Blogging

The presidential election now upon us offers an interesting contrast in marketing approaches. One candidate is all about brand, image, and soaring rhetoric that appeals to the heart. The other is (significantly) less flashy but appeals to our more practical side. He’s the candidate of rational, “value” buyers who carefully consider the offerings then choose the one that offers the greatest benefit for the lowest price—an appeal to the brain.

From a product standpoint, Obama is like the iPod. Never mind that there are lots of MP3 players that offer matching or even superior functionality, at a lower price, without the limitation of compatibility only with a closed network—the iPod is cool! So much so that “iPod” has become to “MP3 player” what “Kleenex” is to “tissue.”

McCain on the other hand is the “off-brand” that peels buyers away from the big name through an appeal to value. A classic example is Dell Computer. When the company first got started, IBM was the premier, established brand in PCs. But Dell eventually wiped them out of the market with a better product, lower price, and direct appeal that bypassed traditional channels.

There’s no question that McCain represents the better “value” in this election: lower taxes, smaller government, free trade, free market healthcare reform, and on foreign policy experience…no comparison. But on brand, Obama kicks. He’s the candidate of hope and change, of mega-crowds, a uniter-not-a-divider (wait, wasn’t that…ah, never mind). McCain, in contrast, appears to many people that he really is your father’s Oldsmobile. Or worse, your grandfather’s. And his choice of a running mate who, fairly or not, comes off as not exactly Mensa material has arguably hurt McCain more than Obama’s past connections have impacted his image.

Sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning (barring any hanging chads), we’ll know: are the majority of us brand buyers or value shoppers?

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Originally posted here:
McCain, Obama, and Marketing Part 2: Brand vs. Value

MarketingSherpa yesterday published an article titled Long-Tail Keywords Dead? We Answer This Question and 14 Others on SEO (open access on their site until September 25). Without summarizing the entire 5-page (at 9-point font size!) article, here are a few highlights and observations:

Paid vs. Organic Search

The article states that 95% of search clicks go to organic results, and only 5% to paid links. While there’s no question that organic search results get more clicks than the associated ads, the contrast isn’t quite that extreme. Lee Odden puts this breakout at closer to 60/40, HubSpot has it at 75/25, and Dynamic Digital says…a lot of things, but basically that organic results get 70-80% while paid links receive 20-30%.

Because organic links perform better, Sherpa advises focusing on SEO, then “only when you see natural search traffic going down should you look to paid search links to supplement that organic traffic.” That’s just plain wrong!

The first question you have to ask yourself is: what’s the value of paid search to you? The closer your product is to the low-cost, tactical, single-decision maker end of the scale (e.g. computer network hardware), the better pay-per-click advertising works. For products that are very expensive, strategic and involve multiple decision makers (e.g. post-merger consulting services), the less effective search engine advertising is.

Second, there’s an excellent argument to be made for using paid search first. It will show you which terms most successfully drive profitable traffic to your site much more quickly than natural SEO can. Then you can focus your SEO efforts on high-value terms that are easy to optimize for, and continue to use paid search for those terms which are very difficult to SEO.

Third, as Anne Holland always advises when faced with any question like this, the answer is to “test, test, test.”

Average cost per click varies considerably by industry and product type.

Long-Tail Keywords rock. “The majority of searches (67%) are made up of one to three keywords. However, 82% of searchers said that they are likely to enter a few more words when they can’t find what they are looking for in a search. Phrases of four or more words are often used to deliver the targeted results that most searchers aren’t seeing with broader-based search terms. These terms can offer you higher conversion rates at a lower cost per click” when used in SEM campaigns, and are far easier to SEO than two-word or even three-word phrases.

Questionable advice on professional SEO: “If you’re a marketer who doesn’t have a good foundation in Web design, try to find a member of your IT or Web design team willing to undertake your SEO projects.” Actually, that sentence would be fine if they had used the phrase “collaborate with you on” in place of the word “undertake.” SEO is a mix of art and science. And I’d argue that its easier to teach a marketer the science than it is to teach at IT person the art.

SEO Frequency: The majority of your SEO work should happen up-front, during the website design phase. After that, you need to enact a policy of steadily adding to that framework with small pieces of new, optimized content…Aim to add at least one new element that builds on your SEO strategy every few days.” Just need to add: the majority of the ongoing effort is link building, not onsite changes.

Blogging for SEO: “Blogs can be a tremendous piece of your search marketing strategy. Blog posts create an ongoing stream of new, keyword-rich content that often generates links from other sites back to your website.” As long as the blogging team follows a few simple guidelines and avoids the seven deadly sins of blogging, then absolutely!

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more from the original source:
Sherpa Answers 15 Common SEO Questions

MarketingSherpa just published a short article, Banner Ad Size and Click Rate: Bigger a Bit Better, But It’s Clicks that Count, that includes this chart:

Three observations stand out:

1) The data haven’t changed much since last year, when it was reported here that “The average CTR for banner ads is roughly 0.25%, with a reported range of 0.17% to 0.40%.”

2) Click-through rates are pathetic regardless of ad size, so don’t use CTR as the primary metric for evaluating banner advertising. In the words of MarketingSherpa, “Online ads are branding tools. Direct clicks are simply a happy byproduct.” Banner advertising is most commonly sold on a CPM basis (and with CTR’s like that, it’s no wonder). CPMs on B2B publisher sites typically range anywhere from $30 t0 $120, meaning that a banner advertiser is paying $15-$60 per click based on the average CTR of 0.21%.

3) The best response rates come from 300×250 ads, which are typically positioned in the top right corner of a web page—no suprise, as that is generally considered the most prime real estate on any web page. Both the 728×90 and 468×60 horizontal banners are typically used at the top of a web page, but notice the significant discrepancy in CTR; when buying real estate at the top of a page, size clearly matters. The remaining ad sizes shown in the chart are skyscraper ads, most commonly positioned on the right and left sides of page content well below the top of page, often below the fold. Interestingly, size doesn’t seem to matter much on skyscrapers.

Conversion rates for B2B ads continue to average about 2.8%. That means, on average, you’d need 17,000 impressions to generate one lead—at an average cost of $1,258! So again: banner ads are branding, not revenue or lead generation. They may very well have a role to play in your marketing mix, but it’s important to understand what that role is.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Go here to read the rest:
Average CTR for Banner Ads - New Data

Note: this is the first of two guest-posts from customer loyalty expert Nisha Prasad at IQPC. Read on to find out how you can get special pricing for IPQC’s upcoming customer engagement and loyalty event.

You’re a marketing star. You have more creativity than Jeff Koons, your plans are impeccable and your campaigns are the stuff of marketing Hall of Fame.

But are you hitting the mark where it counts? That is, are you engaging and retaining your customers, as well as marketing to them?

We all know the positive business impact of keeping our customers loyal but its often difficult to implement and execute a customer-oriented marketing plan that a) wins C Level Support b) is compatible with current business processes and c) uses financial resources wisely.

IQPC has put together the Customer Engagement and Loyalty Summit (November 17-19, 2008, Hilton Miami, FL) to address these real marketing issues. The two-day conference brings together successful business oriented leaders to share their customer strategies and secrets. No fluff, no mirrors and lights, just straightforward answers and opportunity to benchmark in an open, engaging format. It may be the most valuable conference you attend this year.

Some of the most relevant topics in customer engagement and loyalty include:

• Sales and Marketing Integration for Customer Retention and Loyalty
• Analyzing Customer Feedback
• Translating Loyalty into Financial Impact
• Generating Word of Mouth
• Using Technology and analytics and finding out which is best for you
• Changing Employee Behavior to enhance customer engagement

In addition to the ready-to-use takeaway strategies, the event provides great networking opportunities to discuss and share your own successes and challenges with peers. Zappos, Best Buy, Borders, Mastercard Worldwide, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Telllabs, Canada Post, Abbott Labs, and Charles Schwab will also be speaking and sharing their customer expertise.

Go on over, check out the website at www.iqpc.com/us/CustomerLoyalty.

Finally, a conference for marketers that addresses the important issues head on: customers and business impact.

p.s. And because you’re reading this blog, you automatically get a perk (your boss will love that!): 2-for-1 conference pricing when you mention code: IUS_WMC_001. Great price, great speakers, great topics, great networking, great takeaways—the Customer Engagement and Loyalty Summit is for you.

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Original post:
Where Savvy Marketers Go to Become Savvier

If you sell products through channels and would like to have the data to compare your pains and strategies against other channel marketers, here’s a research project you may want to participate in.

SharedVue Marketing Technologies is looking for channel marketers to take a brief on-line survey about their pain points regarding channel marketing programs. They are especially interested in marketers in Fortune 2000 technology companies who use third party dealers to market their products. The survey is intended to improve understanding of the challenges and needs of marketers using channel marketing strategies.

SharedVue will share the summary results of the survey with all survey participants and is offering a drawing for an iPod Shuffle. Individual response data will be kept confidential. The survey takes approximately 2-8 minutes.

Again, the survey can be found here.

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SharedVue Conducting Channel Marketing Survey