Obama Wins the Web SEM Game

One of the cool sessions at SMX East was Search and US Presidential Campaign. It included online marketers for campaigns of Mitt Romney, McCain-Palin, Ron Paul, and John Edwards. The session was covered live- very nicely by Virginia Nussey of Bruce Clay.

Since then I've seen some other editorial pieces on how bad McCain's PPC program is doing and other articles on the scope and strength of Obama's online marketing.

So I decided to look at the SEM differences.

A Google result for John McCain provides

John McCain 2008
Get Involved and Support The GOP's
Nominee for President John McCain.
JohnMcCain.com

In comparison a search for Obama results in

Obama Campaign Website
Help elect Barack Obama President
of the United States: Donate today
BarackObama.com

The Obama ad is much more compelling, so I decided to look at the Obama website.

instantly he continues to use smart direct marketing tactics - starting with a subscription generator splash page. You immediately start receiving auto generate emails with strong calls to action. But it's done it very professionally, it doesn't come off as spam, and works well to build a brand relationship.

After subscribing I was then taken directly to a nice page breaking down the issues.

I wanted to see how the site reacted upon a second return, and it landed me on a donation page with little else I could do. A very well planned execution to get people to remember to contribute, and get trained not to use the PPC ads to get to the official website.

One you figure out how to get back to his website he makes use of blogging, flicker photo sharing, YouTube videos, and links to every one of his 16 social network accounts.

Really impressive is an option to join his SMS mailing list. This has to give him extra points with the the teens.

It's no wonder that between focusing on the young; recruiting new voters; and keeping the conversation going via email and SMS, he's been able to easly raise 200 million dollars online one form at a time.

This is no presidential endorsement, but I have say - Obama has already won the online marketing race.

Interview with Bill Scully

Nice interview of me about being a search engine marketer by Duane Forrester. Covers everything from how I got my start as search marketer and biggest SEO challenge to my opinion of the future of careers in search engine optimization.

Check it out.

Speaking at SMX East

I'm speaking at SMX East in NYC Oct. 8, 2008.
Here me at 9:00 AM on Wednesday morning during the In House Day Session called a Day In The Life Of A Successful In-House SEO.

High Tech Global PPC Spend Analysis

A new paid search report from Covario (http://www.covario.com) titled “Global Search Spend Analysis” reviewed 128 high-tech company brand trends. The report is their first of this type, and compares Q1 2008 vs. Q1 2007. A big shock is a 52 percent increase in overall paid search spending. This is very different that the industry benchmarks of a 20 percent increase.

• The majority of total spend growth has been in North America (58% to 63%)
• International budgets decreased 10%. (33% to 23%)
• Japan and China spending increased 3.5% (8% to 12%)

B2B Online Marketing Budgets to go up in 2008

BtoB's "2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey shows 60.1% of marketers plan to increase their overall marketing budgets next year predominantly in online, events and direct mail. Despite the softness in the overall economy only 10.3% plan budget decreases.

The biggest budget increases will be seen in online marketing, with 79.1% of marketers planning to boost their online budgets this year.

Last year, in the BtoB 2007 survey, 62.6% of respondents said they planned to increase their marketing budgets; 29.4% said budgets would be flat, and 8.0% said they planned to decrease their marketing budgets.

In 2008 the primary marketing goal is customer acquisition, cited by 62.4% of respondents, followed by:

Brand awareness (19.3%)
Customer retention (11.7%)
Other objectives (6.6%)

Of those planning budget increases next year:

27.8% plan a 5% to 9% increase in spending
24.6% plan a 10% to 14% increase
12.7% plan a 20% to 24% increase
10.3% plan an increase of less than 5%


BtoB's survey found that the average percentage of the marketing budget spent next year on online marketing will be 33.8%, up from 26.5% in 2007. Among the online areas that will see increases next year are:

Web site development (cited by 74.0% of marketers)
E-mail (70.1%)
Search engine marketing (64.3%)
Video (39.5%)
Webcasting (39.1%)
Banners (36.4%)
Sponsorships (29.6%)
Social media (26.2%)


Of the 19.8% of marketers currently using social media applications:
53.8% use them for thought leadership
40.4% for customer feedback
30.8% for market research
28.8% for advertising
26.9% as a sales channel

Survey Reveals How B2B Purchasers Buy

A survey of 1000 B2B buyers, asked how they research B2B buying decisions online and how this varies by role within a company, and purchase phase. The report provides valuable information on how to market to B2B companies and the individuals who work for them.

The survey identified roles that the respondents played in, in respect to organizational buying decisions. They identified 4 major roles that are typical, the economic buyer, the technical buyer, the user buyer and the coach buyer.

• The economic buyer is the person who ultimately makes the buying decisions and signs the check.
• The technical buyer is a person tasked with ensuring that whatever solution that is purchased needs the technical requirements of the company. For technology purchases this would often be an IT professional. For accounting software you would typically be a controller or financial officer. And for sales relationship management software it would be sales manager. While these people usually don't have final financial approval they are integral to the purchase process as they are the ones that ensure the potential solution is the right match with the organization’s needs and requirements.
• The user buyer is the person who will actually use the product. Often this person identifies the need and is responsible for implementing what is ultimately purchased.
• The coach buyer is the internal champion who helps move the sales process along and usually has a stake in the purchase of the solution.
  

The report then focuses on how people navigate from awareness, through research and negotiation phases to the actual purchasing decision. The use of search engines, vendor’s sites, what do they look for specifically, etc.

A surprisingly high number of respondents indicated they made their $1000 - $10,000 purchase online after conducting online researchPublish Post. Almost 47% indicated this as the outcome of their research online. 40% did their online research 1-4 months before the purchase.

Here are my take-a-ways:

• In all stages of the purchase cycle, weather it be an online of off-line conversion, search engines had the most influence, with the company website coming in a close second.
• In all purchasing stages the process started with a search engine almost twice as much as the second highest approach, going directly to a company website.
  

It's a well done report, with lots of segmented graphs. You can download the free b2b buying influence report from Enquiro.

eMarketing Spending to Reach $61 Billion by 2012

According to a new Forrester Research report, interactive marketing spending in the United States will triple over the next 5 years, reaching $61 billion by 2012. The growth is expected to be 27 percent annually. The catagory interactive marketing, 8 percent of all ad spending, is expected to grow to 18 percent of total ad budgets by 2012.

Forrester Research Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk, said "As firms continue to make customer centricity a higher priority, they will recognize that maintaining separate marketing teams to manage different sets of channels that all target the same customers makes no sense," ... (as) interactive technologies gradually infiltrate... such traditional paragons as television, billboards, and direct mail... the concept of a separate interactive mark eting organization will disappear."

The survey included 344 interactive marketing professionals and was highlighted decisions affecting display ads, search, email marketing, online video, and emerging media (social, mobile, and advergaming).

The report's highlights include:

• Search engine marketing will triple in five years. The aggressive use of search marketing will grow the category 26 percent to $25 billion by 2012 due to the increasing paid search costs, new tools and services, and international expansion.
• Display advertising (Banners & Sponsorships) will reach $14 billion by 2012. As branding being more accepted online, display ads will an important role for all interactive campaigns
• Online video ads will significantly increase 72 percent to $7.1 billion by 2012 as viddeos become consumed at an increasing rate.
• Social media and SM optimization will drive emerging channels to $10, a $6.9 billion increase. Emerging uses of social media, mobile, game marketing, widgets, podcasts, were included in this figure.
• Little is spent today, but mobile marketing is expected to grow to $2.8 billion. People are becoming more familar with hand held mobile devices, and local search intent and proximity will allow targeted local advertising to off line businesses.

57% of People say Search Engines are More Important than Ever

and 67% of the online search population is driven to search by offline channels.

In June 2007, iProspect partnered with JupiterResearch to conduct a study of online users about the influence of search titled "iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study".

The report shows that a majority of internet users depend more on search engine listings to find information they are looking for then they did a year ago, even if they know a companies name.

More interesting is that offline events that generated the thought to learn more, are driving people to search engines instead of following the ad's call to action. As an example 30% of people that responded to a magazine ad did a search instead of using the ads URL. That means that your landing pages need to be indexed and/or linked to from the the resulting search page in order to continue the initial ads conversation.

Sometimes a picture is wort a thousand words.

A Search Illustrated post in Search Engine Land called Search Engine Click-Thru Behavior; You've Got To Be In The Top Ten! by Elliance got me thinking -- so what, then I started thinking how could I use this to get more attention internally about the value of search.

We all know the value of being above the fold when viewing the first search engine results page, but it's been my inhouse SEO experience that if you can get 70% of all targeted terms in the top 10 positions people are happy. How can I get more mind share! What if I applied the percentage of top of fold positions for a tight group of terms, against the total number of searches per time period. But instead of focusing on the visibility, focus on the missed opportunity. That would raise fear in the hearts of Product Managers, and get their attention.

I call it, the Missed Search Opportunities Per Month (MSOPM).

(100% - % Number of search terms in the top 5 positions) * the total number of monthly searches = MSOPM

The Saboteurs Of Search - Forbes.com

I love this article in Forbes from Andy Greenberg, but when has trying to win become being a bad looser.... or Negative SEO?

Reputation management is a profession. Tweaking content to rise to the top of SERPs naturally pushes down the others. Dominating the top listings is similar to to taking market share.

Yes, link bowling is Black Hat, but it should be pretty easy to figure out who was doing it, and I would expect to see some retaliation. Great for SEOs, bad for their customers. Spend time providing content and the links and external listings will come naturally.

The article mentions a quote from Matt Cutts, senior software engineer for Google, that while spamming other sites is possible, but they make algorithms to prevent these techniques.