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Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google : Aaron Goldman Book Blog Tour

I’ve known Aaron Goldman since 2006 and he stands out as someone who has made himself accessible and friendly in the search engine community. Every few months we share a conversations about what we are both up to and aspire to, it is always fun. Aaron has encouraged me to continue evangelizing my message about the strategic and structural changes in marketing and how they will continue to profoundly impact business results and economic distribution realities – whether businesses chose to engage in them or not. It will impact them positively or adversely based on their course of action or inaction.  For that continued encouragement, I’d like to take a minute to thank Aaron right here and it’s a great honor to be the first stop on this blog tour for his new book “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google” (McGraw Hill 2010).

In the introduction, you discuss how many have a love and hate relationship with Google – at the same time. What it is about Google that allows these emotions to exist mutually at the same time?

Aaron Goldman: Well, I wouldn’t call it a love/hate so much as a love/fear.

I love using Google as a searcher and as marketer. As a searcher, Google helps me find what I’m looking for. And, as a marketer, Google helps me get new customers.

But I’m definitely afraid of Google too. As a searcher, I’m afraid it of what it could do with my data. And as a marketer, I’m also afraid of what it could do with my data but even more afraid that it may one day change its algorithm and leave me out in the cold.

I think it’s general human nature to fear the things we love the most. Once we become reliant on something or someone, we fear that it one day may be taken away.

You discussed relevancy and intent in the book at a few junctures. How do you like to explain these issues to people and why are these concepts challenging for people to understand?

Aaron Goldman: It’s difficult because, by its very definition, relevancy is relative. What’s relevant to you may not be to me. Too many marketers make the mistake of thinking that what matters to them also matters to their target customers.

From a Google perspective, relevancy is the key to search. If Google’s search results aren’t relevant to each individual searcher, he or she will stop using it. That’s why Google looks to collect and keep so much data. It needs to personalize the results to make them more relevant.

For marketers, it’s critical to give off signals of relevancy if you want high rankings on Google. This includes content geared towards specific search queries as well as links from relevant websites.

As for intent. I really think it’s the reason search marketing works so well. People come to Google with the intent of finding something. And, often, that’s something to buy. It’s one of the few places in media where people raise their hands and specifically ask for products, services, etc. It’s the whole pull vs. push thing.

You mentioned how AOL values content differently than most organizations and how Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, owner of The Wall Street Journal or Fox News accuses Google of stealing content. As content channels become infinite, isn’t media monopoly power also changing and/or even declining?

Aaron Goldman: The point I was making with content is that there are certain topics that are highly commercial and others that are not. What I mean by commercial is that the people consuming the content are in a commercial mindset — they’re thinking about buying something.

For publishers, commercial content is the easiest to monetize. Advertisers want to be wherever there are people thinking about buying stuff. AOL has done a good job of creating content on highly commercial topics — think travel or financial services — that it can sell ads against.

The Wall Street Journal and Fox News are too busy covering the “news.” And news is tough to monetize. People consuming news are not in a commercial mindset and are not open to advertising messages.

All that said, you make a good point that it’s tougher to wield monopoly power as channels become infinite and distribution is spread across the long tail. These days anybody can start a blog or Twitter account and “report” news. And people tend to trust their friends more than the media.

You interlaced a bunch of URLs in the book. This is an interesting experiment. What is your hope for it?

Aaron Goldman: I wanted to make the experience of reading the book more dynamic. Rather than just read cover to cover, my hope is that people will read a chapter and then go to the web to learn more about specific topics covered and interact with other people reading that same part of the book.

With static print, it’s tough to keep content fresh — especially in the world of marketing and Google when changes are happening every day. By including the URLs, I have a way to share new developments.

The URLs also helped keep me from going off on tangents or going too deep on topics that many readers may not care about. For example, rather than recap an entire thesis that David Berkowitz wrote about “Jewhavioral Targeting” in my chapter about “Letting the Data Decide,” I just cover it in a sentence or two and include a link.

There’s a few people in the book that were mentioned considerably more than others, how did you pick the contributors, quotes and subtopics?

Aaron Goldman: Along the same lines as the URLs, I knew it was important to include a wide variety of perspectives on the lessons learned from Google. No-one wants to read 300+ pages of what Aaron Goldman thinks about marketing. But people do (I hope) want to read 300+ pages of what some of the brightest minds in the industry learned from Google as curated by Aaron Goldman.

I interviewed over 100 marketing big wigs in the course of preparing my manuscript ranging from agency types to Google employees to researchers to university professors. The ones who are mentioned more frequently are the ones that gave me insights that were the most compelling, controversial, quotable or all of the above.

The book is part history, part teacher and part tour guide…who is the intended audience?

Aaron Goldman: This book was written for anyone who has a stake in marketing. It covers all areas of marketing — advertising, PR, promotions, media, product development, etc.

And it’s written for people like me who have very short attention spans. The copy is quick and punchy. And there’s lots of fun wordplay. I put the “pun” in punchy.

It doesn’t matter if you work for a small business or Fortune 500 company, the lessons in my book are applicable to your business. In each of my 20 chapters, I share a lesson, discuss how Google puts it into play, cover mini-case studies of marketers that exemplify it, and then walk through an exercise for the reader to relate the lesson to his or her business.

This book will also make great fodder for search engine marketing pros looking to broaden their horizons or understand how their skills can be leveraged across other channels.

What knowledge do you want people to take away from the book?

Aaron Goldman: First and foremost, I want people to take away specific tactics that they can apply to their business immediately. If you read the entire book and don’t find a single thing you can do to grow your business right away, then I will personally refund your money.

That said, I also want to give people a framework for thinking about the future of marketing. I spend quite a bit of time throughout the book — and especially in the last chapter on “future-proofing” — discussing what the marketing world will look like 10 years from now and what Google’s role might be within it.

If nothing else, I hope people will find my book entertaining and enjoy getting a peek under the hood of one of the most fascinating (and profitable) companies in the modern era.
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I wish Aaron the best of luck with his book and look forward to learning from his experiences as I continue to explore my book author aspirations in the future. The constant mutual learning from all of the wonderful people I meet in the digital marketing space as I speak and consult around the world is special and hard to fully describe! Looking forward to seeing the other scheduled stops on the GoogleyLessons blog tour!

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Interview: David Meerman Scott On Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead

As you likely already know, David Meerman Scott and I have a lot in common. We both  started our careers in the bond market  and spent considerable time organizing and marketing financial market data to various audiences. Who knew we also shared a passion for music? David Meerman Scott actually maintains a database of the 308 different bands that he has seen live.

In association with Brian Halligan, David now releases Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead (Wiley 2010). The book gives a refreshing look at concepts you’ve seen in his previous books, explaining how David believes using the techniques of the Grateful Dead companies can learn to market, engage and build passionate fan bases. The book interlaces ideas from the offline world and show how to use them online today. Yet this vast opportunity remains hidden to most. They talk about the book in this video:

How did you conceive of the Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead’s concept and map the chapters to effortlessly flow to the reader?

David Meerman Scott: The book’s concept was really conceived out of our love for the Grateful Dead and their music. We were fans and at the same time were eager to write about the Grateful Dead because we identified many lessons in what the band has been doing over more than 40 years that are applicable today. These lessons are an important tool for helping to understand the new marketing environments in a language and with examples that are familiar to all.

You showed several examples of how the Grateful Dead treated their customers with care and respect (page 82). It seems like a simple concept. Why is treating customers with care and respect so hard to do in most companies?

David Meerman Scott: I think doing it involves more work and some companies mistakenly think there is an advantage to new customer churn instead of building a loyal fan base. Companies need to understand there really isn’t any difference between a B2B or B2C company, at the end of the day you are still selling to people.  The more people feel valued by companies and personally connected to them, the more the company’s fan base will grow and the bottom line will prosper as well.

Read more: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/03/b2b-roi-david-meerman-scott-sxsw/#ixzz0wTALaTed

You discuss bootleg recordings and the freemium model extensively in the book. What are your views on how this is emerging in the corporate world and the potential future paths?

David Meerman Scott:   The idea of giving away something for free to anybody who wants it and then providing a paid upgrade to a premium version is becoming increasingly common with products and services that have no distribution costs. The challenge in the upgrade model is to give away something that is considered valuable and something that people will use regularly and become familiar with.

This strategy won’t work when you provides something for free that only has limited value. So for example a free software application with a feature set that is so crippled as to be of limited use will not sell more software.

Back when I had a music site, it was amazing to see that the artists that were heavily involved in defining the direction of the promotion of the band almost always outperformed the ones done by handlers promoting exclusively by the old rules and channels. How can companies best adapt and capture the opportunities this presents?

David Meerman Scott: If we look at this in terms of promotion the best things companies can do is make it easy to spread their content. And let the marketplace spread your content for you. The goal is to spread the word about your product or service in the marketplace. If you have a remarkable idea, you will attract bloggers and social media users in your marketplace that will help you propel your idea without spending lots of money on PR and advertising. The Grateful Dead lesson is that making it easy for our audience to spread our content makes our product “known” in the marketplace.

When you met the senior bond trader at Madison Square Garden in the 1980’s, the book states (page 76) “It’s sort of like a secret society, a shared interest in something that others in the office don’t know about.” Why didn’t everyone in that office become Deadheads? What can be done to make sure search marketing, social media and the new rules of marketing don’t get limited to “secret society” status?

David Meerman Scott: The Grateful Dead was never mainstream. They only had one top ten song in 45 years. As in every niche market, I wouldn’t expect everyone to be a fan.

However, search marketing, social media, new rules of marketing have no way of being limited to a “secret society” status, because every major media outlet, online blogs and sites all use these tools ubiquitously. The real question companies need to be asking is “Are we using these tools to benefit our customers, grow fans and engage in real dialogue,” if the answer is no, the company or its product is the one that will stay secret.

Really enjoyed your discussion of the strategy shift at Dropbox(page 40). Your discussion of how some tactics that work in an existing market can utterly fail in new markets is a highly misunderstood area for both entrepreneurs and existing companies alike. Why is this concept so challenging to understand?

David Meerman Scott: I think it’s not all that challenging to understand, the challenge lies in companies being willing to experiment and step outside of the channels that have been too long traversed and no longer work. Too often companies get comfortable with how they have always done something. So even when it’s no longer working, it’s hard to stop doing it. The key to changing this is to be open-minded about how to market your products and be willing to experiment in your market.  You’ll never know what might succeed if you’re not willing to try new things.

What techniques do you like use to convert raving fans of new marketing tactics that often conflict with previous belief systems?

David Meerman Scott: My job is to write these books and speak about all the successes that companies have when they put these new marketing tactics to use. I’m a journalist as well as a marketing strategist and I spend a lot of time blogging about all the right things and some not so great things that companies are doing with these tools. The best way to convert people to using them is to reveal to them how the can successfully apply them and what benefit will come from that application.

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Speaking at SMX Toronto April 8th & April 9th

It is my pleasure to announce that I’m speaking at SMX Toronto 2010 on April 8th and April 9th. I’m quite pleased to participate in the following two sessions:
Bring in the Love: Organizational Readiness and the Collaborative Work Environment
For many organizations there’s a natural tension between the product group, IT and the marketing teams. These groups are often located in different areas, they answer to different managers and performance is based on different objectives. To achieve search marketing success, collaboration across these groups is essential. The moderator for this session is Alan K’necht, a web analytics consultant, he’s been a great communicator about the session. As you know, one of my greatest passions is the effective use of search marketing in business organizations! Yet creating this reality is hard due to challenges with lack of understanding of search marketing’s strategic impact on the organization and the challenges to effective execution. I’d like to thank Chris Sherman for suggesting to Andrea Hadley that I move to this panel from the concurrent link building session across the hall.

Personalized Search – Times they are a Changing…Yeah, but when?Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all appear to be experimenting with “personalized search”, an algorithm for serving up search results that considers an individual’s interests, search history and browsing patterns. In this session, SEM experts will discuss the impact of personalized search today and tomorrow on both paid and organic website visibility results.
I’ll be moderating this session with Shari Thurow and Rob Garner doing the primary presentations. Look forward to creating a conversation around t

Is personalized search really about a better user experience? Why do I see results for Wheeling, West Virginia when I’m searching for Wheeling, Illinois a few short miles away with a term like Wheeling pizza? Or is it just a scheme to obfusgate SEO communication to maximize paid search revenue at Google? Time will tell, but early evidence hasn’t favored the user experience question.

torontohotels.ca, a discount Toronto hotels site was helpful in booking my trip. I’ll be staying at the Best Western Primrose, a downtown Toronto hotel a few blocks down the street from the SMX venue, it appears to be the best combination of free wifi, location and features for the price

I’d like to thank Andrea Hadley, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for this invitation to speak at SMX, I really appreciate participating in Search Marketing Expo! Should be great fun and mutual learning as always.

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Brand Marketing Channel Strategy Misfortune : Porters of Racine

portersPorters of Racine was founded in 1857 providing furniture of distinction well before Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States. My understanding of the history is that fine furniture was brought into port of Racine, Wisconsin and that people traveled from across the Midwest to Porters of Racine to purchase fine furniture. Fast forward to 2010 and we learn that Porters of Racine is closing after 153 years. There were detailed stories in the Racine Journal Times which mentioned the owners were hoping for better sales that did not materialize. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned the following items in their story:

“Small local furniture retailers who sold mid-range to higher priced furniture already were challenged before the recession because of competition from lower-priced Chinese imports.”

“Porters of Racine, one of the oldest surviving high-end furniture retailers in Wisconsin, soon will close after struggling for several years with declining sales.” Reaction: Notice that phrase “several years”, it’ll become vitally important in a minute.

“Through November, retail furniture sales in the U.S. dropped by 12.1%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The decline followed an 8% slide in 2008.” Reaction: Yes, after the housing bubble which created unnatural demand for furniture in 2005, 2006 and 2007, this would be natural.

The story states that Porters of Racine “will close after several years with declining sales”. Yet the story mentioned sales figures that only showed declines for 2008 and the first 11 months of 2009. dictionary.com defines several as “being more than two but fewer than many in number or kind”. This seems to indicate a period of two to possibly up to seven years. A previous 2007 story mentioned Porters of Racine being in a challenging business situation, before the housing bust took place indicating a clear issue about the business had formed earlier than 2007.  What could possibly explain several years of declining sales that included a four year boom in housing that correlated with increased buying of correlated household goods? That is a really good question.  It would seem to indicate that there was an agonizingly long, slow drop in quantity of qualified store floor traffic.  Let’s examine Porters online marketing channel usage, obviously without the help of the actual marketing plan in my hands.

The following branded terms for Porters of Racine had the following monthly query volume:
porters of racine outlet    36
porters of racine    1000
porters of racine furniture    91

According to my post, Local Search Marketing Keyword Allocation: Porters of Racine, there were about 48,948 qualified queries for the term Wisconsin furniture, 38,971 for Milwaukee furniture and 3,110 for Kenosha furniture for a total of 91,020 queries. Give that the standard 1/3 Google keyword haircut and we’ll call it 60,000. However, if you include the other communities in southeast Wisconsin and northeast Illinois, you’d probably have between 40,000 and 60,000 long tail queries for places like Lake Forest, Wilmette, Winnetka, Kenilworth, Highland Park, Glenview, Northbrook, Deerfield, Buffalo Grove, Lincolnshire, Mettewa, Libertyville, Schaumburg, Kildeer, Lake Bluff, Barrington and Riverwoods. In Wisconsin, there is places like Madison, Green Bay, Appleton and other cities within a drivable distance of Porters. To be conservative, we’ll even leave the high query volume term Chicago furniture completely out of the equation. So let’s call it 100,000 monthly queries in the regional furniture query market.

A look at website of Porters of Racine, shows a classic flat small web site with “Porters of Racine” on every title tag. And while the site had several more pictures on it before the going out of business sale banner was added, this was the case before the change. A further look back at the Internet wayback machine, indicates a series of websites built over the years that did not venture far from the current web sites theme. The word Milwaukee does appear on the site during a year 2000 version. Well you are getting my point, Porters of Racine appears to have never created an effective content strategy that would attract the types of searchers that would be looking for high end fine furniture and lived in the region. In fact it only ranks for the non-branded attribute term – Racine furniture. In my opinion, the shift in how companies engage customers has been shifting from many traditional forms of media to effective content and relevant paid search marketing strategies that can create engagement with potential customers. I’m making an assumption about content only as I see no evidence of an active paid search marketing campaign.

One might assert that many of those 100,000 queries aren’t qualified customers of a high end furniture store like Porters of Racine. Alright I’ll grant you this. But before we write them off, let’s talk about their potential benefits for a minute. Thousands of people wanting the best and aspiring to buy furniture from Porters of Racine! The amount of word of mouth, the number of people who visit the store and tell stories about it. All great things!  Not to mention we likely all know someone in our lives whose significant other caused them to buy something more expensive than they should be buying right? I do! OK, so let’s drop 90% of those queries as completely unqualified customers. This leaves us with around 10,000 queries a month.

10,000 queries a month for how long? Let’s say 7 years from 2003 (once Google had mainstream traction) through 2009. 10,000 queries times 7 years times 12 months per year yields us = 840,000 queries over the past 7 years! During a time period where customers were deluged with tons and tons of new content in news ways and forms. Not to mention that all of these queries were people putting in the word furniture with a regionally local qualifier – so they were relevant prospects! If done right, much more effective than traditional brand marketing spend that wastefully sends outbound messaging to many unqualified and uninterested customers.

So would 840,000 queries from relevant prospects have made a difference in Porters of Racine viability as a profitable and thriving business concern I think so.

Not fully convinced? Consider this. Doris Hajewski’s next “Shop Talk” entry was about Steinhafels opening a new mattress store. Who ranks #1 for the terms – Wisconsin furniture and Milwaukee furniture? You guessed it, Steinhafels!

Back in Chicago, I performed business content strategy and seo services on Weber Furniture Service, a fine furniture and refinishing and restoration provider, at the end of 2008, in the 1st quarter of 2009 versus the 1st quarter of 2008, a very different economic period, unique site visitors were up 45%!!! The company was able to cut traditional media spending as an added benefit which improved profit margin!

To be perfectly clear, my goal here is not to rip on Porters of Racine. Quite the opposite. By profiling a business which is going out of business, it is my hope that tens of thousands of other businesses can learn about the importance of effective SEO, SEM and content marketing practices from this event, which in my personal opinion is one of missed opportunity.

Let’s summarize what we’ve observed here in this post.

1) Effective search rankings can contribute to business success (Steinhafel’s) or business failure. Do you want to learn about Gen X CMO management techniques so you can prevent other businesses from this fate.

2) With the emerging changes in operational risk liability laws is your Board of Directors receiving qualified advice from someone who understands seo and web analytics as well as traditional executive level business techniques? Are they keeping current with these items are transforming the world of business strategy and customer distribution? If your Board of Directors  is not yet receiving this advice, it should be. Shareholders should be demanding it!

3) Are you aware of the trend of how search marketing is allowing product attributes to be electronically stored and retrieved from non-branded search queries allow you focus on the customers needs instead of your product push? As volume of content increases there is an ever increasing lack of mental band with to absorb additional information. You may wish review the appendix to this post.

4) Are you aware of the microeconomics of your marketing channels and successfully migrating organizational resources to align yourself with the customer and lead this change management initiative?

5) We are living in a time that is similar to the industrial revolution.  Marketing is changing from a purely outbound medium to a medium via search that is creating inbound marketing. This is a 180 degree process change that has large process ramifications. We are in a recession, but there are structural changes happening to the economy as a result of search and most businesses are not properly adjusting.

6) In the new normal economy, one needs to utilize the power of the Internet to lower marketing and sales costs to create competitive advantages over their competition. It’s actually not that hard to do once you understand it, but one has to understand that revenue and profitability improvements are possible. This is why the change management is so difficult, many don’t understand what is possible and are not aware of the far reaching organizational issues. One further needs to understand that SEO content strategy is not instant, but rather a long term process.

7) Newspapers, online news sites, TV and cable news need to cover more than just the facts. The reality is yes businesses are closing and jobs are being lost, but that is a symptom, not a root cause of these complex business issues. But these are things that happen well after the damage that is caused by not migrating your marketing channels to an ideal search marketing strategy.

If you’d like to learn how to become aware of these issues so that you can migrate the structural changes in our economy, please consider attending Think Tank Live in Waukesha on February 23, 2010, code WI50 gets you a $50 discount. Chris Campbell of Lakeshore Branding and WordPress Expert Lisa Sabin-Wilson wrote blog posts about the upcoming event where you will learn things such as “How Breaking Business News Stories Migrate to Mainstream Mass Media“. We hope to see you there!

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Local Search Marketing Keyword Content Strategy: Porters of Racine Appendix

While doing research for my Porters of Racine post in Google’s keyword external, I noticed that the keyword sets were large and that the keyword data for Kenosha furniture, Milwaukee furniture and Wisconsin furniture had interesting attributes. These keyword sets were not changed except to remove any query with the term terms implying outdoor furniture or terms that included terms like used, cheap, etc. It also only includes the top queries, not the long tail low volume ones.

The first thing one notices is as the geographic search qualifier term covers a larger geographic area the quantity of searches in the head containing a branded term fell for these furniture terms.
Wisconsin Furniture Monthly Search Queries
Attribute 38119 95.4%
Branded 1818 4.6%

Milwaukee Furniture Monthly Search Queries
Attribute 14014 83.6%
Branded 2757 16.4%

Kenosha Furniture Monthly Search Queries
Attribute 2070 78.7%
Branded 560 21.3%

Does anyone know of anyone who has studied this issue on a larger basis across many geographies and industries? It makes sense to me I don’t yet have enough data to elaborate on it further at this time. It would make sense though as when you are looking to travel farther you are less clear of the path and that when you are doing a hyper-local search you could be influenced by such queues as seeing the physical location and word of mouth marketing factors. If you’ve noticed similar trends, please let me know about it with via a follow on post or private email.

The following is the keyword data I used in the analysis so you can see how I classified the attribute versus branded data:
Wisconsin Furniture Keywords Monthly Searches Attribute/Branded
wisconsin furniture 22200 Attribute
wisconsin furniture stores 3600 Attribute
furniture in wisconsin 3600 Attribute
wisconsin furniture store 1600 Attribute
wisconsin amish furniture 1600 Attribute
furniture stores in wisconsin 1300 Attribute
ashley furniture wisconsin 1000 Branded
wisconsin office furniture 1000 Attribute
wisconsin wood furniture 590 Attribute
wisconsin furniture company 480 Attribute
american furniture wisconsin 480 Branded
wisconsin furniture outlet 390 Attribute
furniture store in wisconsin 390 Attribute
amish furniture in wisconsin 390 Attribute
wisconsin furniture manufacturers 210 Attribute
oak furniture wisconsin 170 Attribute
rustic furniture wisconsin 170 Attribute
colders furniture wisconsin 170 Branded
furniture manufacturer wisconsin 140 Attribute
unfinished furniture wisconsin 140 Attribute
ashley furniture in wisconsin 110 Branded
amish furniture stores in wisconsin 91 Attribute
best craft furniture wisconsin 58 Attribute
american furniture store wisconsin 58 Branded
Total Wisconsin Furniture 39937

Milwaukee Furniture Keywords Monthly Searches Attributes/Brand
milwaukee furniture 22200 Attribute
milwaukee furniture stores 2900 Attribute
furniture in milwaukee 2900 Attribute
milwaukee furniture store 1300 Attribute
furniture sale milwaukee 1300 Attribute
milwaukee office furniture 1300 Attribute
furniture stores in milwaukee 1000 Attribute
milwaukee furniture outlet 480 Attribute
milwaukee bedroom furniture 480 Attribute
ashley furniture milwaukee 480 Branded
american furniture milwaukee 480 Branded
colders furniture milwaukee 480 Branded
furniture store in milwaukee 210 Attribute
boston store furniture milwaukee 210 Attribute
rubins furniture milwaukee 210 Branded
rubin’s furniture milwaukee 170 Branded
furniture stores milwaukee area 170 Attribute
steinhafels furniture milwaukee 170 Branded
contemporary furniture milwaukee 170 Attribute
baby furniture milwaukee 170 Attribute
wood furniture milwaukee 170 Attribute
antique furniture milwaukee 170 Attribute
home furniture milwaukee 140 Attribute
office furniture resources milwaukee 140 Attribute
bachman furniture milwaukee 110 Branded
leather furniture milwaukee 110 Attribute
wayside furniture milwaukee 110 Branded
biltrite furniture milwaukee 110 Attribute
unfinished furniture milwaukee 110 Attribute
national business furniture milwaukee 110 Attribute
rubens furniture milwaukee 91 Branded
milwaukee furniture company 91 Attribute
amish furniture milwaukee 91 Attribute
furniture stores in milwaukee area 91 Attribute
colder’s furniture milwaukee 91 Branded
scandinavian furniture milwaukee 91 Attribute
colders furniture store milwaukee 73 Branded
built rite furniture milwaukee 73 Branded
american furniture store milwaukee 73 Branded
milwaukee furniture dolly 73 Branded
boston store furniture gallery milwaukee 73 Branded
Total Milwaukee Furniture 38971

Kenosha Furniture Keywords Monthly Searches Attribute/Branded
kenosha furniture 1900 Attribute
kenosha furniture stores 480 Attribute
total furniture kenosha 390 Branded
furniture stores in kenosha 170 Attribute
ashley furniture kenosha 170 Branded
Total Kenosha Furniture 3110

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Bryan Eisenberg’s 21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites

Bryan Eisenberg will be giving a session shortly entitled 21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 and at marketing conferences worldwide in 2010 – here’s a high level preview of the session:

1. They Communicate Unique Value Propositions & Unique Campaign Propositions
2. They Make Persuasive & Relevant Offers
3. They Reinforce The Offer Sitewide
4. They Maintain Scent
5. They Make A Strong First Impression
6. They Appeal To Multiple Personas/Segments
7. They Don’t do Slice & Dice Optimization
8. Leverage Social Commerce: Use Voice of Customer
9. They Use It For Navigation
10. They Use It For Promotions
11. They Use It For Credibility
12. They Use It For Feedback & Research
13. They Use Persuasion Principles Like Scarcity
14. They Make Forms Engaging
15. They Provide Point of Action Assurances
16. They Keep You In The Process
17. They Consider Email Preview
18. They Budget For Experience
19. They Utilize a System for Prioritization
20. They Make Data Driven Decisions
21. They Know How To Execute Rapidly

Postscript: The session was well attended! In fact there wasn’t an open seat in the room, people were feverishly taking notes of Bryan’s material during his thought provoking conversion talk.

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BMA B2B Marketing Conference, Google’s Sam Sebastian, Director, Local & B2B Markets

Sam announced in a public forum for the first time that I’ve seen search as a leading economic indicator. I have long dreamed of this prospect from the moment I first saw Google and combined it with my previous background in instituational financial services. I’m excited about this development and would like to openly ask Google when the content that Sam shared this morning will be available publicly for use on Google Trends?

Highlights:
Google’s data can now predict home sales and home sales numbers with search numbers.

The data can be correlated with stock prices at this time.

B2B search terms are growing. Conversions are bouncing back in Q2 2009!

Research, online and offline, big company c-suite, SMB and government sectors.

Commentary: First a note about the c-suite portion of the survey, I have concerns about an offline study asking senior executives about actions used for decisions being accurate. Or worse assuming the numbers were generated from search itself when it wasn’t. Executives might answer what they think is the best practice, even if they don’t do it to appear competent. I know of Fortune 500 CEO’s who still have their emails printed, so I have doubts about the number actually being this high. I’d love for this data to be 100% correct more than anyone, I really would, but I have concerns.

First findings form the C-Suite:

– 73% of the C-suite is using the Internet for information verification and vendor selection.

– 92% Internet exceeding, 87% at-work contacts for referrals.

– 64% of C-level executives conduct 6 or more searches per day to locate business information.

Video and podcast content usage is growing in importance.

Small and medium size businesses:

77% of business owners use search to find suppliers.

Half are using blogs and social media sites in some form in their business.

Government:

Searches are way up on stimulus, energy, health care and related issues.

Huge impact of search results, with just an Adwords ad:

28% Brand Association

36% Message Recall

Commentary:  I’d live to see an example with a smaller, lesser known B2B example.

With both a top organic and Adwords listing, incremental increases are significant

53% Engagement

43% Message Recall

63% Brand Association

Commentary: Sam Did not provide data on organic listings alone. I’d love to see if this was higher of lower than the Adwords ad alone.

“Mobile Search Growing Rapidly” Start testing…(audience did not react much)