Online Marketing Blog

In the 1989, Greg LeMond overcame a 50 second deficit in the final stage to win the Tour de France by 8 seconds.  He clocked the second fastest time trial ever recorded in the Tour de France.  So how did LeMond secure a stunning victor after 3 weeks and 2025 miles?

Optimization.  The optimization of his equipment, including aerodynamic handle bars and helmet, allowed LeMond to shave crucial seconds from his time and ride to victory in front of his less well optimized competitors.

Optimization results had a big impact on this race and they can have a big impact on business as well. I recently attended a session by Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director of Marketing of Adobe on Conversion Optimization: From Strategy to Execution. He offered strategies for businesses to optimize their digital marketing, in order to move ahead of the pack and secure a victory.

The role of media in helping brands become more relevant online has entered a time where words like “convergence” and “integration” best describe the multiple channels, approach, and skill sets necessary to succeed.

The days of single device access to the Internet have given way to a range of connected devices including tablets, smartphones, and even cars and kitchen appliances. Ubiquitous connectivity plus the ease of publishing and interaction by both organizations and individuals can mean huge opportunity.  Companies that optimize their integrated media strategies and tactics to develop and scale digital media content wherever customers are looking and interacting can achieve a substantial competitive advantage.

Your customers are using multiple channels and devices to consume information

Until recently search marketing was the channel that many companies thought they had “all figured out”.  As the online marketing industry evolves many are finding it difficult to move into the next phase, which includes cross-channel optimization.

I recently attended a presentation from Steven Yap, Head of Emerging Products and Markets at Google where he covered that very topic.  Figuring out how search can help produce wins that really matter, and determining what role search marketing plays in a broader marketing campaign leaves many marketers stumped.  In this article I’ve included some helpful tips from Yap as well as some best practices for cross-channel optimization.

London Calling: Mobility & The Olympic Games

Sadly the 2012 Olympics came to an end this past week.  These Olympic Games were by far the most socially shared to date.  This infographic from Acme Packet shared some very interesting information on everything from estimates for viewership and devices used, to predictions for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Twitter Co-Founders Preview Medium, A New Publishing Tool
Evan Williams a co-founder of Twitter describes Medium as “re-imagining publishing in an attempt to make an evolutionary leap.”  Medium takes submitted content like photos or text and organizes items that are similar into collections that multiple users and view, and add to.  Via Cnet.

On the second day of SES San Francisco, I headed to Lee Odden’s session Optimize B2B Content Across the Sales Cycle. Lee kicked off the presentation by polling the audience on how engaged they were in SEO, social media and content marketing. Hands raised all over the room.  When he asked how many were focused on content marketing across the sales cycle, it was striking that there relatively few hands raised.  As focused as we all are on conversions and purchases, we are not all capitalizing on the opportunity to attract and engage with our customer at every point in the buying cycle, and as a result, customers can slip away.

Hot off the heels of Avinash’s SES opening keynote, day two of SES San Francisco 2012 included another famous Googler to start the day. Matt Cutts (@mattcutts), Distinguished Engineer for Google, is the head of the Web spam team. He and his spam fighters, as he refers to them, make up part of the Google Knowledge Group.  He was a last-minute addition to the SES schedule, interviewed by Mike Grehan, VP and Global Content Director for Incisive Media, as part of the day two kickoff.

Taking a deep dive into analytics with Thom Craver (@thomcraver) and Garry Przyklenk (@gprzyklenk) at SES San Francisco was the perfect way to kick off the Dicovery Channel’s Shark Week.

This team of knowledgeable online experts did not disappoint, and as promised, plunged headfirst into analytics and how to make them work for your organization.  In this article I have included 7 things that you need to know about analytics from the “Web Analytics Deep Dive” session on Tuesday afternoon.

#1 – Data is Not Information

Data and information are not the same thing.  Data is described as a seemingly unconnected set of numbers and values.  Information on the other hand provides context around the data, and labels or groups the content.

Keywords are the core of your search engine marketing strategy. Most of us know the basics when it comes to brainstorming, generating and finalizing a list, but how can your company get beyond the basics and focus on advanced keyword analytics. The main focus of the presentation by Bill Hunt (@billhunt) at SES San Francisco focused on moving beyond data and focusing on consumer intent.

When we type in a specific inquiry we expect to find what we are looking for, but often paid search results fail us. In order to capture the user who may be disappointed by search results, marketers can better use keywords leveraging advanced keyword modeling.

Advanced Keyword Modeling

1. Understand the ‘voice of the customer’
2. Effectively map your content with query and query intent

Big data is definitely a buzz word within the industry right now, but as I headed to Bryan Eisenberg’s (@thegrok) session at SES San Francisco, I wondered how the average company would be able to leverage the complexity of big data in a way that is meaningful and profitable.

Target made headlines last year when it inadvertently announced to the father of a teenager that his daughter was pregnant, by sending her coupons targeted to her pregnancy. Target knew that this young woman was pregnant before her father did, through the collection and analysis of data related to her past purchases. Although Target would later refine their coupon targeting strategy, this is a powerful example of a company using data in order to speak to the needs of their consumer.

Focus on the Micro and the Macro!

When Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) is giving the opening keynote you know that you’re in for a treat.  SES San Francisco was no exception.  Even with a few minor technical issues, Avinash rolled with the punches and jumped right into what is wrong with online marketing today, and how it can be fixed.

As always Avinash’ presentation was a unique mixture of stand up comedy, and expert advice from one of the only people who can truly call themselves a guru in the online marketing industry.

3 Things I Find Interesting That I Want to Share

“I got into the web through the path of data.  As it turns out the problem is very rarely lack of or bad data.” – Avinash Kaushik

[Sponsored Post: Trackur is an online reputation management and social media monitoring tool.  This post is from Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur.]

When it comes to social media monitoring, I’m going to assume that you’re already monitoring your brand name, the names of your key executives, and, perhaps, your most important products. If not, you do not have permission to read the remainder of this article, until you have these set up at Google Alerts, or your favorite social media monitoring tool.

OK, for the rest of us, I want to show you 5 clever ways of using social media monitoring that you’ve probably not considered.

1. Find your industry influencers

This week I’m in San Francisco for the SES conference. I’m really looking forward to this event because TopRank has a great team in attendance with my Marketing Manager @azeckman, Account Manager @Alexis5484 and Senior Technical SEO @thomcraver who will be speaking on Deep Dive Analytics.

If you’ve read our blog for any period of time, you know I attend a lot of conferences. I couldn’t or wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t productive and in the past I’ve shared many ways to get more value from attending conferences and events. But that’s not all there is.