of tracks. Recordings from SES London are now available and consist of the Kick Start, PPC, and Accelerator tracks.

To learn more, stop by the ClickZ table at SES Toronto or visit ClickZacademy.com.

Paul Fegan is head of e-learning at Incisive Media and is responsible for creating on-line training content for all of its brands. He co-founded his own e-learning company and has been delivering online professional and CPD training since 2000.

sesconference.com • SES 15

sessions SES Toronto | June 11–13, 2012 | hosted by Sample Sessions

Download the app or visit www.SESToronto.com for complete agenda and session descriptions.

Day 1—Monday, June 11 10:30–11:30am

Track 2 Driving Mobile Traffic: PPC & SEO Jump-start your mobile presence with these fundamentals for presenting content that’s both SEO- and mobile-friendly. Not fully ready for a mobile site? Learn inexpensive and easy options to get started the right way. From desktop and mobile to tablets, smartphones and feature phones, we’ll dive into key mobile differences for SEO and PPC and the strategies to drive and convert more mobile traffic.

•• How to balance Canadian and American content challenges in a consistent, meaningful way (domains, architecture, content, keyphrases, etc.).

•• How to compete in the US market as a Canadian business and not lose your Canadian online presence.

•• The different results on Google.com and Google.ca from a search engine perspective, and which consumers prefer; the search engines’ growing preferences for local.

Moderator: Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board; President, Page Zero Media

Moderator: Gregg Stewart, President, 15 Miles

Speaker: Anne F. Kennedy, SES Advisory Board; International Search Strategist, Author, Beyond Ink USA

Speaker: Jeff Allen, Account Manager, Hanapin Marketing

Speaker: Ian McAnerin, CEO, McAnerin International Inc.

Speaker: Jeremy Evans, Director of Strategic Accounts, Marin Software

Speaker: Ezra Silverton, President, 9th sphere

11:45–12:45pm

3:30–4:30pm

Track 2 Developing a Video Optimization & Marketing Campaign

Track 3 Content Marketing Optimization

This session will use real-world examples to help you understand and master the entire video process, including what to create, how to optimize your video, how to market it with search and social media, and how to measure its real business impact.

Online marketing is increasingly competitive, and brand marketers worldwide are seeking real advantages that will improve the efficiency and impact of their social media and SEO efforts. This session will provide unique insight into content-based optimization strategies and processes as well as tactics for sourcing, creating, and promoting optimized content on the social web.

Moderator: Sage Lewis, President, SageRock.com Speaker: Matt McGowan, Managing Director, Americas, Incisive Media Speaker: Jonathan Allen, Director, Search Engine Watch

Krista LaRiviere, CoFounder & CEO, gShift Labs

Speaker: Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR Speaker: Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board; CEO, TopRank Online Marketing 2:00–3:00pm

Track 2 Made in Canada: Marketing Online Worldwide This session will focus on specific challenges facing Canadian Internet marketers. It will cover:

16 SES • June 2012 {Toronto}

Speaker: Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense

Download the app or visit SESNewYork.com.

Day 2—Tuesday, June 12 9:00–10:00am

Track 2 Social Media Solutions on a Budget Getting your company or organization started with social media doesn’t have to be a pricey proposition. In this session, you’ll learn how to: •• Take advantage of great free and low-cost tools that cover managing conversations, measuring reach and engagement, and developing/publishing great content.

•• Leverage lesser-known social media channels to increase exposure and reach.

•• Create great social media friendly content to build trust and authority inexpensively.

sessions

3:00–4:00pm

Track 2 Conquering the Growing Canadian Affiliate Marketing Industry In this session, you will learn the following and more: •• Affiliate marketing in Canada is a viable, growing traffic channel.

•• Online retail merchants need to educate and form strategic partnerships with web publishers in order to generate traffic.

•• Establishing a successful Canadian affiliate marketing channel requires sophisticated software development, strategic marketing, and stability.

•• Retail merchants need to be prepared to accommodate Canadian affiliate partnerships with the right tools in order for all parties to succeed.

Speaker: Nicky Senyard, President, Share Results

Moderator: Laura Roth, Conference Program & Training Manager, SES Conference & Expo 4:15–5:15pm Speaker: Danny Iny, Co-Founder, Firepole Marketing

Speaker: Krista Neher, CEO, Boot Camp Digital

1:30–2:30pm

Track 1 Maximizing ROI in e-Commerce with Search All e-commerce websites and e-tailers should be on top of certain ROI trends and opportunities. This session will show you how to maximize ROI in e-commerce by leveraging one e-marketing channel to improve the performance of another. You will hear a series of combined channel campaign strategies along with case studies that illustrate how to maximize the ROI of your campaigns by taking advantage of low-hanging fruit.

Track 3 From Keywords to “Buy Words”: Finding High-Value Paid Search Keywords

Moderator: Chris Boggs, SES Advisory Board; Director, SEO, Rosetta

“Professors” Van Wagner and Goodman will take you beyond gardenvariety keyword lists to delve deeper into how user queries signal different kinds of intent. You will learn how to go beyond the blind reading of “after-the-fact” ROI statistics; how to anticipate how your most valuable searchers will express themselves with search queries; and even how to subtly mold their preferences as they progress from search queries to your ads, landing pages, and transactions.

Speaker: Guillaume Bouchard, President, CEO, NVI

Speaker: Elazar Gabay, Vice President, Performance Marketing, LeSite.ca

Moderator: Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR 5:15–6:15pm

SEW Eliminator Quiz Speaker: Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board; President, Page Zero Media

Speaker: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Join us for the inaugural SEW Eliminator Quiz, a pub-trivia-style networking event where you and your fellow marketers will compete to see who is the savviest and most knowledgeable marketer in the room. Afterward, you’ll have a chance to network with your favorite drink in hand.

sesconference.com • SES 17

SES Conference & Expo is the leading global event series that educates professionals in search and social marketing, putting a special focus on tactics and best practices. SES Events provide instructions from the industry’s top experts, including representatives from the Search Engines themselves.

World Tour – Toronto

Singapore

June -

November –

San Francisco

San Diego

August -

February 

Hong Kong

London

September –

February 

Berlin

New York March 

October –

Chicago

Shanghai April 

November -

SESConference.com