Happy Halloween
By Craig Danuloff
Mr Ghost Goes To Town:
[via Theme Time Radio Hour]
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October 31, 2006
October 30, 2006
Call To Action
By Craig Danuloff
Our friends Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have released the paperback edition of "Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Success".
Per their blog in the new release they "..stripped out over 30,000 words and put back 11,000 new words." We can't wait to read them.
And the best part (not really): a new cover design!
October 26, 2006
Google's Miserable Failure
By Craig Danuloff
MSNBC points out that GoogleBombing is alive and well in campaign ’06. Organized bands of partisans are working to drive negative articles higher in the rankings for their political opponents in a new form of participative democracy. The classic example of this technique took place for the ’04 Presidential campaign, when a search for the term ‘miserable failure’ started turning up what Google themselves call ‘odd results’. (more history here.)
The incident marked something of a turning point in the SEO world causing links to replace content (and tags) as the broadly accepted ranking powerhouse. More importantly, it was an early chink in the armor of Google’s public image, forcing most people to consider for the first time exactly how it was that Google decided who shows up at the top of search results.
Today, Google is a habit and a verb, but we’d all benefit from more scrutiny and skepticism of their results. The algorithm has made impressive progress in many areas over the past two years, but we’re still very far from any kind of true relevance meritocracy in far too many results. Towards that, I’m glad to see another round of publicity on how and why search results are manipulated.
I’ve heard that the original GoogleBombing to get the G.W. Bush page to the top rank for ‘miserable failure’ took only 60 inbound links. Of course, it’s hard to say at this point whether Google really was manipulated in this case or if something in their algorithm was actually able to predict the future.
October 24, 2006
Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Assoc. Meeting
By Craig Danuloff
Tonight there was a meeting of the Philadelphia Interactive Marketing Association at the Lucky Strike Lanes. It was a purely social occasion, and five of us from Commerce360 attended to down a few drinks, dine on some pretty good finger food, meet and mingle with folks from lots of other area agencies and vendors, and see who could bowl, and who could not.
Turnout was very impressive with easily over 100 in attendance and about 50 taking part in the ad-hoc bowling tournament. We look forward to getting more involved in the organization, and to future events - the next one is planned for January and is expected to be focus on the rise and influence of social media.
Watch this space for details on the time, place, and exact date. Hope to see you there.
October 13, 2006
The Google Intent Sniffer - Shortening the long tail?
By Craig Danuloff
You've probably noticed that Google recently revised the look of their #1 listings for many search results. Beyond the normal snippet and URL, they now include a sub-group of options for each page, enabling users to better locate the content they actually need.
What's interesting about this is that Google may be shortening the 'long tail' of search. In other words, if Google can provide sub-options with relevant results for more different search intents within the results provided for the generic search, it may actually dissuade people from getting more and more specific with their search phrases.
So the benefit of (and difference between) searching for ‘order sirus’ and ‘sirius customer support’ and ‘compare Sirius radios’ vs just searching for ‘sirus’ goes down with the new listing format. Over the past five years people have been learning to search on longer and longer phrases to try and find more specific and relevant content. General terms still get the bulk of searches, but the tail had been getting longer. The actual quality of the results for the longer searches varies greatly, sometimes it's better but often times the result produced for a highly specific search is worse, which is a lot more frustrating.
In a purely academic sense, it would be better if users continued to build search phrases with more precision, and if the engines also continued to improve their targeted results. But the reality is that habits change slowly and if the engines can just offer an ‘intent menu’ under each relevant listing, this may improve the process for everyone. SEO’s now have to build intent cues into pages not so that they can get found for longer searches but instead so that the engines can correctly classify the available information.
I assume Google is tracking the clicks on these sub-results very closely. It would be great to see these rolled out for more than just the top listing.
October 12, 2006
Shop.org Day 2
By Craig Danuloff
Yesterday (Tues) was another day at Shop.org and a very different set of impressions. Nothing contradicting yesterday's comments, just a different piece of the elephant.
First, this is my first shop.org and I have to say the crowd is impressive. The membership bias and high ticket, along with a virtual lock-out of vendors who aren’t exhibiting or speaking results in a crowd of serious ecommerce brands with the vast majority sporting well-known household names. Comparing the attendees here with those (on average) at shows like SES or AD-Tech is like comparing the audience at the symphony with the crowd at Wrestlemania.
Second, the keynotes were both very interesting and impressive (Kelly Mooney of Resource Interactive and Author Barry Schwartz) and today (Weds) was Seth Godin, (although I couldn’t make it today) so let’s just call that 3 for 3.
Third, the trade show booths were somehow more relevant and interesting than at either SES or Ad-Tech, although I can’t quite put my finger on why. Certain exhibitors clearly appear at all of these shows – like the analytics vendors and larger agencies and marketing shops – but the dozens of rather sleezy ad-network were replaced with a host of hosted commerce vendors and the increasing array of hosted component solutions (from opinion services like BazaarVoice to research firms like Forsee Results and others).
The sum of these three attributes – well chosen guests, intelligent ‘sponsored’ conversations, and a professional atmosphere – created an environment that really worked in terms of facilitating the kind of networking that shop.org is really meant to foster. At the many breaks and social events everyone is just plain eager to jump into rich and relevant discussions. This ‘offline social networking’ was productive here in a way you usually only experience as much smaller (and even more exclusive) events.
One more good thing: the show hosted extensive ‘birds of a feather’ sessions where three or four dozen topics were targeted at one round 10-12 person table each. I found that these produced very effective small group discussions which nicely bridged the ‘listen only’ format of the panels and the many one-on-one cocktail party conversations. In fact, with slightly more effort (on the part of the show organizers) I think an entire 3 hour session with the chance to change tables every 45 minutes would be much more effective than (yet another) afternoon of panel discussions. Sort of a slow-motion speed dating for online marketing conversations – or un-conference meets big-conference.
Tomorrow I’ll try to square yesterday's complaints with today's positive review.
October 11, 2006
Lost in Cyberspace: Reports from Shop.org
By Craig Danuloff
You're one of the largest retailers in the country of a particular luxury item, yet when management finally allows you to venture into cyberspace they provide resources for all of two bodies worth of internal staffing, and when the internal IT team get ahold of the site design produced by a major outside agency they refuse to even discuss the project with marketing until they deliver it - full of changes.
Or you're in marketing at a major software company and your job is to share great pre-sales content with your online retail channel - only they won't take it because if you give it to them they want to be paid as if it's advertising.
How about this one. You head a large equipment and apparel retailer and find the quality and suitability of the e-commerce platform licensed from one of the two largest software providers in the world is so problematic you have to slowly replace each component with open-source and 3rd parties components, leaving a system with far from the power and flexibilty you really need.
These are just three of the stories I heard last night at one Shop.org cocktail party. What we now call Online Marketing (i'm committed to replacing that term) has some serious issues. Yes there are billions of dollars being transacted and earned, great strides have been made to build a stable and workable environment over the past 10 years.
But a look anywhere inside finds that what looks like a maturing industry is really something of a troubled pre-teen. The body is changing in strange and unexpected ways, clothes that seemed to fit when we got them now look silly and out of place, heads are filled with a strange mixture of brilliance and confusion, we just aren't prepared for the situations we find ourselves in, there are a lot of stupid things being done in the name of making friends and being popular, and our parents just don't understand us.
I attended three panels yesterday, including the one I was on, and I don't think they helped very much. Heading back right now hoping to find more parental guidance. More thoughts tonight.
October 10, 2006
Marketing 2.0
By Lucinda Holt
We were in a client meeting last week where, as part of an introduction, Craig gave a history of the development of organic search engine optimization. One of the things that he said was that white hat tactics are starting to overtake black hat tactics in effectiveness. Maybe it is true, as the search engines tell us, that ultimately, if we do the right thing for the user, that will also be the right thing for the engines.
It seems to me that the same evolution is happening everywhere in marketing on the internet. For example, pay per click ads have overtaken banner ads, a clear shift from lower to higher value add for the user. And things are going the same direction offline too; consumers are avoiding advertising everywhere that it doesn’t add value for them. Tivo enables it on the TV while satellite radio, iPods and even public radio are bleeding listeners from commercial radio. 
Source: Radio Research Consortium Audience 2010, Report No. 4
Online, not only do people avoid seeing banners, they are moving away from traditional portals to search (again, more user control) and to to scary, uncontrolled places like YouTube and MySpace. Now that the web is becoming read-write, it seems like things are getting extraordinarily complicated for advertisers.
Really, though, they’re getting simpler. There’s an alternative to figuring out how to manipulate people. And it’s easy, if you can let go of the desire to control. Simply produce a great product that people need or want and enable them to talk with you and each other about it.
How? Rebecca Lieb writes:
"’No longer can we view our job as filling gaps between other peoples' content,' said [American Express' VP of Global Advertising Diego Scotti]. 'Soon, there won't be gaps to fill because everything is content.’... When everything is content and everyone's creating content, just how are advertisers going to insinuate themselves in the gaps that are left? “
Wrong question! the right question is how to produce your own content, or at least catalyze it. Figure out who might like your product and tell them about it. How do you tell them? Give your product away. Put your own videos up on YouTube and hope that random people (like me) and mavens post them on their blogs.
Create interesting off-shoots like hip events, cool t-shirts, and free-for-the-taking cartoons. I know, easier said than done. But even the big guys are trying.
BMW has gone all the way and made involvement in the product elemental to the buying experience and the brand, as discussed in yesterday’s New York Times.
At Mini USA, part of BMW of North America, the fact that so many customers choose to customize their cars showed executives that “we’d never have complete control over the brand,” said James L. McDowell, managing director at Mini USA. About 60 percent of the estimated 40,000 Minis the company sells each year are customized. For instance, Mr. McDowell said, some Mini owners dress their cars in naughty costumes for Halloween, and two investment bankers mounted mock shark fins atop the roofs of their Minis.
“It’s a great thing every day to wake up and see what consumers have done to the brand,” Mr. McDowell said, even though “it’s not a culture we necessarily would have come up with on our own.”
While MaterCard inadvertently created a framework for people to make their own videos with the Priceless campaign.
When “you’re tapping into that consumer desire to have a piece of it,” [Lawrence Flanagan, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at MasterCard Worldwide] added, referring to a brand or product, “you have to take the good with the bad.” MasterCard, for instance, has tolerated and, arguably, benefited from the spate of profane or off-color parodies of the “Priceless” campaign.
So, none of really know yet how to do this reliably and predictably, and we may never. But handing over the keys to the customer is the way to get started.
Hat tip to Matt for Rebecca’s article.
October 6, 2006
Shop.org Boot Camp in NYC
By Craig Danuloff
On Tuesday I'll be participating in a panel discussion on Web 2.0 at the shop.org event in NYC. The panel is at 1pm on Tuesday, and entitled: Web 2.0-a peek at what's here and what's coming-Part 2 - PhotoCasting, Mobile Commerce, Visual Search, and more.
The panel is moderated by Chris Fralic of First Round Capital and the other panelists are Munjal Shah, Riya, Mike Hogan, Zixxo, and Brian Hecht, Kikucall.
I've just got a few minutes of presentation, and will be talking about how Web 2.0 is effecting web analytics, or more precisely how it needs to effect it in the very near future. If you're planning on being at the conference, please stop by and say hello.
October 2, 2006
Blogging at ReveNews
By Craig Danuloff
For those who just can't get enough of my twisted logic and gramatical errors, please be aware that I'm also blogging over at ReveNews, a multi-author weblog that has some focus on the Affiliate industry but also covers the full range of online marketing topics including SEM, affiliate marketing, retail (e-commerce), analytics, spyware, blogging and much more.
More About ReveNews:
ReveNews authors consist of highly respected thinkers, commentators and business people who have real experience and insight. ReveNews readers include industry gurus, top-level executives and CEO’s, plus many of the industry's top net-repreneurs; all coming together to create a global Internet community to distribute, discuss and analyze the industry at hand. Since it launched in December, 1998, ReveNews.com has always been focused on the broader views of online revenue-sharing approaches, from affiliate programs and commissionable marketing to micro-manufacturing and merchandizing partnerships. Combining an active community of merchants and webmasters, an ongoing dedication to analysis and education, and aggregated news on revenue-sharing niches, ReveNews.com has become a leading voice for its dedication to objectivity and its fresh perspective.
My posts at ReveNews are supposed to lean towards Analytics, although I haven't leaned that way there yet. In any case, if there's room for one more bookmark on your system, or subscription in your RSS reader, consider adding ReveNews.
October 1, 2006
Chapter 17: The Johari Window
By Craig Danuloff
One step in the Persuasion Architecture Uncovery process is to create a list of all the bits of information that someone may want to know (or come to find out) in the process of buying whatever it is that you are selling. Doing so defines the questions your selling process must answer, and the issues it must address.
Another thing this does is demonstrate how complex the actual buying process is, how much information is involved, how many different angles people will use to approach their purchase decision, and usually how woefully short and inadequate the typical website is in fully addressing the issues at hand. Suddenly it’s not so hard to see why so many people leave our sites after just a page or two – they’ve quickly come to find out that we probably aren’t going to answer their questions!
The list could be made simply enough, but Chapter 17 adds a twist – the Johari Window. This metaphorical tool is used to divide the available information based on who knows about it, and who doesn’t. The four segments (as used in PA) are:
* Open – Info known to you and your customers.
* Blind – Info known to your customers but not to you.
* Hidden – Info you know but your customers do not.
* Unknown – Info unknown to you or your customers.
It’s the hidden information the book warns us about the most. Marketers jump right back into the bottle when designing and writing marketing materials, including web sites, and pretend that their customers will live in their with them. In other words, it’s easier to believe you can actually hide something, so websites complete ignore ‘the tough questions’. But the hidden zone is getting smaller all the time; the world quickly discovers your secrets and shares them – and before you know it they’re at the top of the Google search results and cross-linked in reviews and discussions everywhere. In other words, at least in the commercial sphere, a secret is probably just a piece of information that you think other people don’t know.
Determining how to deal with issues and facts you’d rather not deal with isn’t easy or fun. (This could be another reason most web development projects skip this step.) But it is a reality that your prospects are likely going to have access to this information, so as the book suggests:
“..taking responsibility for presenting all information allows you to interact with your customers in a much larger open quadrant… you can provide the perspective that works in your favor and competes favorably with the angles other devise.”
When it comes time to define the content and organization of your website tackling these issues will require a lot of work. For now, Uncovery is helping get everything onto the table and giving us a much clearer view of the world in which our website and site visitors will exist.
In the next few chapters the book turns to another real-world consideration which is often ignored in terms of marketing and site design; our relationship to other businesses, products, economic issues, and other external influences.
"What I really don't understand is if you want self-help why would you read a book written by somebody else? That's not self-help, that's help!”
:: This is part of a chapter-by-chapter review and commentary on Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa Davis. Read the original review here.