ISEdb.COM

Well I am at Search Engine Strategies San Jose; the weather is
beautiful, the company great and the discussions so far excellent. The
following are point form notes from an interesting seminar
that discussed how search can be used to aid in branding instead of
just as a direct response sales vehicle. Each point, stat or anecdote
is in itself intriguing but overall add up to a helpful overview of how
to use search to brand. Please brace yourself, however, this discussion
went to many edges of the marketing universe so this post will have
gems from many disciplines.

• URLs vs Name Brand:
  the big advertisements are more often recommending prospects search for
  their name online rather than provide a URL. This is because a high
  percentage (sorry can’t remember the #) of prospects cannot remember
  the URL later but have little problem remembering the brand.
  
  
• Cover Your Assets: When
  advertising offline make certain to buy paid placements for the many
  potential misspellings from your campaign. This recommendation also
  includes purchasing the applicable misspellings of the campaign URL for
  those that use it. If you fail to cover these gaps you can lose a
  substantial number of potential buyers.
  
  
• The Special K Campaign: One
  of the speakers noted a branding campaign that many of us likely
  witnessed during the 2006 Christmas/New Years season by Kellogs. The
  concept of the popular TV commercial was that Special K wanted to help
  you in your bid to become healthier. The crossover to the Internet
  occurred when anyone typed in “Special K” into Yahoo (who was a
  participant in this campaign) they were provided with a co-branded
  customized search result page that provided targeted routes for users.
  One such route was to a forum area where users could get help and ask
  questions about their bid to get healthier. The other was a co-branded
  tips section where there was plenty of advice on snack eating,
  associated diets, food myths, etc.
  
  So what does this branding
  campaign demonstrate? Special K took an approach that is now the spirit
  of social marketing; they were not directly asking people to buy
  Special K but they were building credibility for their brand by
  partnering with their prospects in their bid to get healthier.
  Brilliant!
  
  
• A Funny Bit About Contextual: I
  have never been a big fan of contextual advertising so when the search
  agency representatives on the panel were asked how they felt contextual
  worked into their marketing plans I perked up. What I heard made me
  grin ear to ear… the panelists seemed a bit perplexed for a moment
  and then in their own turn essentially said contextual advertising was
  only considered with any money that was left in a campaign. In other
  words…. forget about it unless you have some pennies to spare and you
  want to really blanket the world.
  
  
• How will the growth of universal search affect paid search marketing?:
  I was surprised by the answer to this question. Essentially the agency
  panelists agreed that universal search could be bad for paid
  advertising. The reason they cited was the more accurate organic search
  becomes the less likely it is that searchers will act on paid
  advertisements. I was surprised more by their candor than anything. In
  my opinion they are entirely correct which is why I firmly believe that
  organic search engine optimization is a key component to every online
  marketing campaign.
  
  
• Yahoo Universal Search: Yahoo
  representative Kelly Graziadei noted that Yahoo is currently testing
  various forms of universal search within its results. One such example
  can be seen by searching for “Transformers”. In this instance Yahoo has
  decided to keep the top 10 organic rankings intact but they have
  preceded them with a graphic enticing viewers to check out the movie
  trailer to the popular movie or see reviews and find show times in
  their zip code.
  
  
• Local Better than International: Scott
  Linzer, Director of Search Marketing at Universal McCann loosely noted
  that the campaigns which made the more time consuming foray into
  creating locally targeted campaigns experienced a better bang for their
  advertising dollar in contrast to the more common national approach.
  
  
• PPC and Organic are a Logical Pairing:
  both of the agency advocates noted that even after achieving a #1
  ranking for a specific term there are direct benefits to continuing
  with a paid campaign for the very same term. To back this up they
  stressed the benefit of multiple locations for branding but they made
  an additional point that I thought very logical: the content within
  paid advertisements are easier to control and to revise to improve
  clickthroughs than organic rankings currently are.
  
  
• What is a Reasonable Conversion Percentage?: I
  asked Scott Linzer this question and his response was that 2 percent
  was a reasonable conversion expectation for a paid campaign. Any lower
  than 2 percent requires serious scrutiny and continued testing. Of
  course, I expect no one ever stops testing. I should note that the
  company Scott works for, Universal McCann, handles a great deal of
  Microsoft’s paid advertising so I was happy to get his opinion on this
  question.

There you are ladies and gentlemen. I will have more
to come on Wednesday. For now I am signing off and preparing for the
next day of fun. All the best, Ross Dunn.