Praveen: Analytics SEO SEM Online Marketing

Google says 80% of its searches are informational and the rest are navigational and some are transactional. Also it points out that every year more than 25% of the keywords typed by users are new, which have never been typed by users before. Google also has 55% market share as per comScore report.

Therefore according to this we analyze that most users searching on search engines are basically looking for information which they may use it to make offline decisions. This is an opportunity for the companies to provide user awareness and education to equip/empower them with required information to make a decision.

A website presence is basic essential of any company, at the same search engine visibility is very important for this both SEO, SEM becomes necessary. Just as a public relations is to offline media, SEO is to search engines.

What is Blogging?

Blogging is personal opinion dashboard of an individual to express his/her views, opinion or suggestions to the world. Many people blog about their work, personal life, hobby, related interests etc.

Blogs can be created on any freely available blogging system such as Blogger.com, Wordpress.com and many more. Every blog has a feed which can be subscribed by users who can read your posts from their personal feed readers. Also people can post comments on the posts.

Advantage of Blogging

In an offline comparison, you would express your views, thoughts (all types political, personal, business etc) to few close friends and relations. Your expression of thoughts may not have had an impact on your friends but certainly have counted as word of mouth marketing.

Porting the similar analogy to online scenario, your ideas on your blog my have an impact to an information seeker who has landed from a search engine & who is reading your posts.

Many users who visit a website may not be able to find all information or may not have complete trust in what you say. They may be looking for additional information from another user, who may be available on social networks or blogs.

Providing additional information on your blog about the company, its policies and products gives an excellent way to build trust with users and convert an information seeker into a customer.

Google always sets an example in every aspect of online marketing. Google has a blog for its each & every product & service it has launched so far. This gives Google an excellent way to communicate to users in casual and user friendly fashion. Also this provides a platform to provide comprehensive information about its products to end users. This gives them tremendous scope to gain confidence among users and ensure their user base community grows. My belief is that popularity of users & webmaster community has greatly increased only because Google maintains extensive communication about its products through blogs, forums, usenet groups etc.

Apart from the official blogs, there numerous personal blogs that are maintained by company employees such as Mattcutts, Avinash Kaushik and other such people. They promote the policies and procedures of the company through their personal blogs.

AOL product manger talks about the new home page on his personal blog, Avinash Kaushik talks about Google Analytics new interface on his personal blog. The information provided here were very useful to end user and builds confidence and therefore brand value.

Companies must demonstrate the way to blogs by first indulging themselves actively into blogging & social networks before they expect the users to blog about them. This is the simple basic principle on which user activity, habits & behavior on internet are transformed. Practice before your preach. This is after you have a excellent product with very good technology.

How Online Companies should blog?

A) Blog about products that are displayed online,

B) Blog about website features & enhancements & every product on website.

C) Blog about policies, procedures, payment systems

D) Blog about FAQs, and user activity

E) Blog about happy customers, happy users, use photographs, videos etc.

F) Participate in popular forums; solve problems/ grievances posted by users.

G) Increase your presence wherever your target users are located online.

H) Encourage your employees to blog about the company and its policies to send out positive signal to end users.

This would definitely build more confidence into your customers as well as turn information seekers into potential customers. This is a big boost to your brand as it increases your popularity in the online community.

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Google has acquired DoubleClick for $3.1bn, Double click is an Ad company working with Advertisers and Publishers in Ad business. They developed a DART product respectively for Advertisers and Publishers to help target and manage campaigns to meet their respective goals.

Google is already a leader in Targeted Advertising both Text Ad/Image Ad display. They have great products such as Adwords & Adsense for Advertisers & Publishers respectively; this technology is for anybody and requires little or no human involvement from Google’s end.

The main question is why did Google Acquire DoubleClick? Some of the reasons I can think for are:

1) Google took inspiration from Overture to build an Ad system to display relevant text ads based on search terms. They built a system and revolutionized it in a big way. Now they might be thinking of repeating the history again with DoubleClick. DoubleClick has DART, which Google might want to make it enormously scalable for anybody to just plug and play. They might want to keep the human intervention to the minimum level and let technology work the maximum, mainly to reduce cost which ultimately benefits the end user.

2) The Ad business is growing at a rapid rate, with internet overtaking Radio and competing with Print. Ad Agency business is really on the rise. Google wants to have a share of that pie too. It not just wants to be a medium to offer and manage inventory, they would also want to actively work with advertisers and publishers to meet their end goals & take major share of the pie.

3) Most Agencies managing Ad business apart from few good ones do not have long term satisfied customers. Most companies are looking for more accountability and reliability from Agencies. Google is more trusted than anyone in the online industry.

4) Google being the leader in the Online Ad selling; its move towards vertical integration is very natural.

Google would be using its technological expertise in combination with DoubleClick’s business acumen & client servicing capabilities to reach it goals.

Yahoo has in acquired Right Media to be able to compete evenly with Google.com. To state another interesting acquisition is Google acquiring Performics, since Performics is a part of DoubleClick. Performics is a company that sells SEO services to its clients. So, formally Google has acquired a SEO Company, I am sure its business would increase whether Google actually supports it or not.

What will Google do with Performics is yet to be seen….

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Online Marketing Industry is very new compared to other industries including Information technology and Software development. People working in this industry especially successful people have some unique characteristics vis-à-vis other industries. Some of the qualities unique to the people working in this field are:

1) Innovative Skills: Believe it or not this is the industry which basically runs on innovation & new ideas. Every innovation can help a company grow only till it is widely followed and copied by everybody else.

a. This industry is an IP intensive industry, IP (intellectual property) is the key asset to any company operating in this industry. Here companies do not have inventory or physical assets; it thrives and grows by knowledge pool and talent of its people.

b. Therefore people who can think out of the box is essential in this industry.

c. The best example is Google & Yahoo; both the companies have a place in history only because they created great products for end users. They are popular not because of advertising or marketing, but because of the popularity of their innovative products.

2) Knowledge Skills: Technical know-how and methodology of working is very essential in this industry. The ever changing new trends in technology make it imperative for professionals working in this field to have latest knowledge to have technological advantage over others. For example Web 2.0, AJAX etc..

3) Marketing Skills: To efficiently market your online products with ROI oriented approach is very essential for your business. Deciding the right mix of media and external communication is the essential job of any online marketing individual. Manage, Monitor & constantly optimize campaigns to drive right traffic to the website and efficiently monetize it are the important skills needed for the individual.

The above qualities are some of the main qualities a person must have working in an online industry. However the most important aspect is to understand and believe in the overall vision of the company, the bigger picture which the company aims to reach. Consider the below example:

Compare a scenario where a person is walking today, tomorrow he starts to walk faster, 3rd day he starts to Jog, 4^th day he starts to run faster. Similarly there is another person who is walking today, 2^nd day he cycles, 3^rd day he moves in a two wheeler, 4^th day he drives a car. In the second case the person has grown while as in first case the person is in the same state but operating faster. Companies and individuals are also same. Most companies tend to operate in the same fashion but more efficiently as they progress, such companies were good in the traditional industries such as banking and finance however in online industries which are IP intensive they would soon die. The real growth happens to companies which follow the second path by moving up the value chain and not just offering a customer a better product but also to create a whole new set of customer base

Marketing, Knowledge & Other skills can make you No.1 in the game, but you need Vision, Innovation, out of the box thinking to Lift the Game to different level. Google was able to think Big, which clearly the other players lacked, this is the main reason why Google is in leadership position and is able to define the game.

Most online companies follow the traditional businesses and follow the Method 1 explained above. They have an idea, implement it, become successful and then want to become efficient in repeating it. They run out of innovation and startup spirit to create new things. They become busy implementing the same idea everywhere they go, even though the whole world has copied it. This is exactly Yahoo has been doing until recently they changed the organization structure to think differently.

But Google has been following the second path, they started thinking bigger and broader. They ventured into Radio, Newspaper, TV, and whole lot of acquisitions.

They bought Youtube, DoubleClick, partnered with myspace and other major online players.

This is the main reason why Google surpassed Microsoft to be the No.1 Brand in the world is less than decade of time, which Microsoft took almost 25 years to build it.

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There has been in a surge in new advertising agencies in India especially in past 2 years. The number has increased to more than 100%, primarily targeting overseas clientèle as well big Indian companies. Due to low cost factor or other reasons most online marketing agencies outsource their projects to India, being one of the largest English speaking young populations.

Many online marketing agencies & companies abroad find it advantageous to outsource their work to other agencies and companies in India. This is possible mainly in online industry where geographic location is of slight importance

Agencies in India target 3 main entities for business.

A) Agency client, typically another agency abroad looking to reduce its cost of operations by outsourcing part or entire amount of work to agencies in India. This is profitable for agencies as they only have to manage the client while the backend operations are taken care of by outsourcing partner.

B) Companies: These are primary advertisers who are looking to advertise across various channels across online media. They would be totally willing to outsource their work to agencies here in India, but since physical presence matters while negotiating deals, the agencies in India have difficulty in closing deals with big companies. But companies which are active online are aware of methods of outsourcing their online work to agencies worldwide. These agencies may have experience in the past or are aware of channels like forums and sites where people selling services can be contacted.

There are also companies in India who are interested in online marketing arena. These companies need to be convinced of the ROI on investing online. However most big companies are aware of online industry growth and advantageous of advertising.

SEO SEM Agencies

In the online marketing industry the services offered by agencies are performed in a predefined set of processes. Every service is offered in phases like:

Phase 1: Analysis

Phase 2: Activities 1

Phase 3: Activities 2 etc…

The agencies assign an account manager or a client representative who is in constant touch with the client regarding updates and changes etc. This client representative would be dealing with numerous clients of that agency. The agencies provide you a standard set of reports and documents sent at regular intervals of the campaign.

The agencies mainly have clientele who are unaware of technicalities and knowledge of the industry, the campaign management activities cannot be performed by them due to lack of expertise or necessary resources.

However the most important thing to be noted is that the agencies have very little knowledge of the business of the client. The company which runs the business knows exactly who its target audience is and what their needs are hence would be able to reach them with the right communication. This is especially true in B2B marketing on search networks. Another aspect is maintaining the ROI, the company self managing the campaign would have all records of sales as well as cost of advertising to help maintain the advertising costs/expenditure

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Google has started inviting advertisers for its affiliate network model. This a entry into the affiliate market, Google will definitely take a share of the total market revenue. This is a good opportunity for advertisers looking to pay only for the incoming leads.

However we have to wait and watch how effectively Google can monitor and prevent fraud in the CPA model. Some issues or concerns which arise out from the PPA program are:

1) The publishers are totally unaware of the business model of the advertisers. So it is up to Google to display Ads in relevant sections of the site.

2) For B2B advertisers, where leads generated are very low in quantity & high in value, publishers would be unwilling to display PPA ads as revenue maybe uncertain, inconsistent & less attractive.

3) Publishers have to really work hard to maximize their revenue through referral ads by testing & displaying Ads in the right sections of the site. Many publishers might be unwilling or incapable of doing so.

4) More MFA sites for referral ad revenue would increase… These spam web pages would make promises of advertisers’ product which may not be real.

5) Advertisers have to pay for junk leads. In traditional affiliate model there can be higher control of quality of leads from the affiliate sites.

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