Archive for April, 2009

Apr30

Gord Hotchkiss

2

The Persuasive Power of Face to Face

Think of the most persuasive person you know. The salesperson you can’t say no to, your mother (guilt always works), your spouse or your 6-year-old child. Now, imagine if you had never met the person in person and they were trying to persuade you over the phone, or by email. Would they be as persuasive? No. Persuasion just don’t work as well if you’re not face to face Hardwired for Face to Face   Robert Cialdini wrote an entire book on the Psychology of Persuasion. He explains the hot buttons that get pushed, moving us towards doing something we might not [...]

Apr27

Kyle Grant

2

PPC Measurability: A Double Edged Sword

In marketing circles, the old adage: "Half my advertising money is wasted. The problem is that I don’t know which half!" is often regarded as marketing fact and has been more or less accepted as fact until now. In a down economy marketers are now heralding this statement no longer as a quote, but as a mission statement to finding where to invest money.  However, the very nature of this quote embodies the challenge that all marketers face: attribution. The famous marketing quote was reportedly said by William Lever, John Wanamaker, and F.W. Woolworth; begging the question: who gets the [...]

Apr23

Gord Hotchkiss

2

Measuring Success After the Click

Avinash Kaushik speculates that Bounce Rate might be the sexiest web metric ever. Scott Brinker has a whole blog dedicated to post click marketing. I believe it was Craig MacDonald at Covario who said bad landing pages are where good leads go to die. And I’ve been quoted as saying (categorically, no less) that the single most important thing we can do for the client happens after the search click. Start Swimming Downstream   It always amazes me that search marketers spend huge amounts of time tweaking everything to do with the search page and very little time worrying about what happens [...]

Apr19

Gord Hotchkiss

0

The Spring Search Insider Summit and my Hidden Agenda

I have an odd reaction whenever I get an email from Ken Fadner in my inbox. My face contorts in the strangest way. It’s half a bemused smile, half a wince, with a dash of anticipation thrown in. For those of you who don’t know him, Ken is the publisher of MediaPost. I’ve been working with Ken in putting the agenda together for the upcoming Search Insider Summit on Captiva Island. You Have Mail…   Ken is remarkable in that, as far as I can tell, he reads every single post and column that goes up on the MediaPost site. [...]

Apr17

Jody Nimetz

3

Does Blended Search Optimization Work for B2B?

Since May 2007, we have been hearing about Universal Search and Blended Search.  Google was the first of the major Search Engines to unveil blended results as part of their main search results in May 2007 with Universal Search.  ASK was second in June of 2007, followed by MSN in July 2007 and Yahoo in October 2007.  Yet here we are two years later and the discussions have died down a little.  When’s the last time you heard someone in your office discuss blended search?  Of course there are exceptions and early adopters, but in discussions that I have with [...]

Apr13

Andrew Spoeth

0

How Does Your Risk Fit Into My Funnel?

I had the pleasure of producing Enquiro’s recent webinar titled Beyond the B2B Buying Funnel. Being a B2B marketer myself, I’m quite fond of the funnel concept and use it to map things like lead volume vs. position in the sales/marketing cycle. An interview I conducted with Jim Sterne takes a look at funnels of different shapes and how they reveal demand generation ailments and successes. But where does the funnel fall short? One of the main messages I’ve taken away is that we shouldn’t look to the funnel model to imply a clear top-to-bottom progression in the sales process. [...]

Apr09

Gord Hotchkiss

0

Microsoft’s Talk vs. Microsoft’s Walk

Not so many columns ago, I urged Microsoft to do something amazing in search. Last week, they did. But it wasn’t in a good way. I was on the road last week, and I saw three different things land in my in box about Microsoft and their search efforts. With each email, my frustration mounted. Finally, Friday as I was sitting in Seattle airport I couldn’t contain myself any more. I sent an email to the most senior person I knew at Microsoft Search. The gist of the email was “don’t do it”. Yesterday, I got an email back thanking [...]

Apr07

Chris Davies

1

Why Would Google Acquire Twitter?

It’s possibly one of the fastest moving rumors on the internet (perhaps thanks to Twitter): TechCrunch has reported Google may be in talks to acquire Twitter. Whether it’s just a rumour, or the talks are fairly advanced, it’s worthwhile to take a step back and examine why Google might want to buy a service like Twitter, and what that might mean to either company. Google Can Do Anything, Why Can’t It Make A Twitter? Google knows what it’s good at. Like any smart company, they focus on what they’re good at and strategically outsource the rest. They also know that [...]

Apr02

Gord Hotchkiss

0

The Confluence of Spring Break: Part II

Starting in the 1400’s, an explosion of exploration came from Europe called the Age of Discovery. Prior to that, the world was a much smaller place. In fact, the end of the world was reckoned to be somewhere past Cape Bojador in West Africa. But during this time of exploration, the boundaries of the world were pushed back dramatically. By the end of the 15th century, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama sailed by this route to India and Christopher Columbus had sailed to the new world. Just 20 years later, Ferdinand Magellan would become [...]