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Our Online Marketing for .ORGs Series Comes to a Close

29
May
2009

Wednesday’s webinar on Social Media for .ORGs was our biggest success yet, closing out the end of the series on a high note.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Back in December, 2008 we hosted our first seminar at the Melrose Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Online Marketing for .ORGs.  That day over a continental breakfast, we welcomed an audience of ready-to-learn members from various local associations and organizations.  Due to the positive feedback of that event, we decided to begin a webinar series tailored exclusively to this .ORG audience and presented every month since January.  After five webinars covering topics such as search engine marketing, email marketing, social media and viral marketing, we’ll be taking a few months off to regroup and plan for a new webinar series at the end of the summer.  We want to thank everyone who has attended our webinars and hope we can continue the dialogue in the future.  We have greatly appreciated all the feedback you have submitted and are eager to apply these suggestions in order to make our next series even more successful.

This past Wednesday, we presented on our final topic of the series: Social Media for .ORGs.  With over 80 people in attendance, we introduced some very important content including:

  • How to communicate through social networks
  • The various types of social media and how they can be applied to your organization
  • How to measure social media for success

For attendees that would like a copy of the presentation or for those who were unable to attend, the deck can be downloaded on our Facebook Fan page.  We encourage anyone to contact us for more clarification on this topic or any others from the series.  Thank you again to all those who have helped make these webinars a success!

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New Similar Images and Timeline Application Integrated in Google Search

22
April
2009

Two new experimental tools are launched to help users more efficiently browse through data

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Similar Images is an application that allows users to sort through the results of an image search by clicking on links to other similar images.  The searches populated will also try to match the angle of the image, a person’s position or expression, or depth of the picture. 

Another new system, Timeline, categorizes information chronologically by day, week, month or year in a zoomable format.  Users will be able to sort through the same type of results that would be shown in a typical Google News search.  According to Google, the results are pulled from various sources including recent and historial news, scanned articles, blogs, Twitter status messages and other media. 

Check out these new features through Google’s latest version of Google Labs.

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Spending Trends in Search Engine Marketing for 2008

30
March
2009

In 2008, companies spent more money on paid search than search engine optimization

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

According to new research conducted by Radar Research, spending for paid placements in North America greatly exceeded that of organic search. Last year, $13.5 billion was spent on search engine marketing; 88% of which came from paid search and only 11% from SEO. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) estimates that search marketing spending will increase to $14.7 billion next year. This figure is inclusive of paid placement, organic search, paid inclusion and SEM technology. 

While SEO tends to be more cost-effective in terms of longer lasting results, it takes time for a site to achieve a high ranking or even a first-page ranking. Oftentimes, clients are either not willing to wait for this to occur or desire results that can be measured short-term. These factors, among others, attribute to the large gap between paid and organic search spending. However, as marketers begin to understand that users find organic listings to be more relevant than paid, they may realize the wait is worth long-term campaign results. 

Spending Trends in Search Engine Marketing for 2008

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Survey Reveals Which Online Marketing Tactics Produced the Highest ROI in 2008

5
February
2009

MarketingSherpa’s year-end survey shows which tactics yielded the highest ROI and how marketers should adjust budget planning for 2009

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

During 2008 MarketingSherpa and Ad:Tech surveyed over 1,200 marketers to determine which online marketing tactics were used most often and how much money was spent on these various programs.  The results of the survey can help marketers adjust their budgets for 2009 to achieve the highest ROI for each program.

MarketingSherpa ROI vs. Budget in 2008

As seen in the chart above, email is the most commonly used tactic  by marketers and also ranks very high on ROI, as the budget required to successfully execute these programs is relatively small compared to other tactics.  The affordability of this particular program is likely the reason for 90% of marketers participating.  Over 50% of respondents report “great” ROI on paid search, more than any other tactic presented in the survey.  This is largely due to a marketer’s ability to track how many conversions are resulting from each dollar spent. 

After paid search, marketers reportedly spent the most on display ads, such as banners and buttons. This is very alarming because less than 15% of those surveyed indicated that this tactic was generating a good ROI.  With the economy forcing companies to cut back on spending, marketers may be shifting their dollars into more revenue generating tactics.

The chart below illustrates the importance of including search engine marketing programs in a marketing plan for 2009.  Paid search and search engine optimization rank among the top three highest ROI generators and are two of the most commonly used tactics. This chart also shows that poorly targeted online advertising, such as pop-ups and emails to rented list, yield a poor ROI.

MarketingSherpa Top ROI Generators

The survey also prompted marketers to indicate what tactics they planned to invest in during 2009.  The benefit of paid search remains clear, as 57% reported increasing spending on this successful ROI generator.  Despite last year indicating a low ROI for display ads, 29% of marketers will continue to spend money on traditional online ads.  This is very surprising; considering one out of three respondents indicated that they deliver a poor ROI and only 13% said they were great.  Perhaps the stresses of an ailing economy will force marketers more than ever to truly focus on the programs that produce the highest ROI.

MarketingSherpa Spending Projections in 2009

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Online Marketing Seminar for .ORGs

11
November
2008

EyeTraffic hosts the first of a series of free online marketing seminars for cause-driven organizations.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

Last Friday November 7, EyeTraffic Media hosted the first of a series of free seminars intended to educate cause-driven organizations on how to successfully apply online marketing strategies.  With the current economy and shrinking marketing budgets, associations and cause-driven organizations are looking for ways to optimize their marketing efforts at lower costs.  Through these seminars, EyeTraffic Media will encourage the .ORG community to explore ways to efficiently manage their marketing dollars.

“With our headquarters in Washington DC, we are surrounded by associations coping with the struggling economy and limited marketing budgets,” said EyeTraffic Media’s Principal Manager George Assimakopoulos. “Having worked with several nonprofits, we have proven that we can help organizations achieve their online marketing goals in a cost efficient manner. It is important to us to share our knowledge of best practices with the rest of the community.” 

The seminar discussed how online marketing can produce more effective results at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Online marketing allows non-profit organizations to attract awareness for their causes and events, and increase both sponsorship and membership.  This can be accomplished through the use of search engine marketing (SEM), viral marketing and email marketing; all of which were reviewed at the seminar.

The event was held at The Melrose Hotel in Washington, DC and had a marketing representative from over 30 different non-profit organizations in attendance. 

“EyeTraffic Media provided a great overview of the key aspects of a successful online marketing campaign,” commented Elizabeth Burrell from The Coalition for Government Procurement. “The seminar offered valuable information that I can now use to re-evaluate my organization’s online marketing efforts to better target appropriate audiences. I look forward to attending future seminars.”

To learn more about the free online marketing educational seminars please contact Christine Pepin, Media Coordinator, cpepin@eyetraffic.com.

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GOOGLE Algorithm Update…Coming Soon

31
October
2008

Google is always working on improvements that will help show the most relevant ads to searchers. Today they announced two changes designed to enhance how they calculate a site’s Quality Score and display rank.

George Assimakopoulos
Principal Manager

Google announced today they will be changing certain components to its algorithm over the next several days. The first change will help better evaluate the precise quality of an ad – regardless of its position on the page. The second change will improve how Google promotes ads to positions at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Let’s take a look at both of these changes in more detail.

More precise Quality Score calculation
Google is now weighing Click-Though Rate (CTR) as the most significant component of Quality Score because it directly indicates which ads are most relevant to searchers. Typically, ads in high positions earn better CTR than those in low positions, because ads in higher positions are more visible to searchers. To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it’s important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score. In the coming days, Google will update the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounts for ad position. This will result in more accurate Quality Scores, ensuring that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, and enable Google to show the most relevant ads to searchers by rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions.

Higher quality ads above the search results
Google is also changing the way they determine which ads show in the yellow region above the search results. These positions are particularly valuable to advertisers because they are prominently positioned on a SERP page. Given their prominence, it’s especially important that these ads be high quality; therefore Google will place extra emphasis on quality when determining which ads to show in this location. To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, Google may not have shown any ads above the search results. With the coming update, Google will allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. For instance, suppose the ad in position 1 on the right side of the page doesn’t have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position 2 does. It’s now possible for the number 2 ad to jump over the number 1 ad and appear above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions.

Keep in mind that these enhancements may cause changes to any campaign’s ad position, spend, and performance. The good news is that this will level the playing field even more across competitive industry segments – especially for non-branded keyword terms.  Google is essentially announcing that they are weighing in favor of "more clicks with lower bids". Our assumption is that challenging economic times have forced businesses and organization to bid down of keyword terms and thus search volume is likely down.  As a result, Google is changing their algorithm in an attemp to maximize clicks – even if they come at a lower cost-per-click.

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Cuil: Better Than Google?

30
July
2008

Former Google employees create their own search engine which could reduce Google’s market share.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

According to ComScore, an online measurement company, in May 2008 Google held a 62% share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21% and Microsoft at 8.5%. This month, another search engine, Cuil, joined the list of Google competitors which also includes Teoma (whose technology is used by Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft this month. What gives Cuil an edge over all the other competition is that it was created by Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, all former Google engineers.  

Patterson built and sold a search index that probed old websites for the internet archive to Google in 2004. Patterson and Power worked together on the same team at Google. Monier was the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, the best search engine before Google launched in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay’s online auction site. This group is also teaming up with Tom Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. Costello later joined IBM where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.  It is clear that this team has extensive knowledge in this space and also of, Google, the industry leader. Because of this, the possibility of creating a more comprehensive and efficient search engine seems more realistic.

Patterson emphasizes that there will be many differences between Cuil and Google.  For example Cuil’s search index is 120 billion web pages. Google has an index of 8.2 billion web pages as of three years ago (when Google stopped publicly announcing its index count).  Cuil’s results are gathered by the actual content of a page, not by ranking the quality and quantity of links as Google does.  The results on Cuil are displayed with photos, and the layout resembles that of articles in a magazine. The results page on Cuil also includes additional categories related to your initial search, conveniently displayed in a drop down menu.  Additionally Cuil will not track the users search histories, as Google does. 

Cuil faces several challenges such as building a better search engine and winning over the public who are loyal to the Google brand.  However, the bigger question is, if Cuil raises the bar for search engines, how will this change the world of online marketing?

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Knol: Google’s New Unit of Knowledge

25
July
2008

Google unveils its’ decision to rival Wikipedia with its’ new highly credible, author-collaborated information site.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

After six months in beta, Google announced earlier this week that Knol, a user-generated encyclopedia, would be open to the public for use.  Many are anticipating that Knol will rival Wikipedia in the near future, although the two sites are quite different. Entries made on this site, called knols, are posted by a variety of approved subject-expert authors about specific topics.  With their name and reputation connected to the material posted, authors have a power that Google calls, “moderation collaboration.”  Using this authority, these authors have the right to accept, reject or modify suggested edits by the readers before they become publically visible.  Comments, ratings or reviews submitted of the knolls, however, cannot be modified by Google.

Knol is sponsored through Google’s internal ad program, AdSense, at the discretion of the authors, who receive a cut of these profits.  On the other-hand, Wikipedia is funded purely on private donors and some grants and is therefore visibly at risk of being unseated by Google’s revenue-generating system. 

The value available for students, professors, researchers and other intellectuals trying to build a reputation exists on Knol, as their selectivity of content shows the sites credibility. Wikipedia, who struggles to assure themselves as reliable source, may now loose readers as well as authors who now have a monetary and career-driven incentive on Knol.

With Google securing 61.5% of searches in June, according to MarketingVox, conflict of interest issues are evident, as these highly updated and information-abundant sites typically rank high in the search engines.  For years, Wikipedia has dominated for this reason with high organic positions.  Now, however, they will begin competing with Google, the powerhouse controlling the algorithms behind those calculated rankings. 

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Google Exposes Students to the World of Paid Search

10
June
2008

University students across 47 countries around the world had the opportunity to experience first-hand SEM tactics that help increase visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs) in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

According to Compete.com, over 135 million people frequent Google’s website each month. Despite the widespread familiarity of the search giant’s site, many visitors are unaware of the strategy behind the paid search system that business-owners rely on for exposure. This year, university students across 47 countries around the world had the opportunity to experience first-hand SEM tactics that help increase visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs) in the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

To compete, student teams worked with a local business not already advertising with Google AdWords to develop strategic online marketing campaigns. Using only $200 of free advertising provided by Google, the teams launched a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign for three consecutive weeks. Judging was based on a post-campaign summary of each team’s results and experience during the competition. In mid July winners will be announced, with the global winners receiving a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, and regional winners a trip to their local Google office. Individual and university recognition will be awarded to other top finalists.

As a participator in this competition, and as someone working in the interactive marketing industry, it is easy to see the value of the Google Online Marketing Challenge. The process of identifying the most effective keywords to produce high click-through and conversion rates, understanding the role of bidding and which ad content users are more receptive to, are all important elements of paid search that students learn first hand throughout the competition. Come October, 2008 when registration for the 2009 Challenge opens, EyeTraffic Media will be assisting both The University of Maryland and Georgetown University in developing their AdWords campaigns.

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Search Engine Advertising On The Rise

17
February
2008

Study expects the amount of money spent on search engine advertising to steadily increase during the next three years.

Ryan Moss
Research Analyst

A study released by eMarkter predicts that spending on online advertising will continue to increase in the next three years. Furthermore, the amount of money spent on search engine advertising is expected to almost double from 2007 to 2011, increasing the amount from over $8.6 billion to about $16.6 billion.

While there are many companies out there that offer search engine marketing, Google has the largest piece of the pie. According to eMarkter, Google increased its’ share of the market from 60% in 2006 to 75% in 2007. Yahoo was second with 9%, while the remaining 16% was spread among several other companies.

The chart below shows the expected online advertising spending broken down by different format. Large increases in spending are also expected in the rich media/video advertising and lead generation categories.

Online Advertising Spending

 

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