Digital Marketing Guide for Agile Managers

What's new in Google Adwords

Brad Geddes is CEO at pay per click and internet marketing training service firm bg Theo. He provides an update of what has changed in PPC and what Google tools he uses to shape his knowledge.

• New bid simulator tool to allow you to see monitor traffic rates
• Adwords keyword tool including site spidering, Google insights for search, Google sets
• Real-time, adaptive, targetted advertising

Getting your Social Networking right

In a recent survey:

• 74% of businesses reported poor results from their sales and marketing on social networks
• 78% of people trust peer recommendations - only 14% trust advertisements

Suggestions to get your social networking right:

1. Find out who the "right" audience is
2. Decide what you want to talk with your target audience about
3. Make it easy for your audience to talk about you

Did you know 4.0?

Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman have launched a "Do you know" series of videos visualizing data on YouTube since 2007. They launched the latest version of " Do you know" on September 14th 2009.

Social Compatible Bio

Lisa Buyer, founder and president at interactive branding agency The Buyer Group, discusses the importance of embracing social media and search to keep up with an evolving Internet marketing and public relations landscape.

• Match your goals to determine appropriate social media tools

• Ensure your bio is truthful and reflect your strategy

 

Mobile Apps to improve SEO

Cindy Krum, CEO of mobile marketing consultants Rank-Mobile, on the world of mobile. As companies work to optimize their websites to rank high in the search engines, they need to put the same effort in getting their mobile applications noticed.

• Mobile app leaders are adapting to cater for new functionalities of mobile phones
• Applications search (such as Shazam) require your listing to be optimized
• If you're selling a download, why not an app too?

 

 

Freemium

Freemium advocate Chris Anderson uses humor and a child's game to again warn print publishers that they need to embrace the concept of a freemium online business model.

• Freemium = free for most of the items + premium for just a small number of remaining ones
• Attention is worth more than money

Twitter is 2008, Interactive TV is 2010

Mark Cuban of HDNET discusses what you need to do to get ahead of the crowd in online advertising.

• Biggest opportunity in advertising is in BIG format

• What are the experiences that are compelling that you can't get anywhere else?

• Facebook, Twitter et al are no longer NEW - they're necessary, but not innovative

• Interactive TV is coming - adding interactivity to an established medium

Google on the Geoweb

Michael T. Jones is CTO at Google. Here, he talks about the future of the geoweb and discusses how the geoweb can benefit from past lessons.

• Information is purpose

• Information is only useful if it can be understood

• Simplification is key, complexity commonplace

• Success can only be achieved through failure, introspection and courage!

Corporate Social Media: No pain, no gain

Stand up comedian Tim Washer has been working with IBM in designing viral videos to attract and retain new customers. Tim learned:

• Advocates creative absurdity in advertizing

• FEAR is the biggest obstacle to a company's social media success

Boxee TV centric Social Media platform

Avner Ronen, the CEO of award-winning media platform Boxee, answers questions on cutting-edge trends in social networking. Boxee provides online tv, movies and music directly to users.

 

 

 

Streetwise mobile apps

Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang hits the streets of San Francisco to discuss what the latest thinking is in the world of mobile apps. These include:

• Mobile geo-recognition - Searching by Pointing
• Personalized demand travel guides soon to be geo-specific
• Aggregated social media content
• Augmented reality games
• Mobile only broadcasting

 

SEO is about the Why, not the What

Bryan Eisenberg, of FutureNow. is an expert in online conversion rates. Here, he suggests it's not about the what online, it's all about the why:

• Small changes to sites can have a huge impact on retention

• Marketing and Technology don't understand human behavior - persuasion architecture does, and it's about reducing process friction

• Efficient analysis happens when you understand the WHY

KPIs for Small Business

Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik outlines various types of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for small businesses -- especially looking at where people come from, what content is being consumed, and measuring outcomes.

1. Where do people come from?

• Search, links, yellow pages?

• Track once a week, more often after a campaign

2. Bounce Rate - I came, I puked, I left - how many visits to your site has only one page view?

• Indicates low quality, wrong landing page

3. Measure outcomes - higher revenues, decreased costs, higher customer retention

Coming soon: Twitter Business Accounts

Reports circulating that Twitter will offer business accounts later this year, with exclusive access to select anlaytics and premium services. Things to consider:

• More suited to large businesses

• Twitter trying to monetize the brand

• Will compete with third party offerings

• Little appetite among small business to pay for such a service

WatchMojo: Branded Infoteinment

Ash Karbasfrooshan, CEO of branded content provider WatchMojo, gives his insights on internet video and it's promotion.

• Advertisers initially afraid of what content will look like

• Merit in video distribution - you MUST be on Youtube, but not all YouTube clones

• Need quanitity, quality and advert revenue content

CMOs struggling to come to terms with Search

Rebecca Lieb, of digital marketing community Econsultancy, talks about some harsh realities in the world of search and search marketing.

• CEOs spend 1.8% of time on search

• Search marketers selling their skills to CMOs - but CMOs do not know enough about search!

• Generational shift is needed such as CMOs paying more attention to mobile due to iPhone

• Simplify search terminology through using marketing language

Social Search

Mike Grehan, recently appointed Global Content Director with Search Engine Strategies (SES) and digital marketing firm Clickz, tells us how search and social are inherently linked:

• Social Search is coming - real-time search on a network of trust

• SEO = prepare content for a short-term information need

• SSO = prepare content for a long-term / strategic information need

Social Media Trends

This video looks at present and future social media patterns.

Big Pharma's Social Media Leading Case

Heavily regulated industries like pharamaceuticals are often constrained by what they can and can't say in social media. This is Pfizer's experience:

• Attempted to become more open through Twitter

• Consumers thought it was a hoax

• Request patience

The Future of Online Search: From GUI to LUI

Stephen Spencer CEO of ebusiness search marketing experts Netconcepts, offers some of his thoughts on where search is going soon. He highlights:

• From the GUI to the LUI - Linguistic User Interface

• Less reliance on keyboards, more voice recognition

• Sites adapting to user behavior in real time

News on Google Ads: Goodbye to keywords, Hello to Cost per Acquisition

Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, Adwords, Google about Google adwords at SES San Jose 2009. Nicholas says:

• Keyword search isn't dead  - yet - but in the near future you can target your ads based on your business needs.

• Move from cost per click to cost per acquisition.

Social media traffic customer conversion

Aaron Irizarry, Infoswell Media, talks about using Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic and accomplish customer conversion. Aaron says:

• If you're going to use social media tools think community.

• Use social media to initiate conversations not only with consumers but with the competition as well.

• Be authentic and engaging.

• Provide a good user experience, specially a smooth conversion process.
  

Clay Shirky: Consumer Patterns in Web 2.0

Clay Shirky, author of 'Here Comes Everybody' and adjunct professor at New York University, discusses  the change in user behavior as a result of the internet, including:

• HSBC's penalty free checking account fiasco corrected through Facebook 

• The Josh Groban non-profit group using social media to further their cause

• The Infotainment problem in citizen journalism

Selling SEO to your Marketing People

Brian Fetherstonhaugh is Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy One global leaders in CRM and interactive marketing. Here, he discusses with John Mulligan of SEO-PR how external marketing agencies and in-house marketers have to be their own advocates to sell a search program.

• Search is not yet on the Marketing Departments agenda

• Advocates of search need to speak their language by   

1. Talking about the entire search customer journey

2. Search is a form of research - real time, global scale

3. Stop attacking other media channels - use search to enhance them 

Facebook Hyper Targeted Ads

Marketing expert Clara Shih explains how marketers utilize Facebook to target advertising. She demonstrates how Facebook:

• Target ads to a specific demographic based on age, gender, religion, or any other information included on a user's profile

• Active versus "latent" demand

• Advertizing waste is becoming minimized

 

Content Mobile DO work for Time's magazines

Fran Hauser, president of the digital side of Time Inc.'s Style and Entertainment Group.  talks about the success of their large scale mobile content approach which:

• Generates 18 million mobile page views monthly

• Have diversified revenue streams through iPhone Apps, BigFish gaming, Twiter and Facebook

• Twitter acts as the customer service platform whilst also informing editorial strategy too

3D magazines

This piece looks at how CBS and Pepsi will run a video ad in the September print edition of Entertainment Weekly.

• All media is collapsing and converging

• At the beginning, due to cost, this will be targeted to subscribers
• A natural evolution for "scratch-and-sniff" and CDROMs

• Magazines will eventually become hand-held devices

MTV on Effective Video Ads

Jason Witt, SVP and GM of MTV's digital advertising unit talks about MTV's experiences with video advertising.

• Pre-roll ads seen as a bad user experience

• Focussed on multiple demographics, multiple sites

• Tested 3 products - side-loaders, fly-outs and lower one third, benchmarking these versus a 30 second slot

• Winner in likeability and effectiveness was the lower one third with novelty enhancing effectiveness

• Side-loader came third

• Internet is creating divisions in content

 

Problems facing mobile advertising

Michael Collins, CEO of GroupM network's mobile marketing agency Joule, ticks off a series of maddening problems that hamper the growth of the mobile ad industry. Problems facing mobile advertising include:

1. Lack of scale
2. Lack of brand infraestructure to profit "value-post-click"
3. Lack of message relevancy
4. Wild cost variations

 

Mobile Media - The Future?

This film is presenting a summary of key result of the open think tank MOCOM 2020, which looked at where the mobile industry expect to be in 2020.

1906 – first US patent for wireless phone

1973 – first mobile phone call in New York

1982 – Nokia introduces its first mobile phone

1991 – First GSM network in Finland

1998 – First mobile content sold

2001 – 3G in Japan

2007 – The “touch device era” with introduction of iPhone

2010 – 2020 ?

 

Mobile Marketing '09 Key Concepts

Michael Becker of iLoop Mobile gives marketing tips for getting to grips with the mobile web.

• Boom time for mobile
• 30 mins per day browsing using mobile – compared to hours via computer – adjust marketing accordingly
• Content relevance – content relevant to time, location, user platform

Smirnoff mobilizes the brand

Daniel Rosen, Managing Director of AKQA Digital, one of the worlds leading global digital marketing agencies, talks about Smirnoff.mobi, the enormously influential mobile experience.

• Online SEARCH – Mobile FIND
• 55+ market fastest growing user group in mobile
• Create mobile specific content
• Smirnoff.mobi shows how a brand can have a sustained presence on a medium

 

The Weather Channel on the Mobile Web

Louis Gump is VP of Mobile at The Weather Channel. What did they do to become the largest site in US for mobile web?

• How are consumers looking for weather – treat mobile as seperate device from other channels
• Keep it simple
• .com or .mobi, or both?

The Future Search Industry

Rebecca Lieb, VP of U.S. Operations at Digital Marketing firm Econsultancy,  talks about the expansion and upcoming trends we should expect from search.

• Search engines will soon be able to adjust results to better suit a user’s social and behavioral patterns
• These aspects and many more will make it so search is easier and more effective
• 30% of Google searches in Japan are via mobile devices
• YouTube is the second biggest search engine

Targetted Mobile Marketing

One of the latest examples of how cellphones can be effectively integrated into a major marketing campaign is that of Al Harrington's new "Protege" line of low-cost basketball shoes. Mobext Mobile Marketing managing director Phuc Truong explained the Kmart campaign's strategy and tactics.

• Target audience had high propensity for mobile use
• Text resulted in a WAP link, leading to a customized website with exclusive offers

 

 

 

MapQuest lessons on localized marketing

Mark Law of Mapquest talks how they have changed their business model to cater for local search.

• Traditionally, Mapquest catered for journeys – emergence of “staycations” meant engaging users with local content
• National sites which cater for local search do not provide dynamic, rich, real-time content
• Location on Twitter isn’t sufficiently engaging
• Built equivalent of a Sunday newspaper for individual cities

Challenges:

1. High cost of content
2. No need to grow audience – must attract them through content quality

• Took RSS feed approach owing to lack of funding
• Identified content that is familiar to users – acted as a “Front door to local content”

Innovation through Location

Tyler Bell (Yahoo!, Inc.) talks about the web of the world and creating open infrastructures to create a location aware internet.

• Geoinformatics – how to use geography to inform data without showing a map
• Web 2.0 is read AND write 
• Web X is the next stage – a web of the world that adapts to “open” location 
• Open ownership, open exchange, open platforms and open data

 

 

Revenue generation through mobile geo targetting

This panel of mobile search experts include Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) ,Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.) , Michael Halbherr (Nokia), Marc Prioleau (CloudMade) and Mark Law (MapQuest). What are they doing in mobile and local search?

• Focus on user interaction with adverts – sponsored links more in-tune with user search eg. local theaters returned with local restaurant searches
• Ying and yang of user experience with revenue – a very fine balance 
• Who owns the consumer mobile internet experience?
• User behavior tracked to monetize – but ALSO to improve the user experience

 

Search Marketing for the different flavours of Social Media

Danny Sullivan, search engine marketing expert, has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade. Here, he discusses “search intent” across different social media:

• Social media is inherently search-like
• But social news, social knowledge, social bookmarking and social networking sites have different characteristics in the form of :

1. Traffic: How many visitors do they drive?
2. Demand/Search Intent: How likely are those visitors to be after something specific?
3. Branding: How can these sites influence branding by appearing in search results?

• “Search intent” = rationale for using a specific search engine
• Google search = discovery, branding, traffic and search intent
• Social news search = people interested in something new, some branding, little search intent
• Social bookmarking = low branding

 

What's new in Mobile Marketing?

Cindy Krum, CEO of mobile marketing consultants Rank-Mobile, on the world of mobile. 

• Mobile PPC doesn’t require a mobile site
• Google Maps, YouTube, the App Store, and Android Store have all become mobile friendly, promoting applications and generating revenue
• “Mobile effect” – integrate mobile to give brand advocates further reason to support your brand

Mobile search has arrived

Cindy Krum, CEO of mobile marketing consultants Rank-Mobile, on the state of mobile search. 

• Mobile search has arrived
• iPhones make up 75% of mobile search in the US
• Search apps generating more tailored results for users
• Business must figure out how to rank not only in the traditional search engines but also in these new mobile search applications

User generated real-time web

Steve Jurvetson of venture capitalist Draper Fisher Jurvetson, talks about the user generated web.

• Innovation occurs at the edge
• How do you take advantage of this?

1. Aggregation of long-tail
2. Target friends of owners not the existing owners
3. Harness power of collective wisdom rather than relying on search algorithms

Challenges facing real-time search

 What are the challenges facing real-time search?

• Twitter has spawned real-time search engines in the form of Scoopler, Collecta, Topsy, and CrowdEye
• Challenges include:

1. Relevancy – Most recent content weighted most heavily
2. Searches often result in spam
3. Searches usually limited to search engine specific content eg. on Twitter, can only search Twitter

• Google may tie-in with Twitter to address these challenges

How will new engines affect Search Engine Management?

Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of search engine marketing firm Enquiro, talks about search industry and players such as Microsoft and Yahoo who are struggling to compete with Google's search dominance.

• Need an “arms race” in search
• Bing is not sufficiently different to Google - Microsoft's advertising it to be "more" than it actually is
• Search industry is still at the very early stages of search and Twitter is part of the real-time search development (the social graph and personalization)
• Wolfram Alpha is an interesting alternative to traditional search engines – Wolfram has translated unstructured data into an algorithm

How LifeInsure.com got top rank by linking through Social Media

SEO Stephan Spencer explains how your business can increase the traffic to your site through social media.

• Create link-worthy content – LifeInsure.com's “19 Things you didn’t know about Death”
• Seed your content by participating (become a power user) or partnering (with an already established power user)
• Ensure you can handle a spike in traffic volume (first wave; geeks, not buyers)
  
• This spike will be followed by a “second order effect” (bloggers and journalists; these eventually will bring the buyers)
  

How to get 1 million people to Hate Your Company

CNN looks at what happens if your company does not have a social media strategy in place.

• Dave Carroll witnessed his guitar being broken by United Airlines baggage handlers
• Made a video (here), wrote a song and promised to have 1 million people to witness it
• United Airlines only participates in Twitter – to send out promotions NOT to engage in dialogue
• Outsourced Twitter to PR

 

 

 

Will new Twitter based tools rival Google?

Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld for web professionals, talks about Twitter impact.

• “Instant search engines” - allow searches in real time (not covered neither by Google nor Bing)
• Twitter usage mostly men, 20% of participants generating 80% of the content
• New search algorithms identify online influence of Tweeters (and account money value)

Social bookmarking StumbleUpon revamped

Brent Csutoras is a specialist in Social Media Marketing. Brent believes StumbleUpon is a great way to drive traffic to a site and can benefit a site if invested in StumbleUpon's services.

• StumbleUpon has increased user numbers from 5 million to 8 million in the past year (compare this with MySpace situation!)
• This was achieved through becoming more adding a web-based toolbar, navigational capability and buttons
• User-base now more likely to share content
• New Partnership Program to “stumble through” your own site

LinkedIn on the future of jobs

Kevin Eyers is Managing Director for LinkedIn in Europe. He describes the world as LinkedIn sees it:

• Fundamental shift to de-centralized information as data cost has decreased
• Now everybody had a voice and is an entrepreneur
• “The world is becoming flat” – more people on an equal footing
• People are more loyal to their job skills than a particular company

Leveraging Twitter Celebs for your business

Mark Shaw is a Twitter Consultant, whose primary skill is monetizing Twitter for business. Mark demonstrated how you can profit from celebrity involvement:

• Celebrities attract a huge Twitter audiences
• If you share the same demographic as these audiences, you have a ready made list of potential customers
• “Celebrity Effect” – Susan Boyle’s popularity driven by Demi Moore