Webmaster World PubCon 2007: Word of Mouth Marketing

I’ve spoken at Webmaster World’s marketing convention the past few years. PubCon 2007 was held in November, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I once again attended had the honor of attending as a speaker. Here’s a summary of my presentation on Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM), along with the full video.

What is Word of Mouth Marketing?

WOMM can be organic, when consumers start talking about a product or service naturally, or amplified by marketers driving campaigns in order to create buzz and accelerate the discussion. Either way, consumers must be given a reason to talk about something in order for word to spread; in order for the “buzz” to become viral, it needs to be worth buzzing about.

The Internet’s Role in WOMM

WOMM works by getting “influencers”—highly regarded, in-the-know consumers—to talk about the product, both online and off. The internet allows influencers to reach a wider audience much more quickly through email, instant message, social networks, chat rooms, social news sites and any other form of social media on the web.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social Media Marketing operates on many of the same principles as Word of Mouth Marketing, but does not rely on human influencers as much as online communication channels. SMM is strictly an online tactic and generally more outrageous and less brand specific than WOMM.

Planning, Integrating and Implementing a WOMM Campaign

A WOMM or SMM campaign generates more buzz when supported by traditional media buys and a larger marketing or advertising campaign. Successful integration requires extensive planning, carefully timed execution and comprehensive tracking and measuring.

Watch my full presentation (24 minutes) for a more in-depth look at the ins and outs of planning and executing a successful WOMM or SMM campaign.

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I’m Louise Rijk, and I’ll be your host once again for the latest installment of AMP Talk. In this special holiday edition, we dive into the holiday shopping madness, kicking off with my comparison of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Then, Social Media Marketing Manager Dan Zarrella will explain what goes into a seasonal SEO campaign—and how soon to start it. In a special interview segment, our producer Alison Driscoll will try out the mic to get a rundown on PubCon, a convention I recently spoke at. Finally, our Paid Search Manager David DiMartino breaks out a PPC budget for the holidays.

“Cyber Monday,” the new “it” day of internet shopping, fall on the Monday after Thanksgiving and is the web equivalent of the cultural phenomenon “Black Friday,” the biggest day of the year for retail. To capitalize on the online shopping marketplace, etailers need to develop web promotions like free shipping and free gifts with purchase in order to drive traffic and compete with the big mall stores.

SEO campaigns need to be revamped for the holidays just like any traditional advertising campaign or promotion. However, the how and when are a little different on the internet and effective holiday Search Engine Optimization techniques and strategies can vary widely for different types of online businesses. Dan Zarrella gives businesses of all sizes an early gift with SEO tips for the holiday season.

AMP Talk producer Alison Driscoll puts me in the hot seat for an interview on the recent PubCon Search Marketing Conference in Las Vegas, where I caught up with Matt Cutts to get the inside scoop on social media, link building and other hot topics industry insiders were buzzing about. I also give a recap of my presentation on Word of Mouth Marketing.

David DiMartino gives etailers the scoop on seasonal PPC ads and promotions, detailing what to do and when to start planning. Take notes for next year, because holiday PPC campaigns are all about strategy and preparation early on, especially for smaller businesses.

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In this edition of AMP Talk, Louise Rijk discusses the importance of social media for online marketing, in particular the use of blogging to create buzz and gain links. Social Media Marketing Manager Dan Zarrella breaks down the buzz over Facebook and other social media networks, and explains how to use them to your benefit. We’ll hear an internet success story from Advanced Media client Peter Marinilli of Target Consulting. Finally, Paid Search manager David DiMartino gives us the dish on click fraud and how to avoid pay-per-click attacks.

Blogs are the latest form of viral marketing, picking up where email left off. When used correctly, a blog adds valuable SEO content to a site that is highly relevant and timely for readers. A strong strategic marketing plan should incorporate both email and blogging in order to reach a broader range of interested consumers.

Facebook and other similar social networking sites offer some of the most cost effective means of acquiring links and driving traffic. Webmasters need to learn how to take advantage of these social media marketing methods to gain links and build buzz, but this is not without risk for some types of companies.

Advanced Media Productions’ client Peter Marinilli of Target Consulting outlines how the internet has changed business industries and how he has used the web to further his business and make himself a more successful sales recruiter.

Click fraud thwarts even the best laid pay-per-click campaign efforts, but you do not have to be a victim. By detecting a potential click fraud attack, you can take steps to avoid losing your customers—and your budget.

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Effective Email Marketing

Generating Links and Using Google Universal Search

Crafting Compelling PPC Ads

A flurry of email marketing statistics from various sources has been distributed via the Internet over the last couple of weeks indicating that email marketing remains one of the most effective tactics in the online marketers’ toolbox.

- Shop.org released a report (State of Retailing Online 2007) emphasizing the effectiveness of commercial email as on online marketing vehicle. Here are the finding:

- Email campaigns, send from an in-house email address list, can deliver sales orders for a cost of $7.00 per order compare to $71.89 for banner ads, $26.75 for paid search and $17.47 for affiliate programs.

- Another impressive email marketing stat from the Direct Marketing Association, via the Email Insider: Email marketers are getting a return of $48.29 in return of every dollar spent on email marketing campaigns.

Blogging and podcasting are becoming increasingly important functions of businesses on the web as companies learn the value of integrating audio and video components to their websites. Both add valuable content to sites and can contribute to a well-thought out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign to raise search engine rankings. Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales at Advanced Media Productions, explained the key concepts of blogs and podcasts in a keynote address at the 128 Business Expo 2007.

Corporate Blogging Benefits

Business blogs can be used to communicate internally with employees, or externally with clients; both methods provide a means of direct communication with readers. An internal corporate blog helps employees share knowledge and generate ideas efficiently, making sure everyone in the organization is up to speed and on the same page. An external blog will raise awareness of your products or services, position you as experts in your field and build up your brand image.

Audio Podcasting

Podcasting is another means of relaying information over the internet whose popularity is growing rapidly. Some consider podcasting a form of “audio blogging,” and it can be used as such, if produced and promoted correctly. A podcast can be played in many forms and used in much the same way as a blog to communicate new ideas and promote products, concepts and services. When properly integrated with text, a podcast can also help an SEO effort.

Over at the MediaPost’s Email Insider blog blogger Chad White recently blogged about the time elapse that often occurs between the time an email subscriber signs-up and when they actually receive the first email message or newsletter in their email box. His comments are based on the recent “Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study”, which concludes that nearly one-third of the major online retailers that were included in the study did not deliver their first regular email to a new subscriber within two weeks of the subscription date. For nearly 20 percent of retailers it took more than a month to deliver the first regular email and some did not deliver any email at all. 18 percent delivered their first regular email within three days.

Besides the lost opportunity cost associated with delayed delivery of email to new subscribers he suggests that it would be a good industry practice to guarantee new subscribers delivery of email within 10 days of signing up. A practical implement of this would be to add a statement to the welcome message, which could read like  “Your subscription will be processed shortly and your first promotion or issue will arrive within 10 days”.

The 10-day rule obviously must fit within the frequency that email newsletters are published. For instance a bi-monthly newsletter would not be able to make this pledge to all subscribers, but in this case the rule could be adjusted to 14 days.

The report highlights again that timely delivery of the first email promotion or newsletter limits the chance that people will flag the email message as spam because they forgot they subscribed.

People that actively seek your company out to receive email promotions or a newsletter usually have high expectations and those can only be met with prompt email delivery after they have signed up for the list.

Let me know what you think.

A little over a month ago, Google released it’s “Campaign Optimizer” tool, which can be used to find ways to “fine-tune your Google Adwords PPC advertising campaigns.”  The tool can be found via a link in the Campaign details page or under the Tools tab in your Adwords account. Using the tool will generate an on-screen custom proposal for your account with suggestions on how to improve your campaign. Running a quick test of the Optimizer yielded some interesting suggestions. The first was a budget increase. In a lot of cases, an increase in a campaign budget is often warranted. PPC is a competitive landscape, and if you want a better presence, you often need to spend some more money. Another proposed option was changing the destination URLs of the ads to capitalize certain words (i.e. www.greenwidgets.com becomes www.GreenWidgets.com). I found this to be a pretty useful suggestion, though it’s one we’ve already implemented with other campaigns in the past. A little more dubious were the suggestions that most of the keywords be switched to broad match. One of the most important parts of optimization is targeting more tightly, and broad match is something that widens targeting rather than reduces it. The seemed to me like a way for Google to put more of your money in it’s pocket by getting you to generate unnecessary clicks.

The most interesting thing about Campaign Optimizer was just how long it took me to find it. After first hearing about it I had kept my eye open for it, but never noticed it appear. Upon further reading about where the link to the Optimizer was supposed to be, I noticed it was missing in all of the accounts that Advanced Media Productions was managing through the Client Managert. Out of curiosity I logged out of Client Manager account, and logged into one of the individual AdWords accounts. There was the Campaign Optimizer links, right where they should be. It seems that Google has made the Optimizer unavailable to their Client Managers. This is interesting, since most Client Manager accounts are Google Advertising Professionals or agencies that are managing accounts for clients. This could be looked at two different ways. One, more innocently, that Google assumes Client Managers are agencies that don’t need a tool like Campaign Optimizer in order to manage an account optimally. The other, more sinister reason would be that Google wanted this tool to be inconspicuous to agencies, and obvious to the average Google AdWords user. This could potentially undercut some agencies who are performing only basic PPC campaign management tasks for their clients. With a tool like Campaign Optimizer, a regular business person wouldn’t need an agency to improve their account; Google will do it for them. Of course, do you trust Google to manage your account in a way that’s best for you, or that’s best for them? The Campaign Optimizer’s proposals might be a good start, but true optimization comes from constant testing and maintenance by experienced professionals.

Through the use of new Internet tools and social networking, the historically passive consumer is taking more control over content development, messaging and distribution, a task that traditionally was perform by marketers and PR people at agencies, studios, publishing houses, retailers and media outlets. Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales at Advanced Media Productions, explained, in a keynote address at the 495 Business Expo that this trend will cause a significant rise in prominence of the Internet as a major content consumption, marketing and advertising medium. The keynote will identify and discuss the trends that drive the changes in advertising in the next five years and make the Internet a mainstream media outlet that is rivaling traditional media for reach and advertising dollars.

Integrated product reviews and ratings are becoming increasingly popular among consumers who are using those reviews for online product research, but only a small number of online merchants are currently offering this feature mainly out of fear of losing sales due to negative reviews.

Recent studies from Jupiter Research and Forrester reveal that the fear for negative reviews is overblown and that they are generally considered helpful to consumers in that they present the pros and cons when making a purchase. In addition, negative reviews often give customers a good insight of any shortcomings a product may have, lowering the risk of costly side-effects, such as high return rates. Additional research from various high-end retailers like CompUSA.com, Overtock.com and Petworld.com, that have been using integrated product reviews for sometime, have also indicated that consumers value unbiased product reviews and ratings, especially when they consider highly priced purchases.

The positives of the integrated consumer reviews and ratings seem to outweigh the possible negative exposure. Here are some considerations for online merchants who are sitting on the fence on this issue:

- Social ecommerce, which will have a major impact on how consumers buy online in the future, requires the inclusion of customer reviews and blogs into ecommerce web sites.

- One drawback of including customers in the marketing process is that you have no control over what type of review or feedback you may get, but the anxiety may be unfounded.

- Although most customers review systems, whether this is integrated outsource system like Bazaarvoice or a custom build internal system, have preview systems, the dilemma often is that the decision on how much to control.

- Negative reviews do not seem to have much impact on the sales. It is natural that there are always some users who complain or have a negative experience.

- User reviews and ratings can drive up conversion rates by 20 to 30 percent.

- Integrating customer reviews and ratings add content to the web site that boost search engine rankings, provides feedback on products and services, build customer loyalty and reinforces credibility.