Google’s new +1 feature was one of SMX Advanced Seattle most engaging sessions and, as a speaker, I have received a wide variety of feedback and questions. It seems this feature has fomented a great deal of speculation and inquiry. Here is a bit more food for thought.


In the article of Search Engine Land you can read about the following questions:

• Like vs. Google +1: What Are The Main Differences?
• Impact On Organic & Paid Search Rankings
• What Does This Mean For Search Marketers?
• Why Social Search Is A SEM Game Changer?

Read more >>

The Power of Demographic Outliers


Nielsen’s Joe Stagaman and Pat McDonough presented findings at Consumer 360 on the opportunities that exist for marketers looking beyond traditional "sweet-spot” demographics. In fact, marketers who are only focusing on the traditional 25-54 age demographic are missing about 58 percent of the U.S. population totaling 180 million people, overlooking growth opportunities as baby boomers age and those under 25 wield increasing influence over household spending.

"A general understanding of those aged under 25 and over 54 is lacking,” said McDonough. "Many of the long-held beliefs about these groups’ purchasing and media habits are just plain wrong.”


Read more >>

There’s lots of advice out there for what to do in optimizing websites for local businesses, yet day after day, we see some of the same bad practices continue to be perpetuated in bad web designs. So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, here’s a reminder of some basic things NOT to do if you want your local business site to perform well with search engines and consumers.


Checklist:

• Don’t Use Vanity Numbers
• Don’t Put Your Local Phone Number Within A Graphic Image
• Don’t Forget To Update Your Copyright Date
• Avoid Making A Flash-only Website
• Don’t Use "Click Here” For Your Link Text
• Don’t Let Your Website Sit Vacant
• Don’t Let Your Homepage Serve Up An Error Or Let Your Domain Expire
• Don’t Neglect To Pay Your Site Designer Or Host
• Don’t Allow Music To play By Default On Your Website
• Don’t Put Addresses & Phone Numbers In Fine Print

Read more >>

Search engine optimization may not always be enough. Just because a web page ranks well in organic search results, for a particular keyword, does not guarantee optimal business results.

Landing pages are essential to B2B internet marketing programs. Effective landing pages drive form submissions and generate business opportunities. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for landing page optimization to focus more exclusively within advertising campaigns, ignoring popular channels of "free” traffic, like organic search and social media.

The chart from Marketing Sherpa supports this theory.

Read more, view chart >>

"Email is cheap!" "Social media is free!"

These two statements are reasons why many marketers are forced by their management (the ones making these statements) to send as many messages to the same set of consumer as possible - wrote Sundeep Kapur on Smart Data Collective.

There is value in focusing, personalizing, and reducing the amount of messages sent to consumers. Don't send everybody the same offer, don't mail them all at the same time either. Here are a dozen ideas to help you with simple segmentation:

• Message type
• Timing
• Operational Segentation
• Transactional Segmentation
• Buyer/ non-buyer
• Source-Code Segmentation
• The "Brad” Segment
• The Betting Pool
• Exclusive/ Top Dogs
• Sniff and Pow
• Tuesday/ Thursday Segment
• A:B Random split

Read more >>

The average American today has more ways to watch video — whenever, however and wherever they choose. In the Cross-Platform Report, Nielsen finds that the resounding trend is this: Americans are spending more time watching video content on traditional TVs, mobile devices and the Internet than ever before.


Channels are:

• Traditional TV
• Mobile Video
• Timeshifted TV
• Internet Video

Read more >>

Terrence Kawaja of investment firm Luma Partners believes data visualizations can change the business decision game. He began with a simple strategy – make it easier for potential investors to see the path of how advertisers reach consumers. And, offer the content free of charge. The result was the highly popular "LUMAscapes” of the online ad industry.

His infographics, showcased in a Wall Street Journal article, represent how more than 1,200 companies fit into display, video, search engine, mobile, social and commerce online advertising. The goal is to show "large, strategic acquirers” including Google, Yahoo and Adobe potential targets for purchase. And, Kawaja helps make the deals.

Read more, see infographics >>

As the global political & physical barriers are collapsing, all the global markets are getting opened for businesses, creating a fierce competition within companies to market their products, increase their revenues, grab most of the customers. Organization are not just worried about the profitability but also survival in this tsunami of Global reach - writes Sandeep Raut at Smart Data Collective.

All along till now, Organizations were using business intelligence to get the information from the vast amount of data buried into various internal systems. But this is just information & decision makers had the reactive approach to deal with such situations e.g. North region is not meeting the revenue targets - so create some focused program to cover North region & so on.

This is where Business Analytics play !! Its not reporting of past data or what is happening now, but giving organizations the forward look at the business.


It can answers questions like:

• How do we get more insights about our customers?
• What if we change the price or service of the products ?
• What will be the impact on our customers ?
• How do we target our most profitable customers?
• How do we detect frauds ?
• Which of the customers are likely to leave us in future?

Learn more >>

It seems that McDonald’s is still the top dog of fast food, but ever since I saw the documentary Super Size Me, I stopped any trips to Micky D’s - write Tim on the site Daily Infographic.

That film really exposed the unhealthy aspects of fast food and the real problems it is causing - says Tim. Fast food is simple, tasty, cheap and way too convenient. Driving over 10 minutes to a drive through seems like a hassle. If it was less available we may be able to dissuade people from eating fast food so often.

Let’s put the health issues aside, they compared Chipotle to McDonald’s? Chipotle may be food that is served fast, but it isn’t technically fast food in my opinion. The public may not be on my side though. It seems that 40% of men have been to Chipotle in the last 3 months. That looks like fast-food-frequency to me.


Read more, see infographic >>

Did you know that kids today…

• Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers
• Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders
• Out-Text All Other Age Groups
• Talk Less on the Phone
• Grew Up in the Age of Social Media - and It Shows
• Watch Less TV than the General Population
• Spend Less Time on their Computers

Learn more >>