April 2008 Archives

May 1 is RSS Awareness Day. To learn more about what RSS is and how to use it, check out this RSS Web site created specially for the event.

As I've said many times, RSS is the most under appreciated Web tool around, for marketers and consumers alike.

For marketers, RSS is the way to make sure the market receives information you put out on the Web. How many people go to a Web site or blog to see if someone has posted new information? Not very often. So much of today's quality content goes unheard, but RSS can change that.

For consumers, RSS makes information gathering easy, like having 10 or 20 newspapers delivered to your door every day. By aggregating RSS feeds, consumers control the information they want to track and read it whenever and wherever they want.

Why RSS hasn't caught on is baffling. The technology is free, so any publisher or reader can use it without dipping into the pocketbook. Plus, subscriptions are easy to process and feed readers are amazingly simple and customizable. My favorite feed readers are Google Reader and Bloglines.

Celebrate RSS Awareness Day by subscribing to your first feed (The Whoa Factor, for instance). Once you get used to it, you'll never go back to surfing.

After reporting better than expected earnings for Q1 2008, Google stock surged more than 20% last Friday, or almost $90/share. Revenues for Q1 were $5.19 billion, up 42% from Q1 2007. International revenues grew to 51% of Google's total revenue. Significantly, revenue from paid clicks grew 20% over Q1 2007, and continued strong both in the U.S. and internationally. With the acquisition of DoubleClick, the phenomenal popularity of YouTube, and the largely untapped growth potential of emerging markets, Google's future looks as bright as its first quarter numbers.

This is all exceedingly good news for Google stockholders, the stock market, and the search engine marketing industry. Google''s results signal online enterprise has remained strong in the face of a slumping U.S. economy. The growth in paid clicks is particularly encouraging. Normally, when business slows, marketing expenses are among the first to be cut. But the U.S. spend on online marketing continues to grow, as reported by Google and as we also saw in SEMPO's recently released State of the Market Survey.

Being enormous, Google is a popular target for criticism. Some deplore Google's perceived abuse of privacy rights;  others, its heavy handed tactics; and a few simply don't like the company because of its size and dominance. But clearly, a strong Google is good for search engine marketing sellers and buyers alike. During the tech bubble, every tech related firm made money hand over fist. But during our current slump, it takes true leadership and a rock solid business model to achieve growth and profitability. Google is providing the leadership and a business model that delivers a satisfying user experience. Google products are fun, easy to use, reasonably priced or free, and get the job done. They innovate, test, and roll out user-friendly versions of new products and services with amazing rapidity. And oh, yes - they make money, and lots of it. Many of Google's competitors can lay claim to one or more of those characteristics, but how many can claim them all?

In a Google free world, I doubt advertisers would pour money into search engine marketing to the extent they do today. Why? Because the overall value of SEM would decline. By setting a high standard and providing leadership, Google makes its competitors stronger and encourages new players to get in the game, giving advertisers more choice and quality options.  

(satire)

Today, April 15, your thoughts may be on how to pay less corporate income tax in 2008, which makes perfect sense considering 2008 may be do or die time. Tax rates figure to start climbing in 2009 with a new administration coming in and our temporary tax cuts scheduled to expire in 2011.

Although I have no financial expertise whatsoever, I think I've discovered a sure fire way any business can reduce its tax burden almost instantly. Here it is.

Halt your search engine marketing program.

Search engine marketing is simply too profitable. Properly chosen and executed organic and paid search techniques require relatively low investment and drive a high volume of qualified traffic to a Web site. Search engine marketing is, in general, capable of producing sales at a much lower cost than what can be obtained through traditional marketing methods. This is why corporate investment in search marketing continues to climb rapidly as the traditional marketing spend continues its steep and steady decline.

In 2007, U.S. companies spent $12.2 billion in SEM - a 30% increase from 2006. Why? Because SEM is profitable. Ergo, to reduce profits, eliminate search engine marketing from your business plan.

Instead of spending $3000 on search optimization, spend $10,000 on Yellow Page ads. Replace the productive $5,000 pay per click campaign with a $20,000 telemarketing program. Should work like a charm!  You'll spend more to achieve inferior results and probably wind up with a tax refund in 2008. Let your competitors, who by year end will have picked off most of your business, worry about taxes. You'll be laughing all the way from the bank.

If you're trying to figure out how your company can tap into the power of social media, read this detailed and insightful social media guide from Carsten Cumbrowski.

Along similar lines, Dosh Dosh explores ROI and social media. Is it possible to cost justify social media marketing efforts? You'll have to read the post to find out.

Tune up your search marketing by reading Ian Lurie's post, The Internet Marketing Unlist: 49 Things You Are Probably Doing But Shouldn't. Practical tips you can put to work right away.

From the Dallas Business and Marketing blog, Why Google is Scared of Social Media. Important insights for search marketing strategists, because the dynamics of search habits are being profoundly affected by new website models.

If you've invested time and money to attract site traffic, you want visitors to read your message. That's why it's crucial to make your message readable, inviting. Otherwise, visitors will pull back and click off.

1. Avoid using ALL CAPS. They are hard to read, especially in headlines. They also distract from surrounding text, which may cause readers to miss your message.

2. Avoid multiple text colors. Again, distracting. It's OK to use a highlight color for headlines and subheads, but otherwise be judicious.

3. Avoid multiple fonts.

4. Use multiple font sizes only when you have a good reason.

5. Avoid italics, which are harder to read on a screen than in print.

6. Break up long chunks of text with bullet points.

7. Break up long chunks of text with subheads, especially ones that incorporate keyword phrases.

8. Replace colons and semicolons with a dash. Much easier to read dashes on a screen. Sometimes you have to break grammatical rules to accomplish the switch; in such cases you must choose between readability - and formality.

9. Never use reverse print (dark text on a light background) unless your site has minimal content. Reverse print looks cool, but is extremely hard to read. Black text on an off white background is the easiest to read.

10. Match your font size to your audience. If your product appeals to senior citizens, go big, because they won't be able to read small fonts. For more on this topic, click here.

11. Keep sentences short. Doing so makes your ideas easier to follow and eliminates the need for those pesky colons and semicolons.

12. The color for anchor text should be bold enough to stand out, but not so bold as to overwhelm the rest of the content.

The economy may be slowing, but spending on search engine marketing continues to rev up. The recently released 2007 SEMPO State of the Market Survey includes these remarkable findings.

• The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007, exceeding earlier projections of $11.5 billion for 2007.

• North American SEM spending is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.

• Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, website development, direct mail and other marketing programs.

• Paid placement captures 87.4% of 2007 spending; organic SEO, 10.5%; paid inclusion, .07%, and technology investment, 1.4%

It seems as though nothing can stop the tidal wave transfer of advertising spend from traditional to online media. In fact, as I'm writing this post, a breaking news story reports that CBS Channel 2 in Chicago has laid off 17 people, including news anchor Diann Burns and sports anchor Mark Malone. The story explains -

What happened at Channel 2 is endemic to nearly all broadcast and print outlets of late. With audiences and advertisers investing more time and money in digital platforms such as the Internet, old-style media have announced cutbacks to offset the slipping revenue.

It's important to note that nearly 90% of SEM spending goes to paid placement. For all the media focus on SEO and conversational marketing, paid advertising still works. In fact, it works better all the time because ads can be targeted with greater accuracy than in the old days of indiscriminately placed pop-ups. Geographic filtering allows PPC ads on search engines to reach more relevant searchers. Ad placement on blogs, RSS feeds, and social networking sites can be geared to the tastes of very specific subscribers.  Many Internet-based business models hinge upon building a healthy revenue stream from advertisements on their Web sites.

The ability to focus advertising spend on the Web makes the (relatively) scattergun approach of traditional media advertising look less appealing than ever, now that business conditions are weak. With that in mind, 2008, despite a recession, may see more growth than ever in paid search engine marketing.