Charles Armstrong

The sound of crickets was all you could hear for the last few months as I devoted a significant amount of my time and attention solely to client work. However, it’s a new year and among my many resolutions is to get back on point and start posting many of my hard-earned internet marketing insights gleaned from 2008, including a good mix of current innovative tactics.

These are exciting times, as there is little doubt the state of the global economy has significantly changed the way searchers are engaging the online channel. Now, more than ever, people are utilizing the online channel to research and compare before making a purchasing decision. The cost per click continues to rise for paid search budgets while conversion figures wane. Right now, many corporations are reassessing and adjusting marketing budgets. GM recently decided that 2m for a Super Bowl ad this year was no longer a wise use of marketing spend. The smart companies are allocating dollars to the channels and campaigns that provide the best ROI and lowest CPA. I have not yet come across a business model where the online channel did not consistently provide the greatest return on investment and the lowest cost per new customer acquisition. The online landscape for marketers continues to get increasingly competitive by the day.

As a side note, I was very pleased to find one of my clients recognized as an industry leader and identified as best in practice for organic search performance in Conductor’s Natural Search Trends for Fortune 500 Companies study. These are exciting times indeed… Stay tuned!

We were taught at a young age not to talk to strangers… Nevertheless, according to a recent eMarketer article, before we hit “add to cart” we sure want to know what others have to say.
Getting objective opinions has never been easier for consumers. If they don’t personally know someone who has used a product or service, they can go online for the thoughts and experiences of millions… Most online buyers do just that.

PowerReviews and the e-tailing group found that nearly nine out of 10 US online buyers surveyed in February 2008 read customer reviews at least “some of the time” before making a purchase.
“This survey highlights the reception that reviews are receiving throughout the merchant world and how retailers are leveraging online review technology,” said Jay Shaffer, vice president of marketing at PowerReviews.

Respondents checked a fairly large number of reviews before making their purchasing decisions. Nearly seven out of 10 online buyers surveyed said they checked at least four reviews before spending their money.

The PowerReviews findings agree with other studies on user reviews. Reviews were the most-desired Web functions for US Internet users questioned in the third quarter of 2007 for Forrester Research’s “North American Technographics Customer Experience, Marketing and Consumer Technology Online Survey, Q3 2007″ report.
Nearly two-thirds of consumers surveyed said they wanted user ratings and reviews.
An October 2007 Avenue A | Razorfish study of US online shoppers found that more than one-half of those surveyed read user reviews as part of their product research.
For more on the Search Engine Optimization benefits of customer-generated content check out SEO & Social Shopping

Is 2.7mm for a 30 second TV spot enough to force marketers to align their campaigns with the on-line channel?

What do search marketers do when they are not that interested in the game? Well… quite a few of us were burning up Twitter discussing the off-line / on-line tie-in of the 2008 Super Bowl Ads. (sic)

Tide was the clear winner in the 2008 Super Bowl internet-marketing arena. Tide led the way with promotion that brilliantly tied together on-line & off-line marketing. The Tide made sure all the pieces were in-place and executed the “my talking stain” promotion flawlessly. “My talking stain” was a clever spot with prominent URL and a clear call to action at the end, directing viewers to my talkingstain.com
Although they appeared to need, more bandwidth shortly after the commercial first aired… The site is easy to find with top rankings in organic and paid search. Once on the site visitors are greeted with a huge amount of interactive content: watch the video, make your own stain ad, win prizes, download the ad, etc.
Does P&G know about social media… You bet! They had both a FaceBook and MySpace pages setup for mytalkingstain. Video sites were also covered with both YouTube and AOL.Video
NUMBER OF SPOTS: One spot
PLACEMENT: Second quarter
DETAILS: The spot will feature P&G’s Tide-to-Go instant stain remover. It is the first-ever Super Bowl appearance for Tide.
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- Well done P&G!

Audi – TruthInEngeneering.com great add… awesome website. Audi did a great job of getting this Flash only website well ranked organically before the big game… However, Audi was nowhere to be seen in PPC… they get scooped by Cadillac in PPC for “truth in engineering”
NUMBER OF SPOTS: One 60-second spot
PLACEMENT: First quarter
DETAILS: Audi’s first appearance in the game in two decades will be used to promote the R8 sports car. The spot will be based on the Godfather film series.

Career Builder spent huge budget on PPC for “super bowl” but left the door wide open and got drafted by Monster.com for “follow your heart”… Career Builder did not even bid on the title of their own spot (and the commercial was just creepy)
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two spots
PLACEMENT: One in the second quarter and one in the third quarter
DETAILS: According the Advertising Age, the spot will feature “spider attacks, a raging heart, an unusual rescue, self-intervention, (and) an overbearing boss” in an attempt to motivate disgruntled workers to finally find a new job.

The PPC staff for Bridgestonetire.com at Bridgestone had their thinking caps on… Bidding on both “Richard Simmons” and “Alice Cooper” for their Super Bowl ad. They also had the top spot throughout the night with “super bowl ads” (why not bid on “deer” too?)
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two 30-second spots
PLACEMENT: Between the first and second quarters and during the third quarter
DETAILS: One titled “Scream” will feature how Bridgestone tires can keep motorists from turning squirrels into road kill. The second spot (“Unexpected Obstacles”) will feature Richard Simmons, Alice Cooper and a deer.

Cars.com ads were uninspiring with no call to action and the site suffered technical issues throughout the Super Bowl.
NUMBER OF SPOTS: Two 30-second spots
PLACEMENT: First quarter and third quarter
DETAILS: Ads will demonstrate the value of Cars.com information by showing misinformed auto buyers contending with car dealers

While many of the other ads were good, their on-line presence was dismal or non-existent. It is simply amazing to me the amount of money companies are willing to spend in 2008 to attract potential customers off-line, with limited to no on-line opportunity to engage them. Repeat after me… Flashing your brands URL in small print is not enough! Additionally, while doing the research for this post, I was surprised at the number of major brands that do not own their social media profiles. Several searches on MySpace, FaceBook, & YouTube found squatters misrepresenting brands.

It will be interesting to see where we are with off-line/on-line media around this time in 2009.

(Btw – e-trade… YouTube quality videos belong on YouTube. Not on my HDTV.)

In an effort to help users search the world’s video media, the Google Video team joined the Google Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps—an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. By submitting this video-specific Sitemap in addition to your standard Sitemap, you can specify all the video files on your site, along with relevant metadata.
When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, they will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video. Search results will contain a thumbnail image (provided by you or autogenerated by Google) of your video content, as well as information (such as title) contained in your Video Sitemap. In addition, your video may also appear in other Google search products.

Google Video Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to publish and syndicate online video content and its relevant metadata to Google in order to make it searchable in the Google Video index. You can use a Video Sitemap to add descriptive information – such as a video’s title, description, duration, etc. – that makes it easier for users to find a particular piece of content. When a user finds your video through Google, they will be linked to your hosted environments for the full playback.

Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported at this time.

For more information about creating and submitting video xml sitemap files checkout the Google Webmaster Help Center.

I have long been a fan of the little web browser that could… Opera. Of course being an SEO, I can’t seem to get by without Firefox and its veritable cornucopia of plug-ins. Yet, on my BlackBerry… Opera Mini 4 absolutely rocks!

Today Håkon Wium Lie, Opera’s CTO announced they have formally filed an antitrust complaint with the EU requesting the European Competition Commission to instigate two remedies on the software giant. Firstly, it wants Microsoft to un-bundle Internet Explorer from Windows or to include another, alternative browser. Secondly, it asks the Commission to ensure Microsoft to follow open Web (W3C) standards.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out… Microsoft has backed down from the EU before. Microsoft in October accepted defeat over an earlier Commission action, which found it guilty of abusing its monopoly position concerning tying of its media player with its operating system and interoperability of work group servers. The software giant chose not to appeal the decision.

Opera Press Release

Letter to the Web Community from Opera CTO

Great Article by Stoney deGeyter on the 12 Product Page Conversion Strategies that Shant Be Ignored

“To be effective, your website must implement product pages that are able to satisfy each of your visitor’s needs. However, information isn’t enough either. While providing necessary information, these pages must be convincing enough to entice your visitors to move through the purchase process — on your site rather than on a competitor’s website.”

If your interested in the 13th Conversion Strategy for Product Pages (the one that puts your site over the top) Please see my previous post!