Category Archives: Digital Marketing

“Doing Search” Online Counts If You’re Seen

First published June 28, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’m not making any friends with Ontario Tourism. Two weeks ago I said in this column they weren’t using search. I was quickly corrected by the tourist bureau’s Nick Pedota, who told me my claim was “wildly inaccurate” and that Ontario Tourism in fact has “an extensive search program.” But based on the following searches I did while in Toronto, Ontario Tourism didn’t show for: Ontario vacations, Ontario resorts, Toronto vacations, Ontario getaways and Ontario holidays. According to Google Trends’ keyword research tool, these are the most common searches for Ontario, by a substantial margin.

If You’re Not Seen, You’re Not Doing Search

Here’s the reality of search marketing. It’s one thing to say “we’re doing search” internally — and it’s a totally different thing to have the searcher realize that yes, you’re doing search. The smart thing to do here would be to give Pedota and Ontario Tourism the retraction they’re looking for and say I made a mistake (which I did). But this proves too good an example of the disconnect I see all the time; managing a search campaign to budgets, not objectives. I stand by my original claim: Canadian advertisers aren’t clueing into the power of search.

Nick wasn’t really in a mood to share many details of the bureau’s campaign, but he did share that they’re were bidding on thousands of “targeted keyphrases” and were using heavy geo-targeting to focus on their prime markets (Ontario and the border states). He said that’s simply “smart marketing”. I can’t disagree. It makes sense to target in on your best clicks first, especially if budgets are limited.

Where’s the Money Going?

But in this case, are budgets really limited? Let me share some things I was able to dig up on Ontario Tourism’s site. First of all, the tourist bureau is doing print (lots of print) and TV (lots of TV). The goal? To drive people to its Web site. Full-page 4-color ads are running multiple times in over 70 dailies and weekly newspapers and 9 magazines. One 4-color full-page ad in the Toronto Star would run about $54,000 (there’s a certain amount of guessing here, as print rate cards are really a mathematical exercise in confusion and frustration). Circulation of the Toronto Star is 350,000 (on an average day). An excellent conversion rate for a newspaper ad would be 0.5% That means, ideally, 1,750 people would actually visit the Ontario Tourism website. Now, I have never in my life seen a newspaper ad convert this well, but even if it did, that would be a cost per visitor of $30.85. If the ad doesn’t work that well, the average cost climbs dramatically. And you pay whether or not the ad works.

What People Actually Use

Now, courtesy Yahoo Canada and a recent survey, let’s look at what actual travelers cite as the most important influencers in making travel plans. Search and Web sites are tied for number one and two, used by 51% of respondents in a recent survey. Newspapers and print? Only used by 7%. But yet, only 2.1% of Canadian ad budgets get spent on search, and 42% gets spent on newspapers and magazines. I couldn’t get any specific percentages for Ontario Tourism, but one only has to look at their campaign page to see that search is very likely getting only a fraction of what’s going to newspapers and magazines. And don’t even get me started on the TV buys.

The Search Story

So, where is Ontario Tourism in the search results? As Pedota shared, they’re only geo-targeting the prime markets, and then only for a 3-month period (April through June). Only 1 of the 7 highest traffic key phrases I found (using an Ontario IP) returned an ad or an organic listing for Ontario Travel (the site also hasn’t been organically optimized). More specific phrases, like Ontario Summer Vacations or Ontario Wine Getaways, did return more ads.

But by bidding on specific phrases (even thousand of “long tail” ones) and not on the more popular ones, Ontario Tourism is catching less than 10% of all the people using search to plan a vacation in Ontario. And unless you’re in the top-sponsored ad locations (which few of the ads I saw were) you’re actually only being seen by a small percentage of those searchers (usually 10% to 30% of them) on the results pages you do appear on. So, according to 97 out of 100 people who are using search to find the official site for Ontario Tourism, the tourism bureau is not “doing search.” By the way, you could maintain top spot in Google and Yahoo for all the top traffic phrases for less than $2 per visitor. Remember, that ad in the Toronto Star cost, at a minimum, 15 times that!

Again, let’s recap. What’s the purpose of the campaign? To drive people to the Web site. And not just any one — THE official Web site of Ontario Tourism, the site most people are looking for on these key phrases.

And You’re Spending Your Money Where?

Is it really “smarter” to ignore 97% of the people who are actively searching online to find you, so you can spend more money running ads in newspapers for the 99.5% of people who have no interest in your site at all? And the real irony here is that if people don’t click on a search ad, you don’t pay! Take a fraction of that budget from the Toronto Star and blow out the geo-targeting and time parameters and go for the high-traffic phrases. After all, there might be people in Saskatchewan or Nova Scotia that are planning a trip to Ontario. Or, perhaps they’re planning their trip in September, or February. If not, it’s not costing you anything. Try getting the Toronto Star to offer the same pricing model!

Is this really smarter marketing? You decide. The readership of this column includes some of the smartest marketers on the planet. Blog about this and give me your opinion. Maybe I’m missing something, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t apologize for trying to get advertisers to spend money more effectively. After all, in this case, it’s really our money they’re spending. At least, it would be if I were an Ontario taxpayer. Something tells me after this column, it might be a good thing I live 2000 miles away. As I said, I’m not making any friends in Ontario.

The Cranky Canadian is Back from Toronto

Apparently I stirred the pot a little bit when I was in Toronto. Yahoo invited me to give a breakfast talk to the handful of Canadian advertisers and I managed to hijack the session for 10 to 15 minute rant about how Canadians don’t get search.  I quickly followed this up with a column in  the SearchInsider to the same effect. I did make one mistake.  I did mention that the Ontario government doesn’t do search for their official tourism information site.  I was quickly corrected in that.  There is in fact the search campaign going on.  It just wasn’t registering for any of the searches I did.  I think I’ll follow up on this a little more for next week’s SearchInsider column.

I apologize to show chair Andrew Goodman for breaking the cardinal Canadian rule of politeness.  Andrew is shipping a case of generic cola with a Canadian politeness serum cleverly mixed in to try to return me to the accepted norms for Canadian behavior. I noticed another blogger who picked up on my rant indicated that as a Canadian living in the US, I would be well advised to escape back south of the border. I don’t know if this is good news for Canadian advertisers or not, but I actually am a resident Canadian.  I call Kelowna, B.C. home.

You know, the funny thing is, other than poor Nick at the Ontario Tourism Board who I mistakenly said had his head up his ass, most everyone else has agreed with me.  Perhaps being a cranky Canadian pays off.  To my knowledge there’s nobody who really is filling this role currently, although Canadians have a long tradition of being cranky.  Notable cranky Canadians in the past included Gordon Sinclair, Pierre Berton and Jack Webster.

If it makes you feel any better, Canadian advertisers weren’t  the only ones I turn my sights on in the past week.  I also took a few shots at Yahoo during an interview on Bloomberg TV. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been traveling for past 2 1/2 months and I think the last time I actually got seven hours of uninterrupted sleep was back in March. This weekend I think I’ll have a stiff shot of Canadian whiskey (we call it rye up here), have a good night’s sleep and maybe I’ll come back next week kinder, gentler and more polite.  Or not.

Semel Says So Long – Yang’s Back

Well, the other shoe dropped. Terry Semel’s stepped down and Yahoo is dusting off co-founder Jerry Yang and bringing him back as CEO. Sue Decker steps in as President.

There’s a whiff of desperation here. I’ve often said that one of the reasons Google has excelled in search is the hands on involvement of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They had an intimate interest in the Google user experience and made it a sacred cow at Google, closely watched by Marissa Mayer. The entire Google empire has been financing solely by the strength of that user experience, so don’t ever underestimate the power of it.

The Yahoo or MSN (Live..etc) user just never had as highly a placed champion (or champions). The fact that Jerry Yang and David Filo cashed in relatively early at Yahoo and watched from the sidelines allowed the search also-ran to drift and be run into the ground by bean counters and those who had dreams of an online media empire. The waffling back and forth came close to killing Yahoo, and may yet.

Sue Decker is a fiscally responsible executive (a.k.a. bean counter) and Jerry Yang, who still has a garage full of Yahoo stock, is probably a little worried about slipping down the Forbes list if the share price continues to erode. So he’s stepping back into the ring, full time.

Will this have much of an impact on the Google/Yahoo rivalry? No, I don’t think so. Jerry cashed in and eased back, where Sergey and Larry would have never dreamed of it. The motivations are different. And Sergey and Larry take an engineer’s proprietary interest into the nitty gritty minutiae of Google, where Yahoo was never really an engineering brain child. It was a collection of links, the manifestation of a online community. It embraced technology because it had too.

To me, this seems like it’s buying time, to keep share prices propped up until a deal can be inked, nothing more. The faces have changed, but the look of desperation remains the same.

Coincidentally, I was just in Toronto last week and talked on Bloomberg TV about the need for leadership and focus at Yahoo.

Canada, It’s Time to Clue into Search!

First published June 14, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’ve never hid the fact that I’m Canadian. I’m fervently proud of that fact, and more than willing to take the good-natured ribbing I often get on the road from my American friends. I usually bear the brunt of some Canadian joke on a panel (often, I’m the one telling it) and I’m more than happy to act as a one-person tourism bureau. But this week, at SES Toronto, I’ve got to say that when it comes to search marketing, Canadian advertisers have their heads up their ass.

Being a Canadian, I’ve pondered long and hard about whether to soften that comment. After all, heaven forbid it comes off sounding rude. Saying someone, anyone, especially your fellow countrymen, have their heads up their ass sounds so, well, American. It’s unequivocal, to the point, in your face, aggressive: everything that Canadians generally aren’t. We’ve had it bred and/or frozen out of us.

But after looking at the facts, I couldn’t come to any other conclusion. The irony is that Canadians (I hope myself included) have played a major role in shaping the North American search industry. People like Barbara Coll, Todd Friesen, Andrew Goodman, Ian McAnerin, Ken Jurina and Jim Hedger are considered world-class in the game. But most of us are shaping the industry working with American clients. It’s because Canadian advertisers haven’t woken up to search yet, and there’s just no excuse for that, because Canadian customers are light years ahead of them.

Canada’s wired!

Canadians use the Internet more than anyone else in the world. According to comScore (responsible for all the stats in this paragraph), we spend more time online, have more wired households, are more sophisticated in our online behavior, do more searches. Pick your metric, Canada is ahead of the pack when it comes to online usage. For example, when we look at average hours spent online per month, Canadians are top with 40 hours, followed by Israel with 37.4 and South Korea with 34. The U.S. is in 8th place with 29.4. Canada also leads the pack in online reach, with 70% of households wired. This time, the U.S. comes in second with 59%. Average pages viewed per visitor? Canada comes in tops with 3800. The U.K. is second with 3300 and the U.S. clicks in with 2500.

See a pattern emerging? We spend a hell of a lot of time online up here. And much of that time is looking for something to buy. Canadians are the world’s best shoppers. We research every purchase down to the nitty-gritty detail. The Internet was created for shoppers just like us.

But what about the advertisers?

I’m writing this at SES Toronto. By common consensus with most Canadian search marketers I’ve talked to, Toronto seems to be the epicenter of the orifice that Canadian advertisers have lodged their collective heads in. The city doesn’t get it, the province doesn’t get it, the country doesn’t get it. When it comes to search, Canada (with a few exceptions) is clueless.

I remember my first SES in Toronto. I had been attending the U.S. shows for a few years previously, and it was with more than a hint of nationalistic pride that I attended the first Canadian show. But my jaw soon dropped at the questions I was fielding from the audience. This group was at least three years behind the U.S. market. That was four years ago. Since then, the U.S. has dramatically outpaced Canadian growth in search savviness. And if you look elsewhere, almost every market I’m familiar with, including the U.K, France, Italy, Germany and even China is rapidly gaining on the U.S. But Canada still seems to be blundering its way forward, overlooking the fact that Canadians spend a huge amount of time online using search engines. It’s to the point where it’s unforgivable.

Show us the money!

Here are just a few of the stats I pulled from comScore, Yahoo Canada and other sources:

  • Canadians spend $28.05 in online advertising per Internet user. The US spends $71.43.
  • 21% of Canadians media usage is online, but it gets 6% of the budget.
  • In contrast, newspapers and magazines get a 7% share of total media usage, but capture 42% of Canadian ad budgets,
  • The U.S. spends almost twice as Canada per capita on search marketing.

I did a few searches from my hotel in Toronto to see if the big brands show for common searches. They don’t. The quality of sponsored ads up here is abysmal. If you were planning a vacation in Ontario, don’t expect to see the official tourism site for the Ontario government in the top sponsored ads. They don’t do search. If there’s anything our research has shown, it’s that you need relevance in top sponsored to encourage interaction with this real estate. Until you get quality advertisers, sponsored is No Man’s Land.

So, in an atypical move for a Canadian, I’m railing against the cluelessness of our advertising community. Next time I come to Toronto, you’d better have your act together. Canadian shoppers get it, why don’t you?

By the way, sorry if this sounds harsh. Must be all the time I’m spending out of the country. Hopefully my passport won’t get revoked.

Planning for Personalization

First published June 7, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I should have known as soon as I saw the speaker roster. Google’s Matt Cutts, Yahoo’s Tim Mayer, Atlas Web Service’s Michael Gray and myself on the same panel. Guess who got the lion’s share of attention in the Q&A and after-session scrum? Michael and I might as well have checked out early and hit the Google Dance before the crowds.

The title of the panel at the inaugural SMX in Seattle was “Search Personalization: Fear or Fear Not.” (Discussed from an attendee’s point-of-view in yesterday’s Search Insider.) As moderator Danny Sullivan often does, he set the panel up to generate a little debate: Michael Gray vs. Google, Yahoo vs. Google. I was like Switzerland, in neutral territory. Danny did get his conflict, with Michael taking a few shots at Google and Tim Mayer throwing down the gauntlet about the lack of transparency on Google’s personalized search results.

Guess What? SEOs are not your Average Search User!

To be honest, I was a little taken aback that the audience didn’t jump all over how personalization was going to change SEO. Most of the questions from the crowd centered on how you opt out of personalized search and why personalization wasn’t good for them. I have some issues with that, which of course I’ll share in this column:

  • First, this crowd was trying to argue from a user’s point of view. Okay, they’re SEOs (this was the organic track) and most of them have been using search since Lycos was a little baby spider. Just how typical do you think these users are?
  • Second, I question their motives. Do they hate personalization as a user, or as an organic optimizer? My guess is the latter, but it doesn’t seem very noble to joust with Google because the company is making your job harder. Far better to cry foul as a user than as a PO’d organic optimizer. As somebody said to me after the session, do you really think Marissa Mayer is losing sleep because the Google user experience for SEOs isn’t all the SEOs want it to be?
  • This was a perfect opportunity to start planning for the new world of SEO, post-personalization. There’s a ton of value we can add, as smart, proactive practitioners, but I didn’t see anyone take the opportunity to delve into this. Perhaps the really smart ones were keeping their mouths shut, content to let their competitors bitch about the inevitable while they plotted their takeover.
  • I found everyone fixated on the current threshold of personalization on the page, taking comfort in the fact that it’s only impacting a small number of searches. I reminded them that this threshold is a totally arbitrary one set by Google, and could (and will) change at any time.
  • Everyone is taking a siloed view of personalization, looking at the organic results in isolation. It’s almost as if they’re assessing the amount of damage control required. I’m not sure they realize the import of personalization. This is a rule changer, a paradigm-shifter. This is the new generation of search functionality. It changes the game dramatically. Whatever happens on the organic side will roll over to the sponsored side. It will drive universal search. It will drive everything.
  • Finally, this is not happening just on Google. Microsoft’s recent comments made it very clear its strategists are thinking long and hard about personalization. Tim Mayer cautioned me not to make the mistaken assumption that just because Google was first out with personalization, it’s the only one working on it. In fact, Matt was quite delighted when he found an article in Times Online discussing how Yahoo Vice President Tapan Bhat confessed at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam that personalization was the future of the Web, including search. You can define personalization in a number of different ways, but however you do it, it dramatically changes our online experience.

So, I leave you with this. I went into the SMX session ready to discuss four fundamental changes I see emerging from personalization that SEOs and SEMs have to think about, right now. No one asked me for the slide deck after the session. There was not one question about strategies for leveraging personalization. Everyone was more interested in grilling Matt on why the opt-out link had disappeared from the results page.

Although I’m tempted to join the smart and silent search marketers, I think I’ll make one last attempt to share this information with the SEM/SEO community — perhaps in a white paper, perhaps a future column. But I’m only going to do it if you’re serious about pushing the envelope into this new opportunity. Reply to the blog below and let me know. Otherwise, I’ll just shut up and nod my head while you bitch about the fact that it’s too hard to opt out of personalized search. You’ll excuse me if I don’t answer; you see, my mind is on something else.

Logging in from China – Part IV

I’ll soon be on NW 08 back home (well, technically, Seattle, but close enough). Beijing proved to be less frantic that I expected. It was certainly intense by North American standards, but it almost peaceful compared to the chaos of Xiamen.

This is definitely a city that’s preparing to welcome the world. That becomes apparent even upon landing. Two huge new terminals are being built at the airport. These are massive buildings that run forever along the existing runway.

My visit to Beijing was limited to what could be seen in one day. Chris (Sherman) and I had planned to spend a rather full day seeing as much as we could. We got to the hotel in the evening and both agreed that we weren’t prepared to hit the town quite yet. We opted instead for the hotel’s own uninspiring but adequate buffet. The consolation was that included unlimited, serve yourself draught beer. Now, this is an idea that should be adopted by the west!

Our hotel was the Prime, about a 20 minute walk from Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. The western chain hotels in the area were more than twice the price and the Prime was rated fairly well in TripAdvisor, so I thought it should be adequate for a couple of nights. It was no Sheraton. Even when I cranked the air conditioning to full, the barest whisper of air could be felt coming out of the crate. The air in the room was about a dead as the Ming dynasty. The place was inundated with German tourists and the service was decidedly indifferent, after the almost fawning approach I found at the Sheraton in Xiamen. It wasn’t a disaster, but this is probably the first time that I found a TripAdvisor rating perhaps a little too high. I’ll try to remember to post a comment to this effect.

Early the next morning, after a picturesque sunrise that unfortunately was made more colorful due to the thick layer of smog perpetually hanging over Beijing, we negotiated with a taxi to take us to the Great Wall at Badaling and then back into the city to drop us off at the Forbidden city. We got to the Great Wall in good time and missed the worst of the crowds. Word of advice. Don’t go to this location of the Great Wall in the middle of the day. You’ll be fighting crowds the whole way.

From the parking lot, we had two choices. We could go explore the Wall to the east or west. On the west side, the Wall climbed at a near vertical angle up the Jungdo pass high to the mountain above. On the other side, the Wall climbed at a much more leisurely angle up the other side of the pass. Chris and I are two middle aged guys that are letting youth go reluctantly, so of course we chose the more vertical of the two options. Beside, we reasoned, the view at the top will be better.

First, let me say the Wall was amazing. As we climbed, the views were spectacular in every direction, with terraced mountain sides towering over the river and temples below, with small lookout towers and temples dotting the mountain side above us. But this is no westernized tourist experience. This is slogging up uneven stone steps, some a few inches in height, some over a foot, sometimes with no handrails, squeezing past picture takers and those that just need to catch their breath. In each watchtower, there were treacherously narrow steps leading to the top lookout. In some cases, the steps were so warn you had to precariously try to find a foothold on either side. This would never be open to the public in the west, the liability exposure would just be too great.

We made it to the top, after climbing up well over a 1000 feet, step by step, and were rewarded with a spectacular view. Another group reached the top at about the same time and we asked one of the group if they could take a picture of Chris and I. They in turn asked us to take a picture of them. They asked where we were from and what we did. Every time I’m asked what I do, I never know exactly what to answer. Search engine marketer is too obscure for most people’s frame of reference. So when Chris mentioned he was a search marketing consultant, I expected the typical glazed over response and polite nod, indicating the person was thinking, “I don’t know what the hell that is and I really don’t want to know.” Therefore, I was surprised when the group grinned and one of them said, “Do you know who this group is?” We had climbed up the wall with a group of Google engineers from Mountain View, who were in China for a joint workshop with a bunch of their Chinese counterparts. What the hell are the chances?

After the Great Wall and a quick visit to the temples at the foot of the pass, we met up again with our taxi driver and headed back into Beijing to the Forbidden City. The immense scale of the place defies imagination. The palace is in full restoration mode for the Olympics, and the difference between the weathered and grime encrusted non restored buildings and the freshly restored ones were amazing. Two of the bigger palaces were completely shrouded in scaffolding, so we couldn’t see them. Just as well, because the day and the previous climb was starting to catch up with both of us by this point anyway. We exited into Tiananmen square, were suitably impressed by the vast expanse of the space and the monolithic architecture of the surrounding public buildings(why is it that the more repressive the regime, the less imaginative their architecture?) and then decided to try to find our way back to the hotel.

Our hotel was on Wangfujing Road, which Chris assured me just one year ago was a major thoroughfare. Today, it’s being transformed into a pedestrian mall. This served as an example of how Beijing, and China at large, is being transformed for 2008. There was an army of workers, basically ripping up the old road top and replacing it with tiles. There was almost no equipment in sight, other than the odd ancient air compressor and portable generator wheezing away. The work had been done by pick axe, shovel and sweat. You throw enough people at a project and it’s amazing what can get done. The coincidence of the historic tie to the Great Wall and the amazing work that went into it two thousand years ago was not lost on us.

After our own “long march” we made it back to the hotel and both collapsed for a couple of hours. Then, we rendezvoused and headed to out to dinner at Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, the home of the original Peking Duck. This restaurant is famous in Beijing and is on the “must stop” list of many visiting celebrities and dignitaries. We fit into neither of these categories and so were ushered to the fourth floor, which I suspect was reserved for all the westerners who don’t know what they’re doing. We ordered the Masterwork, a full duck, along with some accompanying soup, rice and greens.

The duck emerged on a cart and was brought to our table, accompanied by a skilled carver who soon masterfully sliced off every scrap of meat, leaving nothing but a picked clean carcass. The thinly sliced duck was given to us, accompanied by thin pancakes (almost resembling a tortilla) and condiments. We were given a quick lesson on how to wrap the duck into small little bundles. Our instructor used chopsticks and made it look much too easy. After the first attempt we both gave up and used our hands. This is probably why we were sent to the fourth floor, reserved for the “Peking Duck” challenged. Saves embarrassing yourself in front of the locals. Despite the awkward preparation, the food was amazing, washed down with the ubiquitous and very cheap Chinese beer. A cultural experience and a great dinner, for less than $50 US for the two of us. A bargain!

After dinner, we hit Wangfujing Road again for the walk back to the hotel, just a few blocks away. Our construction crew was still hard at it, at 11 at night. In fact, the pace in the street was more frenetic that it had been that afternoon when we were there.

The visit to Beijing was a perfect end cap to an unforgettable trip. I won’t bore you anymore with how amazed/dumbfounded/assaulted I was with China. It was important to be here. It’s important for anyone from the West to make their way here. It’s the emerging Yin to the western Yang and will form a very powerful counterpart to the historic western world dominance. I will never understand the market, the people or the culture, nor should I. It’s not really for me to understand. I was glad to experience it, even just for a week. In chatting with Chris over our decimated duck, as little as I know, I’m probably still ahead of 99% of other westerners. You can’t get a sense of China unless you’re here. There’s no way you can do this at arm’s length. It’s an immersive experience.

I know I’ll be back. And it’s not the romantic return I envision to Europe, where the culture beckons on a very emotional level. It’s an inevitability. The market is too important, the tide is irresistible. No matter what you choose to do or where you choose to do it, to be successful, your path and China must inevitability cross. And on my return, I’ll have all the mixed feelings I currently do about the country and its people.

Google’s Perfect Marketplace

In my recent conversation with Michael Ferguson, he brought up the book Net Worth and the concept of infomediaries. I hadn’t read the book (an oversight I’m correcting) but I did a little quick online research. First, here was Michael’s comments:

There’s a book that came out in early 1999 called Net Worth, which you might want to read. I almost want to revisit it myself now. It’s a Harvard Business School book that Marc Singer and John Hagel came out with. It talked about infomediaries and it imagined this future where there’d be these trusted brands and companies. They were thinking along the lines of American Express or some other concurrent banking entity at the time, but these infomediaries would have outside vendors come to them and they would entrust all their information, as much as they wanted to, they could control that, both online and offline.  You were talking in your latest blog post about understanding in the consideration phase where somebody is and presenting, potentially, websites that they hadn’t seen yet or ones that they might like at that point in the car purchase behavior. But the way that they were imagining it was that there would be a credit card that might show that someone had been taking trips from the San Francisco Bay area to the Tahoe region at a certain time of year and had maybe met with real estate agents up there and things like that. But these infomediaries, on top of not just web history but even offline stuff, would be a broker for all that information and there would be this nice marketplace where someone could come and say, “I want to pay $250 to talk to this person right now with this specific message”. So it seems that Google is doing a lot of that, especially with the DoubleClick acquisition. But I’m just wondering about the other side of it, keeping the end user aware of and empowered over that information and where it’s at. So Net Worth is a neat book to check out because the way they were describing it, the end user, even to the broker, would seep out exactly what they wanted to seep out at any given time. It wouldn’t be this passive recording device thing that’s silently taping. My experience so far of using the Google Toolbar that’s allowing the collection of history, is that it’s ambiguous to me about how much of my behavior is getting taken up by that system and used.

So, as Michael says, Google seems to be positioning themselves to be this infomediary. Think about the nexus that’s forming between personalization and Google’s acquisition of every available marketing channel. Google is creating the perfect customer acquisition marketplace. And what’s their typical pricing model? Yes, auction based pricing.

So let’s walk down this path a little. Let’s assume that Google is successful in pushing a high degree of personalization on a significant portion of the population. If you capture all the search history and web history, you have a great data set to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, a consumer’s needs at any given time. The math behind this is not that intimidating for the brain trust that Google has assembled.

Then, let’s factor in Semantic Web functionality. Now, through a series of useful apps, Google takes that personalization data and further adds user value by letting them interact with information. It’s Google’s recent announcement of Universal Search, taken to a new and much more functional level. They’ve already warned us that Universal Search is just the beginning. Google powers the web as our personal assistant, so that for any given life or consumer event, Google is determining our intent, either implicitly or explicitly, and providing us with commercial recommendations. In this case, it’s not really advertising, it’s a helpful recommendation.

Finally, through the Google web of properties, both online and offline, you have the opportunity to present these “commercial recommendations” through a number of reinforced touchpoints. The odds of connecting with an engagement consumer and eliciting the desired conversion are almost 100%.

It’s a perfect marketplace, the ideal match between a prospect and a solution.

So now you have the perfect marketplace, complete with a Google console that lets you target the consumer you want in the way you want. Let’s add one more piece of the puzzle, the pricing model. Auction based pricing has worked pretty well for Google in the past. Why should this be any different. There will of course be a quality scoring component to this. Google is way too obsessive about user experience to just open the bidding to anyone. But let’s say that the Google quality scoring mechanism goes deeper than it does right now, determining exactly the best vendor fits with the determined need and intent of the consumer. Let’s say that Google narrows the list down to the top 10, and then from their database of potential advertisers, who have all indicated what they’re willing to pay for an almost guaranteed customer with an already predetermined ROI (remember, we know with a high degree of accuracy what it is that the prospect is likely to buy), they present the advertiser (or perhaps a few options, as we all like to see options) with the combination of the highest bid price and the highest degree of consumer intent relevancy. Once the bid is accepted, a packaged and personalized message goes out to the prospect through the appropriate channels.

Think for a moment what this does to the entire world of advertising. Hmm…some pretty hefty food for thought.

Shedding Some Light on B2B Purchasing

First published May 17, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This week, we released our latest B-to-B research study based on a survey of almost 1,100 respondents. Today, I wanted to share a few high-level findings with you.

The Mirrored Worlds of Online and Offline

One of the challenges in B-to-B marketing is that you’re not marketing to just one person; you’re marketing to an organization. So you’re marketing to different people within that organization at different times. This adds a significant amount of complexity to business-to-business marketing. We wanted to capture this aspect of the B-to-B buying process, so we grouped respondents into four different categories of buyers: user buyers, technical buyers, coach buyers and economic buyers, the one who actually sign the check.

Another thing we wanted to look at was the impact of both online and off-line influencers in the purchase decision. How important was visiting a Web site, compared to seeing a vendor at a trade show or an ad in a trade publication?

In the study, one thing became clear. Online influences have gained a tremendous amount of ground over traditional influences. In fact, they’ve even caught up with the traditional off-line winner, word-of-mouth. The vendor’s own Web site was listed as the most important influence, together with word-of-mouth from a colleague or peer. Close behind were search engines, distributor Web sites and word-of-mouth from a friend.

When B-to-B buyers enter the purchase cycle, online activity is a natural result of off-line brand awareness. As the buyer becomes aware of a potential product or solution, the first reaction is to turn online to find out more about it. Across all phases of the buying cycle, including awareness, research, negotiation and purchase, over 85% of respondents said they will go online to help them make the right purchasing decision. This online activity was highest during the awareness and research phase, with a full 92% of respondents indicating that they would turn to online resources then. The percentage was lowest during negotiation, but even so, two out of every three respondents indicated that they would go online during this phase.

The Search Intersection

Also, the vast majority of purchasers start their online journey at the search engine. Although this varies by phase of the buying process, over all phases one in two users turn to a search engine first to help them find the online resources they’re looking for. This is highest during the beginning of the purchase process, in the awareness and research phases. At the awareness phase, 65% of respondents indicated the first place they would go would be a search engine.

There’s also a distinct evolution in the use of search engines as buyers move through the purchase process. Near the beginning, the first places they turn are the major portals, and the overwhelming favorite is Google, the first choice of 77% of the respondents. By the way, in a simulated search we incorporated into the survey, 74.2% of the clicks happened on organic listings. This matches up quite well with the organic/sponsored breakdown we’ve seen in other studies.

But as buyers begin moving through the phases, the role of the vertical B-to-B search engine (such as Business.com or Knowledgestorm) becomes more important. Buyers use these engines to build their consideration set and dig deep for the information about the product or solution alternatives they’re considering. While only 7.3% of respondents indicated they would turn first to the B-to-B vertical engine in the awareness phase, 22.1% indicated this would be their first choice during the negotiation stage.

K.I.S.S. Works for B-to-B, Too

The biggest influence for the B-to-B buyer? The vendor’s own Web site. But when it comes to accessing information on that site, simpler is definitely better. Buyers said they were looking for clear, extensive product information provided in an easily transferable, text-based format. The No. 1 priority was clear pricing information. This was followed closely by extensive product information, comparisons with competitors and downloadable papers and product sheets. The least important factors to the buyer were things like podcasts, webinars and online chat functions. B-to-B buyers are very task-oriented; they want to get in, find the information they’re looking for and get out. They have little patience for linear multimedia presentations that force them to gather information on the vendor’s timeline, not their own.

B-to-B purchases are often complex, long-cycle affairs that generate a tremendous amount of online activity. The wonderful thing for the marketer is that much of that activity funnels through a search engine at some point. This gives the marketer that understands this process a tremendous advantage, because it’s easier to determine the most traveled intersections online. But that understanding is the key. I hope research like this adds to our rather limited body of data on B-to-B purchases.

The Three Cs of Search

First published May 10, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Since most of the Search Insiders are in Bonita Springs this week, chances are that you’ll be hearing a lot of what’s happening down here in the Florida Everglades (other than the brush fires which appear to have us surrounded). Aaron Goldman shared his Buzz-o-meter with us on Tuesday, where he measures the words that seem to be dropped with the greatest frequency. It appears that my opening remarks set a tone that has been picked up in a number of sessions, and two words breaking into the top 10 are “connection” and “community.” Aaron added a third “c”: “content.”

To me, these words sum up a transition that’s happening in search. Expect the activity of searching on a search engine to gradually disappear, to be replaced with the functionality of search as an underpinning to the workings of many things on the Web. Search will become the engine that drives the semantic web, which Esther Dyson talked about in her keynote. She’s looking for search to move beyond “search and fetch” to her ideal, “deliver, act and transact.”

Search will be the connector between what we want and what best matches our want out there on the Web. And rather than a singular task (i.e. go look for this query) it will become a self-guided series of tasks, with intelligent agents in between to set search on its new direction. An entire trip, include flight reservations, hotel bookings, ground transportation, notifications of friends in the area and restaurant reservations, could be booked by intelligent Web agents, powered by search. And as came up in a panel discussion with the Search Insiders, when the presentation of commercial messaging appears in this context, it’s not advertising, it’s a helpful recommendation.

The piece that drives this is personalization, and that’s why Google’s moves are potentially so important. They take us much closer to the semantic web that Dyson envisions. This is the first “c”: connections.

Redefining Community

The second “c” speaks to the very transformation of our society: community. The way we relate to each other is being totally rewired by the Internet. By sheer physical necessity, communities have previously been defined by geography. We shared a common space, which enable communication, which created community. But today, the Internet has made physical distance irrelevant. Our communities are now defined by commonly held ideas or interests. Communities form around ideas, and search connects us to those communities. Every time we do online research for a product or service, we step into a community. In the course of a day, we can belong to several different communities. They are constantly shifting, as people move in and out of them, depending on the longevity of the engagement with the idea that forms the community.

Content Trails

And a third “c,” content, is the trail that the other members of that community leave behind through their conversations. These are the telltale signs that someone has already gone this way, and left a permanent record of his or her engagement with the community. Every Wikipedia entry is part of a community, as are many MySpace pages, blog posts and other virtual outposts. Search is the thread that loops them together at the user’s initiative. In fact, the algorithm of the engine is the de facto definer of community with each given search. The engine goes out, defines the landscape of community, and connects you with the citizens of that community and the content trails they leave behind.

It’s a fascinating world, which is being born as we speak. It’s a sociological experiment of vast magnitude in the making, and I don’t think we know what the repercussions will be. Whatever they are, it’s too late to turn back now. Technology moves fast, but people move slowly, and not in one mass. Small degrees of technological change can create seismic shifts in the sociological landscape. And we’re subjecting ourselves to a degree of technological change unparalleled in history. Who knows what we’ve unleashed?

 

Connecting the Dots with a Global Marketplace

First published May 3, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Late last week I got to spend a couple of very enjoyable days in the desert heat of Tucson together with the sales team of ThomasNet.com. I was the guest speaker at their national sales conference. This week, likely as you read this, I’ll be in New York for the SEMPO Planning Retreat, and in another day or so, I’ll be on a plane to Florida for the Search Insider Summit. I get back for one week, briefly acclimatize myself and then it’s off to China for Search Engine Strategies. The point of rattling off my travel itinerary, other than gloating about the frequent flier miles I’m racking up? All this hopscotching around the globe can be tied together with one common theme. It was topic of my talk in Tucson. While preparing for it, I found some interesting details that speak of a groundswell of change that will impact every industry.

What Web Site? I Don’t Need No Stinking Web Site!

One of the challenges faced by ThomasNet, or for that matter, any online property that is targeting industrial manufacturers, is in convincing some of the advertisers of the need for establishing a Web presence. These are traditional and, very often, conservative businesses that have been around for decades, and they cast a jaundiced eye at anything too new, too trendy or anything that even vaguely smacks of “geekiness.” In many cases, they’ve been turning out steel widgets and doodads that have a very specific niche market. They know their customers, and their customers know them. So why would they need a Web site? Why would they need to advertise on a search engine? And why do they have to worry about a global marketplace? All the reasons can be summed up in two words: things change.

Agents of Change

In 1990, the travel industry was a relatively stable place. Travelers went to the local travel agents and the travel agents acted as the channel for the information from various airlines, cruise lines, hotel chains and vacation companies to the consumer. They served a vital part of the value chain in the industry. And with something as highly personalized and variable as travel, it was hard to imagine how these travel experts could ever be disintermediated.

Even when the Internet started to gain traction and the first online agencies popped up in the mid-’90s, travel agent’ place seemed relatively secure, because of many of the same reasons we currently hear from manufacturers: They knew their customers, their customers knew them and the exchange of information back and forth between the two parties proved the value of this relationship.

In 1995, the number of single-office travel agencies peaked at almost 22,000, according to the Airlines Reporting Corporation. And then things changed. The online travel agents upped the ante. They demystified travel and opened up control of information to anyone who had Internet access. Airlines and hotels readjusted their booking channels to be able to go first to online agencies, and ultimately, direct to savvy travelers. Online communities formed that allowed travelers to connect with others who’d been there, seen it and done it, getting firsthand advice of where to stay and how to get there. And by 2004, the number of single-office travel agencies had been cut in half. Less than 10 years and an industry was decimated. Things change quickly!

Look East for the Future

In 1999 Intel Chairman Andy Grove said, “In five years, all companies will be Internet companies, or they won’t be companies at all.” Grove may have been a touch optimistic in his timing (imagine, someone over-hyping the Internet in 1999), but I don’t believe that takes away from the importance of his message. One of the mistakes that travel agents made, and the mistake that many small manufacturers are making again, is to assume that just because they’re not interested in a global market, all other competitors are likewise uninterested in their market.

The balance of power in the manufacturing world is dramatically swinging eastward. Another sobering fact that I came up with in the preparation for my presentation was the fact that in the U.S., there are currently about 14 million jobs in manufacturing. In all G-7 countries combined (U.S., Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Japan), there are about 53 million manufacturing jobs. In China alone, there are almost 110 million jobs in manufacturing. A manufacturing powerhouse the likes of which we’ve never seen before is gearing up in Asia. And those Asian companies are desperately eager to learn how to use the Internet to connect with new markets right here, in our backyard. To add to what Andy Grove said, not only will all companies be Internet companies, we’ll also have to become global companies. At the very least, we’ll have to be acutely aware of our global competition.

And that brings me to the other destinations on my travel agenda. One of the things the SEMPO board will be discussing this Thursday in New York will be the driving trends in search. Globalization will be near the top of the agenda. Then, a few days later in Florida, at the Search Insider Summit, we’ll be gathering together in the Everglades to talk about emerging issues. Search’s expansion beyond its early consumer-based, direct-response successes into areas like manufacturing and other business-to-business verticals is almost sure to be discussed. Finally, I have to see for myself the economic explosion that’s happening in China. I was a little shameless in wrangling myself an invite to speak at Search Engine Strategies. But it seems that no matter where you go, one thing remains true. All roads lead online, and they all intersect with search at some point.