Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Pilgrim’s Picks for June 25 - Tugboat Edition

Posted: 25 Jun 2008 09:36 AM CDT

I met with a friend for coffee this morning and we discussed coaching/consulting. I plucked an analogy from the air, that he really liked, but I couldn’t think where to write it down–so I don’t forget it.

I’ll share it here, so anyone can use it.

A consultant is a tugboat at a busy harbor. The ship (client) could eventually find its own way to the dock, and may even manage to pull into a slip. However, the tugboat is there to give gently nudges in the right direction, ensure the ship avoids any shallow dangers, and actually berths at the right slip.

So says Andy “the tugboat” Beal.

OK, now for today’s Picks:

Blyk is a European mobile phone service that provides free calls in exchange for users accepting advertisements. Next it plans to expand beyond Britain to markets in Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Belgium.
Semantic “search engine” Evri is launching its limited beta today.
More expansion news. This time search engine analytics service SpyFu is coming to UK.
Just days after we thought Yahoo and Microsoft were done talking–for good–rumors start circulating that the two companies may be talking…again!
BusinessWeek warns bloggers that AP may not be the only media company monitoring the use of its content.
Google’s Asian search market share may only be 15% above Yahoo, but that’s enough to ensure its dominance.

Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

Charter Suspends Ad Targeting Over Customers’ Privacy Concerns

Posted: 25 Jun 2008 09:17 AM CDT

It looks like privacy concerns have put Charter Communications ad targeting plans on hold.

As we reported last month, ISPs are sitting on a wealth of personalized data, but lawmakers have expressed concerns over the methods used to tap into that data–especially "deep packet inspection."

The pressure has obviously become too much for Charter which, conveniently, spins the suspension of its ad plans into a mere pause, while it listens to customers.

"As we do with all new service launches or initiatives, we conducted focus groups well in advance, which told us that most broadband consumers would look upon this service favorably," Charter said on Wednesday.

"However, some of our customers have presented questions about this service as well as suggested improvements," it said. "We will continue to take a thoughtful, deliberate approach with the goal to ultimately structure an advertising service that enhances the Internet experience for our customers and addresses questions and concern they’ve raised."

Translated: We thought we could make a lot of money off of this, but it turns out our customers would rather we didn’t spy on them.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

B2C Lead Report. Good News For SEO’s and Email Marketers.

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 11:27 PM CDT

Two weeks ago, Andy brought you the B2B Lead Generation handbook. Without further ado, we now bring you B2C.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. "Viral marketing" landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.

Some of the highlights from company respondents:

A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on average, 53%) than offline (44%).
Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.
PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.
Companies are now investing more in their in-house email marketing. The average proportion of budget devoted to this has increased from 10% to 15%.
The biggest fallers since 2007 are affiliate marketing (from 50% to 43%),email marketing - rented lists (from 33% to 28%) and viral marketing (from 35% to 22%).

Luke Pursey, UK Managing Director, Clash-Media, stated:

The most encouraging difference from last year’s report is that now marketers are finally beginning to recognise proactive online lead generation as its own area of online marketing and not as a sub-division of affiliate marketing. The disconnect now is… helping them to make the most of it and maximising its potential as an extremely effective online marketing tool.”

No doubt there are a plethora of competing online lead generation activities. However, the results of the survey beg the question:

If marketers view SEO as a better value than PPC, why have the budget dollars slated for SEO decreased by 3% year over year? Is it the age old “snake oil” perception problem of SEO’s? Are SEO’s just lousy salespeople?

Any thoughts SEO’s?

The in-depth 44page report is chock full of charts, graphs and insightful tidbits on the various methods of online lead generation - a valuable resource for online marketers.

Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

Search Engines Preferred for Product Research

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 03:29 PM CDT

Just in case anyone out there was having a crisis of faith, the Opinion Research Corporation has good news for you: search engines are still the preferred method for conducting product/service research. In a survey of 736 adults released yesterday (PDF), ORC found that not only do most people prefer to use search engines for product research, they also read “online customer feedback” heavily.

That THAT, totally skewed Pew findings!

61% of respondents said they read “online reviews, blogs and other sources of online customer feedback before purchasing a new product or service.” Even more impressive, 83% said that “online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on their purchasing decisions.” (But only 32% reported posting online feedback themselves. Lazies.)

And it’s not just individual goods and services that people are researching: 70% looked for information on a particular brand of goods and services.

The survey also looked at where in the “funnel” this research was occurring. Most of us in the industry expect it research and reading online opinions to come in fairly early or midway through the purchase process. That wasn’t exactly the case: 38% first consult online reviews when they began their shopping research, but 27% turn to the Internet after narrowing it down to 2-3 choices, and “another 21% are at the narrowing down stage to confirm that they are buying the right product or service” (Not totally sure what that one means…)

ORC makes a sort-of plug for SEO here, which I’ll reiterate: people are turning to search engines to research and buy the products and services that you offer. Are they finding you? (It’s been a while, but I still remember the elevator pitch!)

ORC also hit on another important area that businesses need to watch in these findings:

“Businesses today exist in an era in which it’s nearly impossible to escape the likelihood of being
evaluated…there's nowhere to hide,” said Linda Shea, SVP and Global Managing Director of Customer Strategies for Opinion Research Corporation. “Companies must be extremely mindful of the power of proliferating online forums and their ability to shape consumer’s perceptions about brands. Even a single negative review, when posted in a very public forum, can have a significant impact on a prospective buyer's decision to purchase.”

*cough*cough*reputation management*cough*
expert*cough*Andy*cough*cough*Trackur*cough*. (Whoa, sorry ’bout those allergies!)

Finally, the last little tidbit: the most researched product and service categories were:

Travel/Recreation/Lesiure (82%)
Electronic goods (80%)
Household products/services (66%)
Clothing (55%)
Automotive (55%)
Personal care (40%)
Food (24%)

via

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Rave Reviews for Trackur; Agencies Are You Missing Out?

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 01:41 PM CDT

Since launching my own online reputation monitoring service, Trackur has seen more than 2700 registered users. Those that sign-up range from small mom-and-pop shops to some very well known Fortune 500 companies.

Those that seem to really get the most out of Trackur are marketing agencies and PR firms. Even if they’re not offering reputation monitoring services to their clients, just knowing what’s going on with a client’s brand, can be invaluable.

One very positive Trackur review caught my eye recently. Search marketing firm EngineWorks took the time to praise Trackur and explain why it’s so valuable to their clients.

We love Trackur
(To it put succinctly!) Andy Beal, founder of Trackur.com, has developed a fantastic tool for search marketing professionals. One that can be used to add tremendous value to client relationships.

We use Trackur in conjunction with several other proprietary applications to understand our clients' current presence online, and to efficiently monitor their image and reputation. With Trackur, we are able to immediately identify potential challenges to a client's reputation. In turn, we can rapidly engage with the company, and implement a strategic plan-of-action to minimize any negative impact.

Of course, Trackur’s great for monitoring your own company’s reputations, but agencies can use Trackur to:

Monitor clients news: be the first to make your client aware about a positive or negative news story.
Monitor industry trends: how can you help your clients market their blue widgets, if you’re not aware of trends and discussions in the widget industry?
Monitor your campaigns: that press release and social media campaign you launched for your client; is it working, is it being discussed?
Monitor your competitors: every SEO, PR, ad agency, and social media marketer should be aware of what its biggest competitors are up to!
Monitor industry news: want to know whenever Matt Cutts discusses paid links? Set Trackur to follow news on “Matt Cutts” then filter down to only when it pertains to paid links.

If you’ve not signed up for a free 14 day trial of Trackur, now’s the perfect time to do so. Did you try Trackur, but your free trial has finished? Email support AT trackur.com and we’ll give you some extra time to check it out.

Your, and your clients, reputation is being discussed. Do you know what’s being said?

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

Rack’em Stack’em Search Bots. Searchme Stacks the Pages in Their Favor.

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 01:29 PM CDT

Remember when I wrote about little known search engine, Searchme, earlier this month? They had just announced another round of funding and in my post I waxed a bit poetic about the "The Beauty of the UI". Some of the naysayers commented – "Nice, but not practical".

Two things you should know about investors. First – they typically don't throw a boatload of cash at zippo. Second – they play to win. So, it was a safe bet that the high profile group of investors must have seen some features they liked prior to anteing up another $12M. Two of those features were revealed today.

Searchme Stacks

Searchme Stacks extend visual search into the bookmark space and across the Web, allowing users to assemble and share collections of their favorite web pages in one. Searchme Media Search Searchme Media Search employs visual search to help users find media on sites like YouTube™ and Flickr™ by simply clicking on the "video" or "image" buttons on the Searchme site and scrolling through their results to quickly identify the correct video or picture. Searchme CEO Randy Adams had this to say,

Until now, most web users have had to check multiple bookmarks every day, click on dozens of links pasted into an email, and hunt multiple times for sites they saw once but didn't have time to check out. With Stacks, they can now bypass these methods, saving time and creating an organized web experience. Media search was one of our beta testers' most requested features, and now our users can find and preview photos and videos all in one place, and play their videos before they click through.

According to Searchme, query volume is up to 100-200K per day and they've recently hired Mike Mathieson at VP of Research as they work to improve relevance. Mike was most recently with Yahoo, where he was the Director of Engineering for Web Relevance. Next time you need to do some research for a project and want your pages readily available in front of you – this seems like a nice way to get it done.

Check out the Stack Demo here. What say you, Pilgrims?

Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

SMX Advanced: Link Building Strategies

Posted: 24 Jun 2008 01:26 PM CDT

By Vinny Lingham

Other than the weather in Seattle, my trip to SMX Advanced was fantastic. Danny Sullivan & co have done an amazing job by creating a conference circuit that even the most advanced Search Marketers found stimulating. My key takeaway from the conference was that there is a fine line between so called "White Hat" & "Black Hat" SEO – and most people don't know where one begins and the other ends.

One of the most important sections of SEO is link building, which was one of the main focuses on the conference. I've purposefully removed all the tactics that I considered to be "Black Hat", as I don't think it's in anyone's interest to have these tactics promulgated.

Roger Monti spoke first about .edu Link hunting

Two main link building initiatives:
• Industry heavyweight backlinks

Check the backlinks of the largest, most important companies in your sector.

o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "bookmarks"
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "links"
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "favorite sites"
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "your product of service"

• Charitable opportunities

o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu sponsors
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu donors
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu sponsors
o    Linkdomain:example.com site:.edu benefactors

Separating fact from myth:

.edu links are not special… but more can't hurt!

They are generally desirable because:
• Usually are not in bad neighborhoods
• In maps of link relationships, these pages are generally going to fall outside of relationships that are known for link manipulation

.edu's may not be desireable because:
•    Pages may not be authoritative content
•    Link pages may be a total link fest
•    Pages may not have many inbound/rarely crawled
•    Non-expert pages are going to be where your links are acquired

Use the following with your product/niche keywords and .edu modifies:
Hotlinks
Bookmarks
Links
Directory
Resources
Pay attention to what type of sites the targets are linking to. Don't bother them.

Jay Young from Link Fish Media then gave his approach:

Brass Balls & Big Bucks – You are going to need them!

Places to get links:

Directories (seriously)
•    Best of the Web
•    Yahoo
•    Dmoz
•    Joe Ant
•    Blog Catalogue