Think eBiz; thoughts on eBusiness

SitePal Avatar and Innovative Self Marketing

Searching for my next online marketing opportunity, I read about candidates using YouTube as a platform for presenting their credentials via video. However, being more if an Internet guy, I thought leveraging my personalized Avatar, created by my friends at SitePal and Larkin Volpatt, would be equally innovative. SitePal offers a unique and dynamic means - a conversational character - for presenting your web site's message. A clever and eye-catching way to welcome visitors to your blog or on-line storefront. It's easy to implement and admittedly a bit fun too.

In this Avatar message, I direct the viewer to click and view my online marketing professional web site. However you can expand your voice-over to include key accomplishments and your career search objectives. Keep it short, interesting and to the point. And unlike the YouTube video version, with SitePal your viewer can easily click over to your web site or resume.

One final note; just like writing a blog, the world is watching. Keep your message professional and results will follow. Your humble blogger will keep you posted on the results of this Avatar experiment.  Stephen

Super Bowl: Search / Brand Strategy

Last year we discussed how some companies won big by leveraging search marketing in conjunction with their Super Bowl ads. And how some leveraged their competitors big budget advertisting for their own success, and some advertisers that fumbled. This year, more than ever, it is critically important to integrate on and offline marketing campaigns. Consumers use the web for research, to learn more and be better informed before they make a purchase. Even if that purchase is offline.

The question then - Will Super Bowl advertisers learn from the successes and mistakes from last years campaign? Think-ebiz will report on the results and observations.

This is a reprint of my article on Effective Search Marketing and Branding, which appeared in MediaPost Search Insider:

Online Marketing For Brand Building

Originally Pubished by Stephen Harris on Friday, May 26, 2006

WHEN YOU THINK OF SEARCH marketing, most of us consider conversions as the true metric of success, driving actual leads and sales through the web site. However, in a recent Radar Research Study, over 62 percent of executive respondents said that building brand awareness was their top objective. Online marketing and brand building are not mutually exclusive ideas. In today's marketplace, consumers no longer distinguish between off and online channels, so it stands to reason that brand building would be top of mind in both of these areas. For an example, consider the past Super Bowl--which showcased integrated off and online brand building successes and failures. In some cases, advertisers leveraged the search channels along with their television and print media--and in other cases, totally missed this opportunity. Still others saw an opportunity to extend their brand at the expense of a competitor. A successful multi-channel advertiser Honda's Ridgeline Truck Super Bowl ad integrated an online experience where people could search for Honda Ridgeline on Google and Yahoo and be taken to a well-branded and on-message landing page. This is a good example of tight brand integration of the off- and online channels. A failure to leverage online American Home Products' new PS Cleaners paid $2.5 million for its on-air spot without an online component. Interested consumers were unable to locate anything about this product when the games were over (a search marketing ad is now online). Without an after-game presence, this became a once-and-only advertisement at a very heavy cost. Seizing the opportunity Then there was a very opportunistic General Motors, which co-opted a Ford advertisement featuring Kermit the Frog by purchasing "Live Green" and "Kermit" on the search engines. People that searched for these "Ford" keywords were presented with GM's online ad, "Live Green, Go Yellow", along with a branded landing page. GM's online brand building benefited at the expense of Ford's Super Bowl advertising dollars. Multi-channel brand strategy The lesson is clear; leveraging an integrated off and online strategy is critical to enhancing overall brand awareness and relationships. To be successful, advertisers need to build landing pages that reflect the message of off-line promotions, and purchase the keywords that people would most likely enter in the search engines. When an off-line ad is integrated with a cohesive online presence, brand awareness and interest is clearly extended, which will lead to more conversions. Postscript - 2007: Reprise Media conducted a study of this years Super Bowl (Da Bears vs Payton's Colts) and found that 3/4 of all advertisers did NOT leverage search into their strategy. Further, 70% of these top advertisers did NOT have an integrated messaging on their landing pages or web sites. Reprise pointe to both SalesGenie and GoDaddy as companies that were successful offline, and on. More on this in a upcoming Think-eBiz entry.

Brand Matters; Brand Building with Online Marketing

Online Marketing is more than a vehicle for producing leads and sales - it's now a major driver for brand building. Companies that traditionally advertise on television or print publications are learning that they need an integrated online marketing component to be successful. There were great integrated promotions during the recent Super Bowl. There were also companies that paid big-bucks for Super Bowl ads and failed to capitalize online. Then there was one company that was very opportunistic, leveraging it's competitors very expensive Super Bowl ad for its own gain.

PS: I am no longer associated with Trajectory Brand marketing. Please contact me to discuss online marketing, including search, online brand marketing and business effectiveness online. I am in a position to recommend other branding, marketing and communications companies other than Trajectory at this time. thank you.

KinderStart attacks Google 4 Secret Sauce

KinderStart, a Silver Lake Ca., web company that provides parents with child care advice via their own search engine (www.kinderstart.com), is suing Google. The claim is that Google has punished KinderStart and dropped their rankings, enough so that traffic has been greatly reduced at this portal. This allegedly occurred in March 2005.

Currently KinderStart has no page ranking, and the complaint was not specific as to what keywords were vital to this business. Although a search for the word "Kinderstart" found one deep-link occurrence (ranked #4).

Unfortunately we do not know the details of this complaint. Was Kinderstart.com doing some "black-hat" SEO that put them into the sandbox or was it just poor technique? I doubt it was a personal vendetta.

I cannot see this being a very fruitful lawsuit. This suit follows the de-listing of BMW and others; a tough stance for rooting out black-hat gamers. And also a rash of bad news for the Googler's (fraudulent click payout, financial errors, a few extra PowerPoint slides in the deck, China, Privacy ...). No wonder Google's stock is now on taking the down elevator.

We'll watch the KinderCare suit with interest; but doubt we'll learn much from this legal course.

Google Homepage - an end to an era?

Google's pristine homepage has been their brand statement - it's about the search. This is in stark contrast to Yahoo's community portal strategy. However could this be a bow to the power of eCommunity - to content presentation with search as a mere tool? Maybe.

In fact, you now have a choice between a "Personalized" content view of the Google homepage - or the "Classic" look. And look who is on the Google homepage - none other than Think-Ebiz.

Google on Cable TV

Check this out; Google has a television show on cable TV called  Current TV. My local cable (Cablevision) does not have this channel - but others like Time Warner, Direct TV & ComCast present this show, which provides vignettes of what people are searching for on...  Google.

Does this show - once again - that offline & online are simply... inline?

Offline and Online Marketing; the live blurs.

In the beginning (before 1994), it was called Marketing. Simply put, it was offline - since online did not exist. Maybe there was a distinction between print and television/radio marketing campaigns. Then Al Gore created the internet (ok maybe not Al) and there became two marketing worlds, each so dissimilar. Now offline and online are blurring; into integrated marketing. That's a good thing.

Think about it; create an advertisement for a print magazine and include a URL for more information. That's a loose integration. However, when the person views the online ad and it is reflective of the print ad - the branded experience is extended. This is a good thing.

And when you ask your readers and television viewers to Google; this simply becomes marketing, with no distinction between the off and online marketing worlds. Pontiac's latest television ad invites you to "Google" Pontiac, while displaying the Google homepage. Why not simply ask the viewer to type www.pontiac.com? Simple - Pontiac is leveraging the action verb - "To Google". This is a clever thing.

The lesson is quite clear; marketing is once again firing on all cylinders to extend their branding and experience across multiple channels. Google agrees (from a quote on Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch); "We are happy that Pontiac has featured Google search in their television ad campaign. This is evidence that mainstream brand advertisers are increasingly realizing the close relationship between broadcast advertising and search usage."

The lines are blurring and once again it simply is called... marketing.

Pixel Advertising; worth a million?

A million dollars for a homepage? This is the achievement about to be made by Alex Tew and his Million Dollar Website. The concept is to sell pixels, one very small unit of display on your monitor, for $1 each. His homepage has one million pixels available for sale - thus one million bucks!

Alex took an idea to market, and like the pet-stone; it took off big time. Many other pixel ad sites have popped up since, all very similar in style. Most are no where near earning the windwall that was achieved by Mr. Tew.

However, when you look at the platform, the homepage full of highly compressed ads, you can tell it is not an effective means of building traffic and business for the advertisers. It looks fun, but how effective can this form of advertising be for the business owner? The focus is on the million dollar website not where it should be; with the advertiser. A few alternative pixel sites are starting to appear, such as Vertical Ads; with its focus on vertical business segmenting and larger ad spaces.

Overall, pixel ads worked well for Alex. The others; well it may be time to pack it up and try something new and more innovative. Stay tuned - this is what makes online marketing fun!