When Search Engine Lowdown first launched back in the summer of 2003, we became the first web site to blog the sessions of a Search Engine Strategies conference, as they happened.
Since that San Jose event, many blogs have emerged to offer blow-by-blow coverage of SES. With that in mind, we want our readers to know that if you’re looking for detailed write-ups of SEO tips and tricks, you may have come to the wrong place. However, if you’re a busy individual who just wants to hear about those most tender and juicy morsels of information, Search Engine Lowdown is for you.
Still here? Great, let’s get to the snippets of information, from day one, which caught our attention.
Session: Applying Lessons of Search to Other Direct Marketing
The usual PowerPoint presentation format from Jupiter included endless slides about how search can be integrated with other forms of marketing (with a long look at email marketing). The best stuff came during the Q&A.
David Daniels, Research Director for JupiterResearch, offered that only a third of all online marketers are sophisticated enough to understand the behavioral pattern of their visitors. These savvy marketers were able to grasp and analyze the tell-tale signs that make up a valuable customer – click patterns, timing of buys etc.
Daniels also suggested that these marketers are using search in ways not previously utilized. For example, how many of you are using paid search for the express purpose of driving visitors to a landing page, so you can capture their email address and personal information? Daniels gave an example of one web site that uses paid search to advertise free cell phone ring tones, then captures valuable information in a registration form. Paid search at the next level, methinks.
Larry Chase, publisher of Web Digest for Marketers, wanted an example of how vertical search was changing the search landscape. According to Jupiter analyst Niki Scevak, retail and travel verticals are the most developed vertical search sites. Scevak explained how shopping search engines are “creating an additional layer in the search engine experience” and help to “consummate the transaction” He went on to give the example that product searches no longer consist of “Google to Amazon” and are now more likely to be “Google to Shopping.com, to Amazon”.
Gary Stein (another Jupiter number-cruncher) took time to explain how the APIs, opened up by Google and Overture, can provide potential opportunities to integrate search marketing with other marketing campaigns. He believed that the time was almost here where the performance of an email ad could be used to generate automated paid search ads, based upon the response rates of the emails. If “Email A” has high response rates and generates new sales, use the paid search API to create targeted ads that utilize the same message as the email. Wow, can you imagine a day when your email campaign talks directly to your paid search campaign with no interaction from the advertiser? (and if you have that technology already, email me).
When it came to affiliates and search marketing, Stein chuckled, “if you don’t have a good search strategy, your affiliates will create one.” Stein also stressed the importance of providing a data feed to your affiliates, “it’s like gold to them,” he said. A product data feed allows them to get deeper into your products and create their own content (in line with Google’s new affiliate policy).
The last interesting snippet from this session came from an audience question on the breakdown of search traffic origination. Scevak claimed that 50% of searches are conducted in the US, with the remainder skewed towards western Europe. He also said 70-75% of search marketing dollars are spent in the US. What about outside the US? “In some markets Google has a near monopoly,” he said.
Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.
You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
