The Lonely Marketer » 2007

8 Shocking Revelations About Me

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 30-08-2007

Okay, so they aren’t really shocking and they aren’t really revelations (just taking a stab at a tabloid-style heading). They are simply 8 random facts about me – The Lonely Marketer. I know this has been floating around the blogosphere for awhile now, but since Daniel Sitter of Idea Sellers tagged me I thought I’d take a break from marketing for one day and participate. So here goes – 8 completely random facts about me.

I met my wife in London, England during a semester of college at the University of London. Ironically, we were from the same college in St. Paul, Minnesota.
I was in attendance for Game 7 of the 1987 World Series when the Minnesota Twins defeated the St. Louis Cardinals. I remember every inning to this day and have been a huge baseball fan ever since. (and I fully support using tax payer money for a new Twins stadium)
My favorite magazines are Kiplingers, Money, Business 2.0, Sports Illustrated, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company.
Two of my favorite foods are tacos and sushi (and I grew up in Minnesota!).
The best series of books I’ve ever read is the Stephen King Dark Tower series. I’m excited for the day when I start them all over again.
Visiting baseball stadiums in other cities is a huge thrill for me. Next up is Shea Stadium in New York!
I once could do an extremely realistic loon call. Loons would actually call back – no joking! I know – very odd. (the loon is Minnesota’s state bird)
Blogging has completely changed my perspective on business and marketing.

I’ve seen so many people participate in this that I can’t imagine I’d be able to find 8 people to tag so I’m going to opt out of the tagging. But, if you’d like to jump in consider this a tag – I’d love to learn more about you!

What’s Black and White and Read Online

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 29-08-2007

Category : social marketing, writing

An article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune caught my eye yesterday and I wanted to discuss it from a couple different angles. It’s not exactly small business marketing, but hits the social media topic about which I often write. In case the site requires registration, the title of the article was “Former Star Tribune publisher to launch online news site”.

Let me go on record as saying…I hope print newspapers stick around for awhile. Does that sound odd coming from me? I author a blog and spend most of my life using online tools or writing about online topics and trends. But, I love baseball box scores in the sports page, stock prices in the business page, and picking up the local newspaper in a different city. Tom Murphy from Murphy’s Law also agrees with that take on newspapers.

With that said, I’m very interested to see how MinnPost.com does. MinnPost.com is the news site being launched by former Star Tribune Publisher, Joel Kramer. From the article:

The site, with $1.1 million in funding, promises news and blog-like posts distributed online and via a printed newsletter distributed at high-traffic locations over the lunch hour, says the man behind the nonprofit venture, Joel Kramer. It will rely on advertising and donations, akin to Minnesota Public Radio.

The article also mentions that MinnPost.com joins Minnesota Monitor and Twin Cities Daily Planet as sources for Minnesota news. The Star Tribune also indicated they have big plans for expanding their online presence as well.

Wow, that’s alot of Minnesota news sources. The Star Tribune has the brand name behind them so I’ll be curious what the other sites will do to drive traffic and take the lead in online news. I think the future of news lies in social media platforms such as this, but with all the online news sources out there, it won’t be easy to separate themselves.

Will they reach out to local bloggers such as me to drive traffic or solicit content? Will they look into taking on local correspondents from each city and town to report on local events?

Where do you see news coverage in 10 years? 20 years?

Allow Me To Introduce You To…

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 27-08-2007

Category : blogging, search engine marketing

I walked away from the recent SES conference with tons of great information that will help me in my job. On top of that, I also went home having gotten to know some really great people. Getting to know these folks was very gratifying on both a personal and professional level! It just so happens that they also have some great blogs that you’re going to want to check out. In no particular order, they are:

Matt McGee of Small Business SEM: If you read this site often, you know I’ve mentioned Matt and his site many times. I’d already met Matt but truly enjoyed getting to know him better last week. His site is an excellent resource for any size company looking to better optimize their search marketing. He also has written extensively about local search.

Stoney deGeyter, Diana Adams, and Rob Woods of E-Marketing Performance: What a great crew from Pole Position Marketing! They were among the great people that I met and hung out with during the week. Their blog is a great compilation of everything search and online marketing. Everything from advertising to link building to PPC to usability can be found on this site! Check out their company as well – they’re a full service search marketing firm.

Jennifer Laycock and Robert Clough of Search Engine Guide: One of the first blogs I ever read! Even with 100s of more blogs added to my feed reader since then, they’re still a daily stop for me. If you have never visited their site, you need to start doing so now. They’re great people with an incredible perspective on business and life – very refreshing!

Simon Heseltine of SearchEngineTigers.com: Simon is the author of the Search Engine Tigers search marketing blog and also works for RedBoots Marketing Consultants. Simon does a great job of following current social media and marketing trends on his blog. He also has a great personality and is a very easy person to be around!

David Wallace of SearcRank Blog: It was an absolute pleasure to spend time with David and his wife Irma at the conference. David has been blogging since 2004 and started SearchRank consulting in 1997. Needless to say when David starts taking about search marketing, your ears perk up. Check out his site to tap into some of that knowledge!

Chris Winfield and Danielle Winfield of 10e20: Chris and Danielle are great people who run a very successful Internet marketing business in New York. Their blog has topics ranging from social media to Photoshop design work. Chris is my new go-to guy for everything social media! Take some time to check out their vast experience and services at 10e20!

Darcy Hill of Traffic Leader: What a character! Darcy couples a great sense of humor with a vast knowledge of the search marketing/SEO industry. His blog – MrRex Sez – is a perfect example of that. I’m very much looking forward to another conference down the road with Darcy!

As you can see I had the chance to meet incredible people who have already given me new insights. What a great benefit of attending conferences!

Why PPC Ad Testing is Increasingly Important

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 27-08-2007

Category : paid search

Continuing my theme of interesting and informative topics from SES San Jose, I wanted to touch on a session I attended about paid search ad testing and research findings. With search engine SERPs undergoing a makeover, I think PPC ad testing will become increasingly important. A search results page may now include blog, images, video and news results via the new universal and blended search trend. What is this going to mean for the scanning eyes of searchers?

Gord Hotchkiss, CEO of Enquiro, made the point that more rich ads are needed because the new image, video, and news results are building fences on the SERP. Gord used a great example in his presentation, but I went out and did a search on “iPhone” to try and build a similar SERP. Here are my results:

Many tests have been done in the past that show the eyes of searchers stall out around the top organic and top paid results in the top left corner of the SERP. I’m wondering if that is going to change. My eyes scanned right down to the image and then to the right. This is what Gord is talking about when he said that Universal search is going to be building fences on the SERP – scanning patterns are changing. The eyes are given boundaries to stay within.

Gord as well as other presenters also made the point that the SERPs are becoming individual portal results based on the search. Ask.com uncovered Ask3D at the conference which builds a portal page for every search you run. Plus, you’ll see on Ask.com that paid results and organic results blend together very nicely (very good for advertisers).

So, what does this all mean for advertisers? We’re going to need to test our ads in different locations on the SERP. I think the top spot will see a slight decrease in CTR while locations in the 3-6 spot might get more eye scans. I think it really depends on your keywords and what kind of organic results they’re going to draw.

The rest of the panel included:

Anton Konikoff, Founder and CEO, Acronym Media
Jonathan Mendez, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, OTTO Digital
Nico Brooks, Director of Search Technology, Atlas

Other PPC ad testing topics that were discussed by the panel include:

Separate out Branded and Non-Branded keywords into different ad groups or even different campaigns.
Consider seasonality when testing.
Test ads by match type (broad, matching, exact).
Don’t forget to test description line #1. Many focus too much on headlines. Try keeping the headline the same and testing two different ad copies in the first description line.
3-4 ads running at the same time in one ad group for testing purposes is not a bad thing.
Let the test run for 100 to 1000 clicks.
Always remember that more data = more confidence.
After test period, make sure that you look at what interactions with your ad led to conversions.

Needless to say, the days of throwing some keywords together, popping up some ads, and letting the campaign sail are over. Clicks will be harder to come by and testing will become increasingly important!

Back From SES San Jose

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 24-08-2007

Category : search engine marketing

After a long airport/airplane day, I’m back from San Jose and the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference. I will still be recapping important issues and trends discussed at the event over the next week or so. In the meantime, if you’re wanting more news quickly, please visit the Search Engine Strategies Blog and you can get links to many session recaps. Lisa Barone from Bruce Clay, David Dalka, Lee Odden and his team from The Online Marketing Blog, and the team from Search Engine Roundtable were among the sites that live blogged the event.

Overall, I was very happy with the conference. I thought this year’s sessions were less about just paid search (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) and more about the complete strategy of marketing your business on search engines. There was also a major infusion of social media tracks and how companies and agencies can take advantage of the trend.

As a person on the client side BtoB space, I was also encouraged to see that more of the speakers talked about how search engine marketing is a significantly growing factor for us. I can see BtoB being a much bigger focus of this conferences in two years.

Overall, well worth my time! I would encourage you to take a look at future SES conferences.

It’s Time To Figure Out Image Marketing

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 22-08-2007

Category : search engine marketing, social marketing

One of the hot topics this week at SES San Jose is the coming of age of the blended and universal search engine results page (SERP). I won’t go too much into it as I posted about it earlier in the week, but it does have relevance to this post. Images are now and will be playing a greater role on the SERP – possibly taking up space once reserved for a standard web page listing. If images are a factor in your marketing, I would say now is the time to get them optimized for the search engines.

Adam Snider posted a comment on my universal search post yesterday asking if there was any information at the conference about ways to optimize images beyond the basic alt-tags text.

Well, given the new importance on multimedia and images, I decided to figure that out by attending the session on Images and Search Engines. It turned out to be loaded with great information.

Sheri Thurow led off with an easy to follow presentation that walked through tips and tricks to optimizing images. From her presentation:

Alternative (alt) text is what shows when the image does not show. This alt text is also crawled by the search engines. Make sure popular keywords are included here.
Relevant keywords should be in text around the image.
Anchor text (hyperlinked text) leading to the page and image should include relevant text about the page and image. Instead of “Pictures Here”, try something like, “See photos of SES San Jose and the Google Dance”.
Photos should be in .jpg or .gif, but .jpg is the best.
Utilize caption or label text in the immediate area around an image.
Make sure file names make sense to the audience. Rather than “img002.jpg”, try “patrickschaber-sessanjose.jpg”.
Use dashes and not underscores in filename.
Utilize correct SEO site structure on the page.

Liana Evans of Search Marketing Gurus also pointed out that the universal and blended search factor means companies need to have increased reputation monitoring. Non-professional images can quickly make their way across the web and now have a greater chance to make that first page of results. In other words, make sure photos from the company party don’t include anything too risky!! Liana also added to Sheri’s list wtih these suggestions:

Increase your use of correctly formatted images in press releases.
Create a sitemap of your images for the search engine crawlers.

Chris Smith of Netconcepts was next up and he had a great presentation on using Flickr for image marketing. Before I get into Chris’ tips, I want to point out that Matt McGee at Small Business SEM also has an incredible post about Flickr and image marketing. Matt also points out a great example of the potential of Flickr photo buzz.

Chris outlined some photo sharing sites but strongly indicated that Flickr was best optimized for SEO purposes. Utilizing a photo sharing service like Flickr for your images increases the possibility that your images will turn up in search results either on that photo sharing site or in search engines. Thus increasing the chance that an image will lead a searcher to your site. Here is what Chris indicated that Flickr will do for your images:

Create a well-optimized profile page for each image
Good caption text
Includes links back to your site
Images can be tagged for easier searchability
Images can be cross-grouped
Alt-text is used
Date taken and page views displayed (search engines like this)

Here was his list of tips if you’re going to try Flickr:

Add unique title to image profile page
Add description
Tag with popular keywords
Make images publicly viewable
Choose loose licensing so others can use photo (encouraging a link back to your site)
Geo tag them if applicable
Use flickr groups
Add links to descrpition field
Post each page to del.icio.us

For more information on Flickr and image optimization be sure to check out Chris‘ or Matt’s blog.

I encourage you to take a look at your images used in your business and see if it makes sense to optimize them for search. It does seem like images will be playing an increasingly larger role on the SERP.

Do You Mind Being Followed?

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 21-08-2007

Category : online marketing, search engine marketing

Continuing my session recaps from Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007, I want to discuss a little of what we learned from the Post Search Ads session.

As a marketer, I know that the first interaction with my company’s brand does not always lead to a sale. It takes multiple ad impressions to grab the attention of a prospect. That is why online (and offline) ad buying has to be strategic – we need to make sure we’re interacting with the prospect at many steps in the buying process. Well, there are services now that help you follow your prospects, but how does the prospect feel about being followed?

Say for instance you come to a website and search for information. After looking through the results you don’t feel that website gave you what you need so you exit the site and move on. Well, that website put a “cookie” in your browser that will stay for 14 days. During that time, the website you exited will be displaying ads for you on other sites you visit in an attempt to win you back. In a spy movie, this is the equivelant of putting one of those tracking devices on the bottom of someone’s car and following them.

As Kevin Lee from DidIt.com points out in his presentation, buyers are in the market longer then their first search.

They have a whole buying funnel to go through before they make their purchase. Behavioral targeting and retargeting allows you to learn from what the searcher does and interact with them in different ways as they travel down that funnel.

Michael Benedek of Almond.net threw out an interesting fact. He pointed out that buyers spend 5% of their time showing interest in products on search engines and 95% of their time doing research on other sites.

That’s a pretty big statistic. As an advertiser, I want a piece of that 95% of time spent on other sites. Plus, if I can get a chance to learn more about the buyer as they browse, I can focus more on targeting my ads as they get closer to the check out line. Statistics show that click-through-rates on retargeting ads are the same as non-targeted ads, but conversion rates for advertisers are 5-10 times better with retargeting.

Is behavioral targeting and retargeting an exact science? No way. 15-20% of people clear their cookies so those people cannot be tracked. Also, what happens if you’re looking for grills on your home computer and your kids gets on the same computer and look for ringtones for their cell phones? What is the advertiser going to show you? A grill that makes music?

But, Dave Carberry of Advertising.com pointed out that by 2011 $3.8 billion will be spent on behavioral targeting and retargeting. So, the technology will get better and advertisers will be more in tune with buyers on the web.

As a searcher and buyer, how do you feel about companies retargeting their ads to you based on your browsing behavior tracked from a cookie in your browser? My first reaction from the buying perspective is that I don’t like it. But, as the presentations went along, I opened up a bit because there is the chance I might be able to find what I’m looking for quicker because advertisers are more aware of what I want. Less garbage ads being thrown at me as I browse.

Your thoughts from a buyer and advertiser perspective?

Bye, Bye Organic Website Listings

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 20-08-2007

Category : search engine marketing, strategy

Greetings from San Jose! The Search Engine Strategies conference is off to a great start with a positive vibe and great content. I’m hoping to share a little current search marketing information from each session I attend.

Universal and Blended Search

If you’re not familiar with the terms Universal and Blended Search, it might be time to educate yourself. A shift is happening on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that might drastically affect those nice website rankings you’ve been enjoying.

Maybe you’ve noticed that the first page of results from searches you run on Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc. are starting to contain organized results from blogs, news/PR, images, video, maps and ratings websites. What that means to you is that there is less real estate for standard website results we’ve been used to for years.

Is this a good thing? For the user, I think it definitely it is. Universal and blended search results now offer a wider variety of options from which searchers can choose. On Yahoo, for instance, you now will have the opportunity to watch an actual video right from the SERP without ever leaving the SERP.

But…..I also learned today that early results are showing that 30% less people are navigating to the second page of results on a given search. This means there are so many more engaging options on that first page that searchers are finding it less necessary to go to page two.

So, what happens if your once high-ranking web pages now fall farther down on the list due to video, image, blog etc. results? Well, it might be time to change with the times. Google’s David Bailey suggests:

Registering your business with Local search to take advantage of geographical targeting
Create useful, popular video content
Submit product feeds to Froogle.

Other advice I took away from the session include:

Optimizing press releases for search engines
Including images on press releases to take advantage of image results in search
Optimizing images on website for better searchability
Utilize social media such as blog and video to promote your company.

Overall, I don’t think any of the information from the session was monumental, but it did show a sign of the times. The focus continues to be on user experience and us marketers need to make sure we’re staying on top of what the user wants.

Isn’t that the goal of marketing anyway?

Top Daily Newsletters for Marketers

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 16-08-2007

Category : general marketing

For those of you that visit this site often, you know I dabble in many areas of marketing. Mainly, because that is what I do on a daily basis. I have the opportunity to work on just about all aspects of marketing. Never is my broad interest in marketing more evident then by what pops into my email box every morning.

It’s not easy to find the time to browse the web looking for the current trends and stories. I’m a big fan of letting someone else do that and email those stories to me in their daily newsletter. Here are a couple that I read on a daily basis:

Search Engine Land’s Daily SearchCap: This is the one email that I really look forward to opening everyday. I emailed Danny Sullivan today and thanked him for his work on it. They put alot of work into this and it shows. It’s packed with all things search engine marketing/optimization and social media. They not only cover their own stories, but also link out to tons of other bloggers with relevant news. Well worth the daily read!

iMedia Connection: iMedia packs their daily newsletter with very good content from all over the marketing world. You’ll find anything from branding to blogging. I always get caught up in a least a couple of the articles.

BtoB Daily News Alert: I like this one for the industry news it provides. You’ll find alot of press release-type information from companies in the marketing world. A pretty easy way to stay on top of the movers and shakers in the industry.

I’ll stop there for this round. That should give you plenty of quality marketing information on a daily basis. I’ll cover weekly newsletters in a follow-up post.

Are there any that you recommend?

Blogging For Business And The M20 Blogs

Posted by Patrick Schaber | Posted on 15-08-2007

Category : blogging

I wanted to plug two great efforts in the blog world that I’ve come across in the last week. I haven’t done one of my larger blog post recaps in a few weeks, but I wanted to pass on two very worthy articles.

First, over at the Create Business Growth blog, Christine has a great series running about using your blog knowledge to make money. We talk alot about the usual efforts of placing ads on blogs, but she’s actually talking about the opportunity out there to offer blog setup and related services to businesses or individuals. I couldn’t agree more with what she’s writing. This also speaks to the momentum that social media has going into new BtoC and BtoB marketplaces – many more businesses wondering how to enter social media. So far, she’s written part one and part two. I’m sure part three is coming soon – check it out!

I also want to highlight Peter Kim and a great effort he has started. He’s created a list – called the M20 blogs – based on some unique measurements that ranks blogs written by client-side marketing professionals. There are great marketing sites authored by agency professionals, but as Peter points out, us client-side marketers have a little different spin and twist on some common marketing themes. I was lucky enough to be included and am currently holding the 9th spot. Be sure to check out Peter’s formula for ranking the M20 blogs. Here’s the list so far:

Thanks Christine and Peter for two great contributions! Let me know your thoughts on their work.

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8 Shocking Revelations About Me

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Back From SES San Jose

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