Advertising, Big Data, and Google’s Moves To Own It All

Google LogoGoogle just made two major announcements. Long-term, these could change the face of online marketing and advertising for almost every company. But before we look at how they are related, two background points are key.

1. When it comes to online advertising revenue, no one is bigger than Google. Not even Facebook comes close.

2. Online advertising companies that use big data in advertising are today’s market darlings. RocketFuel’s successful IPO last week underlines the value the market is putting on these companies.

Google wants to be both. [Read more…]

Two Killer Google+ Mistakes

Google Plus LogoLast week WSJ ran an article entitled “There’s No Avoiding Google+” on the front page. In short, it highlighted the drive by Google to make Google+ pervasive across other Google services.

In one of the most telling quotes in the story, Bradley Horowitz, a VP at Google, says “The entry points to Google+ are many, and the integrations are more every day.”

However, despite reaching 105.1 million global unique visits in October (via Comscore), Google+ is struggling to drive real usage, with users only spending 12 minutes a month on the site (via Google in June). (Stats from this Mashable article) [Read more…]

Your Marketing Results Are Not In Your Control

Two weeks ago GoDaddy’s outage knocked numerous sites offline for an extended period of time.

On the same day, this site (B2B Digital Marketing, in case you are reading this elsewhere) received more search traffic than ever before.

Google search traffic was up 20% over the previous one-day high and was nearly 40% higher than the average from the prior three weeks.

The increase wasn’t because of great search engine optimization. It wasn’t because of great content. It was because other good (or better, according to Google) sites were simply not available, offline because of the GoDaddy outage. Traffic that would normally have gone elsewhere ended up here. [Read more…]

6 Free Ways to Find the Best B2B Advertising Opportunities

An efficient and well targeted online advertising program often means the difference between merely average and outstanding results. However, there is very little quality research available for online planning in B2B.

Here are some of the common challenges marketers face planning a B2B advertising program: [Read more…]

The Most Dangerous Opinion in Marketing: Yours

How does your opinion influence your marketing activity?

  • Has your opinion ever biased your creative selection?
  • Has your personal experience with social media increased your perception of its marketing value?
  • Do your watching and reading habits influence the publishers you advertise with?

[Read more…]

Google+ for SEO? Don’t Focus on Your Brand Page!

Google, Plus Your World was rolled out just over a week ago, and the online world has adopted the rallying call to get onto Google+ for the SEO benefits.

Multiple articles point to brand pages as the solution. Publications from mainstream (Mashable wrote “get your Google+ brand page into as many influential people’s circles as possible“) to niche (HelloBloggerz.com wrote “brands need to invest more time into promoting their Google Plus brand pages“) are misleading marketers.

The problem is, Google+ Brand Pages are not the ticket to SEO success. In fact, if you focus your Google+ efforts on your new brand page, you will miss the most important search benefits of Google+. [Read more…]

B2B Social Media Opportunities [#B2Bchat Recap]

Join #B2BChat on Twitter every Thursday at 8:00 PM EasternIn our most recent #B2Bchat discussion, we looked at a number of social networks and how B2B marketers can take advantage of them, and once again I was pleased to have the opportunity to moderate the lively discussion.

Rather than a deep dive into a single network or objective, the discussion quickly touched on a number of social networks or platforms.

Participants identified a number of specific opportunities, however what was most apparent throughout the discussion is that social media is moving quickly. B2B marketers need to stay on top of the market if they are to identify and take advantage of new opportunities. [Read more…]

2012: The Opportunity for the Few in the Year of More

Mark Schaefer posted an excellent article this morning: Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do. 2012 is the Year of More (credit to Mitch Joel), but we are all overwhelmed by more. The opportunity for marketers is to enable less, in the face of the crushing volume of more. If you haven’t already, go read Mark’s post.

I love the thought, but it isn’t that simple. Mark isn’t going to write 500 posts this year and publish three books (or at least I hope not!). He isn’t creating more, and he shouldn’t necessarily turn around and create less. Mark’s opportunity, and the opportunity for every marketer, is to become one of the few that we, the audience, turn to. [Read more…]

Five Step Guide: Gaming Google for the Long Term

Google makes approximately 500 search algorithm changes a year. Looked at another way, Google averages two algorithm changes every business day. Wow.

Many of these changes, like the well publicized rounds of Google’s Panda updates, are designed to remove ways companies have found to game Google’s search results. So how do you keep up with all the changes Google makes?

Focus on the one thing Google is focused on. [Read more…]

4 Reasons You Need a Blog

Last week, Google announced an algorithm update. The importance of fresh content increased last week for 35% of all Google searches (announcement). This latest algorithm update doesn’t focus on the quality or source of your content, it focuses on the timeliness of it.

For B2B content marketing, here is the most notable aspect of this update: the importance of freshness is related to the search query, not the content. I often hear marketers say their older content is still relevant. However, if Google determines recency is relevant to the search query, that won’t matter. Your content will be pushed down in Google by more recent content. [Read more…]