Posts Tagged ‘google’

April 6th, 2010

What is the value of a brand in the online world?

For the last ten years we’ve heard no end of tales about the triumph of the Internet over mass marketing.  Some robust sources like Wired have informed us that brands are in decline and some, like the American Marketing Association have even declared that “Brands are Dead“. Jonathon Salem Baskin announced in his book that “Branding Only Works on Cattle”. Through the publishing power of web 2.0 consumers are now empowered to make or break brands by the power of their aggregated reviews. One false move in the product or service department, coupled with no satisfactory attempt to remedy the situation can result in a cataclysmic descent in a brand’s fortunes. Ergo, today’s brands exist on a product quality, consumer service knife-edge. Given this new consumer-empowered situation, many a marketer may ask the question, “What is the value of a brand in the online world?”

Before we get to the answer we have to have a working definition of what a brand is. Surprisingly, many business-people (not necessarily marketers) still think that a “brand” is a “logo”.  That’s not true.  Crucially, a brand is not a thing, it’s a set of perceptions that exists in the minds of consumers. A brand is a collection of perceptions about pricing, quality and consumption experiences. Brands are defined in consumers’ minds by the recommendations, criticisms, tastes, and “jobs well done” they themselves have experienced or heard about.  On top of all this, the brand logo is the “brand mark”. To use an analogy based on roads, the brand mark is the sign that says “M1″, but it’s not the motorway.  The product is the motorway, the brand mark is “M1″ and the brand itself is what people think and feel about the M1 as means of transport relative to other options.

Now let’s swing back to the Internet. The Internet is of course a glorious place where the consumer reigns supreme and the truths about products and services are revealed to all.  In this Utopian dream, companies, brands, corporates and institutions can no longer ‘hoodwink’ the consumer. Consumers can “talk directly” with brands and have a customised one-to-one relationship based on “digital conversations”.  All things from the past are now aged and obsolete

Well that’s one point of view. The Internet is also something else. It is a ‘cesspit of false information’. With no barriers to entry and nearly frictionless production and distribution, it’s easy for false information, lies, doctored images, and other forms of deception to infiltrate the Internet. Now that’s not my point of view, it belongs to Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google and the engineer of its post invention growth.   Yes, the Internet is also the home of spam, cloaking, deception, bank account thefts, fraud, consumer scams, false and misleading reviews, viruses, trojans, hacking and many other types of cyber crime.

So, where does this leave brands in the digital age?  I’d argue that the truths represented by brands coupled with the complexities of increased choice and the realities of the darker side of the Internet mean that brands are more vital now than ever before.  The world is getting more complex because more choice is being offered.  Many sources of products and information can’t be trusted.  Consumers use brands to help simplify decision making.  Brands are ‘the solution not the problem’ according to Eric Schmidt at Google, ‘brands are how you sort out the cesspool’.

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October 2nd, 2009

Building an effective search engine marketing strategy

Just had to set out all the elements of an effective paid search strategy for a client. Thought it might be worth setting out some of the important areas to consider if you are to develop an effective paid search strategy. It’s not exhaustive, but it is helpful if you need a quick check list of things to cover.

  1. Platform Selection – determining which of the search platforms to use. The main options are Google, MSN/Bing and Yahoo! Bear in mind that in the UK Google’s share of the search market is around 90% (Hitwise Sept 09). This raises issues about work loads versus potential returns. In my view, sadly, alternatives to Google are below critical mass now.
  2. Network Deployment – do you run across the site’s extended network/content partners? This means your ads appear on other sites apart from the search engine you are using to create the campaign. This can be good or bad  - it depends on the ROI both options deliver to the campaign you are planning.
  3. Campaign and Ad Group Structure - Organise your keywords into Campaigns and Ad Groups for optimal targeting efficiency. Remember that budgets can only be set at campaign level so if you want to allocate specific budgets across groups of target keywords you will have to set up individual campaigns for each set.
  4. Keyword Selection – Select the keywords your target audience are searching. Remember that generic terms are likely to produce more traffic and fewer purchase conversions than highly targeted lower volume keywords. Given that you are likely to be paying for clicks, you need low levels of clicks and a high conversion rate.
  5. Negative keywords – if you’re selling ‘flat pack furniture’ you don’t want to be selling ‘flats’ or ‘puncture repairs’! Negative keyword settings allow you to eliminate these problems.
  6. Keyword matching – Search engines will return your ad against phrases that contain your target keyword terms. But because the words in a phrase can be rearranged to mean something else, poorly targeted keyword phrases may deliver searchers who are looking something different to what you are selling. You can solve this problem by using Phrase match or Exact match keyword targeting.
  7. Bid Tactics - Your keyword bid will determine how high you appear in the search engine’s listings. But remember that the #1 position does not always provide the best ROI. Lower positions can have a much higher cost efficiency. You will need to set up tests to monitor this and refine it as your campaign gathers sales data. Remeber you pay for clicks but only conversions will build your business.
  8. Day / Day parts - Your target audience may be more or less active on certain days or at certain times of day. Setting up the days and times of day that you want your ads to run allows you to target prospects when they are most active or most likely to convert to a sale.
  9. Budget Setting – You can manage budget deployment by setting your daily / monthly budgets at the campaign Campaign level.
  10. Budget delivery – Search engines will “spend” your money in two ways, either 1) as the searches are pulled through by consumers or 2) spread evenly throughout the day. The problem with route 1 is that you can be out of budget by lunchtime. You can set the way your budget delivered across day.
  11. Ad Text Copy Writing – Preparing copy to fit the confines of the ad text box and reflect your keyword selection is a vital component of search marketing. You have a fixed number of characters across each of the three lines including the headline. It pays in terms of ranking and response to match the ad text as closely as possible to the keywords you are targeting. Relevance is key.
  12. Linking / Deep Linking - Linking ads to the relevant web site page(s) and/or landing page(s) can take your prospect directly from their search, through your ad and to the page containing the product information they’re seeking. That makes for better conversion rates.
  13. Analytics tracking – setting up Google Analytics to track your campaign in detail will allow you to generate in-depth insight about where your visitors come from, how they enter your site, what they do on it, and the pages they leave from. But perhaps best of all, once you’ve gathered enough data Analytics will allow you to start optimising your campaign parameters around sales rather than clicks.

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October 20th, 2008

A Secure Office Cabinet

Searched Google today for a “Secure Office Cabinet”. In position 4 in my Google search returns was the UK Cabinet Office Intelligence and Security Committee. I think this raises important questions. Does Google in its infinite information-driven wisdom, know that the Home Office Cabinet Security Committee with its brief to “examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service” is in fact nothing more than a secure cupboard tucked away in Whitehall? Or is it the case that Google really can’t tell the difference between a high ranking government department and vendors of lockable office storage cupboards? There is of course a third and rather Pythoneqsue possibility: that the Security Committee meets in a cupboard. This is not as ludicrous as it sounds; the Beatles reputedly recorded their White album track “Yer Blues” in a studio cupboard.

Interestingly for SEO purists, the SERP #1 return, LA Office, had a PR of 1/10 whilst the government department at SERP #4 has a PR of 5/10.

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September 18th, 2008

Is Google Marketing’s new Yellow Pages?


For many years Yellow Pages had an interesting, if not pole, position in marketing performance reports. Whilst many communication and media channels would deliver a cost per sale of £X, the Yellow Pages always topped the report, often with a CPS of a 10th of £X - or even less.

Why did it do so well? Not because it had any magical qualities as an advertising medium but because it because it was the first calling point for many consumers wanting to find out more about an advertised product. When calling a call centre, the operative might ask, “And where did you hear about AB Financial services?” to which the caller would respond, “In the Yellow Pages”. This Yellow Pages source would then be duly logged in the call data for future agency evaluation. Let’s call this “Yellow Pages Syndrome”

Google is now increasingly performing this “first port of call” function in marketing activity, particularly in non-retail services marketing. The result is that when brand terms are measured in pay per click campaigns they can perform extremely well. Conversions on PPC brand search terms for product X can come in at less than 10% of the cost per conversion on generic category terms. Think “Atco lawnmowers” versus the generic “lawnmowers” for example. “Atco lawnmowers” may deliver a cost per conversion of less than £10, whilst the generic “lawnmowers” may produce a cost per conversion several times higher.

Informed marketers always knew that Yellow Pages was only the “receptacle for response” not the originator of the response itself. The problem was that Yellow Pages was very difficult to measure, all we had to go on was the circulation or distribution volumes in each book’s catchment area. This figure was flat over the whole year and no daily or seasonal readership reporting was available. As a result is was almost impossible to form robust causal linkages between advertising activity and Yellow Pages response. But Google’s daily level reporting across all purchased PPC terms including factors such as response, conversion and key page visits (through Google analytics) means that we have enough data variation to examine those linkages. And, lo and behold, the data clearly supports the idea that advertising drives brand searches.

The fact that advertising and direct marketing drive Google brand term searches means they now have a new metric against which they can be judged. Advertising and direct marketing that produces Google searches can be driving some of the lowest cost sales a business is likely to make - -provided Google searches driven by these channels are correctly attributed. So whilst online and offline, Google and other techniques may appear to be competing against each other, they are in fact enjoying a harmonious and synergistic relationship.

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April 17th, 2008

Google trades marks

So Google is planning to relax its current restrictions and allow keyword advertisers to bid for trademarks and brand names belonging to other companies, including competitors. This means that Company A can bid for keyword searches on Company B - and display an ad in search returns for Company B’s name. Clearly this raises issues for both consumers and company lawyers.

From the consumer perspective, it seems slightly odd that Google is going down this route. One of Google’s stated missions is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Serving up the wrong brand terms against specific brand name searches could cause confusion and even lead some consumers to adjust their respect for the integrity of Google’s search processes.

As far as I can ascertain (and I’m no lawyer), the legal position is complicated. Google is using trademarked terms in its search algorithm. The issue is whether or not a company can prove that there has been a trade mark infringement or passing off. Under the terms of trade mark law this occurs where you use someone else’s name so as to capitalise on their goodwill. For this to apply you have to be actually displaying the name – when the law was drafted the concept of google ad word searching could not possibly have been imagined.

Assuming that Google has not made this move to stimulate mass class actions, it must have done its legal homework and be confident that no case for trademark infringement can be brought against it. It is interesting that these issues are emerging faster than the case law. It may be that that the law itself has to change and that can only come if advertisers feel they are being sufficiently disadvantaged to make them consider lobbying. In the meantime, consumers will have to get used to searching for one thing and being served another - certainly as far as paid search goes.

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February 5th, 2008

Microsoft+Yahoo! Search: 1+1 doesn’t equal 5

Healthy competition between media owners and communications suppliers is a good thing and should be encouraged. Competition keeps products healthy, prices fair and consumers happy. But I’m not sure a Microsoft/Yahoo! search merger is sufficient to create any notable or lasting impact on the current structure of search marketing.

The problem is that Google is the giant in search - especially here in the UK where it has an 81% market share. That leaves Microsoft, Yahoo! and some others carving up the remaining 19%. The problem with these percentages is that they are real peoples’ behavioural preferences. Changes in industry structure and product ownership will not necessarily change consumer behaviour.

History tells us that dominant brand positions can be very difficult, if not impossible to dislodge. In fact category leaders are not dislodged; categories are dislodged. We can use transport examples to illustrate the point. The leading stagecoach companies gave way to the leading railway companies who in turn gave way to the leading car companies. But the leading stagecoach company didn’t become a leading car company. New entrants created and dominated new travel categories.

So change may not come until someone new invents search 3.0 or even search 4.0. or Web 5.0 - or ‘Somethingtotallynew 1.0′. And that will happen, just as the behemoth Microsoft once looked like it would never lose its dominance, so too will Google one day be eclipsed. But in the meantime, Microsoft and Yahoo! will be hard pushed to displace Google when it comes to search.

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