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At a recent marketing awards show, I found myself paying close attention to
the audience as the prizes were doled out. Most of the attendees were agency
types –– designers, copywriters and account managers –– who spent the
evening hooting, cheering and congratulating themselves on a job well done.
(And I was no exception –– especially when it was Movéo at the podium.)
But it got me thinking: Does any of this backslapping really benefit our
clients?
It’s no secret that the marketing industry loves to laud its own
achievements. We have award competitions for almost everything –– from best
global ad campaign to best on-hold message. And as silly as some of these
prizes are, amassing them undoubtedly benefits the agencies involved. Awards
allow us to set ourselves apart in the eyes of potential clients and attract
new business. But for current clients –– the ones paying for all this
award-winning work –– the benefits aren’t so obvious.
Yet, there are some. For starters, awards are noticed not only by potential
clients, but also prospective hires. The opportunity to do interesting work
figures heavily in their decision-making process. So by winning awards,
agencies attract better talent, which, in turn, benefits their clients. In
addition, the pursuit of awards breeds a competitive spirit that keeps the
quality of work high.
So the next time your agency wins an award, consider it a boon –– just skip
the rowdy awards show.
Irene Westcott, Associate Creative Director
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One of the ways I monitor the online presence of clients is to use the application Google Alerts. What Google Alerts does is send you an email of recently indexed pages which include the terms of your alert. For example, I have had the following alerts set up for myself for the last few years: “Randall Gniadecki,” “Gniadecki,” and “Google Advertising Professional.”
Google Alerts provides an easy free service that keeps you from having to search for if anything new has been said about your company or one of it’s brands.
A few things to have Google Alerts for:
1. Company Name
2. Company Stock Symbol
3. Division Name
4. Product Brand Name
5. Key Employee Names
The key is not to over do it. Don’t make an alert for every employee to run everyday.
However, being aware of the online presence of key employees is important, as if they list their employment with your company anywhere on the web, or in social media sites like Linkedin, they are representing your brand whether either you or they even realize it.
One important reason to google key employees is the possibility of what is becoming known as a “googleganger.” A googleganger is another person with the same name as you who is competing with you for search results for the name you have in common. When I first heard about this I asked around the office to see who had Googled themselves, and what they had found. Sure enough, it really is a very small world. Randy Parker, Digital Developer with Movéo Integrated Branding, not only has a googleganger, but they live within a half-mile of him, in the same town. Oh yeah, and his googleganger…
…is a Digital Developer.
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One of the first, and most important question every company asks themselves when they are marketing is “where am I targeting?” Once this question is answered, targeting of paid search can be set to coincide with required geographic areas.
But it’s never that easy, is it. Different Paid placement platforms have different geographic serving systems, and each needs to be carefully considered long before campaigns are setup.
While organizing account structure the number of different types of geographic can influence how campaigns are organized and setup. For example, what are the legal requirements of the business for the purposes of advertising? An Insurance Agent or Financial Planner must be licensed in a State to advertise in that state. One must be sure that geographic targeting is setup correctly so that any legal guidelines are obeyed. Another way that geographic targeting can effect organization of a campaign is by the level of competition. For example, if a company has many locations, both near high population density high competition urban areas and low population density low competition rural areas, these areas could be targeted separately by identical campaigns to maximize reach, placement, and budget.
Many factors can influence the decision of how to geographically target campaigns in each ad platform. It is important to know what the geographic factors are, and how they can be optimized before setting up campaigns.
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Search network marketing is pretty simple to explain, ads are served accompanying organic search results, either on the network itself, or a partner network which utilizes the same search network.
However, the content network, unless targeted by individual site, can be unknown territory on the Internet.
On Google’s Content Network there are a few major categories that represent most of the sites in the content network.
Article Sites:
These types of sites are content rich and full of long-tail keywords. Some of these sites, which serve ads through the Google Content Network are:
• britannica.com
• about.com
• suite101.com
Forum Sites
These types of sites offer users the ability to create their own forum. This results in very targeted forums. By looking at specifically which URL’s have served ads, it is easy to determine if a client’s ads belong, or if the forum is off the target market.
• Proboards.com
• Invisionfree.com
Blog Sites:
Blog sites offer users the ability to create and host their blog through the parent site. As with Forums, it is important to look at exactly which URL’s are displaying your ads, as just as many of the Blogs are likely to target your market as are not.
• Typepad.com
• Angelfire.com
Social Networks:
Social Networks metrics are just as different from the rest of the Content Network, as the Content Network is to the Search Network. The impressions are many and the clicks are few. These sites tend to have a .01% to .02% click through rate (CTR).
• Myspace.com
• Friendster.com
• Meetup.com
Well Known Specialty Sites:
Many well known specialty sites have a portion of their advertising filled by Google’s AdSense program. (AdSense is what the Content Network is referred to on the ad serving site’s side.) Examples of popular sites include Webmd.com, Snopes.com and of course Google’s own Gmail.com.
The best way to be sure of where ads are being served is to audit that serving periodically, and exclude the sites that do not meet the stated advertising needs. The goal is to reach the right prospects, at the right price, and a good content network strategy can do just that.
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Google sent out an Email this morning to it’s AdSense advertisers letting them know that they could have even more ads to choose from soon. After poking around in their Blogspot post I figured out what will actually be accomplished by this move. Not surprising, it has to do with user experience, but this time the user who’s experience they are improving is advertisers already using the content network.
Content Network campaigns can have one major drawback, your ads get served on less than desirable websites, and you don’t realize it until after-the-fact. The other option is a Site-Targeted campaign. This allows much more control over exactly where your ads are placed. The drawback has been that all the best sites in the content network have not all been optimized to allow site-targeting.
This move by Google will motivate websites serving Google content ads to want to be able to serve these new third-party ads, and they will complete the required steps to do so:
1. Opt into image ads
2. Enable advertisers to target their AdSense channels
3. Opt into placement targeting
In the process, every advertiser who is using the content network will see an increase in control over how site-targeted ads are delivered.
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The big trend on the Internet in the last few years is web 2.0. The first year that I kept hearing the term I was working extensively with internet marketers who seemed to be seeping onto the internet from the late night cable infomercials. They all kept saying it was the best thing to happen for solopreneurs and small businesses looking to reach beyond where they were willing to travel. After a few conversations with some of the people who defined what web 2.0 really is I finally got it.
Here is what the essence of Web 2.0 is NOT:
(despite what you may have been told)
1. Rounded corners
2. Skype Blue
3. Lots of navigation options
4. A RSS feed button
5. Having a Blog
Here is what the essence of Web 2.0 IS:
1. Social Networking
a. MySpace
b. YouTube
c. Facebook
d. Forums
2. Business Networking
a. Linkedin
b. Meetup
c. Industry specific Forums
3. Engaged communication providing value and illustrating expertise.
4. Navigation that makes sense and works well.
5. A commitment to actively participate to expand on the shared knowledge base (social network theory).
So why should B2B marketing pay attention to what Web 2.0 brings to the internet?
Web 2.0 allows a business to show off the talent of their employees or owners. Web 2.0 is not something that can be outsourced, the writer must have the knowledge and insight being. I have seen these tasks outsourced before, and every step of outsourcing lost a high degree of the companies brand strength.
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Where does the search for the right keywords begin when building your online presence? Good Brand Strategy Research begins the process, laying the foundation that will hold everything together. As a Search engine specialist my focus is how to apply the concepts and differentiation built into their Branding into their Interactive and Media presence. But relying on what customers were willing to say in research should only be a starting point for your businesses online location in cyberspace.
So how do we find what words your customers are searching for? There are two schools of thought, which I have seen evangelized by many in the SEM industry.
The first is to keep everything small and easy to manage. This tactic usually involves taking keywords that are already being used on the site, adding in what the automated systems generate in Google, and maybe do the same in Yahoo! Search Marketing if that platform is being used.
The second theory is to actually do some work and find the historical data that will give insight into not only the keywords most searched for but also what other industries are competing for the same general keywords. Movéo employs historical data based on the list of keywords provided by previous web copy, brand strategy research, Executives and search query historical data. The landscape of historical data is ever changing, as for over a year and a half marketers still used the Overture database, even though it had stopped updating data. By actively engaging in the communities and current events of the search marketing industry we employ a wide variety of search query database tools that we aggregate and sort to reach across 13 tools and databases.
By employing historical search query data for B2B marketing search marketers can be sure that terms you should be seen for, that people have searched for in the past, you are seen for. As well, it is just as important that those searchers seeking other industries or levels of the supply chain do not even see your ad.
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Brand voice. It’s the way your brand sounds, the way it speaks, the way its personality comes through in text. It’s also one of the most often overlooked aspects of brand building. And that’s a shame, because brand voice, when it’s carefully managed, can be a highly effective method of differentiation.
Take Apple, for example. From the first generation of iMacs to the introduction of the new MacBook Air, this brand has maintained a consistent and distinctive voice. It’s embodied by directness and simplicity –– on saying less and conveying more. Even the brand’s TV commercials (arguably the most copy-laden of its marketing executions) keep the Mac character’s lines short and to the point. This, in turn, reinforces Mac’s brand positioning.
Here’s an interesting thought experiment: Try to imagine the Mac/PC spots with the Mac character delivering a longwinded “hard sell.” Pretty strange, right? That’s due, in part, to the fact that such a speech would step outside the established brand voice.
So if having a brand voice is good, how do you get one? It starts with a well-defined brand. Working with an experienced copywriter that has a deep understanding of the brand is critical. He or she can likely help you experiment with various writing styles and zero in on one that best expresses your brand.
Author: Irene Wescott, Associate Creative Director
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Of the many factors of virtual location placement in paid search advertising platforms continues to be one of the most popular ways for tightly niched and small businesses to gain the attention of prospects. The numbers are obvious every time ComScore releases them, Google is squarely sitting on top of search. So for many businesses, Google is the obvious choice for getting your feet wet in paid search marketing.
However, many small businesses or regional players stop there, intimidated by the additional setup time required to even duplicate the same basic structure and keywords over multiple platforms. Some solve this problem by relying on a program in which they are able to manage campaigns across multiple platforms in one interface. I have found that these programs generally are not as robust as the actual ad platforms interface, resulting in less control over ads served. It is better to take the time to set up each campaign correctly and appropriately in each platform than to loose features provided by a platform in order to make bidding modifications easier, or automatic.
When it comes to location, one is just never enough. With Google nearing 60% of the search traffic, where is the other 40% going? Still more than 20% are going to Yahoo, with just over 9% using MSN, and near 5% for AOL and Ask respectively. That is 39% of the 40% accounted for. With this type of concentration, search marketers can use initial Google performance data to optimize campaigns as they are set up across the hand-full of players in the search placement sandbox. The users of each engine are also have distinct differences. By seeing how the differences in users effects campaigns across different search engines we are able to optimize budgets and placements to be sure clients’ virtual location align with their locational strategy
and branding.
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As I wrote about in my article Web 2.0 is Branding 2.0, businesses can strengthen their brands by leveraging the internet as a platform for open collaboration with their customers. The purpose behind the dialog can be to entertain, share ideas or drive sales– yes, that’s drive sales.
A recent global Internet survey by Nielsen found that despite the vast array of advertising platforms, consumers around the world place the highest level of trust in other consumers. While that’s not so surprising, the study also showed that the level of trust and reliability of customer feedback posted online ranked 3rd among the advertising media surveyed.
So what this tells us is the more opportunities/vehicles businesses can give customers to “spread the good word” about their business, the greater (and easier) their ability to instill positive impressions that “soften the beach” and move prospects closer to the sale.
So start your corporate blog, that Ask & Answer forum, include a “forward-to-friend” function and get your best customers, your high net promoters, working for you.
