One of the biggest problems faced by businesses today is the inefficient collaboration between marketing and sales teams.  So when it comes to Search Engine Marketing – who owns it?

By the name of the activity itself, most would say the marketing team owns it.  If your company is still living in the dark ages (2005), IT likely owns it.  However, it would also make sense – in fact, it may make more sense – for the sales team to own it.

Of course it depends on your business and what the goals of your SEM efforts are, but I submit – a company’s website and their Search Marketing efforts should be an equal collaboration between each of these departments:

1. IT
2. Marketing
3. Sales

Here’s why:

Unless your entire web-side business (including analytics) is hosted elsewhere, you have to have some IT ownership.  Someone needs to be the superstar that keeps the site running, ensuring analytics is reporting accurately, and guaranteeing appropriate security and backup measures are in place and working.

If you have a marketing department – they, and only they, should ever touch the messaging of your SEM efforts.  You want to be sure the corporate brand is not sacrificed for a sales-pitch or an easy way out IT solution.   You also want to be sure that appropriate audience and market research is conducted before implementing a campaign.
 
And finally, it seems obvious that if the site is build to sell, or drive leads, there should be significant sales department involvement as well.  They should have say in how sales are directed, handled, and reported.  They should also be included in the sales process on the site.  There are specific offline sales strategies that often work online as well – these should be used to increase conversions.

In the end, the executive team should be looking to each department to fill their respective roles in the online market place – just as they do offline.

No tags Business, Search Engine Marketing Hide

Happy Friday!

My favorite post this week BY FAR is from Brian at ScoreBoard Media.  The post is all about how SEO consultants should easily pull in $500k a year for consulting – but most aren’t.

I started doing Search Engine Optimization for my own business about seven years ago.  About three years ago I decided to help a web development firm build up their drowning Search Engine Marketing department.  Since then, we’ve spun the department out as its own business (SEM agency), and we’ve grown our client roster (and revenue) significantly.  Then came the brick wall…

I won’t go into details here cause I want my job for now  - but lets just say the sales model is not where it should be, and some decision makers simply won’t listen to good business advice.  Can you imagine someone in your agency saying that Andy Beal’s advice on growing an Search Marketing firm is worthless?  I think the folks at SEOMOZ would disagree – along with all the others that pay him $2k+ a day for consulting.  Hmmm, he might just know something about what he’s saying.

So – I’ve decided to take the high road, do things on my own and build my own brand - hence, finally starting this blog (something I should have done a long time ago), and working to get to know a lot more people.

Brian’s post had a ton of great information – but something that really stuck out to me and has helped me build the agency’s business as well as my own brand – Networking.  Get to know people.  Share your knowledge.

The question becomes, what is your own plan?  Do you want to work for an agency or for yourself?  Here’s a few pro’s and con’s of each:

Agency Pros:

• Steady income
• Incentives
• Health benefits
• Extended contacts through agency sales force

Agency Cons

• Your working for someone else (‘nough said there!)
• Restrictions on white/grey/black hat strategies
• Bureaucracy
• Financial ceiling

Working for yourself pros

• Freedom to build the business to your vision
• experimentation (white/grey/black)
• Unlimited income
• Personal satisfaction of success

  Working for yourself cons

• Contacts are harder to come by
• Financial instability (if you’re not getting business)
• Endless work hours
• Need to excel at many disciplines (marketing, business, accounting…)

There’s a ton more that could be said about each category I’m sure – but of the above items, which fits you best? 

If you’re a true entrepreneur, the working for yourself cons won’t scare you at all – in fact, you’ll likely see each as a refreshing challenge.

If this is not the case for you.  Specifically if those cons scare you – think hard before you commit yourself to building your own business.  The stress can kill you, literally – and you can do great things with an agency…if you don’t mind the limitations.

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There was a great post on SEOmoz today that fits right in with what I’m always preaching about online and offline marketing collaboration.  Please take a look. 

No tags General Hide

I was once asked why I would want to take a vacation in January – after all, with the long holiday (Christmas) weekend, I should already be relaxed.  My reply… “You don’t have kids, do you?”

For parents (and grandparents I imagine), the annual chaos often begins sometime in November as the kids start realizing that Christmas is near and begin the all-too-familiar “I want that..” chanting and pleading.

Thanks to the Internet, this year was wonderfully different.  But before I divulge my family’s 2006 successes, I’ll share with you our typical 7-step program that greets my home each Christmas season:

1. Long wish lists filled with odd spellings, strangely named toys, and dozens of scribbles and hash marks as your child attempts to write down the toy that they must have this year. 
2. Spending countless hours attempting to decipher the language apparently only known to avid Nickelodeon, Disney, and random video game fans.
3. Outsmarting your child by asking her to vocalize the list to make sure Santa knows what to get – then laughing out loud when her words match the writing precisely – impossible to understand.
4. Embarrassing yourself while trying to mimic the indecipherable words your child mumbled earlier to the young toy store clerk – and feeling some relief when the clerk thinks he understands what you need.
5. At least 2-dozen return trips to the toy store when faced with the real possibility that the clerk steered you in the wrong direction.    
6. Watching intently Christmas morning – praying you bought and wrapped the right item, chose the right color, and picked up the right type of batteries.
7. Either rejoicing that you made it through the pandemonium successfully or lecturing your child about how Santa can’t get everything right all the time.

This year was entirely different thanks to a moderate amount of television advertising and my kids’ proclivity for the Internet (with a dad who works, eats, and sleeps Search marketing, and a mom who does SEM consulting and a WHOLE LOT of shopping online – our children are bound to pick some things up).

So as a father of four, I felt proud sitting back and watching my six and eight year old children excitedly enter the world of Internet marketing in order to produce our family’s new 2006 hi-tech, low-stress 7-step Christmas experience, as shown below: 

1. See a commercial on television for an item they want.
2. Google the item to find who makes it, where to get it, and the age appropriateness (mom’s instructions) of each item.  
3. Visit several targeted sites (mostly toysrus.com. Walmart.com, ebay.com) for prices and additional information, as well as locate similar items.
4. Compile a Christmas wish list, sorted by level of desire (#1 being the most wanted gift), and including item number, preferred color, and prices from various sites.  No changes allowed after December 8^th.  After all, Santa has to have some time to complete his planning.
5. Help younger siblings find their desired toys as well and compile their lists.
6. Print out all lists and help mom and dad create an envelope to mail to Santa (Yes, we know you can email Santa, but it’s just not the same).
7. Since the mayhem is a thing of the past, the kids can spend time tracking Santa through NORADsanta.org, while mom and dad track dozens of packages from various stores.  Oh yeah – and send a thank you note to the Google Shopping Cart guys for giving us $20 off of just about every purchase we made this season. 

Not to say Christmas is now void of busy days, headaches, and exhaustion – after all, we still have to prepare for multiple family gatherings over a 3-day span; but at least Christmas morning is more relaxing and enjoyable – knowing that the toy inside the wrapping is exactly what they asked for.

As for business, I couldn’t help but make this fun family topic work related  - but it made me realize that there is still much work to be done on the Internet, so after watching these events unfold this season, I built a small list of recommendations for clients – of which I’ll share some with you.

First let me say that many of these recommendations are valid for all sites – not just those that market to children.  Not even just to ecommerce.

But if kids are part of your market, you should realize that many of them are online, preparing parents for eventual purchases.  So talk to your kids, go visit your nieces and nephews, or see if your grandkids can come over for the day – then learn how they use the Internet (parental controls in place of course).  Your findings probably won’t surprise you, but it may at least make you look at your online marketing plan a bit differently.

My recommendations:

1. Think about your 5 – 10 year old online visitors when you build/redesign your site. 
   • It’s all about simplicity.  Watch how a young child reads a book or puts together a puzzle.  Think simple navigation, simple search tools, mixed text and imagery.
   • Your site doesn’t have to be a cartoon for kids to ‘get it’.  They just need to be able to easily find what they’re looking for.
2. Don’t forget those misspelled words.  Even adults have a hard time spelling – it’s usually more frequent for small children.  Don’t reserve this just for pay-per-click – you should also incorporate misspellings in you internal search tool.  If a child happens upon your site and misspells the toy – it behooves you to have the tool find the matched toy anyway.
3. Kids truly do not know the difference between paid ads and organic.  If you’re marketing to kids, PPC will likely be the most effective form of traffic generation as they will typically click on the first related ads they see.
4. Make product information easily accessible. Price, item number, color, and other product options.  Because the child won’t be purchasing the item, but rather handing the information off to a parent or guardian, it’s critical for this information to be readily available. 
5. Offer additional (similar) products on the product page – Kids will often look at one toy, see a similar one (or maybe another piece to a set) and expand their list accordingly.

If children aren’t part of your audience – I suggest you pay attention to the above recommendations anyway.  You might be surprised at how much help your average visitor needs to find what they’re looking for. 

As for my family, I’ll keep teaching the kids advanced search tactics and pointing them to the sites that make shopping easy and fun.  One day, maybe they’ll even make dad proud by becoming SEM experts and helping change the way we all look at marketing.

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Search Engine marketing is no longer about showing up in the top ten results. Well okay, that is still important, but it’s only one piece of the overall puzzle.As sophisticated businesses and marketing agencies embrace the world of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketers are being asked to deliver a level of strategy and value never before expected. With the bar raised, we must now focus on targeted business goals to prove ROI.When I’m discussing a million-dollar engagement with an enterprise client, I’d have to have more than the luck of the Irish to land the deal with simple promises of first page Google listings and increased traffic through Pay-per-click. Okay, I’m only part Irish – but luck shouldn’t be the deciding factor anyway.

In today’s market, it has become important to prove how SEM will increase sales, lower customer acquisition costs, decrease customer service expenditures, and achieve or exceed overall, pre-set, business goals. I’ve even been asked to provide accurately projected and guaranteed ROI ratios from one enterprise client. That can be a dangerous corner to stand in when your success relies on Search Engine response.

You might ask ‘do business goals really fit in with SEM? Shouldn’t a business strategist or traditional marketer be focused on that instead?’ Short answer…No!

Though someone within your client’s organization is likely accountable for broad planning, budget creation, and ROI development, they will most likely not have the expertise to understand how various search patterns, landing pages, and targeted conversion paths will affect their bottom line.

That said, it’s time for a much-needed reality check. If you’re a Search Engine Optimizer who knows how to get top organic rankings on the Search Engine Results Page through ethical, white-hat methods, great! If you’re a Pay-per-Click expert who understands how to drive traffic through thousands of word variations, geo-targeting, and broad/exact phrase settings, excellent! But if that’s all you know, then your future in this industry is limited.

Here are the facts (or at least my humble assessment of them): if your skills do not include business analysis and strategic consulting, even though they may be well developed and important, you’re missing the big-picture. Right now, Directors, VP’s, and C-level executives all tell me the same thing, “If you expect us to transfer 10 – 20% of our traditional marketing budgets to the Internet, you must be able to substantiate the broad and granular successes – both in the short-term, as well as through on-going trends.”

I could just say, “Sure, we can do that.” – But how do I know what I’m promising, unless I truly understand what “success” means for the client?

Let’s dig a little deeper…

When you engage a new client for Search Engine Marketing, what’s the first step in your campaign? Is it…Keywords? Wrong! It should be an analysis of the client’s business. The list of items to investigate can be long, but should start with the following:

• Marketing plan

• Branding initiatives

• Sales channels

• Prior successes/failures

• Past goal patterns

• Current goals (broken down by variables)

• Obstacles to these goals

• Current audience segmentation

• Internal structure

• External image

• Site metrics (usability, trends, baseline)

Keywords now, you ask? Almost, but not yet.

The thorough business analysis you perform will allow you to build a targeted list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on the type of site, conversion points, branding, and several factors specific to the site in question. The assigned KPIs will then be used to track the success of the campaign and your work.

Finally, once you and your client are in agreement on the KPIs and the broad and granular goals of the campaign, then, and only then, should you begin working on key term development.

I understand many will say that’s way too much work to go into a campaign before even starting search term development. If that’s your stance, that’s okay, but realize that the rest of the industry is developing sophisticated ROI processes and demanding 10 to 20 times the professional service fees of those stuck in the old, simple-ways of SEM.

So, to review, what is the overall goal of an SEM campaign?

1. Drive traffic to the site
2. Create exposure on the search engines (branding)
3. Improve online sales (e-commerce)
4. Improve offline sales (leads to phone, form, or other contact)
5. Elicit downloads (indirect conversion)
6. All of the above
7. None of the above

If you answered 1, you may be right. Although, if you answered 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 you may be right as well…or you may be wrong. My point is, the goals of the campaign may differ for each client. If you don’t develop KPIs and business goals with your clients in the beginning, you’ll have no idea what successes to strive for; nor will you know whether or not your clients agree with your assessment of success.

SEM is more sophisticated than it was 2-years ago. The days of simply driving traffic and getting paid for it are over. I know, I know – I’ve shed a few tears myself.

If you want to survive in today’s SEM market, you need to bring a higher level of business intelligence and strategy to the table. Know your client’s business, and understand their goals. Most importantly, get the client’s sign-off on the goals of your campaign and stick to them. If the direction changes mid-stream, get new sign-off; ensuring that you are always on the same page as your client.

Oh yeah, and it doesn’t hurt if you deliver a few first page search results as well!

No tags Articles, Business, Search Engine Marketing Hide

Do you sell a product or service on your web site?  Forget e-commerce – that’s too literal. What I’m asking is: do you sell your business online in hopes of enticing customers or clients to buy, sign-up, contact you, or register?  If so, please read on…

No Soliciting
Studies are continuously conducted by individuals, firms, and analysts aiming to understand what drives people to buy (or “convert”) when viewing a web site.One consistent finding is that people do not want to be sold to.  Though this may not come as a surprise, take a look at most sales-oriented web sites and you’ll see they are structured as straight conversion sites.  Click here, buy this, you’re done.  Such sites take little time educating or informing us.  Instead, they get right to the point of offering product specifications and prices.  On the surface, this might make sense. But these sites leave too much to chance –  believing their company will win business by simply offering lower prices.  There is much, much more to the equation of successful conversions.   If Everything was as Easy to Sell as the iPod… 
If you’re a technology store and you sell the coveted iPod (or all its various attachments, for that matter), it may be true that you do not need much more than the product on the screen, a good price, and an obvious ‘buy’ button.  Anyone interested in purchasing the item will not need more persuading to complete the conversion (it’s price-driven and a familiar product). 

Unfortunately, we don’t all sell the iPod.   

If your site is B-to-B, large-ticket, manufacturing, or services related, etc. you need to find more innovative ways to get your audience to convert.  Many studies have proven the best way to make this happen is to educate your consumer. 

This means you need to look closely at your site, take out language that could be considered “sales” driven and point your viewers to areas where they might learn something about a product or service that interests them.  If you do not currently have educational pages, get busy — they are critical for increasing conversions. 

But why does this work?  People research and educate themselves via the Internet.  If they find a resource that teaches them about a product or service and offers truly helpful tips, advice, and tools, then they become more interested in that particular site.  More importantly, you build trust with your audience and display your company as an expert in your industry.   

For example, my previous agency built a Product Finder tool for a national knife and multi-tool manufacturer.  The tool suggests specific products to potential buyers based on their responses to a series of lighthearted questions.  If a user is thinking about purchasing a multifunctional knife/tool for someone as a gift, the Product Finder tool will recommend the ideal gift based on several personal factors about the person you are buying for. 

Knowledge is Power – Convert Them Through Education
By nature, people are hungry for knowledge.  They can go just about anywhere to purchase a product, but if you can supply the information they so desperately crave, you will have gained an active and truly interested audience – these are the visitors that are most likely to convert (and come back). Here are some tips:  

• Give ‘Em Options.  If you’re going to offer a download, offer it in more than one format (not everyone downloads PDF’s). Do not require information from the user to download the information.  This is a significant deterrent for most viewers.  Give information freely and conversions will climb.
• Be a Teacher.  Decide what to educate people about.  You know your industry and you probably have a good handle on your audience and what kind of information they are interested in. By continuously educating your audience, users develop a trust with your site, and you become a vital resource in your industry.
• Have a Strategy.  Depending on your business and your audience, you will want to devise a strategy to offer additional information, further assistance, etc.  This can be a list of references mentioned in an article, a phone number, email addresses, or related web site— anything that allows the consumer to take the next step and continue their relationship with you.
• Provide the Next Step.  For some sites, the “next step” may be a conversation with a sales representative.  For other sites, it may be providing additional information on a product or service.  Whichever way you choose to educate the consumer, it is critical at this point to lead them towards a conversion without selling them by the “Click Here, Buy Now” approach.  This creates long-term consumer relationships and will increase overall sales and customer retention. 

In the end, you have provided educational information to a highly interested group of visitors and you have empowered them to take the call-to-action step on their own.  You have demonstrated that your web site is a viable resource for your customers, ultimately creating conversions by education.  E-commerce is simply a buying tool, a very important means of exchanging money for many companies.  For the rest of us, education to conversion is an art and one worth perfecting.

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