Marketing Logic

There has been a stir in the SEO community; the buzz this past year has been all about social media. Getting your site listed on
Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape, whatever the flavor, it’s all getting to be the same. Grumblings, faint at first, have been rising against the cross-current cheerleading of these social media properties.

Social Media Blues
There are a number of reasons for discontent. Being de-listed by a few small groups, spam, and ultimately the traffic that these social media sites provide is very much like a sugar high. There is a flurry of traffic that leaves as quickly as it starts, and sometimes there is less of a result than desired. As Kim Berg recently experienced in I Don’t Digg being Dugg, it also brings out the worst of what people have to offer;

“Update: At last count, this blog post was dugg 890 times. It was submitted by someone else and subsequently, the spam comments, both here and at Digg, have been incredible. I am no fan of Digg. Never have been. This experience and the comments left here just add to my contempt for a place where people act like wild animals instead of human beings.”

Apart from the sheer volume of traffic, the link benefit might be of temporary benefit for rankings, but the amount of visitors and the comments left were not helpful to her or any of her readers.

Under the Microscope of Analytics
This caused some curiosity in me, as I have a few client sites that have been the subject of social media traffic, so, what better thing to do than to analyze the benefit of social media traffic. I did, and the results were surprising.

First, I had data from two types of websites. Then, Kim Berg allowed me to analyze her blog stats, which reflected traffic from Digg and Del.icio.us. Including Kim’s blog, all three are content-based websites. Website #1 is an information-based website that drove people to subscriptions and memberships, website #2 is a technology-based blog with no direct conversions.

I compared the traffic to each of these sites by three methods:

Source
The source of the referral; search engines, links, and social media links. Typically, search engines provide the main source of traffic to these sites. Direct navigation is comparable, but search engines by and large provided the bulk of the traffic. Links accounted for a substantial amount of traffic to the site, and the social media site provided a significant part of the link traffic.

Engagement
Using time on site, page views per visitor, and conversions, engagement of visitors would determine the logical growth for improvement of websites. However it is also useful for determining the continued investment in links from other websites, marketing programs, and other initiatives. These statistics also show the difference in site attraction for different groups based on the source of the link.

Conversions
Visitors from external site links tend to convert at a higher rate than search engines. This has been determined from analyzing many websites, more than just these three. The reason is that visitors coming from another website are better pre-qualified than those coming from search engines. Other website visitors are coming to the subject site based on a recommendation (contextual link), whereas search engine visitors come to the subject site based on a ranking or comparison to other sites in the results pages. The difference is clear and is borne out by the engagement and conversion rates.

Here are the source, engagement, and conversion comparison of search engines, links and social network site links.

Site A
Search segment #1
1.6 minutes Avg. Time on Site
2.5 Page Views per Visitor
0.1% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Search segment #2
1.3 minutes Avg. Time on Site
2.5 Page Views per Visitor
0.24% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Search segment #3
0.9 minutes Avg. Time on Site
2.2 Page Views per Visitor
0.3% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Search segment #4
1.6 minutes Avg. Time on Site
2.7 Page Views per Visitor
0.28% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Link group #1
18 sec. Avg. Time on Site
2.1 Page Views per Visitor
0.9% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Link group #2
2.7 minutes. Avg. Time on Site
3.9 Page Views per Visitor
0.8% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Link group #3
4.18 minutes Avg. Time on Site
4.0 Page Views per Visitor
1.1% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Social Media Link Group
2 sec. Avg. Time on Site
1 page view per visitor
0.0% Convert at the Newsletter Subscription Page

Site B (Technical Blog)
Search segment #1
34 sec. Avg. Time on Site
1.2 Page Views per Visitor

Search segment #2
37 sec. Avg. Time on Site
1.3 Page Views per Visitor

Search segment #3
26 sec. Avg. Time on Site
1.5 Page Views per Visitor

Link site #1
1.2 minutes. Avg. Time on Site
1.7 Page Views per Visitor

Link site #2
1.4 minutes. Avg. Time on Site
1.5 Page Views per Visitor

Link site #3
.9 minutes Avg. Time on Site
2 Page Views per Visitor

Link site #4
54 seconds Avg. Time on Site
2.2 Page Views per Visitor

Social Media Link
1.3 sec. Avg. Time on Site
1 Page View per Visitor
0 comments on socially linked article. (Stumbleupon)

Site 3: Kim Kraus Berg’s Cre8pc Blog

Search segment #1
0.2 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.2 Page Views per Visitor

Search segment #2
0.28 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.1 Page Views per Visitor

Search segment #3
0.21 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.2 Page Views per Visitor

Search segment #4
0.13 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.3 Page Views per Visitor

Link group #1
0.53 Avg. Time on Site
1.8 Page Views per Visitor

Link group #2
0.96 minutes. Avg. Time on Site
1.8 Page Views per Visitor

Link group #3
0.41 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.2 Page Views per Visitor

Link group #4
0.68 minutes Avg. Time on Site
1.5 Page Views per Visitor

Social Media Link - Digg
0.06 Avg. Time on Site
1.1Page View per Visitor

Social Media Link – Del.icio.us
0.21 Avg. Time on Site
1.2 Page View per Visitor

This is a most derogatory piece of evidence, in my opinion.
Despite the higher rates of conversion and engagement by visitors who are referred by external site links, social media site links consistently yielded the lowest rates of engagement and no conversions. On the technology blog, thousands of Stumblupon users left no comments. On the opinion blog, the Digg users that did comment left negative replies or spam.

No Killer App
I have cautioned against declaring social media as the end-all marketing force for SEO’s. This research, though limited, confirms my suspicions. Social Media provides a “sugar-high” approach to building links, much less an online business. It provides a lot of traffic, very fast. However the vast majority of that traffic is not engaged, rarely stays for more than a few seconds and can sometimes be rude. If page views are the goal for a site, social media will provide a lot of one-off page views, but rarely more than that. Comparatively, good external links provide traffic that will view multiple pages – typically many more than social media traffic.

For a search engine marketer, social media traffic can be a proof that they know how to build quick attention for a site. However, beyond that shot of traffic, what is there to show? For those in the SEO business, there is not much else, traffic sells. For businesses that make their living on and off the web, traffic like this is not helpful. It is not direct, and the numbers show that there is even less engagement and branding impact than any other source of traffic. So besides a quick influx of visitors who don’t stick around or even read the full page, what is the benefit?

Investment v Return
I recently saw a headline “Social Media Matures,” which made me laugh. (Sorry, but it did) Sure it’s maturing; it’s in its terrible two’s. Social networks have a long way to go before they provide substantial return for the promises being made. Currently, while still in its infancy, social media is the domain of technophiles and marketers, all of which have an agenda. Among themselves, they accuse each other of developing linkbait and articles solely designed to make the front page of Digg, yet they themselves seem to be the main consumers of their own products. See Gord Hotchkiss’ clarification on this subject, research seems to indicate that the average web user does not rely on social networks for news or research more than once a month.

Building traffic to a site has always been a longer, invested approach. Marketing has always taken more than a single channel to build a good brand, customer base, site links, content, and a business. Online marketing is no different. As a point of clarification, this article is directly related to using the social bookmark sites as a method of building links and traffic, not to sites that are using social media to create engagement for their own user base. That is a different matter entirely.

Your Feedback
I will be continuing this research, as any client I have receives this type of traffic analysis. If you have any questions about the methodology, which I realize is very basic in this article, I would be very happy to answer. I would be very happy to expand my basis of evaluation.

If you have client stats (or yours) that you would like to offer as an example, I would be very happy to evaluate those as part of this activity. I would like to analyze an ecommerce site that has been the subject of any social media attention, in order to see results across a variety of website types. I would be more than willing to give someone credit for allowing me to evaluate their sites as part of a larger base of data.

If you think I’m way off base, then send your log files (I’ll be discreet), and we’ll see.

Related Posts:
Three Downsides to Social Media
Coca-Cola watches the World Pass By, Decides to Join
Overlooked Indicators

Search seems to be at the top of mind for companies and entrepreneurs that develop sites and expect the world to come, much like the proverbial mousetrap. Unfortunately, the best designed and optimized website will not see the light of a monitor unless there is something that draws users and provides a good experience.

While search gets the headlines, there is a lack of the ‘nuts and bolts’ activities that make businesses successful, both online and offline. Most site owners believe that simply building a site, optimizing it for “gold terms” and building a PPC campaign will be enough. Yet, there is a great divide between the goals of the site owner and their market. The market can have very different needs. A site that is built to meet the owners’ needs is not a site that will meet the visitor’s needs.

A few months ago, Gord Hotchkiss published a two-part article, Top 10 Rules for making B2B Search more successful.” The article challenges this type of thinking and provides an outline to the very activities that are most often overlooked in a search marketing campaign. Often overlooked, these activities can also be the most rewarding in developing a campaign.

Just by looking at his first two of his Top 10 Rules, you can get a sense of where it is going and how far from the mark one can be when market (user) research is left out of the site development and marketing process.

1. Know Who is the Buyer and Who’s the Influencer
2. Realize What the Intent of the Researcher Is

If you are developing a campaign to a specific market, and you have not done research on that market – such as actually talking to that audience, you could be missing a large part of the marketing process. Regardless if you are marketing to a B2B or a B2C audience, simply talking to a group of your target audience about the information they desire, the needs they have, and the answers they seek, can provide you with directed content and multiple strategies. You will learn that a typical market is a group of people with varied interests that cannot be sold the same way.

Here’s my visualization of this concept:

The more a business listens to its customers and market, the better decisions it will make when creating a webiste to suit their needs. Through usability testing, interviews, and most of all - listening, a site will have clear direction for growth. Additionally, there wil also be a clear pursuit in the analysis of those goals. By finding what is important to the users, the analytics will either support or disprove that goal. Either way, it provides an analytical framework to judge the activity on the site.

I find in my travels and consulting that many companies do market research. However, the concept of actually interacting or even (gasp) talking to individuals in their target markets is very undervalued. This is the one to many concept of thinking followed by corporations prior to the web (The ClueTrain Manifesto - a must-read if you haven’t read it yet). With the advent of one to one communications; blogs, forums, and citizen marketers, companies have to talk to their markets of they want to succeed.

One of my favorite books about market research is Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. Although it details the retail shopping experience, it provides significant insight into the mind of a buyer and the information they seek. If businesses online used even a fraction of the research that is used in building an offline retail experience, the quality of thousands of websites would dramatically improve.

The Pew Project’s latest numbers show that 60 million Americans went to the web for political information in the 2006 election. Unfortunately, they didn’t find anything.

OK, that last part was a joke, based on my currently jaded view of American politics. I feel that this is one of the unique times in our political history when people on both sides, no matter how extreme, can look at each other, scratch their heads, and agree that everyone needs to go. Neither side is delivering. There is as much criticism within each party as there is towards the other party.

Off my soapbox, when are these guys going to figure this out? In 2004, Howard Dean was the only candidate to purchase paid ads for hot issues. The links took searchers directly to his position statement on those issues, which is a brilliant use of paid ads. However, the main source of political information seems to be blogs and opinion sites but not the candidate’s sites themselves. Why are we content to hear what someone else frames as the issue and not the candidates themselves?

Maybe the problem is content. Or lack of it. I recently heard a commentator say that Barak Obama was the favorite candidate because he hasn’t been in Washington long enough for us to consider him to be like everyone else. Essentially, we don’t know much about him, so he would be perfect. When did silence on issues become a selling point?

Gone are the days of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, when candidates would debate on issues of the day for hours. Not only that, the people would listen for hours and follow the entire argument, logic and conclusions. Today, we judge debates on hairstyles and puffy suits, certainly not on the content. The content is restrained to fit into neat little 30 second sound bytes. And where are the fact checkers? The post debate strategy is seems to be more confusing, as no one will call candidates on the actual facts, but rather their body language and any “zingers” that they provided.

Neil Postman prophesied in his book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” that the political culture would be overtaken by entertainment, which would focus on the entertainment value of debate and the candidates, rather than the substance of the dialogue. We have seen this come to fruition, as candidates attempt to out-vanilla each other and be all things to all people, rather than focus on content and substance.

Where are the candidate blogs? The position statements with clear reasoning and investigation to support the conclusions? Who has an inspiring message for the American people?

It seems strange. In this business of website marketing, I am always challenging clients to provide valuable, educational content within a proper context in order to meet the needs of the user. Because ultimately, the customer is king.

Maybe if the politicians figured this out, we would have the return of the statesmen of old, who did things because they were right, not because they were politically expedient. How do you feel? Do you think that substance and content are political liabilities?

I had a great time this week speaking to the Lexington, KY Advertising Club. The hospitality was outstanding and the event was a lot of fun. There were over 100 guests to the luncheon, and many stayed afterwards into the afternoon for an extended Q&A time. The questions were very good, and I definitely want to get back to Lexington very soon, as the people were very inquisitive and were genuinely interested in search engine optimization and website marketing.

I was impressed with the level of understanding and talent in the room. Many of the attendees had award-winning sites themselves and there was a lot of quality understanding already there, but they allowed me to present and I appreciate the invitation.

Accordingly with the hospitality, I was asked by Tim Coles, Multi-Media Sales Manager for WKYT-TV to attend dinner with him at the Atomic Café (which I highly recommend), and as an added bonus, attend the UK game.

Now, for this who have not had the experience of being in Lexington, KY during college basketball season: These people are rabid fans of UK basketball. Win or lose, they love their Wildcats. It is an experience to see an arena filled with blue and white while viewing the game in almost hushed tones of reverence for their team.

The game was OK – pretty sloppy until the last 3-4 minutes. However Tim and I had some great conversation about blogs, viral marketing, competitive marketplaces and his vision of marketing his sites. While we enjoyed the conversation, I doubt many around us did. I caught many a glaring glance shot our way, as we just weren’t paying the proper attention to the game.

Thank you, Ad Club of Lexington – I look forward to making another trip there and meeting many of you again.

Many articles in the past months have left people wondering as to the future of social media sites such as DIGG, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Netscape, and many others. Lee Odden shared his frustration when he saw his site banned from DIGG. Knowing Lee and the great content he provides, I and many others were shocked to see that the DIGG community could easily kick him out. A few dedicated spammers can group together and end any chance of marketing via social media, and it is surprisingly easy to do.

The darling of 2006, the social media sites, can provide instant traffic and weighty links to websites. The effects are short, but cumulative, and they present instant gratification to those who understand how it can work to their benefit. However, I have three issues with relying on Social Media as the primary method of marketing your site.

Small Communities
The first is that while the link benefit can be instant and overwhelming, the people following those links and voting for sites are part of a very small community.

The latest PEW Internet Data shows that only 35% of internet users read blogs. Cut that number down by the number of internet users that are familiar with social media sites, but it down again to reflect the technical elite that understand the impact of linking through social media. Again, cut that number down to those that have a personal gain by influencing the results, and understand how to manipulate the system. You’ll soon realize that while the links may be beneficial and your traffic is increasing, the intended customers may not the ones seeing your message.

The Silver Bullet
Attending as many conferences as I do, I have recently heard many give the advice to use social media to increase their site’s popularity. Unfortunately, that is usually the only advice. Social media has quickly become the “flavor of the month” for many marketers, and they have left the tried and true principles of long-term marketing for the fast track of transitory links. This is not the fault of the Web 2.0 darlings; it is the result of the small hysteria that follows any new method of quickly building links to a website.

The fast way to success does not provide long-term results in the business world. In the same respect, social media should not be the main plan to build links or popularity for a website. It should be a small part of a plan, but not the sole plan.

The traditional target of marketing is the customer, yet how many customers are directly reached through social media marketing? Unless you are trying to reach the tech crowd, social media will be an indirect method of increasing rankings and even further removed from a direct influence on sales and leads.

Spam
For years, search engines have dedicated significant resources to clean up their indexes from spam. By identifying techniques, adjusting algorithms, and using both automated and human filtering, the search engines are still not 100%, but they recognized the problem early and are always working towards the goal of eliminating as much spam as possible.

Social media is young, and most of these sites do not have sufficient safeguards in place to avoid being used by those that know how to manipulate the system for their own ends. At this point, DIGG and many of the other social media sites are not prepared or equipped to handle the spammy nature of the technical elite who are also the biggest proponents of their services. The search engines are still working on it, see it as a permanent problem, and they take the issue very seriously.

A nice part, but not the whole.
I am not criticizing social media as a means of marketing. I am criticizing those who claim it as the primary means of marketing a website. To build a successful business website, it takes a long-term commitment to build a site that is attractive to your audience. Using social media can be a helpful method, and a temporary means to an end, but it must be viewed as a part of the overall marketing mix.

It seems like I’ve always been in sales. Even when your background is marketing it sometimes just turns into raw sales. I’ve always been fascinated by the sales process, but just as horrified by it at the same time. Growing up, I always equated sales with Herb Tarlek and gaudy sport coats. Yet somehow, the concept of sales is something that has always come naturally, yet there are always lessons to learn.

Unfortunately, some of my sales experiences have been what I would describe as more high-pressure than others. I had to learn the “10 Closing Methods” and “Top Cold Call Lines”. Yuck! In my opinion, there is nothing as bad a forcing a sale on an unsuspecting person. That type of sales always makes my skin crawl. Fortunately, I have had many more good experiences and great teachers who taught me much more about people than sales. They taught me the importance of building relationships, rather than numbers.

The great thing is that this sales experience is what has shaped my philosophy of SEO and website marketing. This is what I attribute to my success, as sales will always be the same, regardless of whether it is on a website or in a shoe store. The sales techniques will always be the same because people are the same.

1. Know your audience. I could stop with that one line. Knowing your audience involves knowing what they need, the terms that they use and how they shop for your product. There are many companies that have not taken the first steps to researching keywords and phrases that their customers use to find products in their market. Knowing who your customer is and how they shop for services is key to understanding they decision making process.
2. Establish Rapport. This involves showing a trusted, personal, and professional face to the business. If a searcher uses specific phrases to find a site, and those words are not on the page where they land, they won’t be there long. The site needs to meet the expectations of the searcher in order to be successful. Establishing rapport online is just as critical to establishing it in person.
3. Tell a story. Stories sell. People love good stories, success stories, company stories, start-up stories. Stories can communicate information about a business that a fact sheet never will. Stories involve building an personality and a unique voice, they connect people into knowing who you are, rather than viewing a faceless website.
4. Create a need. Many sites simply present there product in a “here it is” type of format. If you want it, we got it. That simply won’t work unless you are the only one with that product. Even though what you have solves a need, you still need to create the need for the product in the searchers mind. You need to have product descriptions that involve problem-solving keywords and create a need for the product. Good content can make a searcher connect with the product and they will sell themselves.
5. Anticipate the objection. Once the searcher knows the need, know what objections they may have; price, shipping, justification, color, etc. Anticipating the searcher’s objection to making the purchase or contact decision will enable you to develop content that can address those objections. Addressing objections can be very powerful content on a page, allowing for additional “long tail” keyword phrases that will help gain more traffic.
6. Ask for the sale. Too many times, many sales people put all of their information out to a searcher or a buyer, and leave it there. If you don’t ask for the sale, you won’t get it. I equate this with the lack of “next step” actions. Whether it is a link to a contact form, adding a product to a shopping cart, or simply leading to a phone number, if those elements are not immediately visible to a searcher, they will not be used. The next step needs to be the most obvious thing on the page, as that is how you ask for the sale.
7. Close with an Action. Similar to asking for the sale, a “close” should always prompt for action from the buyer. The action is a conversion point; build a list of conversions and actions that you would like searchers to take on the site. Assign importance to those actions, such as primary and secondary conversions. In addition, never just leave the buyer to wander aimlessly. After they fill out a contact form, provide them with links to additional relevant information. After they purchase a product, provide links to other products or articles, never just deposit someone on a thank you page with no direction.
8. Don’t muddy the water. This was a lesson that I will always remember. Once you have the commitment of a buyer, stop selling. Don’t overload them with choices or add-ons that require just as much commitment as the original purchase. Up-selling or related products are fine, but only in the right order and in the right place. Neither up-selling nor cross-selling should be the focal point of the shopping process. Allow the user to complete the purchase and don’t muddy the water with additional choices.
9. Shut Up and Listen. This is critical. Have you ever had a salesman that just didn’t know when to shut up? Allow the searcher to do the talking, allow them to find their way. Allow usability testing and analytics to tell the story. I am amazed at how many businesses have not made an attempt to talk to their markets or observe how users interact with their sites. Listen to your audience, stop talking, and let them tell you how you can do it better. A few hours of observing how people use your website will provide more intelligence than you can imagine.
10. The Customer is King. Forget the continuing argument of whether content or links are king. Ultimately, the customer is King. If your site does not reflect that attitude, it will not be successful. The web is an economic democracy, if someone cannot use your site or does not like it, they can always go somewhere else to spend their money. The searcher must be treated like a King, the content must be focused on them and their needs, and not the needs of the company.

Are you selling your sites? Does your SEO reflect the attitudes and midset of your customers? In what other ways is SEO like the sales process?

Let me know if you have anything to add to this list . . .