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Recently, I posed my question to a diverse audience: "At your company, who is in charge of social media marketing? Raise your hand if it's the marketing group." A few hands went up. "The public relations team?" A few hands again. "Market research?" Once again, only a smattering of hands was raised. "So I guess most of you aren't using social media ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Raise your hand if you've heard of
Blendtec. I bet you are familiar
with Blendtec and I bet I know
how you first heard of their blenders -
from their viral video series called "Will
it blend?" That series, showing iPods and
other unusual items being reduced to
powder by a powerful blender, serves a
strong branding message: If it can annihil ... More BY MIKE MORAN
In the mid-to-late '90s, none of the search engines wanted to be mere search engines, because searchers quickly left their sites. Instead, they largely ignored search to create portals - those sticky sites they hoped would show more advertising to each visitor by catering to all of their information needs.
Then Google came along. Google gained p ... More BY MIKE MORAN
You can succeed in search marketing without spending any money.
I admit it - I'm a skinflint. Call me
a tightwad, a miser - I don't care.
Basically, I'm cheap. And even if
you're not cheap by personality, you
might need to conserve cash by necessity.
If that's your situation, don't despair.
The Internet is tailor-made for
... More BY MIKE MORAN
What catalogs and direct mail can teach
search marketers.
When I say the word "marketing,"
what do you think
of? Probably some kind of
advertising - maybe a TV commercial
for Coke. That's brand marketing, and
it's gotten the lion's share of attention
from marketers for decades.
Far fewer people are direct marketers
- the f ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Know the tricks and you can steer clear
of spam link techniques.
In my last column, you were warned
to "Never watch sausage being
made," lest you find the process so
unappetizing you'd never eat it again.
But even if you find sausage links tasty,
you'll want to spit out those spam links
every time.
Last time, we explored ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Do you know enough about search spam
to stay out of danger?
"Never watch sausage being
made," folks say, lest
you would find the process
so unappetizing that you'd never
eat it again. Regardless of how you feel
about Spam®, the venerable luncheon
meat, all search marketers must understand
the ingredients that comprise
... More BY MIKE MORAN
For search marketing success, there's no free lunch.
It's the headline any search marketer
would dread: "Google Bans BMW
for Search Spamming." For wellknown
companies, such bad publicity is
reason enough to stay away from deceptive
search practices. BMW's plight was
published in leading newspapers worldwide.
But even small c ... More BY MIKE MORAN
How personalized search results change search marketing.
Your phone rings. A good friend is calling, more excited than you've heard her in months. "My book is on the home page of Amazon! I can't believe it. My book was just published last week and already it's on Amazon's home page!" Exciting? Maybe not to someone who knows how Amazon works. Your ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Search marketers need to adjust to the new model.
As author Robert C. Gallagher observes, "Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine." And so it comes as no surprise that paid search engines are changing too. The biggest change is one of the most fundamental, affecting which paid ads are shown first in the results. The tried-and-true ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Combating click fraud is not about others protecting you. It's about protecting yourself.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" That's what the Chicken Littles of the world would have you believe when they discuss how click fraud will doom the world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Of course, some Chicken Littles have a vested interest in ra ... More BY MARY O'BRIEN
SEM is just another form of direct response marketing and many of the same principles apply.
As I go around the country teaching workshops on pay per click (PPC) I get asked many varied questions on search engine marketing (SEM), depending on which city I happen to be in. Larger marketers seem to have more sophisticated questions; smaller marketer ... More BY MARY O'BRIEN
Looking for search terms in all the right places.
Now that you've set up your search engine marketing campaign and it's chugging along nicely, how do you take things to the next level? You've picked out some good keywords, written some good copy and you're getting a reasonable ROI, but every time you look at your pay-per-click campaigns, you just ... More BY MARY O'BRIEN
The balance of power between merchants and affiliates is shifting.
Welcome to my first column - Mary O'Brien set a high standard that I hope to live up to. I've been working in search technology since the 1980s, so I can help you understand what lies behind some of the search advice you receive. I initiated IBM's search marketing program back in 2 ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Discover how your business can leverage podcasts before it's too late.
Everyone's talking about podcasts, those audio files downloaded from the Web and played on demand using an Apple iPod or any MP3 media player. Many podcasts are just for fun, but marketers are discovering they're also a promising new way to deliver advertising.
In a sense, the ... More BY MIKE MORAN
Building a strong customer relationship is more important than the sale.
Some folks compare organic search marketing to public relations, where you are trying to get free attention for your business. They further link paid search to traditional advertising. If the comparisons make sense to you, then maybe we can torture the analogy by comparing bl ... More BY MIKE MORAN
