By Roger Ewing

Second and third generation search is in hot pursuit of the modern consumer.

Knowing what a buyer desires, without them actually telling you is the ultimate prize in search engine technology.

Currently, we are in the first phase of paid search, which is dependent upon matching text ads with the intent of a search query.  This is the way Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search engines monetize their business models.  But now second and third generation search models are emerging that promise to monetize the consumers clickstream in new and exciting ways.

Behavioral targeting

One example of second generation technology tracks your search and browsing history to display product results before you actually initiate a search for them.

Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, refers to this kind of search as Discovery Based.  Amazon’s “people who bought your product also bought…” is one of the company’s most profitable divisions.

Ever feel frustrated and impatient that your specific search result is not precisely on target?  Of course.  Do consumers really want to be found in the search process?  I believe the answer is a qualified YES.  A quality search result is at the top of our fantasy desire list.

The “search funnel”

According to Google, “Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the (your) ad click and impression behavior on Google.com…”

This means that Google now has the capability to see how many clicks and what different keywords were used in your historical clickstream, prior to you initiating a new search.

Funnel + landing page history + keywords + ad viewed history = Your Profile

Just in case this conversation is a bit too technical, simply put, it implies Google now has the ability to essentially read your online thoughts and anticipate your desire as a consumer.

People visiting a food site can see ads for financial services, cars or any other interest they have shown elsewhere in their online travels.

As consumers we hunger for quality search results.  The Internet will soon allow us to find the products we desire with little or no effort on our part.

What a concept!  I am in the residential real estate business.  If, by applying a simple algorithm (recipe), I can determine your home preferences, prior to your inquiry, I can present properties to you that meet your individual needs even before you begin your home search.

In the near future, when you begin your online home search, you may be greeted by ads for homes that are tailored to your taste and preference.  Vacant homes may even be displayed digitally staged, complete with furniture and decorations that you have previously investigated online.

Spinning The Gold

A plethora of “digital straw” is readily available to any public search engine.  The technology already exists to begin the spinning process. Stand by creative marketers, the gold standard for search is only a few clicks away.

Like it or not, your clickstream represents your individual online stream of consciousness.

Some will argue that is an invasion of your online privacy.  While others will say it is the natural evolution of the search process and represents a benefit to us all.

What’s your opinion?

By Roger Ewing

What Are We Searching For?

According to Piper Jaffrey, a U.S. investment banking firm, the global internet search environment looks something like this.

• 20% of all searches are for entertainment information.

• 15% are commercial.

• 65% are informational.

Much of the informational searches could easily be considered commercial.  BIA/Kelsey, a leading provider of strategic research, analysis, data and competitive metrics, indicates that 25% to 35% of all searches are local, and most of those are commercial, looking for a restaurant for example.

Interestingly, internet penetration in the United States is somewhere north of ten times the average for the rest of the world.  However, far more searches are done internationally than in the US, by a factor of about five to one.  What does this tell us?

When the entire world has complete access to the internet, Search may well become the most important activity involving humankind.

The Speed of Information

Researchers Hal Varian and Peter Lyman, two economists at UC Berkeley, calculated our total global information production for one year. In their study “How much information?” they measured the total production of all unique information channels in the world for two different years, 2000 and 2003.

Their research revealed a mind numbing 66% rate of growth in information per year.  Roughly 3.5 exabytes!

According to Wikipedia as of May 2009, the size of the World’s total Digital content has been roughly estimated to be 500 billion gigabytes, or 500 exabytes.  There is clearly no shortage of digital straw.

What’s An Exabyte?

In case you were wondering, an exabyte is a unit of information, or computer storage, equal to one quintillion or 1 followed by 18 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes.

Let’s just say it’s a really big-ass number, but not as big as a googol, which is 1 followed by a hundred zeros.  Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin took creative liberties when they named their company Google.

So much for the straw in our spinning analogy.  In Part Two of this blog I will focus on winning the GOLD.

James Cameron’s Avatar is a blockbuster movie , due largely to the technology of augmented reality.

By Roger Ewing

Imagine this for a moment.  You point your mobile phone camera at a busy city street and instantly you see an overlay image on your phone of information about sales, promotions, events, food, coffee and other interesting stuff.  All in real time.

No need to actually walk down the street and check out the menus, or look in the display windows.  If you don’t like what you see, you simply point the phone camera in the opposite direction and check out the action there.  Tonchidot, a Japanese company created an iPhone application called Sekai Camera that channels augmented reality technology into this exciting application.

Recently Esquire published it’s first augmented reality magazine.  Readers must download software from the internet.  Once enabled, the reader then holds the magazine page that includes the marker up to the webcam on their computer and instantly a video of Robert Downey Jr. springs to life on the computer screen.

There are additional augmented reality pages included inside the magazine that are quite amazing.  You can see a demonstration of the application here. Esquire Magazine Augmented Reality Issue

Research into augmented reality involves the assimilation of computer-generated imagery into live-video streams.  This technology expands the way we view the real world.

The Coca Cola Zero | Avatar promotion is probably the most amazing demonstration of this new technology.  It provides a glimpse into the marketing opportunities available through augmented reality.

James Cameron’s Avatar Toys augmented reality demonstration is another example of the commercialization of this technology.  Action figures are now 3D controllable images.  Press a button, and the figure takes flight; press another, and the guns begin to fire.  Add another figure, and they can interact.  The possibilities are endless.  Check out the video below.

It’s not difficult to envision a brochure or direct mail announcing a home for sale that possesses a marker, like Esquire Magazine, that when held in front of a computer webcam will trigger a virtual tour of the home to begin playing on the screen.  This is the power of augmented reality.

In the virtual world of augmented reality, our understanding of entertainment and marketing has changed forever.

Avatar, The Movie

Copyright © by Roger Patrick Ewing, all rights reserved.

A great deal of debate is occurring online about how to measure ROI for social media marketing.

By Roger Ewing

Those of us who have spent lavishly on print media over the course of our business careers are empathetic towards our digital new-age friends who struggle to justify investing in social media.  This is particularly true now, given our recessionary cost control environment.

If the Tweeters, Bloggers and Diggers could measure the effectiveness of their social media platforms, would the management team finally stop harping about the amount of resources in time and money that are being applied to these strategies by the marketers?  Probably.  Consider this.

Only about 30% of traditional marketing has demonstrable ROI.

Then why did we spend all that money on traditional print media in the past if there is so little measurable result?  I, for one, did it primarily because my competitors were doing it.  And my competitors did it because I did, and so on. In the past, advertising wars involved keeping a body count of pages published in specific publications.  If my competitor was at ten pages, how could I not commit to at least eight pages to remain competitive?  It’s a lot like a legal battle where the lawyers get all the money, and the clients slowly go broke.

The marketing wars have begun anew, but this time the field of battle is digital.  There are several aspects of our battle strategy we will need to consider if we want our enterprises to prosper.  The first is, our old nemesis, print media.  Second is the awesome power of branding.  These two weapons combined with an intelligent social media platform, will conquer the competition in record time.

Sorry techies, print media is critical and necessary.  The marriage of print and digital marketing, when managed correctly, is the formula that produces spontaneous combustion.

There is a tipping point of web visits that is achieved, when targeted print campaigns support developing web based marketing strategies.

Traffic to your site needs to be substantial, if it is going to achieve traction and grow organically.  The quickest way to do that is to market your web site via traditional print vehicles targeted to your particular industry.

Branding has such awesome firepower that smaller entrepreneurs are often swept aside by the sheer magnitude of it.  Brands are the nuclear missile that atomizes the competition.  Look, you don’t have to be a genius to know what a well-known brand represents to the consumer.  Brand identity implies, “It may not be perfect, but at least I know what to expect”. Why else would you drive around a strange town searching for a Subway Restaurant at lunchtime?

The Internet has given entrepreneurs strange powers.  With a lot of SEO work and a very small investment, an enterprising young business can create brand awareness in a short period of time that rivals the larger brand labels.  In fact, there seems to be a group of consumers out there saying, “I like micro brands, they make me look hip and contemporary”.  Of course, a strategy built around the concept of pretentiousness won’t go very far if the product is not rock solid.

In practice, I don’t believe we can expect to know for sure what the actual result of our investment is in marketing.  However, we can directly measure our web traffic and extrapolate a return. Many sources of analytical information exist to measure the effectiveness of our internet marketing strategy.  Google Analytics is probably the most popular source of web traffic information.

Summary:

1.  Lay your hands on a sold brand name, or in the absence of a great brand, work really hard to create online brand awareness for your business.

2.  Spend judiciously on a print media campaign.  Advertise your brand and your web site in direct mail, newspapers, or anywhere else your target audience may see it.  Important rule: don’t do any advertising that is not memorable.  You are better off sending 100 post cards with a great design and a compelling message, than sending 1,000 that will not be read or appreciated.

Once you have achieved a critical mass of visits to your web site, you can begin to wean off the print media, slowly. Do so carefully, and only after Google Analytics demonstrates your number one source of web visits is the result of organic search engines.

Happy Hunting!

]]> http://rogerewingblog.com/print-media-supports-web-marketing-strategies/feed/ 14 http://rogerewingblog.com/sex-death-and-fly-fishing/ http://rogerewingblog.com/sex-death-and-fly-fishing/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:50:52 +0000 Roger Ewing http://rogerewing.wordpress.com/?p=77

The Title Of A book by John Gierach

By Roger Ewing

Part sport and part art, with a little Zen wisdom thrown in, fly- fishing imitates life, and is a good allegory for business.  In his well-read book, Sex Death and Fly Fishing, Gierach shares insights on mayflies, men, fishing, love, and the meaning, or lack thereof, of life.

When I visit Rick’s Sporting Goods in Mammoth Lakes, I am in awe of the quantity and variety of gear that is available to satisfy my fishing addiction.  Everything I crave is here.  I see a staggering array of colorful flys with names that a nail polish marketer would envy.  There are floating lines, sinking and tapered lines, weighted tippet, forceps, waders, float tubes, knot tying tools, and beautifully crafted willowy fly rods.  This, I think to myself, must be heaven.

The businessman in me makes the B2B connection to fly-fishing.  I have determined there are three important similarities between fly-fishing and marketing that the careful fly fisherman and the enterprising marketer should consider.

Choosing The Correct Fly

Fly fishermen never refer to the fly, a small bit of steal, feathers and thread, as bait.  This would be a sacrilege.  Likewise, in business it’s best to avoid the temptation to offer “bait and switch” strategies.  Success in business, as in fishing, requires that we be real, genuine and always truthful.

Marketing efforts are best described as initiatives.  We research our target market and manage our product to ensure that we have created a strategy that will likely succeed.  When fishing, I like to nymph the stream.  Using a small net to collect insects at various levels of the stream, I match the insects I find with a fly from my fly box, dramatically increasing my chances of success.

In business as in fly-fishing, the correct product for the correct audience is a sure fire recipe for success.

Presentation

Fly-fishing appeals to me because it is esoteric and provides a level of intellectual stimulation that I find very satisfying.  Trout on the other hand are much more pragmatic.  They are attracted to my fly because it is mealtime in the stream.  It’s a sort of dance.
The perfect cast will present my fly in such a manner that it will not occur to the trout that this is not a swimming Callibaetis, or a floating Caddis about to dry it’s wings and lift off the surface of the water.

Similarly, marketing pieces must be compelling, memorable and eye-catching.  Will my message be framed in the correct context and arrive at just the right moment to cause the client to react in the desired frame of mind?

For example, my goal is to deliver direct mail that has a valuable and worthy message.  I want my print ads to resonate with the reader and cause them to think about themselves in a way that is in concert with their lives and my product.  I have found that basic human needs and desires are the best means of getting a buyers attention.  The more exciting the better.  Sex, as Madison Avenue reminds us, sells.

Fly Line Management

Once the trout has taken the fly, the way I manage the fly line becomes very important.  All the gear, preparation and careful planning in the world will not result in landing a beautiful trout unless I keep my wits about me.  The line must not have too much slack, but it must not be too taut either.  I literally fish with my hands, feeling the trout’s energy in the rod and the line.

I’m careful not to tire the trout to exhaustion. It is important to me that I keep this trout alive in the stream to help maintain the precious fish population. A barb-less hook, a gentle net and underwater handling will ensure the fish swims away healthy.  For me, releasing the trout is the most exhilarating part of the fly fishing experience.

In the world of business the analogy of fly line management is obvious.  Managing the client relationship is the most critical aspect of ensuring that our clients provide us with quality referrals and then return to us for service in the years to come.

There is a fine line between appearing to be a stalker in a business relationship and actually being available when we are really needed. Staying in touch, and keeping our clients informed will make our clients feel valued and make us look professional. Accurate, quality information is important to our clients, and to us, if we want to make sure the net is filled at the end of the business day.

Summary

Creating a mutually positive end result for both parties is the active goal of any fly fisherman or entrepreneur.  Whether you are finalizing a winning marketing strategy or wading in a trout stream, remember these simple rules.  Choose the right fly, make the best presentation and manage your fly line well.

The Zen part?  We’ll leave that to John Gierach and the trout.