Category: Blogging

Blogging, Blog, Blogger, New Media, Social Media

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SES Chicago 2007 – Digital Shelf – The Search Marketing Opportunity for Packaged Goods (CPG)

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
Marketing Speakers:
Matt Wilburn, Senior Category Director, CPG, Yahoo!
James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
Dana Todd, Board of Directors, SEMPO
Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Procter and Gamble

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Everyone on this panel clearly put a lot of long, hard work into the concepts, thought and research into this panel and this blog post won’t do the great conversation the justice it deserves. It’s bleeding edge, this is fun and interesting stuff that will eventually transform the way consumers chose products and discover need brands that specifically meet their needs.

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Does search help CPG? Comscore and Yahoo! provided the data for the SEMPO study.

James Lamberti, Comscore

The search marketing opportunity…100 million unique visitors in food alone, and babies

Who are these searchers? Average income, dramatically higher, 80% female

They enjoy cooking and entertaining.

Allergy sufferers are a prime underserved demographic. The opportunity to build brands via presences made through educational experiences.

Matt Wilburn, Yahoo!

Order of importance to searchers

– Information & Help

– Purchase Decision

– Promotion

– Company Website

Content matters more than a direct navigation. (I see a pattern developing here)

Consumers expect a digital shelf to be similar to a store shelf.

Out of stock, hard to find are issues.

Are you visible in paid and organic? Are you creating a nice impression?

Dana Todd, Sitelab

This is a compelling proposition. We believe in the promise of search for branding issues.

We need to think outside ROI. Back away from the spreadsheet. You need to get people thinking outside direct acquisition.

The first brand for cheese is on page three of the Google organic listings. Why?

Chinese toothpaste issue was a counter reaction to the ingredients article in Wired.

Develop problem and solution content.

If searchers are special, treat them as such!!!

End of session comments…

67% of searchers found a brand they weren’t aware of… (Kevin Ryan)

The term PPC is useless outdated and should be changed – Digital Point of Purchase? (Dana Todd).

Question by me in Chicago: Dana brought up the cheese in PPC and no brand organic terms, to use the Liz Strauss conversational blogging element, there are actually 10 posts on toilet paper on Technorati today, shouldn’t brand managers be engaging this, not only for the SEO benefits, but the innovation road map as well?

(all panel heads nod in agreement) Using the data during the planning process is the next frontier after this issue (which is still in the early days)…

This is certainly an area where the conversation will continue and evolve, it’s a challenging area due to the issues of massive change.

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SES Chicago 2007 – Bryan Eisenberg – Redefining the Customer Conversation

Bryan Eisenberg gave a great talk on the multitude of issues surrounding the challenges of successful customer conversions and conversation.

Marketing (r)Evolutions

Mass advertising on passive customers was what used to work.

People sleep while watching TV, hard to pay attention to advertising when sleeping.

Sleeping while surfing the Internet is not something that happens.

Godaddy.com Super Bowl XL TV commercials didn’t use the same model on the web site. Did Godaddy leave money on the table.

Money is better than traffic.

Apple had to give rebates due to word of mouth on iphone pricing.

Marketers still think customers are dogs.

But search puts the power of when and how in their hands (the sonsumer).

Overcoming sales friction – 85% of car purchases start online – you arrive knowing more than the salesman in many cases. Attack of the blogs – Consumers trust other consumers more than marketers. 54% resist, 56% avoid, 69% block ads – yet we still want to buy.

Customers will control the conversation. People have forgotten how to have relationships.

The web is a major influencer, a mere 26% of consumers were SATISFIED with the experience. They are missing the BASICS. Conversation rates are continuing to fall.

All new brands are based on the experience model. Invest in the customer experience.

We are obsessed with the how many, not the who. This needs to change.

Customers desire great and meaningful experiences.

SCENT, ads must think it has scent to be useful.

80% of traffic dies off within three clicks.

GEICO – connects the story…

Zafu – bras in launch video didn’t match website.

Usability – Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father.

We are all connected and customers will control the conversation. It involves persuasion architecture!!!

Traffic generation is about money. Don’t imitate your competitors. It’s the tiny pieces that matter. Focus on making your service better.

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Death of Blog Search Part 3 – Technorati Cuts Data

You’ve seen me talk about this before. Now the new CEO not only hasn’t fixed the Typepad duplicate counting problems, there are dozens of links that aren’t being counted. It is cutting the most useful asset. Historical data. Nobody cares about the past 6 months worth of links – total links and the historical reference of long tail terms matter much, much more.

I’m not going to rant about it, others have quite well…

Techcrunch

Kevin Burton

Zoli’s blog

Deep Jive Interests

WinExtra

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Seth Godin Keynoting Search Engine Strategies Chicago and His New Book Meatball Sundae

In advance his upcoming speech at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Seth Godin held a intimate conference call in regards to the conference and his upcoming book Meatball Sundae.

At first I was thinking this would be a long speech, it was in actuality a short, crisp presentation followed by a spirited, fun and playful question an answer session. It far exceeded my expectations and Kevin Ryan should be commended for having this type of community event.

Now onto a discussion of his new book, Meatball Sundae. The foundation for a new economy is being built. The past several years have laid the foundation for a new industrial revolution.

Told the detailed story of Josiah Wedgewood and his high standards for pottery.

There are 14 main themes occurring right now in the world – though there are many smaller and industry specific trends playing out. These 14 trends are (I typed them fast in a live blog situation so I might not have them exactly right):

– Direct communication with customers is creating massive change

– Individuals can amplifying their voice and become a critic – these are not hassles to be dealt with. The answer is building an organization that thrives and survives on this…

– Having an authentic story is vital

– We don’t have attention spans anymore (why are you still reading this post? 😉 )

– The new marketplace long tail – very few organizations are embracing it

– Create innovation – If you can describe a job it can get done by somebody cheaper

– Google and the shredding of information and bundling

– Noise and infinite channels of communication

– Consumers can talk directly to consumers without the middleman or company

– The changing balance of scarcity and abundance – it’s hard to imagine people being bored

– Big ideas can reach many people quickly

– The shift from how many to who – the idea of being on the today show instead of a blog is higher value is over

– Democratization of the wealthy – the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider but the rich is going up

– Gatekeepers are more important as they distribute information yet less important as you can go around them easier than ever

After the short speech on the trends there was a free for question and answer session…

Is your marketing out of sync?

SG: They should say how change your marketing (what you do) so that it’s in sync with what the market demands.

Why don’t most companies get it yet?

SG: I spent many years selling advertising. People buy TV advertising, it’s fun and it’s not measurable. When the Internet came along and they went running to Yahoo! to buy ads that aren’t measuring. Google and Overture were used by small business people in the ad. The choice is Superbowl ads that don’t work and measurable ads that are harder to make work. It’s naïve to hope that they will shift in a month or a year. They will eventually have to shift. The prices will continue to go up. People still applaud the commercial not the SEM.

(At this point the Gmail javascript froze all of my browsers. I had to reboot and relaunch. OF COURSE THIS WAS THE MOMENT KEVIN RYAN CHOSE TO ASK THE QUESTION I SENT IN – SO I’LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE AUDIO THERE.)

Where do you find thoughtleaders to lead organizations and instead of hiring people with “experience”?

SG: I wrote a post on a similar topic about the loss of relevancy of credentials today. Basically, there are two types of leaders qualified to do this:
– People who have managed change before
– Idea people who don’t necessarily know better

How do make a corporate blog work?

SG: Blogs don’t reach people, people reach blogs… You need to be quick and candid. It’s all about change and being iterative in nature.

Everyone attending SES Chicago will receive a copy of Seth’s book. I look forward to continuing our conversation and maybe even hearing his answers because Gmail’s javascritpt won’t be interfering with his in person appearance!

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king Dalka

OK as you know I’m not exactly the biggest lover of splogs. But when a splog links to my Google post with the anchor text “king Dalka”, it certainly gets my attention. I almost have to think the splogs are lobbying for my support?

If the splog lobby really wants to win me over, they should try anchor text like Chicago, Sales, Marketing, Local, Mobile, Search which are all better terms to link me with in the future…

Got that sploggers?

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Sexy Social Media Revolutions Emerging – Forrester Consumer Internet Conference 2007

There were a few critical points in Charlene Li’s speech and then Christie Hefner’s speech that I want to get to. But before I do an overview of Charlene’s speech.

New term POST

People

Objectives

Strategy

Technology (notice how this is listed last? Charlene pointed out that this is on purpose! In other words don’t execute until you have things thought through!)

Mantra: Embrace your customer to turn revolt into reformation

Ask yourself: How do you turn (customer) revolt into revolution?

Hopefully both speeches will be online later.

What was the high point of the speech for me that told me that a revolution was taking place at Forrester?

It was when Charlene pointed to a technology adoption benchmarking slide and then put a red X through it saying “don’t pay attention to that”!!!!

What does this mean to me? It means that benchmarking it starting to die due to the increased cycle times and shorter shelf life of information. I’ve long felt that you can’t benchmark your way to the top. You have to lead and take risks. To lead and take risks you must have the top generalist thought leaders of our times on your team. People who understand things like search engine optimization as a strategic tool, social media, bottom up communities and cultures, defining a defensible data model from the start and who practice customer listening for their innovation.

After Charlene, Christie Hefner gave an amazing speech about the history of Playboy’s brand and demonstrated how it’s always been customer focused dating back decades and how it’s embracing the demise of the one to many media model. I hadn’t been aware of this but Playboy has had a mobile presence since 2002! Wow.

She also talked about the brands usage in search and have it’s a frequent search term. In fact a quick check of Google trends indicates a large lead in search volume for Playboy over the New York Times.

Her speech was fascinating from the historical side, yet the brand of Playboy is softening as it’s constantly evolving, Charlene’s conversation was far more disruptive and unnerving to many of the people seated around me. Yet it became clear to me that Playboy is a company that has lived many of today’s social media principles long before they were fashionable.

In in the end, it’s all about building a bottom up culture that has the executive support to constantly innovate. Most people don’t get that yet and if they do it’s even more unlikely that they view customers and other stakeholders as critical to success. We are just starting this journey and I can’t wait to participate fully in the fun parts of this revolution to come!

fcf07

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eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007

Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.