Online Marketing Blog

Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director, Global Media & Demand Marketing at Adobe Systems, presented Tuesday morning’s opening keynote at SES Chicago. The goal of his presentation was to take a deep dive into:

• How the value of what marketers do is often viewed incorrectly
• Mistakes that many marketers are guilty of
• What questions marketers should ask themselves in order to invest marketing dollars appropriately

Changing the Marketing Conversation
Often times, as marketers we talk too tactically

Many marketers today still refer to marketing dollars as “spend”, “budgets”, or “cost centers”. One of the things that Chertudi urges online marketers to do is change the conversation. What does this mean?  Organizations should begin considering marketing costs as an investment and not just a cost. Instead of focusing on the “burn rate” we are urged to focus on determining if our investment is large enough to fuel the growth of the company. This will enable marketing to be properly viewed as a means of growing the organization instead of being perceived as a cost center.

I’m going to be visiting the windy city for SES Chicago this week and have been trying to figure out where to explore if I can find some time while I’m there. I always enjoy a great meal so turning to search engines and social media platforms was an obvious answer for me to find great restaurants.

Understanding how end consumers use search and social to find and discuss your business online is key in creating an effective online marketing strategy.  The more that you study and adapt your strategy to positively impact new customers, the more successful your social media strategy will be.

For many years search has been the backbone of internet marketing. While effective on its own for a range of marketing objectives, namely product sales and lead generation, it’s the integration with other digital marketing tactics that can really elevate marketing program effectiveness.

It’s important for marketers to think more holistically about their search marketing programs because with brands and consumers empowered to publish 24/7 via mobile, tablet or computer, we live in an age of information overload. Increased competition for consumer attention, interest and engagement means marketing messages must do more to stand out and focus not only on transactional outcomes, but influence and branding.

For consumers, Google has been an effective filter for the billions of documents in its index handling over 11 billion searches per month on Google.com alone. But search isn’t enough to carry the day in most internet marketing programs.

The closing keynote on Wednesday at ad:tech New York was presented by Christian Oestlien the Head of Social Advertising Products at Google.  The opening of Oestlien’s presentation featured an example of Google+’s new Hangout feature shot live at a Black Eyed Peas Concert.  Fans were given an opportunity to interact with the music sensations in real time.  Black Eyed Pea’s frontman will.i.am is noted as saying “This isn’t behind the music, this will become the music.”

Since launching in June, Google+ has already acquired over 40 million active users.  Users have also uploaded over 3.5 billion photos in those short months.  According to Oestlien the goal of Google+ for enable marketers to interact with their fan base in a way that they never have before.  When developing Google+ the team set out to see how they could influence and impact as well as improve that way that marketers are utilizing Online Marketing today.

[Note from Lee: Our Wednesday Guest Post Series from digital marketing experts has been very well received and today's post from my friend Heidi Cohen will not disappoint. Heidi is a long time and very popular Columnist at ClickZ and Content Marketing Institute, Adjunct Professor at NYU, an active marketing blogger as well as President of  Riverside Marketing Strategies. When it comes to internet marketing Heidi's  perspective resonates well with me and I appreciate her insight into the intersection of direct marketing, digital, content and social media a great deal.]

Does your content jump off the page and grab readers by the collar to get their attention? While no one sets out to create content marketing that’s a snooze, sometimes it misses its intended objective. If this is the case, you have to pump life into your content marketing to make it useful for your target audience.

As part of my November cross country efforts to share search, social media and content marketing insights, I’ve switched from BlogWorld Los Angeles last week to ad:tech New York this week. I’m really looking forward to a great group of Search Marketing sessions at one of the the largest Interactive Marketing conferences in the world. In the past year I’ve been to London, San Francisco, Barcelona and many other great cities (even Cleveland!) but New York is by far one of my favorite places for a conference.

Earlier this year the amazing Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search at Digitas, was serving as a conference Marketing Master for the Search Engine Marketing track and she asked me to speak at my first ad:tech in San Francisco.  When I was asked to perform those same SEM track programming duties for the ad:tech New York show, I had to say yes!

Amazing sunset outside of the TopRank office.

The agency (TopRank Online Marketing) that I started with Susan Misukanis celebrated it’s 10th Birthday this year and in all my time as an Internet Marketer, no other combination of marketing tactics has yielded results like Search Engine Optimization and Content. Over the past 5 years Social Media has entered the mix as an even more powerful amplifier to the effect of optimized content.

But there’s a key problem with how content marketing is implemented by many SEO-focused agencies and practitioners. Creation of “content” has escalated to amazing levels but there is a lot of that content fails to achieve the desired objective. In the midst of keywords, links, rankings and search algorithms there are several important pieces missing.

October 28, 2011 marked my first attendance at the Minneapolis chapter of Social Media Breakfast (#SMBMSP).  I arrived at 514 Studios around 7:45am and to be honest, I was surprised at the number of people already in the audience.  I grabbed my seat in the second row and had an opportunity to to meet the featured speakers Lisa Grimm and Meg Knodl right before they took their seats at the front of the room.

Did You Know?

• There are 46 SMB chapters nationwide
• #SMBMSP has officially consumed 3,751 pieces of bacon
• October 28, 2011 marked the 40th SMB for the MSP chapter
• MSP is the largest chapter (and according to SMBMSP Director Mykl Roventine, the Twin Cities has the most attractive members)

#SMBMSP40 Speakers

[Note from Lee: This week's guest post is from someone I've known  from the Search Marketing world for a long time.  Bryan Eisenberg is a Wall Street Journal & New York Times Best Selling Author, popular keynote speaker and well respected guru in all things related to marketing and conversion optimization. We serve on the SES Conference Board of Advisors together and as he's elevated his status in the business world, has always been helpful and full of practical advice. You'll see that in this post about several tools for which he is an advisor.]

True or false? You never seem to have enough time in the day to get your job done.

With over 70 sessions SES Chicago running November 14-18, 2011 is a virtual smorgasbord of information for Marketing and SEO professionals alike.  Many topics will be covered including: PPC, keyword research, SEO, social media, local marketing, mobile marketing, link building, content, optimization, usability, and so much more.  With so many sessions to choose from where should you begin?  Below are a list of ‘must see’ sessions that I will be sure to check out while I’m there.

#1 – Winning! Measuring Social Media Success

While I doubt that Eli Goodman and Tami Dalley will be channelling Charlie Sheen I am still very interested to hear their take on measuring the success of social campaigns.  I would recommend having your social media metrics handy if possible ( I know I will), so that you can apply the speakers instruction on estimating the value of your fans and followers in real time.  Who knows, we may find that we score better than anticipated.