March 2010 – Online Insights: Strategy

What Does Cross-Channel Really Mean for Retailers?

According to a paper from Harvard Business School titled “Crafting Integrated Multichannel Retailing Strategies,” more than 80 percent of retailers are now selling across multiple channels, including physical stores, websites and call centers. However, according to Forrester Research, less than a third of retail executives say their companies can provide a consistent customer experience across those channels.

While some retailers have implemented specific cross-channel initiatives such as the ability to purchase online and pick up the order in-store, very few are able to go beyond these basic transactional capabilities. As retailers develop their cross-channel strategies, it’s important they understand the three core principles of a true cross-channel experience.

A Single View of the Customer
In a recent CrossView study, we evaluated 26 leading multichannel retailers and assessed their cross-channel capabilities. We researched products, completed orders and tracked customer information across the online, call center and in-store channels. Of the 26 retailers we examined, only one–cross-channel trailblazer Best Buy–could access a customer’s online profile in-store. For the vast majority of retailers, this relatively straightforward–and potentially valuable–request proves to be a challenge.

Access to cross-channel information isn’t just an in-store problem. We found that in 62 percent of call center interactions, the customer service representative couldn’t access online customer profiles, either.

It’s fair to say, then, that although modern retail systems do a good job of capturing a tremendous amount of customer data, very few retailers can leverage that information to provide a single view of the customer across their sales channels. Having equal and consistent access to customer information–including customer preferences, order history and recent behaviors–is the key to creating a focus on the customer, no matter where they are.

An Endless Aisle of Inventory
Every day, countless orders are lost because products aren’t available when and where they’re demanded. Consider the simple example of a customer asking for a shirt in a specific style and size that isn’t on the rack. The product they’re looking for could be available in another store just a few miles away, or at a centralized distribution center waiting to be shipped to the customer’s home. Having visibility into available inventory regardless of location, coupled with the ability to then fulfill to any location, allows a retailer to save the sale and increase customer satisfaction.

Although this concept of the “endless aisle” has received a growing amount of industry attention, many retailers are challenged to make it a reality within their organizations. For example, according to Janet Sherlock at AMR Research, just over half of retailers are able to fulfill orders in one channel with inventory from another. We consider this capability critical for any retailer looking to derive maximum business value from their cross-channel platform.

A Consistent Customer Experience
Inconsistencies are a flashpoint for customer defection and lost sales, so retailers know that their brand experience should be consistent across channels. The same look and feel, the same tone, the same level of service–whether in a catalog, online or in-store–are all critical to maintaining a consistent experience with the brand.

Equally important is the need to maintain consistent pricing and promotions. In the CrossView cross-channel study, 58 percent of retailers offered different promotions across channels. When a customer is presented with an inconsistent experience, it can breed several levels of discontent. First of all, there is the immediate frustration that they aren’t getting the best deal. Second, and perhaps more important, the customer may feel they are being treated unfairly, creating feelings of mistrust and damaging brand loyalty.

In a true cross-channel environment, promotions and pricing are addressed once by the merchant and then leveraged across all channels. The retailer has the ability to initiate a promotion across the board, so the shopper who browses the catalog at home finds the same deals when they log in online or stroll through the store.

The Implications of Wider Cross-Channel Adoption
In spite of the clearly identified customer value of a cross-channel experience, the reality is that many retailers are bumping into the same barriers again and again. Just as we’ve defined some of the most important cross-channel principles above, it’s also critical that we address in clear terms what implementing a cross-channel solution will mean for retailers going forward.

A brief look at the evolution of online retailing provides a better understanding of the current divide in the retail business environment. The web started as a small offshoot of traditional retailing. When it entered a period of unprecedented growth, it became apparent that the web presented a formidable revenue opportunity and significant brand experience. Suddenly, the online channel had a seat at the table, so to speak. Unfortunately, that growth as an almost separate entity created side effects that are now obstacles to multichannel adoption.

The ramifications are clear. Different channel leaders are competing with one another–rather than working in tandem–for both customers and sales. For example, if the manager of a retailer’s physical store is incentivized based on in-store sales only, it’s understandable that he or she would be focused on converting and selling to the customers they have within their four walls. But this leads to lost sales and a bad customer experience.

The time has come for retailers to reinvent themselves and reconsider the traditional way of thinking. Consumers are becoming savvier by the minute. Those out shopping today already expect retailers to have these core cross-channel values in place. They become frustrated when they can’t move seamlessly between the web, the store and the call center. They become especially frustrated when they uncover inconsistencies in the overall experience, feeling that retailers are imposing their internal challenges on them, making it the customer’s problem.

A retailer risks higher customer defection and a loss of brand loyalty, which all translates into a loss of revenue. This is exacerbated by the rise of social media, which allows word of one bad experience to spread like a virus, impacting a retailer’s bottom line in near real-time.

What does this mean? The technology exists today to support full cross-channel adoption. The most significant obstacles remaining are the internal silos and the lack of alignment within the merchant organization. As a result, retail managers must lead from the top down to break apart existing barriers and advocate for improved processes for a new business environment. A retailer will need to examine all aspects of their operations–from bonus structures to organizational structures–to determine how each piece fits into a more integrated approach. Most important, retailers must establish clear cross-channel goals and metrics, and commit to ongoing testing and measuring against those goals to achieve maximum ROI.

Mark Fodor is CEO of CrossView, providers of multichannel commerce solutions for both B2B and B2C organizations. He can be reached at mfodor@crossview.com.

March 2010 – Online Insights: Online Video

Is Your Online Video Engaging Enough?

Have you ever endured one of these common videos? Shots of a guy sitting behind a desk, struggling–painfully, to himself and the viewer–to fill two-and-a-half minutes of airtime with information about his company’s mission and past successes? Obviously, this is anything but a good use of online video. Such efforts don’t cut it anymore with fickle web users who know there’s something better–much better–just a click away.

Still, many companies choose this boring route when developing their online video strategies, opting out of creating exciting, engaging clips and instead wasting time focusing on shows that only serve to drive viewers to tune out milliseconds after clicking “play.”

“Video is more engaging than any other form of communication, both online and offline,” says Diaz Nesamoney, CEO at San Mateo, Calif.-based video technology firm Jivox. “The fact that you can add personality to online videos and make them engaging is exactly why you use the medium in the first place.”

With close to 85 percent of the online audience currently watching videos on the web, Mary Spio, president of Orlando, Fla.-based digital content creation firm Gen2Media, says those firms that take the time to create engaging clips are reaping significant rewards. “We see retailers getting 20-percent increases in web traffic because they’ve ‘humanized’ the online experience through video,” Spio explains.

Those retailers are using video to guide consumers through the different buying cycles, create awareness of products and services, and to even do some hand-holding to help customers research their options and make the best purchase decisions. All of this goes a long way toward creating consumer loyalty, says Spio.

Nesamoney says smart marketers also go beyond the “television mentality,” and use interactive elements to transform online clips into an engaging experience for end users. A utility that allows viewers to download a restaurant menu, or that whisks the user off to a virtual tour of the establishment, for example, can expand the usefulness of a single video, and ensure that consumers do more than just watch for an obligatory two minutes and move along.

You can also add color and excitement to online videos with simple tools like interactive quizzes and coupons, says Nesamoney, who has used these options successfully with numerous clients. A company in the financial planning industry (not exactly considered exciting by the typical consumer), might embed simple quizzes on retirement preparation or wealth management, for example–complete with advice and recommendations–into its online videos.

Once viewers figure out that they will run out of money in 10 years if they don’t start investing wisely now, they’ll call your firm for financial planning advice. These types of interactive video elements “go a long way toward keeping consumers glued to a site and engaged in the content,” says Nesamoney.

Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter are other great ways to spice up your online videos. By integrating them into your online video strategy, you’ll be able to invoke higher engagement from–and interaction with–your customers. Combine that with an online video component that’s updated regularly, says Spio, and the end result will be a “sticky” site that keeps viewers coming back for more.

“If you give people the tools necessary to share new videos across sites like Facebook and Twitter, you’ll transform your customers into ambassadors for your products and services,” says Spio, who points to troubled Toyota as a company that employed the strategy successfully via an online video campaign for its Scion vehicle. Other companies have used similar strategies. “We helped Coca-Cola with the same approach,” says Spio, “and wound up driving over six million people to an online destination over just three months.”

Companies looking to emulate these results must consider the many different ways that they can engage customers. Understand that some are in a perpetual rush and will never have the time to sit through a 10-minute clip, while others will pore over every last video in search of information and advice. Those with short attention spans will be more apt to “click here” for special offers, hoping to cash in on today’s best deals (or move onto another site), while those with more time on their hands will take a virtual tour of a home offered for sale, or view a product-specific video.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach,” Nesamoney adds. “To get online video right, you have to consider all of the different consumers who are scouring the web for information.” Spio concurs, and says the “short-attention-span consumer” will be most prevalent online. “Keep your videos simple, short and entertaining,” Spio says. “Ignore this rule, and you’ll see dismal results from your efforts.”

The good news is that marketers who create videos that include engaging content, action, movement and multiple calls to action are reaping rewards with minimal financial and time investment. “With online video, you can measure how many people view your shows and whether or not they’re taking the next step to learn more about your products, services and offerings,” says Nesamoney. “That alone is reason enough to take more time conceptualizing and developing your online video in the most engaging manner possible.”

Tim Hawthorne is founder, chairman and executive creative director of Hawthorne Direct, a full-service DRTV and new media ad agency founded in 1986.

March 2010 – Feature: Build an Effective PPC Keyword Database–In Four Steps!

Properly Structured, a Keyword Database–Unlike a Mere Keyword List–Organizes More Keywords and Can Easily Identify Those Most Relevant and Valuable For Any Campaign.

By Larry Kim

Most search marketers are still building pay-per-click campaigns from keyword lists, a practice that isn’t doing their business any favors. Even if you’re a master of Excel, a spreadsheet is an inefficient and outdated way to manage keywords for PPC, leading to time and money wasted.

The keyword database is a totally different approach to PPC keyword research, and has many advantages over a keyword list:

• It’s private and proprietary, unlike lists generated by third-party tools;
• It’s easier to organize and manage than a static spreadsheet, supporting smart relationships among data sets;
• It’s easier to update, encouraging expansion over time so your campaigns can grow;
• It’s actionable, so you don’t just analyze your keywords, you take steps to get better results; and
• It’s collaborative, so multiple members of your team can work simultaneously toward a common goal.

Essentially, a keyword database is a flexible infrastructure that enables you to work with many more keywords, keep them organized and quickly determine which pockets of keywords are most relevant and valuable. It’s basically a ready-made PPC campaign structure.

Though it’s something of a paradigm shift, building a keyword database isn’t unduly difficult, and you’ll find that as your campaigns scale, it’s much faster and easier to keep things running smoothly. Here’s the basic process in four steps.

Step 1: Start Finding Your Keywords
The most important part of a keyword database is, obviously, the keywords themselves. To build a comprehensive, up-to-date database, it’s vital to look at keyword discovery as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Ideally, this will entail aggregating keywords from these multiple sources over time:

Public keyword tools – Web-based keyword suggestion tools are most useful when your site is relatively new or when you’re branching into new areas; they can also be helpful for competitive research. These tools, for the most part, show you the popular, high-traffic keywords related to a given topic.

Just remember that overall popularity doesn’t guarantee relevance to your audience, so you’ll need to prove out these suggestions in your campaigns.

Historical site logs - Your website’s server logs are a terrific source of keyword data, and are often underused. These logs contain a record of the real search phrases that people have used to find your site. Combining this private data with public keyword suggestions will give you a much more complete picture of the terminology your visitors and prospective customers are using.

Web analytics - This is where the “up-to-date” part comes in. The keyword reports in your analytics application provide you with a continuous stream of new keywords. Take advantage of those insights! Incorporate these new keywords into your research.

Search query reports - Likewise, stay on top of the search query reports in AdWords Editor. These tell you the actual search queries that have triggered your ads (and they may surprise you).

Pooling these sources will give you a personalized database that is highly relevant to your business–far more so than a purchased keyword list or a static spreadsheet of generic results from a keyword tool. And keeping your research up-to-date with traffic stats (the number of visitors driven to your site by each keyword) and associated goal data (sales and other conversions triggered by each keyword) will allow you to see which keywords and types of keywords really work for you–regardless of what’s most popular according to Google or Wordtracker. Those highly effective keywords are obviously the ones that are going to drive the most value in your pay-per-click campaigns.

Step 2: Group and Organize Your Keywords
Better keyword research is the first step toward more profitable PPC campaigns, but to reap the full benefits of your research, it’s crucial to group and organize those keywords based on semantic relevance. Beyond simply making your life easier, segmenting your database into small, manageable groups of closely related keywords will improve your SEM campaigns in a number of ways:

Better landing pages - It’s easier to write specific, informative web copy around tightly knit keyword groups, and your landing pages will have better chances of ranking high in the SERPS.

Better text ads - Similarly, it’s much easier to write relevant, compelling ad text around close-knit ad groups. Your keyword group structure will translate into your Google AdWords ad groups.

More clicks and conversions - More specific, relevant web pages and ads target a more qualified audience, so they’re more clickable and ultimately result in more sales.

Increased Quality Score - High click-through rates and demonstrated relevance contribute to a higher Quality Score, so you’ll pay less for better ad positions and more qualified impressions.

Especially as your campaigns scale–and as you delve into the long tail–keyword grouping becomes an indispensable tool for PPC management. So how do you actually do it? That’s an article of its own, but here are some quick tips for organizing keywords into a logical taxonomy:

Start with large, top-level groups – Top-level keyword groups for businesses are usually built around a product or service you provide–typically one word and a noun, like “coffee” or “landscaping.”

Segment your top-level groups into narrower subgroups - Second-level groups often include a modifier that specifies the offering in question (e.g., “Colombian coffee”). Continue to segment as needed so your keyword groups are small, targeted and easily manageable.

Finally, you’ll also want to make use of keyword grouping tools when you need a little help (like WordStream’s Free Keyword Grouper). This makes quick work of what would otherwise be a cumbersome manual process.

Once your database is organized into a meaningful structure, everything else you do for PPC–from incorporating new keywords to writing ads to managing bids–will be easier to manage.

Step 3: Discover Negative Keywords and Eliminate Waste
Better keyword research helps you identify opportunities–namely, pockets of related keywords that represent potential profit. But to keep your return on investment from PPC high, you also need to identify waste. Most likely, a significant percentage of your daily AdWords spend is wasted on keywords that match your ads but aren’t really relevant.

Say you’re running a paid search campaign for a computer supply store, and you have an ad set to trigger on “monitor”-related search queries. Using the broad match option is a great way to capture traffic from long-tail keywords you might not think of on your own, like “best price on flat-screen monitors.” But you definitely don’t want your ad to match for irrelevant phrases like “baby monitors” and “hall monitor”–those useless impressions will quickly drag down your click-through rate and Quality Score, driving PPC costs up.

Your budget will go a lot farther–ratcheting up ROI–if you make use of negative keywords. Here are four ways to find negative keywords:

Generic negative keyword lists - Pre-assembled lists of negative keywords are a way to get started on building a list. The downside lies in the term “generic.” Generic negative keywords may not apply to your specific niche. In addition, many potential negative keywords are likely to be missing.

Keyword research - You can find negative keywords while you’re conducting regular keyword research; just keep your eyes open for keyword suggestions that aren’t relevant to your business. For example, in WordStream’s free keyword tool, one of the top keyword suggestions for “monitor” is “heart monitor.”

Search query reports – A third way to find negative keywords is to look at your search query reports in AdWords. This report shows you the actual search queries that are triggering your PPC ads (as well as the match type, number of impressions, number of clicks, CTR and other relevant information). It’s a good idea to comb through these regularly and eliminate any irrelevant keywords from your ad groups. This method is more thorough than the above options, because it’s based on real data from your own PPC account.

Your organic log files - Your own log files are an excellent source of potential negative keywords. These files keep a record of every phrase that drives a visitor from a search engine to your site. There’s one main advantage to this method of negative keyword discovery over search query reports: You can catch negative keywords before they trigger your ads. (And as a best practice, you should eliminate irrelevant keywords from your organic keyword research as well.)

At this point you’ll have a highly organized and streamlined keyword database, which takes care of most of the work entailed in creating high-performance PPC campaigns.

Step 4: Create Strong, Targeted Text Ads
Now that you’ve segmented your database into small, clean, tightly related groups, the next step is to write text ads for each group. Because your ad groups are already highly targeted, it should be relatively easy to write strong, targeted ads.

Here are some tips for writing PPC ad copy that works:

• Include the most value-driving keywords from the group, whenever possible, in the title, text and display URL of the ad. This increases its relevance and clickability;
• Be specific – know which segment of your audience you’re targeting ahead of time. (Again, your keyword group structure should make this simple.);
• Write multiple ads for each ad group for testing purposes, between three and five ads. Google will cycle the ads and you can see which one performs best and then use that ad going forward. Pay attention to what kind of language works with your audience; and
• Be sure to include a call to action so people know what you want them to do. (You’ve heard the line “Don’t make me think,” right?)

In addition, it’s important that your ads are demonstrably relevant to their associated landing pages. Don’t write a targeted ad about a niche product and send visitors to your home page. This too affects your Quality Score.

Maintain Your Gains
Remember, one of the benefits of a keyword database is the ability to grow your campaigns without losing control of your keywords. So once your database and your campaigns are in place, keep monitoring, keep testing and keep tweaking to improve results. And keep discovering keywords! When your customers type something into a search box, they’re revealing their habits and their needs. Listen and learn from them, and put that knowledge back into your campaigns.

Larry Kim is founder and VP of marketing and products at Wordstream, a provider of keyword management solutions for PPC and SEO. He can be reached at lkim@wordstream.com.

March 2010 – Cover Story: The Offline/Online Disconnect

Harmonizing Your Online Brand With In-Store Customer Expectations

By Geoff Galat

If you conduct an online search query for “offline/online disconnect,” you’re likely to see an amalgam of results with no clear definition as to what this term really implies. Yet despite a lack of definition–or arguably, even general awareness–the offline/online disconnect is very much a reality–and an inevitable challenge for any company that operates in the online channel.

The Offline/Online Disconnect, Defined
So what is the offline/online disconnect, exactly? Distilled to its essence, the offline/online disconnect refers to disparities in customer service and experience across the various sales channels, primarily in-store and online. While improving customer service in the online channel presents companies with a cosmic opportunity to boost revenue and overall brand image, many companies simply aren’t up to par when it comes to their customers’ expectations and online experiences. And the proof is in the data.

In a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Tealeaf, we found that the percentage of consumers experiencing online transaction problems remains remarkably high at 80 percent. And the potential online shopping dollars impacted by transaction problems rings up at an eye-popping $47.6 billion! Further affirmation comes from recent Forrester Research data, which demonstrates that the majority of companies are still in the nascent stages of customer experience management, with far too many customers abandoning virtual shopping carts because of experiencing glitches and other usability issues online.

With customers across the online spectrum encountering barriers at the virtual checkout, it’s safe to say that brands with an e-commerce channel have a huge challenge ahead of them as they begin to match their online customer experience with in-store shopping. Compounding the offline/online disconnect is the fact that many successful companies may not even know that their online brand is being tarnished when customers’ experiences are derailed, one after the other, by an online glitch or website transaction problem.

Let’s use the example of Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest web retail mortgage lender and fifth largest retail lender. They were unaware of a major glitch in their site: a barrier was blocking one of Quicken Loans’ predominant online revenue generators being used by customers. Despite call center complaints and customer abandonment and frustration, the company simply did not have the visibility it needed to visualize and identify–and subsequently resolve–the online issue.

Quicken Loans leveraged customer experience management software to evaluate its online channel, and soon the company was able to make the small changes in the text on the online mortgage calculation tool necessary for fixing the online glitch. With online visibility finally realized, Quicken Loans increased the pull-through of the mortgage applications by nearly eight percent, which translated into more than half a million dollars in lost revenue recovered. By embracing a higher level of online visibility and tackling the issues at hand, Quicken Loans improved customer satisfaction, via the online channel, exponentially.

From airlines to Fortune 500s and every retailer in between, the proverbial virtual shopping cart needs a major makeover–and soon. With the amount of tools and services available to help companies optimize their online channel and resulting customer experience, every company under the sun is capable of closing the costly gap between their offline level of customer service and their online customer experience.

The Call Center Catalyst and Social Echo Chamber
Further exacerbating the offline/ online disconnect is the call center, as it can often function as a catalyst for online customer disapproval, as well as negative customer sentiment and experiences. Simply put, much of this “disconnect” lies in the fact that call center agents are simply uninformed about the website and so are not armed with the information they need to assist the customer.

This can be solved in part by properly training and educating employees about the website, how it works and the potential problems customers might have. Having this knowledge of the online channel is vital, but it still leaves call center agents blind to the actual experience a customer has had.

An even better solution is to provide agents with complete, real-time visibility into what a customer actually saw and did on the site–giving them the ability to replay a customer’s session while they are speaking to them on the phone or before replying by e-mail.

Today’s challenging economy has also impacted how consumers think about goods and services–every dollar counts. That, coupled with the exhaustive amount of data available on the social web, has prompted consumers to share their experiences on Twitter, Facebook and other social channels, often about sub-par online shopping incidents. The number of adults who share their experiences regarding plane-ticket bookings and other online purchases gone awry via blogs or social networks has more than doubled over the past year. These shared experiences, from a bad call center experience with an agent to a website transaction issue, can be highly influential. Online glitches can have profound effects on the “word-of-mouth” created via technology and new media.

Fostering Your Offline and Online Brand– Smarter and in Tandem
Despite the challenges ahead for online brands when it comes to customer experience and satisfaction, all hope is not lost, and there is a silver lining to the offline/online disconnect. Our survey found that online customer experience reached an inflection point in 2009. The percentage of consumers who have experienced problems when conducting transactions online showed its first substantial decrease in five years–from approximately 87 percent in all previous Tealeaf surveys to 80 percent in 2009. This improvement points to a growing business focus on delivering better customer experiences as we make our way through 2010.

Analysts and researchers alike are in agreement that more business is being conducted via the online channel than ever before. Companies embracing this new level of visibility are able to radically improve customer experience, brand affinity and agent productivity. It is also a great way to ensure that website errors or issues are rectified as quickly as possible, and customer sessions can be quickly packaged up so that underlying website issues can be corrected. With these changes on the horizon, the online customer experience, as a whole, certainly has a bright future “in store.”

Geoff Galat is vice president, worldwide marketing at Tealeaf, a provider of customer experience solutions, helping companies achieve visibility, insight and answers online. He can be reached at geoff_galat@tealeaf.com.

February 2010 – Online Insights: Online Video

Online Video Trends for 2010

Q1 is here again. It’s the time when companies of all stripes strive to put their strategies into place for the new year. Budgets are set, marketing plans are approved, product roadmaps are locked in and headcount allocations are finalized.

For those of us in the digital advertising industry, the start of 2010 and of the new decade is no exception. So what will be the major story for the kickoff of the new decade in online advertising? For me, 2010 will be focused on video.

More Screens, More Content, More Eyes, More Dollars
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) conference earlier this year, one of the most dominant topics of discussion was the introduction of the iPad and other new tablet PC form factors along with other larger-screen mobile devices. Together with advancements in the smartphone market and their increased video capabilities, tablets will continue to move the needle in the total consumption of online-based video content. The introduction of these new hardware options and the increase in available content will be the core growth driver of digital video advertising inventory. Wherever consumer eyes wander, you can be sure that advertising will follow–and the rate at which consumers are watching video on their PCs, their mobile devices and internet-based TVs is growing rapidly. According to the Nielsen third quarter Three Screen Report, online video usage is on the rise, with Internet users watching 53 more minutes of video online in Q3 ‘09, a 34.9-percent increase from last year. In addition, the number of people watching mobile video has grown 53 percent year over year.

With more video being consumed on these alternative-screen devices, brands will find new ways of advertising around or during this content, and will subsequently continue to spend more on video-based ad formats. Forrester predicts that video will be the fastest growing area of display advertising over the next five years.

Ads Need to Get in Touch with Their Interactivity
As the inventory for online video ad placements has increased, advertisers have been quick to fill it with simple in-stream ads (pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll). As a result, a customer experience issue has arisen–and the viewing experience is critical to users consuming online and mobile video content. This is a different beast than your traditional cable or broadcast viewer. Online consumers are driving innovations in our industry with the power of their clicks and engagement. Don’t expect them to sit through 15- or 30-second in-stream spots that have been repurposed from your broadcast campaigns; online consumers are demanding and expecting more.

In 2010, advertisers, publishers, agencies and technology companies will continue to push the innovation curve with advancements in online and mobile formats by focusing on developing highly customized, interactive and engaging video-based ad formats. Premium content publishers like ABC, CBS and NBC have had huge success enabling their premium full-episode player environments with custom, immersive advertising experiences. In 2010, look for new technologies, formats and features that truly engage consumers and offer opportunities to do way more than just watch the seconds count down until their video resumes.

“True” 3D–Coming Soon to a PC Near You?
3D movies like “Avatar” and “Up” have been a hot topic over the past year, with ticket sales reaching record numbers as audiences have lined up at theaters for these incredible movie experiences. One of the questions spurred by the technological advancements in production of films like Avatar is where this 3D technology will take us next. Will 3D make its way into our TV and PC viewing experiences in the near future and will advertisers be forced to hop aboard the 3D train?

The topic of 3D can be a confusing one as it relates to the interactive world, when compared to the “stereoscopic” 3D world of movies like Avatar that we see in IMAX theaters. Digital technology companies like my own are pushing the envelope with rich media technologies (like Papervision3D) that enable the delivery of real-time, rich, three dimensional online and mobile ads.

You’ll certainly hear a lot more about 3D in 2010, but 3D comes in many shapes and sizes–especially in the online advertising world. I wouldn’t be surprised to see companies emerge with software and hardware solutions for online stereoscopic (”Avatar-like”) video in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if you are waiting to see it in an ad near you in 2010.

HD Online–Gaining Some Traction
High-definition content has become commonplace in our living rooms. The question for online advertisers is, “why haven’t we seen the same adoption curve in online video content?”

The simple answer lies in the economics. The cost of serving an HD video file over the web is still much higher than a standard-definition video file. This, along with the variability of serving cost when offering users the choice between HD and standard video viewing, has made advertisers reluctant to expand heavily into HD video for their ads. In 2010, look for continued reductions in serving costs and alternative pricing models that will begin to empower advertisers to explore options for HD video ads.

Continued Online/ Offline Integration
Now that video is completely digitally based, it seems inevitable that the two distinct advertising operational structures that we see today across advertisers, agencies and publishers will eventually converge and realize efficiencies of a truly unified model for video-based ad operations across traditional broadcast/cable and online/mobile platforms.

Integration is definitely a hot topic. According to a recent Forrester 2010 Predictions report, online technologies and processes are “seeping into television media. Television buyers and sellers should spend 2010 learning from their online brethren how to target, optimize and automate bid-based buys in order to be ready when the television upfront takes a backseat to the ‘online-like’ rules of order.”

The reality is that there are a lot of factors that will prove to be influencers of, or barriers to, this convergence. There is not yet a consensus in our industry on truly how much these two video workflows should converge, or how. In 2010, I expect that the following trends will continue to make this topic one to watch:

• Growth in the prevalence of online video (in terms of both content and consumption);
• The continued shift in budgets being allocated toward online and mobile video-related media buys;
• The desire for more robust and consolidated metrics and analysis around video campaigns across mediums;
• Economic conditions and the forced reduction of staffing models employed by agencies, publishers and advertisers; and
• Technology advances in TV, mobile, cable and PC hardware.

From online consumer trends to ad interactivity, 3D and HD technologies and innovations and online/offline integration–2010 is shaping up to be the year of video for the digital advertising industry.

Bryan Hjelm is vice president of marketing at Unicast, a leading rich media and video ad server and service provider. He can be reached at bryan.hjelm@unicast.com.

January 2010 – Online Insights: Online Video

Creating Persuasive Video

Everyone is experimenting with online video these days, which means that if your company’s clips don’t convince viewers to take action, fast-fingered cybersurfers will simply finish watching, hit “close” and cruise on over to another video. “If you’re spending time and money on online video, you’d better make sure you’re using persuasive strategies to get people to continue watching and responding,” says Colin Martin, marketing manager at business and marketing consultancy Antion and Associates in Virginia Beach.

AVOID ONLINE COMMERCIALS
Where most marketers go wrong in their quest to persuade via online video, says Martin, is by treating the clips like commercials. “It’s OK to use outrageous statements or graphics to lead into the video and grab attention (a search engine optimization firm, for example, might use a statement like, ‘We can get your company on Google’s front page’),” says Martin, “but you also need to follow that up with real results–proof.” Marketers also tend to drag out the videos too long, and wind up losing the viewer’s attention. “The idea is to keep the person engaged for three or four minutes at the most,” Martin says. “If you go longer, people will get bogged down and grow weary of it.”

Baiting viewers and leaving them wanting more also works well when creating persuasive clips, says Martin. “Show the viewer what you do and/or what you’re offering, but do it in a way that only provides a few key points,” he explains, “so that the viewer will want to learn more.” And don’t forget to tap into the persuasive nature of the video genre itself, the simple fact that moving pictures in and of themselves allow you to create very relevant content for a targeted audience.

“Being able to show the product or service in action goes a long way toward keeping the audience engaged,” says Martin, who points to Blendtec’s online videos for the Total Blender as a good example of this strategy in action. “The shows where the host puts iPods and other objects into the blender are meant to be humorous,” Martin says, “but they also plant in the consumer’s head the idea that this blender’s performance is as fantastic as the company claims.”

Service-oriented companies can use a similar approach. The firm that specializes in life coaching or business consulting, for example, can pull together a number of real-life testimonials to feature in the online video, thus cementing the fact that people use–and are pleased with–the firm’s services. When developing the testimonials, be sure to zero in on customers who are similar to the market that’s going to be watching the video. Then, let the moving pictures tell the tale. “Written testimonials can be faked, but video testimonials are far more legitimate,” says Martin. “They build trust and close the anonymity gap between companies and their customers.”

FRONT-END PLANNING
Christy Wise, vice president of marketing at Los Angeles-based online marketing firm Fanscape, Inc., says companies that want to develop persuasive videos must combine a solid call to action (a statement or offer that makes the consumer get up and do something) with content that is compelling and relevant. Getting there requires careful planning at the outset, says Wise, who advises companies to clearly define their goals instead of pulling out their camcorders and shooting randomly.

“Look at what your target audience is doing on Facebook and blogs before you create the content,” Wise says. “This will help you come up with videos that are truly relevant to your audience.” To get the most mileage from those videos, make sure they are sharable, and that they’re posted on public portals like YouTube, for maximum exposure. “You can’t just put a video online and sit back and wait for people to click on it and respond to it,” says Wise. “It’s up to you to make sure people see it.”

As for just how many people will see and react to your persuasive video efforts, Wise says: “Be realistic.” Only a small percentage of videos ever make it to YouTube’s 100,000-views milestone, she says, unless they become one of the lucky clips to go viral and get spread across the web like wildfire.

Rather than setting the bar at an unreachable height, develop realistic goals (such as attracting X number of new customers during the 30-day period that the video is posted online) and measure your results.

Martin says the company that comes up with an integrated plan (which includes traditional advertising, a website, online video and other elements) that keeps viewers engaged stands the best chance of succeeding in the online video space.

“You want people to view your videos, see the testimonials, meet the staff and then investigate your product or service even further,” says Martin, who advises firms to use a service like Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of their online videos, and to hone their strategies.

“The key to getting your audience to react like you want it to is by closely identifying exactly who that audience is and what they want,” says Martin. “Build a rapport with them and create calls to action that get them to sit up and take notice.”

Timothy R. Hawthorne is founder, chairman and executive creative director of Hawthorne Direct, a full-service DRTV, print, mail and digital ad agency founded in 1986. A 36-year television producer/writer/director, Hawthorne is a cum laude Harvard graduate.

January 2010 – Feature: Bullish o Pre-Roll

Reports of the Video Advertising Format’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated

By Caleb Hill

With the turn of the new year and interactive agency planning teams allocating their budgets for 2010, no doubt there will be a familiar debate between video and non-video planners: to invest or not to invest in pre-roll advertising. On one side will stand those who think pre-roll is a dying ad format for monetizing video content. (After all, as many industry experts have noted, haven’t we been waiting years for its breakthrough moment since the great video player wars earlier this decade?) The other side will defend pre-roll’s viability with as much conviction as Ad Mob will defend their valuation by Google. (After all, isn’t the very fact that pre-roll still dominates the conversation at many industry events testament enough that it’s worthy of a bigger line item in the planning budget?)

The fact is, both sides have a lot of convincing arguments for their cases. Pre-roll’s detractors point out that the format annoys users, it isn’t scalable, it doesn’t exploit the promise of interactive and that new trends merit more funding (like last year’s “next big thing”–widgets). The format’s evangelists point to data showing that pre-roll improves purchase intent and brand recall, that it can have interactive companion banners (that can even expand) and that it’s better to invest in proven, if vexing, video ad solutions than, say, widgets.

Those of us on the product development side of the coin look to where the money goes. And at last count, it seems the pre-roll bulls are prevailing over the bears in most of the planning arguments: the spend on pre-roll video advertising for 2009 looks like it will come in at roughly $500MM. The outlook for 2010–depending on which analyst you follow–shows incremental growth. Not a sea change of growth, but hardly a death knell for this ad format.

The eternal pre-roll optimist, I firmly believe the format is a lock for long-term ascendency as the ad format for the web. Given several important 2009 industry initiatives, I also see a lot of reason to be bullish about pre-roll’s near-term prospects–even beyond industry expectations.

I must now pose–and answer–the operative question: What happened in 2009 to suggest such optimism for pre-roll on the heels of a down economy?

Pre-Roll’s Growth in 2009
In 2009, ad agencies, web publishers, regulatory bodies and technology vendors made several notable advancements to the pre-roll format that should be recognized as further proof that the rumors of pre-roll’s eminent demise are greatly exaggerated. And while these innovators in our space stepped up and delivered more engaging user experiences and better mechanisms to facilitate scale, other contributing factors to a successful year for pre-roll included both an increase in broadband penetration and an improved technology platform for video delivery. Both factors dramatically improve the end-user experience for consuming video online, and have led to wholesale increases in the amount of long-form video now available. Long-form video is a special key to my outlook on pre-roll’s success, as it allows publishers to build a TV advertising model around their content that, if done correctly, can leverage the interactive qualities of the web (e.g., Flash) and monetize nearly as well as television, too.

For example, let’s take a closer look at premium content publishers like ABC and NBC. Their “branded canvas” and “ad pod” pre-roll products have been a revelation for marketers, a huge financial success for the publishers, and consumers seem to accept them as well. These products enable the networks’ premium full-episode player environments with custom, immersive advertising experiences that follow the same generally accepted rules of television advertising (e.g., ratios of ad content to network content displayed largely consistent with the consumer’s television experience).

But true to the interactive medium–and a quantum leap over companion banners–the new full-episode ad formats integrate the re-purposed television ad within a much more effective interface for user engagement. In some cases, users can even re-play the ad content–another leap beyond traditional “run-and-done” pre-roll advertising (and a reason the term “pre-roll” has increasingly become anachronistic, usurped by the more flexible term “in-stream”).

The Rise of Standards
As publishers revamp their sites around the long-form video content enabled by technology companies like Adobe and Bright Cove, for 2010 I predict big demand for a large-scale roll-out of pre-roll advertising products inspired by the big networks and video ad serving innovators, like Panache and my own company, Unicast. And that brings me to regulatory bodies and the monumental success the IAB has had (and will continue to have) rolling out its new VAST and VPAID standards for video player environments. These provide a framework to ensure interoperability between video platforms and ad servers so that advertisers don’t get bogged down in the technical details of each site’s particular video environment. With a robust adoption program in full voice–including major publishers committing to compliance this year–a problematic landscape characterized by fragmented and inefficient workflow, lack of standard publisher specs and ad hoc and inconsistent reporting, is yielding to a new liquid video environment where buyers can begin to leverage the economies of scale required for video advertising to make faster and more substantive inroads into television budgets.

Buyers Help Build Pre-Roll
Buyers have done their part, too, investing enough in pre-roll to help facilitate adoption of the IAB standards as well as to drive new format development. The best example of agency activism promoting pre-roll in 2009 is POOL, an initiative for finding the new workhorse formats for pre-roll. POOL truly exemplifies the power of collaboration across the ecosystem to further online advertising objectives. Headed by Starcom (partnering with Vivaki, also under the Publicis umbrella) and large video-content publishers and distributors like AOL and MSN, the initiative leverages new interactive pre-roll formats to ascertain how video advertising can scale across multiple platforms while providing users more control and more engaging interactive ad experiences.

The investment promise of the POOL initiative extends well beyond 2010, which further informs my optimism for pre-roll. Starcom surely will look to scale its pre-roll media spend beyond the scope of the first round of investment, or the “swim lane” as they call it, to include new web publishers, especially those with premium content inventory. Furthermore, Starcom already has committed to opening new swim lanes, which most likely will include mobile video, interactive television and social media. And the consumer research collected through the duration of the program surely will feed into strengthening IAB standards and their adoption. More heartening is the fact that other large agencies will feel pressure to match the efforts of Publicis, just as more web publishers will look to compete with the first adopters by supporting the new formats. The additive effect should bode well for the pre-roll bulls.

Commendations for Creative
Those responsible for utilizing the richness of the new pre-roll ad formats, the creative agencies, also must be commended, not only for effectively exploiting the creative potential of the new pre-roll formats, but also for contributing to their overall design and, in some cases, deployment. Take a look at the quality of creative content around Lost episodes within ABC’s full-episode player, for example. Here you’ll see excellent rich design, innovation (a lot of AS3 executions) and consumer engagement, particularly with games and other interactive features. Plus, in 2009 more and more video ad content was specifically produced for the web medium. This effort–though still finding its profitability legs–challenges the conventional wisdom that the most bang for the buck simply requires 15- and 30-second TV spots to be re-purposed for the web. While original content produced solely for the web might not rise from a niche pursuit, the scalable middle ground is probably a combination of re-purposed video within an interactive framework akin to full-episode products.

Together, these achievements in pre-roll advertising represent a compelling synergy of highly coordinated innovation, investment and industry standards that have begun to overcome the legendary bugbear of video advertising–lack of scale–and put to rest the criticism that pre-roll is dull, passive and annoying to users.

Challenges Remain
That’s not to say 2009 removed all hurdles to online video advertising. Remaining challenges include a recognized lack of premium video inventory, a static if not falling interest in advertising against short-form video, advertorial pre-roll of the same duration or even longer than short-form video (a common consumer frustration), a flawed and inefficient selling model that depresses prices for content as it syndicates across competing sites and the vexing question of how to monetize popular but seemingly unsellable user-generated-content video, just to name a few.

But thanks to a very successful 2009, we will be sure to see new technologies, research and investment set the stage for continued progress toward the type of monetization (and increased TV budgets) that only improved scale and user experience can bring.

Predictions for 2010
Look for formats that enable consumers to select the advertorial content they wish to see instead of being fed the same 30-second spot again and again. Expect to see dynamically enhanced video formats that improve relevance as well as formats using engaging 3D navigational elements and effects. In terms of pricing, I expect to see evolving models around consumer engagement, view durations and even conversions. Also look for new research and standards. But most notably, I predict a far better monetization of premium content throughout its distribution channels via better-structured syndication deals.

When we launched our first pre-roll product in 2003 at Unicast, we had confidence–as did everyone else contributing to the video market at that time–that we would see a critical mass of publishers and advertisers propel pre-roll and video advertising into the top echelon of online advertising formats. While that has not yet happened fully, 2009 ensured that pre-roll advertising is well on its way to taking its promised place in online media spends. In 2010, it’s going to continue to grow.

Caleb Hill is SVP of product at Unicast, a leading rich media and video ad server and service provider. He can be reached at chill@unicast.com.

January 2010 – Feature: An Eye Toward Performance

Pay-Per-Performance Models Represent the Next Wave in Online Advertising

By David Szetela

The online advertising industry is undergoing the same kind of evolution and maturation one sees in every new industry. But change is happening at Internet-speed, and those companies who don’t understand and can’t adapt to these changes risk being marginalized.

Companies of all sizes have rushed to the online advertising space, spurred on by the measurably superior ROI of paid search advertising. The recession has only hastened the flow of ad dollars away from difficult-to-measure, low-ROI media like TV, radio and print. While advertiser understanding of online advertising best practices and techniques has grown proportionately, the relative complexity of conducting, measuring and optimizing online ad campaigns is a murky black box for many. This is especially true for advertisers and agencies who have become accustomed (some might say mollified) by the relative simplicity of “placing ad media” and paying (or collecting) based on a percentage of ad spend and cost per thousand ad impressions.

The leading seller and beneficiary of PPC advertising is the sudden behemoth Google, whose self-service advertising platform brought the ability to target and reach customers to nearly anyone who can operate a personal computer. But Google has raced ahead–and stayed ahead–of its nearest competitors Yahoo and Microsoft by maintaining a dizzying schedule of new advertising features, reporting capabilities and tools for testing and optimizing ad campaigns. In one week last November, Google rolled out no fewer than three new search ad formats that provide advertisers with greater opportunities to reach customers with graphic-rich images and messages.

Some technically savvy advertisers and agencies quickly learn how to exploit new features to reach more customers more profitably. But many advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to assimilate each new change, falling behind in the “feature wars” at the same time that competition is driving up advertising costs. This is driving changes in advertiser and agency behavior, especially related to the online media mix and agency compensation models.

Let’s look in closer detail at some of the changes that have occurred in PPC advertising over the past few years, and how this has shaped the advertising landscape.

Increased Competition Means Increasing Click Costs
During the first few years in which PPC advertising gained in popularity, advertisers could expect to pay pennies for clicks on ads that were displayed based on even the most popular search terms. Companies in competitive industries like personal finance, travel and legal services could pay as little as $.15 to $.50 for clicks on ads triggered by search terms like “mortgage refinance,” “Hawaii vacation” and “injury lawsuit.” Resultant traffic to sites was cheap and plentiful, and profits were sky-high.

Those boom days ended around 2005, when advertisers and affiliates starting stampeding to Google with their ad dollars. In recent years, click prices have risen to dizzying levels. It’s common for advertisers in competitive spaces to be paying $5 to $10 per click to ensure their ads appear in prominent positions on search results pages. The most expensive clicks, paid by advertisers of high-priced legal services like medical malpractice, can cost close to $100.

Whether the top bidders in the search click auctions are actually seeing a reasonable return on their advertising investments is anyone’s guess. But there’s no doubt that the average cost per click has risen steadily over the past few years, and already some advertisers are finding themselves priced completely out of the game.

Increasing Complexity
As mentioned, the search engines (led by Google) have, over time, provided advertisers and agencies with a bigger and bigger set of technical tools for creating, managing, testing and optimizing online ad campaigns. This is really good news for those with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of direct-response advertising and with a sophisticated capability to quickly learn how to master new software and reports.

But the number of experts who can push and pull the increasing number of technical levers has not kept pace with the rate of innovation. Ad agencies and in-house marketing departments didn’t anticipate the need for workers with technical proficiency and analytical capabilities. Just 10 years ago, a typical agency employee spent his or her day calling media properties and haggling over the prices of “ad space.” Today’s advertising expert requires the skillset of an amalgamation of David Ogilvy and Albert Einstein.

Changes
Faced with increasing competition and complexity, PPC advertisers and agencies are facing hard choices. Some advertisers are pulling back from PPC advertising and funneling dollars to other online marketing channels like e-mail and affiliate programs.

Other advertisers are moving to the PPC content networks, directing their ads to appear on sites whose visitors comprise their target markets. As described in my book Customers Now, these networks are available to all advertisers currently using Google, Yahoo and Microsoft PPC platforms. The available number of impressions and clicks is growing faster on the engines’ content networks than on their search networks.

Traditionally, advertisers have shied away from content network advertising since response rates and ROI were proportionately much lower than the results obtainable through the search networks. As described in Customers Now, obtaining acceptable ROI is simply a matter of employing best practices in site targeting and ad copywriting and design. In fact, many advertisers are getting better ROI from content networks since competition has not yet driven up click bids and prices.

Pay-Per-Performance
Ad agencies are finding it even more difficult to contend with the changes in the PPC landscape. Clients are demanding closer attention to the fact that sales volumes and margins are dropping. Agencies are increasingly under the gun to work harder and longer to learn and to exploit new PPC features and functionality.

However, their traditional compensation models may be working in the opposite direction. Most online and offline ad agencies are compensated as a percentage of advertising spend. This is an anachronism based on the fact that for many years, advertising effectiveness could only be measured in the number of eyeballs reached–hence CPM charges from the media to the agencies. Spending more money meant that more people were being reached via ad dollars, so it made sense to reward this way.

While that model made sense in a world where measuring return on advertising spend was difficult to impossible, it may not work as well for online advertising, where ROI of every action can be tracked to the penny. Advertisers and clients are becoming reluctant to turn ad budgets over to agencies whose main motivation is to maintain or grow the size of that budget. Often, this is in direct opposition to the objectives of the advertiser, who wants to minimize ad spend to improve ROI.

For these reasons, agencies including my own have pioneered a new compensation method often called “Pay-per-Performance,” usually abbreviated “PPP.” Under PPP models, agencies charge clients based on the performance of the PPC campaigns under agency management. Typically, this means the agency is paid a percentage of the profit generated by the campaigns, or in the case of campaigns where submitted forms or leads are the success metric, a value per conversion.

The PPP model keeps client and agency aligned and working together toward common goals–usually an increase in sales volume while keeping costs under control. For this reason, there has been an increase in support by leading-edge U.S. advertising agencies–such as Clix Marketing, Location3 Media and Semvironment–to promote a PPP campaign partnership. These agencies are now motivated to take the time to learn and employ new search engine features and functionality for the purposes of continually optimizing PPC ad campaigns–using new targeting techniques to reach more and more potential customers, while using reporting and bid-management techniques to minimize advertising expenses.

Every month, more customers and advertising agencies are exploring the PPP model to forge partnerships that are mutually equitable and allow both parties to achieve their goals. These agencies recognize that the biggest benefit of practicing PPP is shifting the focus from ad spend to the outcome of the ad spend within the contract itself. It is a relationship centered at the core on the organization’s profitability.

The agency-client relationship is quite different under the PPP model. There is much closer and frequent interaction during the planning and execution of well-managed PPC campaigns, e.g., in the designing process and the testing of PPC landing pages. Both parties need to feel assured that site analytics are accurately reporting visitor and sales data.

The extra work is certainly worthwhile for the agency and the advertiser/client. In our experience, clients have enjoyed regular double-digit sales growth while keeping costs tightly under rein. The upside potential for agencies is higher than under percentage-of-spend models. Clients are very happy to spend more on advertising when profitable sales are growing proportionately–and that’s good news for everybody.

David Szetela is the CEO and founder of Clix Marketing, an online marketing firm specializing in paid search. He can be reached at david@clixmarketing.com.

December 2009 – Cover Story: Creating Link Love

Link-building strategies for driving SEO success

By Ken Burke

All I really need to know about SEO link building, I learned in high school. Your site’s global link popularity and the anchor text of those inbound links are two of the most  important search engine ranking factors that you can focus on.  According to Google, “Links are an important signal in our page rank calculations, as they tend to indicate when someone has found a page to be useful.” That usefulness is amplified  when the inbound link comes from a popular site with a high page ranking or with well-established domain authority (one within your topical community that scores well on a combination of popularity, importance and trustworthiness). An effective link-building program can elevate your popularity status–and hopefully your page rank–as well.

While your primary SEO focus should always be content relevancy, developing a link-building program is almost as critical to your success. Once you’ve implemented highly targeted, keyword-relevant content on your site, you should dedicate a percentage of your weekly marketing time to building relationships and links with other topically relevant, high-quality websites.

Below are a few critical points to note when developing your link-building strategy:

Sometimes, Less is More

A few links from high-quality, topically relevant websites are worth more than many low-quality, non-relevant links. Start your discovery process with a combination of the following top link-building sources:

Business partners – Ask a select group of your business partners to mention your company somewhere on their website and provide them with the specific anchor text to use. Beware of placement on link pages that carry hundreds of links to slightly relevant or, even worse, non-relevant “partners.” This type of linking is no longer effective.

Customers - Leverage your best customers and turn them into brand advocates. Reach out to this segment to see if they would be willing to link to your website from their own personal websites, blogs or social networking pages. This may require an incentive. Or, seed them with new products which they can turn around and post reviews on.

Directories - Submitting your website to directories is the most common way to gain link exposure, but is still a valid tactic that definitely works. Just make sure you submit your website to a few (which can vary from about five to a few dozen, depending on the vertical) high-quality, relevant directories rather than auto-submitting your website to several hundred general directories.

Forums – Building links through forums can be very tricky because they are typically monitored by a live person who is watching for advertising misuse. However, it can also be one of the most valuable tactics in terms of branding and the amount of targeted visitors. A popular strategy used is signature-based link building. This is good way to build brand credibility on the forum you’re participating in, as long as you contribute regularly and provide unbiased commentary to earn the trust of the forum participants. Sponsoring a contest is another way in which you can use forums to attract extra links. Lots of forums hold contests (photo contests, essay contests, etc.) regularly. Donate a prize to the winner of one of these contests, and you might receive a link in return.

Guest blogging – A highly effective way to build deep links with the anchor text of your choice is by guest blogging (or guest writing) for other websites. In exchange for writing an original article or blog commentary, most content sites will usually allow you to add a link (or a few) to your own website. Remember that good content can have a viral life of its own and may create greater distribution with no additional work.

Relevant organizations - Industry organizations usually add links to all their members. Don’t miss out on this easy opportunity and make sure that these links do not use “no-follow” tags. Also, determine if any of your targeted organizations provide industry-related content, such as a blog, research or newsletter articles, which you can contribute and pass a link through.

Avoid Buying Links if Possible

It’s likely that these sorts of links come from poor quality, “free-for-all” websites that won’t provide any traffic and could get you banned from the search engines. While some legitimate sites such as Yahoo’s directory charge for submission and can add value to your online presence, link buying as a general practice should be avoided.

According to Google, “Buying or selling links that pass page rank violates our webmaster guidelines. Such links can hurt relevance by causing…false popularity and an unfair advantage.” However, buying links can have other benefits not related to SEO, such as general brand exposure. If you do plan on buying links, make sure that you stay in compliance with search engines’–and especially Google’s–quality guidelines. Google specifically states that paid links be disclosed through a rel=”nofollow” or other technique such as doing a redirect through a page which is robots.txt’ed out.

Optimize Anchor Text Links

Make sure that the anchor text of the inbound link reinforces the keyword(s) targeted on the specified landing page. At a minimum, use your company’s name and avoid generic anchor text links like “click here” or “read more.” A better choice: “This Chicago attorney gave me terrific advice.”

Know What Sites to Avoid

Link building is definitely a resource-intensive task. To make sure that you don’t waste critical resources and to better focus your efforts, simply avoid the following types of websites:

Pages with links inside of frames – These will not pass any page rank and can possibly steal your traffic.

Free-for-all links – These types of sites allow anyone to post unreviewed links which typically result in unrelated and “spammy” links.

Link farms – These are sites with 100 or more unrelated links on a page. (These are banned by search engines and may cause your site to be banned if you link to them).

Sites that utilize “triangular linking schemes” – “I’ll link to your website if you link to my other website.”

A site that has a network of mirror sites with the same links and content.

Sites with a page rank of zero – Perhaps the website is too new or its pages are dynamically generated. Either way, they pass no value to you.

Sites where the link page/directory isn’t linked from the homepage or site map – Search engines simply won’t find it.

Directory sites that make you search to find your site listing – Typically, your link won’t be found by search engines unless it’s on a static, non-changing page.

Pages that would like to place your link using a meta tag that instructs “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” or is referenced in the robots.txt* to be disallowed by search-engine robots – Basically, this instructs search engines not to follow any links on that page–and thus, there will be no page rank for your site.

Websites with a long load time (too many ad banners, images etc.) – The search engines won’t wait.

Websites that are poorly designed and have broken code – These sites typically have a difficult time being indexed.

Link-building strategies are key to successful SEO and should be a key focus for online retailers.

Investing time in a well-conceived linking strategy can make a measurable difference in search rankings and–ultimately–sales.

Ken Burke is chairman and founder of MarketLive, a leading provider of e-commerce platforms and services for mid-sized retailers. Contact him at ken.burke@marketlive.com.

December 2009 – Feature: Reputation Assaults

Trolls are no longer hiding under bridges. The are actively lurking online–and ready to eat your lunch!

By Mike Hughes

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, in Internet parlance a “troll” is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, slanderous, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a discussion forum, chat room or blog. The troll’s primary intent is to provoke emotional responses or otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. While most webmasters and forum administrators consider trolls to be a scourge on their sites, some websites welcome them as an opportunity for profit.

As a Peabody Award-winning documentary director for NBC in New York, I strongly believe in protecting free speech and have fought actively over my 30 years in the media to defend it. In traditional media, free speech reigns within reasonable legal boundaries and limitations of defamation laws, which require that the truth be told to the public under threat of legal penalties. Tragically, that is not the case with online media and many American businesses are being eaten alive because of it.

Reputation assaults by trolls represent a menacing and growing problem. Their actions encroach on direct-to-consumer commerce and our entire society’s free speech rights. Slanderous and false online postings are being enabled and protected from traditional slander and libel laws because of what amounts to a legal loophole known as the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Reportedly, the CDA was made into law so our legislators could avoid ruling on the political hot potato of community standards regarding pornography. To date, lawmakers have not been motivated to adjust the CDA to also protect and sustain our expectations of truth within free speech and to keep our rights from being trampled on by free-wheeling, online trolls acting with impunity.

The CDA loophole has allowed a few questionable entrepreneurs to create their own perfect storm of disruption and reputation assaults, inciting and hosting the most outrageous kangaroo courts imaginable. They persecute products and services for their own profit motives–and they have blanket protection under current Internet law. In the 1925 literary classic “The Trial,” Franz Kafka tells the story of a man prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his offense confusing to both him and the reader–a disturbing nightmare.

Likewise, a nightmare of confusion is ruling the day online when it comes to products being crippled by anonymous trolls posting false or dubious complaints about products, services and companies. In some cases, individual entrepreneurs can operate as judges by running their own privately owned and operated consumer complaint sites and using them as their own online fiefdoms.

I can only describe these sites and tactics as “questionable” until the CDA is more fully shaped by Congress to cover online defamation. The broad legal strokes of the CDA give questionable site operators absolute power on decisions about reputation assault postings because of their immunity to slander and libel laws. And we all know what happens when any group of individuals has absolute power.

Most people worldwide look in awe at the American judicial system and view it as the gold standard of legal systems. Consumers with legitimate complaints have many means of addressing their needs, including small claims courts, attorney general offices, state and city consumer complaint mediation, as well as the Better Business Bureau, chambers of commerce and the non-profit American Arbitration Association. The latter now offers professional mediation services online.

Unfortunately, online posting sites have become the go-to spot for consumers who do not have a legitimate complaint and wish to blow off steam about their purchase decision with false reputation assaults and, in doing so, become trolls. American law is sadly lagging behind Italian law, which has wisely banned this online conduct.

To infer that every business listed on a questionable site is a rip-off or every product listed is a scam is no more accurate than using an ethnic slur to describe everyone of a certain race. This behavior replaces truth with emotional and broad generalities. This is always a stupid and often an oppressive and evil thing to do.

The biggest problem is that consumer awareness lags far behind this new reality due to the blinding speed of the Internet. Most are unaware that a posting they may be reading is not even in the same universe of credibility as reports from organizations such as the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Reports magazine. A blistering attack on an unregulated reputation site may have been written by a frustrated, underemployed man who kicked his dog and beat his wife before posting a hate rant about someone he saw on TV whose face he didn’t like.

As Seth Godin writes in his bestselling marketing book Purple Cow, “It’s people who have projects that are never criticized who ultimately fail. Will you do some things wrong in your career and be unjustly criticized for being unprepared, sloppy or thoughtless? Sure you will. We often respond to criticism by hiding, avoiding the negative feedback and thus (ironically) guaranteeing we won’t succeed. The only way to avoid criticism is by being boring.”

It is vitally important that products, services and businesses be criticized truthfully and fairly without a troll escalating the criticism to barroom drama that disrupts normal on-topic discussion and kills the enterprise.

The Damage Done

At ReputationMedia.com we have interviewed hundreds of business owners and have discovered the ravages done to perfectly legitimate businesses that now need professional help to tackle these publicity and reputation challenges. The problems only escalate if the business owner files a rebuttal on a questionable site. This action moves the posting up to a higher search-engine ranking and often angers the person posting the complaint to launch further attack.

An unfairly attacked business owner must recognize when he or she is being “worked” by professionals who own these questionable sites and who may wish to leverage the business owner’s fallen status to gain what might be called “protection money” in the form of counter-posting fees.

Business owners today need professional help and publicity advice–in addition to legal reform. Consistently helpful legal recourse for them has not yet been found and may come too late for them to remain in business. When businesses are forced to close their doors because of a troll’s false posting, jobs are lost and more foreclosure signs go up on the houses in our neighborhoods.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas L. Friedman recently commented on Meet the Press, “Online postings should come with the warning, Caution: reading this may be hazardous to your mental health.”

Our advice to business owners is to confront this situation head-on with awareness followed by building a “firewall” of backlinks to positive, “white publicity” stories about your business in advance. Advance backlinking is designed to prevent the first negative comment about a business from rising to the top of Google as fast as a weather balloon. This is one way to protect your marketing investment against trolls who hack into the minds of your prospective customers with mental viruses by posting slanderous or off-topic messages to disrupt normal, on-topic product presentations.

Before launching a new product or ad campaign, ask yourself if it’s wise to build your castle on anything less than a solid foundation. A wise marketer today will consider the precautionary steps of posting hundreds of links every month to positive content about themselves, the product and the company as much in advance as possible to protect his or her investment, assets and good name from a lurking troll. Once an online publicity campaign is launched for only a few thousand dollars, the monthly fee for backlinking to good publicity can be as low as $200 per month.

Winning the War

Trolls and troll sites promoting reputation assaults are unlikely to stop any time soon. On the contrary, they are growing and expanding in scope because unethical marketers now look for the first signs of competitor companies or products impeding their success. Online, success means traffic that can be stolen and more traffic means more business.

It’s simple to divert traffic from its intended destination to a troll’s site by posting a phony online assault sign such as, “Wait! Don’t be scammed–buy our sure-fire humdinger instead.” Sometimes, this is the only way an inferior product can hope to compete with a superior competitor.

The trolls are winning. Every day they become more emboldened and empowered by the growing number of questionable sites which are posing as consumer advocacy sites. They justify reprehensible activities by posing as “the good guys” as they conduct their businesses as wolves in sheep’s clothing. They need to be outed for who they are–the trolls leading the trolls–and they need to be regulated or neutralized in some way.

Questionable sites have empowered trolls with unlimited potential for unethical extortion, which is being used and will likely expand dramatically if not stopped.

Two women recently walked into a Berkeley coffee shop and demanded free coffee, stating that if their demand wasn’t met they would file a slanderous complaint about the small shop on a complaint site.

Business owners are even being threatened with an online slander assault when they simply invoice an individual for a past due account.

Where does it stop?

I believe the following actions are needed:

Increased public awareness through campaigns focused on consumer advocacy fraud.

Direct lobbying efforts toward members of U.S. Congress and to U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs should call Senator Snowe’s office to ask her to review the Communications Decency Act and to join other professionals in asking Google to end their support of unscrupulous or questionable sites that exploit business owners.

Some sort of plan, executed by an association or organization of Internet properties–including consumer advocacy sites–to promote self-regulation through creating common practices and industry standards, as other association such as the Electronic Retailing Association has done.

The promotion of business owner awareness that a dollar of prevention is worth ten thousand dollars of cure. Using backlinks to accurate, positive content in advance is as vital as computer virus protection.

If you don’t take control, some troll may take control from you–and with it your hard-earned reputation, your income, possibly your health and your hope for continued American small business innovation.

Mike Hughes is a direct marketer, PR consultant and a frequent speaker on Internet publicity. He can be reached at mhughes@reputationmedia.com.