Disjointed marketing: the need for cross-discipline bundling in online marketing:
The web designer wants you to just trust him, and not to listen to the sales department. The sales department is sure that the Geek who runs the back end is a communist. The website is invisible because someone thought a no-cache tag would be a cute way to avoid outdated content, and none of the pages are cached. The owner is pissed off at everyone because there is no amount he can spend to get results. The advertising department is going crazy, because there is no conversion – it is definitely the webmaster’s fault according to them. The webmaster is going crazy because the owner’s favorite site is ugly, and he hates the idea of anything modern. The salespeople are starving and quitting. (more…)
Social Media: Internet advertising and search placement on steroids: The social media rant!
If you were just getting used to the word blog (short for web log) and you still do not know exactly what social media means, you need to catch up quickly! The next big shift on the internet is well underway and it will leave you behind, lost in oblivion!
That website that you have: you know, the one with no way for a visitor to interact with the site, with you, or with the other visitors is already dead: it probably never produced much anyway!
If you are paying per-lead or per-click it is very likely that you are competing with lead aggregators: middlemen who need not make money at what you do, because they are buying your market, then selling it back to you (less the profit!).
When you get tired of trying to be your own lawyer in this unholy, largely unregulated courtroom, this stock market with no SEC, it will already be too late to dominate the first page of the major search engines organic results for your industry and-or location: because my clients will already be there, and they will be so far ahead you will never catch up. (more…)
Major Media Exploring Web 2.0?
In the past week, USA Today has jumped into the water of Web 2.0 by adopting a social media platform to allow readers and editors to begin having a conversation. This is yet another significant benchmark in adoption of social media. USA Today is a well known media outlet that services a nationwide audience:
Per the USA Today media kit
- USATODAY.com is an award-winning news and information site providing visitors with more than 200,000 pages of breaking news, sports, money, life, weather, technology and travel news – all updated 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Almost 9 million unique visitors each month turn to USATODAY.com for the latest news and information.*
- Visitors experience comprehensive, convenient news and information from USA TODAY through interactive features, info graphics, and multi-media functions including audio, video, chat and live Webcast
Several smaller news sites have already adopted social platforms, but USA Today is the first to really pull out all the stops and utilize a full-features platform with a variety of tools and community enhancers.
One of the most refreshing aspects of the platform seems to be the attitude of the roll-out:
“Of course, there’s much more to the new USATODAY.com. Explore for yourself and let us know what you think. Love it? Hate it? What other changes do you want to see? Is there a missing feature we should have included? We want to hear your thoughts. Let the conversation begin!”
The platform itself is based on the Pluck Community, with additional subscription services being provided by the BlogBurst platform created by that company.
Naming Conventions: The Race is on for Search Marketing Niches
You will notice that although our company name is Social
Media Systems (a DBA for socialmediasystems.com LLC), our
blog is now named 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog. What
is in a name? Plenty!
You see, when you are marketing online and you want to
appear on the first page of the search
engines’ organic results page for a competitive two, three or
four word search, it becomes critically important what words
are used when someone (for instance, the community at mybloglog.com) links to your blog.
Nobody wants to link to a company brochure site, just as
nobody wants to find an ‘I am a realtor too’ vanity site
when they are searching for demographics or school information
about a certain city or state.
Therefore it is of paramount importantance what pages are named
if:
1. Search placement is an issue;
2. You want people to link to you;
3. You want the anchor text to match your targeted search
phrases.
By choosing 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog, we will be
listed as 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog, with the anchor
text matching a coveted deep search phrase: Search Engine
Marketing Blog. Furthermore, numbers come before letters
so…
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2007/03/05/marketing-
content-good-blogs-often-go-unread
http://www.latentsemanticindexing.co.uk/05/marketing-content-
good-blogs-often-go-unread/
The stuff is linked to and reprinted! (oh yea, it helps if
you are already established and syndicated as an expert)
Online Advertising $60 Billion in 2010.
A recent article by MediaPost detailed how estimate for online advertising spending should exceed $60 billion dollars by 2010. This was up from a previous estimate of $54 billion in projected advertising for 2010 last year. In 2006, revenues were estimated at $30 billion.
The article also says “search will account for nearly half of all ad dollars spent online.”
Other bullet points of the article and covered report:
- Search advertising was almost $14 billion in 2006
- Keyword search advertising is the most popular online ad format, accounting for 40% of revenues, followed by display advertising (21%); classifieds (20%); referrals/lead generation (7%); rich media (6%); sponsorship (4%); and e-mail (2%).
A good point for Social Media Systems,
“Cost-per-click and CPMs have flattened in the last year due to CPCs on popular keywords reaching levels that make it challenging for merchants to hit their ROI targets, and the increasing emphasis on non-paid algorithmic search and on multiple-word queries that tend to be less expensive since there are fewer advertisers bidding on them.”
So when one of our clients needs a specific phrase or keyword and we get them top results, it really does save them money. Its hard to argue with a good search engine marketing strategy when the major media players are shifting gears and following our example.
Here is another qoute that I love:
“The launch of Yahoo’s Panama system in early February appears to have revved up keyword bidding on Yahoo as advertisers and search engine marketers jockey for position. For example, an advertiser that might lose a top position–since the algorithm goes from ranking advertisers on bid price only to bid price popularity–may decide to experiment with the new platform and drastically raise the bid price in order to keep a top-tier position.”
So let me get this straight… Google has been throwing fuel on the fire to encourage advertisers to bid up their own advertising for years, and now Yahoo has finally got on board with encouraging pay-per-click prices to sky-rocket and the whole market suffers? It is encouraging to know that the two largest search engines are promoting clients to fight against one-another. I love the fact that Yahoo and Google have done such as excellent marketing and public relations campaign that they have actually convinced a market to aggressively bid against one another and give them more money.
It may take a while, but eventually all those advertisers will realize that a competitive advertising marketplace is an extremely costly one and that most of them are creating a false “ad bubble” within each industry. Some of those industry bubbles have already popped and I expect to see many more explode in 2007.
