Presentation I gave to the UW MBA Direct Marketing class on Inbound Marketing.

1. Inbound Marketing Overview
UW BUSINESS SCHOOL – 11/3/12

2. What We Will Cover Today
• Internet Media Spend – Global Perspective
• Paid vs Owned vs Earned Media – P.O.E.M.
• Why Search? Some Stats…
• Search Engine Basics
• Organic Search (Natural)
• Organic and Social Together
• The Social Journey for an Organization
• Paid Search
• Testing
• New Issues with Search
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3. Worldwide Media Spend
Source: Nielsen Global AdView – Q1 2012
• Internet media spend continues to be the fasted growing segment
• However, it is still TINY compared to the big boys
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4. Differences Between Media Time & Dollars
• Print is WAY over subscribed when it comes to time vs ad spend
• Mobile and Internet are STILL the biggest opportunities
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5. P.O.E.M. Customer Acquisition Model
Paid Media Owned Media Earned Media
aka - Campaigns aka – Nurture & Retention Aka: Inbound Marketing
Characteristics » Money = Traffic, No money, » A person is “known” » Cost is effort
No traffic » Email address + name » Visibility continues when
» Channels are optimized » Channels used to move person effort stops
individually to initial sale & recurring » Channels work together
revenue
Channels » Paid Search » Lead Nurturing » Direct/Brand
» Display/Banners » Re-Targeting » Natural Search (SEO)
» Affiliate (CPA) » Customer Email » Social Media
» Email List Buying » Transaction Emails » Referrals (Links)
» TV/Radio/Print » Customer Service » Public Relations
» Daily Deals
Resources » Media Budget » Email Delivery Platform » Content Creation/Editor
» Campaign Management » Customer Database » Publishing Platform
» Testing/Optimization » Email Content Creation » Social Media Engagement
5
» Customer Service Response » PR & Blogger Engagement
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5

6. Search Dominates > But Look at Social!
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7. Why Search Engine Marketing?
• The #1 driver of non-direct traffic to most websites
• High quality traffic
 All stages of the buying cycle from research to price compare
to brand navigation
 Focused, active traffic
• Organic traffic has no media costs
• Pay Per Click (PPC) search traffic is highly targetable
 By keyword, location, time of day, day of week, demographic
• PPC is self-service, easy to get up and running, highly
controllable/optimizable
• PPC is a great way to test messaging, offers, landing
pages and positioning
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8. The #1 Job of Search Engines
Provide the Best Search Results Based on the Limited Information
(1-4 keywords) the Searcher Gives the Engine.
• Better search results (organic & paid) = happier searchers
• Happier searchers = more search/repeat usage
• More search usage = more inventory
• More inventory = more opportunity to sell pay per click
advertising
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9. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Programs
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Listed in the editorial or organic area of engine.
• Higher quality traffic – legitimate search results.
• No guarantee of placement, mid to long term results.
• Local optimization is a distinct set of tactics
Pay Per Click (PPC) Search
• Auction, bid or CPC system.
• Immediate, cost effective, trackable.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Content Network
• Google/Bing have matched your keywords to content
on the internet
• You push ads to a site without a specific search
• Managed through your same search PPC interface
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10. A Google Example SEM of Programs
Paid Results: The top
two performers from
the AdWords CPC
program.
Main Results: Natural
search listings which
cannot be bought, but
influenced with SEO
program. Google does
not have a trusted feed
or paid inclusion
program.
Paid Results:
AdWords closed-bid
CPC placements.
Ranked by CTR x
CPC. Top three
listings distributed to
partners. Top three
and more distributed to
Google’s Content-
Targeted Ad network.
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11. Example of a Content Ad Network Placement
Content Network:
Page content
mapped to your
keywords. Highly
efficient buy, but
lower in quality.
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12. The Golden Triangle of Search Usability
• Eye tracking study
• The focus is on the
upper left with a glance
over to the top of the
right hand side
placements.
• Underlines the volume
importance of the top
placements.
• Also, your brand
connections starts at
the search engine NOT
on your website!
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13. The Importance of Position
» The higher the position, the higher the click
through rate
» The higher the position, the lower the
conversion (in general)
» Critical to understand position vs cost vs
conversion trade off
Source is Optify click through rate study
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14. How Web Crawlers Work – Content + Links!
Link Link Link Link Link
Web Web Web Web Web Web
Page Page Page Page Page Page
Search Bots follow links and return information to index
Googlebot, MSNbot, Muscat Ferret (www.robotstxt.org lists 298 bots)
Update & Cached Pages
Index Refresh In Database
Schedule News
Business Rules (hourly)
Web
Page Algorithm
Fresh
Content (recent)
Ancillary
Data Sources Local Content
Crawl Site
(standard update)
and
Sitemap.xml Foundation Database
(standard update)
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15. Google is Evolving to the Knowledge Graph
• Google wants to give you the exact information you want > quickly
• Moving beyond text and pages to video, images, books, maps, sound
• 500 million people, places, things with 3.5 billion associated items
• New search structure and UI to get you there more quickly
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16. Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
• 70 – 80% of clicks on a search engine results page
emanate from the organic search area.
Google: 80% of clicks from organic
Yahoo/Bing: 70% of clicks from organic
• Organic clicks may or may not be more qualified.
• The clicks are free of media costs (although there
are internal & management costs).
• It is an important part of your entire Search Engine
program
• It CONNECTS your content with people – earned
media!
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17. Core Components of SEO
SEO has three major components
• Technology
• Site and page optimization
• Crawlability and indexing
• Content
• Keyword Focus
• The Number and Quality of Pages
• Authority
• Domain & Pages
• The Quality & Number of Links
• Social Media Signals
• Keyword Strategy & Focus
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18. Local SEO – Different Set of Tactics
• Triggered by physical address –
need to highlight on site
 Individual page for each store
• Matched to searchers IP address
• Keyword categories drive local
 Pizza, dry cleaners, etc.
• Additional elements
 Map
 Address
 Hours
 Reviews
 Images
• Local directories and business
listings like Bing, Yellow
Pages, Yahoo, etc.
• Reviews in Yelp, Urban
Spoon, Google, etc. add
authority to site
• Build authority from local links
and local social influencers
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19. Search Engine Optimization Truths
• Your #1 job is to make finding, crawling and indexing your site
as easy as possible for bots
• High rankings are built on relevant content & authority
 Remember the #1 goal of search engines
• Following white hat strategies is best
 Engines getting smarter about search spam
 Do you have time to fight the search engines?
• The simpler a site the easier to get ranked
 Balance CMS/Rich Media vs Search Objectives
• SEO is NOT fast and never ends
 Set aside budget for SEO as you would PPC
• SEO will effect your marketing, IT, Web site and copy writing
groups.
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20. Social Media and Search
• Social media has dramatically increased the amount and speed of
indexable content available – everyone is a publisher
• Blogs, comments and articles are much easier to publish and now
have revenue attached to them via Google Adsense, etc.
• Social media networks has raised the bar on cross linking, product
communication and personal profile publishing.
• The concept of a homepage is changing
 Not just on your site, but Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, Pinterest
• Being involved in a conversation and pointing (via links) too an
authoritative piece of content adds to the link building tool set
• Social is a core element of earned media: content+search+social
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21. Twitter – Another Form of Social Search
• Looks like a cross between email and search engine
• Hashtags and @ symbols drive direct keyword relevance
• Popular topics drive HUGE traffic
• Find people who are talking about topics you are interested in
• Now Twitter feeds in Google and Bing (just announced)
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22. Pinterest
• Visual collection of thoughts – virtual pin board
• Easy to share, re-pin and collect from around the web
• High percentage of women > 80%+
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23. Syndicate and Engage Your Audience via Twitter
Create Content Create Campaigns Syndicate Track Results
Your Content One off Tweets In Optify Reports
• articles • Blog post • Increased visitors
• blog posts • 3rd party content • # of leads
• conferences • Whitepaper • # of sign-ups
• information guides • Source = Twitter
• online courses Create a Series of • Detail = Campaign
• podcasts Tweets in a Campaign
• press releases • Build your tweets for the In Twitter
• speaking events week in one sitting • Increase followers
• videos • Build all of the tweets for • # of ReTweets
ReTweets
• webinars the campaign at once
• white papers • Include links to your site Facebook
• webinars which we shorten for you LinkedIn
• Schedule tweets to go Pinterest
out through your account Your Site
Other Blogs
• Utilizing social media and Twitter to extend the reach of your content is ideal
• Tracking the results through campaign variables on your link back to your
site, increased number of visitors and increased number of followers
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24. The Journey to an Engaged Social Media Program
(thank you Ant’s Eye View)
Traditional Experimental Operational Measurable Fully Engaged
• Listening to • “The arrival of • Budget and • Start tracking • Everyone has
what people are Mavericks” authority given business imact the opportunity
saying • Someone takes • Strategy, tactics, • Cross functional to participate in
• On the sidelines the time to headcount silo’s the social web
create company • Silo’d in • Defined success • Governance,
profiles marketing • Influencers policies in place
identified with clear roles
Low resource Part time or “side Resources required, Organizational Very few companies
requirement time” but metrics question impact across are here yet –
starts to bubble up mostly agencies
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25. Paid Media Cost Methods
• Online Media Can be Purchased Using Various Cost
Methods, Each with Pros & Cons.
 Time: Great for guaranteed SOV and placement, but
More Common
Advertiser Risk
inventory is determined by visitor traffic. Effective
method for page takeovers to build awareness and to
block out competitors.
 CPM: Strong guarantee of impressions, share of
voice, and targeted placements, but greater risk (of ROI)
falls on the advertiser.
Less Common
 CPC: Provides targeted placement at less risk than
Publisher Risk
CPM, but impressions are not guaranteed and risk of
forced and/or incentive clicks.
 CPA, CPL or Revenue Share: The least amount of risk for
advertiser and paid only when an user-action is
performed, but no guarantee of
impressions, placement, nor acceptance by publishers.
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26. Paid Search Overview
• The most effective, timely and trackable way to start spending
marketing dollars.
• Market is in transition from a Google + Yahoo + Bing + others
to just Google + Bing
• Google is king – they have the largest volume, highest quality
audience, best testing tools & easiest user interface.
 Bing is gaining with marketing, innovation and business
development
 Google content network is MUCH bigger and more refined
than Bing
Testing is what will make or break your program!
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27. How Paid Search Programs Work
Advertiser www.Google.com
(Search)
Advertiser
Syndicated Engines
Advertiser AOL.com
Google, (Syndicated Search)
Advertiser Bing
Etc.
AdSense Sites
(Content Ads)
Advertiser
CPM Sites
Advertiser (Sub Set of AdSense)
• All of these programs are ad serving systems.
• Search is just one outlet of impressions for the system.
• Everything is centered around a pay per click model vs a CPM or CPA
• Even CPM programs in Google are judged on an effective CPC basis
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28. Paid Search Testing is Critical
• The success of your program depends on testing and your
ability to incrementally expand/improve
• Look for incremental improvement over a long term.
 Include seasonality, week parts & day parts
• Your web analytics/tracking protocol is critical
 What level of granularity can you support/afford?
 Do you automate bid management?
• Balance between click volume and statistical significance.
 Does it make sense to optimize terms that get 4 clicks per month?
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29. Paid Search - Areas to Optimize
• Inventory (# of impressions accessible)
• Campaign Structure & Categories
• Budget
• Keywords
• Match types (broad, phrase, exact)
• Negative Keywords
• Publishers/Engines
• Copy
• Placement: Search vs. Content
• Bid Strategy/Ad Rank
• Conversion Process
• Landing Pages
• Balance with Life Time Value
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30. New Issues with Search Engines
• Competition
 Bing running Yahoo search – impact is negligible so far?
 Google updating UI to add in Bing “esque” features
 Google Instant – rapid update of results interface while you type
• Real Time Search
 Google’s “caffeine” is trying to index content faster
• Universal Search
 Combining multiple media types into same Search Engine Results Page.
 Text, Video, Audio, Images, etc.
• Personalized Search
 Change results page based on previous search behavior and website visitation
 Off-shoot of behavioral targeting
• Latent Semantic Indexing
 Already in use to improve results
 Context of keywords as well as words around the word.
• Mobile Search
 iPhone, iPad, Surface, Blackberry, Google Android Platform
 Different search results based on mobile intent – directions, reviews, local, etc.
• Authorship
 Assigning authorship to person who created content
 Adds a picture of author to search engine results page for better CTR
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31. That’s a Wrap!
• Visit www.optify.net for more articles, information & blogs (in the process of
being updated)
• Also visit www.optify.net for jobs 
• Personal blog – www.branddigital.net
• E-mail me with comments, additional questions, clarifications –
scott@optify.net
• Join the LinkedIn University of Washington MBA Alumni Group – go beyond
your class!
• Thank You!
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32. Appendix - Fun SEO Tools
• http://www.optify.net/
 Blog posts, guides, SEO and Lead Intelligence software
• http://www.branddigital.net
• http://www.SEOmoz.org
 Local company with great community, blog and tool set
• http://www.seodigger.com
 See a list of keywords and what rank for a specific URL
• http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html
 Various free tools for linking, keyword inventory & more
• http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
 142 SEO tools for all things
• http://www.marketleap.com
 Easy to use SEO tools that includes competitive comparisons.
• http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
 Search engine spider simulator
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33. Appendix – SEM Resources
SEO Technical Resources RSS Feed Resources
• www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/in  www.marketingprofs.com
dex.html (list of bots)  www.feedster.com (find feeds)
• www.webmonkey.com (developer site  www.netgator.com
with good tips for SEO)
 www.firefox.com
SEO Strategic Resources
• www.searchenginewatch.com Local Search Resources
• www.branddigital.net  www.geolocal.com/
• www.bruceclay.com/
• www.clickz.com
Paid Search Resources
SEO Free Tools  http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/
• www.marketleap.com
• www.seotoolkit.com
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34. Appendix - Directories
Search Directories Articles Directories
• Dmoz.org  www.Ezinearticles.com
• Dir.yahoo.com
 www.goarticles.com
• www.joeant.com
• www.skaffe.com  www.netterweb.com
• www.bluefind.com  www.articlefinders.com
• www.zeal.com
 www.articlecity.com
• www.goguides.org
• www.gimpsy.com  www.ideamarketers.com
• www.wowdirectory.com  www.buzzle.com
• www.sevenseek.com
 thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/
• www.thisisouryear.com
• Search.looksmart.com  www.certificate.net
• www.microsoft.com/small  www.amazines.com
business/hub.mspx
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35. Appendix - Resources
Design Resources Testing Resources
• www.pixelmill.com ASP Hosted Applications
• www.templatezone.com
• www.templatekit.com  www.Optimost.com
 www.Offermatica.com
Web Analytics Resources
• www.clicktracks.com  www.NetConversions.com
• www.urchin.com  www.sitespect.com
• www.nettracker.com  www.Vertster.com
Optimization Resources Split Testing Calculators
• www.websiteanalyzer.com  www.splittester.com
• www.websiteoptimization.com
 http://calc.in-the-name-of-
profit.com/86429/ab_test.jsp
 http://www.vertster.com/adwords-tool/
Split Testing Software
 http://www.onlinemarketingtoday.com/sof
tware/split-testing/
 http://www.splittestgenerator.com/
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36. Appendix – More Resources
Pop-up Generator
• www.dynamic-popup-generator.com/
Opt-In List Builders
• www.advertisingknowhow.com/Optin_List_builder.htm
• www.coregcomplete.com/index.php (co-reg software)
• www.opt-intelligence.com (co-reg network)
Marketing Information and Content Sites
• www.marketingexperiments.com
• www.clickz.com
• www.marketingsherpa.com
• www.marketingprofs.com
Examples of Viral Marketing Campaigns
• http://showdown.contagiousmedia.org/
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37. US Advertising Spending by Media
2007 – 2012 in Millions
• Search has overtaken display as the #1
media spend online (as of 2008)
• Internet will overtake newspapers in
2011 (if not sooner)
• Internet is bigger than spot
local/national TV in spend
• Search is already bigger than print
Yellow Pages/directories
• Lots of traditional media spends are in
decline while Internet is up, up, up!
Source: Jack Meyers Media Business Report as
provided to eMarketer, Sept 14, 2009
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38. Customer Segmentation & Search
Two Major Ways to Segment with Search
• By Keyword
 Each keyword someone enters is a behavioral indicator.
 A correlation exists between the stage of the research or purchase process and
the type of keywords entered.
o MP3 Player vs ipod 4GB nano black
o Music vs Free Rhapsody Trial
• By Demographic Data
 New tools that link account information with keyword searches are available.
 Research keywords to get demographic profile (very helpful for wider
campaigns)
 Target broader keywords to a narrower demographic (helpful for expanding
keyword campaigns)
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39. How Do They Get Data? – Spiders are Dumb…
Search Spiders follow links and return data to search engine for
processing with algorithms. They can:
• Read meta tags, title tags and HTML content.
• Read URL’s (some read past a ? variable, some don’t).
• Read some dynamic content.
• Follow links through-out the site if built into page.
• Are looking for STRONG uses of keywords.
 H1 tags, title tags and HTML content are more important.
 Bold and italic words.
• Are looking for CONTEXT
 Block of related text, pages with single themes, etc.
Spiders can only return what they can read and find.
Our job is to help them find the right information in the right format
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40. Paid Search Metrics, Levers and Actions
Metrics Levers Actions
Impressions Total Budget A campaign daily or monthly cap will limit the # of impressions.
# of Keywords Add keywords via expansion.
# of Engines Include misspellings & similes.
Bid Position Add content traffic to search program.
Search v Content Bid positions 1-4 get the most circulation through syndication.
Match Type
Campaign Set-Up
Click Through Rate Bid Position The higher bid positions get more click-throughs.
Relevancy of Copy Putting keywords into the copy increased click-through.
Compelling Copy Free now and offers tend to increase click-through rates.
Search v Content Content ads have much lower click-through rate than search ads.
Match Type
Cost per Click Publisher/Engine Different engines have different ranges of prices.
Bid Position The higher the bid position you go for, the higher the CPC.
Max Cost per Click By setting a higher max CPC, your cost will rise to meet position.
Competition The more competition for a term, the more expensive.
Match Type
Conversion Relevance of Copy The closer the copy matches the product offer/the higher the conversion.
Rate Landing Page Create a very clear, singular action landing page that matches keyword.
Offer What is a compelling offer? Make it so and match the copy.
Funnel Efficiency What speed bumps exist between the ad the thank you page.
Average Order Size Product Pricing Focus more dollars on the categories that drive highest average order size.
Cross/Up Sell Manage to a higher LTV for keywords and categories by acquiring at a higher CPS.
Discounts
Life Time Value Acquisition Source Improvements in conversion process and post acquisition communication will allow for a
Re-marketing Sequence higher allowable acquisition rate which can open up the acquisition funnel.
Product Suite/Releases
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41. Testing Methodologies & Tools
• No Testing is Death
• Start with A/B/C testing > but be disciplined in variable control (only one
at a time!)
• Move to multi-variant when you have the traffic to support it.
 Ability to test millions of combinations of variables via tree’d approach
(aka smart test design)
 Taguchi method is de-rigueur, but new, more modern methods are
now commercially available.
• Small incremental changes are the rule, not the exception.
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