People can be summed up based on their natural reaction to the following statement: “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

Read that statement to 10 people and you’ll likely get seven people who nod and wax poetic about the journeys they have taken. Then you’ll get three hearty souls that call shenanigans and boldly proclaim that you can keep your journeys, they’ll enjoy more destinations and outcomes.

And that’s the problem with search – it is neither a good journey nor a satisfactory destination.

In recently-released research from GroupM Search, we identified that in key verticals the average duration for a consumer from initial engagement with search, social media, or a brand site to purchase is close to two months. Over that time people have roughly 10 engagements with those three types of sites before converting. If search is supposed to be making our lives better, it has an odd way of doing it if it means decisions come over a period of 60 days and need close to a dozen interactions.

And that’s the problem with a search engine. It is not a destination engine and it is not a discovery engine.

The problem with Bing, the decision engine, is that it is a decision engine for the masses. Facebook inclusion and broader data sets to analyze from the Yahoo alliance can be considered differentiations in today’s market place, but they fall short. Right now, the data we have shows Bing is at best a second opinion engine for many who are Google first users. The reason is that Bing, at the end of the day, is not doing anything that different with the experience. If Bing, or anyone else, wanted to be a destination engine they would create a truly one-to-one engine that uses your signal base to serve up an Apple Genius experience inside your search. Just because a user expressed explicit intent doesn’t mean that it is being matched in the results. The problem is advertisers are spreading their investments around to the potential of the masses versus the singularity of the person. What’s failing consumers at present is not the advertiser match of content but the ability to operate on a platform that facilitates a bidding scenario based of the expectation that a single connection is going to happen and nothing more will be needed.

In this environment consumers spend exponentially more time inside Bing or another engine versus off-site with the constant click and return to search again behavior. The trade-offs for brands are greater investment and depth of exposure happening off-site in exchange for being hyper targeted with an ability to minimize the touch points. If Microsoft were to take the name of another project, Looking Glass, and use the concept of going down the rabbit hole on site with a heavy dose of personal attention, we might truly have a destination engine for brands and consumers alike.

The counter to a destination mindset is that of the journey and its exploration and discovery. If Malcolm Gladwell is right and it takes 1,000 repetitions to become proficient in your craft, then we need engines that encourage better behavior to allow for an appreciation of the experience of the journey.

The behavior being taught today is one where users learn to search, click, return, and repeat. There’s no feedback loop coming back into the engine in a natural way as to the worth a user found from the previous query and/or click.

Today we see more snippets of rich data being included that is designed to help inform the first click but means nothing to us upon return. An engine that would allow curation and evolve based on our behaviors is what more people want than the current model, I believe. This is about the buying process. We know search is used to find products, prices, deals, and opinions. Yet, to go from start to finish is about forcing an individual to select what looks best after an engine has ranked the sites and then requires personal memory to retain the key elements.

Dream with me of an engine that provides the ability to notate your findings, register the most appealing elements, and further refines itself upon that data – not the standard set of generic content that it believes the masses want to see. If people want to discover and explore, then facilitating that is only as meaningful as the ability to let that information reside beyond their individual brains and use it for a greater good. A true discovery engine takes the implicit (I want to go on vacation) and turns it, via discovery, into an explicit (Le Meridien Paris). The role engines play in getting from A to B can be powerful and helpful because it has the ability to iterate the process so that searching becomes discovering and implicit becomes explicit.

For advertisers, the worth of a word becomes measured by the worth of the person along the path and the models that evolve. Nothing is simple when it comes to discovery and destination, but the alternative that exists today is something people don’t want.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, April 26, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

At the end of “Casablanca,” Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick, utters the famous line “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.” And in those words, we find the current feelings from advertisers towards the newly credible Microsoft search entry, Bing. So far, the data is good. Query shares are up, and advertisers are reporting positive click and ROI trending. Overall, good news for a space lacking a viable forward-moving competitor for too long.

I recently spent a day being served up a weird mix of Kool-Aid by the individuals tasked with creating and selling the latest, and to date, greatest effort by Microsoft in the search space. The Kool-Aid was spiked with a heavy dose of caution. Every positive data point was met by a word of caution. I appreciate the actions speak louder than words mantra adopted lately, but guys, the goal isn’t to kick Ask.com’s tail, it’s to pass Yahoo at the least and put a bit of competition back in the market.

That being said, the next phase of Microsoft’s effort will shape the likelihood of being a real contender vs. the best of the rest. That is the evolution of search ad platforms. Due to a NDA, I can’t get into the full discussion of what might be coming, but rather, I’ll share a question that hit me as I discussed the options in the ad portion of the Bing results page. The question is a simple one: If everyone is adamant that 10 blue links is not the future of organic results, then is the top/side navigation advertising in text format really the best option for paid search?

We’ve seen Yahoo introduce with some fanfare, and less than stellar execution, the Rich Ads in Search format. We’ve started to see the emergence of search retargeting coming to both MSFT and Yahoo, but through it all, the core search advertising experience remains the same. Now, one could contend that on a flat, text-dominant page that flat, text ads are the right match. But what about inside Image and video searches? What alternatives might companies consider of value that would be more consistent with the format of result?

Google has always built behind the commitment to user experience. Advertiser value is rarely of consideration when developing a results page. Too often I find it be a convenient guise under which to operate. Just as Yahoo is now recommitting itself to something it thinks it can win, being the Internet’s gateway. Never mind if anyone else actually sees that as a highly profitable proposition, but to the search experience, it means a superseding of the drive to invest in even long-standing search products, such as Paid Inclusion/Site Submit Pro, not to mention the advertising platforms.

And that brings us back around to Microsoft. The phrase nothing to lose and everything to gain has never been worn so well by a behemoth of industry. You can feel the enthusiasm to differentiate and stand out. A desire to say, “Screw it, we’re not just better than Yandex and Naver globally” but we want to pick a fight and win on our terms against Google and Yahoo. And that, from an advertiser standpoint, is a good thing. We need more competition and choices. We also need partners who are willing to explore new formats, layouts and models for not only consumer gain, but advertiser value.

And if that is the next phase of the Bing plan, then we are truly headed toward a beautiful friendship.

You get what you pay for – unless you choose not to.  Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company and employing a world class search agency, or a Mom and Pop paying for a la carte search services, it’s essential that you get every drop of value for each dollar you pay to your marketers. While this may sound like a no-brainer, more clients than not are investing in search and then under-utilizing its value.

I’ve seen many clients pay top dollar for exactly what they should be paying for: SEM, SEO and Social Media.  They buy in to what we sell them, but then create hurdles that can limit our ability to be effective in all areas.  We have the knowledge to move our clients forward comprehensively; yet many of them do not engage us as strategically as they should for what they pay us to do.

Brand new, multi-million dollar sites go up all the time without organic optimizations built in, big money is spent on PR pushes that are not supported by Social Media and medical bombs are dropped on pharmaceutical companies who must scramble to react in the digital space.  All of this can be avoided when clients are fully engaging their SEM, SEO and Social Media contracts.  So what is involved in getting the biggest bang for your search marketing buck?

Steps to getting your money’s worth:

1. Include your marketers in every initiative BEFORE it launches.  Guaranteed if they’re worth what you pay them, they’ve seen it before and will have ideas on how to not only support that initiative, but on how to stretch that budget even further.
2. If your PR team is going to launch a major (or minor) campaign, include your search team BEFORE it happens.  We can push teasers in paid ads, help you promote it on your Facebook or MySpace pages, guide you in blasting it on Twitter and make sure that the shiny new landing page you push live to support the event is perfectly optimized to rank organically.
3. If you’re paying for Social Media, use your Social Media marketer.  Let them guide you on what content and updates go up on Facebook or Twitter before they go up.  As with anything, damage is easier prevented than repaired.
4. You’ve paid for that organic contract; include your SEO team in your site enhancements or redesigns.  Organic optimizations do not have to slow down a launch if you’re employing the right SEO team.
5. A comprehensive digital program should include some form of proactive reputation management.  If you’re not getting it, find out why.

In this economy, it should become common sense for clients to take full advantage of the services that they’re spending precious dollars on.  As search marketers, we want you, our clients, to fully engage and inform us because ultimately, our success is contingent upon your success.

It’s time to tackle the next stage of building our sand castle – picking paint colors, flooring and lighting fixtures, or in layman terms ­­– setting our campaign goals. In previous blogs, we’ve discussed the grains of sand involved in teamwork across multiple media partners – playing together, planning and communicating and budgeting – now that the foundation is in place, it’s necessary to get to the details.

The campaign goals are more than likely to be mandated by the client. They want to set a goal for ROI or CPEA (Cost per End Action) so they are able point out how their money was spent and what they received in return. It’s important to bring to the table secondary goals and add-ins so the client realizes that working together as a team will bring value-add to the account.

Let’s say our client wants registrations as their goal indicator. They want 5,000 registrations to their program by the end of the year with an average spend of $500 per registration. The interactive or direct mail groups can probably reach these goals, but TV may be less likely. So how can TV get involved in helping with the goal? Mentioning the website or phone number repeatedly and prominently in their ads will provide viewers with the proper information and lead them to the registration page where they can sign up. The cost of TV on its own may not meet the client goals. A combined spend across traditional and digital media helps the client become more cost effective per registration. Showing the correlation of on-air TV ads and registrants vs. off-air times and registrants can help correlate the relationship of TV to the rest of the campaign.

If testing or combining data isn’t a possibility, find out what value each specific medium brings to the campaign and suggest a proper measurement. Many online campaigns measure awareness as a goal. The cost to get the brand name to users can be much lower in such campaigns. Revenue campaigns can be the hardest for all marketers, especially in times of recession.

A funnel approach can be helpful with revenue generating campaigns, as they will help determine what a potential buyer is thinking and how to reach them at the decision stage-and where to place the most money in reaching these people. Funnels also help you to have multiple goals, and to reach those goals.

Setting goals with your client shouldn’t be black and white, nor should it be a competition.  Work together to get as much reach for your client as possible – through awareness, SOV, revenue, or whatever other indicators you can come up with.

A distinct message across all channels is the best way to meet your goals.  Sound familiar?  It should because consistent messaging was one of the first steps we took in planning our castle.  It’s worth mentioning again as we need everyone to constantly be thinking of our sand castle every time a new campaign is launched or a trip to the beach comes up.  And just in case it’s still not sinking in (let’s definitely hope it’s not caving in!) – our next post will center around the messaging!

At a search marketing event in late 2008, 67% of pre-registered attendees attended, leaving a whopping no show of 33% of pre-registered attendees. As the economic recession has burdened families and corporations alike, and as companies are adjusting budgets to cut corners, I can’t help but ask, has it also affected the attendance at tradeshows and industry events? Are companies looking to save dollars?  Are they not willing to put forth the costs associated with sending staff or having presence at shows because of the economic slow down?

As an attendee of last year’s SES San Jose and SMX East, I felt that attendance at these shows has dramatically dwindled compared to similar or previous events.  Could it be that the content of the sessions is outdated? Are there so many interactive and search-focused shows that content seems redundant? Is content not in tune with the attendees needs? Or is it that advertisers are looking for vendors and partners through other channels?

At search marketing events in 2008, I personally found the session content to be valuable and the speakers to be knowledgeable about the latest trends and technologies in search.  That being said, as I walked the exhibitor floor of SMX East (yes, I was looking for more than cool swag to take back to the office), I noticed that there were not as many attendees walking the floor as there were at SES San Jose; other exhibitors I stopped to speak with, who also attended the same shows agreed with me.  SMX is newer and is a different event than SES, and there’s something to be said about a smaller, more-focused crowd. But this observation led to discussions about the cause for lighter attendance at recent events. Most obvious is the conclusion that companies are starting to cut costs where they can because of the economic recession and that they are willing to absorb any pre-registration costs to save on the other expenses that are associated with attending the show, such as the added cost of travel or the $5,000 to rent booth carpet.

The economy gets enough blame for things, so let’s look at another realistic possibility. Attendance might also be impacted by the spike in options of industry events to attend, driving companies to be more selective as to which shows to send employees to.  I sense that companies are more apt to send their employees to larger tradeshows, such as a SES, because there are more sessions and broader content to choose from, as opposed to a smaller, vertical-targeted tradeshow that has content limited to that topic and may be less relevant to their business.

To drive attendees, sponsors and exhibitors, are tradeshow organizers going to explore restructuring in the future so that they receive maximum attendance while still delivering on content?  When I say restructured, I am not talking about revamping the entire show, but maybe cutting back the life of the show and being more selective with location. We might see a spike in attendance if tradeshows are two-days long as opposed to four.  And we all know that tradeshows on the East and West coasts are more expensive for attendees and exhibitors.  Would anyone be opposed to traveling to the Midwest more often to help cut back expenses for those attending and exhibiting?

What would this mean for advertisers and those exhibiting at the show? Will they get as much out of the show if the life of it is cut in half?  Are exhibitors going to be talking to more or less potential clients?  Will companies defer to newer, online (virtual) tradeshows to offset the cost of attending in person?  I don’t have all the answers, but as an exhibitor and attendee, I hope someone will listen. Tradeshows and search-specific events have their work cut out for them to maintain success and a steady flow of attendees in the future.

Most people are familiar with Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, being a general Search engine.  Sendori works a little different than Ask.  Being a provider of direct navigational search, Sendori sends “qualified visitors from undeveloped web domains to advertiser websites ”  Make sense?  I know, it’s a little confusing.  The example illustrated on their website shows how when someone types in an undeveloped web domain such as NiceDiamondRings.com, Sendori will qualify the visitor by matching the domain to keywords, and then send the user to an appropriate advertiser’s page, such as DeBeers.com.

What we do know so far is the acquisition of Sendori essentially gives Ask.com/IAC access to 130,000 advertisers and 33 million unique visitors per month.  However, as mentioned above, no information has been provided on how the two will work together…or not.  Keep an eye out for some potential changes to these two Search products in the near future!  Do you have any guesses as to what may happen?

Arguably, the popularity of online forums and maximizing the opportunity for consumer engagement through online presence allowed the candidates to be in two places at one time – live, in-market shaking hands while also available 24/7 online — without collapsing from exhaustion on the campaign trail.

So what should we take away from the use of search and social media in the 2008 presidential election? To help answer that question, I’ve harvested the insights from a keynote panel at MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah that discussed the two candidates’ online tactics.

Search marketing is a valuable branding tool. Don’t underestimate the power of search marketing in building and maintaining your brand. Organic results bring your genuine content to the forefront of the search engine results page (SERP). Those results increase with social media outreach, with consumer-driven content giving you third-party endorsement. Through paid search, you own your message and can adapt it properly — and frequently – to speak directly with your audience when they raise their hand about subjects related to your brand. If McCain and Obama could do it on a topic like politics, you can, too.

Search serves as a powerful channel for lead generation and direct response.  During early campaign efforts, the Obama camp used paid search for list-building and donor acquisition. Later, in general election campaigning, paid search played a role in voter mobilization and driving voter registration. The 2008 presidential election reinforces the valuable role search marketing can play in lead generation or direct response, whether you’re looking to build your CRM program or drive your audience to a specific call to action.

Always optimize your campaign to better connect with your audience. According to panelist Emily Williams, interactive account executive at MSHC and member of the Obama campaign’s interactive marketing team, the economic crisis didn’t shift the team’s strategy, but there was increased attention paid to “issue” terms. The analysts also focused on the impact of successful paid search strategies that favored the competition versus going against the competition. The reality is, your strategy is built early on, but like a growing plant, should never be left without water or pruning. The nature of business, consumer preference, consumer-driven media and the news media can shift what’s important at any time. By keeping your audience in mind every day of your search program, you’ll continue to be relevant and reap the benefits of your optimization.

Analyzing search behavior can inform and improve your demographic targeting. One can’t help but question whether data from search trends and traffic served as competitive intelligence to guide where the candidates targeted their campaign efforts. Did lagging polls in Ohio drive a targeted search effort? Was the search strategy different to win California versus sustaining voters in another state? Little was disclosed from the Obama camp other than confirmation that there were strict measurements for search marketing and certain silos of focus.

However, analytics looking at this level of behavior is a significant source of information for any advertiser, whether you’re a CPG brand that wants to dominate certain markets, an entertainment brand needing to increase ratings in areas with low viewership, or a quick service food restaurant striving to increase market share in a lagging city. And we can certainly expect insights from search behavior to play an increasingly significant role in future political campaigns.

Social media increases visibility. All this talk about search marketing, yet the Obama campaign was sending Facebook updates and messages to ‘friends’ almost daily. Yes, social media’s value in engaging consumers and unveiling its success was only strengthened with the 2008 elections. What the Obama campaign did right was to put their candidate and platform in places where consumers were already spending their time. Williams shared that “the Obama campaign was looking for people who were looking for ‘us,’ and there’s no better place to that than online.”

She added, “The strategy of the Obama campaign was to build solid tools and allow people to use it in a way that fits them. Our job was to build it and maintain it so that other people could use it.”

And that, alone, is something every brand marketer should be doing.

Using the right channels to effectively reach an audience segment is key, too. As Clickable’s Ben Seslija, another panelist, pointed out, Obama’s use of social media successfully reached a younger audience.

It all goes back to making sure your company and your brand are visible and a part of the conversation in forums where your potential audience or consumer is spending time. While it’s up to you and your planning teams to determine the appropriate weight each channel should carry to fulfill your objectives, advertisers can learn from the Obama and McCain campaigns that peppering yourself traditionally and innovatively across the marketing mix maximizes your potential reach – and return.

It’s the entire package that counts for your brand. What the presidential candidates did successfully that every company and marketer can learn from is to look at integration in a broader spectrum than only whether your media is aligned channel by channel. Results and success, as the candidates taught us, comes from the content, the tactic, and the image of the person or brand. You can’t rely on a good offer or great pricing to drive your success if your brand perception is weak.

That is where the marketing, PR, image, the quality and value of products or services and the people driving the business play a truly synergized role in delivering the complete package that sways consumers to vote for your brand.

1. Google pulling the plug on the Google/Yahoo! deal…as this does not represent the best interest of our clients.
2. The return of Yahoo! Contextual placements as a way to test contextual networks without giving all your money to Google.
3. Mobile is taking off, FINALLY!! 2009 is slated to be a big year for mobile.
4. Fabulous entertainment and parties thrown by the search engines and our vendors.
   
5. The growth in respect for search marketing as part of the media mix….though there are still a few non-believers out there…and you know who you are!
6. The deals Yahoo! and Google made with various U.S. wireless carriers to become the primary on-deck search provider (AT&T and Yahoo!, Sprint Nextel and Google).
7. Despite the economic downturn, our industry has remained fairly stable. We’ve survived another year in the search marketing industry, most of us without totally losing our minds….after all, it’s just search, not brain surgery.
8. Ask.com now provides impression data.
9. MSN finally came out with their desktop tool….your turn Yahoo!!
10. Twitter! It’s amazing how 140 characters has changed the world we live in.

As you’re spending time with your family, eating, drinking, and being merry…remember to be thankful for all that search has done for you this year!

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• 72% of Fortune 500 companies have very low to non-existent visibility for their most advertised keywords
• 20% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence
• 8% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid to strong presence for their most advertised keywords

Why is SEO the red headed step-child of Search?

In my experience here at Outrider, I’ve found that the greatest challenge presented to SEO’ers is getting clients to own and commit to achieving success in the organic space.  As an agency, we tout the idea and proven value of approaching search holistically and using the historical data from paid to influence organic and vice a versa, but how often do search strategists and advertisers really reap the benefits?  Clients at large see the added value and necessity of attaining a visible presence in both the paid and organic space, but because of the cross-functional demands of SEO implementation, i.e. Marketing, Corporate Communications, IT, Legal,. advertisers’ commitment and participation falters.

Opportunity for engagement is lost when we don’t pursue and achieve synergy between paid and organic search.  I don’t know about you, but I know I’ve done the whole “70/30 rule” song and dance a many of times and while intentions are always great, I still haven’t been able to grasp the results that makes all that dancing worth while.  Clients know that their bottom line can be positively impacted with a graduated ROI, but they too have to put work into making that happen, and that’s not always so easy.  Paid search is instant gratification, where as organic search is like wine—it gets better over time.  I think in the minds of many major advertisers, this latent realization of success or failure AND the coordination it takes on their end to make things happen, justifies SEO being overlooked.

Now the question is how do we fix it?  What can we do as search consultants to put ourselves in a position to better manage our clients and provide advertisers with assurance that a solid SEO program can easily be accomplished, especially when working in tandem with your search strategists? What can we do to ensure that a strategists’ hard work in defining opportunity for improved SEO is not in vain, and most importantly, start building case studies around success stories to prove that to fully experience relevance we have to make the red headed step-child feel like it’s a loved and cherished part of the family too?

I’m interested to know what you think.  Let’s brainstorm together and see if we can develop a resolution that will increase SEO results for 2009!

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The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an eye opener into how these fields have changed. In the beginning of the book, Scott mentions how marketing was considered advertising.  Remember those advertising courses that taught us advertising was marketing and marketing was advertising?  Back then, I questioned why there would be two different courses if that were the case.  The professor’s response was at the end of the day you are essentially doing the same thing…BRANDING!  While marketing hasn’t changed much conceptually, the way we market is continuously evolving.

Scott illustrates how the “old school” approach to marketing compares with the current approach to marketing.  With search marketing, it’s about having the message in front of the consumer whenever the consumer chooses to look for it – not by forcing the message onto consumers with the slim chance they are actually listening, watching or reading at that particular time.  Search helps to create synergy with the content of traditional media.  This point alone is one of the BEST reasons search should be integrated into the overall marketing strategy.  When ads run on TV or radio for example, the key terms for those messages can be carried over into a search campaign.  This allows your brand to capture the consumers who are searching as a result to being exposed to the offline commercials.  Having the ability to accurately measure not only the impact an advertising campaign has on converting consumers, but also the success of a particular channel’s efforts based on another, is extremely valuable.

These are just some examples of the NEW rules of marketing that Scott mentions in his book.  Along with ensuring the traditional media and search marketing campaigns are aligned with one another, he also emphasizes the importance of relevant landing pages and relevant content, two other topics whose value should not be overlooked nor minimized.

So, as hard as it is to accept, change really is good.  The NEW rules of marketing are a definite must.  Instead of waiting, hoping and praying to see the success from the “interruption techniques” of yesterday, the goal should be to give consumers what they want, when they want it.

We all reminisce about the good old days.  But rather than getting hung up on the past, don’t you think it’s time to move forward with the NEW?

Note: Intrigued to learn more from David Meerman Scott? Check out his many resources and information about his other books at:  www.webinknow.com.

Book cover graphic from www.davidmeermanscott.com/.

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