Manhattan Marketing Maven

The Latest SEO Intelligence

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is marketing alchemy. Everybody wants it, Nobody knows what it really is or how it really works. And the hype served up by agencies hawking it is impenetrable.

Enter MarketingSherpa, once again soliciting and organizing the collective insight of practitioners and selling it back to us as the 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide. Here are the highlights of this year's survey of 2475 marketers and 711 agency pros as interpreted by yours truly:

Natural search, the cat-and-mouse process of changing keywords, tags, headers and burying clues for spiders behind the presentation layer that is becoming synonymous with the term SEO, is being done by one-third of marketers lead by the big guys, who are doing it 30% more than the rest of us.

45% of us are betting our pay-per-click (PPC) chips on Google, which for all but the top spenders is the whole act. 84% of the little guys and 75% of the big guys, those who spend more than $25K on search, see Google as having a well deserved dominance with the best ROI for the money. The big guys are buying Yahoo, MSN and vertical players mostly to average out their cost-per-clicks (CPC) and because they have the cash and the patience to experiment with the wannabes and also-rans.

Search is perceived to pay off better than PR and direct mail, way better than the all-but-dead banner ad and 4 times better than print ads. Though search isn't seen as strong as banging away at our house e-mail lists. Maybe that's why PPC claims just 40% of online marketing budgets, which are less than 1/4 of overall marketing budgets. Despite the relatively light investment levels, more than half of all respondents think natural and PPC search is a strong tactic with a good ROI -- just don't ask us to prove it.

Measurement is still a big issue. We are counting clicks something ill-defined called "actions" orders, page views, unique site visitors and time spent on site all by way of trying to understand what searchers do, what separates buyers from tire-kickers and what justifies handing over hard cold currency to Google?

We are slowly training a cadre of in-house people to do search marketing. Between 34-44% don't think finding in-house full-time employees is any more difficult than finding other skilled marketing players. That said a lot of us a eager to outsource this process which is labor and software intensive when done properly.

So far the survey says our best tactics to improve search effectiveness appear to be (in ascending order of potency)

1. Create clear buttons to click on and easy forms to fill out

2. Display trust symbols like Hacker Safe

3. Build in the phrases people actually use when searching into your natural search terms and buy the phrases as keywords. Mirror the way your customer thinks, talks and searches.

4. Don't let searchers leave the page. Remove the navigation. Force them to either buy or abandon.

5. Create dedicated landing pages for each search term. Take clickers exactly to the product they clicked on. Then romance the product, make them an offer and call the question.

E*Trade Sucks

E*Trade gives with one hand and takes back with the other. Poor web design, bad interfaces and maddening customer service leads me to defect, complain publicly and encourage others to escape from these clowns.

They come on with relatively high interest rates on savings accounts to get you in the door. Then you're  trapped in their evil clutches. I had a small windfall in January and parked it with them. Now a need for quick cash arose so I go to the site to transfer money quickly to my checking account. They present a "Quick Transfer" feature so I click. I so fell for this.

I start the process, the site crashes. I enter the data nothing happens. I do it several times. Then I figure out I need to create and verify an external account to receive the transfer. I enter the data -- zap. On the third try it verifies my external account. I'm annoyed but still hopeful.

Then I try to transfer the cash and --- nada. I hit the same page again and again in a weird loop. I keep ending up in the same place. Nowhere does it explain I need to get a passcode, wait a while and then hop on one foot.

I dial the 800 number and work my way through the phone tree and --zap. I'm hung up on. Swearing a blue streak, veins pulsing in my neck, I try again and connect to Mary Lyn Pena in Manila.  She takes my information, bit by bit thanking me and apologizing, thanking and apologizing. This might be even more maddening than the technical glitches.

I feel my blood pressure rising. At first she doesn't have the web site up. Then she does but doesn't really know how to direct me. I'm reading her the screen and we're like two blind people in a blizzard. Then she lets on that since my external account is verified in the computer, I can wire in money instantly but I can't wire my money out for 24 hours.

Now I know things have been tough for online banks, but if they need another day's interest on my little boodle, they are really in trouble. Mary Lin asks to put me on hold. She apologizes and thanks one more time for good measure. Meantime the passcode finally shows up in my e-mail. By now I have a full head of steam. But wait there's more -- I missed the daily wire transfer deadline. They'll send me my money 24 hours from now. Maybe they do need my cash for the overnight sweep to keep the doors open.

Bottom line -- rather than transfer a small amount to cover my immediate need I clean out the account and digitally flea from my relationship with E*Trade.

Who are these guys kidding? We live in a 24/7/365 digital world where billions are transfered electronically every minute. There's no excuse to screw around with customer's funds. And if you can't keep a website up and give customers a quick, painless, clear, intuitive process flow, don't be an Internet bank.

Brands Wanna Be Your New Best Friend

Brands want to be wherever you are and do whatever you are doing. Your favorite brand is your new best friend.

Anxious about the reduced pulling power of advertising in a fragmented digital media world, brands are looking to create direct relationships with customers. So read Louise Story's breathless prose in the New York Times on October 14th.

Ever heard this one before?

This is the latest in a long line of pendulum swings where big brands remember that identifying and talking directly to proven customers is way cheaper and much persuasive than blasting ads in all media into an empty void. The usual attention span for and tolerance of brand marketers for this kind of "direct" marketing usually lasts 6 months, one TV season or the run of a new brand campaign; whichever comes first.

Nike is cited at the head of the pack for creating exercise tools and online experiences that help connect their customers to exercise, sports and other customers with similar interests. But many brands are formulating plans to collect names, create digital experiences and mix-it-up live with their customers. This isn't exactly a new marketing tactic, even though the exodus of dollars from traditional media might be.

The perennial marketing question isn't "Should we mix it up with customers?" It is "How do we do it credibly and sustain focus with dynamic content over time without becoming magazine publishers, site builders or TV producers -- far from our core business?" This is a particularly pointed issue for insurgent brands who don't have Nike's bankroll or bandwidth to experiment with messages and evolving media.

Finding the right answer for your brand is a bit easier than you think. Here are 6 starting tips:

1. Watch your customers closely. Figure out what they do and what they have in common. Then decide what you can bring to their party.

2. Identify your best or core customers -- the one's that talk you up and the ones that buy a lot and buy frequently. Collect the data and monitor behavior. Forget what they say. Watch what they buy.

3. Ask your best customers what they think. Test your ideas with them. Ask them to guide you. You'll be surprised at how eager they are to speak their minds.

4. Don't promise what you can't deliver. Start small and iterate. You don't want to piss off your best customers nor do you want to dilute the brand equity you've built. It's always easier to add more than to explain away a stretch plan gone awry.

5. Give customers what they want. Don't be seduced by the fad of the moment or what the other guys are doing. Often your customers want something simple and basic. Giving it to them will win you many more points than building a Taj Mahal they don't care about. Prepare yourself for the possibility that your customers sort your brand into a very narrow niche in their minds or in their lives. They might just want you to produce a quality product or service and let them do the rest.

6. Put a genuine face on your brand. Customers require human interaction. They have questions, complaints, ideas and suggestions that can quickly become annoying, especially to marketers used to working at a comfortable distance from the "field" wielding PowerPoint slides. Somebody -- a real somebody -- has to own this and actually talk to customers. Otherwise your direct or relationship marketing is a fraud.     

The Case for Customer Reviews on Your Site

There is nothing more credible than a word-of-mouth review from a trusted source. The issue underlying the debate about customer reviews on manufacturer's and retailer's web sites turns on the question of credibility and trust.

Independent review sites like Zagat.com and Judy's Book are flourishing. In these cases site visitors know they are getting a pig-in-a-poke and read the reviews with a grain of salt. They also understand that the reviews are monitored and edited to insure some kind of balance and to screen out obvious wackos and shills.

On websites of firms making and selling things the expectations seem to subtlety shift. Visitors expect that the reviews are from real customers even if they aren't sure if the worst ones are edited out or if the nastiest ones are quickly responded to by the company flacks. These days it takes a fairly secure organization to air dirty laundry on the official site. Most firms are thinking about it but haven't fully committed.

And you can assume that behind-the-scenes battles range between those arguing for the a pure party line (e.g. "Everything we do is great and so are we.") and the user-generated content digerati who argue, "We are real. We sometimes screw up. Our customers love us because we are real so if we show our flaws, we confirm and validate their expectations and extend their brand loyalty."

There is evidence both ways. A Deloitte & Touche study found that for CPG products virtually all shoppers trust online reviews. In contrast a survey among Burson Marsteller's e-fluential panel found that 30 percent had problems with fake reviews or positive comments planted by corporations touting themselves.

The squirrelly element is fake reviews posing as customers touting products. There have been enough examples of this and enough outing of this practice, which already has a name, "astroturfing", to give site visitors reasons to be skeptical about the reviews posted.

It seems to me that if you make or sell anything of value, you need to stand behind your products and services. You need to give your customers the opportunity to respond to your sales process and your products by posting reviews. And while you can screen them for civility or legality and impose language standards you ought to let the public speak and let the public assess the validity or credibility of what they read on your site. Reviews are a great source of intelligence as well as a brand barometer. And frankly, the truth is going to come out anyway, better within your site than splashed across the net and out of your reach. 

Bloggers: New Targets for PR Guys

PR guys have discovered bloggers. We've become the flavor of the week because there are many more of us and we are dramatically more accessible than journalists. We are also much less reliable and much flakier.

Drew Middleton was bitching about how clueless PR people are and praised Ogilvy PR for being clueless with a credo. He sounds like many journalists who write frequently about the carpet bombing publicists do in an attempt to break through the multi-channel efforts by writers, editors and producers of all stripes in all media to erect telephonic and digital barriers to avoid random pitches.

For me its kind of funny. I've gotten a few free books, a few off-beat pitches and a lot of unwarranted praise from publicists who have found me on Google Blogs or Technorati and gush about whatever I'm doing; as if they've read me. Hey, I'm not above basking in bogus glory. I'm not getting rich from Adwords clicks.

The potential to create genuine buzz by reaching out to and persuading bloggers to gush about and link to you, your product, your service, your event or your client is driving publicity seekers to mine the blogosphere. So far a few random examples where buzz was created are motivating a million half-hearted attempts. But if you are going to give a go, consider these tips to improve your performance:

1. Read a few posts. Don't rely on the blog title or even the tags to guide you. Then craft a pitch that aligns with the general thrust and tone of the blog.

2. Many bloggers are personalities. Some are really out there. The more you can frame your pitch in their voice or based on an established point of view; the better you are likely to do.

3. Unlike real journalists we aren't bound by codes of conduct or corporate watch dogs. We can be bribed with really good freebies.Don't think a cheap hat, t-shirt, mouse pad or a book nobody else wants is a really good freebie. Many of us are smarting that we are so far under the freebie radar that we never got the free Nikon, iPod or Dell Inspiron. We can be schmeared, just do it right.

4. Many of us hope to use content to lure more, new readers. If what you are pitching can help us develop our audiences, tell us and explain how and why. You'll get much better play. Better yet -- if you can teach us a new tech trick or link us to a serious traffic source, we'll put out big time.

5. Be real. We are a savvy, skeptical lot. And we can use profanity at will without limit and go off on you much worse that official media outlets. Don't try to bullshit us or sell us something that is obviously bogus.

Monitor Mental Models to Drive Behavior

Don't underestimate the power or the value of intention. Don't assume you know what your team thinks they are doing. Direct their focus and orient their targeting.

I was struck this morning by the AM New York hawker at the subway station vocally calling attention to the ads in the free paper. She obviously was attempting to optimize the impact of rthe freebie paper to its clients. Though I wondered if she really knew what she was doing or if her bosses had tasked her to do this.

Then I thought about the CSRs at a client call center where I discovered that the management thinks the job is to sell incremental services but the workers think their job is to protect customers from the company and to issue refunds. People get an idea of what they are supposed to do and form a mental image of who the customer is. These mental models drive behavior. Assuming you want to apply the labor and energy of your team for maximum effect you need to know what they are thinking and shape the mental images that govern behavior.

In working with colleagues I am continuously surprised by the unexpected interpretations, unforseen mutations in meaning and the unexplainable individual riffs that emerge from what I thought were simple concepts and direct instructions. I've learned the hard way to routinely double-check to see that the message you think you transmitted was received and understood and that your intention, target and direction is being followed.

In calibrating expectations, there are several recurring themes:

1. Helping People. Most humans want to help others. Nobody wants to be the bad guy. Few want to sell things nobody wants. Fewer still like to collect money. Frame the task in terms of how it helps consumers though don't get too cute about it. Nobody believes that tryimng to collect money from a deadbeat customer to save them from a sherrif's lien is truly helping.

2. Flesh Out Customer Archectypes. At Ann Taylor everyobody understands who "Ann" is. They know her size, her taste, her favorite colors, her income, her habits, how she shops and what she thinks about. They  design goods to please her and shape the store and online experience to delight her. Creating a sense of the customer and setting the expectation that you want to engage customers and build sustaining, long term, relationships with them is a crucial first step.

3. Set and Reinforce Clear Goals. If the job is selling more you have an affirmative obligation to explain what you want them to sell and how much more. Remember few people can do more than 2 things well at the same time. Set clesar goals. Specify the order in which you want things done. Show how you will measure progress and results. Naturally if you can train them how to do it, provide appropriate coaching and support tools and overlay an incentive, you've got a dramatically better shot at meeting your numbers. But the baseline is defining, quantifying and clearly articulating exactly what you want.   

The more I learn about communicating the harder it is. But understanding how people process information and the mental map they draw for themselves is a necessary first step toward gewtting what you want.   

Herschell Gordon Lewis Schlockmeister Turned Copymaster

Herschell Gordon Lewis, the self proclaimed direct marketing curmudgeon-at-large pushes my buttons. 

Also a former Pittsburgher with multiple careers, he is simultaneously the most entertaining and the most annoying person I regularly read. I guess I'm not alone since Direct Magazine published two pieces from him in the current October 2007 issue coinciding with the upcoming DMA meetings in Chicago.

The Fort Lauderdale-based Mr. Lewis, who has had a parallel career as a splatter/horror film director uses all three of his names as if to distinguish himself from some other Herschell Gordon Lewis -- either a Lex Luthor-like villain tormenting writers everywhere or a Talmudic scholar addicted to wontons -- has an unusual and uncanny take on the connection between people, words and ads.

Looking down at you sternly in his half-glasses over his interlaced praying hands in his publicity picture you know you are headed toward the Principal's office. Herschell is the ultimate questioner and skeptic. Consider his take on ads "created" by " an idiotic cousin of the that troglodytic character on the insurance commercials" that we can't figure out.

"Logic and salesmanship vanish from the 'creative mix' when self-absorbed cleverness supplants connection with potential responders." 

Dedicated to using words and images to connect with customers and and provoke action, Lewis argues that "success stems from being regarded as flourishing salespeople"  which, from his perch " is what we do. We sell or we deservedly perish."  In that context he offers a stream of guidance emphasizing clarity, the imperative tense, directing the consumer and using linguistic nuances and subtle language choices to reduce or overcome consumer's natural defenses and to connect with common experiences.

He understands that Americans have common idioms, common experiences and common ways to process information. What else would you expect from the man who virtually invented the splatter film, experimented with hybrid nudie-horror films and brought us "BloodFest2: All You Can Eat" in 2002? Underlying his stream of advice and course corrections is the idea that marketers must understand and use this commonality to connect with customers and prospects. It's always about the customer. It's never about the creative person. And they must do with wit, subtlety and deftness since our customers aren't as dumb as we think they are. It's no wonder he titled his latest book, Hot Appeals or Burnt Offerings.

Part William Safire, part David Ogilvy, part high school English teacher and part MAD Magazine copywriter, Mr. Lewis, who has written 30 books including my favorite " Asinine Advertising,"  knows how we think, what we get (and don't get) and how to get us to click, call or to fill in the blanks. Its a good thing I don't have to pay royalties on every idea I've "borrowed" from him over the years.

Someday I'll meet him. Hopefully I won't say anything too stupid. Some other day, I'll be able to afford to hire him to consult on my copy. Till then I'll read him and let him push my buttons.