As referenced in articles such as SearchEngineWatch.com’s Selling SEO Projects Against PPC Campaigns, marketers and marketing consultants at times must decide between PPC and SEO budgets. But this “either-or” approach misses the mark.

SEO and PPC should be two integral parts of the same campaigns, each individually less effective without the other. SEO is more effective at attracting the larger masses of searches, and typically has more inherent credibility by the searchers, but PPC is more effective at nimbly targeting changing long tails of searches. Moreover, PPC is ideally suited as a short-term testing ground to steer longer term SEO efforts.

Smart marketers use both of these tools, along with others (such as social media tactics) to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns. At Domus, Inc., a full service integrated marketing communications agency, we work with our clients researching, developing, executing, analyzing, and continually refining integrated marketing campaigns. Visit us at our web site for more about us.

How excited is your marketing department? What is the level of enthusiasm in your office? If the energy is not there like it once was, it might be time for a game-changer. This might be true whether or not you have an (ad) agency of record and whether or not you’re satisfied with your current marketing efforts.

What do I mean by a game-changer? Bring in new blood to review what you’re doing, make suggestions, throw out new ideas. Very often, a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective is all you need to jump-start and rejuvenate a stale situation. For a relatively small overall investment your potential upside can be significant.

Contact Domus today to find out how we can breath new life into your marketing efforts.

I wrote an entry here few weeks ago, also titled Arrogant Marketing. In that post, I discussed how some companies’ marketing approaches forget who owes whom a “Thank you” and who owes whom a “Congratulations.” Today’s post, though, is of a different nature. I heard on the radio an ad from Bank of America. It was the second time I heard the ad, and both times I had a viscerally negative reaction. Upon thinking about it I realized why.

The Bank of America ad was the one promoting their Bank of America military credit cards in advance of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday. In the ad, they exhort people to show their patriotic colors by signing up for the Bank of America “military” credit cards, which proudly display the red, white, and blue. By buying the card, we supposedly show support for the country and our military.

My problem, though, with the ad, was that it seemed like it was bordering on trickery. Many companies take advantage of upcoming holidays to promote services, and many companies show their support for causes by combining promotions with charitable giving. However, Bank of America’s promotion is different because, as they indicated in the legalese at the end of the ad, Bank of America’s military credit card is not endorsed by the US military or any military organization, nor does Bank of America donate any money to any military or veterans’ causes through use of the card.

So what’s the point? They’re just selling a credit card with a picture of the Stars and Stripes. But, unless you listen to the legalese, the pitch almost makes you think that Bank of America is joining you in support of our military families. In that sense, it’s a little arrogant of them to think that they can fool consumers by positioning their ad as such. Moreover, I think it is a little dumb and short-sighted. How much expense would be involved in donating a tiny fraction of card fees to military family causes? And how much good publicity could they get? Instead, they get me and everyone reading this thinking less of them.

As marketers, we at Domus work hard to make sure that our clients market honestly and effectively, without making mistakes like this. For more information, please click on our web site for more.

At our agency, Domus, the term “Internet Presence Management” comes up a lot. We define it pretty broadly and allow for many new ideas to be incorporated into it. But basically, we work from the principle that although the online world has its own set of (millions of) minds and is not (and should be not be) controlled by marketers, there is a certain amount of conversation leading that effective and honest marketers can accomplish. Within the strict boundaries of honesty and openness, there is a lot that we can do.

Since we started our transition as an agency years ago to embrace and evolve internet presence management, the online world has changed dramatically. The biggest changes, in our minds, have been the explosion in usage of social sites, especially Facebook and Twitter.

As marketers focusing significant amounts of time on internet presence management, we’ve certainly needed to take note of these sites. But although in some ways they are significantly different than other social media sites, in many respects they are the same. They are sites where people hold or might hold online conversations; therefore, they are sites that can be used to offer conversations, to lead others, and to participate constructively in still others. The specific tactics used in Facebook and Twitter differ from each other and differ from the tactics used in other areas, but as long as the tactics line up with the sites’ characteristics and with the brands’ strategic goals, then they will be effective.

As an full service marketing communications agency, we’re pretty excited about how these media are evolving and how we are using them. Please visit our web site for more.

Facebook and Twitter, the two current kings of social media, offer marketers a number of opportunities but also many false hopes. As an example, Facebook garners about 200 million unique visitors per month, about half of whom use the site every day. However, the largest segment of that user community – 18-24 year-olds – is one of the most adept demographics at avoiding clicking or even looking at display ads. So regardless of how targeted Facebook ads can be, they’re generally not being viewed. Twitter, on the other hand, has a strong 18-34 and even 35-49 user base, but doesn’t really have a display ad model. (In fact, they currently don’t have any revenue generation model, yet.)

So, what options are available for marketers? Although the click-through rate is low, display ads are still a viable option on Facebook (but use the pay-per-cick model, not the impressions model). However, the real value of these two venues is in attracting followers/fans. Give people a reason to want to come to your Facebook page or to follow your Twitter brand, and you will over time build a base of either potential customers or strong idea influencers/disseminators.

Therefore, the first question marketers need to ask themselves is whether or not they have a brand, a product, and/or an idea/opinion that others would find worthy of following. Obviously, this is an area where a good marketing communications agency’s value can really shine. It’s not always obvious to the social media novice what positioning or strategy might be appealing enough to garner a following.

The next crucial area is the development of the strategy and tactics to initially get, maintain, and continually increase the follower/fan base (but more importantly, a qualified, targeted base). Social media is one of the fast growing, but also fasted evolving areas of the internet. Therefore, strategies and tactics that worked yesterday won’t necessarily work tomorrow. So it’s important to regularly be part of the online communities to see what’s happening. However, basic principles of social media, such as offering honest, interesting content while soliciting and engaging in respectful conversations, will always apply. Whatever process is used, though, this is again an area where a creative and dynamic marketing agency can truly provide value to its customers.

Next, the truly successful social media marketers understand what to do with their followers/fans. These people, in essence should become not just your best prospects, but your extended sales force, your Q&A department, your viral marketers, your customer service department, and your R&D group (idea generation), among others – but most importantly, your partners. Again, a full-service marketing communications agency should help its clients develop and execute an ongoing strategy to accomplish this.

Domus, a full service marketing communications agency has been in business for over thirteen years. In that time, using its unique business model, it has been adept and nimbly changing and adapting to marketing and social trends, while maintaining its core roots in classic marketing principles. Domus has a dynamic and growing internet marketing division, of which social media marketing is a strong focus. For more information, please visit our web site.

Google, the multi-armed Shiva of modern technology companies, has experienced only moderate success in its endeavors outside of its core competency: search. Forays into and acquisitions of businesses with alternate business models such as social media (Orkut), micro-blogging (Jaiku), and wiki-format encyclopedias (Knol) have been met with mixed success. Even those Google ventures that maintain a good market share, such as YouTube and Blogger, have had revenue-generation models that were closely tied to search and paid-per-click advertising, Google’s bread and butter. Additionally, these services have not generated even a small fraction of what Google’s core business has.

It is easy to look at some of these acquisitions and endeavors and scoff at the quirkiness of feel-goodery web companies, especially one famous for its playfulness, relaxed work environment, and corporate policy that allows employees 20% of their at-work time for personal side projects. However, when a lot of these decisions are looked at in retrospect, the cleverness and interconnectedness of Google’s strategy is sometimes stunningly, sometimes almost scarily efficient.

A couple of examples, to reinforce my point that Google’s real strategy is not always that clear:

- Blogger: the free-to-use blog-publishing platform has absolutely no revenue stream in and of itself. However, the blog explosion of the early and mid-2000’s help to fuel Google’s AdSense program, which increased their “search partners”, “content network” and off-site (google.com) revenue stream.

- GOOG-411: Many questioned the wisdom of a “new media” company getting involved with the 411/directory business, especially as search seemed to be replacing the usefulness of such services. However, GOOG-411 was not an end-game business but rather a means to an end. Specifically, Google used the voice recognition data they received from GOOG-411 to develop their search-by-voice apps which are now available on nearly every major mobile operating system. This development process, which seemed a little counter-intuitive when it first began, has given Google a foot-up in the mobile realm that takes advantage of the medium’s on-the-go nature and multiple hardware devices (with or without full keyboards).

- YouTube: Monetization of this social video site has been slow and Google has been losing millions every quarter supporting the massive infrastructure and bandwidth needed for the site. Very few would disagree with the idea that online video consumption will continue to increase exponentially, but in-video ads (which Google has been testing) do not seem to generate the volume of revenue that could push the site into the black. The real problem is that Google’s core competency, search, is hard to apply to videos where content is not easily indexable and so Google has had to rely on user descriptions which are very limited in their accuracy and usefulness. What Google needs/needed was an accurate way to index their massive video library so that video search could stand on it own, without inexact descriptions, reviews and comments propping it up, and so that the successful AdWords revenue model could be applied to the video site. With GOOG-411 and their newly enhanced voice recognition software, Google now has the technology to begin serious indexing of YouTube, or at least its audio. Wondering if they want to index the images of YouTube in the same, automated manner? Keep an eye on Google Image Search and the Android operating system for image-recognition technology and apps… that’ll be your first clue.

With the idea that Google pursues these side projects out of whimsy disproved, how do we perceive the search giant’s recent product announcements and strategy shifts? The increasing inclusion of Google Talk (chat and video messaging) across all their web properties, the emphasis of Google Profiles (a simplified Facebook parallel) within search and other services, and the introduction of Google Wave (a real-time collaboration and communication platform), seem to represent parts of a comprehensive social networking strategy. Pair these with Google Friend Connect and Google’s involvement with open social network standards, such as OpenID and OpenSocial, and it becomes relatively apparent that Google wants to become the driving force or the at least the connecting glue for a new, decentralized social media landscape.

So, what does Google’s push into social networking mean for advertisers? Well, if Google becomes more involved in this industry, advertisers may see the sort of increased effectiveness, ROI, and trustworthiness that they’ve come to expect from Google translated into the sometimes risky arena of advertising on social networks. This development, if successful, will be good news for advertisers, good news for Google, and if their platform is truly open and as flexible Wave and their other solutions seem, then it will also be good news for users who are already losing valuable time managing multiple social network accounts with different logins, components, and quirks.

For more information regarding social networking, search marketing, and traditional marketing and public relations, visit Domus Marketing and Communications website.

Is 2009 the Year Search Engine Marketing Changes?

It’s amazing how fast things are moving now. First there is the incredible volume of traffic and content that has moved and is moving to Facebook. Then Twitter took the world by storm and everyone now is scrambling to “Tweet.” Now we’re getting one new “search” engine after another. First there was http://www.cuil.com, then http://www.wolframalpha.com, then http://www.bing.com (Microsoft’s revamped and rebranded Live.com search), and in the last week we have http://www.hunch.com and two new engines, http://www.collecta.com and http://www.crowdeye.com. I’m probably missing a few, and it’s not even the end of June.

We now can search web pages, news sites, blogs, and social media sites. We can search Twitter, we can make decisions, we can search through indexed sites or we can search through the web in real time. We can search, decide, make hunches, compute knowledge, and who knows what else?

Google is still the undisputed king for search engine marketers, but all of these other options present potentially significant niche markets – each part of SEM’s long tail. Not all of them yet offer platforms for marketers to take advantage of their traffic, but it’s only a matter of time before one or more of them becomes successful enough to do so. The second half of 2009 should be interesting indeed.

As a full-service marketing communications agency, Domus is monitoring carefully the trends and announcements in internet usage, search, and marketing. All online marketers would be well advised to do so also.

Footnote: – After writing the above early this morning, I just found out about yet another entry. It’s http://www.search3.com.

Advertising Age just posted a couple of interesting articles: Spending Fell (Only) 2.7% in ’08. The Real Issue: ’09 and Package-Goods Brands Lose Loyalists in Recession. The first one mentioned that although advertising spending dropped only 2.7% in 2008, that was broken down quarterly as follows.

The first article further reported that Proctor and Gamble, the nation’s largest advertiser, dropped their spending by 6.6%, while Walmart Stores, the nation’s (newly) fifth largest advertiser, increased their spending 15.9%, including a huge “66.5% increase in measured media spending on their flagship Walmart chain.”

Contrast this information with the second article, which reported a study that more than a third of formerly faithful consumers abandoned major brands like Crest, Cheer, Pinesol, Tylenol, etc. Crest and Cheer are P&G brands, which saw brand loyalty decline during the recession at the same time they were dropping their advertising. Interestingly, Tide held onto its loyalists much better than brands like Cheer and Wisk, but also vastly outspent them in advertising.

So, what are the conclusions? Unfortnately, there is not enough data here to make one, but there is certainly enough data to raise questions. And there is certainly enough internal data for the marketers at P&G and others to analyze the relationships. However, if I were a betting person, I would wager that there is a strong correlation between the numbers in the two articles.

Domus, a full service advertising, public relations, and internet marketing firm based in Philadelphia, has a long history of marketing in the consumer packaged goods environment (as well as others). Exploring the relationships between advertising dollars and marketing mix vs. the final sales is a fundamental responsibility in marketers’ feedback loop, a responsibility that Domus has effectively executed for many years. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com.

Everyone has heard of Bing, Microsoft’s newly branded and revamped search engine. And everyone is aware of the statistics, that Bing had an impressive first week and its success has continued into its second week. And everyone’s still talking about it. (Do a quick search for “Bing” on blog sites, news sites, etc. People are talking about Bing’s success, what it means for Google, what it means for Yahoo, etc.)

What I find especially interesting, though, is how well Microsoft has coordinated its marketing efforts to launch Bing. They’ve had ads running on TV, replayable on the internet. They have a huge PR campaign feeding releases and news bits to the press and other online sites. They have new micro-sites promoting and explaining it. (See DecisionEngine.com and DiscoverBing.com.) They have a Twitter account for Bing as well as a Facebook account. And they haven’t stopped. In fact, Steve Ballmer just reaffirmed Microsoft’s long-term financial commitment to making Bing a success.

Separate from the (obviously important) fact that Microsoft has lots of money to invest in all aspects of its marketing, the methodology that they’ve been using shows a very capable, strategically coordinated effort. Kudos to them from a marketing perspective.

Domus, Inc. works not only to come up with new original ideas for our clients, but is also always watching what other marketers are doing to see what works and what does not. Please visit our web site to find out more.

According to comScore, Bing’s growth has continued through the second full week of its launch.

Further analysis using sites like Compete.com and statCounter.com show that Google’s search share also increased, which is leading some to say that Microsoft is not progressing in its competition with Google. What most people forget, though, is that Microsoft is not (yet) competing with Google. Companies primarily compete with adversaries who are close to them in market share. For Bing that means Ask.com (fourth place, behind Microsoft) and Yahoo (second place, ahead of Microsoft).

Looking at the traffic numbers being reported, note that both Ask and Yahoo saw declines of about 1% each. So Bing is successfully taking market share from its primary competitors. That’s the real story to watch. Whether Bing eventually can make a play to challenge Google for the market lead is a story for another day, but not until (or unless) Bing overtakes Yahoo.

Why should PPC marketers keep following this story? I’ll answer that with another question. What is your PPC budget allocation across the major search engines? As Bing’s market share changes from week to week, are you nimble enough to make corresponding allocation changes to your budgets? If not, you might be doing a disservice to your brands or your clients’ brands.

As a full-service marketing communications, advertising, public relations, and internet marketing agency based in Philadelphia, PA, Domus watches not only its clients’ metrics, but metrics of the market as a whole. We pride ourselves in being extremely nimble and agile, reacting effortlessly to changes in the market. For more information, please visit our web site and contact us.