Marketing Blog
Louis Gudema, President
Magic Hour Communications
Recent
Posts (click to jump to post):
Carnival
of Marketing
MarketingSherpa's "Landing
Page Handbook" -- Who to believe?
Cheerleading for drug sales
Beta: A software marketing tactic?
PPC May Soon Mean "Pay Per
Call"
The Reason for Google Analytics
Google Click-Fraud: The Sequel
Google Click-Fraud
Google is Number One, but by how
much?
Online display ad demand exceeds
supply: prices surge
Ford's not so innovative ads
DM forms that should be outlawed
Master networkers
Magic Hour releases First Presidential
Search Engine Poll
Google is changing the face of advertising
Carnival
of Marketing
We're pleased to be hosting this week's
Carnival of Marketing, conceived by Noah Kagan
at Okdork.
Here's the best of the (recent) best:
Jack Yoest has some good tips for "10
Steps of Marketing With No Money -- Then Sell
Out".
One of the things
I like about Jack's post is he tells a story.
People like stories; people relate to people.
Michael Chaffin writes about this in "Emotion
Generators and Why Stories Matter".
Douglas Davidoff
has a very different style, much more theoretical,
in "It's
Time to Stop Giving Customers What They Want".
It may be easier to get into his post if you read
the third to last paragraph ("What's wrong
with that, you may ask?...") early on.
Liz Strauss has
thoughts on the business strategies Michael Eisner
used to resurrect Disney in "Marketing
Strategy a la Mickey Mouse".
While Spike Jones
has thoughts that remind me of Jim Collins's excellent
book "Good to Great" in "The
Little Things".
Bob Cargill has
identified one "little thing" that Southwest
Airlines is making into something so big that
other companies are already immitating it in "The
Ding Heard Round the Marketing World".
And John Jantsch
boldly predicts the demise of the iPod due to
Apple's arrogance in "Great
Products Can't Overcome Arrogance". I
have to agree about Apple's arrogance; it helped
keep them to less than three percent of the PC
market. So far, though, they seem to be doing
just fine with the iPod: over 40 million units
sold, 14 million in the most recent quarter, and
they have created what Damon Darlin in "The
New York Times" calls an "iPod
ecosystem".
Good thinking,
and writing, all.
February
12, 2006
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MarketingSherpa's
"Landing Page Handbook" -- Who to believe?
If you haven't been to MarketingSherpa
yet, get there. They have some excellent (free!)
weekly newsletters that often include interesting
case studies of successful marketing campaigns,
as well as numerous reports and marketing studies
for sale.
I recently read their 2005 "Landing Page
Handbook: How to Raise Conversions -- Data &
Design Guidelines." It has over 150 pages
of recommendations on how to design landing pages
for direct mail, search engine marketing, and
other campaigns. (A "landing page" is
the Web page you go to for more information; in
the case of an online ad its the page you're directed
to by clicking on the ad.) It also includes some
very cool heatmaps which show how page design
can affect where your eyes go.
I won't detail all of their recommendations, of
course; you can plunk down $247 yourself if you
want that. But their key philosophy is that landing
pages are a special kind of Web page with unique
design and content requirements. Critically, landing
pages live in a parallel universe and shouldn't
include the site's full navigation. The marketer
doesn't want you to start browsing the site, they
want you to either buy or at least take the next
step of raising your hand by signing up for a
white paper or converting on whatever the offer
may be.
So... That got
me to wondering. Most of their examples are small
and mid-sized companies. What do the big guys
do? I went onto Google and searched on a variety
of terms designed to bring up ads from Global
2000 companies. I found that three-quarters of
the landing pages did not follow the MarketingSherpa
recommendations; many ads simply went to the usual
Web page on the company's Web site about that
product or service. In some cases these were already
ecommerce pages and the company may have decided
the page was optimized as much as they knew how
to induce the visitor into making a purchase.
Other times that was not so clear. Here are the
links to custom landing pages listed by company
and search term that brought up their ad:
Google
"anti-spam"
Cisco
"network security"
IBM
"network security"
Google
"internet marketing"
Blue
Martini "online marketing"
And links to the many more "landing pages"
that were not customized or living in that parallel
universe:
Dell
"server"
Microsoft
"anti-spam"
VeriSign
"anti-spam"
HP
"network security"
VeriSign
"network security"
Sun
"Xeon server"
IBM
"Xeon server"
HP "Sarbanes-Oxley
Compliance"
ENI
Marketing "internet marketing"
iCrossing
"search engine marketing"
SEOinc "search
engine optimization"
Claritas
"media strategy"
College
Board "marketing"
Target
"international sales"
Sony
"MP3 player"
Apple
"MP3 player"
I would like to think that behind all of these
major search ad campaigns is an agency, and a
lot of thought, strategy and testing -- that they
have tried customized landing pages and found
them inferior. Maybe they were too hard of a sell,
too off-putting. I would like to think that. But
I've also worked with enough Global 2000 companies
to know that behind some of these efforts may
be a product marketing manager with a few dollars
to try something, and little interest in going
through an agency of record that can't be bothered
with such a "little project".
Clearly Google has drunk the kool aid. But are
we to believe that Dell, which probably knows
more about online direct marketing than anyone
in the world (except perhaps Google...), is getting
this wrong? In his book "Direct from Dell",
Michael Dell talks about how they can optimize
pricing for a product online in just a few hours
based on responses. Wouldn't Dell be using custom
landing pages if they were truly more effective?
It's also interesting how few of the online marketing
firms used custom landing pages, either.
And one of the MarketingSherpa study's favorite
examples, an Old Navy email campaign, actually
leads to a page
on the Old Navy site with full navigation.
On the other hand, in her introduction, MarketingSherpa
publisher Anne Holland claims that after
redesigning their own landing pages, they
saw a significant lift in results. On the importance
of iterative design and testing, the study claims,
"By a three to one margin, marketers who
tested campaign specific landing pages achieved
significant improvement. This was equally true
for B-toB and B-to-C marketers, as well as those
using primarily search or primarily email."
And Seth Godin, who
has a similar philosophy, is quoted endorsing
the study.
So what do you think? Do so many major marketers
have this wrong? Is MarketingSherpa leading the
way? Send me your experience at louis@magic-hour.com
and I'll print interesting responses next week.
Meanwhile, at Magic Hour we're testing both integrated
and campaign-specific
pages with our SEM campaign. Not enough data yet
on the campaign-specific pages to suggest which
is working better for us. And no doubt both can
be improved; neither incorporates all of the MarketingSherpa
recommendations. Designing and testing is a never-ending
process. We've already seen a significant improvement
in inquiries based on redesigning our landing
pages over the past two months.
November
30, 2005
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Cheerleading for drug sales
In one of their better headlines ("Gimme
an Rx: Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales"),
The
New York Times today describes the common
tactic of drug companies to recruit former college
cheerleaders, or current pros, as sales reps.
The cheering advisor at the University of Kentucky
describes the desirable qualities of the these
recruits, ""Exaggerated motions, exaggerated
smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm - they learn those
things, and they can get people to do what they
want." He adds that the pharmaceutical recruiters
don't ask what the cheerleaders major was.
All this time that
we've worked with pharmaceutical companies we've
tried to figure out how to get marketing materials
past their secretaries, and the answer was to
give it to a cheerleader to deliver.
November
28, 2005
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Beta: A software marketing tactic?
The Wall
Street Journal today suggests that it's increasingly
common for software companies to use public betas
as a marketing device. They write, "These
days, beta editions are not only released to the
public, but also stay in that mode for months,
or even years. Google News, Google's news aggregator,
has been in beta for three years. Microsoft's
antispyware application has been in beta for nearly
a year."
As soon as Google Maps were available, they were
pretty solid and useful -- but in beta for months.
More useful features have since been added, but
that is always true with software.
November 28, 2005
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PPC May Soon Mean
"Pay Per Call"
OK, I know I promised something on Yahoo!, but
this news came out and deserves timely mention:
Google is testing pay-per-call ads. In these test
ads – see screengrab – there is a
little phone icon. If the searcher clicks on it,
they can enter their phone number and be automatically
connected with the advertiser. Instead of paying
when the searcher clicks on the ad, the advertiser
pays for each call received.
This
may be especially useful for the millions of small
businesses that don't have a Web site -- want
to order a pizza, anyone? -- but would profit
from advertising online. And it may help Google
close its gap with Yahoo! in local advertising.
Ingenio
already offers this service on AOL. The placement
of their ads is based on how much the advertiser
is willing to pay per call. However, Google has
always used a more complex formula for rank that
includes not just how much the advertiser is willing
to pay, but also how popular the particular ad
is, and presumably they’ll do that with
pay-per-call, too.
Big potential problem, and how Ingenio solves
it: spurious clicks/calls. Early banner ads had
very high click-through-rates because people wanted
to see what would happen. Many people who click
on a paid ad -- or a “natural” link,
for that matter – don’t spend much
time on the site. It’s not unusual to see
half or more leave after looking at only one page.
Here’s Ingenio’s policy:
"To ensure you get maximum
value as a Pay Per Call advertiser, you are not
charged in the following situations:
- Repeat calls: Only the
first call from a phone number will be charged
within a 30-day period.
- Short calls: You will not be charged because
most likely the lead was not valuable.
- Hang-ups: Calls where the caller hangs up the
phone before you answer are not charged.
- Unanswered calls: You will not be charged until
sufficient time for the phone to be picked up
elapses.
Other new phone call leads delivered to your ring-to
number will be charged, so be ready to receive
calls when your ad is live and use scheduling
to automatically pause your ad when you are unavailable."
Google
hasn’t made details on their policy public
yet. So far this is a test, it is only a test.
November 25, 2005
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The Reason for Google Analytics
Ten days ago Google added its Analytics
tool to Adwords. The reason:
About eight out of 10 U.S.
companies with annual sales of $1 million or
more aren't using or have outdated software
for tracking the success of online advertising
campaigns, said Eric Peterson, a Portland, Ore.-based
analyst for Jupiter Research. (Source: Bloomberg
News, 11/15/2005)
That's ridiculous. If you're
using online ads and not using an analytics tool
like NetTracker (which we use and supply to our
hosted clients), Webtrends, or HBX Analytics,
you're flying with blinders on.
Even if you aren't doing ads, you should be using
these tools to monitor your Web site and marketing
success.
We, like most of our clients, aren't engaged in
direct online sales. Most of our clients (high
tech companies and private schools, for example)
are engaged in sales of a five- or six-figure
service or product with a lengthy sales cycle.
NetTracker gives us invaluable feedback on our
online and other marketing. It has helped us steadily
increase click-throughs, and -- more importantly
-- inquiries, while reducing the cost per click
(CPC) and even the overall campaign cost. More
inquiries, lower cost: can't beat that.
More on using analytics, with a small "a",
another time. And enough about Google! What about
Yahoo? More on them shortly, too.
I'm outta here. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
November
23, 2005
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Google Click-Fraud: The Sequel
In response to my report of possible
click-fraud (see previous post), I received the
following email from Google today:
After a thorough investigation
of your account, our team found some clicks
and impressions that didn't fit a profile of
normal user traffic. We also verified that this
activity was filtered from your reports by our
monitoring software. You were not charged for
this potentially invalid activity. We found
that this activity was very minimal and fortunately,
it does not seem your account was affected by
any higher-scale invalid clicking usually done
by competitors or automated clicking programs.
Actually, the email was much
longer, but that's the jist of it. As in my prior
experience, it seems that the clicks initially
show up in the daily tally (which is not updated
in real time, but they say it shouldn't lag by
more than three hours), and then disappear within
a day or two.
Since I don't record the reported rates
and compare them a few days later -- I just use
the Google reporting tool anytime I want to look
at stats -- I don't know how often this is happening
with them automatically adjusting (as they claim).
November
22, 2005
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Google Click-Fraud
I received a message today from Richard
DeLigter of Real
Productions in New York, a corporate video
company that uses Google Adwords to promote its
video services, as does Magic Hour. He had noticed
that the number of clicks on one of their terms
had suddenly shot up and, using their Web site
statistics program, that the person who was clicking-through
using that term was only looking at one page and
then quickly leaving their site. He thought this
was very likely an example of click-fraud: a competitor
trying to deplete his advertising budget. He's
almost certainly right. It was very kind of him
to notify me; when I looked at our stats, I saw
the same thing.
Two weeks ago we notified Google
of another instance of click-fraud on another,
unrelated term. We had experienced a click-through
rate (CTR) of about 3 percent on that term, which
is outstanding. Suddenly it jumped to 9 percent,
which is insane. Google investigated and got back
to me a couple days later agreeing that the jump
was the result of click-fraud and taking away
charges for what they felt were the extra clicks.
Two instance of click-fraud on a small account
like ours in a month: that's pretty amazing. Google
claims to be aggressive in monitoring, but it
looks like in these cases they didn't catch the
activity. It shouldn't be that hard. It all starts
with that sudden jump in CTR. If they see that,
they should investigate immediately and automatically.
I've notified Google and will
let you know what they tell me in a couple days.
November
21, 2005
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Google is Number One, but by how much?
I've seen several recent analyses of
the ranking of search engines -- what percentage
of total searches is done on each engine -- and
while they all agree that Google is #1, they don't
agree on size of market share. Three examples
(all data from July):
The NetRatings data press release
does not make it clear if it is referring to only
US or worldwide searches. comScore and Hitwise
are for US-only, and what a huge difference in
the survey results between the two. I saw an article
in the Wall Street Journal over the summer that
claimed that while Google has a lead worldwide,
in the US Google and Yahoo! were within a percentage
point of one another.
These stats are very important
when devising a search engine marketing strategy.
If you believe Hitwise, you wouldn't bother with
MSN or AOL at all. When viewing the Web site stats
of our clients, corporate and non-profit, we typically
find a huge lead for Google -- 70 percent or more
is not uncommon. Since the sites have similar
rankings in both Google and Yahoo!, this has to
be the result of more people using Google.
These rating organizations need to provide more
detail. Perhaps Google is big in one type of search
and Yahoo! another (Hitwise did note that Yahoo!
is much stronger in local search). It makes you
wonder just how valid their methodologies are...
November
19, 2005
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Online Display Ad Demand Exceeds Supply: Prices
Surge
The Wall
Street Journal reported today that demand
for prominent display ad space at Yahoo!, MSN
and AOL is so great that some pages (i.e., car
buying tips) are sold out 18 months in advance!
They report "MSN says it currently charges
between several hundred thousand dollars and $1
million for a prime, 24-hour ad spot on its home
page. That's up from about $25,000 to $50,000
four years ago." One media buyer accurately
commented that "it's starting to get into
Super Bowl territory."
As I write this, the home page
of Yahoo! has an ad for Mazda. MSN for Kraft,
and AOL for Dell. Google's home page, of course,
is ad-free. Given their tremendous profitability
from paid search and other services, and the degree
to which that simple home page is part of their
brand, it may even stay that way.
Major advertisers have now bought
into what content sites have claimed for years:
that online ads not only result in direct sales,
but also build brands.(1)
(2)
(3)
Fortunately, pay per click ads are still
affordable for small businesses and organizations
for many search phrases, but demand for them is
steadily rising and the day may come when they
are only affordable for the Global 2000, also.
November 16, 2005
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Ford's
Not So Innovative Ads
In the latest issue of The New Yorker there is
an ad from Ford about how innovative they are
(click image to enlarge):
Now THAT'S innovative: a middle-aged
guy standing at a podium. And looking pretty uncomfortable,
at that.
On the
page before the Ford ad is an ad from Samsung
that really does communicate that they are an
innovative company:
Ford's ad is the classic disconnect
between form and content. If you have to say you're
innovative...
November 15, 2005
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DM Forms that should be Outlawed
There is such a thing as immoral marketing, although
to talk with some marketers you wouldn't know
it, and it goes beyond spam. One of the most outrageous
forms of marketing is a direct mail piece that
look like a bill or a check from a company that
you have no business relationship with.
At Magic
Hour we occasionally receive direct mail pieces
that look like bills; they are more common at
home. I think this is a form of mail fraud: a
piece intended to communicate an obligation that,
in fact, does not exist and to slip through and
get paid by the inattentive recipient. My guess
is it's more effective with older people who may
have a harder time keeping up with all of their
business relationships, or may be more afraid
of the repercussions of an unpaid bill ("would
they sue me?") The direct mail check is simply
a sugar-coated version of the bill: cash it, and
you've authorized a service that will cost you
far more than the check paid. The large print
giveth; the small print taketh away.
They
should both be outlawed.
November 10, 2005
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Master Networkers
West Coast PR/marketing consultant Renee
Blodgett is the networking queen. On LinkedIn,
most people I am linked to have a few dozen connections.
A couple have a few hundred. Renee has 1,123!
Renee was recently passing through Boston to attend
PopTech,
and so of course she sent out an invitation to
everyone she knew to get together at a friend's
apartment for an evening of wine and schmoozing.
The word from others at the party that attended
PopTech was that it was okay, but they didn't
see The Next Big Thing. Most enjoyable conversation
of the evening was with Buzz Bruggeman, another
consumate networker, who told many interesting
stories about his dealings with the draft board
in the '60s and other matters, and even slipped
in a plug for his ActiveWords
software.
If you Google Renee, you come
up with 67,400 hits. If you Google Buzz, you get
124,000. That's networking, and putting the power
of the Web (they both have blogs, Buzz has two)
to work for you.
November 5, 2005
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Magic Hour Releases
First Presidential Search Engine Poll
Magic Hour today released the results of its first
Presidential
Search Engine Poll. We analyzed how many searches
were being done on the leading candidates in each
party for the 2008 presidential nomination. The
results on the Democratic side mirrored very closely
the recent WNBC/Marist poll. The number of searches
for Democratic candidates was higher, too. Republicans
did not mirror the poll results quite as closely,
which supports the "conventional wisdom"
that while Republicans dominate the airwaves with
the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly,
Democrats are stronger on the Internet.
November 2, 2005
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_________________________________
Google is Changing the
Face of Advertising
A new month, a new blog.
Both the New
York Times and Wall
Street Journal had major articles recently
on Google’s impact on advertising. According
to the Times, Google’s $6.1B in ads this
year “is more advertising than is sold by
any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television
network.” And it’s expected to increase
50 percent next year. If you’re not advertising
online, you may be missing out on a major opportunity.
A key element in this revenue is the superior
technology Google has created for ad placement:
ads that are clicked on more often get a higher
placement than other ads. The rate the advertiser
is willing to pay is not the only factor in placement
(unlike Yahoo!, which ranks ads simply by what
the advertiser has bid). This helps consumers
– the ads they’re most interested
in are placed higher – and it helps Google,
because the ads that generate the most revenue
are more prominent. And it helps the advertisers:
if you have a popular ad, you can actually maintain
or even improve its position while lowering your
cost per click.
Now Google is looking at moving into other advertising
services, taking its cost-per-click model into
media buying in other media. They are looking
into serving up personalized TV ads via digital
cable boxes; they give the example of a man only
seeing ads for men’s clothing rather than
women’s. Or compare it to how Amazon shows
you books that other people who bought the books
you buy like. Google recently took out a sample
print ad that had information on several companies;
the companies only pay if a person calls the 1-800
number for information about them.
November 1, 2005
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