Marketing Thoughts by Domus Inc.

The government just released their numbers on the economy, and they’re still no good. So, although there might not be a lot you can do to improve your sales in the short run, brand-building is a long-term process. Now is the time to review your brand position, your brand strengths and weaknesses, your current and desired audience demographics, and your competition. Now is the time to lay the communications groundwork such that when people start buying, your brand is front and center in their minds. So, what are you doing?

As a full service marketing communications agency, we are actively engaged in helping our clients position their brands weather the recession and also grow fast when it eases.

For those of us standing in the sidelines, the buzz about the Microsoft – Yahoo deal is positive because people feel that the partnership will finally provide some competition to Google. However, Google’s share was 65% before the deal and it remains 65% after the deal. So, how does the deal enhance competition? For one, as both Carol Bartz (Yahoo) and Steve Balmer (Microsoft) indicated, the increased scale will provide enough volume for advertisers to bid on both platforms.

But strategically, there is another positive aspect to the partnership, one that has not been discussed by either party (or third parties). Separate, both Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling a little in their own ways. In the search market, Yahoo has stagnated and Microsoft has not yet been able to capture significant market share. Microsoft is making one last big push now, with its Bing launch, to get that share, but without the merger, that posed a potentially dangerous outcome to both Yahoo and Microsoft. Why? Microsoft’s launch is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising money. But as we’ve discussed in prior posts, the more Microsoft advertises, the more news outlets, pundits, and bloggers analyze Bing with respect to Google. Only a small portion of the online buzz had been including Yahoo in those comparisons. Therefore, the major long-term result of that campaign might well have been BOTH Google and Microsoft taking share from Yahoo – not Microsoft taking share from Google.

That obviously would have been bad for Yahoo, but it would also have been bad for Microsoft. Even if Microsoft and Google together gobbled up all of Yahoo’s share (relatively evenly), Google’s share would have gone up from 65% to over 75%, while Microsoft’s share wouldn’t even reach 20%. Google’s added size would have made it that much tougher to compete against.

However, by entering the partnership, Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s shares will effectively be one combined share with no internal competition. That in turn frees up both parties to focus on Google instead of each other.

At Domus, we remain very involved in the news being reported throughout the industry.

Are you engaged in any SEO or PPC efforts on any web sites? Do you know your relative rankings (for SEO) or cost-per-click (for PPC) in Bing vs. Yahoo? If not, now’s the time to start analyzing those numbers.

It looks like the Microsoft / Yahoo search deal is about to close, and Bing will become the new search engine behind Yahoo. When that happens, all of your Yahoo ranks and costs will change. It will probably be a couple of months before everything is finalized, which gives some time. So, between now and then marketers should develop and execute plans to modify SEO and PPC efforts to ensure consistent Yahoo results.

Domus is currently undergoing this review with its clients. Are you?

We often see the term “integrated marketing” in news reports, in company literature, and in other places. At first glance, this seems like a phrase that’s right on the mark, a sign that marketers know what they’re doing. However, when I see “integrated marketing” I see someone who has forgotten the true meaning of “marketing”.

As Al Ries wrote in his recent post in Advertising Age, marketing is the job of coordinating “all the various disciplines inside a corporation in order to develop the right product, the right price, the right position, the right distribution strategy and the right brand name.” However, when most people talk about “integrated marketing”, they limit their viewpoint to a mixed advertising, PR, and/or social media campaign — the end-points of marketing, not the end-all.

As a marketing agency, Domus remains well aware of our responsibility to our clients to not only help them communicate with their market, but to help them develop and execute all components of their marketing efforts.

Advertising Age is reporting an imminent deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, part of which would probably involve making Microsoft’s Bing the default search engine for Yahoo. There are many implications for many people in this deal, but let’s look at some basic ones for search engine marketers.

First and foremost, marketers will see changing traffic patterns in their web sites. All of the search engines rank sites differently for various keywords. Therefore, when the deal goes through, Yahoo’s old rankings will change to be in line with Bing’s rankings. This means that if you had a great position in Yahoo and a poorer one in Bing, your position will drop and your search traffic will probably reflect that. (And conversely, if Bing ranked you better, your traffic will be better off.)

Likewise, if you have a paid search program that is designed to complement your rankings in organic search (e.g., buying ads where your organic ranking is not high enough), then the foundation on which you made your decisions might change overnight. You might be buying ads for keywords where you now have high rankings or not buying ads for keywords where you now rank poorly.

As marketers, and especially as agencies overseeing our clients’ marketing efforts, we should all start reviewing our current metrics and our strategies and tactics based on those metrics to see what we need to change. At Domus, we pride ourselves at being a very nimble advertising agency, and as such are already starting our reviews. Are you?

A number of stories have hit the news this week indicating that the housing market is starting to improve. If this is true, companies whose sales are directly correlated to the housing market should start seeing their potential sales opportunities increase. The marketers who start their campaigns now will be in the best position to take advantage of the uptick.

Domus is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We pride ourselves on our nimble service and are already heavily involved in marketing plans with our housing-related clients. Please visit our web site for information about us.

Two current news stories caught my eye today. One is today’s financial results from Hershey, where they reported strong increases in both profits and revenue, partly attributable to significantly increased advertising budgets. The other was a set of stories on KFC. Again, following a large advertising campaign their Kentucky Grilled Chicken product launch is one of the best in their history. And now one of KFC’s competitors (El POllo) is also scoring big in California because of a large advertising campaign.

Pundits repeatedly talk about the “death of advertising”, whether it’s in relation to public relations or to social media marketing. But time and again, companies who effectively incorporate advertising into their overall marketing strategy continue to succeed. Traditional advertising is certainly not the same as it was 10-20 years ago, but it is still undoubtably effective. Marketers should not dismiss it as an integral component of their marketing tool box as they move to newer, digital avenues. All media are potentially useful in one situation or another.

Domus, Inc. is a dynamic marketing agency that continues to successfully marry new technologies with classic marketing principles and media to develop effective, integrated strategies and campaigns for our clients. Please visit our web site for more information.

Yahoo just reported their most recently quarterly earnings, and the numbers aren’t too good. Overall revenue fell by about 13%; even search revenue fell. (Profits increased, but only because of strong cost-cutting measures, including layoffs.) Google, on the other hand, released their numbers a few days ago, and they showed revenue and profit increases. (Microsoft will release its numbers later this week.)

This doesn’t bode well for Yahoo, and should be a warning flag for search engine marketers everywhere. Yahoo is still number two in terms of search, but the writing on the wall is not positive. (And this does not even take into account Microsoft’s launch and aggressive marketing campaign for Bing.)

As search engine marketers, we should all closely monitor our analytics reports over the next six to nine months to ensure that we continue to allocate our budgets in line with the evolving realities of the market.

Marketing communications agencies such as Domus should be especially diligent, being the stewards of our clients’ budgets. Please visit our web site to find out more about us.

A lot of people are talking about recent research numbers from Forrester and [x+1] showing the recent and projected rises in digital advertising, led by search engine marketing (SEM) spending. These correspond to a continued drop in traditional spending but also an overall lack of confidence is marketers’ expectations of search ad performance.

Companies are moving more and more to digital and to search in particular because that is a critical component of today’s marketing environment. Moreover, investing in SEM is safer, especially in today’s troubled economy, because it is easier to justify a spending avenue with a superior ROI. But does SEM spending truly give a superior ROI? In the short run, its effective impact is easily measurable; however, that does not take into account the more subjective value of long-term advertising and PR campaigns whose goals are not necessarily immediate conversions, but increased brand awareness.

Today’s superior ROI from SEM comes partly from the months and years of work building brand positions using traditional marketing principles. Companies that forget those principles and rely solely on short-term measurable SEM conversion statistics might well find that over time they are getting a diminishing return on their search dollars because they’ve slowly let their brand positions decline.

Domus is a dynamic marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We have been leading the charge with our clients to effectively embrace all of the exciting opportunities available to marketers today. But we haven’t lost sight of the fundamental principles that must underly every strategy. Please visit our web site to find out more about us.

Or Maybe Not…

The news media are full of stories about Twitter, including the most recent stories about how Twitter has gotten millions of dollars of free publicity. So, technically, the news media are full of stories about how they themselves have mentioned Twitter a lot on their stories. And that of course means that everybody should jump on Twitter immediately because it is so hot.

But what metrics out there show that getting active on Twitter is a worthwhile investment for companies? Mashable recently posted an article on how food trucks are successfully using Twitter. This is a good example of situations where the vendors have a reasonable use for the technology and can actually measure whether their investments are paying off. (Does lunch traffic increase or not when sending tweets?) It’s also an example where the investments are negligible once the operating formula is in place. (How much time does it take to say, “We’ve reached such-and-such street intersection. Special today is x.”?)

Other businesses, though, might or might not be a little harder pressed to find a viable reason to use Twitter. How much effort is involved in creating a regular stream of Tweets? How much effort does it take to build a large enough base of truly interested followers? How many of them translate into new site traffic, added purchases, or further brand proselytization? How many of those people would have received brand communications anyway from other, already existing media?

Twitter is very hot right now, and as such marketers should pay attention to it. Some marketers might find worthwhile uses for it, as with the food vendors. But as with other (previously) hot technologies, jumping on the bandwagon just to jump on it does not necessarily make it a worthwhile investment. (How are companies’ Second Life virtual worlds doing these days?)