Social Search is the new SEO buzzword.

Facebook has just announced they have over 700 million users, and this makes them significantly larger than Google as the most popular site in the United States. Google search is now estimated at 250 to 400 million search a day, but did you know that Facebook serves over 150 million search queries a day?

Twitter execs recently reported they their search function is now handling an average of 1.6 billion queries per day, and they recently upgraded with an improved search infrastructure with the aim of making the results as personally relevant as possible. “Our ranking function accesses the social graph and uses knowledge about the relationship between the searcher and the author of a Tweet during ranking,” the company explained. This means that Twitter’s search index will now incorporate dynamic information such as information about the searcher and how users’ interact with tweets.

Search engines have been forced to respond to the tremendous growth of social media. As the demand for real-time search results increased, it became clear that users would no longer be constrained by the limitations of search engines, which have to index sites on the Web before displaying them on their results pages. In December 2009, Google introduced real-time search, which incorporates news results and Twitter updates into search results.

Google's universal search (which displays content from YouTube and other networks) is another way social media content has been brought into search results.

Apart from the incorporation of social media content into search results, social networking sites affect search engine rankings in other ways. On his blog, search marketing guru Danny Sullivan recently posted some interesting answers from Google and Bing on how they are addressing this subject. He reminds us that:

• Both search engines count referencing of a given piece of content via Twitter as an indicator of authority (apart from the links coming from those references).
• Both search engines attempt to compute the authority and quality of an author and give that author's tweets preferential treatment.
• Both track links shared within Facebook.
  

The emergence of social media as it relates to search results means that an article that a couple years ago generated 50 links might today generate 10 links and 300 mentions on Twitter and Facebook.

Now that Facebook has opened up their pages to be crawled and indexed, you should be looking for new ways to use social media to influence search results on Facebook and Twitter.

Ten years ago, SEO professionals told us that improved organic rankings were all about optimizing page-level elements -- keyword frequency, title tags, and the relevance (and inclusion of those keywords) in on-page copy. Five years ago, Google significantly altered the algorithm so SEO strategists added the importance of relevant inbound links that pointed to your website to their sales story.

Those things are still important today, but organic SEO results these days requires a well-designed and optimized website plus relevant inbound links and a strong presence across multiple sites on the Web.

That’s where social media has become so important to the search equation. A/B copy testing by several groups, including SEOmoz, have shown that the cumulative reach of Twitter can far out perform multiple inbound links. If you are not using social media to complement your search straegy, you are missing a great opportunity. A good search strategy is enhanced by the relevance and broadscale reach of your content, and that makes social media a major indicator of relevance to search spiders.

So how do your clients take advantage of the convergence of social media and search for their business?

Here are four things they can do right now:
1. They should market their content across as many of the major social media outlets as make sense and are likely to be frequented by their target group. The major search engines now factor in how many times their content is shared among Facebook users and retweets among Twitter users. The search engines assign a higher value of importance to a piece of content that is shared by multiple readers. So you need to encourage your clients to broadcast their content on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites that can reach their customers and prospects?

2. They should look for niche sites or bloggers that target the same audience as their prospects. The more places they can find to expose their content and build their web presence, the greater the opportunity for search spiders to find them and assign a higher PageRank. And they should always encourage the readers of their content to pass it along to other interested parties. If they can build a network of engaged followers on these social media sites, they will move up in the search rankings and stand a better chance of being found when someone searches for a keyword that includes their content. Be sure they have links to their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (if they serve B2B customers) pages on your website. Make sure you are helping your clients understand that they should also let their customers know they can engage with the brand via social media.

3. Encourage your clients to start testing Facebook’s PPC as an alternative and/or complement to Google pay-per-click. The Self-Serve Facebook Ad Tool allows you a lot of opportunity to test alternative visuals, headline and body copy. Use analytics and attribution to determine the effect of the impact on organic search traffic and continue to test until you find the best combination of ad message and targeting.

4. Keep a close eye on the progress of Promoted Tweets as Twitter continues to make strategic acquisitions to boost its advertising technology. The recent addition of AdGrok (similar in concept to Google's AdWords) and the purchase last year of Smallthought Systems, maker of a cloud-hosted Web analytics application, could finally give Twitter a legitimate revenue tool to create a self-sustaining business. Analytics software is critical to evaluate the efficacy of online advertising campaigns and make adjustments accordingly.

Both search and social media are here to stay, and the ever-increasing interdependence between these channels should be seen as an opportunity in any business category. The strategic use of both channels can result in increased marketing effectiveness, and now is the time to take the lead in getting your clients on board.

Are You Helping Your Clients Position Their Brand In Today's Digital Marketplace?

In previous posts, I've argued that the secret to new business success and client retention is to become an invaluable asset to your client's marketing team. That means you must help them in more ways that just creating advertising.

I recently saw an article in Marketing Management by Don E. Schultz, professor emeritus-in-service at the Medill School of Journalism. In the article, he argues that the concept of positioning espoused by Jack Trout and Al Reis in the 1970's is no longer valid in the 21st century. He cites several reasons for this hypothesis, but most prominent is his reasoning that "marketers don't control brand positions, concepts, images, or even experiences -- consumers do". He goes on to state that today's marketers have "only limited means to communicate with consumers today . . . to position the brand" and that "the brand manager's voice in the branding milieu is tiny and faint when compared to the branding experiences consumers receive from other sources -- such as peers, community groups, the brand's customer service group, the technical support experts, other employees, retailers, and distributors who are not even under the control of the brand manager or marketing department".

Professor Schultz concludes his argument with the question "does any of the brand baggage we've dragged into the 21st Century have any relevance or resonance today with us, our customers, or the marketplace?" Throughout the article, Professor Schultz makes it clear where he stands, which is evident with his description of positioning as "brand baggage".

An article like this can create a great opportunity for an agency to help their client or prospect succeed in a marketing environment that continues to change so rapidly. Professor Schultz is certainly right that the idea of one brand completely owning a position for all time in the customer's mind is outdated. But I don't think that idea was ever totally valid in the first place. Volvo has always been positioned as the epitome of safety, but that brand was never the only brand with safety features. So it never owned exclusive rights to that position.

Yes, things are different today than they were in the 1970's when the original concept of positioning was coined by Messrs. Trout and Reis. Yes, the proliferation of brands, sub-brands and line extensions has increased while the ability of marketers to reach masses of consumers has dwindled dramatically. Yes, there are new tools that all marketers should be exploring to discern how best to speak to today's customers.

But I've got news for you, Professor Schultz. The consumer has always been in charge.

When the marketing mavens in Atlanta tried to foist a new version of Coca-Cola on the world, consumers said no in dramatic fashion. The marketing business has always had its share of Edsels when consumers refused to buy into the marketer's attempts to position the product in the consumer's mind. Do you remember Quadraphonic sound, Apple Newton, Apple Lisa, PC Jr., the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the USFL? These were all well-positioned, sure-fire winners until consumers said "no thanks".

So the idea that positioning is no longer valid for marketers because the consumer is now in charge doesn't resonate well with me. Nor do the arguments that marketers have limited means to communicate or that every exposure and every brand experience outside of the brand manager's voice and control is suddenly more powerful. The sum total of the actual brand experience has always been more powerful than the statements made in formal branding communications. And they always will be. The challenge for marketers today is to use that to their advantage.

No matter how wired the world becomes in the 21st Century, there will always be a need for marketers to try to position their product or service offering in the mind of the customer. There will always be a need for marketers to search for competitive niches and unmet needs, and to espouse the most salient benefits to a target group of consumers. Success, as always, will be based on whether expectations are aligned with the reality of the brand experience. And agencies can play an integral role in helping their clients define or refine their brand positioning to capitalize on the new realities of a wired world.

Is the concept of brand positioning different in today's world?
Yes.

Is the concept of brand positioning more difficult in today's world?
Absolutely.

Is the concept of brand positioning nothing more than yesterday's "baggage" and thus dead in the 21st century?
Absolutely not.

That's what makes this a great opportunity for an agency to become an invaluable asset to their client. And a great selling story for new business prospects.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

Ten Marketing Trends You Can't Afford To Ignore

It will come as no surprise to marketers in almost every business category that 2008 will be a difficult year. The economy appears headed for a recession, whether we use the “r” word or not. The credit industry is facing the repercussions of too many years of questionable decisions on credit-worthiness, and we’ve all discovered that the keyword “sub-prime” doesn’t really have anything to do with the prime interest rate. Fuel prices continue to rise, with no relief in the immediate future, no matter how much more corn we grow. The healthcare industry continues to be a mess, and the current political discourse hasn’t revealed any plausible solutions to the issues.

But even with all of these caution flags waving high, opportunities are still available for marketers that are willing to try new things and take advantage of the changes that continue to occur in our media consumption habits and attitudes toward marketing.

Here are some of the key trends that we believe will play an important role in marketing during 2008 and beyond:

1. The shift from traditional media to online and other new media alternatives will accelerate to the point that online will become a traditional medium. For several years, marketing giants like P & G, Kraft and Unilever have simple dipped their toes in the water of online marketing, with less than 10% of their marketing budgets (and their marketing efforts) devoted to alternative media. I believe that advertising in traditional broadcast and print vehicles will continue to be a staple for many advertisers, but the astounding growth of social media and the availability of broadband connections in the home environment will shift online advertising from being a secondary, or even tertiary, afterthought to one of the most important elements of a marketing program. The Internet is now used extensively by every major demographic group for information, communication and entertainment. According to Forrester, online marketing spending will triple to $61 billion over the next few years, and experts predict that online spending will account for 25 -30% of all marketing dollars by 2015.

2. The integration of off-line support for online campaigns will continue, with television playing a major role in developing that synergy. Over the past two years, we have seen an increasing use of television and other off-line media to drive customers to a web site where they can find more in-depth information. Once there, a longer form sales message can be used to tell the story and build customer loyalty. A great example of this is the current Burger King Whopper Freakout campaign. Thirty second television commercials and selected print ads direct consumers to a special web site http://www.whopperfreakout.com/, where an eight-minute, documentary-style video tells the story of how real customers reacted to a staged situation of a Burger King that no longer offered the Whopper on its menu. It is a very creative way to demonstrate a taste preference for the Whopper versus the Big Mac and other alternatives, and according to Burger King has received over 1.5 million views in its first month, about five times what a company spokesman said is considered successful.

3. E-mail marketing will continue to grow in importance, but will evolve from its current context. Consumer fatigue from mailboxes overloaded with too many unsolicited and irrelevant offers will force marketers to focus their efforts on delivering relevant messages when they are most willing to listen to them. In order to avoid consumer shutdown and rejection, marketers will need to take advantage of increased use of behavioral targeting and other analytic tools to deliver e-mail that is triggered by consumer actions, not their own promotion activity.

4. Brand loyalty and customer retention will eclipse brand awareness and customer acquisition as primary marketing goals and evaluation metrics. Past marketing tactics have focused on building broad scale awareness with a resulting belief that the more people you reach, the greater chance you have of converting a sale and acquiring a new customer. In today’s multiple-choice world, simply knowing that a product or service exists isn’t enough. In this environment, product relevance to niche market segments is a much more powerful marketing tool, and marketers should focus their efforts on building loyalty and retaining the customers they already have.

5. Word-of-mouth marketing will become more intentional as a primary marketing tool. While marketers have always hoped to achieve positive word-of-mouth due to its presumed greater credibility, word-of-mouth can no longer be a happenstance event but rather an important part of an integrated marketing program. Deliberate efforts to generate beneficial consumer conversations through viral marketing and other buzz marketing tactics will grow in importance. WOMMA, the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, reported the results of a national survey in their November conference that identified word-of-mouth marketing as the "fastest-growing segment of the $254 billion marketing services sector," and reported that "Brand marketers are responding, and have begun to increase their WoM media budgets, moving from test phase to implementations that support their integrated marketing campaigns." We caution marketers, though, to be transparent and honest in their efforts, or they will face the wrath of the FTC who has announced they will pay close attention to "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" such as the recently reported scandal created by John P. Mackay, co-founder of Whole Foods Market. Mr. Mackay has admitted that he used a pseudonym to log more than 1,100 entries on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board to champion his company’s stock and to blasting a rival – Wild Oats Market. In an era where corporate greed and ethics are so top-of-mind, this was not only illegal, it was stupid.

6. SEO and SEM will become SOP. A recent study by Anderson Analytics ranked search engine optimization as one of the more significant tools to create bottom line impact for a company. As more marketers become aware of the power of complementing organic search with a proactive use of keywords and keyword ads that link to specific landing pages on their website, this use of search engine optimization and search engine marketing will become standard elements of their marketing program.

7. Social marketing will continue to grow dramatically as targeted consumer networked communities become more popular. Web 2.0 has opened the door for unprecedented interaction and consumer-generated content, and marketers should pay attention to new ways that consumers are interfacing across the web. Facebook was the darling in 2007, grabbing attention from MySpace and YouTube, but the real growth in social marketing will come from social network sites that are targeted to consumer niches from teens (e.g. Pizco and Tagged) to seniors (e.g. Eons) to photographers (e.g. Flickr) to mothers with children (e.g. momseasychair) to business networking and job seekers (e.g. LinkedIn and Plaxo).

8. Blogging may be right for some companies, but only if they do it right and are willing to accept the consequences. As we noted earlier, transparency will be crucial to avoid any backlash from disgruntled consumers who can smell manipulation a mile away. Companies must be careful when using tools like blogs, vlogs and Podcasts or face the wrath of a networked audience that can love you one minute and hate you the next. Some forward-thinking companies have created a new executive position of Blog Monitor to be able to respond quickly to new issues as they arise, or to correct misinformation that can damage a company unfairly.

9. Going Green is no longer a luxury or an option; it must be addressed by every marketer in every category. Since the original Earth Day in 1967, marketing periodicals have been saying that green marketing was the next big thing. It wasn’t then, but it is now. Every day, another brand finds both direct and indirect ways to commit to a sustainable future. A recent national study among marketing executives at a VP-level or higher listed “green marketing” as one of the most important emerging concepts. Once again, we want to caution marketers to avoid over-hyping any half-hearted efforts. If you are committed, flaunt it. If you aren’t, don’t try to fake it.

10. Consumer engagement will displace the traditional interruption-disruption model as the order of the day in all categories. For decades, consumers have understood that if they wanted to experience free content in the form of television entertainment, radio broadcasts, and news and weather reports in their daily newspaper, they would have to put up with ads. Ads were seen as a necessary evil to support the content consumers really wanted to see. But the rise of broadband connections, satellite radio, cell-phones, TIVO, and other forms of digital communication now allow consumers to control their media content and easily avoid advertising they don’t want to see. When this is combined with less trust in advertisers and their messages, and a greater ability to create their own content with the help of blogs, social networks, wikis and other digital-communication platforms, irrelevant content will not be tolerated. This doesn’t mean that advertising is doomed. It simply means that as marketers we must do a better job of engaging consumers with content that is so compelling, relevant and entertaining that they will seek it out and even share it with others. As Geoff Ramsey, CEO and co-founder of New York-based eMarketer.com put it in a recent article, “the new ad model is about creating great content and finding clever ways to embed it in the fabric of communities and content platforms where consumers are hanging out and actively participating”.


Understanding and responding to the aforementioned trends will have little effect if we, as marketers, can’t find better ways to truly engage our customers. 2008 offers great challenges, but will also offer unprecedented opportunities. A.G. Lafley, chairman – CEO, Procter & Gamble had this to say about 2008, “We need to reinvent the way we market to consumers. We need a new model. It does not exist. No one else has one yet. But we need to get going now.”

For marketers to answer that call-to-action challenge, they must “get going now” to look for new ways to connect with their customers. The future belongs to those marketers who can out-smart their competition rather than out-spend them.


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