I woke up this morning to a pretty interesting e-mail that was sent to me by way of my Google profile from someone named David Anderson:

I am making a blog for an online writing class I'm taking through UF, and for a module on search techniques I needed to find a non-mainstream website about my topic (sports bars).  I found your old site, the East Lansing Bar Review, and I loved it so I've written my post for this assignment about it.  I've only made five posts so far, but here is a link anyway: http://sportsbarjunkie.blogspot.com/

This is really crazy in so many ways. The site he is referring to is something I created back around 1995. I was attending Michigan State University and worked part-time in the MSU Network Center to make some extra cash. My official title there was Mainframe Consultant and mostly I helped professors and students to use things like Gopher, Banyan VINES, FTP, configure dial-up PPP access, and learn how to use our Unix-based ELM e-mail client. This was a time when most corporations hadn’t even heard of the web, it had fledgling use by Universities, it was being referred to as a fad, and I had just helped to get Michigan State’s own first web sites up.

I wanted to play around more with this new-fangled world wide web so using a vi editor in Unix, working in HTML 1.0 and armed with a copy of the predominant browser of the time NCSA Mosaic, I decided to create a site that offered a personal review of all the local bars and pubs in the East Lansing, Michigan area. I had a lot of fun creating the site. I had even more fun doing the critical research required to provide the reviews. But it really was bare bones ugly, used hand coded tables, some basic formatting tags, and the most advanced thing it included (which was hot at the time) was an image map that used a monstrosity I created with a copy of Photoshop 1.0.

But so it was born: the East Lansing Bar Review. For a couple of years I kept updating it and occasionally I got really interesting feedback or comments. It even got me a few free beers from local bar owners. When I left MSU my younger brother Mike took over the site and moved it (all 4 or 5 HTML files and all 5-6 images) from my student web account to his. He kept it updated for a couple of more years before he graduated. A couple of years later we got tired of being contacted about it from people asking for updates so Mike posted a note on the site explaining this and since then it’s gathered electronic dust but apparently it’s still there.

15 years from when I created the site, I’m now the CTO of Definition 6 where we create massive high-end brand experiences that include transactional sites with extensive back-end systems integration, hundreds of thousands of pages of content in enterprise-class Content Management Systems, on-line video experiences, mobile web sites, mobile applications and more in addition to spending a ton of time doing Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, On-line Display Media, and Analytics.

In an effort for this blog post to have a point and not just be nostalgic rambling or reflection on how far we’ve come in terms of the web and on-line advancements, what really stands out to me is considering how high this site shows up in results for major search engines. If you search for East Lansing Bars it still comes up as one of the top several results on Google. And if you search as David describes he did in his blog post it’s number one. Keep in mind the site was originally written and posted before Google even existed and at a time when Yahoo! had just come onto the scene as a start-up. The very concept of organic search engine optimization didn’t even really exist let alone was it the means of livelihood for the legions of people that practice its art today. I’m sure there are some things to be said for how today’s algorithms treat a site with such a long tenure favorably as well as the tenure of links to that site. And I’m all but certain that the same site published today would not be treated so favorably. But it is probably worth noting that a site hosted at relatively bad URL by today’s SEO standards with no meta-data, no thought to Information Architecture, and bad file naming practices still shows up high for certain not uncommon searches when the content was meaningfully written and relevant to the subject matter of interest. I’ll leave the rest of the analysis to the real SEO experts out there (and my apologies to our Creative Department for even publishing a link to this relic of a site on our blog).

Thanks, David, for the trip down memory lane and for giving me some interesting things to think about this morning.

Intuition can guide you to the place of innovation, and analysis guides you to the method of innovation.

Driving down costs is the goal of every business in every industry. Identifying and nailing down Cost Drivers in a Interactive Media Agency is one of the most challenging aspects of Innovation due to the service model and diversity of projects. The more diverse the services and the more capabilities an organization has, the harder the cost drivers are to innovate. This is the challenge.

Create Measurability

In order to analyze data, you need to collect data. The first step is to establish a normalized set of information, and discover commonalities that you measure over time. It's difficult in service business models to identify measurable practices since commonality between projects may not exist. In contrast, it is much easier to find measurable actvities within consistent services. For example, in the realm of public service such as law enforcement, response times can be measured which can lead to innovation in terms of communication technologies, route mapping, and routine patrolling route generation to optimize the response times and measure improvements. In the same light, commonality and metrics need to be put in place so that you can innovate. Without this baseline set of metrics, most improvements are subjective and can be hit and miss.

Measurability and Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing strategies and improved search engine optimization follow the same metaphorical principle. Because optimization is always a moving target, you have to establish a control on your marketing practices and only change a few independent variables at a time, such as keyword density, or keyword targeting in ads, in order to see their effect. In the case of organic search results, the effect of changes may take weeks or even months before they actually show results. To top it off, search algorithms and prioritization change "without notice." To discover these changes requires a scientific mindset for the search engine optimization consultants.

The cost drivers in Search Engine Marketing involve keyword market prices. Camping a commonly used keyword for PPC can cost you a fortune. Using longtail strategies and finding ways to effectively identify your product, service or company is the innovation point, and only good analysis and keyword research will get you there. Consistency is the rule of the game to establish and maintain hold of brand loyalty, market share, market segment, and also online in terms of keyword ownership, and search engine rankings.

Internet Application Development

With Internet Services, the identification of cost drivers needs to be built into the process by abstracting out parts of the process that show commonality and measurability. This should be the starting gate through which your innovation charges. Like online marketing, application development is a moving target. New technologies explode onto the marketplace on a regular basis, tempting you to change how you do business. Again by using a scientific approach, by controlling your process and making sure you change a few things at a time, you can drive changes from the right point of view rather than hype, and effectively make improvements on your cost drivers.

In my continuing research into marketing to the Hispanic consumer, I'm finding great articles from MediaPost that provide good information on why and how to reach this particular audience.  So here is an article by Joseph Kutchera (Why Does Google Send U.S. Hispanics To Foreign Web Sites?) that talks about what Google is doing with search results for the Spanish speaking community and how you can apply similar ideas to your marketing campaigns.

The first thing he points out is that if you search in Google using Spanish words, 50% or more of your responses are going to be for sites outside of the U.S. borders.  So why does this happen and why do marketers miss this target audience?  Kutchera provides the answer.  "Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S."  When people search using Spanish words and terms, Google is going to return sites that have Spanish content on them.  Does your website have Spanish content?  If you do, you may still be missing out on this audience for a few different reasons.  Kutchera points out the following.  1) Your Spanish site may not be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like your English site.  2) Many Spanish speaking Hispanics like to go to sites of their country of origin. 3) Spanish language markets are more likely to spend time on their content, making it more relevant than someone from an English language market who is updating a Spanish language website. 4) U.S. advertisers have been slow to move budgets toward online marketing and therefore not providing the resources necessary to provide the content that is necessary.

So what can you do to reach the Hispanic population:

- Purchase non-U.S. targeted inventory on your search buys along with your U.S. targeted inventory.
- Reach out to Hispanic country-of-origin web sites through ad networks.
- Apply behavioral, contextual, and language targeting to further segment and understand your Hispanic audience.

As a Senior Consultant at Definition 6, an interactive marketing agency with expertise in Web Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing Consulting, I'm seeing lots of evidence for companies to shift some marketing dollars to specifically target Hispanics in the U.S.  This growing population is getting online at a very fast pace.  There are millions and millions of them out there that could be buying your products or services if they could find you.  Are you willing to let them go to your competitors?  We can help you target them.  We can help you get ahead of the curve.
 

Here is an article I found about targeting Hispanics with mobile ads and apps.  Why you should target them specifically?  Well, it turns out that many younger generation Hispanics in the US will get their first internet experience on their cell phone, not on a computer.  And some recent surveys have shown that Hispanics are more likely to view mobile advertisements and respond to them than other groups.  One company mentioned in the article is targeting Hispanics by offering English training on their cell phones in exchange for them watching a short 2 - 3 second advertisement.  With the responses offered up by Hispanics, it can become quite easy to figure out what different demographics are doing and what they respond best to.  Given that Hispanics will be in a better spending position once the recession settles, it seems like a great opportunity now to start planning your mobile campaigns that are directed toward Hispanics.

Definition 6 is an Interactive Marketing company in Atlanta that can help you with your mobile marketing strategies and help you tie them in with application development consulting, web 2.0 applications, email marketing and search engine optimization.  Contact us and let us help you market to this growing community of consumers.

As the CEO of a traditional Atlanta Interactive Agency I find the evolution of Socail Media Marketing to be a great emerging domain for our consultants and our customers. I am attending Socon 09' and will be bloging a few times today.
The breadth of this conference is pretty wide and it appears taht the use of eMail Marketing, Web Site Design, Search Engine Optimzation have evolved as teh buidling blocks of a digtial stragey but the newest engagment tool has truly become the social network. That community of on-line users who connect to share, colloboarte, publish, listen, learn and grow, all digitally and all the time. This makes the job of a marketer harder than ever because the messages crafted to describe why to use our customers products or services is now being absorbed and maniupulated by the end users and then enforced by feedback from others. Like an echo chamber the expereince, good - bad - or avearge is amplified, repeated, and heard hundreds or thousdands of times over.

It should be an interesting day, I imagine a few new thoughts will emerge and couple of old ones will die and mostly more details will emerge as the conversation continues.

The best part of having an Interactive Advertising Agency is seeing how leading edge thinking evolves and grows. Years ago we would just talk about eMail Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Consulting, Website Development and hosting services. That was it and then the crash of 2001 came along and Interactive Advertising Agency life became harder and many companies went out of business. If the last two days are any indication of things to come, interactive advertising is going to only become stronger in the next 18 months. Take a look at this chart from Media Daily News:

ZenithOptimedia, GroupM Forecast U.S., Worldwide Ad Recession In 2009
	2008	2009	2010	2011
ZenithOptimedia
U.S.	-3.8%	-6.2%	+2.1%	+2.8%
Worldwide	+1.3%	-0.2%	+5.5%	+5.8%
GroupM
U.S.	+0.3%	-3.2%	NA	NA
Worldwide	+2.6%	-0.2%	NA	NA

Who would want to be in the traditional adverting and media business next year?  Not me, and not because traditional isn't important and can't help brands, but compared to Interactive Advertising - look at this chart from Online Media Daily:

Share Of Worldwide Ad Spending By Medium
	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Newspapers	27.1	25.4	23.8	22.3	21.2
Magazines	12.0	11.5	11.2	10.7	10.4
Television	37.3	38.0	38.3	38.5	38.5
Radio	8.0	7.6	7.1	6.9	6.7
Cinema	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.6
Outdoor	6.5	6.7	6.9	7.0	7.1
Internet	8.6	10.3	12.1	13.9	15.6
Source: ZenithOptimedia

Next year Interactive Adversing will exceed Outdoor, Radio, Magazine and I personally believe by 2011 will be equal to newspaper even if  others don't yet. Look for our upcoming posts on some rapid start programs on how to get involved in Interactive Advertising solutions for 2009.

I really enjoy the field of Interactive Advertising and being the head of an Interactive Advertising Agency as it allows me to see the continued evolution of the digital space.  I found an interesting chart on eMarketer the other day and I wanted to share it.



Look at these growth numbers! I know many of you are saying, wait a minute, we are not seeing double digit growth like the last few years and these projections are down from what they were in August. I know that you are correct, however if you are in the paid search business or search engine optimization consulting business this is a great chart. If you are into email marketing or provide website development services, then this is a very good chart to see.

Most advertising mediums are being cut back and actually declining, most expenses in all departments are being reduced. Our field is still going to grow and growth is always relative. If we grow 7% and the others decline 3% we actually see gains in excess of the 10% spread as compared to total spending. It is just great to be an interactive advertising agency!

When it comes to a search engine optimization strategy, many of our clients are either puzzled by the ever changing algorithms or mislead by the differences between paid and organic search.  Undoubtedly, there is a great deal of misinformation out there when it comes to search engine optimization marketing.

Lance King, a Definition 6 Technical Project Manager, researched the topic and came across an article written by Michael Estrin who addresses some of the most common misperceptions about search engine optimization marketing.  A common thread that Lance sees when talking to his clients about search engine marketing is that they think that if it’s not paid search, that it’s free.  Depending on the website and the campaign objectives, you will want to budget properly for an SEO program.  Just as important, you need a seasoned SEO consultant on hand who not only understands the strategy behind internet search engine marketing but who also knows how to benchmark and measure your SEO successes.  To read the article in its entirety, go to:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19803.asp