SEM Canada Off, Vancouver Internet Marketing Conf Still On

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In case you were eagerly waiting for the SEM Conference in Calgary, you're going to have to wait a little longer. It has been postponed until October 2009. Apparently a major corporate sponsor is in the offing, but as you can guess, the big companies can't move fast enough to accommodate the short fuse that the conference has with it being originally scheduled for this September.

This is probably good, as being the first annual, there is a lot of ground work that still has to happen, that the relatively short timeframe didn't allow for. Better to wait and get everything ready and lined up, rather than rush it and risk a poor result. Also, the original date was VERY close to the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, which attracts a VERY similar audience. IMC has not had a conference in Canada since Vancouver in 2002, and as a result, has a strong following.

We'll now have more time to prepare for IMC Vancouver, where we have both a speaking engagement on B2B search engine marketing, and a demo of ActiveConversion lined up. It's scheduled for September 11-12, 2008 at the Coast Plaza Hotel. Hope to see you there!

Labels: IMC Vancouver, Internet Marketing Conference, SEM Canada

posted by Fred @ 3:14 PM

Interview by Brian Carter

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I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Brian Carter of Fuel Interactive, for the upcoming SEM Canada conference. I haven't had a chance to listen to it much, but it's a great way to cover alot of ground in SEM and online marketing.

Brian is the Director of Search Marketing for Fuel, based in South Carolina. Brian is an SEOmoz Pro Member and Google AdWords Qualified search marketing trainer, consultant, and speaker. Brian has more than eight years experience in the internet industry and is well known in the search engine marketing industry.

Being that one of our specialties in B2B and using SEO/SEM with longer sales cycles, we decided to cover those topics in detail. Brian was gracious to also ask me about www.ActiveConversion.com, which helps companies capitalize on search and online marketing.

The MP3 is around 45 minutes long, and I think you may find it interesting.

The interview is in his blog article which is here: http://adwordsconsultant.blogspot.com/2008/07/interview-mp3-with-fred-yee-of.html

Here is a condensed list of things we cover:

• Search marketing in the B2B space
• 2.5m businesses that could benefit from SEM
  
• Advantages of online marketing over offline marketing
• Why Microsoft would spend so much to buy Yahoo
• Branding vs. Niche direct marketing
• Case study: Evans Console who sells $250k consoles to NASA and FedEx
• Effect of interactive marketing on Yellow Pages
• The Calgary business scene, and search marketing scene
• Shifting from the part-time in-house to search marketing agency experts
• Conversion tracking for lead generation campaigns
• A more sophisticated way to track and stay in touch with long buying cycle sales prospects

Lightning round topics! Fred's quick opinions on...

• Twitter
• Yellow pages
• LinkedIn
• Local search
• Canadians
• Americans
• Calgary

Labels: activeconversion, b2b search engine marketing, Calgary SEM, fred yee interview, SEM Canada

posted by Fred @ 5:46 PM

Google Ad Planner and Google Trends

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Online advertising just got even easier with Google's new tools for planning your online media buys. Google Ad Planner help advertisers match what they sell, with the demographic that is most suited for what they sell, on the websites that most likely has that demographic. So what that all means is you/we can easily find and advertise on the websites most likely to be interested in what you're selling

You may think you already know what they are, but with millions of websites out there, it is a lot of work going thru them, and figuring out if this is an appropriate website (and adding more). The info includes gender, income range, and education, that can make your ad planning much easier by being able to target exactly who you want to see your ad. It will also make finding those kind of websites very easy.

This had been a problem with Google's contextual ads before, which were keyword based, but could show on almost any website, unless you spent a lot of time specifying which websites you wanted to show the ad on. Most people didn't, and as a result, the click thru rates for contextual ads were usually very poor, especially compared to search ads. Google Ad Planner fixes that, and you will see contextual ads really start to take off as a result, if you know how to take advantage of it.

Google Trends is related, and pertains more to being able to 'loosely measure' the website traffic of a particular URL. Similar to Alexa and Compete, it uses a 'trend' to give an idea of how much traffic a website gets, relative to another similar website. You may seen Google Trends in another format, as a way to find the most searched keywords for the week, like 'Angelina Jolie'.

With tools like this, you can see why Google is going to continue to dominate online advertising and search engine marketing for the foreseeable future. The others have alot of catching up to do to keep up!

Labels: ad buying, Google ad planner, Google Trends, media buying, online advertising

posted by Fred @ 2:44 PM

Future of Print Still Being Threatened

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According to a report by Eloqua, entitled 'State of the Marketer', which has been widely reported, print spending will continue to decrease. 55% of 200 U.S. marketers surveyed expect to decrease their print ad spending.

In addition, a large number of these same marketers (90%) intend to continue increasing their direct online ad budgets, with 15% 'radically' increasing their online spending.

Print isn't taking it on the chin only from online spending. Direct mail spend, social media spend and mobile ad spend will be increased.

The report also goes on to say that 64% of marketers believe their marketing programs are more effective now than three years ago. This is so much the case, that marketing budgets are actually increasing, and even in the down market in the U.S., that they will maintain or increase their marketing staff.

This leads me to believe that a) online marketing and advertising is continuing to grow b) because it is more effective c) leading to higher marketing spending d) and more satisfaction with the marketing department.

It's not a foolproof hypothesis, but I bet any of you out there using online marketing (like our clients) know this is likely closer to the truth than not!

Labels: marketing budgets, online advertising, print advertising

posted by Fred @ 4:34 PM

Microhoo Deal Dead

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Over 3 months after making a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, Microsoft has decided that 'clearly a deal is not to be done'. Microsoft's latest bid which upped the total price to $47.5 billion over the weekend, was rejected as inadequate.

So what does that mean? For one, it means I was wrong to expect that a 80% premium would be enough to convince Yahoo. And more importantly, it may mean that both sides didn't want to do the deal - which may be a good thing. Both sides have had over 3 months to get feedback from analysts, employees and even competitors as to the value of the merger, and if the point was to take on Google - they may have both figured out that this might have been a disaster.

From an online advertising standpoint, it will mean:

• Google will get even stronger, especially in the short term
  
• Yahoo might get better and be willing to change dramatically because of the scrutiny
  
• Microsoft will have to grow this part of their business themselves, and get better at it.

For us and advertisers, I think this will mean we will have a more vibrant search engine marketing and online advertising industry. More competition usually means more innovation, choices and lower pricing. It will take some time to get there and it may hurt these industry giants but in the longer term, the rest of us should benefit.

One thing is certain. Online advertising and marketing is BIG, and getting bigger. If you haven't already, hitch your wagon to it.

Labels: deal, Microsoft, online advertising, yahoo

posted by Fred @ 5:05 PM

Adwords Phishing Email

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I don't usually take up blog space with security alerts, but this one hopefully is the one exception for the year. There are emails being sent out with your email on them, that look very much like the emails you get from Google when your credit card expires, or is no longer accepted. This email doesn't have the usual spelling errors, or obvious bogus URLs that make it easy to detect as fake.

The email then 'instructs' you to go enter your credit card info, which of course is the reason for the email. We see a lot of these alerts and were initially concerned by them because they were real looking AND because they did go to clients with Adwords accounts.

The solution is to not click on the link provided in the email, and to go investigate via your Google Adwords account directly. Or in the case of our clients, get told to go 'see what the h*ll is going on' for them. If you have an agency like FoundPages, you probably don't have to worry, they would also get an alert if it's legitimate, and also see enough of them to know when it's bogus.

I have to admit, this is one of the cases, where I might vote for getting paper in the mail...

Labels: adwords email, credit card harvesting, Google Adwords phishing

posted by Fred @ 8:11 AM

SEM Conference in Calgary Sep 4-5

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A sign that search engine marketing has matured from a novelty and become a standard, if not vitally important part of marketing in Calgary and Alberta, is that the SEM Canada conference is taking place right here in September!

I think it's the first annual, and part of the reason is Laura Callow is helping to organize it. Laura's a transplanted Calgarian and she's bringing her 'big picture' skills she has from working with some of the largest companies in the world.

The website is up and running for this event, and early bird registrations are being accepted. It promises to be an excellent event, with speakers and panels that you would normally expect to see in San Jose, New York and London.

You can bet I'll be there as FoundPages is thrilled to participate in a conference that is geared toward something it has been evangelizing for the past 5 years. It will be great to invite our clients to something that has become important enough to warrant it's own conference in Calgary.

Visit the website and registration info. As things firm up, and the date gets closer, you can expect we'll update you more.

Labels: Calgary SEM, SEM Canada, SEM conference

posted by Fred @ 12:12 AM