Conference Buddies

Ad Networks and Exchanges

Ad Networks:

400+ Ad Networks currently, 18 trilliion pageviews a day, $7 Billion revenue for top 20%

Sloan/MediaCom:

70/30:  70% long tail buys, 30% general buys
$650 Billion market world wide

Google:

• Platform (Ad serving/management)
• Ad Network (Content network)
• Ad Exchange (Ad networks are their customers)

Google has 23% of online display advertising market

Fox Interactive = owns hundreds of properties

During the Great Depression these brands spent more on Advertising and bounced back:  Twinkies, Purina, Converse, HP, Pittsburg Steelers, Coolwhip

$1 Billion spent in digital by Group M with 1300 publishers

You need to understand consumer behavior

Marketing Effectiveness – Improving Accountability and Returns to Impact Business Performance

MODERATOR:
Christopher Marriott, VP, Global Managing Director, Acxiom

PANELISTS:
Chris Caputo, VP, Digital Media Strategy, Optiem, Inc.
Cheryl Kellond, Senior VP, Advertising Business, Choice-stream
Jeff Hirsch, President and CEO, AduienceScience
Geoff Atkinson, Senior VP, Marketing, Overstock.com

Lessons of Direct Marketing

• Consumer insight first. Connect behavior to spend.
• Technology is the gateway to optimization
• Insight without execution … is pointless

73% few dollars spent per hour of target audience consumption Digital vs. TV

A New imperative in Touch Economic Times

• Decreasing number of purchase opportunities has big implications
• Tradiitional retail marketing vehicles – search and newpapers – are at their limits
• Display has all the right components: Reach, frequency, expanding purchase options
• However, until now display has under-delivered is potential

Unlocking the Performance in Online Display

Two Distinct Components

Finding the Right Audience:

• Retargeting is always a smart marketers winning bet

Delivering the Right Message:

• 1:1 messaging with the in-marketing relevance of search that creates an “occasion to purchase” like catalog

Category Specific Ad

Overstock.com

• ChoiceStream RealRelevance Advertising
• Dynamically created display Ad + landing page
• Personalize products & offers
• Purchase paterns (what they bought, what they did)
• Serve up on landing page the products the user had added to basket but didn’t purchase/abondoned, and also serve up related items below that

Conversions per Thousands of Impression (Over 3x Advertising Lift)
Revenue per Thousand Impressions   (3x-5x Lift)

———

American Greetings.com

$5M to $10M visitors a month

Challenges

• Acquisition Campaign
• Growing Competition
• Complex Traffic Patterns
• Huge Product Variety

Need: Better visibility into profit drivers

Attribution Management funnel

Awareness -> conisderation -> favorability  -> purchase  ->  loyalty
ecard -> funny ecards -> american greetings -> $$$

Data Mart:

• Media (Paid Search, Display banners, Shopping engines)
• Behavior (Visits, Engagement, Conversion)
• History (Products, COGS, Profit)

Actions

• Identified – Introducers, Influencers, Closers
• Re-allocated budget
• Eliminated losers
• Fill top of the funnels
• Feeding eagles, starting the pigeons

Make smart decision on the data

CPC = 13% increase
Spend = 32% increase
Profit = 28% increase  (due to better optimization)

Example – Moen.com

Situation:

• Cut Tradeshow Budget
• New Product Launch
• Increased Competition
• Diverse Audience

Need: Refresh CRMS data
And get new product info out there

Guerilla Tactics:

• Timed email communicaions post show
• Announced new products launch
• Masked CRM refresh with sweepstakes
• Added urgency to complete the form

Opens = 7% increase
Response = 43% increase
Within 48 hours = 1/2 of audience responded already

Takeaways

• True Analytics not Google Anlytics (only 1/3 of puzzle)
• Pay attention to consumer behavior
• Hard times requires creativity

Misc:

Relevancy creates Engagement & Trust

————–

Sketchers Case study

Targets Prospects across AudienceScience Targeted Marketplace

Objective

• Increase sales
• Masximize return on Ad spend
• Drive new and qualified visitors

For Sketchers.com only 1% of revenue comes from online, but focusing more efforts in that area.

Revenue Sources:

15% thru stores 15% Int’l, 1% online, > %70 from retail stores/partners

Solution:

Behavioral and demographic targeting from AudienceScience and other ad networks helped Skechers identify qualified prospects on their site, gauge their interest and intent, and then group these users into segments that they could serve re-targeting ads to

3% conversion rate on website

Optimized and tested from 20 Ad Networks to 12
Utilizing retargeting

Soho Labs (bought other brands)
Tag the user (women section, kids products, left item in cart, etc.) (serve Ad based on shoes left in cart,

ROAS = Return on Advertising Spend = (Revenue/Cost/Cost)

Return on Ad spend was 617% over the course of the campaign
The campign was optimized on a weekly basis to ensure success

• Analyzed impression volume versus clickthrough rate to ensure qualified traffic through the Run of Networkr= impressions, and conversion rate versus eCPA for retargeted Skechers visitors (90% retargeting vs. 10% RON)
• Skechers was able to continually revife its creative for maximum results

Lower performers ask for better rates

Run 3 to 5 creatives to test

Not opinion or bias, optimize by performance

Q2 2009:

• Create Storyboard across multiple Ad netowrks, allowing fo more personalize messages to specific customers
• Determine last-touch attribution for Ad buys and removal duplicate order issue
• Allows for aggregate learning across all networks in order to help optimize campaigns and Ad sizes
• Reduces strain on internal IT by utilizing universal tags that marketing team controls

————–

Name changed:
Banner Ads = Display Ads (because video, buy in ads, etc.)

Sketchers:
Search vs. Display = less than 20% spent on Display vs. Search
More money from retargeting display Ads than search

Data drives decisions

Fishing where your fish are

Search (SEO, PPC) is the best acquisition channel. It facilitates demand, but doesn’t generate demand

SPEAKER:
Darren Guarnaccia, VP, Product Marketing, Sitecore

1. Continuity of messaging throughout the process: aligning message to what customer expects
   • Bring customer back to why they started
2. Segment & Balance user experiences with site goals
   • Build credibility with visitors & prospects
   • Example: Omni Hotel advertise around local attractions to align with what customers wants – FUN
3. Deliver value back to your web visitors by waiting for the right moment
   • Lead scoring: scoring & waiting for visitor interactions (behavior)
   • Behavior: wait until they are ready based on their actions
   • User experience must win
   • Differentiating experience
   • Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing
4. Learn to Learn: listening to your segments & optimizing messaging
   • Scoring your content & actions
   • Testing & validating with plils & surveys
5. Overcome objections & barriers using community content & engagement
   • A website is an active participant in moving prospects into the sales process: the 6th man of the sales team
   • A website helps/educates customer overcome the hurdles, objects, pain points
   • A website helps shorten the sales cycle
   • Customer look for: Affordability, Expertise, Location
6. Get the conversation started: Long-Term customer value through engaging dialog
   Engagement in community content:
   • Customer Reviews
   • Company working out rough spots with clients publicly
   • Use to build trust & credibility
   • Use to help overcome objections
   • Social content based on relevance (provide free tips, recipes, ideas for users to use your product) to drive prospects deeper to your website
7. Provide ongoing content & experience for which visitors hunger and return
   • Subscriptions
   • New content to bring back customers
   • Use ratings/reviews to determine what customers want
   • Creating long-term value overtime by re-engaging prospects

Tap the wisdom/behavior (the most popular stories/whitepaper/content) of the crowd as a filter.

Media Boot Camp Power Session:  The Modern Agency

MODERATOR:
Tim Hanlon, Executive VP, Managing Direcor, VivaKi Ventures

PANELISTS:
Torrence Boone, CEO, Enfatico
Jordan Warren, President, San Francisco, Agency.com
Sharon Gallacher, Global Media Director and Managing Director, Neo@Ogilvy San Francisco
Winston Binch, VP and Managing Director of Interactive Crispin Porter + Bogusky

• Advertising, Direct, CRM, Ad Analytics all in one P/L
• Integrated agency, leveraging strengths from world wide (i.e. bangladesh)
• Attack specific business challenge (modern business challenges)
• Full service digital agency

Integrated Marketing

• Brand communications that can sell
• Media agency bundled – own business plan, salaries, etc.
• Media thinking and technical thinking put where the creative momentum is.
• Hyper-targeted – video components served by audience type (by gender, sport, etc.).
• New disciplines interaction director, technology director added to the modern agency (in addition to the creative, media buying, other roles)
• Focus on analytics
• From an agency perspective, no one figured out social media, mobile, etc.
• Poor economy places more emphasis of accountability
• Don’t confuse Tactics with Strategy
• Re-engineering to measure ROI
• Companies don’t measure the impact of media on search / seo

Integration vs. Re-Integration vs. Silo
Money vs. Ego
Holding company  (scale, financial, leverage)
WPP/Y&R/ plug into capabilities

Brand vs. Performance

• All is performance, it’s how you measure it

ad:tech San Francisco 2009
April 21, 22, 23
San Francisco, CA

ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition.
Worldwide shows blend keynote speakers, topic driven panels and workshops to provide attendees with the tools and techniques they need to compete in a changing world.

To find more information about ad:tech, or to find more information about their conference, visit:
http://www.ad-tech.com/sf/adtech_san_francisco.aspx

Personas, Profiles, Actors, & Roles: Modeling Users To Target Successful Product Design – SD West 2009

March 11, 2009

Speaker: Jeff Patton (Architect, Interaction Designers, AgileProductDesign)

Conference Notes:
Building personas, profiles, actors & roles are key to understanding:

1. Who will be using the software
2. What is the profile of the target user – skills, user experience, levels of interaction
3. What is the function of the software
4. What is the responsibility of the user in relation to the software

This often starts by brain storming. More data is often available from market data, marketing departments, and UI studies.

Use of images of what your target personas is often helpful for people to connect with the attributes.  Keep attributes short and easy to remember.

Search Engine Optimization 301 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speakers:
Nikki Patrick, Tampa-SEO.com
Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz.org

Inner Linking for SEO success

Nikki Patrick
Nikki@Tampa-SEO.com

If Content is King then Linking is Queen

Inner linking is taking keyword rich text and linking to to another page on your site with the content of your website. This allows the Search Engine spider to easily spider all the pages of your site.

Don’t over do it! You want to add a few links withi the content of each page that link to other pages that may be related. Only do this if it makes sense.

Google doesn’t like to see more than 100 links per page, including your navigation.

Inner Linking:

• Search engines place more value on links within the content than links from your navigation
• Use the bold tag around your anchor text to add value to the link, do not style it in the CSS. Don’t overdue it on the same keyword.
• Your home page should have links to category pages to push link juice to them.

Add a SEO friendly site map to your website. Use both HTML and XML
www.xml-sitemaps.com
www.sitemappro.com

A well structured inner linking campaign will give you those indented listing in the SERP’s as well as the internal pages

Page Sculpting

Page sculpting is the art of pushing link juice or value to certain pages of your site for increased rankings. Each link is assigned a certain amount of value.

The search engines don’t need to index every page of your site. Add the rel=”nofollow” tag inside of a link if you don’t want the search engine spiders to follow it.

You want to “nofollow: pages like

• shopping cart, checkout pages
• abous us, contact us, company info

You DO want to follow category pages, product pages, resource pages, affiliate pages, and the home page

You can also add rel=”follow” to tell the spiders to follow those links

Be careful when page sculpting. It is an advanced technique that can hurt your rankings if not done correctly.

SEO Tip: Use the no follow tag for “more info” link and buttons to give more link juice for keyword rich anchor text

Advanced Linkbuilding

So Juicy, You’ll Need a Napkin!

Gillian Muessig
SEOMoz.org

Pull Marketing
Push Marketing (Ads to your website)
Mold the two

How to perform searches that will result in high quality link acquisition targets:

The Obvious:

Seek permutations of keywords from top 100 ranking sites:
snowboard equipment (with quotes, no quotes, etc.)

Reciprocal Linking Tactic that Works

• Email sites or people you want to trade links with
• Offer to link to a piece of conte on their website an articel a grpph a tool a blog post
• In exchange, ask them to find something they like about your website,
• Write something review to them and visa versa

Creating a mobile stylesheet has more than just usability benefits. There are hundres of directories on the webs that list mobile/PDA-friendly websites

Image links on Steroids

Use a CSS image replacement so the link looks like HTML

Tickle the Blogger

• Compel bloggers
• Comment
• Write about them, then alert them

Unbelievable link sources:

Certain blog sections at Amazon
Check out pages examples on Amazon like:

• Jennifer Wilson Witch Books
• Blogging with MSN Saces
• How to Profit from Art

Keynote – Day 1 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speakers:
Russ = CEO, Miva Merchant
Jon Burchmore = CTO, Miva Merchant
Rick Wilson = EVP, Miva Merchant

Miva Merchant 5.5 launched May 2008
Over 10,000 merchants now on Miva Merchant 5.5

New features and fixes:

• Import/Export timeout fixed
• XML import functionality
• Streamlined User Interface
• Highly stable environment
• 100% control of shopping interface
• MySQL optimization
• CSS based skins

2 Miva stores grew into Internet Retailer top 500

Latest Credit Card Industry Regulations:

• PA-DSS/PCI-DSS Compliance mandatory for all online merchants as of July 1, 2010
• PA-DSS => Application
• PCI-DSS => Host
• Penalty = can’t accept credit cards (Visa/Mastercard)

If you are a small retailer then you may have to move to paypal, google checkout, checkout by amazon, etc.

All other online merchants will have to make sure that their shopping cart and hosting provider is PA/PCI compliant for credit card transaction security.

Keynote – Day 1 – Part 2 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speaker:
Dr. Larry Osborne
Pastor, North Coast Church
Founder & President, North Coast Training Network, Vista, California

Word of Mouth Promotion

Create advocates/promoters of your products.

Advocate/Promoters:

1. Satisfaction (both product and process)
2. Confidence (confident always excellent, consistent)
3. Trust (character and integrity)

Process = how it is delivered

If satisfied with product and mildly uncomfortable with process will come back but will not become an advocate and bring anyone to you. Referral chain disappears.

Consistency vs. Quality

Quote from Dr. Larry Osborne:

“We judge ourselves by our best moments. Customers will judge you by your worst moments”

Power of long term customer.

Are they satisfied with your product and process?

Keynote – Day 1 – Part 3 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speaker:
Trevor Claiborne

Google Analytics

1. Landing Pages / Finding pages where they leave (bounce rate on landing pages, split view)
2. Funnel Reports
3. Internal Site Search

Q: How do you know if it is the page or ad copy?
A: Look at bounce rates for NON-PAID keywords
A: Check bounce rate for PAID keywords

Google Website Optimizer

Oct 2006 limited beta, 2007 out of beta

A/B Testing
Multivariable Testing (Headline, Description, Call To Action, etc.)

Test age -> Conversion Page
Section Scripts (up to 8 sections per page)
Tracking Scripts
Conversion Scripts

Best Practices

• Start Now
• Test Often

NerdyShirts: 20 min setup, and in 1 week = 7% improvement in conversion

Google Analytics Resources:

The Techie Guide to Google Website optimizer
WebsiteOptimizer.blogspot.com
google.com/websiteoptimizer
GA or GWO Authorized Consultants (Get authorized)

100 conversions per version (rule of thumb)

tclaiborne on twitter
tclaiborne@google.com

Introduction to SEO – Miva Merchant 2009
Speaker: Mark Simon, Miva Merchant

Conference Notes/Descriptions:

I. How Search Engines Rank Pages

• Search Engine Rank Pages Not Websites
• What the Search Engines evaluate (Ranking Factors)
• Title
• Description (keyword and selling tool)
• Headline (Header tags, 6 tags, 1 to 6)
• Body Text (Write for your customers, write to convert, then plug in keywords later)
• Anchor Text (keyword vote for that page)
• Links
• File names
• Keyword

II. Keyword Research

• Target Markets & Demographics
• Customer lingo – may not be what you think
• Industry lingo – tribal speak
• Number of Searches
• Number of Competing Pages
• Competitor Strength
• Identifying Opportunity (lowest amount of competition for a keyword phrase vs. number of searches)
• Keyword Tools

III. Competitive Analysis (find keywords, find links, etc.)

• Getting into the Search Engines
• Measure Success
• SEO for the CEO

IV. Getting into the Search Engines

• Links from other websites
• Sitemaps – HTML and XML

V. Metrics – Measuring Success

• PageRank doesn’t matter

What does matter:

• Conversion Rates
• Average value of visitors
• Traffic Sources
• Ranking for highly converting keywords
• Inbounds links
• Bounce rate

Q&A:

What is the difference between Indexing and Caching:
Indexing (google bot) = spider your pages and stores the data in their database
Caching = last version that google has saved

If some of my page isn’t indexed how do I get them in there (site:website.com):

1. Sitemap
2. Interlinking top pages (link from top popular internal pages)
3. Social Bookmarking

Some tools and resources mentioned during the SEO session at Miva Merchant

• SitemapPro.com
• SEORecon.com
• Linkscape Tool from SEOMoz.org
• SEObook.com

The following is a summary of a session at SMX West 2009 on Search Engine Friendly Web Design presented by Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

5 Basic Rules of Web Design

When centered on the user, there are specific rules that form the foundation of successful web design. These are:

1. Easy to Read

The code and text should be written in a way where it is easy to read. It should continue the “scent of information” (contain relevant keywords from acquisition source) so that a user can easily discern that they are in the right place.

2. Easy to Navigate

The web site should be, first and foremost, designed for users and searchers, not for search engines. All elements that appear to be clickable should be and users should have a sense of where they are at when navigating the site.

3. Easy to Find

Being easy to find refers to both the before and after of users arriving on a page. The web site should be found/linked from major search engines/relevant sites. Important elements and contents should be found above the fold (portion of the site that is shown upon initial loading without scrolling). Contact information should be easy to find, usually in the header, footer, about us, or contact area.

4. Consistent layout, design & labeling

Consistency communicates a sense of trust, security, reliably, and branding. Consistency is based on many factors, such as, use of space, color scheme, logo usage, placement of content, etc.

5. Quick to download

Speed is determined by both actual and perceived download. If what users want is hard to see at first, then the download appears to be slower. Larger downloads can be applicable if the important elements can be found easily.

3 Building Blocks to SEO

The build blocks to SEO are centered on how crawlers/robots can index your site. These are:

1. Text Indexing

If the content of a site does not have any text or “indexable” content, it won’t rank well, which in turn, makes it difficult to find.

Some other important factors:

• A site should make use of Primary Text, which includes title tags, visible copy, text within the header, and anchor tags/links as all search engines index these and use them in determining rankings.
• If time allows, a site should make use of Secondary Text, which includes meta tags, filenames/domain names, and alt text, as only some search engines index these.
• Breadcrumbs can help a lot, giving a sense of organization to users, as well as provide relevant keywords to links.
• If applicable, try to use captions for images because visible copy weighs more heavily than alt text.

2. Follow Links

The link component refers to internal liking within the site. These should factor in site navigation scheme, as well as other page interlinking.

Some other factors include:

Navigation menu

From most search engine friendly to least friendly:

Text Links > Nav buttons > Image Maps > Form/DHTML Menus > Flash

If using non-text links, always provide 2 forms of navigation. 1 for target audience and 1 for search engines. The search engine friendly one can be a navigation placed within the footer.

Embedded Text Links

Text links placed within visible copy can help to enhance usability and search engine friendliness. However, it is important to not overdo it. Too many embedded text links can decrease usability and legibility.

Site Maps

Site maps do not refer to the URL list that can be submitted to search engines. In this case, a site map refers to a page that provides users a hierarchy to your site structure. When creating a site map, it should not just be a list of URLs or links. Having annotations great helps with legibility.

Others

There a number of other helpful ways to improve usability and search engine friendliness. Some involved linking to related pages, upselling, and having a horizontal navigation vs. a vertical navigation.

3. Site Popularity (Link Development)

Popularity is based on number of external links, the quality of external links, and click popularity.

Some other factors that influence popularity include:

• Having substantial and unique content
• How other sites link to your site (What is the anchor text being used? What are the annotations?)
• Having keyword rich text on homepage
• Having at least one crawl-friendly navigation (even if it’s the footer)
• Having links to relevant information/sites
• Having a visible site map

Miscellaneous

Some other factors to think about in regard to search engine optimization and web design:

• Always design for searchers, not search engines
• When redesigning a site, SEO should be put into consideration in the initial phases and not after the site is built
• Test the usability of a site to determine the effectiveness of a site. If users can’t find the information, most likely, it’s not good for SEO either