Bill Balderaz offers Social Media Monitoring tips in MarketingProfs

This month Webbed founder Bill Balderaz was featured in the MarketingProfs monthly e-newsletter. In the piece Bill offers tips on monitoring your competition in the social media space. Curious about where to begin? Read his tips on using social media monitoring tools.

Social Media Growing Up Fast, but Still Too Young to Know-it-All

I loved being 17. Sure cruising around in my friend’s Firebird with the t-tops out listening to Guns N’ Roses was great, but even better was the fact that I knew everything. I’d never voted, but I had rock solid political beliefs that did not waiver. Despite being ten years away from parenthood, I knew all about raising kids. Even though I’d never worked in corporate America, I knew how businesses should be run.

Now as a grown up, voter, parent and entrepreneur I realize that I don’t know much at all.

As an industry, sometimes social media acts like me at 17. We read all the best practice. We get a bit preachy. We demand transparency and fast responses and tell clients that consumers define their brands.

When our clients, or executives or lawyers talk to us about FDA regulations or IT restrictions or preserving a corporate brand, we do the equivalent of rolling our eyes and say, “WHAT-EVER, Dad.”

But the truth is, social media sound bites about being transparent, and fast and authentic are easier said than done for most companies. Here are a few reasons why:

1. People don’t want to go to jail. Social media isn’t the Wild West, at least not for brands in heavily regulated industries. While consumers can Tweet, blog and Facebook all day about your allergy medication, you as a pharmaceutical company can’t just get online and start talking about side effects.
2. There was no such thing as WordPress a few years ago. You tell your client to add a Twitter stream to their home page and they tell you that they have to fill out a creative request through IT and create a business case and QA it and it will be live in six or eight months. You scream and say, “Why can’t we just convert the whole site to WordPress?” Great idea. Except the client has 15 years of legacy web content, and six different content management systems, and a database, and secured areas of the site.
3. The company has 100-year-old brand it can’t quite part with. Trust me; I’m the biggest advocate of making consumers a part of a brand. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.  Companies spend generations and millions of dollars building and defining their brands. Don’t be surprised if a marketing manager isn’t quite ready to turn that brand over to consumers.

Don’t get me wrong. Over the last 13 years I’ve been lucky enough to talk to people all over the country about technology. During that time, really smart lawyers, IT professionals and marketers all told me that tools like cell phones, the Internet and email not only had no place in the office, but that for legal, technical and marketing reasons, they were an absolutely impossibility. Today, those impossibilities are necessities, just as someday social media will be. Our job is to be a change agent for our clients and employers, without being the know-it-all teenager.

Claiming Your Place on Google Places, Manta and LinkedIn

Let’s say you’re looking for a good Chinese restaurant in Columbus. You search Google and find a series of results that look…. different. Instead of “regular” listings you see a list of phone numbers, addresses, reviews, maps and links that say “Places Page”.

Welcome to Google Places.

The last few weeks we’ve received calls that go something like this “Someone just called us and said they are on our website but there’s some blurry picture of our building and a bunch of reviews on it and ads from our competitors.”

Welcome to Google Places.

Whether or not you know it, your business probably has a listing on Google Places. If you haven’t claimed the profile then that page is going to be comprised of information Google pulls from various sources.  That means your hours of operation might be incorrect, or your address may be wrong, or your phone number may be outdated. And since these pages tend to rank very well in Google local searches… often in the very top position, it means this is often the first impression you make online to a potential customer. And while you know that the Places page is not your official website, your potential customers and clients might not.

So how can you claim your profile? It’s simple. First go to Google and search on your company name, city and state. Then click on the link next to your name that says “Place Page.” On the top left side of that page you’ll see a link that says “Business Owner.” From here, you can claim your listing and make sure your information is presented as accurately as possible.

While you’re at it you’ll want to claim your profile on Manta.com, based here in Columbus, Manta is the third most visited business website on the Internet hosting 25 million visitors or more per month. To claim your Manta profile, search for your company name on Manta and then click on “Edit Company Info” on your company page. Why is Manta important? In addition to attracting a huge number of visitors, Manta also ranks extremely well in searches. Go to Google and search on your company name followed by the word “profile” – you will probably find that your listing on Manta outranks your own website.

Finally, take a look at your LinkedIn company profile. To find your LinkedIn profile, simply select “Companies” from LinkedIn’s top drop down menu and search on your company name. Visit the LinkedIn company page and start editing.

How To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

So you design a beautiful site, and you’re getting a lot of traffic, but you still aren’t generating the sales or leads that it takes to justify the cost of the site. If you’re wondering why your conversion rate isn’t what it needs to be it’s probably for one of two reasons: 1) Your website doesn’t have clear calls to action that make it easy for your visitors to convert or 2) You’re driving the wrong type of visitor to your website. There’s a simple test to determine which issue is probably holding your conversion rate down:

1. If you’re talking to your website design shop, it is probably that your SEO/online marketing firm is sending you lousy traffic.
2. If you’re talking to your SEO/online marketing agency, it’s because of your crappy website design.

Okay, still now satisfied? Take a look at Google Analytics and let’s dig in.

1. First, stop thinking about site wide conversions. It’s not that your site converts at 1%. It’s that search converts at 4% and direct traffic at .4% and referring sites at 1.2%. Then dig in deeper. Maybe search converts at 4% but some keywords convert at a whopping 20% and some have not driven a single conversion. And, you’ll be surprised which ones convert best. Now imagine if you put all your efforts into the 20% converting keywords and keywords closely related to those terms. Then look at that referring site traffic. Does Twitter convert at 9%? Do Tweets sent on Tuesdays convert even better, say 11%? Now what about Tweets sent on Tuesdays that are about diabetes treatment? Do those convert at 14%? Start thinking about conversion at the micro level. And if your PPC traffic as a whole is only converting at .02%, don’t give up. Just trim the fat on non- converting keywords and shift budget and attention to those that do convert. You may end up with 200 keywords in your campaigns. or 2000, or 20.
2. Next start using Google Analytics to track conversion paths.  You can set up goal funnels  and examine what pages are most likely to lead someone to convert. You may find that visitors who view your “About” page are more likely to convert than those who don’t. Or that visitors who view your testimonial page never convert. You may find that certain page combinations raise conversions. You may find that you can convert visitors with one slick page and very little copy, or that you may need five pages with a lot of copy to convert a visitor.
3. Now look at the relationships between one and two above. Maybe people who visit your site from a keyword search on your brand name just need that flashy, simple page to convert. Maybe your Facebook fans convert without ever looking at your “About” page. But visitors from PPC may need to look at five pages and educate themselves before converting.

All this should guide your marketing activity. You may decide to target Twitter visitors at 11 am on Tuesdays and drive them to the ‘Patient Information” page. Your PPC visitors may require a very different message, at a different time and a very different landing page. Stop thinking about a single conversion rate for your site and start thinking about improving a hundred very targeted conversion paths.

Internet Marketing 2011 Trends: Geo-Location Marketing

Is it a game, a marketing strategy or both? No matter what it is, FourSquare is rising in the ranks as a popular social media outlet and marketing tool. Many restaurants and retail stores are using this and other geo-location services through Facebook, Gowalla, etc. to dramatically increase sales, while others are counting these location-marketing attempts a flop. What is the secret to success, and should you be paying attention?

Tags: facebook, foursquare, geo-location, gowalla, marketing, webinar

The Week in Webbed Marketing

Yesterday I returned from a week of vacation and came back to an inbox full of really good news. While we normally reserve this space to talk about search, advertising and social media there was too much good news to not share:

1. First, Webbed Marketing will be featured in the PRNews PR Digital Guidebook. The book is available online for $399, and Webbed Marketing’s section is focused on using social media for intelligence and research.
2. We’ve also been selected to speak at the upcoming eMarketing Association conference. The exact time and topic are TBD, but we will be discussing social media policies and strategies. Plus, the conference is in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities. If you’ll be at the show, please let me know, I’d love to connect.
3. And we were featured in a case study from our friends at Vertabase. Here are some excerpts:

Since its founding in 2006, the Columbus, Ohio-based Internet marketing firm, Webbed Marketing, has experienced tremendous growth, tripling its staff and customer base over the last three years alone.

Thanks to all of you for your support over the years! We’re here because of our great clients, partners and supporters.

How To Tell When You’ve Completed Your SEO Project

Asking when your SEO is completed is a bit like asking when road construction in your city is finished. Roads need repaired and maintained, new shopping and housing developments pop up, more efficient traffic options need to be created. The construction is never done. Just like the Search Engine Optimization of your site. Here is why:

1. Search changes. If your site was perfectly optimized for Google last year at this time and you haven’t touched it since that means that your site was last SEO’d before Google rolled out social search, the Wonder Wheel, enhanced Places Pages. Oh and Google Instant which when paired with Google Suggest probably changed the keyword phrases your target market uses. Oh wait, and the combination of social, local, personal and universal search means that I may get results that include a video for the Indian restaurant in Columbus that my cousin who I’m connected to via LinkedIn Tweets about. But you will never see that video in your search results. And there was Google Caffeine. Oh, and Yahoo! and MSN went from “also rans” to a combined force that could be driving 20-30% of your search traffic. So yes, a few things have changed.
2. Your competitors change. Let’s say your SEO program went great and you increased sales 20%. Unless you are in an industry that is  growing a lot that means somebody lost sales to you. So what are they doing? Upping their SEO game with more links and more content to compete against you. When you dominate search, your competitors all come after you.
3. Your search terms change. This is probably the biggest mistake we see organizations make: Say a company offers roofing repair in Denver. The marketing guy says “we need to focus everything we have on the phrase ’roofing company Denver’.” After some research we find that there are 400 ways people search for roofing companies in Denver. Like “Denver’s best roofer”, “find cheap roofer Denver”  and “Denver roofer accepts xyz insurance”. We target some of these phrases and then we are done right? Wrong. The next day The Denver Post runs a story about energy efficiency. Suddenly search volume on the term “energy efficient roofs in Denver” jumps. Then there is a hail storm and search volume now jumps on “Denver roofer hail damage.” Then two weeks later Congress announces that the government will offer tax credits to people who invest in their homes this tax year. And now the fine citizens of Denver start searching on “roofing tax credit.” One of our clients used to optimize on terms related to “swine flu.” Overnight, it became “H1N1″.  Another client earned a spot on Oprah. Immediately after the show aired people started searching on his services plus the term “Oprah.” The meanings of words change too. “Short sale” used to be what Old Navy had when it offered discounts on pants that end above the knee. Then it meant buying a stock at 8 am and selling it at noon. Then it meant what you did to avoid foreclosure on your house. The people within your company may always call your products and services the same thing, but the rest of the world changes terminology more frequently than you would believe.
4. Your prospects change. Let’s say you have a revolutionary way to treat diabetes. You work for six months on your SEO program and reach a lot of new patients. Then you stop your efforts. On the first day of month seven someone is going to be diagnosed with diabetes and will be out searching for treatment options. Stopping your SEO efforts is like saying you’re going to have a sales team for six months and then fire them all.

Webbed Marketing Is Looking for a Great Account Manager

Webbed Marketing is seeking a dynamic and motivated Account Manager to join our team.  The Account Manager is responsible for managing multiple client engagements, including serving as the primary day-to-day client contact, providing strategic thinking to help clients achieve their goals, retaining clients and organically growing accounts. This position will do little to no cold calling or lead qualification but will focus primarily on existing client retention. Less than 10% overnight travel is required. Knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing is required (SEM) and all candidates selected for phone interviews will be required to complete a test to assess search engine knowledge.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the day-to-day point of contact for multiple clients
• Understand clients in detail, including their industry, competitive positioning, and messaging; understand the client’s tactical needs and key strategic aspects.
• Understand search engine optimization, pay per click marketing and social media
• Actively participate in account strategy development, help to craft the direction into client- and internal-facing deliverables and in-market tactics. Stay current with interactive trends, and apply them proactively to meet client needs.
• Translate client requirements into agency requirements; create clear documentation for the internal team
• Manage task priorities, ensure team members fully briefed on accounts
• Responsible for overseeing quality assurance of work delivered to clients, maintaining the highest quality standards.
• Lead client status meetings to prioritize current and upcoming projects.
• Promptly address scope challenges and issues with clients.
• Retain clients
• Identify client project opportunities to grow account revenue
• Lead tactical client discussions with day-to-day client contacts as well as strategic meetings with senior client personnel.

Qualifications

• Excellent relationship building skills.
• Dynamic and flexible personality
• A bachelor’s degree
• Search engine and social media knowledge
• Experience managing multiple clients

We offer a great salary, flexible schedule, paid vacation, a retirement plan, health insurance, dental insurance, company funded life insurance and the chance to work with some of the best clients and brightest minds in online marketing.

If you are interested in applying for an Account Manager position please email bbalderaz@webbedmarketing.com.

Tags: account manager, career, job

Don’t Ask What You Want, Ask What You Want to Accomplish

You don’t want a PageRank of 8, or a 10% click through rate or 1,000 Twitter followers.

Just like consumers in 1908 didn’t really want a better horse, they wanted a faster way to travel that didn’t poop— thus the whole “automobile” thing caught on. Professionals in 1976 might have thought they wanted a more useful typewriter, but they wanted a box that they could type on, and do math on, and access information from - but they weren’t saying they wanted a ”personal computer”. Last April, I didn’t want a library/music store/movie theatre/magazine standd that fit into my briefcase, I wanted one magic little device that could serve up any media, and here I sit listening to Whitesnake my iPad.

In other words, we often get caught up in wanting a better version of what we know, versus thinking about what we want to accomplish. Ultimately, your online marketing program is probably about generating more sales, leads, voters, donors or members through your website. Things like where you rank on this keyword, or how much your traffic grows, or how many likes you get on Facebook don’t keep your shareholders happy.

Every day we get calls from potential clients asking if we can get them to page 1 on Google for this term, or if we can generate 1,000 new inbound links, or if we can increase their page views per visit. The answer to all of this is “yes we can, but we’d rather help you generate revenue.” If after six months of a marketing program, your time on site is down, and your traffic is down and you haven’t generated a single new link but sales have tripled and you’re showing a great ROI, count the campaign as a success.

Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe in measuring everything. I believe you can build models that show if your website traffic increases by x% your sales increase by y%. I believe you can analyze how YouTube video views correlate with leads. I believe that you can associate longer time on site with more members. But ultimately, I believe the thumbs up or thumbs down on any campaign should be decided by answering a simple question: “What did I accomplish for my organization?”

Pay Per Click Value of “Peripheral” Terms

The problem is that it is just so tempting.

Say that you sell Vespa scooters in Green Bay. You bid on dozens of variations of “Buy Vespa Scooters Green Bay” in Google AdWords and MSN AdCenter. You sell a lot of scooters. It’s practically like printing money. In fact you figure that for every 100 clicks you get on an ad, you sell a scooter.

Then you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how you scale the program. You decide to start bidding on terms like “fuel efficiency” and “save gas.”

And the whole program tanks.

So what happened? You dig in and you see that your cost per click jumped from .40 to $3! You realize that you are competing with hybrid car makers and fuel additive products and alternative energy advocacy groups. Your quality score is low because your site is about selling scooters – not fuel efficiency. Your conversion rate goes from 1% to .01% because people searching on the term are much less qualified. They may be looking for scooters, or a hybrid car, or a fuel additive.

The point in all of this? It’s great to test. In fact, it’s great to test hundreds or sometimes thousands of terms. In the PPC world, you let the numbers tell the tale. But in 98% of the cases we’ve seen, “peripheral” terms just don’t work. Your competition increases while your relevance and conversions decrease. So while ongoing testing is essenetial to the success of any PPC campaign, focus your tests on variations of your core products and services, your long shots are, at best, long shots.

Tags: AdCenter, AdWords, google, MSN, ppc, Yahoo!