Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

Integrated Web Marketing with Other Media

Integrated Web Marketing was the focus of this morning’s final session at the Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing East 2007 Executive MindXChange. The formal title: Search and Cross-Channel Integration: How Search Marketing and Other Media Together Drive Results

Our presenters were Patrick Garrett and Kristine Segrist from Outrider and Steve Dennen from comScore. Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay for all of Steve’s presentation because I had to leave for the airport, but what I heard from him was really helpful and interesting.
Patrick and Kristine started with some diagnostic questions, as they sought to “bring sexy back to search.”

Are you integrating Search and PR?

They started with the story of rats overrunning a Taco Bell in New York City. Here’s the YouTube video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws]

ABC.com ran Google ads on rats Taco Bell and related terms right away to take advantage of the situation and drive people, and about 36 hours later Taco Bell bought ads to tell its side of the story. So Taco Bell did the right thing, but was a little late. For crisis management, any time you have a statement you want to get before the public, you need to buy ads on related search terms.
Are you supporting major promotions via search?

For example, Nationwide mortage and Pizza Hut did Super Bowl ads featuring Kevin Federline and Jessica Simpson, respectively.

Here’s the Pizza Hut ad:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM6bRf8h95s]

And here’s the K-Fed Nationwide ad:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDJs2F1nesY]

Pizza Hut did a better job of promoting its ad, with a branded YouTube channel.

Is your search campaign capable of reacting to external factors?

Example was Sears home improvement having its ad bids on air conditioning keywords go up based on localized rising temperatures.

Are you measuring the impact of other media on search?

Kristine identified four keys to effective search integration

  1. Alignment
  2. Engagement
  3. Measurement & Analysis
  4. Search as a Diagnostic Tool

The Alignment case study was PMDD (severe PMS), in which a pharma company ran an unbranded campaign to raise awareness. They had viral user generated content site, while understandpmdd.com was the site for learning more, tracking daily moods, etc.

The viral site featured a video by the Veronicas, which also was available on YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Qq-OxpSw8]

More highlights to come…

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Blogging Panel at Frost & Sullivan

The Blogging panel discussion was too short (only an hour), but the great observation is how attitudes seem to be changing. We did have “the ROI question,” but for the most part the real issue isn’t whether companies should be involved with blogs, but how they should do it.

Among the returns on the blogging investment (and the investment can be really small; it can even be zero in dollar terms and just the time of an interested person), we came up with:

  • Time saved in communication – answering common questions that have come by email, enabling leaders to refer those questions to the blog, and as people have further questions those can be asked and answered in the comments, too. It saves having to have the same conversation repeatedly.
  • Leads generated and sales closed – Jeremiah says Podtech.net doesn’t do press releases or advertising; his blog is one of the company’s key methods of marketing, even though that’s not it’s primary purpose.
  • Building relationships with customers – this is the main benefit
  • Customers and potential clients familiar with you – A blog is a great way for people to be up to speed on what you’re all about, eliminating awkward talk about the weather when you first meet.
  • SEO – This wasn’t mentioned the first time through, because it’s a fundamental truth that BLOG stands for Better Listings On Google. It’s a given. Having a blog puts you higher in the search rankings.

Members of the blogging panel, and their blogs, are listed and linked to below:

So tell us, what didn’t we get to discuss that you wish we would have? The beauty of a blogging panel is it never really dies. The discussion can continue indefinitely.

Updated: Thanks for the link, Jeremiah. For those interested in reading more about the conference sessions, here are the links to Day 1 and Day 2 posts.

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Frost & Sullivan: Search Engine Marketing vs. Pay Per Click

I’m sitting next to Jeremiah at this Frost & Sullivan interactive session, which is being led by Patricia Hursh of SmartSearch Marketing. It’s on “Balancing Paid and Organic Search.” She promises the following key takeaways:

  • SEO vs. PPC decision criteria
  • Compelling reasons to integrate/implement both methods
  • How to isolate and measure results
  • Tips on maximizing your ROI

Craig Oldham from Allstate is one of the thought leaders for this discussion, too; she’s joined by Carrie at GMAC Mortgage.


Jeremiah is blogging the presentation, too, and his thoughts are here.

The key point is it’s not really SEO vs. PPC, but SEO and PPC. SEO is a lot like PR, whereas PPC is marketing. Just as you don’t have final control of the message with PR, you don’t with SEO either. But organic search results and media stories have higher credibility – and costs are less.

Most businesses wouldn’t pit PR and marketing against each other, and only do one or the other. The same point holds for search engine marketing and Pay Per Click.
SEO vs. PPC decision criteria include budget, speed to results, control over message, flexibility, longevity, credibility and competitiveness of your market. SEO doesn’t require a media budget for each click, but it’s not free. Speed to results is a big advantage for PPC, whereas natural search can take longer. PPC gives more control and flexibility, while longevity and credibility is better for organic. And depending on the competitiveness of a market and the number of bidders for a given search term, PPC can vary widely in cost per click.

Offering real value on your site is important to get people to link to you. The number of real links is what drives search engine results, and the way to get links is to offer value. In the end, that’s what drives links. If your content is worthwhile, people will link to it.

Google has webmaster tools that let you submit a site map during site redesign, so you don’t lose ranking. That way the spidering happens more quickly and efficiently. Optimizing press releases also helps speed the SEO process.

Compelling reasons to integrate/implement both methods – with PPC you can control the exact message, but some people have a much higher propensity to click organic results, distrusting the ads. And why wouldn’t you do the relatively cheaper thing, SEO, if you’re doing PPC?

Sites that require customer logins hurt their search engine rankings because the crawlers can’t get there, so Patricia asks her clients to decide which pages really need to be behind the password-protected area, and which ones are available to the world (and the search engines.)

Ability to turn on quickly is an advantage of PPC; you can take advantage of current events or mass media appearances (as Sheila from Siemens mentioned about an Oprah appearance by her company.) Optimized press releases also can do this quickly. You also can buy terms for competitors or adversaries on a key issue.

(As an aside, I need to check out a service Jeremiah mentioned, which uses a USB device to get wireless internet access via cell phone. He’s got a cool card that lets him liveblog this session and do multiple posts; I have to go somewhere to connect to wifi between sessions. He mentioned that Thomas Hawk has a device he uses for his Mac. This would be really good for me to have wireless access on the bus each day. If anyone can tell me what that service or device is, I want to buy it.)

Patrick from Outrider mentioned PPC as a message tester, so you can see what words or phrases people actually click. “Search is a fabulous focus group,” Patricia says. Jeremiah says looking at tags in del.icio.us is a good way of seeing what attributes consumers are applying to your web site.
Tips on maximizing your ROI – we discussed that if your organic search is good, you can possibly pay less for 4th or 5th position in PPC, and get good results at lower advertising costs.

Thanks, Patricia, for a great job in facilitating, and going where the participants were interested.

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MSNBC Dropping Windows Media Player

MSNBC is moving to all Flash and away from Windows Media Player in its video delivery environment. That’s one of the most interesting tidbits from the just-completed session, and it comes from Kyoo Kim, VP of Sales for MSNBC.comThat’s actually quite stunning when you consider that the MS in MSNBC stands for Microsoft. But that’s what the marketers and customers are demanding/accepting.

In the end, customers really are royalty.

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