Link Princess

Description: How can you translate analytics data into meaningful, actionable, recommendations for improvement of an SEO strategy? The focus is on ACTION. Simply getting a statistics report isn’t enough to consistently manage an optimization or a keyword campaign. How do you do the deep dives into the data, and what should you be looking for? For some, they find gold, but it has to be communicated up the ladder. Finding, interpreting, and communicating the data are all very different things and all must be used to build a successful analytics program. Find the holes in your SEO strategy by evaluating different keyword and link based traffic, so that you can make a business case for change and increased investment.

Introduction by:

• Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit

Speakers:

• Matthew Bailey, President, SiteLogic
• Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Bizresearch

Amanda starts us off with a general declaration that web analytics are great but the bottom line is you have to know what to measure and what it means. So, first up is Matthew.

Matt starts off by evangelizing analytics and talking about how passionate he is about the field. People who love what they do generally make great presentations. So far, so good. Analytics can not only tell you what your site is doing but what you can do to your site to make it improve almost immediately. Everyone loves to sit in brainstorm sessions and say “I think we should do this…” or “I have a feeling that we need to start…” Matt argues it’s a better idea to say “I know that we should do this because the data tells us it’s the best thing for us right now.”

The first step is start with specific goals. Ask yourself what do you want to accomplish and what do you want your users to accomplish? The typical web analytics package looks at the following:

• Page views
• Path analysis
• Top 10 pages
• Top 10 referring keywords
• Number of monthly visitors
• Number of hits (’cause it’s a nice big number)

Just because this is what all the other kids are doing, it’s not necessarily the best stuff to be looking at. This is telling you what is happening, but it does not give insight into what you should be doing. These are the macro-actions. The micro-actions will lead to the next step of what to do.

Typical cycle of sales follows a path like this: Entry page > products pages > detail pages > the close > conversion. The biggest piece of this cycle is to segment the data and find out who is coming and what are they coming for? So, to illustrate this Matthew gives us a real-life example that we all have fretted about at least once: The Red Shirt Phenomenon of Star Trek. For those of you who don’t know what this is all about, I will illuminate: there is a theory in the Star Trek community that if a crew member of the Starship Enterprise was wearing a red shirt, they were more likely to perish during the show’s run. Matthew wanted to confirm this, so he sacrificed himself and watched the three seasons that made up the series.

 In his findings, there were approximately 430 crew members during the 5-year mission of the Starship Enterprise. In the 5 years, there were 54 deaths of crew members. The shirts make up the following metrics of those reported deaths:

• Yellow shirts: 10 %
• Blue shirts: 17.2 %
• Red Shirts: 72.8%

Now, breaking down the red shirt fatalities a little bit more, we find that 57.5% of the red shirt deaths occurred when they beamed down with Captain Kirk onto an unfamiliar planet. So, the question becomes: what can stop the red shirt phenomenon?

The answer: When Captain Kirk meets a female alien, the red shirt survival rate increases by 84%. Unfortunately, Captain Kirk only meets a female alien 30% of the time.

This is a (great) example of how segmentation can help you improve the performance of a Web site and apply this to improve the conversion rate accordingly. It also shows how you can apply certain conversion rates (survival) to specific segmented groups (red shirted crew members). You get the following items through segmentation:

• Context
• Conversion
• Contrast

By comparing & contrasting segmented data, you can create a context that surrounds a conversion or a drop in metrics.

Important KPI’s:

• Time on site
• Conversions
• Pages Viewed
• Progress on goals

After all, analytics is all about improving users’ experiences for your Web site.

Relevant segmentations:

• Blogs
• Web sites
• In-market links
• Social news
• Search

Also look for the entry pages that result in conversions. Your home page could be a hindrance when it comes to conversion. But taking a look at the types of links that result in conversions is key. (I heart links)

Next up is Laura and she’s all about a Cause for Action (or how to keep your ship from sinking). When it comes to our industry, we are always discovering something new. Change is a constant dynamic for SEO. Yep.

She gives a shout out to the big analytics programs and tools and then says if you at the macro level, you will not leave any calls to action at the micro level.

Analytics need to be like a ship with a double hull. She recommends at least two analytics tools. Google analytics and be sure to enable conversion tracking. She also likes to activate the metrics for referring domains/ links to find out what kind of traffic is coming from them.

Now, I’m not an “analytics person” so to speak - although I’m considering conversion. Ok, no I’m just kidding. I’m gonna stick with links. Back on track - so Laura talks about a whole bunch of tools, metrics, and stuff that we need to keep in mind when it comes to SEO and managing Web sites. So I’m gonna move on…

Description: When AT&T’s Ed Whitacre declared in 2005, “They’re not going to use my pipes for free,” he was talking very specifically about search engine marketers. Telcos and cablecos want to use their control of the Internet connection to provide so-called fast-lane service to business partners. The strong implication is that non-partners will suffer degraded service. Worse, even those who do partner with one or more Internet access providers will incur (5) extra charges, (4) reduced reach, (3) degraded knowledge of their customers’ behaviors, (2) reduced ability to discover new applications and markets, and (1) reduced trust. A series of very recent FCC and court decisions mean that the neutral Internet we know and love, which gave birth to the entire field of search engine marketing and nurtured it to profitability, can no longer be taken for granted.

David wrote a book called Rise of the Stupid Network and I make a mental note to read it just ’cause it’s a great title. David is a self-described “internet guy,”has twelve years of experience in the telephone company, and is a “prosultant.” As opposed to a “con”sultant, I imagine. He opens his talk by describing the network neutrality debate as being renewed in recent online discussions and that the movement has recently picked up speed. He says there are five reasons we need to join this discussion and they are:

1. We will get charged extra

2. Our reach will be reduced

3. We won’t know our customers’ behaviors as well.

4. Our ability to discover and reach new markets will be reduced

5. Reduced trust

Everything with this net neutrality really hit the fan in 2005 when Ed Whitaker, the CEO of AT&T declared that the internet could not use his pipes for free. Basically, he declared war on Google, Yahoo, Vonage, etc. and he declared on it behalf of the phone companies and Time Warner Cable. Whitaker didn’t have the vision to invent it but he wanted it in 2005 because it was a huge success. In general, the telephone company believes their job is to treat internet traffic differently and get into the middle of the online world. We would need permission and special fees to reach people reliably.

The problem with Whitaker’s statement is that the internet is already reliable; it’s the telephone connections that are not. The internet works on any application & a variety of machines. No one plans on the growth of the internet, no one knows how big it is, yet it keeps growing.

The reason David calls it the “stupid network” is because there is no center of the internet. Everything is on the edges. No one runs it or regulates it, anyone can put things online and launch new applications. The telephone company wants us to believe that the internet will collapse and they are the ones that can save us. They truly believe that. But the telephone companies are the ones that are collapsing, not the internet; the internet continues to get better and better. The true value of the internet is at is edges and we are all at the edges (like he said, there’s no center).

If the internet loses its laissez-faire attitude that has fostered a spirit of creativity and freedom, we will lose the true value of the net. Net neutrality is actually defined as the equal treatments of packages regardless of its location, source, or ownership. The telephone company wants to take a chunk out of everything we get from the internet so they can make a profit. The want to transform the net into an application-aware and cultural discriminating atmosphere and turn it against certain applications.

Community-built web sites, the popular Wikipedia and new sites allowing content being shared through “tagging” can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies to tap into them in an appropriate manner.

Moderator:

• Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink

Speakers:

• Todd Parsons, Co-Founder and CPO, BuzzLogic
• Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
• Jennifer Laycock, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide
• Steven E. Marder, CEO & Co-Founder, Eurekster, Inc.
• Tamera Kremer, Founder, Wildfire Strategic Marketing

Yes, I know. All you die-hard agenda adherence types are saying “wait! This session is out of order.” Laptop battery died (not from lack of power, from “irreparable damage”) and I have no outlet anywhere near me. Bogey.

Anne opens the session to a rather large audience. Social media is definitely a very hot topic today as the room is packed to standing room only. She covers the basic housekeeping items and then tells the panelists that they each have 5 minutes to cover their presentations. Pressure’s on.

Todd from Buzz Logic opens up first. BuzzLogic has been up and running for about 3 ½ years and it’s described as an on-demand social media platform that finds the “influencers” for clients in certain types of communities to engage in conversations about the client’s products. Re-reading this, it doesn’t make any sense. But they find out who the big shots are on the Web in terms of bloggers and social networks, find out what they are talking about and then tell you where to find them. Make sense? Good.

Stats time:

• There are 57 million Americans who read blogs (Todd says his slide is outdated, it’s up to 65 million now)
• 60% of readers are going to blogs solely for opinions. I thought you guys just thought I was funny.
• 65% of online power shoppers use reviews generated by users and spend 10 minutes looking these over (in case you don’t know, that’s an eternity in cyber space)
• There are 3.5 million conversations happening online everyday. Todd also notes that these are spread pretty evenly across the demographics and that one age group or gender is not dominating this arena.

The big example that Todd brings up is the Georgia emissions test vs. the Toyota Prius hubbub that happened about a month ago. This began to drive simultaneous conversations online involving bloggers, social media venues like Facebook, MySpace, etc, consumers, and the brands. All these guys were sharing link love (Todd says linking is getting a bad wrap lately and it shouldn’t. Got that right. I heart linking) and the conversations were flowing.

He talks about the two types of links happening: acquired (or solicited/ requested) and editorial (organic/ natural). The editorial links are harder to control but they are rooted in trust and powerful for many reasons. The biggest thing about these conversations is that they are driving authentic engagement for a multitude of users so anything other than authenticity will do it. Pay Per Post is an example of the search engines getting pretty aggressive and sniffing out the less than genuine stuff going on out there.

Adam from iCrossing starts off by saying he has 35 slides and 5 minutes to cover it all. (I won’t keep you in suspense, he makes it with about 13 seconds to spare.) iCrossing is a do-it-all shop that has been around since ’98.

We’re social animals in general, so social media makes sense for us to use online. We crave connections and some times we do it in rather un-cool ways. We have more ways than ever to create, find, share, and distribute content across the Web. Content doesn’t make social networks. It’s the personal networks that do that within the context of the social media.

Adam predicts that 70% of all content on the Web will be user generated by 2010. The other 30% will be from the brands themselves. Additionally, the UGC out there is taking over the search results, so brands do not own the conversations that are happening in cyberspace.

Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide hearts Flickr and she shares some of the fun stuff you can do with it. The benefits of Flickr are:

1. You can do images searches
   1. It’s also a big source of images for Technorati and Flickr.
   2. You can (and should) use the tags for the long tail keywords you are targeting
2. Sense of Community
   1. More highly engaged since pictures take more time to go out and take, upload, name, and share than just writing a blog.
   2. This is particularly great for brand evangelists and industry experts.
3. Links (Here’s the money part)
   1. It drives traffic and it allows keyword-rich text links.
   2. Spammers beware: You can’t do this for every image. Add value first to the conversation, then plug a link later and sparingly.

Stuff you’re gonna need to know:

• Tagging
• Add notes to your pics
• Find and join communities
• Geotag your images
• Subscribe to user feeds
• Use flickr widgets
• Creative commons license lets you identify exactly how people can use/ share your images.

Tamera from Wildfire (based in Toronto) is up to talk about del.icio.us.

Good stuff:

• Over 2 million users
• You can tag any page on the internet
• Compatible with other platforms
• Shareable with other users
• You can view popularity of any page
• Tag as individual page or as a group (like hit all my fave stores, tag them as wish list, then send the list to my BFFs for my Christmas shopping list)

Tamera also went on to explain a project she did with AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing and Sales) in Canada. It was really interesting. Go check it out.

Steven’s turn and he’s with Eurekster (love the name) who created Swicki, a social search tool. He says search and online media in general has gone from a one-to-many setup to a many-to-many type deal. There are user centered engagements that are not being brand-driven, but community powered. When you have this user participation and it’s being guided by a publisher what you usually wind up with is brand reinforcement.

Looking internally, ask: what do we already have that we can leverage for this social style of tools and push out a reinforcement message of our brand? The key is to provide a useful tool that will basically build brand with and through it.

Swicki is customized widget that lends itself to becoming vertical search engine for users. It’s community based, so your friends can add to it. Over 100,000 Swickis have been built and you can monetize it.

Description: Should you take work in house, completely outsource or find some balance of the both? This session looks at options to guide you to your own decision.

Moderator:

• Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers:

• Paul J. Elliot, Principal-Search Engine Marketing, eMergent Marketing/BRULANT Inc.
• Matthew Greitzer, Director of SEM, Avenue A/Razorfish
• Bill Hunt, CEO, Global Strategies International

Aw, suki it’s time for Paul to present. I’ve decided to attend so I can heckle. But I’m a chicken, so I won’t. But Paul is engaging a rather hot topic of going for an outside agency or keeping you SEO in-house. He’s been working for days on his presentation, so I’m sure it will be stellar.

Obviously, I’m biased going into this since I work for an agency but there fine lines that are difficult to dance with all of this. Jeff is going to start the discussion with basic introductions and all the speakers introduce who they are and what they do. I’ll forgo that since it’s at the top of this post.

Bill is reminiscing the last time he presented with Chris Boggs who fired up the crowd. He points out an article in the SES magazine that he highly recommends. Bill’s company works with a lot of Fortune 100s, many of which bringing elements into their strategy that have to do with SEO. He recommends a hybrid approach combining in house and outsourcing to get the job done, and he is the self-described “middle of the road” guy.

Jeff asks if Bill sees an ebb and flow in this trend right now. Bill says yes, especially on a global scale. SEO is going through a maturation process and hitting a peak so many companies have someone on payroll who is the dedicated search marketing person. They are the voice of reason in the marketing rush. They are search-centric evangelists in the company, which is a huge shift due to the fact there is a focus on search where there previously wasn’t any. Search marketers have to play nice with everyone. You have to work with the agencies, PR, marketing directors, brand experts, and more.

Generally, he sees a disconnect in that these people are not communicating on a regular basis.

Matthew from Avenue A Razorfish is up and his position is “hire an agency.” He agrees with Bill’s take and he’s seeing it more and more in his clients. It’s  beneficial to us SEOs to have that internal assistance. There are two things you want from your agency:

1. Leadership: agencies live in the search space and need to bring big ideas and concepts, strategy & tactical leadership (especially since as a sociological phenomenon, groups of SEOs are motivated to learn more to help each other) and organizational leadership (help you get a handle on who’s doing what, bridge the gap and bring it all together).
2. Results: No explanation necessary. Clients want results; so do agencies. Nuff said.

When looking for an agency:

1. What is the staff-client ratio? This will tell you how much time and attention your account will get.
2. Level of customization: how much, what, and how often
3. Process, training and on-boarding, turnover: how fast can new people get up to speed on your account?
4. Meet the team

Get more from your agency by:

1. Sharing data with the agency. The more information they have the better the results.
2. Take advice & offer feedback. If you can’t do this, why hire an agency? It’s frustrating from the agency side. Give frank and honest feedback. If the agency doesn’t take it and improve, find someone else.
3. Reward success: Shoot a note to their boss to give positive feedback.
4. Push for innovation, exceptional results: The best clients are the ones who raise the bar, push the agency, and think differently.

Jeff poses a question to Paul about the transition from being in-house to being on the agency side and asks what the challenges are. He’s stealing Paul’s thunder, but Paul recovers well. Each side has its different challenges. He was a one man machine when he was client side and he could only share so much and only had limited time to learn. On the agency side, he loves the fast paced craze, but also knows it’s hard not to be able to only focus on one client.

Olivier is asked if he had to be a jack of all trades. Olivier sympathizes with Paul in that he was a one man media marketing show and now he focuses more on a diverse hiring plan.

Paul’s turn… tempted to heckle… must resist. Okay, I’m good. Moving on…

Paul describes his experience going from in-house to agency side. Boy he talks fast. His presentation discusses the comparative experiences between being the Internet Marketing Manager for Things Remembered to becoming the Principal in charge of eMergent Marketing at Brulant, Inc. He talks about how 50 hours wasn’t enough stress. Yep. You read that right.

Now he’s bragging on Brulant and his team. I’m blushing. We learn about our clients and their industries. We’re an integrated service solution so that saves money and time. He has pros and cons lists that break it all down.

The bottom line is that each side has its ups and downs.

In-House Pros

1. Strong connection to the product & service offerings
2. Concentrated focus on one site
3. Easy access to all the necessary data
4. Better integration & coordination with internal team members

In-house cons

1. Good search marketers are all very similar: get bored easily, very competitive, etc.
2. Lack of educational opportunities
3. Lack of training in both organic and paid search tactics, etc.
4. Justification in tool and research purchases
5. Difficult to drive organizational change from within

No agency relationship will be successful without an internal resource allocated solely to the agency to be a voice for the agency and to provide a vehicle for two way communication. Rah, rah, Paul’s the man.

Olivier says Paul makes him feel like a slacker. Me too, Olivier! He has also been on both sides of the coin. He gives a brief background on the company he works for and their evolution into the search sphere. They hired someone to assess where they were and they became a hybrid model example, using both in house and agency resources. He’s working on both sides simultaneously and decided he needed to bring together everyone to work together.

Olivier points out that you need to work with developers and this can be a challenge as SEO is generally at the bottom of the list in terms of order of importance. He also reiterates some points that Matthew made about staff to client ratio and customization capabilities. His company compromised and took the SEO in-house after a year of working with an agency for SEO best practices & training and then used an agency for paid search.

Jeff revisits the hybrid concept and asks: what are the hallmarks for a successful relationship in this type of model? Bill says it will go right when you have the right person with the right passion and the right focus for the company will work. Egos can get you on the speaking circuit and hired away from your company but the people with the right attitude who can play right with all the parties involved, it will go well. What is your culture? Are you too domineering that you won’t be able to grow or are you willing to learn, to grow, to adapt and take into consideration the pulse of the customer and the market.

Bill says that failure happens most when the search resource in-house thinks they know everything. There is a huge support network for in house SEOs but you have to be willing to share it. He also says another downfall is not challenging your agency and pushing for better results.

Q: When clients work with an agency, who are you primarily working with?

Paul chimes in that it differs from agency to agency. For the larger clients, we work with the marketing team.

Q: So is there no out? There has to be an “in” somewhere.

Paul says there should always be relationship with someone on the inside. Matthew concurs.

Description: Search engines, especially Google, say don’t do ‘em. But some search marketers say paid links work. Are paid links subverting search quality? Or are they simply a fact of life, here to stay?

Moderator:

• Chris Boggs, Manager, Search Engine Optimization, eMergent Marketing/BRULANT, Inc.

Speakers:

• William Leake, Founder and CEO, Apogee Search
• Eric Ward, CEO, EricWard.com
• Brian Boland, Director-adCenter, Microsoft Corporation

Chris Boggs begins the session with an overview of why we need a session like this discussing how the practice of link buying has become a bit shady. He describes it as “link building on steroids.”

Apparently, there has been quite an active debate regarding this topic on blogs across the Web this past weekend.

Bill starts this off with discussing the fact that paid links do work and Google is certainly having a difficult way to handle this approach. Once a new format of linking comes up, most likely Google will find a new thing to discount in terms of visibility and rankings. William describes a proper linking building campaign as a stew; a “little bit of this, a little bit of that” with a proper mixture of ingredients that are kept in a healthy balance.

New link bait that is original is difficult because competitors jump on the bandwagon as soon as something new starts. He compares paid links to celebrity endorsements. He identifies the biggest problem with paid links is advertising without disclosure is deceptive. And buying links without notifying clients of the potential risks is deceptive.

Google does not determine ethics for the industry/ internet. (I hear ya, I’m with ya.) We still need to play with Google, let’s talk high risk and low risk, not the idea of them being evil.

Are paid links here to stay? Yep. You have to pay to be a member of the trade association and quite often you get a link to your site from their site, but Google is going to going penalize them anytime soon.

Next up is Sage Lewis of Sage Rock (no Eric Ward… sniff sniff). But first, Chris directs a question to the panel regarding how Google is targeting link buyers. Sage brings up that natural linking is the way to go. Brian talks about how there a lot of technical issues that need to be resolved and this is definitely on the list. Nice way to hedge the question, MSN.

Now, for real, Sage is up. Sage is a link love expert & SES columnist. Link building campaigns need to start with content (the horse in the “cart before the horse” metaphor). The cart is the links in this one. So far, I’m with him. Wow, he’s animated.

Basically, now he’s saying that content needs to be the focus of link building. He point out the Win/Win mentality (aka habit #4 of Stephen Covey’s habits of highly effective people/ Web site).

Some tips:

1. Integrate the community into your corporate events.
2. Promote the good work you are doing in your community.
3. Help your audience succeed.

You can’t just build it and they will come. Sorry, Kevin Costner. You have to ask for the link too.

Chris’s next question: what are the options for content when it comes to offsite components? The guys suggest press releases, facebook, social media, and the cream of the crop: Your content on someone else’s site with a link pointing back to you. Other suggestions:

1. Trade associations
2. Links from charities that received donations from you
3. Reclamation efforts: mine your current links and ask Webmasters to change the link to an optimized version. Key: make requests personal to them and what can be received in return? If not money, what else? Think of content, reciprocals, etc.

Now for Brian Boland from MSN (now comes the other side of the story). Brian starts discussing reciprocal links and how easy those are to found. Their number one goal is to protect the high quality of users’ experiences.

Brian is fascinated by the fact that paid links have become an “ethical” topic and discourages the idea of black vs. white when it comes to this issue. Every user who goes to a search engine will switch engines if they have a bad experience. There are no switching costs for dumping one engine for another as your default search. Bottom line so far is: we focus on quality.

What is your sole purpose, he asks. Is it to trick users or search engines? Not a good thing. Imagine MSN wagging a finger at you and shaking their head in disappointment. Valid point. Now he’s promoting his http://webmaster.live.com tools that they have recently launched (holla to all you beta testers out there).

MSN is going to continue to integrate technology and figure this stuff out algorithmically. He says “Google does not own the internet.” Amen! He says we do (got that right) and he said it is ours to fill with junk or quality items. Intriguing.

Chris discusses text link ads and how they are still above the radar. Paid links are still carrying weight in search engine results. Bill touches on the fact that you need to identify how mission critical your SEO is as well as the distribution of paid links make up your incoming links on a percentage base. Don’t waste your money by putting a bullseye on your back. He also has a great point: If Google penalizes the method of buying links, then sites will go out and buy links for their competitors to get them penalized or even banned. Selah.

Description: Online resources now bring us greater functionality and interactivity in finding things locally than the yellow pages traditionally has. But despite growing usage of local online search, a vast majority of transactions still occur in the offline world. Given this reality, what are the most effective ways to more effectively lead offline conversions with online search products? Where will consumers turn most to find things online before they buy them in the real world? 

Moderator: Michael Boland of The Kelsey Group

Speakers:

• Bob Armour of ShopLocal
• Scott Dunlap of NearbyNow
• Manish Patel of Where2GetIt
• Richard Rosen of FastCall411

On to the next session. Seth Godin struck a chord with many that were sitting in the audience for his presentation. So, now we will hear about Local Search. Definitely a hot topic, even for link builders as regional directories, search engines, and resource sites are up and coming in the search world.

Michael opens the session with a cordial welcome. This is the kickoff to the Kelsey Group track which is a showing of a growing partnership between them and SES. It’s a new format and they’re pretty geeked about it. Michael also gives an overview of local and how it is becoming fractioned between mobile, social media, etc. and how the consumers are changing the trends of this online form of media and marketing.

We will be looking at the basic & foundational basis of local search. Lots of statistics, but I can’t type that fast. We’ll be looking at the offline conversion process where online media is the starting point. How do you track those clicks to conversions? How do you more effectively lead consumers in the proper direction (or more specifically the way you want them to go)?

Richard Rosen is up first. He is the founder & CEO of FastCall411. A newer company that is online in beta. They are a local & local search application that focuses on local services where 100% of their conversion is offline. They integrate the connection of the phone call to local merchants. They are the first to fulfill the destination into a phone call.

Richard says the consumer expectation does not meet the current market reality. 250,000,000 calls per month take place that start online. Two out of 3 of these calls find merchants who are “not available.” Boy, I hate that. There is a disconnect between merchants who think that availability is important and the consumers’ expectations. The start of this is a better local search application.

He goes on to describe local search as frustrating (for sure!) and it is because of a lot of different factors including bad base data (old listings), not enough content generated by users such as reviews, difficult prospecting, poor match of leads with destinations, and others. The transformation that has to occur starts with identifying availability as part of a new approach to local search and connecting users with merchants.

Richard now does a demo where a recording says that a customer wants to be connected to a plumber in Los Angeles and then it sends simultaneous phone calls to 10 merchants an the first to push “1” will win the business. Ingenious!

Manish is up next. He is the CEO of Where2GetIt and they have been up for about 10 years in the local search realm. He wants to share his findings with us. Bring it!

They work for over 600 brands with 600,000 locations and 15,000 products. He points out that the internet started as consumers connecting with merchants, retailers, etc. Now, they want choices & control of the buying process. The internet gives consumers the ability to do this.

People are going to Google the most to find what they want. Surprise, surprise. But he also notes there are trends in where people are going to find things. They are looking at a variety of sites now including social media, vertical directories, retailer web sites, etc. We have to rethink where we want to be and how we want consumers to “consume our message.”

Next slide: getting found = retailer web site. Filtering functions are now being incorporated including handicapped accessibility, pharmacy hours, and brands offered.

Getting found = manufacturer’s web site. Can we buy directly from you? Is it sold locally?

On to the link aspect. Vertical search is on the up and up. CSE’s are another place where consumers are initiating purchases. Being here helps quite a bit.

Adidas has a MySpace page, Google partners with the car, facebook, iPod, Garmin… the list goes on to how marketing is proliferating and becoming more and more bi-directional.

Steps to better offline conversions

1. Get found.
2. Engage with relevant information – do our tools help our consumers?
3. Track results & optimize:
   1. #of driving directions
   2. Coupons downloaded
   3. Phone calls
   4. Click throughs

Additionally, put your hours on your site, review, coupons, mobile extensions, opt-in email lists or contact local dealer. You can track conversions with these. This is the holy grail of tracking for offline conversions.

Scott is up next from NearbyNow who has a new mobile product. He starts by asking how many have gotten their shopping done (pang of guilt).

NearbyNow is a search provider for shopping malls. 200 malls in 130+ cities. Shoppers can even put items on hold and pick them up later. I love this feature with Borders! Especially when shopping with my toddlers. Shoppers who use this make an average of 4.3 transactions per visit among other statistics.

Interesting notes:

1. Mall shoppers have a “high intent to buy”
2. Makes a geographic area 100% searchable
3. They focus on converting shoppers who research online, but purchase in-store.

The goal of this company is to move online conversion to offline. Mobile targeting is an example of the way that NearbyNow backed into new technology. You can be at the mall and find out what is on sale with the help of your sale. No more buying something that is 20% less two doors down! And it’s limited to 2 ads/ hour all in text messages so no application download is needed.

They used this to back into a combo with outdoor media, magazines, etc. You can text a message to NearbyNow and they will reply with places locally that provide that product. This helps you measure your conversion. Make it measurable (the new SEO mantra). Due to the data the crawlers were finding, they matched the Casio cameras that come in different colors with fashion accessories and they started selling even more. Quite intriguing and completely an example of how consumers drive the way businesses are viewing their products.

Last, but not least is Bob Armour from ShopLocal.  This has been around for about 7 years. They are the leader in multichannel marketing & shopping services. They help advertisers drive in-store sales using the Web. They do this in three ways.

1. The web has been more of a research tool than a shopping tool. 92% of us research online, while 95% of us go to the store to get it.
2. The internet is projected to grow. Onlne influened offline sales will grow to 1 Trillion by 2011. Woah.
3. Advertisers will follow the consumers. Consumers are much further along in using the Web than advertisers. Yep. I concur.

Their solutions include

1. Smart Circular
   1. Web version of what you find in your Sunday newspaper. Online ads are more interactive and more helpful to users.
   2. 53% of people who view this visit the store within a week; 95% within a month.
2. SmartMedia
   1. Local promotions delivered through rich media. Generally a banner ad that delivers locally based information to users.
   2. Now they are being pushed to use other formats such as widgets, mobile, RSS, embedded content, etc.
   3. Interaction time for users viewing these ads with localized content climbs from 10.7 seconds with standard rich media to 17 seconds.
3. On ShopLocal.com
   1. 56% of shoppers who use this go to the store to buy them
   2. Shoppers found new stores to purchase from that they normally would not visit.

Seth Godin is described as an Agent of Change and an Entrepreneur and he is the first keynote speaker at SES, Chicago, Day 2. He’s just come out with a new book called Meatball Sundae and I’m uber excited to hear him speak. His newest book is all about marketing being out of sync.

The conference description of this presentation notes that a “meatball sundae is a monstrosity, the unfortunate combination of the old and the new that leads to pretty much nothing at all. By understanding the key drivers of the new marketing, you can embrace what works and abandon the legacies that are holding you back.”

Huh? Well, I’m hoping Seth will explain it and I have no doubt he will in his most unique way.

Already we have had the obligatory “what happens at SES, stay at SES” mantra note. Kevin Riley introduces Seth to the group gathered in the International Ballroom. Lots of accolades for Seth, and understandably well deserved as he has changed the face of marketing.

Seth takes the stage and he starts by noting that something big is happening and it’s going to big, and it starts with the obsession with the internet. The revolution needs some architects for the change that is happening.

Seth describes the meatball sundae. Yay! Please explain. Meatballs are commodities, made in volume for mass distribution. The sundae is the new marketing such as Facebook, etc. It works great until you put it on top of the meatballs. If you want to reach the masses, make something the masses want to buy. He says most of us work for companies/ clients that make average stuff for average people. These companies grew up in a certain place with a certain business, but something has happened since their inception.

The Yellow Pages have a multi billion dollar business doesn’t understand why people weren’t going online and he goes on to reference TV Guide versus YouTube and AOL vs. AOL Yellow Book.

Now for the history lesson, the industrial revolution happened several hundred years ago. No plates, silverware, etc. Every business only had one or two employees. Josiah Wedgewood invented marketing as we know it. He built the very first factory (he was a potter) full of people with specialties. He hired people he could train; he had health insurance. A real revolutionary. He spent 2 million dollars to ship on approval sets of China to the heads of Europe by mail. He opened the very first showroom in London.

He walked around the factory and whacked things with his walking stick that he found unsatisfactory. He figured out you could transport things by boat. He looked at everything that everyone else saw and figured out he could build something else on top of it.  It’s a pyramid, with manufacturing at the bottom and sales and marketing at the top. How can we figure out what just happened can affect what we are trying to do?

We generally ask: how can we make sales and marketing work for us? But Wedgewood took another approach. The revolution of Wedgewood was that he worked from the bottom. He worked on the meatballs.

The internet is too powerful for us to think we can change it and bend it to our will. Wal-Mart’s MySpace knockoff didn’t work (it’s whipped cream on top of their meatballs). No idea that happened, but hey I learn something new everyday.

Now onto the cherries, whipped cream, and toppings: Seth’s stand on SEO is that SEO clients are lazy and want to make shortcuts too soon. They are calling us up and saying “hit me with the cherries.” Seth talks about Squidoo and how they are embracing the We and using it to their advantage. How can we change the bottom of the pyramid to eradicate being stuck.

There are fourteen (!?!) trends to describe the dynamics of the meatball sundae.

1. Direct communication between producers and consumers. Seth describes the Sonos… they reach out and say “users, talk to us.” They have helpful people in their tech department who will be able to talk through any issue. They’re doomed to failure because
2. Consumers are louder than ever before leading to amplified word of mouth. Nothing stays in Vegas.
3. Authentic stories. There’s no time to read the fine print… They grab the stories that are authentic, consistent, and make us feel good about what we are hearing. Consumers who pay attention to every brand will never get a clear picture. Generally it’s a caricature that is not your true image. We have to go to the client and say the way this is going to be successful is not by tweaking the color map, but telling a story people want to hear. Now, we have to live it and make it true.
4. Speed. FedEx, Amazon and similar companies are pioneering this, but the Web taught people that you never have to wait for anything. Seth tells a story about buying stickers. He submitted a price quote and heard back in less than 2 hours. They were too late…. Someone else showed up an hour and half earlier and won the business. Companies are not organized around speed.
5. The Long Tail. What’s happening now is that companies don’t have to offer just a few, but every possible option for consumers. Options win all the time.
6. Outsourcing. If your job can be reduced to a manual, sooner or later you will be out of a job. Go to Jott.com, sign up for free, call in and say something, and your reminder will be sent to your inbox. Amazon offers this service. Say the title of the book and it’s at your house tomorrow. Woah. Huge time saver here! The little factory can outsource and win.
7. Splitting. The idea that you can control what people can see when you want them to is bogus. Google changed all that. No one takes just the good parts, bundles are the way to make things work. Google unlocked the bundle.
8. Infinite channels of communication. A whole slide of companies appears, none of which existed 11 years ago.  Another slide of a ridiculous amount of cold medication choices. Your clients make the blue box that people don’t know they need. We have branded everything to death. Another image of “diet water.” Oh, snap. With the amount of clutter on the Web makes things harder for people to get in.
9. Consumer to consumer relationships (such as eBay). Consumers can transact with each other such as Kiva. People can connect who wouldn’t ever otherwise meet. In the top list of charities, only 2 have changed. This is an industry that’s stuck.
10. Scarce and Abundant. There has been a flip in what is scarce and what is abundant. The number of choices is overwhelming. Look at cell phones vs. water. Point well made. Attention is something that has gone from abundant to scarce.
11. Triumph of big ideas. Big ideas are something people can get in a second. In a factory mindset, you’re always trying to improve.
12. Who vs. How Many. Critical debate. Seth calls it a sweet spot. If you are in the business of getting attention when attention is abundant, such as the Super Bowl it matters a lot. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as how many as who does. Daily Candy is built around this idea. Women will go to the sample sales. They have successfully targeting the right group. We have an obsession with compete, Alexa, etc. It’s baloney. Hmmm. Focus on “who.”
13. The New Rich. The rich are different than the rich used to be. We can find them everywhere we look. They look different, they spend differently, but they are just like everybody else. They are different than the “rich” of the 1920s. Ask yourself “who are they, what do they want”
14. New gatekeepers, No gatekeepers. Who you knew and how you knew them mattered a great deal back in the day. Today you can put all you inventory online and anyone can find it. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you know, but you can put a PDF online and it will spread.
15. Scarcity & Ubiquity (bonus; Seth rocks). Scarcity: Jerry Springer in concert – go to Vegas. Ubiquity: Seinfeld on TV (on every night). Ubiquity is uninteresting. Signed, personal items cost a money. Gotta love souvenirs. Spend 30 bucks on a t-shirt at Disney. They end up in the middle because people cannot decide (the danger zone).

Seth is going back to history lessons now about King Jolette. Wow, I’m learning a lot. Don’t know how much more the brain can take and it’s only the first session. Squidoo is built by people who are really bad at the old thing, look at the new trends and make it work. Threadless sells 40 million dollars worth of t-shirts with only a few people in Chicago. Onto Catherine Zeta-Jones who also owns a factory. She has to face some choices. Reference to writer’s guild strikes: things just don’t seem fair. You make it to the top of an industry and it falls apart. The information is free, but you can’t make the world go back. How can I take this opportunity to build new assets and succeed.

Replacements is built on this idea. Break your mother-in-law’s teacup? No worries about divorce court… buy pieces one at a time here. Zappos is huge because they are a whole different way to view online business.

The opportunity here is to go the next meeting and ask these hard questions. There is always that meeting about where to go next, but it usually gets waterted down, studied, compromised and ultimately fails. There is a lot out there for the taking.

Questions from the audience: People who want choices and we can benefit from that. People don’t know how many are out there, so how can they benefit from them?

Seth’s answer: Use the long tail. 1) Tell a story and 2) search matters (Thanks for the props). The stories can be inexpensive if the audience is already captivated. The generic story to the generic audience is harder to tell. Figure out the story you want to tell and tell it to the group who wants to hear it the most. We don’t waste as much time today online. We don’t learn about things we don’t want to learn about.

Q: How can mobile turn into a marketing platform.

Seth: Mobile might be the next big thing but it’s not going to be a big Web browser. It’s the ultimate permission medium. We don’t want people to call us/ text us/ spam us on our phone if we don’t ask. We want to know where we are, what we want and give us the information when we want it. To get into mobile: am I about this moment, place or about connecting to this person who is willing to be connected?

Q: Paddy has a question about using Second Life and asks is this a “meatball sundae” or a blue box with a gimic.

Seth: Care about each other, new places to go, new experience. Second Life is not the medium to use. Find the other scuba divers, form a network and we’ll coordinate the trip and make it happen. Find products for your customers, not customers for your products. They can be left out or they can be in. People want to be in. They also want a moderator (not to exploit, but to lead them). If you don’t do this, someone else will. And they will become the most successful in this sphere.

I’m in Chicago with a couple of colleagues for the SES Conference (Search Engine Strategies for all you newbies out there). While I’m still hunting for SEO celebrities, I’m must say so far it’s been pretty fun. That’s what you get for working with fun people.

 Today is jam-packed and I’m going to try my first stab at live-blogging. Thankfully, Lisa at Bruce Clay put out some tips to help me prepare for the event. So I will be taking her sage-like advice and getting ready for the day. First up, only an uber favorite of mine, Seth Godin. His book, the Dip… well… let’s just say it rocked my world and motivated me to get into the niche I am in. Highly recommended.

So, it’s time to start that I V of caffeine into my veins to get the day going. Don’t want to miss a moment.