I sat down with Peter and his team and we talked about various ways to use digital channels to increase the public’s awareness of the gift certificates offered by Oasis Spa. I presented a framework that Doug had introduced to me called “The Hub & Spoke Model”. I had used variations on this technique in the past but never this specific model. Let me say that it is effective – you should try it. But I added a twist that makes it even more effective. More on that in a bit.

Jeremiah Owyang has written an excellent article on various models that companies use for organizing social media. In his blog post, he presents 5 models but concludes that the Hub & Spoke model is the one most often used by companies.

The idea is to pick a central location (or hub) and focus all marketing and communications efforts to that central spot. When I teach marketing concepts we call this “Integrated Marketing Communications”.

I like the model but it lacks action, direction, movement, or flow – all the components just sit there. To me an effective model for marketing and for social media should point or direct people toward a certain goal. Or to put it another way, there should be a call to action. As you can see in the model above, there is no real call to action 0r at least it isn’t obvious.

Being a true marketer and wanting my customer to be successful, I changed the model. As you can see below, the campaign that we developed for Oasis Spa is built on the structure of the Hub & Spoke model but with a difference. The “hub” is a Facebook landing page with various communications channels driving people to the hub – e-Newsletters, Calgary’s Twitter community, Radio, LinkedIn, Facebook ads, Google AdWords, and potentially a video on YouTube.

But the campaign needed a purpose or an objective; some type of action. We considered the objective of increasing Likes on the Facebook page but for a holiday season marketing campaign that objective didn’t seem like enough. We wanted to meet Peter’s objective which was lots of sales and many happy customers. As a result, we modified the model by adding another circle in the lower right corner. We wanted to show that we people should land on the Facebook but then move to an e-commerce page where they could actually order a gift certificate.

One channel that proved to be very effective was involving others in the YYC social media community. The following people blogged, tweeted and posted on Facebook:

• Marie-Eve Mayrand – @MeMay2 – http://bloomingmarketing.com/oasis-spa-calgary
• Randy Milanovic – @Kayak360 – www.kayakcreative.ca/blog/bid/105123/Holiday-Online-Marketing-Campaign-for-Oasis-Spa-Facebook-Style
• Crystal Tost – @RemaxCalgary – www.calgarylistings.com/oasis-spa-calgary
• Al Dhalla and Doug Wagner  – @Doug_Sunwapta – http://blog.sunwaptasolutions.com/weblog/2011/11/buying-attention-in-social-media-does-it-work.html
• Mike Nelson – @sabrecaptain
• Linda Trinh – @RentClickCgy
• Cidnee Stephen @CidneeStephen
• Deepa Acharya – @TheDeepster
• Ryan Kelly – LinkedIn
• Tom Hanger – @TomHanger
• Toni Guffei – @ToniRoni
• Susan Rutherford
• Christina Burnside – http://graysacademyesl.com

The campaign was wildly successful. By December 24th, hundreds of people had purchased online and thousands had visited Oasis Spa to buy certificates in person.

Now that the infrastructure has been developed we are looking forward to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and maybe even Father’s Day.

Last November we hosted our first seminar on Online Marketing Strategy in 6 Hours. It was sold out and a tremendous success. So much so that we are offering this seminar again – re-titled as Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours.

The topics and dates for these new sessions are:

• Quickinar: Tweet Like a Pro in under 3 Hours on January 21
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Monday, January 31
• Quickinar: Lights, Camera, YouTube Action in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 10
• Quickinar: Facebook Business Page in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 17
• Quickinar: Kick Your Blog Up a Notch in under 3 Hours on Thursday, February 24
• Quickinar: Social Media Strategy in 6 Hours on Friday, March 25

As you will notice we are calling these sessions, Quickinars. This is a name that we came up with to emphasize that these are short, intense seminars that focus on relevant topics. Right now we are focusing on providing social media training for the Calgary market – we may expand.

We hope that you find these seminars useful and valuable. For the entire list of seminars and more details look at our Quickinars page on Eventbrite.

If you have questions please email me, jeff.nelson@anduro.com or call me (403) 410-3803.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions.

As a result, we had an objective (do the video) but this was one of those situations where we had no time, no media room, dysfunctional equipment, and no one to shoot the video.  Being 2 resourceful guys we improvised. We met at Mount Royal University, snagged a classroom, set up our cameras on a tripod, hammered out a script (very loose) and shot the video. Here is what we came up with. Enjoy.

The link pointed to an article called “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” by Derek Powazek. In a nutshell it is tirade against Search Engine Optimization and companies offering SEO which includes our company, Anduro Marketing. I couldn’t resist reading the post and responding.

First Derek gives a quick history of the search engine industry:

“First came the web, and it was a mess.” “Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google…” “The ascendancy of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.”

Not a bad history actually. He should post that to Twitter. But then Derek loads up the page with name calling and loaded language to emphasize his point. His labels for Search Engine Optimizers include: “goat sacrificers”, “snake oil salesmen” and “a new breed of con man”. He then makes 3 points and elaborates on each.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.
2. SEO is poisoning the web.
3. The One True Way.

Actually, Derek is right on each point but beyond the basic point Derek seems tarnished, tainted and terribly mislead or misinformed.

1. SEO is Obvious.
In many ways Derek is correct – much of SEO is obvious. Picking keywords, adding them to web pages and getting any type of link back to the website is free and relatively easy. But so is cooking a burger or changing oil in a car. I can do both but I don’t except occasionally. Why? Lots of reasons. I don’t have time. I’m too lazy. And the chef at BrokenCity does a much better job. Besides, I don’t have buns, burgers, condiments, fries and a stove at the office. Why should I cook a burger at lunch time when I can pay someone to do it and talk with customers, colleagues and friends instead? Sheesh.

So what are customers buying when they hire a firm to optimize their website? Where is the value in hiring a company like ours to optimize their website and boost the home page on search engines? The answer is simple. Our customers don’t want to spend time doing tasks that would take them a month of Sundays. We can do SEO faster, better and often cheaper. We have the tools, processes, and know-how to get the job done quickly and effectively.

One of the basic principles of running a successful business is to do what you do well and focus on that. People buy value. If you focus on providing value then customers will buy. But if you spend all your time learning and doing things you don’t have the aptitude, training and skills for then you won’t be able to provide quality products on time at a reasonable price. Trying to do everything sounds like failure to me.

Let me give you an example. Let’s take Dell – a large company with a large budget for brochures and online ads. One would assume that their website would automatically work well with the search engines. Not so. A couple years ago we got an email from a business manager for the business unit focusing on small and medium business. He thought there was untapped opportunities for Dell to rank well on search engines. His rationale was that paid ads on Google cost money and high listings on the organic side of Google are free. Good point. We “messed around” with the URLs, source code, anchor text, internal links, external links and strange things started to happened. Pages on the Dell site start ranking at the top of the SERPs. Dell.com is still in top spot for “business laptops”, beating out 25 million other pages. It’s in 3rd spot, out performing 109 million other pages, for “servers”. The end result – our contact at Dell got promoted. Nice.

But what about small companies? What value do they get from SEO? About 5 years ago Wayne Thomas came to us. He runs a small company called CleanSuite Software Inc. His company produces software for dry cleaning businesses. He wanted to have more visitors come to his website. He had some ideas of how to do that but wasn’t confident and simply didn’t have enough hours in the week to optimize his site and pursue inbound links. We talked. He hired us to help him out and he is a very happy customer. CleanSuite is a small company that is building its reputation and success on our talents. If you go to Google.com and search for “dry cleaning software” his site is listed in 2nd spot beating out 1.3 million other pages. He was in first spot until recently. Wayne, give us a call.

In summary, yes, SEO is obvious to some people but not everyone. For companies that want to reduce their marketing risks, an SEO firm is a good bet.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Derek’s complaint is that Google’s search algorithm is based primary on building links back to a site. Then he goes on a rant about “SEO cockroaches” and “SEO bastards” doing all kinds of devious techniques to get links which have temporary value. He is right. If you use black hat tactics and try to trick Google you will get caught and the website will likely be tossed out. But who uses black hat techniques? Any SEO who has been in business for more than 3 years and can prove results never tries to trick Google. What we use are best practices.

1. Picking keyword phrases that will drive qualified visitors to a site – people looking for what companies are offering.
2. Optimizing a web page by adding the keywords in the right spots so that the search engine crawlers can find the phrase. This isn’t secret or hard but it has to be done correctly.
3. Building a web of reputable industry related links back to the site. Not really hard but time consuming so we can’t waste time going after useless links. No one is going to pay us for work that doesn’t produce results.

Derek, what’s wrong with using best practices?

3. The One True Way – Good Products and Good Content.

Derek’s point that many writers create “dumbed down content” is valid. It is sooooo true. I see tons of crappy content on the Internet every day. But I read fast and I can spot dumb content very quickly. Here’s the rub. I doubt that I’m the only one with a critical eye. The folks at Google aren’t stupid either. They know what good content looks like.

Thanks Derek for a stimulating article and your point of view. Ultimately, you and I can agree on something. Create good products. Create good content to let people know about it. Repeat.

Here is a link for more details: Internet Marketing Conference – Calgary 2010.

Great line-up of speakers. So far 60 people have registered. Ends on St Patrick’s Day – March 17th.

Topics include Social Media, Gaming, Videos, SEO, Pay-Per-Click and Industry related news.

Anduro is offering a discount. Call our office and we will give you the promo code.

Malcolm co-wrote the case study, entitled “Anduro Marketing: Internet Services vs. Software Sales“, with Sid L. Huff. Sid is a Professor and Head of School at the School of Information Management, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

The summary of the case study as list on HBR.org is:
“Anduro Marketing is a Canadian company that sells technical services to companies wanting to improve their search engine website rankings. Though small, Anduro has attracted several major clients in both Canada and the United States, and expects steady profitability and growth. Anduro believes it can generate substantial additional profit by developing and selling a suite of software products that automate its technical service offerings.”

The case presents the conundrum that we had to either develop a technology suite related to SEO tools or focus on expanding our service offerings. I won’t tell you in this blog post what we decided to do. But you can contact me directly and I’ll let you know. Please contact Jeff Nelson via our Contact Us page.

1. The importance of the tail varies tremendously
2. People search differently for different types of services/products.
3. The importance of the tail does not depend on the size of the search spend.
4. The tail is most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.
5. The tail is critically important for some advertisers.

I love the way Damon James in our company summarized the article. His conclusion is, “For bigger websites (lots of pages) and companies with lots of discretionary funds, the long-tail is a good thing. For smaller websites (limited real estate) and companies with limited dollars, (unless they want to do it themselves), not so much.”

One of our strategies is to use SEO techniques to go after keywords that are in the middle of the tail and pay-per-click campaigns to catch keywords on the long tail.

The bottom line is that most companies have to look at the value of keywords in the long tail and determine the value. More often than not setting up a pay-per-click campaign is the best way to go.

Let me outline how our company is using this tool to help our clients. We have a few clients in the industry of global positioning systems (GPS). One is a manufacture of industrial hardware and applications, www.novatel.com and the other is a retail seller of mobile GPS units for consumers, www.gpscentral.ca. For both clients we are preparing a “gap analysis” to determine how their website is ranking for terms related to “gps”.

Note: The following data is aggregated industry related data, not data specific to GPSCentral.

Our analysis for companies like GPSCentral is a typically along the following lines:

• Enter the search term “gps”
• Adjust the filters to your specific interest: Web Search / Canada /  All subregions / Last 12 months / All Categories to get the resulting page and graph
• Click on News headlines to see related news
• Click on Forecast get future trends (you must select 2004 – present for this function to be available)

If you login using your Gmail account you can get additional detail related to search volumes. When logged in, the y-axis becomes a percentage scale with 0 being zero and 100 being the highest volume during the selected time period.

For the gap analysis example, our next step is to review the Top Searches and Rising Searches and determine how the website is performing for these specific terms. For example, the top search term listed is “gps garmin”. When we look at Google.ca we can see that the website is performing well for this term – 2nd and 3rd positions. The website is also listed on the first page of Google.ca for the next 4 terms including “garmin”, “gps canada”, “magellan gps”, and “magellan”.  But when we search for the 6th term on the list, “gps review”, www.GPSCentral.ca is not listed in the first 10 pages – room for improvement.

By using the “site” command in Google we can quickly determine that a pages has not been specifically optimized for “gps review”. A few pages on the website contain this term but none of the pages have “gps review” in the title of the web pages.

At this stage we have a few options:

1. Select one of the existing pages and optimize the page for this term.
2. Develop some new optimized content and add that page to the site.
3. Start a linking campaign to improve the performance of the existing page or the new page

We haven’t started yet, but we will over the next few weeks.

Contact me if you have comments, questions or suggestions.

Jeff Nelson

Simple diagram. Great descriptions. Easy to navigate. Clear. Well put together.

Enjoy!

The title is, “When to Restructure Your PPC Campaign or Completely Start Over” by Amanda Chaney.

She points out 5 scenarios which may lead you to have to make a decision to either restructure or start over:

1. Change of Direction – company is going in a new direction, with a new site

2. Client Evolution – long standing account may not be working anymore since the internet and search behaviors change.

3. Site Redesign – if the site is undergoing a redesign, so should the PPC account.

4. Reporting Reasons – companies may want to see data grouped differently, focus on certain aspects of their site etc.

5. Poor History – if the account has poor history such as poorly written ads or poorly organized structure.

I would like to give my input here.

If at all possible, I don’t think it is a good idea to start over unless you have to. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Account history is a big deal – especially with Google Adwords. Google bases a lot of decisions on the account history and how the account has been managed in the past. Having a good account history will help and if you just go a restart from scratch, you will lose all the history. This is not only not great from Google’s perspective but just think about all the useful data you are losing. What can you use to compare the new data to? The account will have changed too much to compare it to the old campaigns so you have no real way of determining if the campaign is successful.

2. Making drastic changes when a client is making drastic changes to their website spells out trouble. We did this with a client of ours recently and here are the issues: they were getting a lot of conversions before they launched their new site and we redid their PPC campaign. All these changes were made and conversions dropped like a rock. We obviously had no way of knowing for sure if the problem was the PPC Campaign or the website. After about 3 months, we figured out that it was actually the site and not the campaign (CTR was much higher and more people were getting to the site but not covnerting). So be cautious when making drastic changes – either to your site or the campaign.

Small changes are better to make than big ones. The results may not be as obvious but in the end you know what changes made the difference.

So to recap, unless you really have to, I would always try to redesign rather than start fresh. What do you think?