Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

In work, in life, in whatever you do, it’s easy to get in a groove (sometimes it’s a rut). I started in Internet Marketing before Google was even around ResponseDirect.com became iProsepct.com (around 10 years). Traditional marketing never made any sense to me. You throw millions of dollars out the window and if your sales go up, then you throw more money out the window. Actually you don’t throw it out the window, you throw millions at an agency that has a bunch of creative types and some account managers and then they throw a significantly smaller pile at the media properties and hope your sales go up so they will get another pile of money to pick through.

On the web, people look for stuff. They search. People are scavengers, all they do online (in life?) is search. Search isn’t always turning to a search engine to search. It could be reading an article in search of information, it could be talking to a friend searching for critical information to make a decision but in some form or another people are almost always searching actively or passively.

The beauty of the Internet was immediately obvious to me. People tell you exactly or approximately what they are looking for in the form of a keyword search and you can serve it up to them to generate a sale, give them what they want in an honest and efficient manner. You have the opportunity to measure results, change the website to better align with what your customers want and zero in on making more money and helping your customer quickly and easily get what they want from you.

I originally intended my focus to be on Search Enigne Optimization (SEO). Fundamentally SEO is really simple. Instead of structuting a website like a catalog or Microsoft Word with the implicit assumption that the end user (or consumer) is already on your website or in your application, you need to assume that the consumer may enter the website from any page on the website. In order to account for this some redundancy is needed in site navigation so that someone who starts out deep in the site knows exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. The copy, navigation and architecture of the site needs to reflect the way your target consumer thinks and evoke emotions that make them want to continue on through the website to complete a sale, generate a lead or take another action that will help you and your customer achive a common goal.

Despite the inital intended focus on SEO, I ended up focusing more on PPC search which I got pretty good at, maybe even damn good. I threw some PPC traffic at at least 100 different sites. Some got only a few clicks, others got millions. If they could convert the traffic, they kept getting traffic. If they couldn’t convert then the traffic stopped unless working with them was part of a more traditional fee for services arrangement. In that case they often paid to have someone to tell what to do and push out the message they wanted consumers to hear more so than they hired someone to generate sales for them or help them provide what thier consumers were actually looking for. Is it more important to say what you want to say and tell someone what to do, or would you rather make money? The goal of any business is to make more money now and in the future but in many such pay for services arrangements, the goal of making money often seemed to get lost in the shuffle.

When you operate in a fee for services arrangement you often have to do what the client buying the services wants you to do whether or not it makes any sense. If you have a lot of clients you can make a lot of money if the billable hourly rate is high, your costs are low or some combination of the two. Over the long term, this type of business arrangement can be a dangerous one in a fast changing industry like the web. While your clients stand still and direct you to do what they want, it can strip you of growth opportunities and hinder your ability to be on the cutting edge and be able to deliver what the market is ultimately going to need as opposed to what a slow moving organization wants NOW. You know Gretsky’s quote “I always skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.” Maybe it takes a number of concussions before most people think like that and more execs should get out there on the ice.

The web is a much different place now than it was when I got into this industry. It is more crowded, it is full of social media noise, traffic can come from many more places than just search but people are still scavengers.

Up until today, I had never purchased any books or ebooks or anything of the sort on any kind of Internet Marketing wiht the exception of Fredrick Marckini’s Search Engine Optimization book from many years ago.

Today, I decided to purchase the “Blueprint to Profitability” put together by Jeremy Palmer of Quit Your Day Job. I’ve known him for a while, always been a good guy and top performer in CJ. I know paid search, how to sit in meetings, write POVs, many things that work really well and everything that doesn’t. The thing I don’t know is how to make the things that don’t work go from not working to working. By this I mean fixing a paid search campaign or setting one up that will generate staggering results is easy IF the site is setup to convert the traffic. It’s fairly easy to tell if a site will convert traffic but I’ve got little to no skill at actually building a site that will convert traffic. When you are catering to someone else and building what they want instead of what works, what the analytics tell you works, and relentlessly driving in the direction the analytics tell you to go, it is like trying to run a marathon with your feet stuck in cement.

So tonight I finally broke down and paid for someone else’s expertise and bought the Blueprint For Profitability. Not to long ago, I came across a quote that struck me. “You Can’t Do What You Want By Doing Something Else” This should be the first step toward doing what I want and learning the things I want to learn that will power future success and growth to achive anything in the world of Internet Marketing. It’ll be something new, some actual brain food and will likely be an eye opener. As time permits and things progress, I’ll add some updates as to how things are going and share some results. As the title of this post states, “One of the Most Important Things to Know is What You Don’t” I know wht I don’t know and have for a while. It’s time to change that!

As the end of the year approaches, it is time to look into the crystal ball and make predictions about what will happen in the industry in the upcoming year in 2009. Given the state of the economy it is going to be a wild year with lots of opportunity for those who choose to take advantage of and a grim year for those that choose to ignore the Internet and the way it has fundamentally changed commerce.

Predictions for 2009:

1) Many companies will go bust because a recession/depression and the associated decrease in consumer demand, the credit crunch and other economic forces will separate the smart, focused, efficient businesses that have adapted to the web from those that simply refuse to see what is right in front of their own noses.

2) Pay for performance (aka affiliate marekting models) will continue to thrive and maybe, just maybe, the corporate folks will take off their blinders, stop “branding” and start listening.

3) Big global media agencies and the media properties they spend a lot of money with will struggle. Agencies and media properties will lay off tens of thousands of people because they are unable to adapt to the new consumer driven marketplace.

4) There will be little if any growth in most online advertising including search and online display media and there will be huge opportunities to stock up on the stocks of the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and other online pure plays that will be the future of the economy. That lack of online advertising spending growth will not be due to lack of opportunity but the lack of companies to figure out how to effectively use the medium in front of them.

5) 2009 will be the “baby boom” for Internet companies. With potentially millions of layoffs in all sectors and tens or hundreds of thousands in the tech & Internet sector, there will be lots of fresh fertile minds with no mindless job sucking the life out of them who will stop looking for a job and instead create their own opportunities and build new companies.

6) Lots more companies will test the waters of social media only to be able to track little to no ROI from social media. Since social media is still considered “experimental” and it is hard to quantify the value, enthusiasm for it will wane even though tracking the value of billions spent on traditional media is something most companies are unable to do.

7) Companies that utilize the search data in front of them, rebuild their sites (and maybe their businesses) based on search data and personas and deliver sites, products and services demanded by the marketplace will thrive and may grow exponentially.

8) YouTube and other video sites will start to have some real live shows and “channels” that can attract real advertising revenue that may deliver an ROI for the advertisers.

9) This will be the make or break year for smaller online agencies. A tight economy will force them to get their shit together or go out of business unless they purposely choose to stay small and focused on core services that are demanded by the marketplace.

10) Omniture and to a lesser degree other analytics vendors will be acquisition targets simply because of all the data they have and will be able to command a nice premium over their current stock or estimated private values.

11) Microsoft will continue to struggle on the web but may be able to buy other companies that will being in fresh thinking, new minds and new perspectives that can help them be less dependent on packaged software sales.

12) The X-Box may become Microsofts strongest foray into the online world and enable Microsoft to finally get a foothold in the Internet even though their search business will continue to flounder.

13) CPG, financial and other large companies with huge brand budgets will continue to struggle online. When the top management is either replaced or becomes willing to listen to the up and coming Internet savvy junior level employees or consultants, there will be a HUGE demand for quality site design, development and marketing services that actually help sell cases and financial services products.

14) The number of research and analytics tools available in the marketplace will continue to explode. Some will be very useful but only a select few people and companies will be able to figure out how to use the data in front of them.

15) The basics of the Internet won’t change and the companies that embrace them will thrive. The basics include: fast download times, relevant ad and website copy, creating sites and businesses based on consmer demand and not on “branding” push, simple, easy to use navigation and site design and adopting a conversational approach to marketing (instead of just talking about it).

If you want to thrive in 2009, just get back to basics. Remember that your Internet marketing should start with your site, not with your marketing. Make things fast, easy and intuitive for those people you are trying to reach or sell to. Re-read the ClueTrain Manifesto and pay attention. It is more accurate now than ever.

It is probably rooted in the world of traditional marketing. A company creates a product after doing some market research and then looks for an agency to “handle the marketing”. There is a little song and dance, some wining and dining a little negotiation and eventually an agency is chosen to get a 15% cut of whatever the media budget will be.

This same process happens when it comes to Internet marketing as well. A company decides they need to “do search”. We need someone to “do our search” for us. The same process often ensues. The merchant looks around, they talk to some different people, they look at different proposals and find someone who makes them feel comfortable. The search company talks about wonderful technology they have, how long they have been in business and lands the business. The good and bad thing about marketing on the Internet & search in particular is that it is so trackable. Big traditional agencies generally give their clients a sheet with clicks and impressions as if just putting any information in front of a consumer is valuable even if it is irrelevant.

What very, very few merchants, traditional and online (even search) agencies realize is that the success of a pay per click search campaign (or most any other online marketing campaign that is supposed to drive sales) is only fractionally dependent on the search campaign.

Internet marketing & search in particular is a conversation. Ads don’t convert people. They never have. A sales person, a trusted friend, sales material or product packaging convinces someone to make a purchase. A search ad that is generally limited to about 100 characters cannot sell someone something by itself. This is why click to call PPC ads have always failed in search engines and why they will always continue to fail. If the consumer just wanted to call, they would pick up the yellow pages, find a number and make a call. When they are on the Internet, they are searching because they want more information. A phone call is generally something that happens after a bit of consideration and research.

All marketing [should] start with search because that is what people do. People identify a need or want which may sometimes be spurred by an ad (but not a search ad) and they go search for information. The search may take place on a search engine, a blog, a store, in a conversation among friends, on Twitter or a combination of things. The search happens because the person has one or more questions they want to answer so they look to start a conversation. Once the person is engaged in a conversation the information presented to them needs to answer their questions.

The search ad serves as the bridge to get the attention of the person and then the site needs to sell them by presenting information the way they want to see it and the way they will be influenced by it to make a purchase or further engage with the merchant or organization with products or services to offer.

Have you ever noticed that some people “just get” things and others can’t see things sitting right on the end of their nose? The Internet is one such area where this happens all the time. It seems that when a person is used to looking at things one way, many times they are simply incapable of looking at them through another perspective. People sem to develop mental models that leave them blind to certain things. Such is the case with advertising and marketing on the Internet. After college (Industrial Engineering @ U Pitt), I decided I wanted to go into marketing. That was after bartending and skiing for a year or so after getting done with my college edumacation.

Even going through engineering, there was a lot of material we covered and a lot of projects we did, just because that is what people did. They didn’t necessarily make any sense but we did them out of habit. Accounting classes were famous for this and the cost accounting mindset still poisons organizations because it distorts reality. It can be a good way to model things but when looking at how a business really operates, most cost accounting and efficiency measures need to be taken with a grain of salt or even tossed out the window in favor of looking at the reality of the way a business actually operates. Eli Goldratt & his best seller, The Goal clearly laid this out way back in 1984. If people would not only read it but ACT on it and pull thier heads out of their asses, they’d be able to run more profitable businesses.

At the time of graduation, it was really tough to even get an interview for a lowly marketing associate positon in ANY company. Maybe it still is for technical or engineering grads to get into marketing when they graduate. Lots of marketing people think they are a lot more important than they really are. There seems to be this mystique about marketing. Marketing people think that what we do is rocket science. If you have a good understanding of people and actually listen to people, you can rock in marketing. If you can listen and have a genuine desire to understand people, you can rule the world in online marketing & search marketing in particular. An awful lot of marketing people don’t seem to have the ability to listen and simply can’t get past the way they think things should work even if they obviously don’t work that way.

Traditional marketing doesn’t work, online media (banner advertising) doesn’t work in most cases. Just like pharmaceutical companies come up with diagnoses so they can come up with a new pill to sell, marketing people come up with new metrics to justify programs that don’t work by any sensible measure.

For the forseeable future, advertising and marketing revenues will continue to shrink when allocated to the traditional methods of marketing based on demographics and psychographics, particularly online.

The future of marketing is simple. A person goes to a search engine of some sort and asks a question in the form of a keyword search. The smart advertiser identifies a relevant keyword, creates an ad that shows the consumer that they understand the question the person is asking and then links to a page that provides the answer. It always has worked that way and probably always will. Companies are starting to get it but if you can understand just that one point you are smarter than 95% of the people who work in marketing and deserve a big fat raise.

In order to take advantage of the opportunities paid and organic search offers CPG advertisers, CPG companies need to recognize how the web works and adapt their mindset to the realities of the new marketplace. Search is not a mass medium in which to broadcast a message the same way television is.

When consumers turn to search engines, they are asking a question in the form of a keyword search. Nothing more, nothing less. They are focused on performing a task to address a want, need or desire. They have a problem and it is up to the advertiser to anticipate the intent behind the query and find a way to answer it. A search ad does not brand. A positive experience from the time a person performs a search, clicks on an ad and accomplishes the task at hand results in a positive brand experience, elevates the perception of the brand and may make the consumer more included to purchase the products of a given CPG company. Unfortunately it is difficult to conduct research into this whole process and everyone except the CPG company benefits when search ads are blasted out into the maketplace and success is measured based on clicks and impressions.

Lets say a company sells whole grain pasta. If the consumer searches for whole grain pasta, then it would make sense for the CPG company to advertise on keywords like “whole grain pasta” and take that opportunity to introduce their whole grain pasta to the consumer, present them with some recipes on how to make great pasta dishes and then present them with a coupon to get the consumer to make a purchase. The Intenet is a SALES medium, not a marketing or branding medium.. That is not 100% correct, the banner or search ad is generally not a good branding tool unless it is relevant to what the consumer wants to accomplish at the time the ad is presented to them. Search can target a consumer when they are actively looking to perform a task, banner advertising can not.

Have you ever noticed that new metrics have to be invented in order to justify most display (banner) advertising programs online? People are blind to banners and they don’t generally respond to them. Media programs are often behaviorally targeted so that the ads are shown to people who have already been to the website. In order to justify the expense of the banner programs, sales are credited to the program when people view an ad 30-90 days before they make a purchase. It generally doens’t even mater if the person saw the ad. If the ad was at the bottom of a page that the consumer loaded and a cookie was set, then the banner campaign is credited with the sale.

Lets go back to search. In order for CPG companies to take maximum advantage of the power of search, they need to embrace a different perspective. While demographics and psychographics are fine for mass media like print and TV advertising, they are generally not available in search advertising campaigns and don’t matter much anyway.

In order to make all their marketing and advertising efforts work and sell more stuff, CPG companies need to approach marketing in the following way:

Perform the standard market research that incorporates demographic and psychographic data. This can help determine who the audience is, how much income they may have and help identify the different personas the marketing and advertising campaigns must cater to in order to develop collateral to the people research shows are most likely to buy the product.

Perform keyword research to see what consumers are looking for and how they express their needs and wants. Keyword research can also provide direction for creative concept development. Are people looking for office comedy, tarot card readings, fortune tellers, grocery lists, specific types of games, recipes, or other types of entertainment or online applications?

Once there is an idea of who the consumer is likely to be, it may be possible to infer what types of activities, applications or entertainment these people may be interested in and what types of creative concepts can be developed into applications that this audience will search for.

The name of the product and the language used to describe the product can also be based on the keyword research conducted.

When the site is developed, there is now hard (or at least harder than some agency creative type wild ideas) data on what the consumer is interested in, who the consumer will be, what types of entertainment or applications the consumer may be interested in and how they will search for and describe the product when they search.

Before any designer touches anything, before any programmer sets out to develop a site and strikes the first key to develop code, the site features and architecture need to be laid out to mirror the way the consumer if likely to think about and search for the product to be sold.

Now, when the site launches, the site will naturally integrate with a paid search campaign and if the developers are technically competent and can buld a search friendly site, the site will have a much better chance of getting organic search traffic and a PPC search campaign will snap in place easily and quickly.

Once the campaign is up and running, the focus of optimization will be optimizing the website performance in tandem with the PPC search campaign. Are consumers taking steps on the website that will lead them to a purchase? Which keywords are performing best? Where is there additional marketplace demand that new content and site features can be created to fulfill? Where do people drop out of the site and why do they drop out? What site elements result in more site registrations, more interaction with the site, more recipe downloads, more sharing of content, more printing of coupons?

“Integration” has become a big buzzword in online marketing and advertising and the type of integration everyone writes about and focuses on doesn’t make any sense. Everyone is focused on “integrating” their search and media (banner) campaigns.

There are two types of integration that need to happen:

Site content and features need to “integrate” with the way people search.
Creative concepts on the website need to integrate with the look and feel of the website to present a consistent and relevant message.

If this all sounds like a lot of work, it is. Welcome to the Internet. If you are in CPG and you want the online channel to work for you (i.e. you want to sell more stuff) it is time to start doing things differently. You may need to shake up your organization, your agency selection and adopt a different mindset. Stop taking the “studies” and “articles” you see from the major Internet marketing publications as facts and THINK. These are press releases and “studies” designed to get you to flush more money down the toilet in the name of “branding”.

At minimum, track your search campaigns beyond clicks and impressions and measure what people actually DO on your website(s). Once you take that first step, the light will start to go on and you may start to think differently.