When it comes to the brilliant storylines in Mad Men, I’m hopelessly addicted. I can’t look away. As a bonus, Mad Men comes with historical perspective – in terms of social norms and rituals, but also in terms of how the advertising industry works.

In terms of how far we’ve come in the last 40 years, social progress has been amazing. When it comes to the actual business of ad agencies, so many of the tired old memes and themes linger on to this day, it can be downright depressing.

In a recent episode (510), Christmas Waltz, the agency is feeling the financial heat from a client spending hiatus (Mohawk Airlines). But not all the news is bad. They’re getting ready to pitch new business to Jaguar. It’s not exactly General Motors, but Draper Cooper Sterling Pryce doesn’t yet “have a car,” and will be the smallest agency in the pitch proceedings. Pete Campbell is desperate to get this “car.” In the partners’ meeting, fossil Bert Cooper seems distracted, and finally blurts out a typical non-sequitur: “They’re lemons! They never start.” Don Draper is too cynical to jump on board Pete’s pitch train at first, but he seems to warm to the idea when this new mission (the umpteenth of too many to remember) gives him something spirited to do (spend all of his time in the office, like he used to) now that he’s quarrelling with his young wife (who used to spend all of her time there, with him).

What’s depressing? Well, even in 1965 there was a palpable sense that the merry-go-round of “our next victory is more of the same: pitch, creative, client, bill, haggle, keep selling, client malaise, pitch another, lather, rinse, repeat” was getting stale. No agency getting the upper hand, clients seeing only diminishing returns from mass media advertising. Clients, already disillusioned, seeking to reclaim the magic of mass media glory days gone by. And by extension, the magic-makers in their offices seeking to re-stoke the adrenaline rush of the early days by applauding small wins in all-hands meetings and staging exaggerated teamwork exercises, such as working through Christmas and New Years for some speculative business.

The other constant – true in 1955, losing credibility by 1965, and patently ridiculous by now – is the premise that your agency’s collection of brilliant strategists, genius creatives, and market researchers will somehow create the “perfect pitch” that will pull business away from the other agency’s similar group. And that this perfect campaign will magically transform the client’s business and boost profits (after paying the agency, in-house overhead, and bloated mass media costs). All too often, the end result was little more than to flatter the buyers that they were involved in something larger and more inspiring than a cold calculation of the ROI on dollars invested in new customer acquisition. Ever hear anyone say “ROI” in a meeting with Don Draper?

In short, as early as 1965, novelty in advertising as a way to build markets (and win business for agencies, to make men like Don Draper even wealthier) was getting old. Madison Avenue was already getting stuck in a rut. It would be the last generation of “Mad Men” – those seemingly infallible gods of persuasion who didn’t even have to look at the price of their exclusive office rent. (As we know from Sterling Cooper’s machinations, that luxury was short-lived even for many of them, as upstart agencies splintered away from parent companies in the hopes of keeping more money for the new principals, with the promise of yet more novelty – something the clients immediately smelled as an opportunity to get the same quality for less money.)

A further insult to our collective self-respect is the persistent notion that the advertising industry is about being nefariously talented in the art of selling heretofore undifferentiatable concoctions of sugar, food coloring, and cheap ingredients to buyers so stupid as to be “influenced by advertising,” no matter what. Somehow, the average consumer is supposed to be unable to differentiate between the kind of product (like WD-40, when it came out) that generates true word-of-mouth by devotees, and thus rapid sales increases, and something like Frank’s Red Hot sauce, an aging brand that is currently being revived, pointlessly, with a campaign portraying little old ladies “shockingly” telling people “I put that #$%^ on everything.” You put that $%^& on everything? Really?

(While you’re asking questions like “really?” you might also ask yourself whether the company has ever changed the formula for the sauce, how the production facilities work, how the peppers are farmed, how today’s peppers look, feel, and taste vs. the peppers of 1918, etc. If you’re a real data maven, you can even look up stats for their UK-based holding company, Reckitt Benckiser, a $25BN conglomerate. The only little old ladies that really appreciate Frank’s Red Hot probably like its current dividend yield of 3.67%, and the 10-year appreciation in Reckitt Benckiser’s stock price: 181%. Annualized, that’s 10.87%, a superior rate of return by any measure.)

But that’s an apt analogy for how the modern (and by modern, I mean the 2012 version of the creative agency that hasn’t changed its main modus operandi since 1955) ad agency operates. No matter how circumstances may be changing in the actual economy, no matter how radically clients’ true needs, products, and data analysis capabilities may have been transformed, the modern 1955/2012 agency still “puts that @#$% on everything.” Flip on the TV, and you get to watch that @#$%.

I’m not done with these guys yet! If you take a visit to Reckitt Benckiser’s website – they also make familiar brands like Calgon, Finish, Clearasil, Durex, and Easy-Off – and you find that the company is actually loud and proud about the size of its media budget, the “largest in the industry”! “While others are pulling back,” boasts the copy, “RB is boldly pushing ahead and giving its brands the attention they deserve.” (The attention they “deserve,” mind you, has largely been bought with decades of previous big-media investments. We deserve it more than ever because we already overpaid for it!) They actually cite a figure: it’s 12.4% of net revenues, adding: “That’s visionary.“ You can’t make this @#$% up.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Woolite. But I refuse to “put that @#$% on everything,” no matter how many TV spots I have to help RB pay for.

Is this all just random bashing? Am I basing my critique of high-media-spend-to-revenues ratios on science, or superstition? It’s not easy to prove either way. But it’s easy enough to show that you can achieve similar or better results with far lower spends.

Someone might say: “This is just how it works. As it worked for Nike, today it works for Under Armour. That’s how you build a large brand, even one that starts out as a subversive or niche one at first.” Maybe, but what’s Lululemon Athletica’s comparable spend? How much better could Under Armour have done if it had repurposed 75% its traditional media budget for any number of other marketing and product development purposes? The two companies’ financial fortunes are easily compared here

They’re pretty comparable in a lot of ways. It’s just that one of the two companies – the one that spends a lot less on traditional advertising – has done significantly better than the other (and in a significantly shorter time frame since going public).

All scapegoating aside, maybe they can learn. Maybe even companies like Reckitt Benckiser will  eventually see the wisdom of “pulling back” from these wasteful spending patterns; soon, they might even feel silly for bragging about them. It’s only a matter of time. When it comes to products like Frank’s Red Hot, granted, pulling back probably isn’t an option. It really is undifferentiated red goop. No one is going to grab a few extra bottles from the grocery store after tasting it once, call Mom, and say “Mamma, you should really put this shit on everything!” Stop spending on media, and Frank’s Red Hot crawls back under its rock.

Change is coming, in any case. Some conglomerates, many of us think, are addressing those changes far too gradually. Procter & Gamble recently drew attention for announcing large cuts in its traditional advertising budgets. But on closer inspection, the announcement looks more like a government announcement than one from a private company. It’s being phased in over five years and merely slows the spend growth rate rather than constituting an actual cut. Indeed, larger planned operations expense cuts and broader headcount downsizing will dwarf P&G’s ad spend restraint in terms of actual dollars.

A host of other consumer products conglomerates (Unilever, Kraft, Pepsico, Coca-Cola) have also recently committed to maintaining or increasing traditional media spending, even in the midst of other cost control measures and in some cases serious company-wide downsizing exercises. Yet the expected budget shift to digital spaces is undergoing serious hiccups, with the recent pullout of GM from their relatively small Facebook spend representing just one example.

If you judge by the current stock price premiums of many brands, and the strange time warp that the largest brand stewards remain locked into when it comes to overspending on defending them, the Brand Bubble isn’t bursting just yet. But curious and info-savvy consumers are changing their behavior over time. Individual categories and individual products stand to face serious threats, and old-tymey bullhorn marketing can’t indefinitely withstand the info-savvy peer-sharing behaviors of the digital generation. (That’s why, for instance, online reputation software companies are red hot. Some startups in the space already have Fortune 500 companies placing large orders for solutions that have yet to be built, for problems it was never in these companies’ DNA to anticipate.)

Advertising today is to consumer awareness what penicillin is to garden-variety bacteria. “Superbugs” resist antibiotics now. Analogously, most consumers have become immune to harping by brands. They’ve grown thick shells overtop of the buttons advertisers used to press. Many cockroaches could survive global thermonuclear annihilation; many consumers could resist an ad budget of $50 trillion.

The safety and cachet of brands still means a lot in some circumstances, but where those virtues are trumped by other attributes valued by customers, the consumers of advertising will be non-responsive to the vast majority of repetitive brand exercises. Seth Godin long ago made the case (in Permission Marketing, 1999, and Purple Cow, 2003) that consumers are now frantically fleeing advertising just as fast as you can find new ways to shovel it out. The only possible antidote to that, he argued, was either permission or remarkability. The “TV-industrial complex” of 1950-1975 is dead, even if many advertisers wish it weren’t.

As search marketers, we believe that another key to penetrating the consciousnesses of cockroach-shelled prospects is “relevance.” Advocates of social media would add “peer respect.” Some purists argue for “transparency” and “authenticity,” whereas Godin maintains that All Marketers (still) Tell Stories .

So what’s next? Can advertising agencies play a role in steering advertisers through the Chaos Scenario that is unfolding now? Can the “agency of the future” do so? What would that look like? What should agencies be offering? What should they be thinking about?

I’ll ask the questions and provide 99.44% true answers in the next post in this series.

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

This is pretty old news by now, but this week I want to write a timely post about how Facebook is one whole evolutionary step beyond Google and how it is going to eat the search engine’s lunch.

Google has become one of the biggest businesses on the planet by positioning itself and its advertising exactly one click away from any desired action:

▪ Immediately before finding the new novel you want to buy.
▪ One click before a mortgage application.
▪ Or even one click away from finding some videos of people doing things that are all together less savoury.

The problem for Google is that it cannot affect people’s behaviour before the last search.* Google search is all about the fulfilment of demand; it does not shape, nor does it generate the demand.

It is exactly because of this Achilles heel that Google has produced (or acquired) a mind-bogglingly large number of products and services. Some of them have been good (hello to Google Maps, Gmail and Docs), and some not so great (good riddance to Buzz), and on some the jury is still out (Google+, Display Network and Remarketing).

Despite this proliferation of services, I must point out that Google have been ‘caught napping.’

Just as users adopted Google so quickly in the early years because it made information free and available in a way never before possible, Google is now about to lose relevancy because users don’t just want to consume information. Web users want to publish information themselves and they also want to vet, verify, and judge that information, all in a safe, constant environment where their peers collaborate.

This is no longer a world dominated by the last click of Google but the last 100 impressions of Facebook.

Google’s obsession has been tools to make things better, faster and easier for users, but I don’t think that any of them get Google significantly further up the decision making process towards the ‘Demand Generation’ dollars that have historically been ruled by TV and is now beginning to be colonised by Facebook.

Why should Google be concerned about Facebook? Simply put, Facebook is delivering a Paradigm shift in web use.**

The Facebook project is much larger than that of any other website past or present, and I would argue that its ubiquity in how we use the web is going to become bigger, more important and longer-lived than that of Google’s.

Facebook is EVERYWHERE. (Image Credit: Mashable)

‘To Google’ may have made it into the Oxford English Dictionary as a new verb for web search, but
‘To Facebook’ is going to define how we use the Web. Full stop.
How is this going to happen?

For Facebook to deliver the paradigm shift I am suggesting above, it must redefine our relationship with the web. To try and illustrate my point I will give some broad elements which define the web and what it is used for, then, I will try and show how Facebook is taking those over and what that might mean:

Any attempt to define the internet (and its primary uses), would probably make some mention of the

following:
1. The internet helps us connect with friends.
2. The internet is freely accessible and navigable via great search and indexing tools like Google.
3. The internet allows data to be free: sites like Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers will give you masses of data on almost anything.
4. The internet allows ecommerce.
5. The internet allows us to post notes about our lives. i.e. Blogging
6. And in more recent times: The internet mixes GPS technology with map data for augmented realities and location -based services.

Now line these up against Facebook’s offerings old, new, and planned:

1. Facebook was designed to connect us with friends.
2. Facebook is constantly tweaking its Search tool and is already working on ‘social’ and even ‘semantic’ search which is seen as the ‘holy grail’ of search in the future.***
3. Facebook has ported in Wikipedia into its domain and has its very own ‘Questions’ application to challenge the likes of Yahoo! Answers.
4. Facebook is helping many brands deliver ROI positive media campaigns through ASU advertising****. Facebook also has Marketplaces and Offer distribution, and of course, its own currency in Facebook Credits.
5. Facebook Notes and Wall updates allow all users to blog, be it micro or macro in scale.
6. Facebook launched Places as competition to foursquare.

Facebook is starting to bring together many of the key services provided by the chaotic wider web under one roof, one brand, and one single, user-friendly, user interface which is simple and easy to use. If it succeeds in doing this seamlessly (and without falling over privacy laws as it goes), then it will have removed the average web user’s need to browse through other sites at all.

And don’t get me started on how the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ will take this momentum and give it an extra boost. If you add on top of all this Facebook functionality the fact that it is inherently social, and thus backed up by friends, family and colleagues rather than anonymous clicks and back links (as with Google’s SERPs***), then Facebook will be informing a shockingly massive number of decisions made in people’s lives.

If it achieves its aims, Facebook will have become all of the clicks of the mouse prior to Google’s last click and it is only a matter of time before Google becomes marginalised and goes the way of Yahoo/Bing potentially leaving Facebook as the 100 prior impressions and the last click as well.

Now you've seen this picture. You're welcome.

I would suggest that Facebook’s eventual effect on Web use could be as big as that of Microsoft Windows on general computer usage. Before Windows, computers were the sole domain of programmers and scientists: DOS was no friendly place for the beginner, and had Bill Gates not come along with an operating system that everyone (literally everyone), could use, then personal computing had no future.

In the same sense that Windows made order of the chaos of early computing, I’d say it’s a fair prediction that Facebook is going to make sense of the wider internet (not for the experts or for you reading this post, and not for the early adopters or the geeks and scientists, but quite seriously, for everybody else).

Is this a ridiculous claim to make of a Social Network?

I don’t think so.

Facebook is going to do to Google what TV did to Radio. Yes, Google will still exist and be very important, but it won’t be the biggest or the most important site on the web any more.

Facebook is going to eat Google’s Lunch.

* There a few points I have made in this post which I either have not had time to fully substantiate here, or have intentionally not bothered substantiating in the interests of generating a debate rather than a White Paper. I asterisk this point in particular as being one which could verily be argued because I don’t want my Head of Search to have an aneurism if he reads this.

** This term is oft misused, so I offer a definition here: a Paradigm Shift is a complete change from one way of thinking to another. It’s a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.

*** I totally accept that Google+ now brings social endorsement to Sponsored ads on Google, but I would question how beneficial this is going to be unless Google+ achieves a critical mass of users.

**** I also acknowledge that some brands (notable in this weeks’ news; General Motors), have not worked out the correct approach on how to get value from Facebook, and that stories of failure are as frequent as those of success. I would also state that failures are more to do with inappropriate planning and inadequate execution and less about the Facebook Platform

So you’re a social media marketing rockstar. You manage your Facebook Page with style and grace. You have your fingers in all kinds of social media ad formats and you’re really good at optimizing your Page Post Ads on Facebook. And, of course, you know how to measure every social media action out there — from Tweets to Likes to Pins.

But what about your company blog? You know, that thing you used to update regularly before there were Facebook Pages. That section of your site that’s been relegated to sporadic updates of company news.

Where does your blog figure into all of this? Because it should figure front-and-center in your social media strategy, and if it’s doesn’t, it’s time to bring it back into the marketing fold and use it to generate both leads and customer engagement.

Anchoring Social Marketing with Your Blog

So if social marketing is all about engaging users where they already are (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), where is your blog supposed to fit into the picture? Well, the truth is that it should be anchoring it.

Think in terms of a hub & spoke social media marketing model. Your blog is your content hub and third-party social channels are spokes: you push content out from your blog our through the spokes and traffic and engagement funnel down those spokes to your blog and ultimately to your site.

Hub & Spoke Social Media Model

Credit: Business Casual Blog

Basically, no matter what kind of content you might produce, it should be represented on the blog somehow. Either it’s a blog post, or a blog post plugging some other kind of content — whether it be a video, a whitepaper, etc.

This way, your can actually “build equity” with you social content because you’re producing content that you’ll always have. So whereas that Facebook Post (or Survey) or Tweet gets buried in the timeline (and is long dead after a week), something published on your blog is something that will continue to (1) rank and (2) attract engagement such as Likes, Tweets, and Pins.

Reinvesting in Blogging

Of course, this all sounds good in theory, right? But how are you supposed to justify the costs of investing in producing content and updating your blog on a regular basis? Well, why don’t you take a cue from other marketers?

According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing 2012, not only are marketers investing more in blogging, but blogging has the potential to outperform many other channels. For starters, in the last three years, what marketers invest in blogging has nearly tripled.

Credit: Hubspot State of Inbound Marketing 2012

Granted, “nearly tripled” doesn’t tell us very much. For all you know, that could just mean marketers have gone from updating their blog once a month to three times of month.

So how do you know what you’re supposed to invest in your blog? Well, think about what you’re investing in other channels (and how they’re performing), and take it from there.

Credit: Hubspot State of Inbound Marketing 2012

Indeed, according to Hubspot, when it comes to lead generation, blogs actually (slightly) out-perform channels such as Facebook and Twitter. And this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, when we go on social networks, we don’t go on there to shop. We go on there to socialize.

So while a Page Post on Facebook (for example) might engage us along the lines of a Like or a Share or a comment, we remain within the Facebook ecosystem (withint the social network). A link to an engaging and/or entertaining blog post, however, might generate a click-through, which will take us outside the ecosystem and onto your site.

This is a big and important step in the conversion funnel because it takes us from mere brand awareness to actual engagement. 

Add to this that your blog content is something that will continue to rank and attract traffic on medium-to-long-tail keywords, and you have a solid and reliable piece of the social media puzzle or pie or mosaic.

Don’t Forget: Content is King

Be a king of your domain...

One quick and important caveat about using your blog to anchor your social media strategy: it can’t suck.

Just like your Facebook Page and Page Post Ads and Tweets have to be fun and/or informative and/or engaging, so does your blog content. For example, if your Facebook Page’s Edgerank is already high and you start posting links to content that’s flat or (worse) salesy, you’re just going to compromise all the equity and trust you’ve built up with you Facebook Fans.

So if you do take that last chart at face value, and start investing in your blog as much as you do in Facebook and Twitter, then spend that budget wisely. Go for quality over quantity.

Rather than hiring some copywriting monkeys to constantly update your blog with 250 word posts about your products and services, use that money to develop content that’s actually going to engage the users you want to reach. Delve into the expertise of your team and mine your database to come up with content like infographics, how-to’s and tutorials — the stuff that users will actually find helpful and interesting, because that’s the stuff that’s really going to (1) go viral, but more importantly (2) reinforce your brand’s trustworthiness and credibility.

There is no golden rule to how frequently your blog should be updated. There is only the rule that it should be updated, and when you do, it should be something that your customers or clients are actually going to be interested in — otherwise, you’re just spending money on talking about how much you like yourself.

Targeting Different Audiences

In today’s world, not everyone is searching the traditional way through a search engine. Potential customers are also reading blogs, using social network sites and for those on Mobile devices are downloading Apps and searching for things through browser bars or other apps. With the emergence of all of these other online vehicles, it only opens the door for advertisers to cash in on this additional visibility.

Direct Navigation:

Direct Navigation, or also referred to as “type-in search” is where Internet users navigate to a website directly through the browser address bar, bypassing  search engines altogether. One company that is emerging as a leader in this space is Trellian’s Direct Search Network. According to a study from UCLA, “86% of all online searches reach websites via direct navigation using one of the following methods”

1. Typing in a Domain name and adding a .com
2. Typing in keywords or phrases followed by a .com
3. Using a bookmark

Key Benefits:

• Lower CPC’s as compared to Google, Yahoo/Bing
• No competition for the audience to choose
• Higher conversion rates as compared to traditional PPC
• Access to domain portfolios without the cost

To learn more about Trellian’s Direct Search, please visit trellian.com/dsn or download their new Direct Navigation Whitepaper

Social Networking Sites:

Facebook is a “hot topic” these days with regard to their IPO and the recent news that GM is dropping Facebook Ads because “they have little impact on consumers’ car purchases”.  However, advertisers should not follow in GM’s footsteps. GM spent a reportedly $10 Million annually with Facebook and they have different goals and objectives as most other smaller companies. Facebook Ads is an important platform not only to drive traffic and conversions, but also as a LEARNING TOOL for (1) understanding broad and specific interests, (2) social connections and even (3) indirect interests that can be applied to other strategies such as the Google Display Network. Here is an article on how to leverage Facebook Ads for Google Display Strategies.

They KEY to successful Facebook ROI is “deep targeting” and constant testing. Facebook Ads can achieve Ad Fatigue very quickly and advertisers need to constantly push the envelope and test different strategies. Once advertisers get an idea on what is working and not working, then “cut the fat”, optimize the winners and keep testing.

LinkedIn Ads:

Yes, that right. LinkedIn Ads. Now, you’re probably wondering why spend money on LinkedIn as it’s just a Network of Professionals. Well, again like Facebook Ads, it’s the deep targeting abilities. In LinkedIn, advertisers can choose GEO, Companies, etc… see screenshot below:

LinkedIn Ads Targeting Abilities

In Conclusion:

If advertisers are gearing up for their “high season,” they should not ramp up their spend on Google but rather diversify their budgets across different online vehicles such as Social Networks and Direct Navigation. Consumers are everywhere online these days. Remember the old marketing saying that says, “fish where the fish are.” Well, in today’s world, the fish are swimming all over the place.

Never one to shy away from an opportunity to share his thoughts, he’s been quoted quite extensively this week in some great articles from some of our favorite publications.

For starters, Paula Bernstein from AdWeek asked Marc about how Acquisio helps marketers respond to the need for in-depth analysis tools that help them to respond to market trends before the competition does. From the article:

“It’s key to enable people to see not only what’s going on, but to act on it,” says Marc Poirier, CMO of Acquisio.

You can read the full article here.

Just today, The Drum, a marketing and media publication in the UK sought out Marc’s comments on General Motors’ decision to pull their ads from Facebook. While at SMX, he had a chance to sit down with a reporter from their publication and discuss what seems to be a real missed opportunity for GM. In the article, Marc is quoted as saying:

“You also want to see the contribution of Facebook ads beyond the last click only, so attribution plays a role here.”

You can read the full article here.

Cynthia Clark over at 1to1Media wrote a great article this week on the shortage of analytics talent, and issue that could become a real stumbling block to the future of digital marketing businesses if not addressed quickly, and with a forward-thinking strategy in mind. Adding to the article on what companies should be looking from their analysts, Marc said:

“You want them to be able to not only relate to your problems, but also have enough creativity and initiative to suggest paths to finding new solutions.”

You can read the full article here.

And, finally, we had a really great write up in AdWeek about our company and the services that we’re offering. The article is called Improving the Agency’s View, and outlines the capabilities of our platform, as well as the level of advancement that agencies can achieve with Acqusio.

“Agencies need good tracking so they can tell why, when and how a conversion occurs,” Poirier notes. “Because we see every ad impression a person is exposed to, when a conversion happens, we are able to go back and see all of the events that led up to the conversion. It gives marketers the tools to assign credit to all of the events that resulted in the conversion, including Facebook and display ads.”

You can read the full article here.

There’s a lot more great stuff coming up, and we’re always excited to be able to share some insights into the world of marketing. With Marc’s passion for online marketing, his vast knowledge of the space, and his ability to break down complicated ideas into very simple terms so that all of us can understand, I’m quite sure that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.

Stay tuned for more great stuff from Acquisio!

I will be attending the conference along with my Acquisio colleagues, as well as giving my views as a panel member for the Cutting Edge Search Technology session, running from 14.15 to 15.15 on 18th May. Both Acquisio and I hail from a search background, so I have first-hand insight into how the channel has evolved and broadened over recent years to become the digital linchpin it is today.

I’ll be letting you know a little more about the panel session and the other fantastic topics being covered next week. In the meantime, please do let me know if you would like to meet up during the event.

Click through to find out more about SASCon here.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that apparently, a few days ago Google, announced they will implement a new way to report on Quality Score by breaking it down into 3 components: Expected CTR, Ad Creative, and Landing Page Quality.

This has been a long time coming, and the implications for Acquisio and our customers are far reaching – finally advertisers will have direct feedback on which part of their ad strategy is causing issues with quality score, which as you probably know is an important determinant for success – including the price paid for clicks.

Imagine preparing a new campaign and learning ahead of time that your expected CTR will be lower than average for specific keywords? Or that your landing page quality for specific ads is below average? So many headaches avoided.

I can’t wait to design new campaign rules and alerts to help you take full advantage of this new data in AdWords.

Rock stars need to dance better than this or they'll get no respect, no respect at all.

For years, SEO companies and “rock stars” have whined that they don’t get the respect they deserve.

That’s been unsurprising, given that you trip over seven unethical SEO firms and two “cheesy borderline” SEO firms out of every group of ten. If only 10% of SEO firms are really “agencies” that adhere to some professional standards (including a degree of transparency, contemporary technology & practices, etc.), how can clients figure out what to do and who to hire?

It’s been a little better on the PPC side, but here too, it’s pretty easy to set up a “facsimile of the real agencies,” hoover leads in the door, and start billing for substandard work done by a mostly nonexistent organization. The tipoff is the About Us pages that launch right into an unverifiable jumble of information pulled from other agencies’ websites, never identifying the actual principals of the firm. And sorry, if you’re out on the highway in the desert somewhere in unit #4518 (a self-storage unit maybe?), if I’m a client you’re going to have to do more to convince me to sign up.

To briefly touch on the agency side of things and how it’s gotten better for clients… I do think it has, because somehow word of mouth is getting better and buyers are getting smarter. If they are hiring a large agency, they do that because of the safety factor. Probably you pay more for a bit less specialization and get less of some things, but most buyers don’t have time or enough luck to make it through the mysterious effort of somehow striking gold with a lone wolf practitioner who turns out to be up to the job in all facets.

In the middle are interactive agencies or SEM-focused agencies with known track records (like Page Zero Media, to toot our own horn here). Buyers know that there are actually just a handful of leaders running SEM-focused organizations with any depth, and that you can actually meet with them and talk with them at the major industry events (SES, SMX, etc., along with emerging dark horse events like Heroconf and the Acquisio User Summit – on the latter, get a load of who’s keynoting). Anyone who gets to know “PZ” team members like myself, Mona Elesseily, Dean Towers, Scott Perry, Dave Weber, etc., will know that many of us have been at this for 11 years now, and we’re training the next generation of obsessives as campaign complexity continues to challenge clients who would flounder if they tried to run them on their own. We’ve been around this long, and we’re going to be around next year and the year after that. For execution help, advice, audience building, and networking opportunities, we also partner with some of the most important entities in the industry; longstanding relationships with companies like Google, conferences like SES Toronto, companies like American Express OPEN, and vendors like Acquisio, matter to us and to our clients.

To look around the landscape (this post isn’t just about self-promotion but about B2B consumer protection, in the end), I’ve been more and more impressed by the trend represented by (for example) Blueglass, an interactive agency that was the product of several established groups coming together, plus the recruitment of some top talent that might have been considered “lone wolves” in their earlier work. It’s just easier for clients if they can get more of that in the same place, without worrying whether Rock Star X has a full plate for the next couple of months. In short, we’re seeing the emergence of an agency landscape out of what used to be a bit of a mess. That leads to more professionalism, and more safety and long-term execution for quality clients.

There are quite a few others worth a mention, of course. And they don’t have to be huge. Look at Marty Weintraub’s group at AIMClear – they’re rockin’ it.

Let’s turn to the tool side.

There are a lot of disparate tools, platforms, and dashboards out there that many agencies and in-house practitioners alike use to automate, report, research, and generally excel. Despite all the wondrous innovation, though, the problem for the firm (let’s say it’s an agency) is chaos. It takes time and money to be constantly researching and testing out new tools from new vendors.

I mentioned this when writing three years ago about the bid management space. Although new companies have certainly emerged in marketing automation, it’s probably fair to say that a few names have really solidified their grip on different market segments. As two fairly close competitors in the past, it was probably healthy and good for customers that Acquisio acquired (haha, Acquisio made an acquisition) ClickEquations.

One thing I love about Acquisio is that I don’t have to jump out into another tool evaluation mode when my agency has new needs. In addition to core PPC reporting and automation features, they integrate third-party data (for example, through partnerships with The Trade Desk and GShift Labs), Facebook ads, and increasingly, more sophisticated needs like multi-channel attribution. There’s a huge learning curve with some of this, but the key is that the learning is within the same consistent environment and the service and support is coming from one team, not ten. Our team can expect to be using that environment next quarter, and the quarter after that. In that regard, it’s not so dissimilar from using tools from Google itself. You don’t have to be constantly relearning features and environments, and the fact that you’re not paying for ten vendors and administering multiple logins is a huge win as well.

That brings us to the recent home run for SEOmoz, long considered the gold standard in SEO tools. $18 million in high profile venture funding is a validation for their role in the industry and no doubt for their sound finances. But more than that, it provides incontrovertible proof that they are one of the few players with Momentum. For many buyers, including myself, the likelihood of shopping around and trying a whole bunch of competing tools goes down when I hear news like this. $18 million isn’t something SEOmoz needs to run its operation, but it’s a powerful signal that they intend to be around for awhile — indeed, that they will be something of a ‘hub’ that builds out more interesting functionality that transcends ‘mere SEO’ (hence their tinkering around with a name change to just ‘Moz’). And to take it to a personal level, once again… this is all happening because you and I know who Rand Fishkin is, know he’s always been a thought leader and a tireless builder of this product. Maybe you even know Gillian, or other members of his family. It matters to me that a vendor has the courage to stand up and be visible rather than toiling away in a self-storage unit by the highway in the desert with a generic ‘About’ page. I think it probably matters to you, too.

I first learned about Momentum (a book subtitled “How Companies Become Unstoppable Forces”) from Noel McMichael, who co-founded Marketleap, one of the first small SEM agencies that managed to exit with a decent (if far too low by current standards) acquisition price. Noel told me to read Momentum. He said it had been the most influential book in the building of his company. Rather than behave as lone wolves who are good at some things, Marketleap built a cohesive and fervent (if relatively small) agency to signal to clients that if they hired Marketleap, they were getting on board with a group that self-identified as a professional organization that would take a back seat to no one in terms of execution.

Momentum means everything to vendor choices. Companies from Microsoft to Salesforce have created empires based on some of the most visceral of B2B buyer instincts: no one wants to waste time adopting the solution that won’t be the “standard” next year, and the year after that. Buyers want consistent technology, not just the latest technology. They want support and service, and organizations that can support learning and networking opportunities.

Many clients are still outsmarting themselves by hiring flaky, unqualified firms in order to save a dollar or two, but it’s getting better. Smart buyers know that the landscape is not as chaotic as it looks. There are a relatively small number of reputable agencies and software platforms to pick from. Those are the ones you’re going to be hearing from again and again.

Credit: Social On Main

So social media has gone mainstream. No seriously: MAINSTREAM.

How do I know? Well, aside from the fact that every second piece of print or outdoor advertising seems to have a “Like” icon somewhere on it, Google has fully incorporated social tracking into Google Analytics. And that means that social media is so much more closer to being fully trackable and attributable as a source of traffic in the sales funnel.

So what does this mean for your business (or your clients’)? Well, it means that you can now understand how social is affecting is affecting your bottom line online.

And there are two ways it’s doing that: search rankings and actual conversion rankings.

Social Signals & Search Rankings

Okay, before we get into what you need to know about tracking actual conversion from social media, we need to address how social is affecting your search rankings.

Why? Because search offers an opportunity to target users by intention.

Basically, when someone searches for something, they are already that much more engaged — i.e. they’re actively looking for products/services that you provide. Consequently, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that in SEOmoz’s 2011 search ranking factors, social signals were not only a variable, but pegged as a variable that will only increase in importance in the near future.

Source: SEOmoz 2011 Search Ranking Factors

So what does this have to do with measurement? Well, quite a bit, actually.

You see, when it comes to Facebook Likes impacting both search rankings and personalized results, Microsoft actually has a bit of an edge on Google because Microsoft has a deal with Facebook where Likes (and the like) directly impact Bing results. This, however, is not the whole picture.

But back in June, Google acquired PostRank, a service that helped marketers quantify (albeit arbitrarily) social actions such as Likes, Tweets, etc. And now that the sun has set on PostRank as a standalone service, it’s pretty safe to assume that those social metrics have been fully integrated into the Google algorithm.

So the first thing you need to know about measuring social is how social activity is impacting your search rankings. In other words, if you’re churning out keyword relevant social content and that content is actually being shared, Liked and Tweeted, then you should be able to correlate that with how your change in search rankings.

And if you can’t, then you’re probably doing something wrong.

Tracking Social Conversions

The Four Face of Social Analytics

Okay, so now that you’re monitoring your search rankings and trying to correlate how your social wins are impacting your targeted keyword ranking, you probably want to get down to the nitty-gritty of quantifying all the money and (wo)man-hours you’ve invested in things like community management, Facebook Page updates, and promoting your social content.

Well, in addition to the (plausible and grounded) speculation about Google integrating social signals into their search ranking algorithm, the search giant has outright integrated (what seems like) PostRank metrics into Google Analytics. Specifically, there are four new sets of reports that you can use to quantify your social efforts:

• Sources: As your content is shared and people come to your site, it’s important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.
• Conversions: Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site, driving traffic from social sources. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.
• Pages: People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. It’s important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they’re being shared, and how.
• Social Plugins: Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site (for example, Google “+1″ buttons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.

Of all of these, the most interesting social report is the Conversion report, because this is the report that you can use to actually quantify what social traffic (and actions) are worth to your bottom-line. Specifically, Google has even gone as far as distinguishing between three kinds of social media conversions:

• Assisted Conversions and Assisted Conversion Value:
  This is the number (and monetary value) of sales and conversions the social network assisted. An assist occurs when someone visits your site, leaves without converting, but returns later to convert during a subsequent visit. The higher these numbers, the more important the assist role of the social network.
• Last Interaction Conversions and Last Interaction Conversion Value:
  This is the number (and monetary value) of last click sales and conversions. When someone visits your site and converts, the visit is considered a last click.  The higher these numbers, the more important the social network’s role in driving completion of sales and conversions.
• Assisted/Last Interaction Conversions:
  This ratio summarizes the social network’s overall role. A value close to 0 indicates that the social network functioned primarily in a last click capacity. A value close to 1 indicates that the social network functioned equally in an assist and a last click capacity. The more this value exceeds 1, the more the social network functioned in an assist capacity.

Note that you must define goals and goal values in order to see data in this report.

With these reports, you can actually quantify at what level (and to what depth) social media is contributing to your online bottom-line. Indeed, you can see how much of your social traffic (and activity) converts directly or contributes to conversions through other channels, as well as which channels provided the greatest source of conversions overall.

With this intelligence and insight within reach, you can further refine your social strategy and efforts in a way that actually drives revenue or conversions (or whatever other KPI you deem relevant). More importantly, you can justify (or adjust) your business’s (or client’s) investment in those social efforts.

Prepping to Track & Measure Social Media

Now that social media has gone mainstream, it’s more urgent than ever that you’re able to quantify it. More importantly, now that social media can be easily quantified through Google Analytics (a tool that’s already tracking/quantifying other the value of other traffic sources), it’s imperative that your bring your social tracking into the fold so that it can be easily quantified and (seamlessly) compared to the performance of other channels.

So first, you need to find some way to quantify how your social efforts are supporting your organic ranking efforts. Specifically, I’d start with a test: pump out some (quality) content around a certain keyword theme, promote it across social channels, and monitor whether there is any correlation between an social engagement and a change in relevant rankings.

Secondly (and more importantly), you need to start tracking how social efforts are directly affecting your bottom-line. So log into Google Analytics, define relevant goals and goal values, and monitor whether the return your social efforts is yielding justifies the investment you’re putting into it — and if it’s not, then start looking at ways that you can modify your social strategy so that it actually does.

Of course, all that being said, beware about the value of how social is contributing to your search rankings. While it’s challenging to clearly and directly tie social engagement to search rankings, it’s easy to substantiate the value organic rankings. So if you’re pushing social efforts that aren’t directly contributing to your website conversion, but your organic traffic continues to climb and that traffic remains (as it should) above your site average, then think twice before pulling the plug on your social efforts.

Our own Marc Poirier recently held a webinar with Brian Stempeck of The Trade Desk on this subject that was meant for agencies to help them ease their clients into this transition, and to show them the power available to them with this strategy.

And just today, eM+C published an article by Marc Poirier entitled, “The Growth of Interactive Marketing and What it Means to Today’s Marketers.”

From the article:

The opportunities for interactive marketing via online channels are as diverse as they are potentially profitable, and tracking interactive ads that are run in conjunction with traditional search reveals the more interactive you are with consumers, the better able you are to convert them into a customer – or a fan or a continuously engaged customer, whatever the goal of an advertising campaign may be.

Read the entire article here, and get to know more about how you can take your campaigns to the next level.