The Human Factor

I recently attended an Interactive Marketing Blowout; a day-long series of seminars featuring some of the industry’s best and brightest as presenters / speakers. Much of the focus was on technology and how it is transforming the marketing world. There was very little mention of the human factor.

Overheard during a break in the action, “One of my clients wanted a Pay-Per-Click campaign. If you’re using the right software, it’s no big deal. It only took me five minutes to set the whole thing up.”

One small step for the Adman, one giant loss for his client!

True, software programs facilitate building a keyword list, evaluating Advertiser competition, estimating search volume, and predicting Page Ranking while considering Cost-Per-Click. More data is available, but generally, that’s as far as it goes.

Here’s why The Human Factor matters.

In preparation for an upcoming PPC Campaign, my firm spent five days, not five minutes, performing due diligence. We spent the first 60 minutes with the software tools (Google; Yahoo! Search), and the rest conducting our own searches – word-by-word, site-by-site, link-by-link – on the web. We knew that there was keyword competition, but not who those competitors were. If we had stopped after an hour, we would not have discovered the following:

1) The names of our client’s competitors who were using PPC, what words or terms they were buying, and where. Valuable competitive intelligence.

2) An additional 60 high-performing, product-specific keywords being used on the web, which we used to build out our target list.

3) Bids on some of the most desirable, highly-contested Keywords had not been placed by our client’s competitors, but by vertical-specific associations, directories, and so forth. This insight was leveraged to beef up our Link Back Strategy.

4) Six (previously unknown) new competitors and one that had ceased operations.

5) Several online “Malls” offering competitors’ products and not our client’s. Obviously, this creates additional strategic / tactical opportunities.

6)One competitor is using our client’s brand as a Keyword. Very smart, and an actionable insight, which suggests tactical moves to remedy this.

7) Two Vertical Search opportunities – alternative engines with superior Keyword search volumes and no competition – promising in terms of driving traffic at a reduced CPC.

Two vertical-specific Forums, each with more than 15,000 active members, which allowed us to present our client with several more options: pursue Link Back; participate as a knowledge leader; advertise; or, all three?

I could go on and on (I usually do). Of course, we gathered a great deal more data, and we’ll use all of it going forward. Bottom line, we would not have such information if we had ignored The Human Factor in a technology-dominated equation.

Are You Local?

There has been a lot of chatter lately about ‘local search’ in pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. It seems some people are confused about the differences between geographical local targeting and keyword local targeting.

For educational purposes, lets create a company that we will be attempting to market online. Let’s say we have a landscaping company in Wichita, Kansas, called Premier Lawns. Now, how would we start an online marketing campaign for Premier Lawns? Unless they were a franchise with several locations spread out over many cities, chances are they can only provide their service within a 100 mile radius. That being said, it doesn’t make any sense for them to advertise to anyone outside of that area, or does it?

This is where we begin Geographical Local Targeting. Parameters can be set to tell Google (or your preferred search engine) to only display paid ads within a geographical vicinity of Wichita, Kansas. So, if we were bidding for such phrases as ‘Lawn Care,’ ‘Landscaping,’ ‘Lawn Maintenance,’ etc, only searches that were physically located within a 100 mile radius of Wichita would see, and thus, be able to click on our ads.

That concept is pretty handy for paid search advertising with such broad phrases, but what about optimizing their site to be listed organically? If you type in a vast phrase like landscaping (go ahead… try) you will find many articles from about.com,hdtv.com, wikipedia .com, etc, etc etc. This presents the need for Keyword Local Targeting. We have already determined that the people who can actually use the services of Premier Lawns are going to be located near Wichita, so why not put the city in the search queries? ‘Wichita Lawn Care,’ ‘Wichita Landscaping,’ ‘Wichita Lawn Maintenance,’ … you get the point. This brings local relevance to the broad search phrases making the results more desirable.

How else does this concept fit? Let’s assume you live in Austin, Texas, no where close to Wichita. However, who is to say you might not own a second home there or maybe a rental property? You might find yourself needing lawn care while you are away from the home. In that instance, Premier Lawns could be of valuable service to you. If they limited their online campaign to only geographical local targeting, there would be only a slim chance of you ever knowing about them. But, by adding in the city name to the search query, Premier Lawns makes themselves accessible to potential customers outside of their geographical limits.

Find. Get. Keep. (Part 1 of 3)

FINDing Prospects Online

So you have webpage. For some reason you go to Google (or Yahoo)… type in your company name and… BAM you don’t come up anywhere. Why is that? Why would you not be able to type your own name into a search engine and find your site? In August of 2005 there were 19.2 Billion (with a B) web pages indexed by Yahoo. Is there any surprise that it is more challenging than ever to be indexed by the search engines under relevant keywords?

Prospects ARE out there looking for your services, but if they can’t find them, that website you just paid $25K for is going to be pretty useless. In order to find your prospects online, you have to know (or at least try to figure out) what they are searching for. Let’s pretend you are a Professional Business Advice Consultant for example. How many people would type that phrase exactly into a search engine?

If you guessed zero – you win. Some may give up right there claiming “but that IS what I AM!” Have you ever heard the phrase, “It’s not about you?” It couldn’t be more true in this example. It is clearly NOT about you! There is a HUGE market for “Professional Business Advice Consultants,” but your prospects are searching for business coaching, business advice, small business consulting, starting a business, etc.

The key to being found online is to be relevant to what your prospects are searching for and then implementing a strategy to cut through the clutter known as ‘competition’ and get them to YOUR site.