So, you are tired of reading about Facebook this past week. From the controversy with GM pulling its $10M Facebook ad program to the Facebook IPO. And then the surprise wedding of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to his longtime girlfriend one day after the IPO. And in all this coverage, no one put the real Facebook issue on the table.

Everyone is asking if Facebook ads provide a winning ROI. Frankly, that is the wrong question.

Facebook should not be your social media program. It should be part of your social media program, but social media is bigger. And for that matter, social media is only a part of marketing (and other important business functions as well like customer support). To look at every slice of a marketing program and see if there is an ROI does not make sense. I’ll explain why shortly.

Before I explain the ROI issue, let me first rewind the tape from last week’s events. I was asked to provide comments and answer some questions for a number of publications. As is always the case, my comments were taken out of context. I was asked about GM publicizing that it was pulling its Facebook ads and my thoughts on that. Here was my complete response …

“WSJ reports that General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook as GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said the auto maker ‘is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.’

“The news could not come at a worse time for Facebook, but states some strong commentary on both Facebook and GM.

“First GM … this is the same company that went before Congress looking for hand-outs to save their fledging company. Was Ford in front of Congress? No. Is it a coincidence that Ford has an extremely productive social media program that is fully integrated into other marketing programs? No. What Ford does, that is absent from GMs social media effort, is that they have a strategy, plan, execution, and metrics that integrate ALL owned, earned, and PAID media endeavors. They do not have an isolated Facebook paid media program. Furthermore, I question if Ewanick understands that, on average, only 16% of brand postings on Facebook reach their ‘like’s’ newsfeed as revealed at the fMC on 2/29/11. He should look at Facebook’s reach generator (paid offering from Facebook) with regards to “content (being) effective and important.” The fact is that GM does not know how to integrate social media into a winning business strategy. The issue is not Facebook ads.

“As for Facebook … this news is very detrimental for Facebook right before their IPO. It paints a picture that a struggling company cannot rely on Facebook to help turn them around, but the same could be said about any pure-play marketing advertisement program. The reality is that Facebook advertisement, by itself, is not a great use of precious marketing dollars. Facebook has done a poor job positioning and describing how their platform drives quantifiable business results. Facebook is not the equivalent of having a social media strategy and it is time for Facebook to communicate how they are PART of a winning solution and stop making ill-advised marketers believe they are THE social media solution.”

I was also asked what I thought Facebook going public would mean to the company and marketers using Facebook as one of their marketing channels. I provided some brief comments, as I will have an article in eContentMag.com this coming week covering this topic. Here are the snippets I provided:

• As Forrester’s Josh Bernoff, SVP of idea development, tweeted this past week, “Buying Facebook shares? The original investors took their risks & will now get their rewards. Now the risk is passed on to you.” But investors are not the only ones taking on risk; marketers now have added risk with Facebook if they put all their social eggs solely in the Facebook basket.
• The fact that Facebook is now a public company means Zuckerberg and team need to answer to quarterly results.
• While Zuckerberg may continue to talk about the importance of sharing what’s going on with your connections, there will be deeper focus on revenue generation. The real question is whether Facebook can carry off both sides successfully.
• As Facebook feels increased revenue pressure, I see a potential user conflict.
• As Facebook introduces more ad and revenue tactics (such as the recently announced reach generator) it will be interesting to see how users react. It will be a delicate balance for Facebook to keep usage high while introducing greater revenue generation.
• Keeping Wall Street, brand advertisers, and users all happy and content at the same time will be one massive effort.

Here are the various places that published edited versions of my perspective and point of view:

• USA Today — GM to stop buying ads on Facebook
• MediaPost — Facebook Ads Need Traditional Measurement Tools To Determine ROI
• MediaBistro — GM’s Decision Not to Advertise On Facebook Not Such a Big Deal After All
• Business Insider — What Everyone On Madison Avenue Is Saying About Facebook 
• New York Post — Social downshift: GM slashes $10M in Facebook ads

The real issues facing marketers is not Facebook ROI. Let’s start by looking at consumer buying behavior. Today, there are many components and influences that in totality lead to a purchase. For a moment, let’s just concentrate on digital use. We need to understand the plight of the consumer. They may hear about a product from a friend on a social community or in an email. They may look for the product or product category on Google or other search platforms. Seeing an ad on Facebook or other websites may work to remind them of their consideration. They may look for reviews online. A promotional ad may trigger an action. All of these things contribute to the purchase path and are important elements. Are we simply going to give “the last click” the credit for the conversion? Can we measure other contributing factors?

You see this gets complicated in the digital world we live in. I did not even mention offline marketing activities. They contribute to the purchase decision as well and make this ROI discussion even more difficult.

Thus, it is not an issue whether Facebook ads have an ROI for marketers, but rather there is a need for marketers to use digital display ads (Facebook and others) integrated in digital strategy. A digital strategy that includes owned, earned and paid media. If you look at consumer digital behavior, they do not just go one place and make a purchase decision. They are using different tools (search, ads, social, reviews, etc.) to make purchase decisions.

“Marketing ROI” is what should be measured. We should not try to place an ROI on each element of marketing. Yes, we should measure variables that show success (or lack thereof), but ROI is not a realistic measurement of Facebook ads. There are key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be measured such as click-throughs and impressions. Once again, these are attributes that “build up” to a sales conversion, but they should not be specific to the ROI equation.

It is time for marketers to have a much greater degree of knowledge and understanding of customer behavior and how they are using digital in their purchase decisions. Marketers must develop a marketing strategy and plan that integrates the digital channels their target market uses. Marketers must determine how they will measure each of the piece of their strategy, but ROI should be left as a metric for evaluation of the entire marketing program.

A version of this post originally ran in the Social Steve Blog. 

The search marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Gone are the days of a walled garden between a company’s organic and paid search programs and the rest of its online marketing strategy. Now, there is a recognition by marketers that search, like any form of marketing, must be engaged in a holistic, interconnected manner. It must create measurable results that tie into the whole of a company’s marketing campaign, rather than being off in its own universe.

With that in mind, MediaWhiz has collected the best of its insight and perspective on search marketing for a new, informative white paper, which we unveiled this week in the eMarketer newsletter. It presents 10 new ideas for enhancing your brand’s search strategy. Each comes from MediaWhiz’s stable of search marketing experts. Each represents a new way of thinking about online search and an innovative way to grow your business.

Learn five trends for navigating the modern search landscape. Explore how your brand can convert online traffic into franchise foot traffic. Discover how to incorporate Quality Score into your brand’s search campaign. All that and more can be found in MediaWhiz’s new white paper, “10 New Ideas for Enhancing Your Brand’s Search Strategy.”

Download your copy today.

Because with the marketer’s world showing no signs of getting any easier, we could all use a little advice from the experts. 

Below is an excerpt from MediaWhiz’s new search marketing white paper.

Five Trends for Navigating the Modern Search Landscape

1. Search is not just for online retailers; it’s for everyone. Online searches influence offline purchases. Forrester Research estimates that more than $1.1 trillion of retail sales in 2011 were “Web-influenced” versus $173 billion actual online sales. This is especially true for considered purchases such as autos, financial services, education, furniture, etc. For example, JD Power estimates 90 percent of potential car purchasers research their purchase online before going to a dealer.
2. Search means more than Google. It is important to diversify your company’s paid search (PPC) efforts. Google attracts the majority of paid search but Bing and Yahoo are gaining share. Similarly, Facebook appears intent on charging into the search market. But search audiences at Bing and Yahoo differ from Google. In 2010, click-through rates for small and medium-sized businesses grew 109 percent for Bing, 123 percent for Yahoo, but only 32 percent for Google. As Facebook emerges, targeting and response rates will likely vary from the other providers. Search success will require the ability to manage all four platforms successfully.
3. Local and mobile search will explode. Local results are increasingly dominating search results pages. Businesses must maintain local registrations with the search engines to ensure presence in local search results, maps and geolocation queries. Segmenting customers through geotargeting with paid search also helps focus the right ads to the right customers. Use of mobile devices to conduct searches is exploding. Search on Android devices grew 300 percent in the first half of 2010. Like registering your locations, configuring your website for mobile compatibility is paramount.

Want more insight like this? Download the new MediaWhiz white paper, “10 New Ideas for Enhancing Your Brand’s Search Strategy.” 

The impact that Google Plus will eventually have on the search marketing industry is arguably greater than its influence on social media. It will ultimately be used to track user behavior at every level and serve up ads based on that behavior to a degree marketers have never seen.

While Google Plus offers favorable benefits for users, there are equally powerful opportunities for agencies and brands. The robust integration of search and social that is built into Google Plus means that there is an added value for brands to establish relationships with individuals. As those relationships build, users will include brands in their social circles. When brands are added to users’ social circles, they will automatically jump to the top of the queue for that group of users’ relevant topic searches.

Google has been the Internet search leader for more than a decade. In that timeframe, it has made numerous attempts at becoming a social media power. Unfortunately for Google, its history in the social space — Orkut, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Google Wave and Google Buzz — has left the impression that when it comes to social media, Google is more Friendster than Facebook.

Many brands and agencies talk a big game about the value of integrating search and social, but Google is taking the first step in delivering a solution. Think about this common scenario: a consumer hears about a product from a friend and his interest is piqued. He wants to find out more about the product, so he performs a simple online search. What happens if a competitor’s brand shows up higher on search? Is there a propensity for the consumer to be diverted to the competitor’s brand? Perhaps. But what brand would want to take that chance?

When Google launched Google Plus, it incorporated what it calls “Search Plus Your World.” The outcome is that search is personalized. Google Plus’ social data is incorporated into users’ Google search results. When Google Plus users perform a search, postings from their Google circles, relevant to that search, appear at the top. For example, if a given user searches for “accounting services” and one of his circle connections has posted or commented about a topic relevant to “accounting services,” that user’s reference appears at the top of the search output. The search is relevant to the user based on his circle’s contributions.

Read the full op-ed in Digiday. 

Below is a video snippet of Punch playing a Beatles song, displaying his mix of contemporary with classical violin playing. Check out more of his innovative playing style here. 

We talk about influence as if it is something new. Actually the definition has not changed in the past 1,000 years or so, but tactics for influence engagement certainly have changed due to the digital revolution. And while many might consider my use of the term “digital revolution” trite, I think it deserves the entire superfluous connotation as I intended it to be. The fact is that the digital world and, even more importantly, the related behavior changes that have transpired, are extremely important. Thus, we must look at “influence” as it relates to digital behaviors.

What is Influence? 

Influence is “the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.” For marketers, influence is only valuable if it produces actions or changes behavior or opinions of others. This distinctive point is often missed. So as marketers, we want to focus on those individuals that do something to cause an action or behavior change in a significant number of people that favors the brand we represent. “Influence marketing focus on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.”

So before we have the “Klout (popular social influence scoring platform) — should we care debate?”, let’s make sure we understand why influence is important to brands. And second to that, let’s make sure we understand the types of influencers that are valuable to brands. I break this down in three groups:

1. Traditional influencers. These are the individuals that traditional PR agencies court. They are pinnacle media establishments (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post) and celebrity-like figures (Mario Batali, Roger Ebert, Tim Gunn) in a specific area of subject expertise.
2. Emerging (digital) influencers. These are bloggers that have established a large audience following and drive thought leadership in a specific space. The poster child of emerging digital influencers is Robert Scoble. Scoble is a tech blogger whose rise to vast influence started from strong participation and guidance in Microsoft’s NetMeeting support newsgroups, and for maintaining a NetMeeting information website. Another example of an influential blogger emergence from nowhere is Tavi Gevinson who commanded quite a following for her fashion blog. At the prime age of 13, she was a special guest at New York Fashion week. (It still astounds me how she came up in conversations at ELLE magazine when I worked with them.) Emerging digital influencers could also be blogs (PitchFork, Mashable, Gizmodo) rather than individuals by name.
3. Influencers by connection. Here we have your everyday “Max” and “Maya.” People who have hundreds of friends — no, let me correct that — hundreds of Facebook friends and Twitter followers. These people make posts and tweets and their connected friends react. “Saw a great movie.” “New sports drink was killer.” Their posts create response and action. If you represent a brand, you want to court these people to produce brand action.

Now we are ready to talk about social media influence and break through all the nonsense being thrown about. Start by answering these questions. What do you want to accomplish? (Actually, this question should be the start of every social media and marketing endeavor.) Are you looking for earned media (mentions of your brand on an influential blog) or people to share your brand with all their friends/connections? Is the influencer expecting or will they be motivated by receiving something in return? These are the sort of things you should determine first.

And before we get into the influence tool and platform discussion, let me say this right off the bat (to set the record straight, maybe raise some controversy): a Klout score, by itself, is meaningless. Giving Mari Smith a free test drive on a new Chevy because she has a Klout score of 78 (very high) is downright stupid. Mari is a strong social media and relationship marketing thought leader. She is not an automotive influencer. If awarding her a free test drive for a week would even lead to a tweet like “Love the new Chevy,” I think her followers could smell something fishy.

Once you have your influence marketing plan defined, then you are ready to talk about tools and platforms to assist you. Think about the types of influencers you want to work with as defined above. Probably you want a mix of the different types, but think about how you are going to connect with each to build a relationship. Think about the action you want to motivate them to do. Think about the bandwidth you are willing to allocate for each.

Examining the Social Media Influence Tools

First, it is important to remember that digital influence is new and emerging so I am certain that we will see much greater advancements over the next 18 months. The minds behind influencer platforms realize that it is not just about accurately scoring influence, but more importantly to allow brands to determine the influencer in their market space and to make it easier to connect with these people. When both of these functions become easier for brand marketers to execute, then we will see the true value of digital influence tools come to fruition.

Let’s start with Klout, since it is probably the best known influence tool. It is good to see Klout moving from a generic influence score and starting to score on topics. After all, if you are a wine and spirits company and you are about to launch a new line, do you really care about Mashable’s high influence score or are you more likely to want to identify nightlife and alcoholic beverage influencers. Personally, I do think there is too much focus on one’s Klout score for making important decisions. I do not think it tells enough of a story and individual’s specific influence capabilities to spawn brand action. At least not yet.

Kred is an emerging influence platform that is grounded in technical innovation from PeopleBrowser. They provide an influence index much like Klout, but they also produce an Outreach score. So not only is it important to score influence from a reach and subject matter expert perspective, but it is also valuable to understand a scoring for the degree of outbound engagement the individual performs. Kred also has “community” or topical social scoring. One of Kred’s differentiators is that they are transparent with regards to their scoring attributes. They literally show you how points are accumulated.

Appinions takes a slightly different approach. Appinions is a query based influence tool. If I want to understand who the influencers are of automotive or any other area, you can form a specific query to do so. Appinions does contextual scoring versus individual scoring. Contextual scoring measures the degree of action taken by others (quote you/blog about you, link to you, retweet you) based on what you say.

Klout, Kred, and Appinions pretty much provide you a list of emerging digital influencers. If you want to know who are the people talking about your brand and having strong influence on their connections, you can use a social media monitoring tool such as Radian6, Sysomos, and others to 1) find who mentions your brand, and then 2) evaluate their influence or authority level. Having used both Radian6 and Sysomos, I can tell you this approach is very labor intensive. I am looking for a better solution. I do not think anyone is there yet, but SocialChorus is in the right direction. They offer a way to identify “influencer by connections” and reach out to them to attempt to create brand ambassadors. This is often done on a rewards basis, so I throw some caution there. Sometimes your actions might be perceived a “bought influence” and if that is the perception, your influence marketing can backfire on you.

Moving forward, all of these platforms are opening up their APIs. This means that one company can do the influence scoring and provide another platform the data. I think what we will see going forward is integrated solutions among platform providers such that some will do the scoring and other will handle the engagement activities. This will be a power combined solution.

One of the things that none of these tools do well, is to cross correlate an individual on all the channels. For instance, the blogging I do here has no contribution to an influence score. If you are reading my post (or anyone else’s) there is a chance that I have some influence due to my social media guidance. But there is no correlation between the SocialSteve Blog, the @SocialSteve Twitter account, and my quotes in the press as Steve Goldner that show up in some marketing industry online trade blogs and news sites. This does not play into the algorithm of the influence tool.
There are a handful of key points you should consider in making influence marketing part of your strategy:

1. From a marketer’s perspective, not everyone is equal. Those that have a strong reach and following and can drive brand action deserve greater attention and TLC (tender, loving care) from brand marketers as opposed to the general public.
2. There are different types of influencers that you want to engage with and build strong relationships with.
3. A platform or tool should not determine how you go about influence marketing. You should determine who you want to reach, how you plan to engage and go about building a relationship, and then determine the platform(s) to help you get there.

A version of this post originally ran in the Social Steve Blog. 

To get some deeper insight into what the Discover tab will really means for digital marketers, I sat down with Steve Goldner, senior director of social media for MediaWhiz, and head of the agency’s social media practice. Steve works with a broad range of major clients in developing their social media strategies and campaigns, and he expressed hope for a new level of insight from Twitter regarding what consumers are saying about brands and the ability to more finely target key brand advocates. 

The past year has been a whirlwind for MediaWhiz. We formed an operating partnership with SolutionSet, an independent integrated marketing services company, to create the SolutionSet MediaWhiz Partnership. Five months later, we became part of the Hyper Marketing Inc. (HMI) network, following a merger of SolutionSet with D.L. Ryan Companies, the nation’s largest independent digital, shopper and promotional marketing agency.

Through it all we kept growing and building the core of the MediaWhiz brand: a results-driven digital marketing agency. And that growth continues to be recognized by our industry peers.

Case in point: the 2012 Advertising Age Agency Report, out this week, lists MediaWhiz as the No. 21 digital-agency network in the United States and the No. 73 overall advertising/marketing agency across all divisions, by revenue.

We’re especially proud of the latter as it represents an improvement of 112 places from our 2011 ranking of No. 185. It marks MediaWhiz’s first-ever appearance in the top-100 rankings of all agencies in the Advertising Age Agency Report.

These strong rankings confirm that MediaWhiz’s results-driven business model is a success. They also are a testament to the partnerships we have developed with our clients and the entrepreneurial spirit of our employees.

MediaWhiz continues to evolve with the rapidly changing online media and digital marketing space. Our clients depend on us to manage the complexity of their modern marketing and digital media challenges, and we have grown MediaWhiz to meet those needs.

It’s no longer just about executing search campaigns or optimizing social media programs. Now, more than ever, online advertising success depends upon building integrated online performance marketing programs that take full advantage of the interactions across all digital media efforts.

Businesses face challenges on multiple fronts to effectively market their brands online. The MediaWhiz model — helping clients acquire customers more profitably via expertise in all forms of online performance marketing, including Affiliate, Search, Social, Display, Email and Data Acquisition, and optimizing within and across all digital media channels — is what we believe the future of online marketing and advertising should entail.

We’re proud to be on the vanguard of this new paradigm in online marketing. This year’s Advertising Age Agency Report rankings indicate that MediaWhiz’s work is valuable to our clients and to the digital marketing industry. It’s a recognition we aim to uphold in the months and years to come. 

Eduard Kats is president of MediaWhiz.

Groupon has successfully leveraged performance marketing on the advertising side drastically increasing subscribers and sales from 2009 to 2011. Now, they should consider utilizing it to reinforce their brand image and build or re-build relationships with their clients. Consumers love Groupon because they get great deals. Groupon needs to convince businesses that continuous revenues could be generated through improved targeting, localized search and media buying, deeper multi-channel engagement, better compliance and precise measurement.

It’s been almost a year since Groupon spurned Google’s $6 billion purchase offer. At the time, many experts understood and even praised Groupon’s decision. 11 months later, that hindsight is 20/20 thing is rearing its ugly head. But with a $700 million IPO, it’s clear Groupon will be around a while. In order for the online couponed to reassert its long-term growth strategy, it needs to demonstrate continuous improvement in sales and efficiency. Leveraging an integrated performance marketing program would certainly help.

The bells and whistles of integrated performance marketing are only as strong as the content they promote. Being able to identify prospects is a great start but it is important to provide them with compelling content. In the fast-paced digital age, relying on your brand reputation – no matter how stellar – is not enough to secure partnerships. Continuously reinforcing your position as an industry leader is essential in order to remain top of mind with your existing and prospective client base.

So what kind of content will compel your target audience to act? Again, the digital age has changed the game. Prospects are savvier. They are not interested in self-reverence or brand boasting. Make your content informative and objective. It’s about showcasing your intellectual capital, not showboating. White papers, case studies, blogs and webinars are great examples of high level content that can attract and engage prospects without preaching to them. If the content is great, it will resonate through your might performance channels ultimately driving leads and client conversions.

Remember: Don’t be content with subpar content. Great content will drive great multi-channel results.

For franchises, leveraging Search expertise is about more than constructing a web site or creating a social media page. In order to maximize the Internet’s revenue-generating capabilities, your online presence must be continually optimized to increase brand awareness and improve sales conversions. This requires developing relationships with Search experts to precisely target your audience. These Search professionals are able to apply proven strategies which can support your ROI goals.

Local business owners have a results-driving entrepreneurial spirit and are accustomed to directly dealing with issues that can positively or negatively affect their franchise. It might be tempting to attempt to tackle a Search program internally. This should not be your tact. Running a brick and mortar shop is complex. So is Search. The do-it-yourself approach could end up costing you time and money. It could also adversely impact your online reputation.

Effectively launching and running any Search campaign requires specialized expertise. A forward-thinking Search team with experience driving results within your industry can tailor a robust Paid (PPC) and Organic Search (SEO) campaign to meet and perhaps exceed your program goals helping you acquire customers more profitably. How do they go about laying the foundation for online to offline growth?

PPC experts can incorporate tightly focused, cost-effective branded and non-branded keyword groups into your landing page or site to drive user engagement. Search professionals can thoroughly optimize registration and contact fields as well as continually revise and expand content to improve rankings, keep up with customer interest and stay ahead of industry trends. Also, Search marketers with a track record of building profitable online programs can strengthen your social media channels. They can create buzz and control messaging, thus protecting and growing your brand.  

Franchise customers have many store options to choose from. Search makes it easier for them to locate your business and saves them from another trip to a crowded mall. They will thank you for it with their business.