Online Marketing Blog

Editor’s Note: I am excited to introduce the next in our series of guest articles from IBM Distinguished Engineer Mike Moran.

The credentials list on Mike is a mile long including 20+ years experience in search technology, co-author of the best selling book “Search Engine Marketing Inc” as well as his recent book, “Do It Wrong Quickly“, 4 patents on search and retrieval technology, a sought after speaker at SES, DMA and AMA events and a great blogger with Biznology. Even though he’s one of the busiest people I’ve ever known, Mike stole some free time on a plane to write this post on the difficulties of search marketing for readers of Online Marketing Blog.

Editor’s note: Social search isn’t the new kid on the block anymore but it still has it’s mystery as far as search marketing implications. The next in our series of guest posts comes from a very well respected guy who I’ve long appreciated as having more than an advanced understanding of where the search marketing industry is going. Ron Belanger is Vice President, Agency Development at Yahoo! and has been a strong voice on topics ranging from search as a powerful branding tool to social search and the future of the search engine industry.

Photo credit Mike Grehan

Social media is a white hot topic, getting a tremendous amount of play in the advertising world. Investors and speculators are tripping over themselves to invest in the next Facebook or MySpace.

Editor’s Note: The next in our series of guest posts from SEM professionals comes from Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo. Marketo is a client of TopRank Online Marketing and provides B2B marketing automation software in the form of pay per click management, landing page optimization and integration with salesforce.com.

With Jon’s B2B software marketing expertise, excellent work both on his blog Modern B2B Marketing and as a contributor on Search Engine Land, I asked if he could write up a guide for search marketers that would provide actionable advice for readers on the topic of landing pages.

Perhaps the largest difference between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) pay-per-click is that the post-click goal for most B2B marketers is to capture a lead, not make a sale. This means that B2B companies must focus on converting clicks into leads as much as they focus on getting clicks in the first place.