Three Deep Marketing - St. Paul, MN

Becoming a Better Marketer – February 2010 Edition

Jeff Sauer — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:31:38 +0000

I’m trying something new on the blog where I post some of the best articles that I encountered during the month. If people like it, I will do a link round-up at the end of each month highlighting articles that I find most relevant to the world of interactive marketing. Leave a comment if you think I should continue on with this column!

When Life Hands You Lemons…

You make a documentary about how you turn your misfortune into lemonade – an inspiring tale about how to make the best of an unfortunate situation. The premise of this feature film (35 minutes, available for free on Hulu.com and embedded below) is about how several people were laid off from large agencies during the recent economic downturn, and made the best of their situation by finding their true calling in life.

There are some very interesting stories to be told during this quick documentary and my words could never do all of them justice. I suggest that you take a half hour out of your day to watch Lemonade!

5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code

I found this article particularly interesting because it lays out many of my thoughts about the disconnect between designers and coders. I often see web design mock-ups that are clearly more suited for print than the web. In my opinion, a good web design is far less about the creative presentation, look and feel and far more about creating a user-centric design that incorporates web best practices/standards and choosing creative that works with this user focused paradigm. Needless to say, this is a quality that we are looking for as we seek to hire a front end web developer for Three Deep.

Here are 5 Good Reasons why Designers Should Code

Fortune 500 Spending $1.2 Billion on Paid Search, Because They Can’t Rank Naturally!

Hello opportunity!

For as long as I can remember, corporate websites have never provided much value to me and many years ago I simply stopped visiting them. I think it’s because they are projecting their vision onto me (in inhuman corporate speak) rather than taking the time to write their website with the users in mind.

As a result of a customer non-centric approach to their web presence, many corporations have forced visitors to find information about the company elsewhere, often through third party websites. They have lost the opportunity to have a dialogue with millions of potential searchers each year because they don’t understand how to speak in Vox Populi (the voice of the people).

Now we have an article that might finally cause corporations to listen. Marketing Pilgrim’s piece about the Fortune 500 spending $1.2 Billion in Paid Search hammers this point home.

Rebuilding: The Strategist

I am a huge fan of Kevin Hillstrom’s “Mine that Data” blog because he provides incredible insight into multichannel marketing through examples, lessons and simulations. In this particular article, he talks about a role that many companies sorely lack: the strategist.

The word strategy and a position titled “strategist” can mean many things to many people. Hillstrom’s article helps define exactly what a strategist is, and how a company arrives at a need for this position. Here’s an excerpt:

“A CEO hires a Strategist only when Organizer, Miner, Targeter, and Futurist roles have been clearly defined. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without an Organizer skilled at providing a quality data infrastructure. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Miner skilled at telling the company how customers are behaving. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Targeter who takes profitable action on customer insights. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Futurist who pushes the company in new and interesting directions that are likely to fail.”

Read the rest of Rebuilding: The Strategist

4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom

If you follow Three Deep’s twitter account, you may have seen a link to an article I wrote on Google’s CPG Blog (a blog dedicated to the Consumer Packaged Goods industry). I really appreciate Google giving me the opportunity to write a featured article on their blog and represent the voice of a CPG marketer. Over the years Three Deep has established a great relationship with the CPG team at Google, and we hope to publish more articles and case studies in the future.

You can read the entire 4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom article on their blog. For those of you who just want to know what the 4 things are, here you go:

Moms use the Internet
Coupons Create Loyalty
Search Loves TV
Search Evolves with Mom

Want to be a Favorite Place on Google?

A few months ago I blogged about Three Deep becoming Google’s favorite place. While I was intentionally boasting about our designation, knowing that we were really just one of 100,000 businesses receiving the sticker. Now Google has announced a new round of stickers going out to even more local businesses. If you own a business with a retail location, I highly suggest that you read Google’s instructions about how to become a favorite place.

Moms Are Searching For YOU

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:45:59 +0000

In December, several members of the Three Deep team attended an event at Google’s offices in Manhattan, NYC. Google’s offices made for an intimate setting, and compelling presentations from BabyCenter’s Tina Starkey and Google’s Jim Lecinski made for a particularly worthwhile event for our team to attend. Since many of our clients tend to be in the business of marketing to moms (and we often execute these marketing programs), this event was right in our sweet spot.

Parisian Love

The event started with a quick video that was produced by Google that told a love story through search. It was a compelling video and told a great story of a long distance relationship where the subjects are brought together through the magic of Google.

You may recognize this video from the Super Bowl… I know that I did! While watching this during the Super Bowl, I had a serious case of Déjà vu; I knew that I had seen the video before, but couldn’t remember where. Now I can say that I saw Google’s first ever TV commercial several months before it was shown on live TV!

Mom Online, Mom and Search

The first speaker of the day was Tina Starkey, president of Baby Center. Her presentation unveiled some brand new research that had been conducted by her team. Several interesting nuggets of information were revealed in Baby Center’s 21st Century Mom Report.

Next, Jim Lecinski of Google took the stage and presented Google’s primary research called “The Four Truths About Moms and Search” – which put some structure and statistics around the search habits of moms online.

The event concluded with a round table discussion featuring high level marketing minds from Proctor and Gamble, Kraft Foods, Baby Center and Google. The format of the discussion was very informative and the answers were genuinely inspiring.

Some key takeaways we learned from the event:

Marketers big and small are still trying to figure out the best way to utilize Social media
Many social media successes at CPG companies are unofficial/underfunded projects that are created by ingenious individuals within the organization creating them during their spare time
Even though Social Media is seeing rapid adoption, it’s still a surface level communication tactic; it lacks the depth and stickiness necessary to form long term brand loyalty
Search is widely adopted among moms, to the tune that 85% of moms use search, and search is the most utilized online activity of all moms.
Television is very important for reaching moms (83%), and should always be considered for a well rounded campaign
There isn’t a silver bullet tactic that will reach all moms; all touch points should be considered to provide the best results

Attend the Momdotcom Webinar

Today, Google is hosting a webinar to share this research with the entire world. For those of you who are interested in attending the webinar, you can register here:

Date: Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm EST, 12:00pm – 1:00pm PST

For those of you who don’t have the time to sit in on this webinar, I have provided some useful resources below, as well as my live “tweet stream” of notes that I posted to Twitter while in attendance at the event.

Resources for Mom Online

Here are some links to research and blog posts about the event, and other articles of note:

Baby Center’s 21st Century Mom Report from December, 2009 (PDF)
Google’s “The Four Truths About Moms and Search” Research (PDF)
Google’s CPG Blog write up of the event
Parental Guidance – Mommy Blogs and Corporations

Three Deep’s Live #Momdotcom Tweet Stream

@threedeep

Three Deep will be live tweeting the google/baby center #momdotcom event
12:18 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Tina Sharkey, babycenter president, invented the term social media #momdotcom
12:20 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

A new mother is born every 7 seconds in the us #momdotcom
12:24 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

46% of conversations between moms with 6 month olds involve the word “cereal” #momdotcom
12:50 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Some very interesting statistics about Hispanic moms #momdotcom
1:01 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

http://tweetphoto.com/5714143 a scene from the #momdotcom event with babycenter president Tina sharkey
1:08 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

When it comes to food choices for mom “health trumps choice” #momdotcom
1:13 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Correction, health trumps price
1:22 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

4 truths of search and moms: 1) stork delivers search. 2) moms become black belts in search. 3) search is moms gps to store #momdotcom
1:42 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

4 truths of search: 4) search is moms backup brain. #momdotcom
1:43 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Surprising stat: 85% of moms use search, which is higher than any other online activity (including email) #momdotcom
1:44 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

78% of moms type in brand terms in search engines (make sure your brand is visible for these queries) #momdotcom
1:48 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

TV prompts search usage – 83% of moms search for products based on seeing product in TV commercial #momdotcom
1:52 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

72% of moms delegate recipe searches to search engines #momdotcom
2:02 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

So true RT @BabyCenterMom: Kraft and pampers say search is a vital way to reach moms ….. Way before the baby comes. #momdotcom
2:54 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Great thoughts on CPG ecommerce – something that we deal with quite often. Good to see we share similar approaches #momdotcom
3:14 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

ROI of social media? #elephantintheroom #momdotcom
3:19 PM Dec 2nd, 2009

Super Bowl, Chips and the Internet

Brandon Smith — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:41:15 +0000

It’s time of year again – a night of exciting football and advertising frivolity. Sunday, February 7^th 2010 marks Super Bowl XLIV (that’s Super Bowl 44 for those that are Roman numerically challenged), an annual event where commercials command just as much attention as the game itself. Raking in as much as $3.1 million per 30-second spot, it’s the priciest bit of commercial real estate in the advertising landscape.

Over the years, folks have tuned-in to watch Cindy Crawford sip Pepsi, witness Ali Landry pop Doritos and learn that the FedEx package Tom Hanks held so dearly in the movie Castaway, ironically, contained a survival kit.

But times have changed.

For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not be represented at all in this year’s Super Bowl. Neither will perennial Super Bowl advertising award winner FedEx for the second year in a row. And Doritos’ approached to Super Bowl advertising has been completely revamped all together.

There is no doubt the poor economy as played a large roll in this sudden stream of corporate fiscal responsibility, but underneath all of the PR speak of “accountable spending” lies the realization that far more cost effective means of marketing exist. Pepsi has publicly announced that Super Bowl advertising simply doesn’t fit into their marketing mix for 2010. A marketing mix that relies FAR less on television and print advertising, and more focused toward interactive marketing and social media in a $20 million project they have called “The Pepsi Refresh Project”.

Crash the Superbowl

Doritos (whose parent company happens to be PepsiCo) is taking a somewhat different approach. They are using their Super Bowl ad space solely as the culmination of a competition that, prior to the Super Bowl, has relied almost completely on viral marketing.

The Doritos “Crash The Super Bowl” challenge is both simple and ingenious. It’s simple because it allows anyone with a video camera to submit their idea for a Doritos commercial. Buzz is generated and traffic is driven to the Doritos site where visitors can vote on their favorite commercial. The commercial receiving the most votes is chosen to air during the big game with the winner receiving as much as $1 million. It’s ingenious because it promotes user generated content and personal interaction while spending far less on their usual Super Bowl commercial production costs.

Fedex Cuts the Cord

FedEx was more straight-forward with their stance on Super Bowl advertising, stating: “FedEx does not plan to advertise due to cost containment actions we’ve taken as a corporation.” Mike Glenn, a FedEx executive has also added that their annual TV advertising budget had been reduced significantly to its lowest point in years while their digital advertising and communication plan continues to expand in effort to “be where our customers are” .

In lieu of their traditional television advertisements, FedEx has released a series of 3-minute short films they expect to spread virally and are considered to be more sketch comedy and less commercial. These spots have their own dedicated YouTube channel and can also be found on FedEx’s website

So are these Fortune-100 companies missing anything by forgoing the Super Bowl advertising frenzy all-together? According to a recent study, the Super Bowl is viewed by 42% of all U.S. homes with televisions, which is a pretty impressive number. However, when you consider the fact that 85% of those same homes use some form of social media, perhaps its money well spent.

Our Client Success Story

Since we are a digital agency that has yet to establish a television department, we helped one of our clients achieve their dreams of being associated with the super bowl by taking a far more niche approach to those employed by major advertisers. Since we didn’t have a large budget to buy media, we set our target on associating the content of our clients website as being a solution for a very niche element of the super bowl: snacks.

Granted, some people care more about the food that they are eating than the actual game, but we found that in our niche, we could become a major player on Google for minimal ad spend. Our long tail approach created a winning situation for our client; they were associated with super bowl snacking hundreds of thousands of times (often in the top two positions) and they didn’t have to break their advertising budget to achieve this association. They were pleased with the results and loved seeing themselves associated with the Super Bowl; we even took several screen shots of them beating their competition in the ad position game.

Have you thought about advertising on the Super Bowl for your brand/clients? Would you take a niche approach and if so, what would be your niche? Let me know in the comments!

No related posts.

Keeping up with Three Deep? There’s an app for that!

Jake Dietrich — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:03:43 +0000

Those who are familiar with our company and our culture know that we are constantly thriving to be thought leaders in our industry. Our blog has proven to be an excellent channel for conveying useful information to our peers. By extension, many of our employees use Twitter and other social networks to further extend our reach.

To make keeping up with Three Deep one step easier for our followers, we have recently created an application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. After all, we figured if Seth Godin has one, we probably should too!

This flashy piece of digital goodness serves up our company blog, as well as Twitter feeds from individual team members that are frequently posting on industry trends, best practices, and even a bit of humor.

The app. is named simply Three Deep, and can be downloaded at no cost from the iTunes App. Store or by clicking the link below. If you like the app., please be sure to rate and comment. Enjoy!

Click here to download the Three Deep iPhone/iPod Touch Application

For our followers that do not have and iPhone or iPod Touch, there are many other ways to keep up with what’s going on at Three Deep. You can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

Thoughts Company Culture – What is Yours?

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:35:34 +0000

Some time in September of 2009 I saw a “tweet” that contained a link to the slide deck embedded above – a presentation by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about how they formed an inspiring culture at Netflix. Throughout this massive deck (128 slides!) I was both awed by the openness of the slides (revenue numbers and business models revealed) and inspired at how interesting and unique Netflix approaches innovation, compensation, and several other vital aspects of their business.

Hastings credits this culture and the core values of the company as a major reason why they have been able to consistently grow their business, fight off competitors (they rendered Blockbuster’s brick and mortar model obsolete), and constantly develop new ways to improve value they deliver to their customer base (like streaming to my Xbox 360 – which is an amazing value add to their service!)

The key to their success? Many things, but it may be best summed up with the way they answered this question: “What gives Netflix the best chance of continuous success for many generations of technology and people?”

1. Behaviors and Skills

One of the key components is the Behaviors and Skills possessed by employees. Hastings defines 9 of them:

Judgment
Communication
Impact
Curiosity
Innovation
Courage
Passion
Honesty
Selflessness

They want every employee to embody these behaviors and skills and reinforce them often with employees. At Three Deep, we value many of the same qualities. In fact, these qualities have been closely tied with the torrid growth pace we have experienced in 2008 and 2009. While it may be hard to pinpoint the exact contribution each of these behaviors and skills contributed to our growth, I can safely say that they have become inherent in the culture of our company.

2. Responsibility

As a growing business in a growing business segment, one of the most difficult tasks we face is the delegation and adoption of responsibility as new colleagues are brought on board. Personally, I have undergone a big transition from single-handedly managing an entire client engagement (playing roles of sales support, service line manager, implementation resource and account manager) to working with a team of people who take on many of these roles. It has also been an invaluable and rewarding professional growth opportunity.

The key to a smooth transition comes down to a comfortable level of trust that is established working in a collaborative team environment. Working with a team of tremendously talented individuals who assume responsibility for the work they produce certainly helps accelerate the transition process.

Hastings points out the qualities of “the Rare Responsible Person” – which outlines traits that he looks for in employees. These qualities make for a great foundation for any member of an organization.

Self motivating
Self aware
Self disciplined
Self improving
Acts like a leader
Doesn’t wait to be told what to do
Never feels “that’s not my job”
Picks up the trash lying on the floor
Behaves like an owner

I am especially enamored with the last quality listed; behaves like an owner. Without giving away key hiring processes, I must say that working with people who possess this quality is an absolute pleasure. Show me someone who behaves like an owner, and I will show you someone who is great to work with.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Three Deep Company Golf Outing – October 3, 2008

2010 is Going to be a GREAT Year!

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:54:09 +0000

I am writing this post on the second business day of the new year, and I’m already very excited to see what 2010 holds. At Three Deep, we have already had two great accomplishments to start off the year:

Upgrading Our Website Design

Depending on who you ask, our old website design needed anywhere from a “cosmetic refresh” to a “complete overhaul” – for this design, we chose to go somewhere in between. We updated the layout to be wider (using the 960 grid system) and make the site less cramped. We also softened some of the corners and made other tweaks in order to make the site look more inviting.

The major change on the site is that we improved the animation/offer area on the home page to better highlight the core services we offer. Rather than our old home page focus of lead generation (which is definitely part of our business, but not the only part of our business as the graphic implied), we decided to create a very SEO friendly carousel that showcases our core services and easily understandable to our visitors. Using jQuery, we were able to animate the features area while still keeping it search friendly; it’s amazing how well it works!

We had been talking about updating the site for months, and we finally put a date on when it needed to get done; January 1st. We knew we had to get the site updated before January 4th, because we would be getting a lot of traffic from …

Featured Story in Star Tribune Business Section

In late December, the partners at Three Deep sat down with a writer from the Star Tribune to tell the story of our company and how we have achieved our growth. The story turned out great and captured our company vision very nicely! Like any news story, there were a few facts that could have been more accurately stated, but the representation of our vision was great!

Several members of my friends and family saw the story and have been sending me notes of congratulations via email and Facebook, which is always a good feeling. Since it’s really hard to tell people what I actually do for a living, I can just point them to the article from now on.

For those of you who haven’t read it, here is a link to the article: Agency maximizes click-ability

Here is our company profile on the Star Tribune website, which is already #7 on google for our company name.

My Personal Goals for 2010

It’s a little scary to publish my own goals on the Internet, but in the spirit of transparency, here are some things that I hope to achieve in 2010:

Land at least one speaking gig at a local conference or event
Compliment our GAAC status with a Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant (WOAC) certification
Conduct primary research with a client or trusted partner and have it published
Get Three Deep certified in all available areas of the Google Advertising Professionals Program
Continue to help Three Deep get more press. The Star Tribune feature was a great start… we need to keep up the momentum!
Become a Seminars for Success leader and be more active in the search marketing and web analytics community
Continue to innovate new ideas, techniques and services while staying on top of changes in the Interactive space
Rewrite the service descriptions on our website – In my opinion, these pages don’t really give the depth into the services we offer or demonstrate our expertise as well as they should

Just for fun, here is a look at the evolution of our website since we were founded in 2003!

Three Deep's Layout - 2003 and 2004

Three Deep's 2005 - 2008 Layout

Three Deep's Old Layout (September 2008)

Three Deep's Newest Layout - January of 2010

Please Don’t Leave Me – SEO Trends for 2010

Brandon Smith — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:22:24 +0000

Sweet - she's on-time...

My wife travels often for work, and by default, I usually act as her own personal car service. As such, I am found searching for a flight status for whatever airline she may be flying that week.

Somewhere between April’s Delta flight from Monterey and November’s American Airlines flight from Indianapolis, Google has become fantastic at showing me the information I’m looking right on the SERP (search engine results page), above the organic listings without ever having to leave the search engine. Every bit of information I’m looking for is right there.

Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have a Google enabled phone, you just push the Google Voice Search button, say the airline and flight number and, voila, the information you need is at your fingertips – making it very user-friendly while driving as well.

It ‘s a simple, small addition, but it really cuts down on the clicking and information entry I used to have to endure to find the info I needed, and to have that info at my finger-tips with just two taps of the screen while driving (is that illegal?) is VERY convenient.

According to Google’s latest press release this week, results like I’ve mentioned above have been expanded to include tracking information for major shipping companies, current weather conditions in most large cities, and you can even find out if your favorite team is winning mid-game. Offering results like this will be vital for Google as they try to maintain their momentum in gaining market share from the likes of the other obsolete search engines, and the new kid on the block.

In 2010, our roles as search marketers will be to embrace these changes to Google and other search engines, and advise our clients on how this best applies to their business. I am looking forward to it!

Data Visualization: We Are Giving Away 9 Microsoft Pivot Licenses!

Jeff Sauer — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:31:31 +0000

Over the weekend, I learned that I was accepted into the Microsoft Pivot technical preview program. It was totally unexpected given that this is a super secret and coveted preview program, but I guess they found my application worthy.

Microsoft also allowed me to share my license with 9 of my closest friends, so if you are interested, you should download Pivot too! (Note, that since this is a Microsoft product, it only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7 – so many of you might be out of luck). Here are the download/license instructions:

To download Pivot, visit our download page. Then, use the following installation code:

5487 F0A8 25F5 5193

This code is good for 10 installs – give it to 9 friends and keep 1 for yourself!

What exactly is Microsoft Pivot? I would call it a standard Excel Pivot table on steroids, with alluring sex appeal and a major “wow” factor. It takes visualization of data to a new level, but also provides a fluid interface and rapid speed of display that I have yet to see in another visualization tool.

Since it’s still in a beta release, I am playing around with the tool to figure out how I can use it to provide visualizations to Three Deep’s clients, and what actual practical usage we can get out of the tool (i.e. how much of this is glitz vs. substance).

I have some great ideas for client implementation, but I would also like to hear what you all think of the best way to utilize this cool (and FREE) tool.

Also, if you do take advantage of one of the licenses, please leave a comment so that I can keep track!

Hat tip to Flowing Data for bringing this application to our attention.

Here’s a gallery of visualizations I came up with using the tool. Enjoy!

My Beloved Minnesota Vikings

The Scrappy Minnesota Twins

For our President, Dave Woodbeck, The MN Wild

For Irony, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods Sports Illustrated Covers

Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place

Jeff Sauer — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:22:23 +0000

You read it correctly, we are Google’s favorite place! After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that Three Deep Marketing is Google’s favorite place in the United States, and presumably the world.

I would like to thank my family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and people who I might meet in the future; we couldn’t have done it without you!

In the mail today, Three Deep received a package from Google containing a large window sticker with a bar code, like the image shown to the right. I have been anticipating this package for the past 10 days; ever since reading this announcement from Google. I knew it was only a matter of time before Google would send us an affirmation of how much they truly like our organization.

What does it take to be Google’s favorite place? A strong presence for your local business listing. Those fortunate enough to receive this designation and a package in the mail (about 100,000 exclusive businesses) have worked hard to optimize their local business listing on Google so that they often show up in local business oriented search results.

How can you get your business to be one of Google’s favorites? There’s actually a pretty simple process to follow in order to become a Google favorite:

Claim your Local Business Listing (you’d be surprised how many businesses do not get this far)
Add Vital Business Information - Things like your web address (remember to use tracking url’s for maximum value), phone number (unique tracking number encouraged here as well), business hours, category of business (this is the trickiest part, since they don’t always describe your business perfectly), photos, videos, coupons and more
Optimize your Company and Service Descriptions for Search - Claiming your listing is easy, but make sure that you use relevant keywords in your description so that people can find you
Make Searchers Choose YOU – The typical local search results page has 10 results; why should they choose you over your competitors? Do you have the best prices? Most convenient location? Friendliest service? What is it about your company that should make them choose your listing?
Define Success – What makes your listing successful? An impression of your listing? A click through? Requesting driving directions? Phone calls? Sales? Defining the action you want your visitors to take, and then optimizing around this goal will result in an amazingly effective marketing campaign

If your business follows these simple steps, then Google might find you worthy of being their favorite places as well.

At Three Deep, we have been “eating our own dog food” and spent a lot of time optimizing our local business listing so that we can easily be found. The results are humbling: our listing is viewed by thousands of people each month, and driving directions are requested hundreds of times each year. All for a marketing company with no retail presence or “drop in” potential.

Through optimization, we were able to build a presence around our company using Google’s free local business listing tool. Now we have an awesome sticker on our front door that makes our business look even more awesome than it did before.

For more information on what you can do with a Favorite Place sticker, check out this video:

Why Amazon is More Relevant than Zappos

Jeff Sauer — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:10:42 +0000

Before reading too much into the title, please make note that this article pertains to the paid search engine marketing practices of Amazon and Zappos.

While getting dressed this past Monday, I found that through general laziness toward laundry and a hectic travel schedule, I was left with one pair of dress socks. These socks were getting old, and had sprouted a few holes in them through everyday wear and tear.

For most normal people, there is a clear solution; go to the store and buy new socks. I wish it were that easy for me. The truth is that I live in the frigid state of Minnesota, and the cold weather conditions have lead me to despise shopping in “brick and mortar” anytime during our cold season, which generally runs from October to May.

Even if I were to put on my parka and trek to my local department store to purchase some socks, the truth is that they wouldn’t be able to accommodate my huge feet. I wear a size 13 shoe, which is the largest sized shoe that is commonly found in US stores (you can sometimes stumble into a size 14, but it’s rare). Any bigger and you need to special order your shoes from a catalog or online.

For some reason socks work differently. They are carried in a single size that covers all feet shoes sized 6-12, and stores rarely carry anything larger; especially when it comes to dress socks. Throughout the years I have become accustomed to just dealing with this fact and I just wear smaller socks and pull really hard to get them on my feet. This often results in ripped socks with lots of holes, which leads back to my recent experience.

I decided to try to find socks online, assuming that there are plenty of sock options available on the web. I went to my old friend Google seeking a solution to my sock problem. Knowing that specific queries will yield me the best results, I searched for “size 13 black dress socks”

From the sponsored results, I can clearly see that Amazon and Zappos offer socks in my size – perfect! All I need to do is click through and purchase and I can get back to work, right?

Not exactly. Only one of these e-tailers got it right.

Zappos Frustrates Me, Loses Sale

When I click through on the Zappos ad, I am brought to the above page (click to view larger image), and I’m immediately lost. What do I do? Where do I go? How do I find size 13 socks?

Should I use their internal search engine to find size 13 socks? Wait, I just used a search engine to get to this site so I am not going to waste my time searching again. I think I should leave to see what Amazon has for socks.

They say it takes 8 seconds for someone to form an opinion of your site and find what they need. It took me half of that time to go back to Google.

In the immortal words of Bryan Eisenberg there was no “scent trail” and as a result, Zappos lost me. Other than seeing the word “Socks,” there is no correlation between this landing page and my search query. You lost me and wasted click fees on me.

I am guessing that Zappos has a very low conversion rate for their portfolio of keywords pertaining to “size 13 socks”

Amazon Knows My Needs!

When I click through on Amazon, they clearly understood the intention of my query by dropping me off on a page of size 13 socks. The page itself is actually a search results page from their internal search engine, which is a clever way of ensuring the relevancy to my query. The only thing that they could have done better is to recognize the color “black” in my query… but that is something I can easily refine.

Nice work Amazon – the price you paid for this click is well spent and I will purchase from you.

The Key Takeaway: Relevance is EVERYTHING

It’s easy to focus on technology platforms for e-commerce, landing page tests, conversion rate optimization, bid optimization, quality scores and all of the other fundamentals that go into increasing the results delivered by your website; I concentrate on them every day as well.

With that said, it’s equally important to realize that none of that matters if you are not relevant to the needs of your visitors and potential customers.

This is why Amazon is constantly winning in online retail. I’m guessing that this is also why they eventually bought Zappos earlier this year; to apply their methodology and deep understanding to better serve their set of customers.

How can you apply this to your campaigns? Easy; put yourself in the head of your potential customers. Get to know what they are looking for, what makes them more likely to purchase from you.

Align your site, search and content to their needs, and your results will improve dramatically!