Blog
WebMama named #7 on Silicon Valley Fast 50
On 28, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
By the San Francisco Valley Business Times.nnWe’ve worked with Web Mama and its CEO Barbara Coll since she first started the company back in 1997. Barb practically invented the search engine marketing business single handedly.nYou can find her and her dedicated team of search professionals … not all of whom are women or mothers BTW … at http://www.webmama.comnnGo Barb!
Freakonomics meets the business world
On 28, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Steven Levitt, author of this summer’s bestselling “Freakonomics,” says there are lessons for businesses to be learned from his unusual data analysis methods. First, use your data. “Often, data generated for one purpose is useful for another. ‘Freakonomics’ describes the case of an entrepreneur selling bagels in corporate offices who kept meticulous records to track profits and losses—data that eventually yielded insights about white collar crime and the effects of office size on honesty.” Ask different questions, and don’t mistake correlation for causality, says Levitt, citing the case of a feudal king who, upon hearing that disease was greatest in areas with the most doctors, figured that reducing doctors would reduce disease. Question conventional wisdom, …
Good article summarizing best practices in SEO
On 18, Sep 2005 | In SEO (Findability | Search Visibility) | By Marcia K
While these best practices were crafted for multi-channel merchants (i.e. folks who sell online, through a catalog, and via a call center) they apply to most businesses who depend on paid search to drive leads. 1. Track delay between click and conversion and consider dayparting 2. Asess the lifetime value of search-acquired customers 3. Grow your phrase list 4. Target your ad copy. 5. Track everything. 6. Bid for profit, not position. 7. Test additional phrases, new copy, and landing pages. 8. Monitor performance of brand vs. nonbrand ads. 9. Don’t let your affiliates advertise under your brand name. 10. Supervise your bid robots, particularly during key selling seasons 11. Optimize feeds for each paid …
Quick Tips for improving email deliverability
On 17, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
With all the talk about the numerous sender authentication protocols, it’s easy to overlook some basic actions that can help improve your e-mail deliverability. A new white paper from e-mail services provider Silverpop, “Deliverability: What the Pros Already Know,” calls attention to some of these basics: If an address has produced a soft bounce three times in a row during the course of 21 days or more, remove it from your mailing list. (A soft bounce is a valid e-mail address that has been rendered temporarily undeliverable due to something like an overloaded inbox.) E-mail everyone on your list at least once every 90 days. This will help you keep a better handle on address …
Study: Search Marketers Are Not Making Business Case
On 16, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Most companies evaluate search marketers’ performance on campaign results, such as search engine ranking, rather than actual business results such as sales volume or return on investment, according to a study released last week. The JupiterResearch study, based on a survey of 636 search marketers and 224 search advertisers, found that 81 percent of organizations tie search engine marketing metrics to the evaluation of their search marketing employees. DM News Article Sept. 08 2005
The perils of “overchoice”
On 14, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Harvard Business School professor John Gourville says that offering too many different choices in products can backfire, causing overwhelmed shoppers to run screaming from the store or worse, to turn to your less-diversified competitor. However, a variety of choices isn’t always bad—if the choices are aligned to a single product (think Levi’s 501 jeans in hundreds of different sizes), customers will appreciate the assortment. But non-alignable assortments, such as the plethora of cold remedies on a drug store shelf, represent “overchoice” that can dampen customer enthusiasm. “The question is which alternatives to eliminate and what the customer response will be,” says Gourville. “In the case of one online grocery retailer, by reducing their assortment in …
Growing concern about RSS and its impact on marketing performance metrics
On 08, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
As RSS moves more mainstream, measurement problems are arising around how to incorporate RSS click throughs into clickstream analysis products like Omniture (SiteCatalyst), WebSideStory, Coremetrics, and ClickTracks. Right now there is no way to get a complete picture of how many people are viewing a particular piece of content or an ad except by taking performance metrics provided by various siloed products and aggregating them by hand. This will work if you have a small number of feeds, sites, and discrete bits of contents and ads to track but obviously won’t scale for publishers and advertisers who are tasked with tracking hundreds or thousands of pieces of content. Expect the problem to get worse before …
Apples’ Strategy – Be Second to Market
On 07, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized | By Marcia K
Apple Computer’s surprise domination of the digital music market is based on an unusual strategy: succeeding by being a smart second (or third) to enter a market. While Rio and Eiger Labs both had MP3 players long before the iPod, Apple took the concept and added several new-market disruptions, including iTunes, iMovie and GarageBand, the company’s music editing software suite. Apple was able to outmaneuver its competition by offering good design and ease of use, while executing clever marketing and smart distribution. The popularity of GarageBand, which enables tech novices to assemble and publish music that is entirely manufactured on the computer or remix older songs, has reinvented the desktop studio production environment and analysts …
Price war in internet advertising
On 06, Sep 2005 | In Uncategorized, Web Strategy | By Marcia K
xpect this to escalate into a full-fledged price war and shake out where some of the lesser networks bite the dust for lack of inventory Ad Networks Facing Fierce Fight for Inventory Ad dollars are chasing the internet more and more, and ad networks are now confronted with serious competition for premium inventory and soaring prices, according to a New York Post article published in E-Commerce Times. While some ad networks are benefiting, others are getting squeezed – depending on their business model. Ad networks are seeing a surge in demand – especially as many advertisers launch holiday campaigns for the fourth quarter – with some confronting a shortage of inventory, or, rather, inexpensive inventory. …
Is it possible to hype a market into existance?
On 04, Sep 2005 | In Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized | By Marcia K
There is an excellent article this week in The Economist looking at the “digital home” and at what cable, telecom, internet, and hardware companies are doing to create the new entertainment nerve centers of the future. The article touches on what exists today (CDs, DVDs, etc), what is in production or preparation from various companies (MS MCE, IPTV, music downloads, etc), DRM, interoperability, and competing standards, among other topics. Although there is no mention of MythTV or Linux, it is a pretty solid analysis of the market as it is now and concludes that vendors are trying to hype a market into existence where there is no great consumer demand. A choice quote: “‘If consumers …
