David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Danny Sullivan was sporting these ultra spiffy striped socks yesterday at Search Engine Strategies Chicago broadcasting the Daily Search Cast from the Webmaster Radio expo booth prior to his departure for Pubcon.
This raises so many questions, are these socks typical of the Daily Search Cast? What kind of socks will he be wearing today?
Moderator:
Charles Laughlin, SVP & Program Director, The Kelsey Group
Nusiness Speakers:
Bruce Crair, President and Chief Operating Officer, Local.com
Scott Finholm, VP of Local Advertising Services, Marchex
Justin Sanger, Founder & President, LocalLaunch!
Tobias Dengel, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Website Pros, Inc.
Charles Knight from Alternative Search Engines also blogged this session
Websitepros, Tobias Dendel
255,000 customers/providers, 700 employees
It’s a mess to figure out how to position a small business online.
Do I spend money on radio, newspaper, whatever?
Even for a small business a web site is a critical factor in creating trust.
We don’t believe per action will be effective as it’s too complex.
Example, roofer in Indianapolis 15 unique calls and 15 qualified emails.
Local.com, Bruce Crair
1 million people advertising online, 18 million listings which shows the great opportunities still ahead.
Too many choices, the small business owner is confused. Even if they do understand the choices, the cost is hard. Then how do they create an ROI?
Most businesses don’t have websites, they need them to do the job. They need to figure out how to make the data accurate. All too often, it’s not.
Any business can do it. Just doing paid without organic is a waste of time.
Pay for placement, click bundles, pay per click, make sure you start with simple stuff first.
Locallaunch, Justin Sanger
150 people, thousands of orders per week.
We intended to create the SME (Small Medium Enterprises).
Innovation outpaces adoption.
The innovation is amazing and significant. The SMEs don’t feel this. These enterprises are not yet able to take advantages.
Destinations and inventory abound.
Yahoo! local and Google local provide new experiences all the time. Vertical search plays nice together with geos. This is pretty complex.
Who is winning?
Yellowpages are winning due to directional relationships
Pure Plays
RH Donnelly is a sales company. Google and Yahoo! realize this and are partners.
Margin pressure is intense and unsustainable.
Marketplace trends
Sales Organizations are driving the experience for SMEs
Content aggregation is a strategically vital business strategy
SME aggregators strive to collect and store richer, vertical-specific local business content
IYP is an old heading. It is now simply local search
Pure sales organizations are selling at non-sustainable margin – this is a critical driver of consolidation or service pressure
PPC pricing pressure will further compound an already fragmented marketplace
Marchex, Scott Finholm
We are a local online advertising company and leading publisher of local content.
Advertisers of all sides, we work with sales forces to teach them how to sell search.
Sites:
SEM and SEO aren’t the same thing
A great site isn’t necessary..but a “good” site is…
Services:
Can’t automate creativity
All businesses are not created equal
Clicks and calls both matter
Sales:
Small businesses look to trusted, proven providers
Simple product = more sales
Seth’s talk was a more refined version of the teleconference he gave last month. I blogged that here. Three questions I want put out to the blogosphere for discussion are:
Should organizations be smaller like tree trunks instead of the traditional pyramids?
How can this change take place if most leaders don’t know it’s necessary and are not up to speed about what to do or how to do it even if they acknowledged the issue?
How will recruiting morph to put the generalist thought leaders in place to lead this change – perhaps those with competencies derived in other industries or through accelerated self learning?
Other coverage of Seth Godin’s Search Engine Strategies Chicago speech:
Meatball Sundaes and the Smelly Old Guard
Seth Godin Tells Marketers How to Avoid Meatball Sundaes
During the universal search session, the usefulness of video in regards to boring business items was discussed. Kevin Ryan asserted, “Should I make a video of me hitting myself with a ball peen hammer?”
I’m sitting here in Kitty O’Shea’s in Chicago and Jim Hedger says “Yes, I would pay to see that!”
Greg Jarboe says, “I’d advertise on that video because the video would get a lot of cheap hits.”
What do you think? If enough people agree with Jim, maybe Kevin Ryan will be making his hammer debut on Youtube!
Bryan Eisenberg gave a great talk on the multitude of issues surrounding the challenges of successful customer conversions and conversation.
Marketing (r)Evolutions
Mass advertising on passive customers was what used to work.
People sleep while watching TV, hard to pay attention to advertising when sleeping.
Sleeping while surfing the Internet is not something that happens.
Godaddy.com Super Bowl XL TV commercials didn’t use the same model on the web site. Did Godaddy leave money on the table.
Money is better than traffic.
Apple had to give rebates due to word of mouth on iphone pricing.
Marketers still think customers are dogs.
But search puts the power of when and how in their hands (the sonsumer).
Overcoming sales friction – 85% of car purchases start online – you arrive knowing more than the salesman in many cases. Attack of the blogs – Consumers trust other consumers more than marketers. 54% resist, 56% avoid, 69% block ads – yet we still want to buy.
Customers will control the conversation. People have forgotten how to have relationships.
The web is a major influencer, a mere 26% of consumers were SATISFIED with the experience. They are missing the BASICS. Conversation rates are continuing to fall.
All new brands are based on the experience model. Invest in the customer experience.
We are obsessed with the how many, not the who. This needs to change.
Customers desire great and meaningful experiences.
SCENT, ads must think it has scent to be useful.
80% of traffic dies off within three clicks.
GEICO – connects the story…
Zafu – bras in launch video didn’t match website.
Usability – Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father.
We are all connected and customers will control the conversation. It involves persuasion architecture!!!
Traffic generation is about money. Don’t imitate your competitors. It’s the tiny pieces that matter. Focus on making your service better.
Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
Marketing Speakers:
Motoko Hunt, Founder, Japanese Search Marketing Strategist, AJPR LLC
T.R. Harrington, Director of Strategic Direction & Product Development, Darwin Marketing
Erica Schmidt, Global Director of Search, iProspect (slides where unreadable)
Motoko Hunt, Founder, Japanese Search Marketing Strategist, AJPR LLC
87.5 Million on the Internet
68% penetration
Mobile taking off in Japan, SNS, Blog, Video
Yahoo! allows keyword assist in Japanese.
Searchbox is telling you the words to search online offline.
Challenges of language includes spelling variations, no spaces segmenting word.
Translators don’t know SEO. Keyword research must be redone as the usage rates can be highly variable. Japanese keyword Research is critical.
Shopping, payment options, “Osaifu-keitai”, Points (not coupons) are prevalent.
T.R. Harrington, Director of Strategic Direction & Product Development, Darwin Marketing
Baidu – 68% search traffic in China
The way Baidu displays ads first – you might not see a natural listing on page 1 at all!!!
Ad platform differences – CPC, Budget, # of clicks, content network, campaign report, geo-target, keyword insertion
Paid Search – higher click through rate, faster CPC price increases, relatively few optimization variables
Natural Search – keyword selection methodology, traffic estimation tools in China unreliable (Google says not to use Google analytics there).
China still has low penetration of credit cards and most transactions happen offline and therefore aren’t trackable.
I’m going to O’hare airport today to pick someone up, so as usual I check the Chicago area traffic page. I noticed something new in the upper right hand corner that stated IDOT free email alert system is available at http://www.iltrafficalert.com.
What you’ll find on that site is a rather revolutionary tool that allows you to set a custom alert for the expressway of your choice based on traffic speed. If the data is accurate this could be highly useful. Let’s say you normally leave to go somewhere at 6:45AM based on normal traffic. This tool apparently allows you to set up a 6:15AM alert if the road was moving below 20MPH so you could start your trip earlier. Sure this tool could still be more granular in both speed and in picking the exact section of road you want on that expressway but this trend towards a self-service, but a micro-controlled alert is nothing short of revolutionary compared to the traffic radio mass distribution model.
Chicago area commuters can now set up their own alerts here. I’d be interested in hearing about people’s usage stories and potential suggestions in the comment section, perhaps IDOT is listening. 🙂