Make Money Online

Know what you want…

Seems simple right? In my experience, dealing with hundreds of clients over the last 12 years, very few can actually quantify what they want.

Some tell me they want marketing help (far too vague), but when I ask about success metrics, they almost invariably cite traffic as their primary success measure. Now, not to discount traffic, but that’s not what pays the bills is it?

ROI shouldn’t be calculated on traffic*, but by counting other other measures. If your aim is engagement, count comments, reviews, buzz. If your aim is sales, count overall revenue increases, direct conversions, increase of average sales…

In an SEM campaign in particular, knowing what you want is vital, because every click costs you. Your campaigns should be highly segmented, helping you know where each dime goes, how each ad performs, how each keyword you’re buying contributes to the goals you’ve set.

Search Engine Guide has an excellent post up today about segmenting your keywords:

There are four distinct keyword segments each representing a different phase of the searcher’s buying cycle. After going through the process above you should be left with one or more groups of keyword that can be optimized into a page or several pages. The next step is to take each group and segment them even further based on those keyword segments.

Once you know what you want, you can do A/B testing to determine where your money’s going and whether or not your plan is working.  Know what you want and you have a heck of a lot better chance at getting it.

*there are a few, rare exceptions to this rule

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Online Marketing Goals

We give out way too much information online. You know it, I know it, but it’s fun and we so push the fear out of our minds and continue to chat about our kids, our friends, how annoying so-and-so is at work on Facebook, Twitter and more. But we’ve been conditioned to share, and it’s not a recent evolution.

Supermarket ‘clubs’, like those in place at CVS, Safeway, Publix, and virtually every chain supermarket, save Walmart, already share your data with telemarketers and email marketers.  The swipe saves us a few bucks so we agree… Upromise, by Sallie Mae, has already gotten into big trouble with not disclosing the truckloads of data they collect from their toolbar to their users.  Still college students add that toolbar and hope for the best. WE SHARE TOO MUCH!

A Mashable post on Data Mining in Social Media digs a little deeper, but still not deep enough. They don’t even mention the new iPhone app that’s being called a ’stalker’s dream’ nor the freaky 123People that lets you check the government documents that other people have filed (or had filed against them).

I’m big on social media, I love it, but this trend toward over-sharing, both purposefully and unintentionally, frightens me.

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Source:
Data Mining and Social Media

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New OK Go Video Actually Tops Their Treadmill Video

At work, we do these status reports and they’ve been helpful keeping everyone briefed in a large org w/o wasting time. I’ve been doing them w/my kids in the afternoons on the way home from school. Their feedback was that we needed another section for complaints.

Grace listed several complaints and I had to keep telling her to stay on track!

Also, note how important food is to them! Each of them included it in their successes…

Cady (12) — The drill sgt got hers out in 2 mins, and then critiqued everyone else’s

Successes

• Got 4 desserts on her field trip today
• Spoke her spanish conversations almost perfectly
• Won Battleship game after school

Needs to Improve

• Falls too much (up the stairs today, landed on her butt Tuesday)
• Shy

Burning Issue

• Objects to being put in the front row during gym

———–
Grace (9)

Successes

• Everyone liked the presents she made for her friend’s birthday
• Had cake after lunch
• Wrote a song on the piano

Needs to Improve

• Talks too fast (ironically she had to repeat this so we could understand it)
• Doesn’t drink all of her drink at lunch (no idea why she wants to improve this)

Burning Issue

• Struggling w/multiplication

————
Jacob (7) — I loved how pithy his responses were. All boy…

Successes

• Didn’t hit anyone today (I guess this is considered a success… LOL That one really made me laugh)
• Got a perfect score on his quiz
• Enjoyed after school snack (then came promptly home and ate a huge bowl of cereal)

Needs to improve

• Patience
• Running in school

Burning Issue

• None

——-
Ruby (4)

Successes

• Enjoyed nap (she never enjoys naptime)
• Ate all of her grapes at lunch

Needs to Improve

• Going to bed without arguing (she got mad at this point and refused to continue—she keeps this up I’m going to have to fire her)

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(via Mixergy)

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Excerpt from:
Jamie Oliver at TED: Teach Every Child About Food

(via Wired)

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Ignite NYC Open Hack

Support your favorite pirate today! Yeah, it’s on the 19th this year, but I like to party like a pirate a little early. Never heard of Talk Like a Pirate Day? Only cool people do it, so if you aren’t doing it… Well, you already know you’re ‘that’ guy.  Sad…

Anyhoo!  Javascript insert created by Tom Hughes-Croucher of the amazing team at Yahoo! Developer Network.  Get your own Talk Like A Pirate Javascript code here!

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All Me Posts Are Pirate Speak Now Mateys

Marketing Socially: Robyn Tippins from Converge SC on Vimeo.

FYI, the very first of my talk is cut off, but what you miss is my telling you that I started a diaper company in 1998, at age 22, and in month one, using forums to market it, we grossed ~$30k. The video picks up there.

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Robyn Tippins at ConvergeSC

It should come as no surprise that consumers trust reviews more than they trust advertising. But reviews themselves are becoming a form of advertising and based on results of the recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (pdf) it’s working:

“Recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally,” the Nielsen survey, the largest of its kind, shows that,  “nine in every ten Internet consumers worldwide (90 percent) trust recommendations from people they know, while seven in every ten (70 percent) trust consumer opinions posted online.”

This leads Trendwatching.com, in its September trend report to proclaim:

“Businesses have to understand and accept that consumers’ decision making processes, which ultimately come down to whether they will buy from you or from someone else, have truly shifted to a new, powerful peer-to-peer arena.”

While consumer-influenced purchasing via reviews and recommendations has been occurring online for some time, it certainly seems to be building to a feverish pitch. The very nature of social media encourages friends and acquaintances to freely share information and, therefore, to make opinions about products and services widely known. Trendwatching.com cites ShoutIT as an example of an application that allows consumers’ reviews to easily appear at once on Facebook, Digg, and Delicious pages.

Trendwatching points to a mind-boggling number of reviews floating around in the webosphere. Reviews are encouraged by online companies using consumer feedback as fodder for increasing repeat website visits.

Says Trendwatching: “Expect every industry, every sector, every product to eventually succumb to reviews.” In fact, think of Twitter as an example of a global real-time reviewing tool.

Perhaps the most curious sub-trend of the reviewing trend is the belief that reviews by ordinary, everyday people are just as trustworthy as reviews by supposed experts. While professional reviewers have their place, reviews written by friends, acquaintances, and “consumers whose lifestyles mirror yours” are regarded as relevant and real.

It’s all part of the transparency trend – consumers want to know all about companies and all about products. Increasingly, they demand the ability to instantly compare product benefits and prices online in an effort to get the best deal. The transparency trend means companies will have to be ever more sensitive to their competitors. They’ll also have to rapidly respond to bad reviews and do online damage control.

As Trendwatching says: “It’s ultimately about character, about finding your voice, about your behavior as a brand that, if in tune with the current zeitgeist of ‘openness’ and ‘generosity’, automatically turns transparency into a benefit instead of a threat.”

Read more here:
Reviewing is the New Advertising

You know social media has come of age when sites like Facebook start talking about revenue. Facebook board member Marc Andreessen (fondly remembered for Mosaic and Netscape) recently told Reuters that the social media site could be a $500 million business by the end of 2009, predicting “billions” in revenue in the next five years.

The number of Facebook users, or “fans,” (as opposed to MySpace “friends”) is even more impressive than revenue at the moment. There are over 200 million users worldwide and 72 million in the U.S. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once daily.

That large of an audience has been attracting more corporate dollars. Dell targets small business owners via Facebook with a series of social media guides that can be downloaded by Dell fans. Starbucks is using Facebook to promote its RED loyalty card to 2.5 million fans (RED is the campaign created by Bono to fight AIDS in Africa. Numerous companies offer a RED-related product). WDFM reports that over 11,000 customers worldwide have purchased almost 91,000 RED cards so far.

“If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year,” said Andreessen in the interview in the Reuters. “There’s every reason to expect, in my view, that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now.”

Along with with corporate adoption Facebook’s growth has led to a shift in its demographics.  The most interesting statistic may be this one: According to Facebook, the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older.

The latest Facebook demographics from iStrategy Labs show users age 55 and older have grown at a rate that exceeds 500% in the last six months alone. The 18-24 age group now makes up just 25 percent of U.S. users, down from 41 percent at the beginning of 2009. Simply put, Facebook users are aging.

The trend to older Facebook users could turn the site into a new and important avenue for businesses to reach the moneyed boomer demographic. Not surprisingly, businesses targeted this demographic are adding Facebook to their media plans. Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company started by a couple of hippie boomers, currently has close to a million Facebook fans, according to Web Digest For Marketers (WDFM). The Ben & Jerry’s Facebook page offers fans a way to send a virtual gift of ice cream – an application that has over 23,000 monthly active users, says WDFM.

Facebook just unveiled the “fan box,” which allows companies to promote Facebook on their corporate sites, encouraging visitors to sign up as fans. Clearly, Facebook sees the value of its site in a business marketing context.

With the potential for billions in revenue, Facebook and its social media brethren represent more than just fun ways to interact with friends. These sites are becoming increasingly a critical part of the marketing strategy for those businesses interested in engaging and interacting with consumers – and building revenue-related relationships with them.

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Advertising Key to Facebook Billions

This month marks a milestone of sorts for the advertising industry. The June 2009 issue of the Journal of Advertising Research will include 23 papers (pdf) on advertising. These papers document, according to the Journal, “the evidence for empirical generalizations (substantive findings that have been evaluated to advance the application of marketing knowledge).”

The findings shed light on current advertising practices and imply what may be most effective in the future.

For example, if you believe television is on the decline because of digital media, think again. One study suggests that “TV appears to retain its perceived clout among target audiences in Asia, Europe and North America and holds across recent years. While the influence of digital media has grown, it has not caused a corresponding decrease in TV influence.”

And as for the long-term sales effect of advertising, another paper shows that it “depends (positively) on the size of the initial effect and (negatively) on competitive advertising. An advertising exposure typically has a half-life of three to four weeks.”

Other papers address such topics as advertising impacts in a marketing mix, the role of advertising in word of mouth, behavioral effects of digital signage, how clutter affects advertising effectiveness, and whether today’s advertising laws will survive the digital revolution.

The papers are the result of a project called, appropriately enough, “The Future of Advertising,” conducted by the Wharton School and supported by the Advertising Research Foundation.

One study will be of special interest to online advertisers – and it could have a fairly dramatic impact on the way we measure effectiveness. According to a large research study conducted by comScore, online display ads “have a positive impact even without clickthroughs. There is a lift in site visitation of 4 to 6 percent from display ads, even without a click. The increase in lift over a control is 65 percent in the first week and 45.7% in weeks 1 to 4.”

Gian Fulgoni, comScore’s chairman, explains:

“The number of clicks on display ads is not an accurate predictor of the effectiveness of online display ads. Even with no clicks or minimal clicks, online display ads can generate substantial lift in site visitation, trademark search queries and lift in both online and offline sales… The only reason we have the focus on clicks is that they can be measured. The Internet measures came out of the minds of technical people, not advertising people.”

This study disputes the commonly accepted standard that counting clicks is the best measure of the effectiveness of online ads. One positive way to interpret the results is to recognize that click-counting may present hard evidence of ad response, but there is an important “softer” dimension – the visibility and awareness generated by online advertising.

This is encouraging, especially at a time when search is all the rage and online ads have come under fire. Isn’t it nice to get good news about advertising for a change?

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A Peek into the Future of Advertising

It’s not secret that the print publishing industry is in trouble: several newspaper have recently gone bust. But the magazine industry might be in even worst shape. Like newspapers, circulation and advertising are down, but even moreso because magazines are seen more as a luxury purchase than are newspapers. But is it possible that magazines (and newspapers) should be considering affiliate marketing as a way to boost their ad revenues and maybe even their subscriptions?

Granted, it would considerably unconventional for a print reliant industry to turn to affiliate marketing. But as AdAge reports, marketers are warning magazines to innovate before it’s too late:

LONDON (AdAge.com)–Unilever Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift and Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy gave a stark warning to an international gathering of magazine publishing executives today, urging the industry to innovate and to be more creative.
[...]
Mr. Levy [told the audience] that magazines must “shatter traditional standpoints” if they are to escape the current cycle of “despair, doom and demise.”
[...]
For Mr. Clift, the selling point of magazines is the opportunity for “symbiotic editorial.” “If the [marketer] information is useful, relevant and interesting there’s no reason why it should be inconsistent with the magazine brand. It can build the magazine’s brand equity rather than compromising it,” he said.

Between offline affilaite marketing and traditional online offers, affiliate marketing may just allow the print-based publishing industry to “shatter” those “traditional standpoints,” and offer advertisers a more “symbiotic editorial.”

First, whatever adspace that print-based operations are unable to sell could be filled in with affiliate offers. In fact, print-based operations may find that they can maximize their ad revenues by regularly featuring a blend of the two — especially on their online properties.

Second, by runing affiliate offers based on the kinds of products that their readers are actually likely to buy (rather than waiting for advertisers to come to them), and producing better-targeted content around that demographic, print-based publications can offer a kind of “symbiotic editorial.”

Third, print-based publications may even consider a kind of “hot deals” section or newsletter around that demographic. If properly targeted, this might not only boost their conversions, but actually help generate and retain subscriptions as readers start wanting access to such attractive offers.

Of course, affiliate marketing isn’t going to save the print-based publishing industry. It’s facing several challenges, of which only one is falling ad revenues. It must, therefore, innovate in a number of areas.

Affiliate marketing, however, could help it innovate in the ad-sales department. By diversifying its ad-model to include sponsorships, impressions, and performance-based ads, print-based publishing might just be able to bolster its revenues long enough to innovate in other critical areas, and weather the storm that’s pounding it right now.

Originally posted here:
Should Magazines Consider Affiliate Marketing?

When I talk SEO, most people new to internet marketing want to know what keywords are and how to use them.  Many still think that appropriate keyword usage is just keyword stuffing at it’s best.  ::sigh::

There is never a reason to ‘fool’ the search engines with keyword stuffing, unless you are a Tool.  And, yes, I mean tool as in a clever way to say jerk, not tool as in a useful thing that get’s stuff done.  But, I digress…

Search engines like keywords.  They literally eat them up.  By understanding keywords and SEO, you are helping both Google, and Yahoo!, to provide relevant results (disclaimer, I work for Yahoo!).  Keywords tell search engines what your site is about.  Using keywords in ‘key’ places is what makes your site appear high up in search engine results pages (SERPs).  If I want to rank well for the term SEO, I’m going to use ‘SEO’ all over my site.  But, it’s not just the main word that’s important.  The words that often appear with ‘SEO’ are key as well.  Words like relevance, SERPs, H1 tags, keywords, etc. tell the search engines that they can trust my usage of SEO, because there are other words that usually appear with this word in natural language groupings.

In my daily wanderings, I found this SEO tutorial for the person who is new to SEO.  I hope it helps.

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SEO For Noobs