The Future Direction of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

13 12 2010

SEM is pretty straightforward, right?  You use some analytics software to figure out the search terms that customers are using to find your product or service and then you bid on the right to place ads with those terms.

A new white paper from Forrester looks at the future trends in SEM.  Like a lot of things, the searchable Internet is fragmenting  in many ways:

  • Into new forms of content.
  • Into new uses: Mobile/Social and GoogleTV are examples.
  • Into communities and platforms that are opaque to traditional search engines.  Examples include the Apple iPhone, Android phones, and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.  Search engine technology is going to adjust.  In fact, Bing and Google are already making changes.

But, the bottom line is that search engine marketing techniques and analytic approaches must change as well.

You can download the full Forrester report for free from Omniture (owned by Adobe):  The Future Of Search Marketing

It’s well worth reading.


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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media Marketing, Technology

Major Cloud & Social Media Announcements at Dreamforce

7 12 2010

Wow!  The pace of change continues to increase – and for the better.  I just attended the Salesforce.com Dreamforce keynotes this morning and there were some pretty interesting announcements.  First, a couple word on Salesforce.com itself.  They are now at a $1.7 billion per year run rate and are rated as the #4 fastest growing company in the Fortune 500. Impressive.

Mark Benioff spoke a good bit about the pace of change; how social media has passed email, how the iPad is selling 1 million units per month, how mobile devices and location-aware apps are changing how we live and work.  What’s impressive to see here is how Salesforce.com has seen these changes and has leveraged them better than most other large companies out there.  IBM, for example, “gets” it but has just not been quite as agile at internalizing the changes in strategy required to lead in this market.

Some of today’s announcements:

  • Chatter. Salesforce.com has done a great job of integrating their social media app, Chatter, into all of their applications.  They say that Chatter is their fastest-growing application.
  • Jigsaw. Likewise, a recent acquisition, Jigsaw, has been integrated to leverage the power of the community to deliver more accurate and complete enterprise contact information, critical to good sales and marketing efforts.
  • Chatter Free.  Salesforce.com is making a free version of their Chatter app available for free to enterprise users and have gone a long way towards making it really easy for corporate IT to implement it.
  • Chatter.com Free.  In February, they will deliver a free mobile version of Chatter.  The point is that they want everybody using Chatter.  They want to make this the social media platform for enterprise use. Smart idea.
  • Database.com. Software.com is delivering an enterprise-quality database in the cloud for the first time. It supports relational operations as well as full-text search and has a built-in enterprise-class security model.  It also has published APIs that modify themselves as you use the database, making application integration easier.  For more details.
  • Open Programming Languages. Salesforce.com also announced that they are partnering with VMware to deliver support for any industry programming language.  Java , for example, will be supported on the platform for the first time.

The conference continues tomorrow and there will be more announcements, but this is significant progress across many fronts including cloud, social media, mobile, etc.  You can follow it all at www.salesforce.com/live


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Categories : Cloud Computing, Company Example, Enterprise Marketing, Marketing Plan, Mobile, Social Media, Technology, Uncategorized

Social Media Marketing at Ford

5 11 2010

This is a follow-up to an earlier blog that I wrote about Ford and social media marketing.  They are continuing to do some great things over there.

The Ford Fiesta Movement

Ford launched the Ford Fiesta in this country entirely with social media marketing campaign called the Ford Fiesta Movement.

  • Ford gave 100 Fiestas to online personalities free for six months
  • The personalities were challenged to a contest where they got points for creating online content about the cars
  • Results at the time of launch
    • Over six million YouTube views
    • 740,000 Flickr images
    • 3.7 Twitter impressions
    • 80,000 people asked for more information about the Fiesta – and 97% had never owned a Ford before.
    • 40% Generation Y awareness

All this was done with zero traditional media.  It was a 100% social marketing campaign.

Ford Social Media Marketing Video

(This is really worth watching — all the way through)

Ford is not stopping there

The video here talks about how Ford is now doing a Focus Rally America event for the Ford Focus.

Here’s how Focus Rally America works (and this is creative):

  • Ford will select six teams of two people to compete in an interactive cross-country road rally.
  • The winner gets $100,000 plus 10 Ford Focus cars to give away to the people who help them the most online.
  • Clues to navigating the rally will be published online and the community will have to pick teams and support them by helping them to solve the clues.

Scott Monty, goes on to describe how Ford is using social media as a part of integrated marketing campaigns that have far more impact than traditional marketing campaigns.  These campaigns include

  • Paid media
  • Earned media
  • Owned media

The key to success, as he describes it so well, is: “It’s people talking to people about Ford, not Ford talking to people about Ford.”

The other important thing to take away from this is that Ford is generating user and interest and buzz without being gimmicky, in my opinion.  This is a fun way to generate genuine interest in their products.


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Categories : Business Models, Company Example, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Company, Social Media Data, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Advertising – Part II

10 09 2010

Just after my recent blog (9/7/10) on this subject, I saw a very interesting article on Mashable that offers some interesting numbers and analysis around social media advertising trends.

Some of the key points of the article include:

  • eMarketer projects that social will account for 6.7% of the total online ad spend this year.
  • The 2010 spending forecast for advertising on social networks is projected at $1.68 billion in the US, up 30%
  • Total social media ad spending is expected to pass $2 billion next year.
  • The big winner in this space is Facebook, with revenues projected to pass $1 billion this year.

In addition to Facebook, the article goes on to describe Promoted Tweets on Twitter where a company can insert a brand-sponsored topic into the trending topics list.  This program is in the early stages and is well worth watching.

Why the Move to Social Media Advertising?

  • The average user is now spending more time on Facebook than on Google according to comScore.
  • Nielson says that the average person spends more than seven hours per month on Facebook.
  • It’s effective 1: Social media lets companies target their audience much with much greater exactness.  The result: context-relevant ads and messages that are useful to end-users.
  • It’s effective 2: Social media lets the community digest messages if and when the want them, rather than interrupting their TV, reading, or radio experience.
  • Location-awareness offers the prospect of making messages even more relevant, helpful, and entertaining.
  • But, maybe most important of all, social media offers the opportunity for companies to engage in a two-way conversation with their communities 24x7x356.

The bottom line is that social media is where people are spending their time.  Social media also offers an opportunity to really engage with customers rather than just “drive-by selling.”


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Categories : Business Models, Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Data, Social Media Marketing

The Future of Advertising

7 09 2010

In previous blogs I have shared some of the research that shows that Social Media Marketing spend is projected to increase, often at the expense of traditional marketing methods.

Since then, I have run across the interesting news that the ad click-through rate has fallen in half in the last two years. (Source: comScore)

  • 32% click-through rate in July 2007
  • 16% click-through rate in March 2009

That should not be too surprising.  As users get more comfortable with technology, they develop personal skills and technologies to block out intrusive advertising.

So, advertising spending is moving away from traditional media, and moving more towards Internet and online advertising.  At the same time we know that click-through rates on ads are falling.  The conclusion is:

  • Ads need to be contextually relevant and helpful or entertaining to readers
  • Traditional, intrusive advertising will be less and less effective
  • You will also need to look at where you are advertising

The other big shift that we are seeing in advertising higher growth in display advertising and lower growth in search advertising. (Source: comScore)

  • Search Advertising was $2.9 billion in 2009, but grew at 4%
  • Display Advertising was $2.3 billion and grew at +15%
  • Some of the hot areas in Display Advertising include:
    • Banner Ads +8%
    • Video Ads + 48%

Some of the recent news in the industry reflects this data:

  • YouTube is using their ContentID technology to identify copyrighted content on their site, but rather than removing it, they are placing relevant ads with the content.  Full Article.
  • Yahoo! Has changed its strategic focus away from search and search ads to focus more on content and display ads.  The idea being to make the ads more effective by making them contextually relevant.  Full Article.

Where is online advertising heading from here?  Here are two examples of hot areas:

  • Ads within Social Media. Facebook has ads and Twitter is expected to follow in the reasonably near future.
  • Ads in mobile apps.  One the coolest and most useful examples I have seen is the information I have seen in the augmented reality apps.  These are presented as useful information about the physical locations around your present position.

The bottom line is, no matter where you place the ad, it has to be contextually-relevant, helpful and/or entertaining or your audience will just tune you out.  (Or some clever hacker will built a way to block your message.)


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Categories : Business Models, Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media Marketing

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