Internet Marketing Blog From Wolf21

I was just speaking to a client about setting up Google analytics on his website. We tried to set it up for him 3 years ago but as a one man show, he didn’t have the resources to follow through on the results so he decided to put it aside for the time being. I think we can all relate to that.

His analytics has been up for one day and already he is marveling at the information that Google can track and that he can use to negotiate with his “referrers”.  Once we set up a couple of goals , he was able to compare each advertising vehicle in terms of return on investment (ROI).

The days of impressions and click throughs are long gone now,  you must be able to track ROI or suffer the consequences. In PPC, you may be bidding on keywords that aren’t producing sales and in SEO, you may be going after keyword phrases terms that simply don’t pay for themselves.

As the economy gets tougher over the next few months, you will need to take the guesswork out of your marketing program. Google analytics is an easy and inexpensive (free) way to start.

I had an interesting phone call today that got me thinking. The topic at hand was do you think social media could be used internally in companies?

We all know if you are surrounded by computers all day, there is a high chance you have checked your facebook account or email account at least a couple of times. Studies have shown that employees spend at least 30 mins a day on social networking sites during work.
Companies are concerned about the amount of time spent on social networking to a point where most (around 43% in England) have banned social networking sites. Companies interviewed asked employees “would you pay your neighbours to grocery shop for themselves?” and stated that it is equivalent to companies paying for employees to engage in personal activities during work hours.

But, what if companies could put a twist on this ever-growing issue. Articles on social networking issues have stated that companies should not ban these sites, but embrace them. They argue that employees will find other ways of engaging in these sites and that it won’t solve the issue at hand. With the Internet growing and with mobile phone applications allowing for easy Internet access, it will be nearly impossible to keep employees from engaging in social networks. Some articles have even stated that some employees, after being warned for using social networking sites, have been fired for abusing company time on social sites.

Should companies embrace this and use it to their benefit?

Allowing employees to engage in social media networks could be beneficial to a company. Employees would be able to communicate easily amongst each other, which in turn could help create a more business friendly culture. Facilitating communication amongst employees could solve potential conflicts of interest, encourage trust, allow for more resources and exchanging of knowledge, and allow a community to be built within a company. Even planned events, news and rewards could be announced through such means. This could be the new way to encourage teamwork and team building.

Using these sites could also increase communication from upper levels of management to lower levels of management. It could help companies track employees concerns and build a better relationship between employees and their company.

Of course, there is no question that a company policy should be created to limit the amount of time spent on social network sites. Perhaps monitoring or scheduled time in the morning, at lunch, and during the afternoon would allow for orderly use of social networking sites.

Although extensive research has not been performed on the following, I do think it’s an interesting take on social media sites being used in the work place and could perhaps change how we communicate in the future.

Many companies are successfully introducing social media marketing into their overall campaign strategies. And why wouldn’t they? There is a ton of research and statistics out there that continually reinforce the same findings: online marketing helps drive offline campaigns. Finally, even within industries that you would not necessarily expect to find championing the way of social media, companies are discovering the merits (and profits) of initiating a strong online presence.

Although there are many companies within a diverse range of industries integrating online and social marketing into their traditional strategies, it is still not very common to find (please keep in mind that I did not say impossible to find, so no hate mail, please) many companies that are skipping the traditional marketing methods altogether.

Burger King is an obvious exception to the above statement. Burger King has presented a few completely user driven social media campaigns; that is, campaigns that do not utilize offline promotions. Subservient Chicken being most famous among these campaigns. There is also Pet Moustache , which is pretty cute, and CoqRoq (I think their site is no longer but check out their myspace page). Most recently, they have also launched Meat Haiku.

Burger King has received a lot of flak for these completely user driven campaigns, for both trying too hard (to fit in) and not trying hard enough (to capitalize on the success of some of their campaigns). Regardless of these criticisms, it is obvious that Burger King is embracing social media as a viable marketing tool. They are rushing headfirst into this relatively new marketing avenue and, as can only be expected, are making a few mistakes along the way. After all, it is not like they have a plethora of predecessors that they may utilize as models. It is my opinion that, while most of the criticisms towards the campaigns are warranted, Burger King is quickly becoming perceived as a leading company to watch in the world of social media marketing, and for good reason.

Next week, my post will be Subservient Chicken vs. Meat Haiku.

Social networking is nothing new to the presidential campaigns, but their strategies, tactics and degree of functionality have evolved over time. What has really caught people’s eye is Barrack Obama’s success with online fundraising. According to a Business Week article, Obama’s $51 million fundraising campaign was double that of McCain’s. Ontop of that, the Obama camp has stated that 88% of their donations have come from online resources.

What is he doing to make his online campaigning so successful?

Obama is the first candidate to start using widgets to make it incredibly easy for anyone to donate to the campaign through his social media channels. Obama is taking social media tools and networking sites seriously and is literally “everywhere”. Barrack Obama has a powerful presence on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter as well as commenting on other sites such as BlackPlanet, MiGente and Glee (to name a few). With his presence on all these sites, it is no wonder that people are able to follow Obama more readily and easily. One source stated that McCain barely understands the Internet, let alone uses it in the right manner to captivate an audience.

Comparing Obama’s use of social media with that of McCain’s, it is clear that there are huge differences in their approaches, and it’s beginning to show.

If you visit any of Obama’s networking tools you will see how he engages with the specific audience. It won’t take you any time at all to find the donation widget, encouraging people to donate to the campaign. It’s no wonder his stats are higher than McCain’s. Obama engages his audience on their turf and then encourages them to donate.

This will definitely change presidential campaigning in the future, and it won’t be any surprise that social media marketing will play a major role.

We always tell clients that everything you need to know about search engine optimization (SEO) is already out there on the Internet. Some very good SEO’s make a nice living by providing all the information and resources you need to successfully run an Internet marketing program.

That being said, however, the best research you can bring to the table comes from practicing what they preach. Lisa Barone has a great take on the difference between reading about and practicing SEO.

In fact, most of the information put out there is general, as opposed to industry specific.  Once you start to do your competitive research, that will become apparent to you very quickly.  So, don’t get stuck trying to find out which SEO tactic lead to your competitor’s top 5 ranking, start practicing and let the results guide you to page 1.

Rand Fishkin outed an SEO company last week for suspect search engine optimization techniques.  Since then, there has been innumeral posts regarding the techniques in question and the fact that someone like Rand publicly outs another SEO firm for using tactics that he may be advising his own online community membership.

SEO Book’s Aaron Wall has a lenghtly blog post regarding Rand’s behavior. The post also includes a a video from Shoemoney, who also questions Rands outing of a company for tactics that Rand has used at one time himself and includes his vue on paid advertising.

I follow Rand Fishkin’s at Seomoz blog and I pick up valuable information from Rand’s indepth analysis of search engine optimization and social media marketing. I admire Rand for what he has accomplished but still, I don’t get it. Why would someone of Rand’s stature take to outing an SEO company.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Google will eventually catch up with the company and justice will be served. The real point here is that by the time Google catches up to them, they will have made a samll or large fortune by then and they will take their profits and just start over with a backup they probably already have in the system.

We see this a lot in SEO, clients will show us a competitive website and want us to out their competitors who may or may not be using black hat tactics to rank well in Google.

Its not in our nature to out companies. That is just our way of doing things but that doesn’t mean we are right. That is just who we are.

I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. If your competitor was manipulating the system to take advantage of Google, would you report them?

Okay, we have picked victim #1, a cabinet maker/woodworker who has built a successful company that is celebrating 20 years in business.
Garren Dakessian (Owner) has built his business by giving great service, craftmanship and happy customers giving great referrals. When the chief editor of Style at Home magazine chose Malibu Woodwork to build new cabinets for the basement and lounge of her own home, it shows he is the best in his business.

Over the years he has expanded his skills and offerings from clients requests that he, finish their basement or renovate their lounge. But now he wants to go back to his true skill, cabinet making, and to get the word out that Malibu Woodwork will make custom cabinets for your Kitchen, home office, bathroom, or basement.

Malibugroup.ca has a simple site today, made up mainly of pictures showing the Style at Home spreads, home and contact page.

After doing keyword research we found traffic, and a lot of it, searching for his services as a cabinet maker. Add in his local town and the competing sites in natural search come down to either single digits or none!

After looking at competing websites in this space, we noticed of lot of them have a local amateur feel. We only found three that stood out with any style, content and ease of navigation.
What do we do with these you ask? Knowing that the average web surfer doesn’t just visit one site, we need to stand out and be remembered over the others, even if we aren’t in position #1. So we take the best of each and combine them into the ultimate site. Not only will the site rank well, it will also convert well.

Next steps: refine the final keywords and have content written. Build the new layout. Get video and pictures of happy customers.

The other day I joined a Webinar on “Winning Back the Customer: Why Social Media Matters in a Down Economy”. I found it very interesting and wanted to share a few pointers they made. Due to our economic status, it’s not uncommon to find businesses prioritizing their budget expenses.

Contrary to myths, people are not spending less and are not opting for a cheaper brand of a specific product or service. What they are doing is prioritizing. This means people are weighing their purchases across categories, so it’s no longer Starbucks vs. home made coffee but it’s Starbucks vs. going to the movies tonight. For businesses this is not good news because it is no longer competition between brands but competition between unrelated brands.

In recessions, people are trying to figure out what is best for them. They are trying to understand what relates best to their lives at this point. This is where businesses need to up their game and start using social media to show their customers how their product or service fits into their customer’s lives.

Most businesses are beginning to panic and are pulling out of services they feel won’t be helpful in the long run. Some think shifting all expenses to online marketing and opting out of social media will help their business. Others are opting for the opposite and are putting as much money towards social media as possible. What is causing businesses to sway? Social Media is a fairly new concept in online marketing. Not only is it new but it takes a long time to start up and needs a fair amount of dedication to ensure its success. So, is it worth the risk when money is so scarce?

Here are some views as to why you should be investing in social media:

• You an’t afford to sit out: social media is not going to stop or slow down for a recession. People are not going to stop using social media tools and the Internet. Therefore you must be there to protect your brand and to create a face for your company. What better way than to interact with people on their grounds than by being part of social media networks. Lost time is lost opportunity.
• True Loyalty is recession proof: social media helps build brand trust because it allows people to learn about brands and connect with other people. Writing blogs, articles and participating in social media networks gives your company credibility and likeability. $148 billion was spent on advertising last year and only 14% of people polled said they trusted advertising. Half was spent on social media and 78% of people polled said they trust social media. 36% of consumers say they think more positively about a company that has a blog.
• Put consumers to use: Using your valuable customers as a voice to your company will help build trust in your community. Listen to recommendations and interact with your customers through competitions or give-aways. This will build customer loyalty and give relevance to your brand.
• Flabby ads: Integrating paid ads and social media can pack a powerful punch. Social networking improves search engine optimization, which in turn enhances the performance of paid search. Social media adds bulk to your brand and gives people interesting information that they can pass along to other people. Each interaction you have is an impression of your company.

Free is good: Here are some free things that social media provides:

• Friending: talking to people
• Social networking seeding: exposing your business
• SEO lift: immediate affects on your traffic flow to your site
• Listening: to your customers and what they want and expect of you.

Many SEO Experts agree that Google Analytics is one of the most useful free tools available in our industry. It is free, easy to install and easy to use. There is so much information that, if installed and interpreted correctly, it would be near impossible not to improve several aspects of a website under evaluation.

It is not, however, always easy to interpret Google Analytics data. This is especially true for the average small business/website owner. Let’s consider the page views section.

Many people look towards the page views section of Analytics to gauge viewer engagement. It is commonly thought that, the higher the page views, the more actively engaged the viewers are with the site and the more likely the viewers are to contact/purchase/return. While this may be true for some sites, it is not necessarily true for all sites.

So, if a high page rank is not indicative of a higher level of user engagement, what exactly is it telling us? Well, a high page rank could be an indication that your website is not well laid out. This is especially true for ecommerce sites. In all likelihood, viewers are having a difficult time finding exactly what they are looking for and, as a result, are having to delve more deeply into your site than they would prefer.

A better indication of user engagement would be to 1. Take a look at bounce rates and 2. Implement well designed goal funnels then track your abandonment rates. If either of these two numbers is higher than you are comfortable with, it is time to decide how to alter your site so that you are achieving the right engagement / higher conversions.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Round Table posts an interesting question on his recent blog post, Google showing product images in Adwords.

Google is offering expanding adwords ads. The three ads that appear usually on a Google search results page are accompanied with a + sign that you can click on that provides a drop down of the advertiser’s products.

When you check out Barry’s blog post, you can see that once the products appear on the results page, the organic listings disappear from view. Barry poses the question, is this good for the searcher as well as the advertiser? A comment on the blog asks the larger concern, where will the organic ads eventually appear.

Its clear that as search goes local, the one box, or Google map results that appear underneath the Adwords ads will take up their fair share of real estate. Add the expandable product feature and you have little room for organic listings, except on the right hand side of the page where research has shown us we pay little attention to or will organic results appear as a more results… link at the bottom of the page.

Google has to walk a fine line here. A full page of paid listings has led to the demise of several former search engines. However, being a public company, Google has to produce increased revenue results for their shareholders.  I suspect the failing economy will only speed up the rate at which Google tests and then executes on their next strategy for Adwords.

Where does this leave SEO?  Search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be a part of your search engine marketing platform, however, you must have a pay per click (PPC) campaign as a part of your internet marketing program. Besides, PPC is a great keyword research tool and PPC will become invaluable when mobile search moves into a higher gear…but that is another story.