Now in its 10th year, the global SES Conference and Exposition Series educates tens of thousands of marketers each year, with a 98% satisfaction rate. SES Chicago, the only major Search Marketing Conference and Expo in the Midwest, will be packed with 60+ sessions, multiple keynotes and Orion Strategy sessions, exhibitors, networking events and more. We hope to see you there.

Event Overview:

• Real-time actionable information you need to grow your business through search engine marketing
• Ins-and-outs of search engine marketing from top search experts and the search engines themselves
• A unique setting to network with fellow marketers and search engine industry professionals to discuss the trends in search engine marketing
• Access to the world’s most comprehensive gathering of search engine marketing & optimization-related solutions providers and potential partners & affiliates.

What You Will Learn:

• How search engines list web sites for free and through paid placements
• How to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy-and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t

Oh, and Justin’s sending me off with a packed lunch as I’ve been invited to present a Tinbasher case study next Wednesday at the Blogging for Business session.

Some pretty exciting news on the Next Generation Marketing front.  Well it’s not quite news yet - more like an embryonic news nugget.

Jeff, Skip, and I got on the phone this morning to plan out our next dates.  One thing that looks more or less definite is a stop in Beckley, WV in November.  We’ll post more here and on the main site when this gets locked down and we have more news.

* I just felt like opening with some Spanish today.  Weird - I didn’t even catch any Dora or Diego this morning.  If that’s misspelled or otherwise incorrect, please let me know.  I took Deutsch in high school and college.

Looks like the Marketing Genius blog is back after the hijacking.  That was much quicker than anticipated.  Please continue to enjoy posts from our good friend Skip Lineberg, which resume today.

In the meantime, I wanted to give you an update on 2 items:

1. For a time being we pulled posts from each of the travelling speakers from Next Generation Marketing.  We are no longer doing this, but still encourage you to check out each one individually:

• Direct Online Marketing Blog - Justin Seibert and Paul Woodhouse
• Mythology Marketing Blog - Jeff James
• Marketing Genius - Skip Lineberg and other folks from Maple Creative

2.  You’ll note I didn’t link to Skip’s blog.  We didn’t have a falling out - I still want to give him a great big bear hug every time I see him.  His blog - Marketing Genius - got hacked.  Really tough situation. As soon as the situation gets resolved, I’ll provide an update.

The Power 150 is a ranking of the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world, as developed by marketing executive and blogger, Todd Andrlik. It’s really as simple as that, except that the name isn’t strictly accurate: It currently ranks more than 500 blogs written about all types of media and pretty much every imaginable marketing discipline. It’s now housed on Ad Age, partly because we thought it’d draw some traffic and links for us, but also because both Todd and Ad Age figured it was a useful service to rank and showcase all these sources of information in one place, where thousands of readers could discover them. With more than 700,000 registered users on our site and a host of daily and weekly products, we also hope we can grow the traffic to Todd’s creation and some of the blogs it highlights.

Methodology
What Todd came up with is a largely objective ranking, which is probably why it’s already gained such popularity among marketing and media bloggers. It uses a basic multimetric algorithm to obtain a final ranking based on the sum of eight sources, seven of which come from Google, Bloglines, Alexa, Yahoo! and Technorati. The last is Todd’s own personal subjective measure. In the case of a tie, individual scores for a blog are weighted in the following order (from highest to lowest):

Todd Points (1 to 15): As the only subjective measure in the Power 150 algorithm, 1 to 15 opinion points were assigned to each blog. Todd Andrlik values frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content. The use of audio, video and graphics is also heavily weighted in the Todd Points.
Yahoo InLinks (1 to 30): Much like Technorati’s InLinks count, Yahoo uses its Site Explorer to tabulate the number of links to a particular blog. We then scale this number down to a 30-point scale.
Technorati Ranking (1 to 20): Technorati ranking analyzes the number of sites pointing to a particular blog. The more link sources referencing your blog, the higher the Technorati ranking. Similar to the Bloglines Subscribers value, Technorati ranking ranges were determined (i.e., top 9,000, top 10,000, top 20,000, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 20) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.
Technorati Authority (1 to 20): Much like the InLinks count, Technorati’s Authority count is the number of blogs (as opposed to individual links) that link to a particular blog. This number is then scale down to a 20-point scale.
Technorati InLinks (1 to 20): Technorati tallies the number of links to a particular blog, and we then scale that number down to a 20-point scale.
Alexa Points (1 to 15): Alexa ranks sites with an algorithm that incorporates page views and reach (the percentage of all web users who have visited that particular site). For the Power 150, we take that rank and assign it a proportional score between 1 and 15 and factor it into a blog’s total score.
Bloglines Subscribers (1 to 10): Bloglines displays the number of feed subscribers. Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., more than 20, more than 30, etc.) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 15) that was used in the Power 150 algorithm.
Google PageRank (0 to 10): Google PageRank is a link-analysis algorithm that interprets web links and assigns a numerical weighting (0 to 10) to each site. High-quality sites receive a higher PageRank. The actual PageRank number was used in the Power 150 ranking algorithm.
Collective Intellect (0 to 10): Collective Intellect is a social media analytics company that works with brands to evaluate consumer opinion, measure buzz, identify customer sentiment and manage corporate reputations at the industry, company, brand, campaign and messaging levels. For the Power 150, Collective Intellect’s authority ranking uses a patent-pending algorithm to calculate an author’s authority on a topic, including such measures as link-analysis between on-topic posts, topic density, author’s percent of contribution to the topic, number of comments and post quality.

This honor is to be shared by all of you, our entire community of marketing geniuses. It goes to show how important all of you are who comment, contribute, link to, recommend, tag and ‘favorite’ this and other blogs. Thanks! We couldn’t have done it without you.

Consider for a moment how most advertising or marketing campaigns get developed. A marketing decision-maker in a firm has a goal to increase revenue. Using all her best training, she (if she’s one of the better marketers…how many campaigns get launched without any research or feedback?) holds a few focus groups, interviews salespeople, and consults with market data to develop the message, the reach plan, the "offer", etc. She most likely works with an agency to build the creative and launch.

Even if she took the next disciplined step and tested the campaign first before launching (only a fraction do), it’s still a top-down, controlled approach to building a campaign. What would a customer-centric, community-oriented "open source" approach look like?

For one, the customers themselves could have been asked to share their ideas on what the company’s campaign should look like. What would customers like to hear the company say, and how? Perhaps a contest from customers on campaign ideas, which would be released to the customers to decide the winner?

While it’s true that most customers would not participate, the most passionate fans of the firm probably would. And after all, they tend to be the advocates who want the firm to succeed anyway and influence many others on your behalf.

The recent Inc. Magazine has a great article on innovation that highlights Threadless , a t-shirt company whose entire business model rests on community participation in the design of new t-shirts. From the article:

Threadless, he explained, ran design competitions on an online social network. Members of the network submitted their ideas for T-shirts — hundreds each week — and then voted on which ones they liked best. Hundreds of thousands of people were using the site as a kind of community center, where they blogged, chatted about designs, socialized with their fellow enthusiasts — and bought a ton of shirts at $15 each. Revenue was growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company had never advertised, employed no professional designers, used no modeling agency or fashion photographers, had no sales force, and enjoyed no retail distribution. As result, costs were low, margins were above 30 percent, and — because community members told them precisely which shirts to make — every product eventually sold out. Nickell’s company had never produced a flop.

Interesting model, one that requires a lot of faith in your current and potential customers. Many will react to this with a cynical eye, thinking this could never apply in their industry (especially highly technical categories). But I suspect that it applies to almost every industry, at least to some level.

Why not run a small pilot in your company with this approach?

For anybody already signed up, somebody will be in touch over the coming days about your refund.

We apologize for any inconvenience and ask you to keep your eyes peeled for any additional Next Generation Marketing dates in the future.

Few brands invested as heavily in television and print advertising as Gap. According to Ad Age , "Marketing expenditure at Gap Inc. was trimmed 18% during the quarter, driven by the absence of TV ads for the Gap brand, company executives said. That contributed to a 40% jump in profits at Gap Inc., compared to the same period a year ago."

What’s behind this shift? For one thing, the economy. In these shaky times, Gap found that aggressive brand advertising was not driving as much foot traffic. Instead, they shifted their marketing focus on capturing revenue in-store via merchandising to the folks who were already moving through their aisles.

"It’s a waste of money [for the Gap brand to advertise right now]," said retail analyst Jennifer Black. "In this kind of an economic environment, traffic is slow anyway, and there’s so much competition with advertising. … If there was a time for them to do this, it’s not that bad of a time. You really want to yell and shout and scream about the product when it’s really fantastic."

Which leads us to the second reason Gap pulled back: their brand is well-known, but suffering. Fashion brands are notoriously fickle, and the Gap has been limping for a while now. Why blow tons of advertising dollars until the brand is fixed?

Note that during this time, Gap’s revenue has declined while profits went up. There is a clear trade-off. Gap is not building for the future with this strategy, it is simply watching the bottom line. Is this smart for any company in difficult economic times, or for those facing financial pressure?

Not necessarily, but it is worth summarizing the lessons from Gap’s experience:

• If you drop advertising, prepare to face a drop in new customers and overall revenue.
• Cutting advertising will boost profit, but probably only in the short-term.
• Don’t burn advertising dollars if your brand and value proposition are not effective; you’ll only be adding to the noise in the marketplace and will most likely not drive a healthy return on investment. (Note the retail consultant’s reference to "…there’s so much competition with advertising." If you’re brand can’t break through, you’re probably wasting major dollars.

1.Rosenbaum

Question about video placement and click through rates - getting stuff noticed etc.

Call to action buttons. Put the video in a prominent position. Build in a way to gather testimonials. RSS Feed to news section. More choices for interaction

New Media 2.0 blogs and whatnot for the banking industry.

Well it’s regulated and staid. Dull and stuffy. MSN money - use tools/widgets and such.

Fairmont Federal

Show a younger demographic a bit more openess and visibility - especially a credit union. Alignment.

Public Sector Blogging.

People are going to complain no matter what. Political transparency people. These problems don’t go away but it’s also an avenue to plant more positive stuff and develop a more positive conversation. Rather than anonymous detractors tackle them head on. A valid point for all businesses and folks wanting to blog. Pull your head out of the sand. Don’t be an ostrich.

Goodwill advocacy ambassadors. Remember to be proactive. It doesn’t have to be a singular effort, the more the merrier.

Now if there’s one thing I’m taking from today, or has become apparent in this really good little end session, and it’s that the morning’s initial negative comments / general ambivalence to blogs and blogging seems to have been turned around. Not only do more people seem more accepting but the room seems to get it more than they did.

Perhaps I’m wrong and hopefully you’ll set me right.

So an exceptional job, gentlemen. It’s been an absolute pleasure from my point of view.

All your comments are gratefully received.

Check the videos.

We’re wanting raving loyal customers. Or loyal raving customers.

Would you refer us to someone else?

Net Promoter

Great little example of advocacy of Zappos.com from Jenny in the audience in her explanation of her Zappos usage - “Any shoe you would ever need.”

If you check their site you have have testimonials front and center. Let others toot your horn.

Good memory moment from Justin about a great thing Zappos did for a customer a while back. I’d forgotten about that one, but then again, I’ve forgotten what I had for lunch.

Seriously, read Seth Godin. If you don’t have a sublime realization of zen-like wowser-ness then I’m a numpty.

Get your free copy of Groundswell. (Although it’s a free for blog review copy.)

Right, where are we.

The whole general idea here is to not act like you give a crap but to actually give a crap and align in that kind of engagement with you and your customers. Yes, it’s something you have to do, but it’s something you honestly can’t fake. Or can’t fake honestly.

You can inspire them with going the extra yard like with the Zappos example above.

Linkedin

If you do happen to be an existing member of Linkedin or sign up for the service after the conference, feel free to mentioning it in the comments if you’d like to connect.

Beware the John McCain spam troll strategy.

Whatever the channel, you need to engage and communicate with your customers and develop a deep relationship. It’s fairly simple. Blogs are fabulous in the current Web landscape that is of the read/write variety, but if you feel more comfortable utilizing video or audio (podcasting) then go right ahead.

From a personal point of view I’ve always been a more avid writer than speaker. And I’ve always had a face for radio. Blogs are an easy choice from my pov . I’d also argue that because of additional benefits such as the search engine reach they’re more beneficial as a more rounded marketing strategy. Let a blog be your Web presence’s engine room.