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The Obama administration is taking another swing at improving its main foreclosure prevention program.
Environmental tourists can drift among icebergs in the Antarctic or stand in the Galapagos, inches from exotic birds.
Video: How to tackle party planning for the big game without breaking the bank.
The dilemma: an aging retail company needs to hit it big. The executive team decides to partner with one of the top-trending "brands" of 2011: The Kardashians. Upside: major name recognition, and any web search including "Kardashian" might generate a banner ad for the company. The downside: it's an unpredictable party to work with. The company is Sears, and the story is real. Here's what happened. One might argue that Sears was the original Amazon. Once upon a time they were a cutting-edge service that delivered whatever you needed, right to your door. But recent headlines about Sears read more like a reality TV show synopsis: stores closing, stock downgraded, and save-the-day new executive hires. A recent Forbes article lists changes ailing giant Best Buy needs to make to survive. Let's apply the same lessons to Sears (I've changed the wording). 1. Major digital integration. Like, yesterday.2. Cool products your customers are excited about3. New cool messaging Sears partnered with the Kardashians to launch a new product line Sears did $40 billion in sales last year (strong, but down from $50 billion the year before). And their customers are loyal to the company's reliable brands like Kenmore, Craftman and Lands' End. If Sears makes the right new business decisions, is this a strong enough customer base to grow from? Can digital marketing save Sears? Sears VP-president Dave Friedman has been busy. Let's start with the bad news: he already has an end date. The company apparently isn't ready for all the changes he's trying to push. Now the good news: he's managed to launch some cool new ideas. Here's a big one. The project had all the right elements: a Kardashian "Kollection" apparel line, with Annie Leibovitz shooting the ad campaign. A true "tra-digital" (traditional/digital) initiative that included digital marketing, SEO strategy, TV advertising, and partnering with E!'s "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" to show Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé hand selecting items for the Sears lineup. How did the TV partnership happen? Here's CMO Dave telling Questus' Joey Dumont about the process. (1:00) And how did it go? (0:31) If a company can't accept change, no digital marketing campaign can save it. Here's Dave discussing the challenge of being a "save the day" CMO. (1:06) Bonus clip: Dave has been at the helm on both the agency side, and the client side. Here's his top advice for bringing new ideas to brands. (1:35) Conclusion Despite initial positive reports, the negative press keeps rolling in, and almost 300,000 consumers have signed a petition to boycott companies that partner with Kim Kardashian. (Though other brands keep lining up to partner with the three sisters.) VP-president Dave Friedman is off to bigger and better things, and Sears is closing 80 Sears and Kmart stores this month. But we don't know the end of the story yet. Best of luck to this retail mainstay, and to the rest of us who are looking for new ways to connect with audiences and customers.Add a comment
This digital marketing business is not for the faint of heart. Not when there's a lame economy limping along, revenue growth expectations to be met, and tighter overall budget expectations to be dealt with. If you're thinking of digital marketing -- or any marketing for that matter -- in terms of either/or, it's time to move on. This is not a Chinese menu. No column A or B. Digital marketing is the science of "both." It's no longer search or display, display or text, SEM or search retargeting. It's all of the above. The combination of search data and display advertisements represent the perfect intersection. It is intent-based display targeting. After all, there isn't a more compelling time for a brand to put a display or text ad in front of someone than after they've searched for a specific product. There are two reasons that brands need to innovate in their use of search engine marketing. First is to show improved ROI for their efforts. Second is to integrate the new behaviors of the "searchers." Search retargeting, which applies consumer behavior and purchase intent to display, will be one of the best engines to drive the future of search for advertisers, and most importantly, for the searchers. Stay informed. Looking for the latest digital strategies for iconic branding? Attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Feb. 5-8. Request your invitation today. For brands, the searcher experience has become more important as consumers migrate from vertical search engines (such as travel or medical) to general search engines. Now, they want a better experience from Google, Bing, Yahoo, or others. A recent research paper published by Magnetic supports this by going back to IBM research analyst Andrei Broder, who published an academic study of search intent categories in 2010. He found three main behaviors: Navigational -- the immediate intent to reach a particular site Informational -- the intent to acquire some information assumed to be present on one or more web pages Transactional -- the intent to perform some web-mediated activity All three of these behaviors are still directly addressed by search retargeting. It is evident that search is among the best performing forms of advertising on the internet, but for marketers, it is not the only factor -- scale, reach, and price also come into play. According to a report from the Internet Activity Index, shared by the Online Publishers Association and Nielsen Online Data, search only represents 4 percent of users' share of time online. Thus, there is a need for technology innovation to take the power seen with the solid results and high ROI from search and apply it to display, where 96 percent of time on the internet is spent. Utilizing search and display together is the logical next step in terms of search expansion for two reasons: 1. By combining search data with display retargeting, marketers can better scale their SEM campaigns, and display advertisers can achieve a new level of targeted awareness. Search retargeted display will offer many more times the impression opportunities per keyword search than traditional paid search advertising. 2. With more opportunities to target based on keywords, advertisers achieve more efficient pricing than with traditional keyword advertising seen within the search engine. The scale from display and precision of search enables brands to reach the same consumer who searched for your product within the search engine on content sites like The New York Times, USA Today, and others. On the other end of the spectrum, there's the value to the consumer, or the searcher. The July 2011 McKinsey & Company report draws some interesting and underexposed conclusions about the benefits of search for consumers. It identifies the areas in which consumers find unique value from using search engines, including price transparency, entertainment, time saved, people matching, problem solving, and raised awareness. These areas reveal that the average search engine user derives between 30-65 percent more value from using search than any other media. While the report did not quantify search retargeting, it is clear that it has the potential to exponentially increase customer value through its efficiency and technological innovation. Again, this will be key to the growth and innovation of search retargeting over the coming year. It's time to throw away your Chinese menu and select digital strategies that leverage the science of both search and display advertising. By applying the power of intent data to digital display advertising, brands have access to a cohesive online approach that ties searchers' immediate interests with their online behaviors. Here are five key tactics to follow when you combine search and display strategies: Define strategyLeverage strengths of each channel to define a strategy to reach your campaign goals. For example, Magnetic recently worked with an online retailer that not only needed to maximize reach, but also wanted to focus on driving sales for specific products. By using search data combined with different creative to reach in-market shoppers, its search retargeting program delivered nearly a 300 percent return on ad spend. Test, test, and retestDisplay ad effectiveness can be challenging to measure. Fortunately, one of the great advantages of search is that there are various ways to test campaign strategies and optimize for performance. By combining search and display, marketers can use A/B testing to evaluate variables within a campaign such as frequency, creative, time of day, and day of week. It's still about keywordsSearch retargeting is the logical future of search innovation. But it's still based on SEM basics, and that includes keywords. Each brand and campaign has a unique target audience and set of objectives, and therefore, requires custom keyword segments. Using keyword generation tools enable marketers to expand beyond SEM lists and build out specific custom segments to target against. By optimizing at the keyword level, coupled with serving different creative assets based on specific search terms, Magnetic has increased campaign performance and helped retail clients push consumers through the funnel. It's also about creative Keywords have helped many companies capitalize on search retargeting. But hyper-targeted creative -- dynamic creative -- can also be essential in any given campaign. Layering specific ad messages and creative over the highest form of intent data also helps push consumers through the funnel. Use varied metricsThere are a lot of ways to measure the success of search retargeting, especially metrics that go beyond the click. For search retargeting, it's best to evaluate a myriad of metrics including CPA, CTR, CPC, return on ad spend, cost of marketing, and more. James Green is the CEO of Magnetic. On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.Add a comment
Every company with an online presence knows that increasing its virtual visibility is key to its success. Hiring an SEO consultant is the perfect way to outsource this vital task, but how do you know who is the best resource for your company? There are a lot of SEO "experts" out there who use shady tactics to drive traffic. You don't want to invest your money in people who won't get you results, and you don't want bad search karma. Here are four questions you need to ask any potential consultant before hiring, and the answers you should hear back. Stay informed. Looking for the latest digital strategies about connected televisual entertainment? Attend the iMedia Video Summit, Mar. 25-28. Request your invitation today. How do you select the keywords you'll target?SEO experts shouldn't shoot blindly when selecting keywords. The best ones will use Google's keyword tool and pull your site's historical keyword searches to determine which words have the highest potential to convert visitors. These words should then be embedded in your titles, the content of your pages, and in your meta tags. Don't overcook it -- keyword stuffing is a thing of the past, and you could pay the price with a ranking penalty. "Long tail" keywords can also be more helpful than a single word or phrase. Mixing words can assist in enhancing your ranking as there may be less competition. Search engines may have a high number of matches for "mortgage lender" or "VA," but "VA mortgage lender" may be less competitive. Therefore, having a page targeted to "VA mortgage lender" would be a smart move. Trying to think like your customers is essential, which translates into utilizing local phrases when you can. These are also less competitive, and many consumers will look for "Chinese restaurant Cleveland OH" rather than a Chinese restaurant. A Kelsey Group study revealed that 97 percent of consumers go online to search for local services. How do you obtain links?Two phrases you'll want to know about are "black hat" and "white hat." SEO consultants who follow Google's guidelines don't buy links. On the other hand, "Black hat" experts will purchase links and use other shady link-building tactics. While these stolen goods may produce some short-term gains, they're not worth the risk: your site can be penalized, or even banned, if the abuse is noted. Besides, most search engines look at the quality of the links connected to your website in order to rate your relevance and authority, and you can get quality links for free with a little hard work. True experts will seek out sites that have content that's complementary to yours. From there, they will get you added to directories or attached to partners or vendors who similarly meet your clientele's needs. Better yet, they'll obtain guest blogging opportunities for you -- these are great ways to demonstrate your expertise and build trust with potential customers. Some readers also find badges and other widgets to be convincing, so your SEO consultant will keep an eye out for those that are most relevant to you. External links are essential to SEO, as they can drive up to 80 percent of your business. These simple guidelines demonstrate what a safe bet is, and what's less secure: Content links = high rank Header links = high rank Side (margin) links = medium rank Comments = medium to low (spam hurts this ranking) Footer = low What kinds of reports do you provide?Be suspicious of an expert who won't let you view a sample report. A qualified SEO expert will typically provide you with a variety of data on a monthly basis. Most will be happy to show you the applicable keyword research they've done, as well as the search volume connected to the keywords they've selected. They'll also review your current site offerings and make suggestions for upfront tweaks you can make -- alterations to your URL, titles, number of clicks it takes to reach important pages, etc. They will place a benchmark on your site at the start so your ranking and visitors can be monitored. After these initial reports have been analyzed and you've launched a marketing plan, your SEO expert will report completed projects and the results that were achieved. They will also outline their upcoming plans for your site, report where all your links have originated from, and (most importantly!) provide you with insights regarding what new opportunities you could pursue. This is where outsourcing this expertise is valuable -- don't be short-changed on future opportunities. How much will my traffic increase?Nobody can promise you a No. 1 ranking. Google's keyword tool helps SEO experts estimate the current traffic a keyword is generating. By assuming a No. 1 ranking, a consultant can predict your future traffic. Although this seems illogical, it's not -- the No. 1 site can receive more than a third of the traffic on the internet for the keyword. While your expert cannot guarantee top rank, they will shoot to get you in the top five -- right in the center of traffic. Remember that it's not all about traffic. Good content and information that your audience can use is better. Long-term growth generated by content can have a better overall impact on your company than a short-term page ranking. SEO is an essential strategy for businesses today. It's important to be an informed consumer and ask the right questions. When hiring a consultant, you want to find the best. Your company deserves nothing less. Louis Rix is the marketing director for NetCars.com and director of Car Finance 247. On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.Add a comment