Our first newsletter of 2012 is packed with search marketing goodness, and we’re giving you a sneak peek into this month’s articles before it hits inboxes everywhere. If you love this edition, go ahead and subscribe to our SEO Newsletter; it’s a great way to ensure you’re up to date on the industry’s hot topics and provides a deeper glimpse into some of the trends and issues online business faces every month. So, without further adieux, here are the highlights of January’s SEO Newsletter.

16 SEM Predictions for 2012 by Bruce Clay

This month, our feature article kicks off with Bruce Clay giving 16 predictions for 2012. If you’ve been following our newsletter over the years, you know that about this time each year, Bruce offers his forecast into what lies ahead in the search marketing climate.

This year, he touches on:

• Budget predictions for search in 2012
• Emerging SEM disciplines
• Web marketing conferences
• Impact of Google+
• AdWords costs
• Local SEO
• Offshore labor for SEM
• Content publishing

Plus, check out the link in the article to his 2011 predictions to see how they panned out.

Understanding Search Plus Your World

Our Back to Basics article gives the nuts and bolts of “Search plus Your World,” Google’s new search results that rolled out just this month, plus some extra insight from senior SEO analyst at Bruce Clay, Inc. on if the new search function did, in fact, kill SEO.

In this article by yours truly, I cover:

• How Search+ works: How Google+ factors into the results, what else you can expect in the new search results, what kind of content is featured in the SERP and the various options for viewing results.
• What the implications of Search+ are: Why brands, the public and the government might be concerned about this new search function by Google.
• What personalized and non-personalized results mean: Understanding some of the ranking factors in the various results views.
• If Search+ killed SEO: We explore how SEO factors in a new Search+ world?

Google’s Freshness Score and Why it Exists

The ability for search engines like Google to determine the “freshness” of Web content is required to return the most relevant results. Enter Google’s freshness score. In this article by Brent Yorzinski of Bruce Clay Australia, he dives into the step-by-step fundamentals of Google’s freshness score, how it influences what we see in the search results, and why the freshness signal in Google’s algorithm leaves much to be discovered.

Bruce Clay Europe’s managing director Ale Agostini recently co-authored a brand new book for the European business community with Bruce Clay on holistic Web marketing called, “Trovare clienti con Google,” or in English, “Finding Customers with Google.”

Published last month and available on Amazon or HOEPLI.it, the book is nearly 200 pages of fresh, tactical search marketing methodologies, trends and tips. I caught up with Ale over the weekend to get the deets on the book, what people will learn and why it’s the perfect time for the European business community to embrace self-education in Web marketing.

Jessica: Tell me about the book, what’s behind it and who should read it?

Ale: Most traditional or conventional marketers do not fully understand how to do SEO and PPC because of thetechnicality that is needed to perform these activities. That’s why we wrote this practical search marketing book for business people that explains Web marketing strategy in a straightforward manner. Anybody who is currently running a business, in charge of marketing or sales should read this book. The book is also a great tool for SEO analysts and SEM practitioners.

What kinds of things can readers expect to learn?

Even the toughest concepts of SEO are explained in an easy way. Some of topics covered include:

• How to increase visibility in search engine results.
• How to generate qualified traffic to your site.
• How to make Web marketing a powerful advertising sales and public relations tool for your business.
• How to integrate SEO into press releases, online video and social media.

The philosophy behind the book is explained in a short video on, “Trovare clienti con Google” (video in Italian).

Why was the time right for an Internet marketing book like this in Italy?

In Italy, as well as the rest of Europe, a large proportion of companies continue to increase their investment in both paid search, SEO and social media. But most of these firms (probably 99 percent) are outsourcing search and social media without having enough knowledge or experience on how to assess the quality of these services. That’s why I believe the time is right for a book like this; it’s an easy read and gives a good understanding of sound search marketing practices, which can be immediately applied to the reader’s business.

Will the book be published in any other languages?

We are currently thinking about localizing and publishing the book in some European languages like German, French, Spanish, Polish and Dutch. If anybody is interested in seeing the book in their native language, please let us know.

What other educational things will Bruce Clay Europe be involved in for 2012?

Bruce Clay himself will come to Italy to join Bruce Clay Europe in June 2012 to teach the annual SEO training course. Last year was the first of it’s kind and was wildly popular amongst the European business community. Besides that, I will probably speak at SMX West in San Jose in February, and again at SMX Munich in March.

If you have questions about the book “Trovare clienti con Google” or anything else related to Web marketing or Bruce Clay Europe, you can reach Ale on Twitter or his profile on Google+.

Back when a facebook was actually a book comprised of pictures of college students and Google wasn’t even a word, it was Leo Burnett who said, “A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain’t got nothin’.”

Fast forward 40 years after Burnett’s passing, and we find ourselves in the Age of Social Media Marketing, where involvement and relevance are the currency of the land, especially for businesses, small and large. A lot of their money is spent on advertising and marketing in ways that would have seemed alien to someone like Leo Burnett in the days of yore. We’ve gone from radio spots and periodical ads to targeted brand presence on Facebook, bidding for PPC words, and creating display ads. The advertising times have changed, indeed.

Advertising on Google and Facebook: By the Numbers

For Internet giants like Facebook and Google, earning advertising revenue from businesses is like Santa Claus sliding down a chimney everyday with a sack full of money, and let me tell you, Santa has been kind this year. For Q3 2011, Google reported a 24 percent increase in paid search advertising over the same period last year, which marks a rebound from a small lull in ad spending in the previous quarter. Google also reported quarterly earnings of $9.27 billion.

Facebook is following suit with strong overall revenue projections with an expected $4.27 billion earned this year, with $3.08 billion from worldwide advertising on the social networking site. According to eMarketer, this represents an 104% increase over 2010.

What do all these numbers mean? More and more businesses are finding ways to not only to reach broader audiences, but to engage with them in ways businesses logistically could not even imagine 10 years ago.

Don’t believe me? According to the projections made by eMarketer, Facebook’s paid advertising has increased five fold…in two years.

The proof is in the pudding considering Facebook has 9.2 million business profiles that engage, on some level, in social media marketing. It’s safe to say that businesses are keen to recognize the importance of online advertising as is evidenced by the astronomical amount of money businesses are spending on being seen.

To Boldly Click: Google’s Plan to Get Advertisers to Embrace the +1

Piggybacking on this week’s revenue report is a surprising statistic that is sure to make any PPC analyst giddy. Google saw a 57 percent increase in click-through rates (CTR), which could mean one of two things, or both: Google is becoming better at matching ads with relevant queries and people are becoming more effective at AdWords bidding. I am of the opinion that increases in CTR for ads on Google will either show sustained growth or continue to increase as they did this past quarter.

How is that possible, you ask? The answer is simple: +1’s.

This is the part of the story when ads get social. Earlier this week, Google began displaying +1’s on ads appearing on Google Display Network sites. This adds a certain social cue to online display advertisements as they show the other Google+ users who have also +1’d the ad. This is a tremendous development in the world of online advertising due in part to the fact that people are more likely to click where friends have previously clicked. A trust is built between the user and the advertisement when someone sees his friends have +1’d a display ad.

If people adhere to the ad’s social cue, it will get an added boost in the auction, providing a greater chance of showing on a page. Following that logic, display ads with +1’s will have a higher click-through rate than ones that don’t. It is worth noting that Google does allow you to opt out, but my advice to anyone who is using AdSense and Google Display Network, and is serious about getting any traction on ad campaigns going forward, is to embrace the +1. Without it, you might as use a carrier pigeon to deliver brand messaging.

Plus, with Google delivering more and more local results, it is pertinent that brick-and-mortar businesses develop a strategy to advertise with Google. Display ads with social cues will give a local business greater reach, especially now that Google+ has breached 40 million users.

Spend Money to Make Money: How Social Engagement is More than Just Being ‘Liked’

Speaking of advertising with social networks, Facebook is making it incredibly easy for small businesses to advertise on their social network. Together with the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, Facebook will educate small businesses on the value of advertising on Facebook, effectively pushing online marketing beyond operating a brand page.

The Facebook Marketing Bootcamp teaches small businesses how to effectively establish and advertise in a social networking space. Facebook, in effect, is giving the old advertising sales pitch, and who could blame them? Facebook gets its ad revenue and small business get much needed online exposure given the fragile economy.

Facebook allows businesses to target friends of fans for advertising opportunities, which is important for engaging an audience that would otherwise exist beyond the reach of a business that does not advertise. Take, for instance, Coca-Cola. Coke is one of the most followed brands on Facebook with over 36 million “fans” – that’s approximately the population of California. Why would Coca-Cola stop at targeting 36 million when they can engage in an expanded network of 100 million?

Spending money on social media advertising is as much about receiving a business boost as it is about getting involved in an expanding community, remaining relevant, and building trust.

Social Media Marketing Doggy Bag: What You Can Takeaway

Embrace the +1 – Google is making it increasingly easy to start online ad campaigns, specifically with display ads. And who knows, those pesky little +1s could make all the difference when click-through rates skyrocket.

Facebook Wants You, Enlist Now – Bootcamp may be the place to get your small business and your website in gear. Plus, Bootcamp is free and Facebook is giving away rebates for advertising with them. Everyone wins.

Keep the Social Advertising Faith – Dollars spent in social media marketing don’t always directly equate to dollars earned. The result is engaging an online audience and building brand visibility.

Forget Don Draper, Remember Leo Burnett – He may not have been alive at the advent of social media marketing, but his words ring true in ways he could have never imagined. It’s a good social media practice to keep in mind: stay involved, be relevant, get noticed, remain believable, “or you ain’t got nothin’.”

Last Thursday we posted a new episode of our SEM Synergy podcast, this one from SMX East in New York City. While I wasn’t able to post about it here on that day (I was knee deep in the final day of liveblogging), the show was mad groovy for several reasons and definitely warrants a recap.

Voilà.

Mad groovy podcast, reason 1: Video interviews to come! Back in August of last year, we tried our hand at video interviews. You can see our small archive of Internet marketing video interviews over on our YouTube channel. Some big names, including Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network and in-house SEO evangelist Jessica Bowman, helped me blaze the trail into the video realm, but our video interviews gradually fizzled out.

Now we’re looking to video interviews with renewed vigor, and at SMX East last week we had our first chance to capture people on screen. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting last week’s interviews along with a couple more, and (spoiler alert) video makes everything more entertaining. Jessica’s hoping to snag a few video interviews with our fine fellow marketers at Wappow Search and Social next week. Look out, World Wide Web. We’re ready for our close ups. (No really, please be careful. This fancy new camera we’ve got is HD… O_o … Eep!)

Mad groovy podcast, reason 2: There are two ━ count them: TWO ━ expert interviews on last week’s show. PPC and online ad pro John W. Ellis spills his secrets for scaling back the creep factor of remarketing and retargeting. He also gives some advice on a PPC solution for small businesses looking for a safe way to test paid search, Google Express. As local businesses explore the array of powerful options available to them through online marketing, platforms like Google Express can make good sense.

Moving from the paid space to the organic, I also talked to local search marketing super-sleuth Mike Ramsey about his research into local search ranking factors most closely correlated with high local SERP-age. He shared his research in a session at SMX East called Hardcore Local SEO Tactics. You can find Mike’s slide deck over at the Nifty Marketing blog, and when that’s not enough, listen to Mike’s presentation buzzing over the airwaves as you listen to the podcast.

To get you in the mood for the gems in last week’s podcast, here are some of the highlights from my interview with Mike. You’ll hear all about…

Major shifts in the way Google ranks and displays local search results:

“The biggest change to the way local search displayed was in October ━ it was October 27, 2010. That was when they brought out, basically, the merged search results. We call it, like, the O-pack, or the integrated search results.

More recently, about three months ago, Google just did cosmetic changes to Places. What they did was they eliminated reviews from third-party sources like Yelp, SuperPages, etc., etc., from the count in your Google Places total review average. They also took off the review snippets from the page as well, and all they have now at the bottom of the reviews section of Google Places is small links that might point you over to Yelp and just give you an overall idea of the count of reviews there.

A lot of people thought that would have a major ranking effect change, but it was very cosmetic-based and not ranking-based. Ultimately, it just made it important to make sure you have all sorts of reviews now. It’s just the Google Places reviews are going to be more visible.”

The role and importance of citations as a local search ranking factor:

“Citations is an interesting thing that’s evolved. About, it was probably about 8 months ago, there was a few studies where some people said, ‘Hey, you know, citations don’t matter as much as links anymore.’ When they switched the pack back in October, everybody was on the bandwagon of saying that the citations were losing prominence. It was so interesting putting together the study [of local SEO ranking factors] that we did at Nifty because we found that Google wasn’t showing very many citations on the Places Page, but when you really got in and started doing a lot of custom searching, either on Google or using tools like Whitespark’s citation finder, you would find very different data than Google was displaying on the Places Page.

So, in the study that we found, we had like 57 businesses across 4 different locations and industries and the data showed that on average, the high ranking amount of citations for companies was somewhere in the range of about 3,000 different instances of that showing up, whereas in the low ranking ones it was like under 100, it was very, very low, even under 50.

It just showed me the importance of how keeping your business name, your business address and your business phone number, which incorporates what a citation is, just consistent across everywhere online. It doesn’t mean that citations are the only thing that matters, but in proving location prominence and getting really big trust with Google, it’s by far the most important step. Tying that with link building and it’s probably the two most powerful things you can do in local search.”

Links as a local search ranking factor (and no, they’re not dead!):

“It’s funny because I think in search, a lot of times it’s the latest and greatest thing. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon and you end up going too hard one way or another. So when David Mihm first came out with a piece called “Citations are the New Link” in 2008 or 9, he said citations are the new link.

In local search, people stopped caring about links at all and they just went after citations. All of a sudden, links start mattering again. My hope is in the industry we don’t have people switch too far one way or another. The best is just to be consistent and broad in your approach; build citations and build links.

I think the two points that I had there was exactness in location ━ and that covers your citation side ━ and then prominence in authority. You link building, it builds on your authority, but it also, depending on your anchor text, builds on your location prominence as well. So it’s very good to just incorporate both methods into search marketing.”

Creative ways to encourage reviews online:

“There’s a lot of ways that we’ve been able to incorporate for customers and we find that our clients’ customers have responded well to. One of which is having, on a local website, usually in the sidebar or in the footer space, links to about four review portals. So generally we’ll look at a place like Yelp; I think Yelp is an extremely important review portal. Other ones, like CitySearch, of course Google Places, and then maybe an industry specific one, just depending on what industry you’re in.

We’ll have some kind of phrase like “read our reviews” or “leave us a review” and you can generally, over the course of natural site traffic, people will go, they’ll read a few reviews. Chances are if they enjoy your service they’ll leave one. If you do a bad job, they’ll leave one as well.

A few other things we’ve seen work extremely well. [...] Let’s say you have a customer e-mail list, identifying everybody that uses a Gmail account, identifying everybody that uses any other service. Maybe if you have them on Facebook then you push them toward CitySearch since you can log in to CitySearch with Facebook. Start trying to get your users and push them toward the place that they’re most likely to leave reviews. It works great. I mean, Gmail account users, if you send them a link to Google Places, they’re already logged in. You can send them a direct link to the review spot and it’s fairly easy to pick up quick reviews like that.”

And there you have it! Mad groovy, right? And those are just highlights from one of the show’s interviews! Be sure to listen to the show to soak in the PPC smarts, too. Thanks to Mike and John for sitting down with me at SMX East. As you’ll soon see, the camera loves you guys, and so do SEM Synergy and Bruce Clay, Inc!

Today on SEM Synergy, I rounded up a PPC power line-up during my time at SES San Francisco. Interviews with paid search specialists Kevin Lee of Diddit, Andrew Goodman of Page Zero Media, and Jason O’Hare and Will Eisner of WordStream touch upon the increasingly complex state of online advertising today. The landscape navigated by a paid search marketer is undergoing dramatic shifts, as search engines Yahoo! and Bing partner and with newer social media channels competing for resources and attention.

For small businesses engaged in or newly exploring online marketing, it’s a chore to get a working understanding of each channel, the ROI potential and the compound effect of channel interactions with one another.

It’s enough for online advertising professionals to keep up in the shuffle, as Kevin explains the major challenge of managing a PPC campaign:

“If I were to say what the biggest challenge is for those managing PPC campaigns on a day-to-day basis, either within an agency or on an in-house basis, it’s really ‘what to do next?’ The prioritization, the homework list of what to do on a paid search campaign, just like SEO, is endless. You have stuff to do to keep you busy from here to infinity. So the real question is, what do I do next? Where’s the next best area to concentrate where the next lowest hanging fruit is, for me to move my campaign forward, to really move the needle against my objectives? …] It’s very challenging to decide what to do next. Do I test creative? Do I add new keywords? Do I change match types? Do I reorganize my campaigns? Do I test the elasticity of the marketplace by bidding differently? There’s just tons and tons of stuff to do.”

So how are small businesses faring in the race to keep up with the competition?

Andrew Goodman shared research conducted earlier this year that illuminates the situation for many SMBs:

“A study was done by AmEx OPEN SearchManager commissioned this year to understand where small businesses are at in terms of their adoption of tools, in terms of their adoption of paid search and other things, and the findings were, I think, as expected. A very large number of businesses are still not using them much at all, not using paid search. And the ones that do have trouble finding the time. They have very little time to spend on it and 50 percent of them or so, the owner of the business themselves manages the paid search campaign. As you might expect, they don’t do it very well. It’s inconsistent in the time they can devote. So we have a gap there.”

The guys from WordStream add to the conversation of providing online advertising resources to small businesses with their free tool that evaluates a Google AdWords campaign. VP of Product Will Eisner said:

“We’ve definitely found the case to be that there’s a lot of people who try AdWords and then they think, ‘I’m just not getting the return on investment that I want here. It’s just not really working for me.’ And a lot of the times the reason for that is that their AdWords accounts are not set up in a way that’s going to make them successful. So what the grader is going to do is it’s going to tell you here’s why you’re seeing the kind of performance you’re seeing in your AdWords account. If there are problems we’re going to tell you the areas where the problems are.”

The challenges facing small businesses online makes up but a snippet of this special episode from SES San Francisco 2011. So please take a listen to hear the search advertising experts talk about pay-per-click advertising developments, the effectiveness of social media as an ad channel, the missed opportunity of retargeting and so much more.

Here we are wrapping up SES 2011. It’s been a great time, lots of hard work and a fair amount of fun to go along with it. Here, we have a panel of peeps in the online advertising sector who will assess the current state of play and how the possibility of convergence may be closer than we think.

Co-Moderators:
Matt McGowan, Managing Director, Americas, Incisive Media
Mike Grehan, Chair SES Advisory Board, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch/ClickZ

Speakers:
Seth Berman, Director, Global Marketing, BabyCenter
June Bower, VP Online Business, Cisco Systems
Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas
Daina Middleton, CEO, Performics
Giovanni Rodriguez, Digital and Social Strategy, Deloitte Consulting LLP

To start, they are debuting a video from our friends at Pixelsilk on its offering on multisite management. Awesome video!

Grehan says he feels like the stage is setup like a firing squad, and he’s also worried that everyone will be looking at his odd socks. We just found out

McGowan’s brother was the voice over for the introduction and will be on a TV show soon called Shameless.

McGowan: Let’s talk the year of convergence. What does that mean to you?

Copeland: It doesn’t matter where the user is in the day and what kind of device they are on, there’s a convergence. When we think about convergence, it’s how do we have a singular conversation with a potential customer or existing consumer with9ut walking in and out of their conversations. In TV, we are assuming we know where they are – we’re just now starting to get to the edge where brands can have one conversation with consumers on their terms and not just jumping in and out of the conversation. How do we align all of these media conversations and synchronize them?

Bower: If you think about what Apple has with the iPhone, they have considered your experience as the first thing. It’s about the experience. Convergence is really about the experience. One is the experience of the customer, and the other is about the experience of the marketing person. What’s the experience you can create across the board to make your brand compelling? At the core of it is understanding the customer and marketing person’s needs.

Berman: It is all about a mass personalization experience. It’s apps, mobile Web, Facebook, Twitter. Customers want different things from the different channels.

Middleton: Convergence means participation. We used to think of one-way dialogue. We’ve spent a lot of time on messaging, hoping someone will take it in and act on it. The world has dramatically shifted. The technology enables them to connect with brands in new ways. Mobile has taken it a step further. It’s really about relationships. At Performics, we think about how to develop a relationship between a brand and a person. Performance is important. How do we keep the relationship steady and deliver results?

Rodriguez: There’s four things to look at: Mobile, the cloud, analytics, offline stuff – social. We tend to use the word “social” in the context of media, but more and more, we are looking for ways to engage directly. Convergence to me is those four competencies to provide a complete experience.

Grehan: If we do get convergence, do we stop putting the “e” in front of things and just say “marketing”? Marketing has been fragmented between offline and online. Does convergence mean that we just have one agency that does everything?

Middleton: Agencies split around 1995 or do to be more efficient. You can look at executions and ask if it’s media, technology, etc. — and you would answer “yes” to all of those. Today you see media agencies being separated but they are being brought in at the front because it’s very important. Agencies moving forward, you will see stronger partners.

Copeland: The data that exists 10 years ago that exists today drives more intelligent decisions. You pick partners based on their perspective.

McGowan: Sounds like there are changes, from a client perspective, what do you expect an agency to do today?

Berman: We used to have one agency of record. When I left my past role, we had six different agencies. We have to find the right specialists to find what we can’t do. The marketers have to have a lot more skills and be more quantitative. The convergence is driving more fragmentation. One agency may not have expertise in every area.

Bower: Think about what motivates the people you work with. Money is a big motivator. When people are being paid to do search, they will tell you it’s the most important thing. But, who is advocating for your customer? It’s not about the media choice, but how the experience is going to touch your customers.

McGowan: Are we ever going to go back to the Mad Men days or make the process more and more complicated? Is there an end to this? Are we going to continue to fragment until we aren’t marketers anymore?

Grehan: I think the campaigns we need to create it’s not just 1:1 – it’s many: many. It’s difficult for someone to have all those skills.

Berman: One of the biggest challenges is the costs associated with one channel. Something has to give at some point. It’s not scalable. Marketing organizations aren’t just going to keep growing to produce content for all the channels.

Rodriguez: Companies like Best Buy leverage their reach into marketing by using people beyond the marketing team.

Middleton: We can’t go back to the Mad Men days. Broadcast invented all the marketing tools we use today and we have to shift those to live in this new reality.

Bower: How can you harness the power of your constituency to help you do the marketing? And align this with your business objectives.

Grehan: The book “Brand Hijack” is all about that.

[McGowan tells us there’s a bar in the back of the room and audience members who ask questions get a drink on SES.]

Grehan: Are we all in danger of having no privacy?

Middleton: The definition of privacy is changing. The world that my kids are growing up in is different. It’s a larger societal question. How will we draw lines with our own privacy? Clients have to become more responsible for their own data.

Grehan: Is it an ethical thing for marketers or is it the consumer’s responsibility?

Rodriguez: I think we all know now that anything we say or search for can all be discovered. There may be a lot of tension around the subject for a while.

McGowan jokes that in the future, wealth will be determined by how long you can disconnect from the Internet.

Audience Q and A:

Q: How do we help our customers understand the need for convergence?

Middleton: One of the ways we do this is to talk about the environment and what’s changed regardless of them. Whether the client decides to engage or not, it’s happening. We have banned the word “consumer” from our vocabulary. We say “participants.” If you make a language change, you make a perception shift.

Grehan just outed Bryan Eisenberg In the front row with us and making him respond.

Eisenberg: As we see the way the younger generation approached it, it’s going to change the way we do things. I’m concerned about how businesses are going to survive this for the next few years.

Grehan: Thanks for that doom and gloom [everyone laughs].
Greg Jarboe has the mic [also in the front row with us] Q: Convergence and organizational structures seem to be more inflexible than rapidly moving threats and opps. How do we evolve as rapidly?

McGowan: Be careful evolving every time there is a change. There’s a lot of distractions.

Rodriguez: We need to be aware of the pressure companies get from their competitors.

Q: How do you face the fear in a big company around the team you are working with if you say we are making a change and we have to stick to that?

Copeland: You have to stand by your convictions. Have agents that can ID where changes are taking place that are worth betting on. Some organizations embrace that and some frown upon it. To have fear about doing the right thing could potentially mean you are in the wrong place.

Bower: You have to keep bringing people up to speed, especially with search. Come up with internal campaigns. It’s a lot of time and effort, but in the end, you will get support and budget. It really changes perceptions. Target employees and management the same way you target your clients.

Q: As convergence happens, how do you restructure internally?

Middleton: The reality is, a lot of big brands have this problem. Taking the time and energy to get the right people in the room to under=stand the overall ripple effect of marketing is a tough one.

Rodriguez: We talk a lot about collaboration in tools, but I don’t think we’ve really figured out how to collaborate.

Q: The more you have convergence across channels, the more you have to think about narratives. Do you find that to be the case?

Rodriguez: We don’t tend to think about multiple scenarios, we think about a lifetime engagement and look at it from a week, year, etc.

Grehan: Let’s get some final thoughts. Convergence – is it conversion or convolution?

Copeland: We are all story tellers, we need to tell it or be a part of it. How do we engage and connect and be part of these stories of life?

Bower: I see it as two lines running in parallel. The beauty of it is, we keep getting new ways to connect and new tools. It will always be a challenge but I am excited.

Berman: Convergence is understanding what a consumer wants, I don’t need to worry about what channels our users wants.

Middleton: That’s why I am here, love that it changes every day. Is it complicated and messy? Yes. But so is life. Know your participant and figure out how to keep them engaged on an ongoing basis. It’s going to get messier but it’s a good thing.

Rodriguez: What we desire is integrity in our approach to consumers so that all the channels come together. It’s what we want as customers and vendors.

McGowan: See you again next year!

Last day, first session. Still without a bagel. Last night, I was assaulted by hail. New York, you are on notice.

However, we’ve got a couple of sessions today that I picked because they just sounded so different than the norm and I’m actually excited about them. This is the first of them and here’s the panel.

• Moderator:
  Jeff Ferguson, CEO, Fang Digital
• Speakers:
  Paul Szymanski, Search Engine Marketing Manager, Sony Music Entertainment
  Clayburn Griffin, Social Media Director, Promediacorp, @Clayburn
• Avi Wilensky is sitting in for the Q&A portion, @aviw

There is no one in this room. Because everyone is still asleep.

Jeff starts off with a little background on the State of the Music Business.

So far, in the 21st century, consumers have spent less money on record music than they had in the 1990s for all formats. It’s like the 1960s out there and only getting worse.

What’s causing the decline? No one really knows.

• Shift albums to singles?
• Napster? iTunes? Pandora?
• Lack of talent?
• Labels not keeping up with the current tech and promotion methods?

Paul is up first to give us things from the labels’ standpoint.

The fact that music has been suffering which is why the direct to consumer group has been expanding into digital.

In case you didn’t know: Sony Music Entertainment comprises 14 different labels covering rock, hip hop, pop, classical, etc.

The direct to consumer team develops exclusive bundling of artist products. This is t-shirts, signed images, etc.

He was brought in to build the SEM from scratch. He’s focused on revenue, not branding and awareness. Mostly he’s focusing on Google in this presentation.

The main thing that they can control about Quality Score is the relevancy of the build. However they’re seeing QS as low as three for terms that should have a 7-9. (Yesterday, he asked Google about categories receiving low scores. They said they don’t but he thinks they treat all music as low quality.)

Low Quality Score’s Impact:

1. Increase in CPCs

Combated by raising bids

First page bid estimates – CPC increase of 3x to 10x of your average CPC in order to make first page

2. Decrease in volume

Quality Score and Competition?

Artists are unique brands with mostly competition from iTunes and Amazon using dynamic insertion.

How is this cost effective for them?

• Higher Quality Score?
• Lower CPCs?

Test: Drive to different domains to determine impact of quality score — doesn’t seem to be an advantage for better known brands.

They want endless volume for

• ability to generate many transactions for any initiative
• for those to continue before and after street date
• analyze purchase behavior
• Focus on most efficient transactions
• etc

They don’t really have a purchase funnel exactly. The converting terms that htey have are non-purchase terms. The majority of conversions come from generic artist terms like their name. The volume on very popular artists is higher but the conversions on the same as an emerging artist.

Because of the high volume, QS is affected.

1. Impress Share Lost Due to Rank

• Low quality score reduced the number of times your ad appears

2. First Page Bid Estimates

• Ads will not serve at all for selected keywords (except that sometimes they do)

Caveat to the next: Each artist is its own brand — each will behave differently in different mediums, even in the same genre.

Email List Rental:

• Different from in-house lists which are likely to have excellent performance
• Targeting correct users
• limited volume

In-text advertising: [Those annoying links that cover what you're reading if you mouse over them]

• Keyword-based CPC buy
• Adaptable ad units
• Limited volume for artist specific terms but better for generic terms
• CPCs at least 2x higher than normal search buy, better for branding

Facebook:

• CPC or CPM based ad units
• Image & Test allocations longer than traditional search
• Very high impression volume
• Probably better for branding or awareness

Banner Buys:

Branding/Awareness, usually not targeted

however, there are highly targeted campaigns available. Network buys can have very very pricy CPMs, like 10x more than Google’s content network.

Video:

• Difficult to procure offer-based video assets — most are produced for the artists not for ads.
• YouTube mostly points internally.
• High Monetary commitment up front for other video outlets

Google Content:

CPC or CPM

• Site-targeted text or banner-based buys
• Significant impression and click volume but low CTR
• Branding/awareness
• –Retargeting
• Highly targeted but seemingly lower volume for high traffic sites.

What can you do?

• combat low QS from launch – immediately eliminate low QS score terms even if these are ones that you think are very relevant. Add them back in as your overall QS rises, generate small builds with very strict keyword to ad copy correlations, Run only highly-targeted keyword lists
• Run broad and check search query reports
• Test, test, test
• Manage expectations, certain offers will flop — If you don’t include something new or exciting in a Greatest Hits package, no one will buy it. [IOW, sell things that people want, not just the same thing over and over packaged slightly differently.]
• Do not support low price point products
• Explore Bing – volume in Bing is very low compared to Google but conversion rates are higher.

Jeff (asking from his experience at Napster): We gave up on PPC because it was just too expensive to compete against you guys on artist terms. Have you considered SEO?

Paul: SEO does drive sales and it’s very beneficial but it’s more the other panelists area.

Clayburn Griffin (which is the most amazing name ever. Kudos Clayburn’s mom.) is up next.  He’s taking the SEO side of things.

There’s a bunch of different players who all want different things from this: The Artist, Label, Fans, The SEO

Problems for the SEO:

Splash pages (with interstitial pages and offers) block the nice content rich site with a glossy offer page built of Flash and images (use seo-browser.com to see your site like the engines see it)

Wikipedia is one of their biggest competitors because it’s always text.

How do you fix the splash page? Use a lightbox instead! [I hate lightboxes. Just saying.] You still get the content but the users get the offer.

The Artistic Vision!

Artists want creativity and SEOs want content. How do you fix that? Use divs to put the text behind the image map [Hey, that's Adam Lambert's homepage!  ...what? Don't judge.]

Newsmakers

Artists make news. It changes the SERPs and pushes the official site down the page.

It also affects their Suggest. Some artists are good and have good autocompletes. Others like Miley are troublemakers and their news takes over their suggest.

News can cause a temporary spike in traffic which is good for ad impressions but not for sales.

Tools

• nextbigsound.com — see who the up and coming artists is (Hey, guys, Justin Timberlake might become a thing. You heard it here first.)
• statdash.com — keep tabs on social accounts by artist or by site. [Follow them on Twitter @statdash to get a beta invite]

Q&A

Ke$ha’s dollar sign causes problems on her site because it uses $ for all S’s. They image replace it and div the S behind it.

How much do brand nicknames get involved: (Led Zeppelin being Zeppelin, Justin Bieber being Biebs, etc)?

They do have to go with the official names but they try to optimize for what the user might be searching for as much as they can. It’s often up to what the artist wants and will let them get away with.

[Ramble from a guy about how corporate radio is killing music because there's no discoverability or something. Yawn. 60s are over, dude. I don't even know what his question was but...]

Clay: Statdash came about because Sony needs to monitor so many assets. It can be applied to any bulky workload. They’ll be doing a freemium model.

Have you ever had an encounter with Cambridge Who’s Who? Well, I just did. I’m not even sure why I decided to engage with the organization being as though I distinctly remember a giant encyclopedia-like book with profiles of random business people collecting dust in the storage room at my last job … and it was the Who’s Who book courtesy of Cambridge.

But it got me thinking about paying for your brand presence. There are three types of approaches to promoting your business brand online. You can:

1. Buy online advertising space through paid search tactics like PPC, banner ads, promoted ads, etc. (you could even go so far as paying for links to help boost your site, although we all know that’s a no-no).
2. Go strictly all organic, implementing SEO best practices, participating in social media and so on.
3. Engage in a healthy mix of both, using organic and paid search tactics (minus the Black Hat techniques) to create a well-rounded Internet brand presence.

My question about registries like Cambridge is this: Is someone really going to look on the Cambridge registry and say, “Now, there’s an accomplished person I can trust!”? Heck, anyone can see your professional profile on LinkedIn and that’s free.

Same goes for branding your business online. Would you rather go to a restaurant that is simply listed in a local merchant directory, or would you prefer to choose a place based on things like user reviews, special offers and customer engagement?

To me, a listing in the Cambridge registry is kind of like the equivalent to a Yellow Pages ad. Sure, you’re there. Yes, it’s one more way to get your name out. But in the end, it’s the merchants/professionals that add value to the community that are going to stand out.

Less Expensive Ways to Build Your Brand

To be fair, let’s talk about two obvious roadblocks when building a personal brand or business brand online.

1. Lack of knowledge.
2. Lack of money.

Let’s address the first point. Not everyone has public-facing positions. Maybe there are professionals out there who are trying to build a personal brand but don’t know where to start, and something like the Cambridge directory seems very useful.

Before you shell out all that cash, remember we are living in a digital world, where information-sharing is often free. So, here are a few tips for building your personal brand (these can be applied to business brands as well!):

• Create a blog. You have something unique to share with the world, even if you don’t think you do. Nobody has had the exact experiences you have, so go out there and start sharing. Build a community through a blog, keeping in mind how you can be helpful to your readers.
• Participate in social media. Why pay for a listing when you can get out there and engage with professionals of all levels in nearly any industry imaginable? Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are free and extremely powerful tools for networking and building your brand.
• Join professional associations. This bullet and the next are both offline activities and kind of like the equivalent of paid search. You are paying a fee to engage with people that matter. But unlike just a business listing or online ad, this is face-to-face contact where you can make meaningful relationships by becoming involved in your local professional community.
• Go to conferences/seminars. You may need to save money for these types of events, but the connections you make can be extremely valuable (not to mention the education).

Investing in SEO and Paid Search

If you only have a set amount of money to spend to build your brand, you’ll have to weigh the benefits of time invested and ROI.

For businesses looking for more exposure online, start implementing SEO best practices. Focus on not only making sure your website is in tip-top shape for the search engines to crawl and index it, but also look into paid search.

Implementing SEO on your site takes knowledge, which takes resources and time. In a recent post, I outlined some of the ways professionals could educate themselves on the basics of Internet marketing.

On every search engine results page, we see a mix of organic results and paid results. While the layout and delivery may be changing (e.g., social media and local search are affecting the way we view results), there will always be an emphasis on both “natural” and paid placements.

Therefore, paid search is and will likely always be a complementary tactic that can help solidify your business brand online.

I spoke with Javier Ruesga here at Bruce Clay, Inc., who gave me some insight into how to get the most from your paid search:

“PPC is one way of driving traffic to a site, the other is SEO, which is more labor-intensive and requires a longer time investment.

But ultimately, it boils down to how well-structured, compelling and transparent the website is, which ultimately will be the decisive factor in acquiring new business or gaining a conversion.

In PPC, besides having a well-structured campaign (themed campaigns/ad groups), adding long-tail terms, where less competition and cost savings can occur would be recommended, keep in mind: relevance is key.

The messaging is critical. Keep the ad copy fresh, compelling and relevant in order to stimulate conversions. I would also encourage having separate campaigns for search, display and mobile networks.

To explain, Google has search ads (those typically displayed in a Google search), the contextual/display network ads (targeting related articles, website, Gmail, etc) and mobile ads. These can either be used together or isolated.

Having separate campaigns by network allows for better budget spend and bid management.

Incidentally, the messaging should be different (search ads should have strong call-to-actions, whereas display ads are more targeted towards the information seeker).

Furthermore, having separate local campaigns versus national (if applicable) allows for a greater focus on areas served, especially when multiple locations (brick and mortar) exist.

Even if you don’t have multiple locations/destinations, but the product/service is available/deliverable online, I would strongly encourage having both local and national campaigns.

Also, Google has made available various ad extension options; I would encourage implementing all of the available (location, phone, site links).

Taking it a step further, I suggest creating remarketing campaigns and establishing audience settings to capture additional market share within the display network.

Tie all Google accounts together to get the most exposure, such as AdWords, Google Places, Google Merchant Account (if applicable) and Analytics, etc., and use all the vehicles within Google that help promote offers and stimulate conversion results.”

Your Brand: The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that sometimes you do have to pay for placement to help build your brand. But, you always have to consider your return on investment.

Ultimately, your personal or business brand is going to be more credible if you consistently add value, are active in your community and/or industry and spend time nurturing your relationships.

So for me, the Cambridge deal just isn’t worth the money for what they are offering. But, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic. Please weigh in below.

With the holiday season well upon us and 2011 right around the corner, I thought I’d sit down with Javier Ruesga, SEM analyst and paid search pro here at Bruce Clay, Inc. to talk about some tips for holiday PPC campaigns and other ideas for year-round ad success.

Jessica: What are some tips for planning PPC campaigns for the holidays?

Javier: The only one that stands out is to activate campaigns/ad groups that contain your holiday keywords. These are seasonal keywords that are focused on the closest holiday to mirror searcher behavior and capture additional market share.

It’s a good practice to have a holiday campaign established, with AdGroups focused on each holiday, for example, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. Typically these should be activated six weeks in advance to allow for the complete sales cycle.

Is there anything people can do today to improve their PPC campaign for this holiday season?

Better late than never. Actually, prepping for this should start months in advance; using historical performance (if available) will help identify highest profitable areas and also provides ample time to asses the competition. The keywords lists, campaigns, budget and bids should be prepped ideally at the two-month prior mark.

As the campaign progresses, continue to manage the live campaign. Then there’s the post-event sales, which helps capture additional market share (after x-mas sales, after New Year’s sales, etc.).

Does the holiday season affect how you adjust your delivery settings to accommodate?

This is very critical for retail industry. The holiday season is the biggest revenue-generating period for the year. Therefore, retail businesses must allocate sufficient budgets in order to be able to move their inventory (budget level adjustments).

Preparing their holiday campaigns with anticipation will help capture additional market share. Especially if they are offering extended hours during the holidays for phone orders (day parting settings) or special offers, delivery or discounts (ad copy adjustments).

What about outside of the holiday season — what are some of the factors that need to be taken into account when deciding what hours of the day to run PPC ads year-round?

Businesses need to understand their audience in order to implement some of the strategies behind the ad serving. Hourly conversion rates can fluctuate during the course of the day, depending on each industry and when visitors are most likely to convert.

Analytics can shed insight as to when goal completions occur by the hour of the day. (In the Google Analytics account, select Traffic Sources > AdWords > Day Parts.) If most of the conversions happen during normal business hours, run your campaigns accordingly.

Day-parting tactics can be implemented to mirror consumer behavior. (In the Google account, select Campaign > Settings Tab > Advance Settings > expand Schedule Option and implement Ad Scheduling.) This is also an option if you are limited in your daily budget, and would like to drive business on specific times of the day and maximize your opportunity in capturing additional market share.

On the other hand, if the business’ call-to-action is tied to a call center/phone order environment – let’s hypothetically say it’s an automotive parts business where the bulk of the business may be driven by the early part of the day and is geared toward a very niche and geotargeted area – perhaps they benefit from having their ads served at an accelerated pace. Day parting (to control the ad serving times) can also be used in this scenario.

Something else to consider on very specific verticals or niche markets is mobile phone usage. Is there is a high volume of mobile users that engage in click-to-call?

Determine the peak volume hours and implement the campaign settings accordingly. I typically recommend having a separate search, display and mobile campaign in order to get a better assessment of performance and refine the strategies and tactics for the campaign.

What should we look out for in 2011?

Yikes, let me look into my crystal ball. For PPC, I’ll resort to the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Set goals, research, test and get creative in order to stand out from the competition. Sometimes being different is not so bad.

As for all aspects of Internet marketing in general, given the state of the economy, one needs to take the approach of “inspect what you expect.” There are a lot of businesses that are cutting back on their advertising budgets altogether; others are scaling back and reinvesting their budgets where they’ll receive the better return (online marketing).

Does this present an opportunity for businesses that are willing to risk more of their marketing budget where competitors are dropping off? Add to that the ever-changing climate of Internet marketing within Google service deliverables, Bing/Yahoo! expanding their reach and fighting for market share, and Facebook/social networks capturing more of the eyeballs and building user/brand loyalties.

In this day and age, businesses must continuously adjust, diversify and cast a broader net to have a presence in all possible online mediums. These provide quantifiable results and performance measurements as to where they’re garnering better results. It doesn’t have an end, and businesses must manage this ever-changing process. An outside agency/party can help achieve with the minutia that will help a business reach their goal, especially in these difficult and challenging times.

The bottom line: there’s risk involved in all marketing ventures, minimize the risk by reaching the most eyeballs in order to achieve your goals.

About the Interviewee

Javier Ruesga joined Bruce Clay, Inc. in 2010, bringing with him years of experience in search marketing for companies like Yahoo! and others, where he served in multiple roles in leadership, sales, paid search, SEO and more. You can learn more about Javier at LinkedIn.