Asking these companies what they wanted to achieve most from their digital marketing activities, those in the B2B space wanted to generate leads on which their sales efforts could close the deal.  For those in the B2C space it was all about generating sales.  In response to the question about how they measure their digital marketing success, all companies said overall website traffic was their main benchmark, followed by lead generation and sales.

For all companies, search engine marketing (SEO and Paid Search) was their most effective lead generation and sales tactic, with 75% of companies indicating so.  This was followed by social media marketing, which was reported 25% of the time as having the biggest positive impact.  As the social media world evolves, it appears companies are learning that social media may be a more of a branding and awareness tool than a lead generation and sales tool.

Furthermore, the survey asked for responses relative to social media marketing – specifically with which social networks the participating firms were most active – and separated it between those in the B2B and B2C space.  Not surprisingly, Facebook was by far the dominant network for B2B.  For B2B companies there was a more even distribution of activity.   When asked if they had ever generated leads from their social media marketing activities, LinkedIn was found to be the most effective lead generation source for B2B, while Facebook clearly was the leader on the B2C side.

Finally, responding firms were asked about their marketing budget allocations and how they will change going into 2012.  Historically, search engine marketing has dominated marketing budgets with 60%+ going to this medium, and 10-15% going to social media depending in what space they operate.

This is a great, revealing survey but what does this mean to you and your business, and what should you do?  The following two graphs show what has been and what will be marketing investment allocations going forward into the new year.  Here are some suggestions:

1. Who are your main competitors and how are they positioned in the search engines compared to you?  Search engines being the most positive online lead and sales generation tactic, it is important to assess your positioning here and decide how to allocate marketing budget and what search engine strategy makes the most sense for you.
2. Depending on what space you operate in (B2B or B2C) you should evaluate your positioning in Facebook and LinkedIn.  Are your competitors active in these mediums?  How good is their content and is this an opportunity for you to develop a specific “personality” in FB or LI and carve out a niche for yourself?
3. Ask someone knowledgable in this space for what he/she sees working for other companies.  Search engine marketing may be the best lead and sales generation tactic, but it may not be best for your type of company.  Same with social media.  It is attractive because it is essentially free, but it can also be time consuming.  Do your customers want to interact with you on the social networks?  Are your customers even using social networks for their business dealings?  These are all questions you can ask yourself and someone else to determine where your marketing budgets should be allocated.

Being the behemoth it is, Google has the existing connectivity to bring a large audience into Google+ and position the platform as a true player in social networking, likely their initial intent – and there’s nothing wrong with that!  Check out this video on YouTube.  It provides a good intro about Google +. 

Video about Google Plus

Google + is simply another online social media platform that enables people (and soon businesses) to create different networks (they are called “Circles”) of people you know and want to “socialize” with. 

One of the many great things about Google + is that you can create many Circles.  You can create a Circle for just your family, or just for work, or just for friends, etc., etc., etc.  You can also reach out and “follow” people just like Twitter, Facebook.  You can put some people you know into multiple Circles.  It’s awesome – you’ve got to get in there and check it out.  Just go to https://plus.google.com/#, sign into Google and begin creating some Circles. 

Is Google + for businesses who want to brand themselves and gain visibility on this platform?  Well, not quite yet but soon to come.  It is expected that Google will soon open the network to businesses and they expect demand to be huge.  In the short term, if an individual wants to create a Circle comprised solely of their co-workers, this can be done and used as a collaboration tool within the firm. 

Google seems to be taking a cautious approach to maintain the credibility of the platform, and I like that.  I even read recently that Google is challenging the integrity of some of the profiles being created.  Someone by the name of Rowan Thunder was banned from the platform because the name sounded like it could be questionable, and Google has since allowed Rowan in because he is a real, legit person.  Facebook seems to have become the “wild west” and it is refreshing to be able to start anew with creating online communications networks with others you know.

What’s ahead for Google +?  A lot!!!  There’s a good deal of talk about games coming to the platform, and this will be a direct hit to Facebook.  Also, the platform is rapidly expanding globally, although the US is by far has the biggest user population.  There is talk about photo sharing and event planning features coming to the platform.  It seems that Google is coming after the social media scene aggressively and it will be interesting to see how it and Facebook play out.  Competition will only make the platforms better for everyone involved.         

One last item not talked about too much yet but will certainly have an impact.  Since Google has virtually double the market share of any other search engine, having all this information about you and your friends will most certainly effect your search results.  I’m certain there will be a great deal of interesting information coming out about this in the future.

There is little question that SMB’s value word-of-mouth as the most effective way to acquire new customers.  Social media certainly can result in greater brand and top-of-mind-awareness and it is pretty cost effective if the personnel involved are highly skilled and productive at it. Interestingly, search engine optimization was considered fourth on the list.  After that, advertising in the more traditional sense is taking a lesser and lesser position on the list of what is important to new customer acquisition.  

On the contrary, a different survey sponsored by MerchantCircle found that local small businesses were more likely to say search engine optimization was a more effective channel than social media, at 40.2% vs. 36.7%.  Because some social media platforms like Facebook have become part of the very fabric of our society, people know how to use them and the learning curve is relatively easy.  On the other hand, the costs, technical challenges and mystique of search engine optimization may be discouraging factors to more SMB’s using this marketing approach.

I wonder if a survey was conducted with SMB’s who are doing both social media marketing and search engine optimization, whether these business owners would say social media or search engine optimization was better at actually generating leads.  Our experience clearly indicates at this point in time that search engine optimization is far more effective at actual lead generation.  After all, what better situation can you have then a qualified customer going to Google, typing in a search phrase to find a product or service provider and virtually asking who out there has what I am looking for?  I mean, think about it. 

Now, this is not to say social media marketing should be ignored in favor of search engine optimization.  Considering the social media trends we are seeing, both are critically important and should be considered for serious investment.  The nuances of your target market, their shopping and buying patterns and the strength of your competition are all factors to be considered to determine how much of each is right for you.

Having been a part of the online social and marketing space for nearly 7 years, here’s what I expect to see take shape in 2011.

Social media analytics

Following up behind 2010 will be more options and services that can help you establish the impact of your social campaigns. Be weary of straight up Social Media ROI solutions that are fast to put a dollar amount on every retweet and every Facebook ::like::. I’m all for accountability and data, but I don’t think the social space has matured enough for us to understand how A leads to Z.

In a blog I wrote several months back, I advised to stop trying to measure every social media effort. While I took a little heat from this, I stand by my words. My point then was most companies struggle enough with trying to get any meaningful social media strategy and culture going. Focusing too much on the numbers too early on is like building a moat around a brick wall – it’s not like you needed the help in stopping forward progress. Instead, in 2011, I think more of the companies that are diving in head first by hiring full time social media teams along with those that are becoming established can begin to dive into the data and put some accountability on the sweat equity.

Mobile sites/engagement

I hope to see more brands invest in a mobile strategy by going beyond just a mobile friendly site or iAd impression. It seems the infrastructure for one online platform to work in collaboration with another is being laid faster than highways in China – take for example an iPhone app that’s nothing more than a shiny interfaces for a website or network. Is adopting to a smartphone world just about smart phone compatibility of your website or is there something we’re missing – something we haven’t quite seen yet. This one is harder to pinpoint but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a game changing mobile strategy hit the seen in the months ahead.

Social Authority Optimization

With Google and Bing now using social media authority as a search engine ranking factor, we will become more obsessed with optimizing social media profiles. Let me explain…

“Social media optimization” started to make a name for itself back in 2008. The goal of “social media optimization” was to optimize your social network profiles well enough that when you search their brand or service, their social media profile showed up in the search results. This was a way to get more real estate on the first page of Google. The recent changes to Google and Bing’s algorithm is something different. This new algorithm change means Google and Bing poll your social media authority/activity as a factor in ranking your website. Think of it like this:

Rankings = site optimization + links + social media awesomeness*

What I’m calling social authority optimization** accounts for this and it think we’ll see a lot more of it in 2011

*this is a very oversimplified example – don’t take it too literally

**for the record, I think buzz words are silly – but for the sake of differentiation pardon my silliness

Privacy concerns

Facebook had its fair share of privacy uproars in 2010 and I think they’re hardly out of the woods yet. And with more web analytic platforms and services popping up (some of which track you on an eerily detailed level), and the implications of wikileaks on net neutrality, we may begin to see the kind of paranoia that keeps Winona Ryder off the web.

Local

The new local focus of Google search results is like that minor leaguer who not only got called up to the majors, but is now being asked to bat cleanup in the playoffs. The elements that rank a site in the search engines changes all the time (remember last year at this time when there was such a thing as a Yahoo search algorithm?), but with Google now integrating these local search results into their primary listings, we’re seeing one of the more significant facelifts to Google than we’ve seen in a long time. Google also just began promoting it’s shiny new Google Places iPhone app, making valuable information – like reviews – more accessible (why the Google Maps app on the iPhone still omits reviews is beyond me).

The only thing holding back the impact of this into 2011 is that it’s mostly only relevant to local businesses (location irrelevant? move along – nothing to see here).

Something/someone gets shaken up considerably

This one I’m leaving wide open, but I think we’re either going to see a new major player hit the stage and/or watch a big one leave. With Facebook prepping for a 2012 IPO, the amalgamation of social awesomeness and organic search, the significance of local, growing privacy concerns and history as our guide, I think there will be something very different about January 2012 compared to January 2011.

So with all this talk and importance on local search, it’s important to ask if local search is even relevant to your business. In short, if a search for what your business offers includes a geographic reference, then yes. If, on the other hand,  the address of your business is irrelevant, then this change wouldn’t be applicable to your search engine visibility.

“But Google already auto-generated my listing. Is there anything else I need to do? ”

Yes! Claim it, populate it and track the impact.

Google tries to use the information it finds across the web to generate and display the most relevant search results possible. It’s possible that Google found your address, verified it through other sources on the web, and created a listing for your business. If you want to know if this is the case for your business, try doing a Google search for your business name + the city you’re located in. If you don’t see a map with your address pop up, click the “maps” link at the top of the page. If you have an auto-generated listing, you would see it here.

While it’s nice to have the added visibility, these auto-generated listing often have insufficient, or even outdated information about your business. This is when it becomes important to claim and populate these listings with as much information as possible about your business.

Once you’ve had your listing claimed, Google will give you data through the Google Places interface. This data can be insightful in terms of understanding how many times your listing shows and how many times it was clicked – however it doesn’t go as far as to tell you what happens once that visitor comes to your site. With just a little extra configuration, you can track these visitors back to your site and see how they accomplish your site goals right alongside your organic and paid traffic.

Takeaways:
If location has any significance on your business, you should take local search seriously. If you’ve already been targeting SEO, you could be poised to have a favorable, immediate impact on local targeting. This isn’t the end of quest, as it’s important to have these listings optimized to ensure they show as high and as often as possible, and then add the appropriate configuration to track these visitors back to your site. After all, it’s all about getting the visitor to take the right actions. And wherever you choose to invest your time and resources ultimately needs to be held accountable.

Here’s how it works (I’ve substituted the actual names for fictional ones):

Someone is looking to have their yard professionally landscaped. Their neighbors used Pristine Lawn Service and raved at the quality and price of their work so they decide to look them up online. They go to Google and search ‘Pristine Lawn Service Richmond.’ Among all the Google search results is www.pristinelawns.biz. As a person looking for the Pristine Lawn company, this seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. I click the listing, but instead of landing on the Pristine Lawns website, I arrive at the Awesome Yards website.

And that’s it: the Awesome Yards company has captured people looking for their competitor by purchasing a variation of their domain.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF REDIRECTS:

If the Awesome yard example above sounds like a strategy you’re interested in using for your business, then allow me to break down two common ways to exploit website redirects and the accompanying “world of hurt” you might be setting yourself up for:

One way: You buy thousands of keyword-rich domain names (web addresses) and have them redirect to your site. For example, my business is LeoneWidgets.com and I market to Richmond, VA. I could buy RichmondWidgets.com, WidgetsinRichmondVA.com, BestRichmondWidgets.com, and have them all just redirect back to my site. This would be like receiving thousands of great new links (if you don’t understand how search engines rank sites, having a link to your site is analogous to getting a vote or endorsement for your site. If the link has your keyword within it, the link (or vote), looks even better.)

Another way (The Awesome Lawn Method): You buy several domain names that will attract visitors to click on them when they display in Google. These can be competitor names, other relevant sounding domain names, etc.. Using the above example, I might buy variations of my competitors’ sites, like DansDoodads.biz, EricsThingamajigs.biz, PaulsKnicknacks.net, etc. The idea is these domains will get ranked throughout the search engines when someone searches my competitors. So, when someone thinks they are going to my competitor, they actually arrive at LeoneWidgets.com. Note: this will do nothing to rank LeoneWidgets.com higher in the search engine. Instead, I’m just taking up more real estate.

PENALTIES

The most glaring problem with both of these methods is that they are very, very easy to detect for search engines. Google, for example, is an accredited registrar (meaning you can purchase domains though Google). This provides Google access to domain ownership information so they know who owns what and what they’re doing with it. Secondly, search engines like Google and Bing are only as good as their search results. As such, they dedicate some of their most brilliant minds to finding and identifying deceptive practices. If the search engines think you are trying to get more real estate than you are fairly entitled to, they will catch you.

MONEY BETTER SPENT ELSEWHERE

Domains are cheap. But buying them in bulk as a search engine strategy can quickly add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. A small price if effective, but the risk you take can easily cost you much more. If you want more rankings and more traffic your effort, time and money can be spent doing things like:

- Optimizing the website for targeted keywords and easy crawling by the search engines
- Writing valuable, resourceful content that can earn links back to your site
- Optimizing local map listings in Google and Bing

The most important takeaway from this story is that a strategy that can be considered deceptive by some probably will be deceptive in the eyes of a search engine. There are so many opportunities to get high rankings and relevant traffic using white-hat methods that it’s not worth taking the risk with grey and black hat strategies. Do it the right way and you will be rewarded.

[Let me clarify that there are technical issues that do exist in some iPhone 4 models. This has been proven as fact. What I'm more interested in is how the product has performed in terms of overall sales and customer satisfaction]

In case you missed everything that transpired regarding the launch of the iPhone 4, here’s a very quick breakdown…

• Apple releases iPhone 4. Everyone happy and excited.

• Within 24 hours, people report that touching a specific part of the phone causes bars to drop. Blogs post videos, but reports still limited.

• Within a few days, more and more people report the same issue. Frustration beginning to mount among customers.

• Apple announces software update to fix number of bars reported on phone. Not meant to be fix for “dead spot” on phone.

• Consumer reports performs its own tests and says it can no longer recommend iPhone 4 until a free fix is in place. Mainstream news now picking up story.

• Apple holds press conference 23 days after initial launch. Presents data suggesting problems and dis-satisfaction among customers isn’t nearly as widespread as is being reported online.

Apple wasn’t denying that certain problem existed. Instead, they were trying to paint a bigger picture. Something the individual reviews and blogs had failed to do. Here are some key data points Apple presented in their press conference.

• For every 100 calls made, the iPhone 4 drops less than 1 more call than its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS

• Only 1.7% of iPhone 4 users have returned their phone as opposed to the 6% return rate of the 3GS

• Percentage of users who have called Apple Care regarding their iPhone reception: .55%

The internet did a great job of sensationalizing this story and blowing reality out of proportion. As it turns out, the iPhone 4 launch was more successful than the iPhone 3GS in most respects when it comes to customer satisfaction. And in case you hadn’t been following last year, the 3GS launch was thought to be smooth and without incident.

Prior to Apple’s response, everyone was relying on the emotion and limited personal tests to draw conclusions about the phone. Beyond reporting the “dead spot” on the phone, people began to conclude that 1) everyone was having this problem, and 2) everyone wanted a replacement. The data simply says otherwise. Is it possible we fall into similar traps when it comes to our internet marketing decisions? Do you ever find yourself drawing conclusions based on emotion without having data to back up your claim? Have you ever found yourself saying:

“Our website is terrible. I doubt it generates a single lead.”
“We’re paying for all this traffic but I don’t think it’s getting us a single call.”
“I have this feeling our marketing dollars could be better spent somewhere else.”

If you’ve ever thought any of the above, or worse, acted on it, you may have done yourself a disservice. You may have redesigned a site that didn’t need to be fixed or cancelled the most profitable marketing campaign in your company’s history. On the flip-side, you may have actually been right all along. The real shame is that we don’t know for sure. We only relied on our emotion and hunches instead of logic and data. Our website and company may be worse off for it.

Let’s say Scott is responsible for all leads that come into your business. When meeting with Scott to evaluate the productivity of your internet marketing campaigns, what would you like to hear and see in his presentation?

A) “The phone does seem to ring more since we started the campaign. We still have web forms coming in regularly. I can’t tell you how many more calls we’re getting each month but it does feel like a boost compared to before. When I ask, people will tell me if they used a search engine to find us, but they can’t be specific if they originated from SEO or PPC.

or would you rather have Scott present this:

B) The following is a breakdown of the number of leads generated and whether they originated from PPC or SEO traffic. I’ve used our monthly investment to calculate the cost per individual lead so we can determine which campaign is more profitable.

The first scenario was subject to being biased by Scott’s emotions. Initial skepticism or optimism would have a significant impact on how Scott reported the change in leads coming in since they launched their SEO and PPC campaign. Had he wanted the campaigns to work, he would be more likely to say he felt a significant boost in the leads coming in. Had he been skeptical and advised against the initial investment, he would have been more inclined to say it wasn’t working. In this case, he reports a “boost,” but we have little else to go on. Biases aside we didn’t have a single numerical figure to go off of.

In the second scenario, we let the data tell the story. We’ve removed the human element and instead let the numbers dictate the result of the internet marketing campaign. SEO works, PPC works better, but both are contributing favorably. This is the same approach Steve Jobs presented in his press conference. By doing so he was able to paint a clearer picture and restore faith in the iPhone 4′s brand and future.

Using data isn’t just another way to make an argument. It’s a way to remove biases and extraneous variables and put a clear, numerical and economical value on a result. In the case of the iPhone 4, everyone jumped to conclude that it was a complete and utter failure. In reality, we were only listening to those that reported problems. We tuned out the thousands of people who reported having zero issues with their new phone. Relatively speaking, making the same mistakes with our marketing dollars can be just as costly – if not more. As we work to refine, optimize and reallocate our marketing dollars, we need to ask “why” and make sure we have the appropriate data to back up our decisions.

That experience got me to thinking during the remainder of my drive about excesses in our lives, and I wondered if this held true for us in when it comes to the field of Internet Marketing.  When is enough, well, simply enough?  Someone probably has named a law for it, but demand in our lives always seems to fill capacity.  Our lifestyles seem to expand to consume our income.  Hard drives fill up.  I remember my first Mac notebook computer had a 20 MB hard drive.  Oh the joy after a couple of years when I doubled it to 40 MB, allowing me to keep up with apps such as MS Office that seemed to be bloating with code even then.  I couldn’t envision a day when hard drives would store hundreds of gigabytes, or what we could do with all that space.

A 28 kbps dial-up modem allowed me to transfer text files and the occasional image, albeit slowly.  That seemed fine at the time, but then came DSL, then cable modems, and now fiber optics.  At each step consumption seemed to keep pace, with large video files that could be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time, and now stream real-time.

That leads me to the field of Internet Marketing.  On the negative side, there are certainly excesses when it comes to spam emails, and there is an ongoing battle with techniques to limit the number reaching our Inboxes.  In terms of white hat marketing techniques, advances in bandwidths and device speeds are leading to rapid changes.  A few years ago designers were placing waving flags and sparkles on web pages to attract user attention.  This gave way to downloadable white papers and embedded video files, making the browsing experience more interesting and interactive for the user.  

The key now is for us to use advances in technology to provide users with meaningful, rewarding experiences.  Lists should be segmented so people receive mailings that they are interesting in reading.  Use videos not just to grab attention, but to convey information to a website visitor that would be difficult or take too long to communicate with words alone.

In summary, we need to avoid going after the quick hit, the “sugar high” in our marketing approaches, because it rarely leads to loyal, long term customers.  Providing fresh, targeted, meaningful content, and keeping abreast of advances in technology is a good way to build company awareness and brand loyalty.

I was looking around for a nifty way of examining load issues on clients sites. I wanted some way of quickly pin pointing which images/files were causing the issue (or the delay was even being caused by site file sizes in the first place!). I discovered a cool little site called Pingdom that did the job.

Simply enter a URL and even check the save URL box. Pingdom drills down through your file load times and display in KB each different component of the page. It also gives you an outline summary of basic info about the site, how many images, style sheets, plugin, redirects, external objects etc. Simple and neat it does what I needed!

But Pingdom is more than just that, it is also an uptime and performance monitoring system. The system lets you know if you site has gone down, gives you uptime reports, response time reports and connects nicely to Twitter, SMS and Email to alert you if troubles a-brewing.

SEO and PPC work well togehter in two ways: 1) brand strength and 2) branding vs. promotion.

Brand Strength: Studies have shown that when a company has 1st page placement in the Sponsored Links (PPC) and in the organic listings (SEO), it creates a synergistic approach.  See the PackandRide.com example below.  For example, PPC listings typically get about 24% of click-throughs on a SERP (search engine results page), while SEO gets the remaining 76%.  That equals 100%.  However, when 1st page placement is achieved for both SEO and PPC, the click-through rate exceeds 100% – that is, it is not 1+1=2, but rather 1+1=2+.  The theory here is that brand strength and click-throughs are heightened when the searcher sees multiple listings for the same company.

Search Engine Optimization

Branding vs. Promotion:  SEO is the best long-term branding strategy online, but what about promoting a certain product or service – or what happens when an important search phrase is so competitive that you can’t get it onto page 1.  That’s where PPC can close the gap.  Let’s say you are in the moving business.  You hear about a military post being relocated but the search phrase “military moves” isn’t one of your targeted search phrases for SEO.  So, you go after that term on the PPC side and position yourself to generate traffic from the recent announcement about moving the military base.

In summary, PPC and SEO both have their places in search engine marketing.  Used at the right times in the right places, you can achieve significant, long term brand strength online as well as have the agility to responsd to current events and opportunities to promote your products and services.