Online Marketing Blog

B2B Search sessions (both organic and paid) can be few and far between, so any time it exists I’m sure to plant myself in the front row.  The B2B Tactics session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers included:

Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing
Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.
Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing
Karen Breen Vogel, President and CEO, ClearGauge

With B2B SEO being a sweet spot for the team at TopRank, hearing from other industry leaders about how they have effectively executed for such companies is certainly relevant.

While sitting in sessions at any Search Marketing Conference, you will hear agency-side search marketers asking the panel for advice on how to keep clients from standing in their own way.

Questions like:

What if my client ignores our optimization recommendations?

What if a client doesn’t see any value in social media?

Some search marketers might think working with clients who won’t implement recommendations is a waste of time. I think it’s well worth a little extra work needed to understand why they are not following recommendations and finding a work around. In fact, if you’re working for an enterprise SEO client, the ability to find work arounds is a bare minimum requirement.

No, this isn’t a lame attempt at a keyword stuffed blog post title. I’ve been noticing over the past year a significant increase in the number of references to “online marketing” by SEO blogs, articles and news web sites.

It would be easy to say I am biased due to the name of this blog and our agency both using “online marketing” in the names. I’ll admit that I probably am.

When I started working on selling and marketing web sites in 1997, the catch phrase seemed to be “web marketing” since the most common reference at the time was “world wide web”.

Next month I’m heading to New York to blog the SES NY conference for Online Marketing Blog where Lee is speaking on the “Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions” panel with newly elected SEMPO board member Chris Boggs and PR veteran Sally Falkow.

I’m over-the-moon excited to attend and have stumbled upon a tiny connection between the host city and the conference.

The industry that never sleeps will be placed smack in the middle of the city that never sleeps. While I’m not sure what kind of cosmic connection to make of this (and it’s not the first time so I’m pretty sure the earth won’t start spiraling toward the sun), I am curious to see how it all goes down and to share my insights with you.

Earlier this week we started a poll on what online marketing tactics our readers would use most in 2008. The polling plug-in allows for only one choice and over 100 people have responded so far. We’ll keep the poll running for another week or so, but here are the top ten tactics rankings so far out of 35 listed and the percentage of votes for each.

With the vote count at over 150, I’ve updated the top ten as of 02/13/08:

• Blogging (27%)
• Email marketing (16%)
• Search engine optimization (14%)
• Pay per click (9%)

Monday night, Jessica and I represented TopRank at a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Event in Minneapolis.

In the first of a series entitled ‘Conversations About the Future of Advertising’, Jan Leth from Ogilvy & Mather gave a presentation entitled ‘Dada, Data, Alpha and Beta’ in which he highlighted how marketers can take advantage of the digital age.

In particular I found interesting, the idea of momentgraphics versus demographics. Marketing of years past would have concluded that we need to know the age, race, income and interests of each of our prospects.

What will you do to improve your online marketing performance in 2008? There are so many options, challenges with agency selection plus a moving target when it comes to knowledge/expertise. Without previous campaign performance statistics, it can be a real challenge deciding where to allocate marketing dollars for the web when you’re looking at expanding into new areas of promotion.

Whether your success metrics are branding, traffic, lead generation or sales, the right strategy and mix of tactics can make or break a business that relies on internet channels. What ARE the best upcoming channels? We’d like to know your opinion in this week’s Reader Poll:

[Note from Lee: While Susan, Jolina and I are in Miami at a private client conference for one of the largest companies in the world, it seemed particularly relevant for Jolina to write a quick post about enterprise SEO. Jolina's presentation today to roughly 30 different business units as well as corporate communications, PR and IT simply kicked ass.]

While the vast majority of search engine optimization projects performed by search marketing agencies are for small and medium sized businesses, SEO for large and complex organizations takes a unique combination of finesse and consideration.

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Walt Disney

Jennifer Laycock Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide helped the audience understand the value of images and 3 benefits to submitting photos to image sharing sites, like Flickr.

She made an excellent point by demonstrating what impacts people the most:
Copy OR Images

Let’s try it. What impacts you more, the description of how I dressed my dog up for Halloween OR the picture of it?

Description: For Halloween, I dressed my pup up as an angel.

Search Marketing within large organizations, often presents a unique set of problems back to the search marketer/marketing firm.

It’s nothing that’s does on purpose (for the most part), but rather it simply comes along with large, complex organizations.

The panel for this session outlined what they see as the most frustrating components of working for large organizations and how search marketers can adapt to reach the end objectives.

The panels’ top frustrations include:
1. Uneducated individuals
2. Resistant individuals
3. IT Departments that say NO

Day two at SES Chicago opened with a keynote speech from Seth Godin talking about Meatball Sundaes.
So what’s this Meatball Sundae all about?

Let’s break it down first: The meatballs are the core of the organization whether it’s products, services or traditional marketing.

The sundae, the whipped topping, nuts, sprinkles and cherry is what new marketing provides including channels like social media.

I’m sure we can all agree that a meatball sundae does not sound appetizing, but they’re being created across organizations with marketers trying to force traditional messages into new online channels.

A slew of SES Chicago attendees sat in on the session - Igniting Viral Campaigns - to learn how they just might create the next Burger King Chicken Campaign, in which Burger King was able to increase chicken sandwich sales with a website and a subservient chicken.

Maybe we’re not all looking to sell more chicken sandwiches, but we are looking to take a message and make it viral.

Each panelist provided insight on what they believe to be the keys to making content buzzworthy.

Bill Hanekamp, CEO, The Well hammered home the importance of relevancy to session attendees.