Online Marketing Blog

Online video has seen a surge in popularity over the past few years. What started out as simple user-generated content (UGC) has become a medium for everyone from the rich and famous to the video blogger next door. It is no surprise that marketers were quick to recognize this trend and capitalize on the success of viral videos in order to reach out to consumers. Yet online video marketing is almost as varied and complex as the ranting of LonelyGirl15. This session examines these complexities and how they relate to marketers. Moderator Rebecca Lieb, contributing editor at ClickZ, led a panel of three Online Video gurus as they discussed the viral video phenomenon, its causes and its future.

Everyone is so familiar with the expression “When in Rome…” that most people don’t even finish the statement. Yet this piece of well-worn advice is sometimes ignored or forgotten in practice. Emerging markets around the world are growing and attracting U.S. attention in every industry, and search engine marketing is no exception. Online marketers, like other business professionals, need to ensure they have a good understanding of the local market they are targeting and interacting with in order to effectively market to them. This SES San Jose session gave a good introduction to the international markets of China, Japan and Latin America from an online marketing perspective.

Lee Siegel is the Author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. I haven’t read the book, but this session shed a new light on the effects of the online world we all currently live in.

Kevin Ryan leads this Q/A session, focusing mainly on how the digital mafia is affecting our society’s current state of being and the challenges foreseen for the future.

A few of the Q/A highlights from the session include:

Where do you see this online world we’ve created taking us? Do you see us moving in a negative or positive direction?

Many business owners and marketers can agree the current economy is having an impact on marketing plans, making every dollar and click matter. As part of the TopRank Account Team, I am excited to learn a new perspective to help clients increase conversions for their marketing campaigns.

Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder of Future Now Inc., along with Brett Crosby, Group Manager for Google, shared insight to identify missed conversations and how to improve your landing page and increase PPC ROI.

Every brand has a story and every story has a purpose.  But what does your story say about you? 

The Storyteller Marketing session was fantastic.  It’s a different way at looking at marking.  Some presenters didn’t even consider themselves marketers, instead, storytellers.  It’s all about finding or creating a story that will spread, in a positive way, around the web, from mouth to mouth and be more than just some advertising campaign.

Where is search headed?  We’ve heard of semantic search for a few years now, but what’s going on with it?  Each major search engine is taking the next steps but some are closer than others.  

Actually, what we are beginning to see is semantic and universal search merging together.  Yahoo, Ask, Powerset and Hakia showed screenshots that included images, videos, ratings and other media.  Are universal and semantic search the same?  Possibly. 

- Sorry for the bad pictures. I haven’t got down the art of taking pictures of PowerPoint slides.

Right after lunch today (which was pretty darn good ) was the first of the Orion Keynote presentations - a panel entitled “How Much Search is Enough?” Moderated by Kevin Ryan, this keynote panel discussed issues facing marketing budgets for search and traditional media, and how to make each piece of the marketing pie come together.

On the panel this afternoon were Rob Murray of iProspect, Aaron Goldman of Resolution Media, Steven Kaufman of Digitas and Bob Tripathi of Discover Financial Services. The format of the panel was pretty informal, with Kevin Ryan asking a few questions and the panelists giving their answers. The main focus of the discussion was, however, planning budget for search.

Viral makes you think of something horrible, right? Like an outbreak of a virus taking over the world’s population and turning us all into zombies? Well, trust me, when it comes to online promotions and link building, “viral” means “success”.

During the session this morning, we heard a lot of fantastic tips for how to create and promote viral campaigns. Fionn Downhill of Elixir Interactive gave some fantastic statistics about the use of social media for viral marketing purposes and how to leverage that to gain buzz for your product.

Last year at SES San Jose 2007, universal and blended search was the new thing going on in the background, and wasn’t really talked about in the sessions yet. Over the past 12 months, Google’s universal search and blended search has exploded across the internet. Everyone wants to know how to dominate the rankings on Page 1.”Let’s get pictures, video, local listings AND text results for my company all on one page!” Okay, no problem Our expert panel in the first session of SES San Jose 2008 takes us through the basics and the future of blended search.

What is the long tail in search? It’s all the smaller keyword phrases that refer traffic to your site. There may be only a few referrals, but all the long tail keywords can bring in more traffic and revenue than the larger, more popular keyword phrases.

Long-Tail Example: Head, or larger keyword phrases, could be printers. The long tail contains all the individual makes, models, sizes and types of printers.

What made this session good was that each presenter had a different perspective. Local, ad network, eCommerce and organic search.

We’re on a roll this week during SES San Jose 2008 with our next tip in a series of how to “Get the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences“. Previously a Vice President and Editor in Chief at ClickZ for 7 years, Rebecca Lieb serves as an Editorial Consultant to the ClickZ network as well as a public speaker on interactive marketing and advertising.

She’ll be keynoting the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Summit this October. She can be found many places online including Twitter.

Our third set of internet marketing conference tips come on day one of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose and are appropriately from Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch.

Kevin Ryan has been involved with numerous conferences over the years working for various interactive and internet marketing agencies before starting his own and now as head of the SES conferences in the U.S. and abroad for Incisive Media.

1. Events are a great place to meet with clients, vendors and potential partners.