Sure, I’m on Facebook every day. Whether I am checking to see if an old friend’s baby was born yet, telling everyone I know about the most brilliant/creative thing (in all of history!) that my toddler just did, or looking for my free bagel coupon from Einstein Bros., my day is not quite complete without a quick glance at Facebook on my iPhone, or on the good ol’ trusty computer. Almost every mother I know would say the same. Or would they?

Click here to read her full article in iMedia Connection.

Honestly, I was a little negative about the idea of ratings extensions when they first started being syndicated. How will we manage the bad feedback? Will the swamp of reviews associated to aggregators ruin small-to-mid level advertisers’ chances to benefit from this extension?

Click here to read his full article on Search Engine Watch.

We recently sat down with the combined Microsoft/Yahoo teams to further discuss platform integration. Early in the conversation, I found myself frustrated by the change because of the lack of seemingly any outside SEM consultation.

I’m still a little disillusioned by our partner’s process, but change is good, right? How will the partnership advance? If their intention is scale, is it feasible for long-term growth “as is”?

The following few points bring up a few integration woes and where they may need to improve…

Read the full article in Search Engine Watch here: http://searchenginewatch.com/3640720

1. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” – Monitor your competition. What are they doing? Capitalize on their mistakes, and learn from their successes and failures. Find out how they position themselves. Can you meet their service levels or even offer something better?

2. “Round up the usual suspects.” – While odd problems do crop up, check the typical offenders, first. A decline in organic traffic? Ensure your content is fresh and visible to search engines. No activity through your PPC campaigns? Check your budget caps. Analytics package showing strange results? Make sure everything is tagged properly.

3. “My momma always said, life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” – Just because our audience behaved a certain way last month doesn’t mean they’re still doing the same thing today. From creative tests, to landing page tests, to conversion optimization, as effective performance marketers, we must evolve. Compare the performance of “Sale on Widgets” to “Widgets on Sale.” Don’t assume you know the answer. Test, test, and test some more. Along those lines …

4. “You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.” – Being able to draw accurate and actionable conclusions takes time. If you’re trying a landing page conversion test, don’t assume that Page A is better based on one day (or week, or month) of data. Be sure you have statistically relevant results before making sweeping decisions.

5. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” – or a bigger budget, or a better tool. Time and again, I’ve seen companies invest in a solution, program, or product, and stubbornly refuse to switch courses even in the face of compelling reasons to adjust their initial plans.

6. “You can’t handle the truth.” – As you test, be prepared to get surprised. Who knew that ad copy with text speak (like ‘LOL’ or ‘OMG’) could convert? Texting-happy teenagers!

7. “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” – Use demographics of existing customers to find new ones in creative places. Does a 43-year old woman fall within your target market? Perhaps you should consider advertising within or alongside a social game, specifically tailoring your creative message to speak to her. Even better, can you include an incentive to purchase, such as a FarmVille or Mafia Wars gift card?

8. “Elementary, my dear Watson.” – Progress is crucial; however, we must also keep a keen eye on the basic principles of marketing. Who is our customer? There may be a spiffy new pilot program but does it reach our target audience? What does our customer want? If they’re shopping for widgets but all of our materials try to drive them to sprockets, prospective shoppers are going to take their dollars elsewhere.

9. “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” – Communication is vital in any relationship, including the one we have with our customers. From a consistent branding message, to clearly delineating our latest offering, we must communicate. When an ad says “Free Shipping” but in reality it’s free shipping only at a certain price point, consumers are justifiably disgruntled.

10. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” – There are so many great resources out there; bloggers sharing their experiences with testing in PPC campaigns, emerging social marketing techniques, and how algorithm changes impact search engine optimization. It impresses me, because they’re putting information out there for all of us to use – even competitors!

Did you recognize all the movie quotes? Bonus points if you did! Now I’m curious — Did your favorite movie teach you anything about search engine marketing? I’m off to see if I can structure a test to prove the worth of showing a movie every afternoon in the conference room. Don’t worry; “I’ll be back.“

Key findings include:
- The affluent purchase path is showing definitive signs of shortening, with 88 percent of total purchases occurring within three clicks in 2010. This reflects a 17 percent increase in “short-term” conversions versus 2009.

- Affluent shoppers continued searching online for luxury products throughout the economic downturn, but are displaying significantly increased interest in luxury brands versus a year ago. Customers seeking luxury products more fervently was evidenced with an increase of 20 million search impressions for the brands studied. (Nov. 2009-April 2010 versus Nov. 2008-April 2009)

- Customers are spending more per transaction on luxury goods than a year ago. The most recent holiday season showed average order values growing about $20 per order, or six percent. (Nov.-Dec. 2008 over Nov.-Dec. 2009) And the total number of orders for the 2009 holiday season increased almost 25 percent, with revenue for luxury retailers’ sites increasing 32 percent during this timeframe.

The whitepaper also detailed key findings for specific luxury verticals, including fashion, multi-category and beauty, as well as providing luxury retailers with the “New Rules for Luxury Retailers” in the form of key strategies to employ in 2011 and 2012.

“During the economic downturn, many industry ‘experts’ declared that luxury shoppers would never again be willing to by fully priced luxury goods or that ‘luxury was dead.’ Well, we are happy to report that neither of those predictions proved accurate,” said Vic Drabicky, Director of International and Vertical Market Development for Range Online Media. “While the economic recovery is not even close to complete, this research signals that affluent and aspirational consumers are already shifting their behavior in favor of the luxury brands they’ve coveted during the downturn. They are seeking and purchasing more luxury goods, and in a shorter timeframe from first click to purchase than they were during the height of the economic downturn.”

The study analyzed data from 424 luxury retail brands marketed within the company’s client base. Included in the analysis were the metrics of impressions, clicks, click through rate, CPC, cost, revenue, orders, conversion rates and average order value for November 2008 through April 2010. The Luxe Groupe also examined key economic indicators, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, in conjunction with this luxury client data. The client names and data specific to individual brands were not released due to proprietary and contractual limitations.

Please download the entire whitepaper, and read our findings about economic indicators for the luxury retail marketplace.

Cocktails begin at 6 p.m. with panel discussion and guest Q&A until 8 p.m. Just follow this link to register. http://guest.cvent.com/i.aspx?1Q%2cM3%2c38b94083-838a-4f05-b6f1-b20e37275482

Here is a sampling of the results:

Sprint Navigation for the BlackBerry Pearl 8130

I was desperate, so I decided to scroll through the results. Not one of the results on the page is for Sprint’s standard GPS navigation software, but it got me thinking of some of the ways that good search experiences have completely spoiled me:

• I constantly look for search kiosks in grocery stores.
• I get mad when I do a local search and it doesn’t bring up a OneBox result.
• I refuse to click next page if I don’t find what I want.
• I only type in a few letters to most search boxes and anxiously wait for suggestions.
• The first thing I look for on a complex page is a search box.
• I suffer anxiety at the thought of having to browse through a directory.
• I have become very, very bad at finding anything in the Yellow Pages.

I’m a little extreme, but I’m also part of a very valuable segment online for all kinds of businesses. There are a lot of us, and there is a lot of bad search. As a retailer, I’d want to know exactly how that segment felt about the experience I was providing, and optimize it as effectively as I could.

How much money do you think Sprint loses to bad search?

(I know, I know. Buy an iPhone. On it.)

Sadly, you’ll have to wait for Facebook to release their study to get your stats. Let me just say it’s fascinating and I really appreciated the content. How’s that for licking the red right off your sucker?! Ha! Sorry… It’s just too fun to tease you all.

So while I was there I caught the original purpose of the study. Why would a company like Facebook need to do research about moms on Facebook we all wondered? Doesn’t FB have some gigantic database resembling a NASA command center? Can’t they just run a report?

Turns out, they can’t. There is no report. What this got me thinking about is what Facebook even requires you to input about yourself so they can get their data. So I spent a few minutes trying to remember back SO LONG AGO to when I did setup my FB account. Get this! I couldn’t remember. I’ve been a Facebook member for so long I literally don’t remember what they required me to put in there. Therefore I created an account for my alter-ego, to remain nameless.

So far, they’ve got my alter-ego’s “name” “email” “gender” and “birthday”. Not too bad, just tell them my basic demographic, which if you have a cell phone, catalog subscription, TV subscription or grocery store loyalty card you would have shared that with them.

Facebook: Fill Out Your Profile Info

Please notice the SKIP button. I used this feature through the entire process and still only provided the minimum of information. Now, I my alter-ego has a FB account to monitor and control the minds of others interact, complain, advertise etc to all sorts of people.

You may be asking right now “Parksy-pants? What is the point of this exercise?”

You’re in luck, because I’m finally getting to my point. My POINT, since you’ve been so patient is this:

When the mass of users on the web are starting to get a concerned that advertisers are using web browsing history, demographic data, (information that will only make their experience more relevant BTW) do they stop to think about all the information that they offer up freely? While I may have been able to go all the way through this process without so much as a real fact other than a working email address, most people don’t do that. They put in every piece of detail to make the experience as rich as possible. They want things that are relevant, they want people they know to be their friend on Facebook. I don’t usually get too upset about the general consumer and their lack of understanding of what “we do” with the internet. But I do find that if people paid a bit more attention, they actually have more control over things than they thought.

So behavioral targeting, re-targeting media, relevant ads on gmail… all of it – it’s to help and yet this side hasn’t been shared. I think it’s an important reminder to us all, that the next time you run a retargeting campaign the consumer might not want to see an offer for 20% off because you are being intrusive.

Yeah, you know what – I’ll eat all the bacon the Ritz Carlton can throw me if that’s the answer consumers give you.

Let’s clarify, I am not Don Draper. But if I was, I would be on my 3^rd bourbon, 6^th cigarette and 100^th good idea. Can performance marketing be cool? Why is it that most performance marketers get pigeon holed into a specific type of strategy? Heck, it’s understood that we will grow your search programs. There is no question we will knock the pants off last month’s comparison shopping revenue totals. Yes, we expect to see growth in your dynamic remessaging program this holiday due to results in customer formation.

This being said, why do our branding/creative counterparts get to partake in a more liberal metric orientation? As a performance marketer, we have the unique ability to quantify and qualify brand experience. Why don’t we get any brand love? There are a few barriers to entry, although slowly but surely… more performance marketers are making the brand case.

1. Direct Response vs. Direct Opportunity
   Hey, we hit the ceiling in brand search. We can’t find any room to grow our CSE program and our email strategy is functioning at the highest open rate in the last few years. Where can we scale the program? Your DR programs feed off solid brand strategy. Look for direct opportunity, which I consider to be anything outside of our comfort zone. In a stagnant economy, partners tend to be on the flexible side. Do we have the ability to back into a CPC? Will they guarantee impression volume based on conversion metrics? Is rev share out of the question?
2. Appropriate Expectations
   “You crashed and burned Mav” – Believe me selling a branding buy like a performance placement doesn’t click. Most advertisers have separate P&L for ecommerce and brand initiative. This typically means that you are also talking to two separate parties, which then means two different marketing speaks. Work with your branding counterparts on stylization. Create a wow factor with supporting performance metrics (i.e. reach and frequency + realistic demand, latency estimates, conversion results and interaction to revenue goals). Make sure that your goals are quantifiably “liberal”.
3. Management Comfort
   We are crushing their numbers. Why throw a wrench in what we know best? These strategies will not take the place of your foundation. Go ahead and keep Google’s lights on, but also think about incremental opportunity. What branding placements have intrigued you? What type of metric do these partners focus on during RFP? What branding worked in the past and what type of metrics where reported? How can you apply the same metrics plus your standard performance outlook (i.e. conversion, AOV, demand and revenue per impression)?
4. Piece of the Pie
   Marketers, particularly agencies, love to share budget. Psych! This is hard point to grasp, but performance and branding agency cross-over can be efficient. Learn from each other. Consolidated strategy tends to optimize consumer interaction, thus increasing the likelihood of program success. In the end, it helps to scale business for the client and their partners.

Don Draper, I dedicate the above to you. Let me know if you have any questions.

For SEO, if you’re already using it as a secondary or even primary tracking tool, you’ll want to consider adding a few of these items:

• Want to know exactly where your natural search listings rank? Here’s a settings hack that lets you capture this information when Google includes it – http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-and-sitelinks-with-google-analytics-ii/
• Are people clicking on your video or image thumbnails in the normal Google web results? Use this code to find out – http://www.searchcowboys.com/seo/256
• Find out if your content is making it into Digg, Reddit, and other social media sites with this Firefox plugin (in beta) – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9393
• Create a quick list of keywords that are suddenly driving you new traffic with another Firefox plugin (in beta) – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11120

Those are just some of the options you might want to look into. In fact, you might even develop a custom solution to your specific needs. The possibilities are wide open with SEO and Google Analytics.