Today’s journey is about Internet marketing magic.

We start magically enough discussing PPC and money. Money isn’t money anymore. Money floats. Money is a VOTE for or against something. How can money be a vote against something? When you don’t make any of it. After a strange daydream driving to the office on a rainy and finally cold day in February I wanted to write about how being an Internet marketer and curator over the last twelve years has changed my thinking.

There is a problem knowing truth. Humans are dynamic systems with billions of social and biological inputs. How do we KNOW such a complex system?  In a Black Swan world do we ever know the truth? Wrong question asked in the wrong way for Internet marketers.

The web is magic. One of my favorite tools, Scoop.it, spiders the web based on keywords helping curate across many topics (see Curation Revolution on Sccop.it). Let’s see if we can find or understand Internet marketing magic further.

Internet Marketing and PPC Magic
Several years ago, determined to understand the unknowable, I experimented with Google Pay Per Click (PPC), the most immediate direct feedback system. I manipulated Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) up and down. First I moved standard ROAS from our default $3 to $1 to $6 to $1. Here is what happened:

• Internal P&L for PPC got healthy even fully loaded we made money on PPC ($3 to $1 was close to breakeven)
• Organic search (SEO) fell out of bed crashing and halting progress where we were climbing and sending existing #1’s down the page
• Catalog subscriptions tanked – our “B” conversion point was joining our email list for the “best deals” and we cut new names into the list by half
• YTD (year to date) vs. LYTD (last year to date) Sales Tanked – since PPC ROAS of $3 to $1 was in the history I was comparing against upping the ROAS to $6 to $1 hurt sales by about 30%
• Despite cleaning up our PPC profits and losses net impact of the move up to $6 to $1 was negative costing more than we saved by a large margin

Our next experiment was to move ROAS down to $1 To $1. Here is what happened:

• Internal P&L looked UGLY, fully loaded we lost a lot of money on almost every sale, but we were making it up in volume (little inside joke there since this month of almost $1 to $1 almost cost me a job)
• Organic search got better but wasn’t covering the differences due to SEO’s slow uptick (organic can be behind by as much as 90 days as spiders and links catch up) AND PPC doesn’t really help with link bait – the most important SEO lure
• Catalog subscriptions were up but they didn’t triple (figure our standard ROAS was $3 To $1 so catalogs and sales should triple if there was a one to one relationship between ROAS and either metric – there isn’t a one to one relationship between ROAS and anything so don’t look for it)
• Sales Improved but didn’t triple, sales almost doubled

Point of Diminishing Financial Returns
There is  always a point of diminishing returns, the place where putting in or taking out more only hurts. Our standard $3 to $1 ROAS kept internal P&L healthy. $3 to $1 ROAS was as close to a one to one relationship anything on the web ever becomes. We fed PPC at $3 to $1 ROAS and good things happened across multiple dimensions and, even better, we almost paid for the PPC investment on its face (i.e. without any help from other channels), almost.

Feeding other systems such as sales, email list subscriptions, white paper downloads, requests for product demos, traffic, time on site, pages viewed and lowering bounce rate is PPC’s purpose, its raison d’ être. Eventually more diversified competitors win because:

1. Customer acquisition costs are lower in aggregate for well diversified Internet marketers so they can afford to drive PPC bids up to a pain threshold forcing other less diversified Internet marketers to retire from the field
2. Since PPC is only one of many feeder systems for well diversified Internet marketers if PPC tanks well diversified Internet marketers have other options such as email, social, and mobile while less hedged competitors go out of business (and believe me PPC tanks on occasion for strange and undetermined and undeterminable reasons)
3. The forward momentum of PPC is seconds, turning PPC off turns traffic off like a light switch. Organic listings, in contrast, can last years. My Content Marketing Networks presentation on Slideshare was #1 for years, slipped to #2 recently but a nice run for a very long time.

Modeling Dynamic Systems
The terms “weather forecasting” and “weather prediction” tell a lot. Use of “forecasting” and “prediction” speak to a complexity beyond 2 + 2 = 4 linear modeling. Weather is highly dynamic or full of Bursts to use Notre Dame network researcher Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s term from his book Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do.

Don’t think your website is burst-y? Here is a traffic chart from ScentTrail Marketing my blog:

Here is a graph I used in Content Curation Magic and Contest:

See the similarity.

ScentTrail Marketing creates a wave, a series of bursts.  My pattern is a burst followed by quiet. I have a great day job so don’t have as much ScentTrail content creation time as before.

Here’s the rub, all websites NOT led by brilliant, algorithm-creating Internet marketers are burst-y. Now look at the government’s chart for Amazon’s growth in ecommerce from my SEO and The Amazon Paradox post for my friend Bill Ross’s excellent LinchpinSEO site:

NOT BURST-Y

I can hear the 2 +2ers out there thinking this chart shows money not content so of course it is smooth. Amazon’s money chart serves as a proxy for all other charts such as traffic, conversion or acquisition. Amazon’s chart is also a perfect example of the first law of content marketing for Internet marketers: More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better.

Amazon’s chart is smooth because the most amazing content creation engine the world has ever known isn’t burst-y. Amazon is built to make Google happy generating more and more content, faster and faster, better and better. Amazon’s content creation process is THE key to great Internet marketing. Amazon will reach 1B pages in Google’s index by August, around the same time Facebook crosses the 1B subscriber mark.

More and More
If you aren’t watching Google page spread using a tool or the site:YOURSITE.com command then your marketing team is missing one of the three legs of Internet marketing. All Internet marketing sits on a three-legged-stool of CONTENT, COMMUNITY and CAMPAIGNS leading to CONVERSION. The Internet marketing stool is business model agnostic (B2B or B2C).

Faster and Faster
Google CEO Eric Schmidt supplied one of my favorite stats. We create as much content now in two days as from the cave until 2003. Every two days we create the same amount of as in MILLIONS OF YEARS. Moore’s Law states integrated circuit power will square every two years even as costs go way down. You don’t have to look very far to see Moore’s Law’s impact (Google, Facebook, Amazon). Expect more speed faster. Compare Moore’s Law chart showing the gain in integrated circuit power to Amazon’s smooth rise and the relationship becomes clear:

Better and Better
Google created PageRank, named after founder Larry Page, to index the web. Google’s bot establishes a score from 0 to 10 for every web page. Google does not and will probably NEVER index every web page; Linked: How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else And What It Means also by Barabasi shares that only about 2/3rds of the web will ever be in any search engine index.

Before reading Linked I used to tear hair out over my Google page count. Our site had over 10,000 pages, but our Google page count rarely moved about 5,000. Our “lost pages” were probably Google knocking pages out because they weren’t unique, well linked or both. Other “lost pages” float in a Sargasso Sea moving slowing further out never reaching Google’s shores. Isolated, unlinked and alone these un-indexed pages are NOT what any Internet marketer wants.

“Better and Better” is only partially what you do. Better is mostly about what others think about what you do. “Voting” on “better and better” takes many forms including traffic, LINKS and Facebook LIKES. This means any Internet marketer’s job is creating content capable of springing legs and walking around the world.

Modeling Dynamic Systems – The Cool Psychedelic Part of Internet Marketing
Ken Kessey and the Merry Pranksters (c. 1964) were Internet marketers before there was an Internet to market:

The psychedelically painted bus had its stated destination as being “further.” This was the goal of the Merry Pranksters, a destination that could only be obtained through the expansion of one’s own perceptions of reality. They traveled cross-country giving LSD to anyone who was willing to try it (LSD was legal in the United States until October 1966). Wikipedia

I inject the sixties for more than a smile; the Pranksters idea of “further” as a process rather than destination is prescient. Systems as dynamic, diverse and alive so the Internet require different processes, different ways to understand what those dynamic Internet and web systems are trying to tell us. Weather turns quickly. Here is a quote new friends at CurationSoft helped me recover:

“I’ve seen tornadoes roar up on dusty Texas plains. I’ve run from a black storm’s vengeance, furry and terror. No Texas tornado has anything over the content storm heading at each and every one of us.”

Curation The Next Web Revolution on ScentTrail Marketing

Collapsing Content Network Space/Time
We’ve arrived at our “further” for today. What occurred to me driving to work listening to Jim Stengel, a fellow P&G alum, speak about VALUES in his excellent book GROW: How Values Power Growth and the Good To Greatness of them is the web and the wisdom of crowd system the Internet creates requires a new value system, a paradigm shift. Valuing new metrics and web paradigms is NOT to say core values don’t begin any Internet marketer’s (or content curator’s) journey since establishing values is THE KEY first step.  The way we THINK is what we lucky few Internet marketers control. A wise and smart friend, Rich Kurnik, once told me, “If we can’t change something that seems uncontrollable change YOURSELF, change your thinking and feelings about it.”

Rich’s idea perfectly describes the mental paradigm shift necessary to become a GREAT Internet marketer. Here is my attempt to build on Rich’s wisdom:

Hope today’s journey was magical, if not tomorrow is sure to be because Internet marketing is getting more and more magical faster and faster.

Martin
—-
Martin Smith (@ScentTrail)
Director Marketing

Download Sponsor Flipwall Shortcode  Download from WordPress

As taken from the readme file:

Description

Creates a cool sponsor wall with flip effect; instead of complicated post management, embed tiles anywhere with shortcodes!

Creates a two-sided square with a “logo side” and a “detail side”. Logo side will display a scaled image, while the detail side will show a name, description, and website link.

Based on awesome script Sponsor Flip Wall with jQuery & CSS by Martin Angelov. Not related to plugin WP Sponsor Flip Wall, which creates a content type in order to display tiles.

Installation

1. Unzip, upload plugin folder to your plugins directory (/wp-content/plugins/)
2. Activate plugin
3. Add flipwall tile shortcode anywhere you need it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make a flipwall tile?

Use the shortcode!

What is the shortcode?

Use the following format:

[flipwall id="image-name" title="Sponsor Name" url="http://whatever.com" linktext="Instead of whatever.com" image="url to image" text="description if singleline" ] Description with <em>HTML</em> [/flipwall] 

where

• id = a unique identifier; if not provided just increments flipwall-#
• title = the name to display at the top of the “detail side”
• url = external link on “detail side”
• linktext = if provided, the text of the external link (instead of just showing the URL)
• image = url of the image for the “logo side”; if not provided will just display text “More about $title”
• text = optional – you can use this for a simpler shortcode if the description is just one line
• class = optional class to apply to the tile

Pretty much all of the attributes are optional:

[flipwall]This tile has no attributes, just a description[/flipwall] [flipwall text="This is just a one-liner"] 

But your resulting tiles wouldn’t be very useful.

Please note: if using the single-line version with text, you must either list all of them as such or list them at the end (due to the way shortcodes are closed in WP)

Also, if you want to use the default container, just wrap everything inside

[flipwall-group] ... [/flipwall-group] 

which will automatically clearfix the tiles.

Can I change the defaults?

Only one simple hook available:

• add_filter('abtSponsorFlipwall_localize', YOURFN);change the base javascript variables used by the flipwall init script:
  • stylesheet: replace the default stylesheet with your own to change the default appearance of tiles
  • speed: change the flip speed (from 350 ms)
  • direction: change the flip direction (from ‘lr’)

Download Contact-Form-7: 3rd-Party Integration  Download from WordPress

As taken from the readme file:

Description

Send Contact Form 7 Submissions to a 3rd-party Service, like a CRM. Multiple configurable services, custom field mapping. Provides hooks and filters for pre/post processing of results. Allows you to send separate emails, or attach additional results to existing emails. Comes with a couple examples of hooks for common CRMs (listrak, mailchimp, salesforce).

The plugin essentially makes a remote request (POST) to a service URL, passing along remapped form submission values.

Includes hidden field plugin from Contact Form 7 Modules: Hidden Fields. Based on idea by Alex Hager “How to Integrate Salesforce in Contact Form 7”

Installation

1. Unzip, upload plugin folder to your plugins directory (/wp-content/plugins/)
2. Make sure Contact Form 7 is installed
3. Activate plugin
4. Go to new admin subpage “3rdparty Services” under the CF7 “Contact” menu and configure services + field mapping.

Please note that this includes an instance of hidden.php, which is part of the “Contact Form 7 Modules” plugin — this will show up on the Plugin administration page, but is included automatically, so you don’t need to enable it. This file will only be included if you don’t already have the module installed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add / configure a service?

See Screenshots for visual examples.

Essentially,

1. Name your service
2. Enter the submission URL — if your “service” provides an HTML form, you would use the form action here
3. Choose which forms will submit to this service (“Attach to Forms”)
4. Set the default “success condition”, or leave blank to ignore (or if using post processing, see Hooks – this just looks for the provided text in the service response, and if present assumes “success”
5. Allow hooks for further processing – unchecking it just saves minimal processing power, as it won’t try to execute filters
6. Map your form submission values (from the CF7 field tags) to expected fields for your service. 1:1 mapping given as the name of the CF7 field and the name of the 3rdparty field; you can also provide static values by checking the “Is Value?” checkbox and providing the value in the “CF7 Field” column.
7. Add, remove, and rearrange mapping – basically just for visual clarity.
8. Use the provided hooks (as given in the bottom of the service block)
9. Add new services as needed

How can I pre/post process the request/results?

See section Hooks. See plugin folder /3rd-parties for example code for some common CRMs, which you can either directly include or copy to your code.

Screenshots

1. Admin page – create multiple services, set up debugging/notice emails, example code
2. Sample service – mailchimp integration, with static and mapped values
3. Customized thank-you page

Hooks

1. add_action('Cf73rdPartyIntegration_service_a#',...
   • hook for each service, indicated by the # – this is given in the ‘Hooks’ section of each service
   • provide a function which takes $response, &$results as arguments
   • allows you to perform further processing on the service response, and directly alter the processing results, provided as array('success'=>false, 'errors'=>false, 'attach'=>'', 'message' => '');, where
     • success = true or false – change whether the service request is treated as “correct” or not
     • errors = an array of error messages to return to the form
     • attach = text to attach to the end of the email body
     • message = the message notification shown (from CF7 ajax response) below the form
   • note that the basic “success condition” may be augmented here by post processing
2. add_filter('Cf73rdPartyIntegration_service_filter_post_#, ...
   • hook for each service, indicated by the # – this is given in the ‘Hooks’ section of each service
   • allows you to programmatically alter the request parameters sent to the service

Basic examples provided directly on plugin Admin page (collapsed box “Examples of callback hooks”). Code samples for common CRMS included in the /3rd-parties plugin folder.

There was a problem. HTML structured the page but didn’t fill it with copy or images. Each time I learned one skill two more that needed learning popped up. Web development challenge in these early days centered on finding people willing to help for a reasonable amount of money or learning how to DIY (do it yourself). We’ve come a way since 1999, but some things don’t change. Anyone can have a website only a few will understand how to make money online.

You Get What You Pay For And Web Development Costs Are Going Up
In 1999 presence was the challenge. In 2012 presence is assumed. Once everyone has an Internet marketing presence competition moves from presence and engineering to the battle for hearts, minds and advocacy.

Fighting for hearts, minds and advocacy requires different skills. Internet marketing may be the most engineering-like marketing thanks to a sea of behavior and heuristic information, but cutting clutter to make strangers love your company, brand or product is as much business therapy as business.

As web development business therapist we see common mistakes such as:

• Search For Silver Bullets
• Know Thyself To Know Others
• Barking Dog Marketing
• Cathedral vs. Bazaar

Stop Silver Bullet Search
We believe in the quick fix even when life teaches otherwise. The search for silver bullets is distracting and bleeds our most valuable asset – TIME. Reject quick fixes and instant millions. People do win the lottery, but their winning never improves your odds. “Win the lottery” isn’t an effective Internet marketing plan. Anyone who tries to sell you a silver bullet or lottery ticket should be avoided. Creating greatness is HARD and requires sweat, tears and treasure.

Know Thyself To Know Others
Thinking Like An Internet Marketer values the web for what it can and can not accomplish. No web site makes a company’s communication more organized or clear. The web is a huge guassian blur making pointed and sharp ideas, potentially dull and confusing. How would you rate your knowledge of your company’s character on a ten point scale? If you answer anything below a 8 then you have introspective work to do. If your company, brand or product is blowing from pillar to post then, as Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, “There is no there, there.” Know yourself BEFORE you create any site, blog, social media or email campaign. Compare each effort in some meaningful and measurable way to your company’s core values.

Barking Dog Marketing
Do you walk toward or run away from a barking dog? Barking at visitors has the same impact. Greatness, transparency and honesty are more sustainable and profitable than any short term bark. Barking may improve sales or conversions for a short time, but damage to brand, positioning and long term profits and advocacy may be significant and long lasting. Every day and action matters in the battle for hearts, minds and advocacy. Read Dov Seidman’s great book HOW: Why we do anything means everything. Seidman explains why values and processes are the only things any business truly own.

Cathedrals vs. Bazaars
Internet marketers build sand castles. Whatever we create will be gone soon. Building sand castles requires different attributes than constructing Renaissance cathedrals meant to last a hundred years. Thinking like an Internet marketer means organizing work around:

• Speed
• Data
• Creative Use Of Convention (don’t recreate what visitors expect)
• Team
•  The Magic 11% (see 1:10:89 Rule)
• Listening and Leading

Speed, passion and wrecking what needs ruination means errors, bumps and mistakes happen. If mistakes drive you crazy don’t become an Internet marketer. Mistakes are a part of the cost of being relevant in a constantly shifting space such as Internet marketing. Perfection isn’t a sustainable Internet marketing strategy. Speed, being data-centric and listening more than you talk work better. Understanding the difference between creating sand castles and accepting input from the bazaar instead of laying stones to live for a hundred years is why “Thinking Like An Internet Marketer” requires a paradigm shift. Perfectionism is too expensive for sand castle builders working in the world’s largest bazaar dodging silver bullets and barking dogs.

Free SEO Evaluation White Paper (coming soon)

Look for the Atlantic BT SEO White Paper soon. Today’s post shares SEO Tips prompted by a customer who successfully made SEO low hanging fruit changes and is looking to move his web site to the next level.

SEO – Martin’s Tips Note

SEO is a many layered challenge with touch points in site design, site reputation, viral campaigns, PPC (as a traffic generator and source of content research), hosting (site speed is becoming an increasing issue), meta data (particularly page titles), keyword aligned body copy and about fifty other things. We’ve seen tremendous SEO change in the last two years due to the growing influence of social networks. Diving into the middle of such a many layered challenge takes skill, time and a solid understanding of your site and business goals. Here are “best practices” you can implement in your site today to improve organic traffic:

• Facebook Likes (macro and micro) – Be sure to have the Facebook LIKE button on your home page and on important individual pages such as product pages or key articles AND make sure your counters are accurate to the page the LIKE button is on. I want a macro “reach” counter capable of summarizing LIKES across multiple touch points, but no such tool exists yet (that I am aware of) so make sure your Facebook counters are aligned to pages they are on.

• Platforms Beat Websites – read my Internet Marketing – Platforms vs. Websites post on ScentTrail Marketing to understand how significantly Internet marketing is being transformed by Web 2.0 and the promise of Web 3.0. As Amazon nears a billion pages in Google’s index understanding the interconnected “platform-yness” of Internet marketing has never been more important.

• UGC Rules – One of the implications of living in the land of platforms is you can’t create enough content to win keyword wars on your own. You team and content creation budget isn’t big enough even if you have millions. User generated content (UGC) is KEY. Create campaigns that develop community and encourage people to share your site across their social nets (and remember to use the Facebook LIKE button whenever possible). You may want to read my 1:10:89 Rule post too as it explains how magical and rare contributors are. My favorite UGC tools are polls, contests and games. Each UGC tactic has a “best practice” application I will write about in another post.

• Content, Community and Campaigns THEN Conversions – Living in a platform time means learning SEO stepping stones to success. Each step builds on and contributes to the next. Create a content strategy. We create content strategies with extensive keyword research, something we’ve named ”branding keywords”. Branding Keywords maps keywords to business values, buying personas, buyer pain points and potential blue oceans (those keywords not frothy red with competition). This kind of research is a HUGE time commitment (days usually), but it makes your content and campaigns jump off the page. We are working on sharing these steps so anyone who wants to can “brand keywords” (look for our tutorial in about a month). Community can be as little as adding reviews or as much as building out a Facebook environment. Content without community support is a tree falling in the desert with no one to hear it. Campaigns are the “buy one get one free” or the “free white paper” or the “Holiday Sale” language of email and social marketing. You need deadlines, a great offer and compelling presentation across all touch points (site, blog, social, email) to motivate and cut through clutter and buyer apathy. Conversions come because you fire on every step. Any friction such as TRUST and REPUTATION must be fully eliminated (another post for another time). Conversions Key Performance Indicators can be anything including more time on site or increased page views. We like to make conversions some ACTION such as sign up, download or buy.

• SPEED – Go to Alexa or use a speed evaluation tool. If your site is anything other than FAST redesign it or serve it better or both. Google’s margins erode when pages take too long to load so they will punish your listings for slow response.

• SPAM – Work in SEO long enough and you can feel hidden SPAM traps. You know exactly how to SEO write to push keyword density without spamming. There are tools that you can use to confirm and help eliminate things like “stop words”, but do this long enough, test enough content and you develop an intuitive feel for what works. If you don’t have such a sense yet read my SEO Writing Tips 1 – 5 on ScentTrail Marketing for a quick crash course.

• DATA – We are constantly reminded that however much we think we know about SEO we don’t know anything. SEO and the Internet live organically in Real Time. The only things that matter or define SEO success is what is happening now. The good news is there is a sea of data to help cut the cost of the gamble. SEO and Internet marketing are always gambles, but informed ones perform better and better over the long run. Every now and again we re-read Black Swan by Taleb just in case we think we can finally predict Internet marketing’s future (no one can and arrogance goes before a huge fall in our Internet marketing experiences).

• Snake Oil – In another much younger life I sold soap for P&G, an honorable straight forward job. SEO is full of people who project confidence when they should have NONE. They use words they don’t understand but do so in a way that makes listeners confused or anxious. Here is a quick Snake Oil test. Ask a prospective SEO how they would change your home page title, the most important meta copy on any page. If they answer anything other than, “I have no idea,” RUN FOR THE HILLS. Existing sites are modeled and indexed in Google. Change is expected and accepted WITHIN parameters, within modeled limits. First rule of SEO is DO NO HARM. Anyone who, at a moment’s notice, creates a SEO plan for your site is dangerous and should be avoided. Avoid snake oil salesmen since the first rule they violate is DO NO HARM and harm within Google’s Elephant Memory Brain is forever (or a very long time anyway). Another good Snake Oil test is anyone who says, “I can get you #1 on X keyword in Y time.” The only way to achieve such a mission is to wear a black hat, to game or trick Google. Never game or trick Google. The math always wins and the over/under doesn’t favor such a tactic (what you stand to gain vs. lose). A former CFO told me, “I want you to make something happen on Google by the end of the week.” Something is happening on Google all the time, I had to explain, but only BAD things can happen for sure by the end of the week. Hard concept for a CFO to grasp.

Keep the faith, keep creating content and find a way to move your “site” to a platform generating UGC and the magic Google Juice it provides is the most important SEO lesson once you are past the low hanging fruit of solid meta, body copy, tags and purple cow link bait.

Hope these ideas have helped. Look for our Free SEO White paper and more on Branding Keywords soon. If you would like to be kept up-to-date with the latest at Atlantic BT (never share our list and don’t spam) use the link below to stay in touch.

Yes, Please Add Me To Your Think Like An Internet Marketer Email List.

Martin
Director Marketing

Suggested Reading:

Phil Simon’s new book

The Age of the Platform

Great Job By David Tonight!
Fantastic job by David Rose from MagneTVideo.com tonight at our Internet Marketing Meetup on video marketing.

Video Secrets Meeting Summary on ScentTrail

Summary of  tonight’s MEETUP at Atlantic BT is on ScentTrail. Will post a link to David’s presentation.

Martin’s Story
Imagine you are on a beach. Suddenly water moves swiftly away. Fish flop and dance naked in early morning sun. “Tsunami,” we think involuntarily. We live online, via CNN and in a global village so we know a big wave is coming. Internet marketers stand on just such a beach. We face a coming web video marketing Tsunami.

“This is better,” I thought before testing a 3 minute video on the home page of the $6M site I managed as a Director of Ecommerce (before joining Atlantic BT as Director Marketing). “Run it,” I said watching our metrics nervously. Never test in production without a B option you can easily roll back too. Good news this day was I’d learned the “rollback” lesson. In four hours site conversions tanked by a full point (about $3K). “Kill it,” was my next command before the site walked into a end of summer weekend with such a conversion train wreck.

“What happened,” my boss asked me. Ever wish you could jump in a time machine and go back a few years traveling with the knowledge you have now to just such a moment? Here is what I know now that would have helped then:

• Read vs. Video = VIDEO
• 3 Minutes is an eternity online (1 minute or less now).
• Video on the home page is TOUGH (lots of views but converting traffic can easily be lost never to be heard from or converted again)
• Too polished doesn’t work well online – rough edges establish immediacy, authenticity and authority (strangely enough)
• Videos create VERY HOT spots immediately below them, so include a Call To Action (CTA) in the video that mirrors a CTA immediately below the video (or, if video is on product page keep it far enough away from the MAGIC BUY button as to NOT create confusion)
• Videos are EMOTIONAL and that is a good thing
• Videos “SEO” well, pop nice on YouTube, can spring legs and walk around the web (via embed codes) and are easier to get top listing on than text (LOTS EASIER but getting harder as I write this)

This list could get longer, but you get the idea. A quick note about video and SEO. Spiders can’t “see” video so tagging, linking and surrounding text can be very important. I learned another video SEO secret today from David but won’t spoil his January 24th presentation. Want to know a very cool video SEO secret that is EASY and POWERFUL you will need to join us for pizza in a few weeks.

What I know without any doubt is VIDEO is a powerful Internet marketing tool. Powerful enough Atlantic BT is working with David Rose and MagneTVideo.com to learn how to provide video marketing services. The end of my story is we finally figured out a winning video formula (less than 2 minutes, on the product page, make the product the hero and pull in wisdom of crowds reviews). Pays to have a good team, a patient and trusting boss and a B option.

The net of our tests was conversions on product pages with videos quadrupled. New products already on a roll set new records. Older products starting to wane got a new lease on life. How many failures before finding the winning formula? My team created about ten different videos before we found the winner. Who has that kind of time confronted with social search, the real time web and Internet marketing as we know it today? A: No one, thus asking David and MagneTVideo to share “inside baseball” secrets so Atlantic BT can offer easy to buy, effective web video marketing.

There are many great video marketing providers including friends at Atlantic Creative, Big Fat Film and RHEDPixel (they did the work mentioned here). I also have a good friend who runs a cool company called mailVU in Charlotte. We are working with David and MagneTVideo to combine Atlantic BT’s web development and Internet marketing power, learn cool video marketing secrets to share with customers and potential customers and surf the monster video marketing wave coming in the web’s direction.

Hope you can join us for our monthly Internet Marketing Relativity Meetup on Tuesday, January 24 (Join Raleigh Internet Marketing Meetup Here).

Martin

PS. Lifted image at the top from an excellent article “Why Use Video Marketing” by Sneh on Buzzom.com.

Interviewing Now

How, we were wondering, could we give back?

How can someone learn how to become an Internet Marketer?

Internet Marketing moves so fast it can’t be taught in a college classroom, dorm rooms maybe. Atlantic Business Technologies in Raleigh located in the Atlantic BT Center, 4509 Creedmoor, wants to help students or people who want to transition into Internet Marketing learn by doing.

2 (unpaid) Internet Marketing Internships to be filled immediately:

Social Media Marketing Intern
The Atlantic BT Social Media Marketing Intern is about understanding the rapidly evolving world of social media marketing and its cousin SEO (search engine optimization). Responsible for developing content strategy for the Atlantic BT blog, Facebook, Twitter and Mobile platforms. The Social Marketing Intern will evaluate new social media tools such as Scoop.it, Share.it, Hunch.com and Quora making recommendations for partnerships and working new tools into Atlantic BT’s social media marketing mix. Assist in the creation of marketing personas and archetypes to guide campaign creation, offers, site heuristics and taxonomy. Social Media Marketing Intern will also work with metrics to create social ROI reports and understand reporting tools such as Argyle Social, Spring Metrics and Google Analytics.

Requirements:
Strong writing, analysis and creativity skills. Knowledge of Photoshop and Dreamweaver a plus. Some knowledge or experience with analytics a definite plus.

Internet Marketing Campaign Coordinator Intern
The Atlantic BT Campaign Coordinator Internship is about bridging the gap between the art and science of Internet marketing. Starting with brainstorming, planning and then working with creative to produce Internet marketing campaigns, the Internet Marketing Campaign Coordinator will be knee deep in understanding client needs, translating needs into marketing campaigns, testing assumptions and reporting results. The Internet Marketing Campaign Coordinator Intern helps organize, champion and test macro and micro Internet marketing concepts around topics such as gamification, social capital and email marketing.

Requirements:
Knowledge of Photoshop and Dreamweaver required. Ability to think creativity. Some knowledge or experience with analytics a definite plus. Strong keyword writing skills a definite plus.

How to apply:

Email:
Send Resume and short essay (300 words or less) on why you should be one of the two Atlantic BT Internet Marketing Interns to…

Martin.Smith(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com

Twitter @Atlanticbt :
Tweet links to your online resume and blog with short essay on why you should be one of Atlantic BT’s Internet Marketing Interns using #ABTintern .

Wednesday Night November 30 Interviews
If you can turn around an application by attending our Raleigh Internet Marketing Meetup on Wednesday November 30th at 6:30 we will be interviewing from 4:30 to 6:30. Tweet the time you would like to interview to @atlanticbt using #ABTintern.

It’s no secret, I love beer. When I’m not talking about web design, I’m talking about beer and my homebrewing hobby. So naturally, this is where my “water cooler discussions” usually end up. What I’ve found from these conversations is that I have a lot of co-workers that love beer too. If you weren’t aware, we have 3 homebrewers, 1 ex-commercial-brewer, and about 25 or more avid beer fans in our office.

Fanboys aside, designing a beer and the process of brewing is similar to the planning and developing of a website. Both industries have a handful of key ingredients and important factors:

1. The concept or idea
2. The purpose and end-goals
3. The foundation
4. The experience
5. The consumers and keeping them coming back

When these factors come together in harmony, we’re left with a product that makes both the brewer (or web designer and client) and the consumer equally happy. And, on the other end, if these factors don’t jive, we’re left with a sad product that doesn’t sell.

Photo by e_walk on Flickr

The Concept or Idea

In order to craft a great beer, you first need a solid idea. What kind of beer are people drinking? How saturated is the market? What kind of beer do I want to make? These are just some of the questions any product design phase. They’re necessary because they help you focus on your concept. Going too broad too soon could result in failure. So, we focus on what will work for now. Once we build up a following, then we can begin to introduce all those other ideas or recipes floating around in our head.

So, I’ve done my research and I’ve found that most people in Raleigh seem to like pale ales. There’s already a few local breweries that make this style. But, there’s room for competition since the demand is so high. Now that we have a style chosen for our flagship, it’s time to plan and test the recipe. We find some friends, invite them over, and have them taste our latest batch of beer. We might even submit our idea to a panel of experts looking for feedback. In the homebrew world, this panel of experts are judges at a local competition. Regardless, every person along the way helps us formalize our concept–making it stronger.

Then, we need a catchy name. The name needs to say it all. And, most of the time, it needs to not have been used before. We’ll call our pale ale “Crabtree Pale Ale.” This name not only suggests the hoppy and dry finish we’re going for, but it means something to my local market too. I can already picture the label.

The Planning and End-Goals

Fully understanding the purpose of your concept can help you derive your end-goals. And, properly planning this execution is vital to success. This would be like understanding and formulating your recipe to suit a particular beer category. What flavor, aroma, and texture components are necessary to the style? What ingredients are used to achieve this complexity? And, most importantly, what can we do to keep this product on or under budget without sacrificing quality?

We’re making a pale ale, so we need a final beer that is relatively clean, moderately hoppy or bitter, and maybe a touch citrusy. The final product should also be pale and clear. There’s a few malts that we can choose from to create the flavors we want, as well as, a whole-host of American hops that will fit the profile.

It’s no coincidence that planning and end-goals are so closely related to the concept. What you’ll find is that there’s a lot of reliance on, or blending of, each of these steps. This is necessary to achieve the best product possible. This is also why it’s important to have all the moving parts under one roof.

The Foundation

Arguably, the most important ingredient in beer is water. In fact, beer is comprised mostly of water. Therefore, water quality naturally plays the biggest part. Many brewers treat their water to achieve the profile appropriate for the beer style. Whether we want hard or soft water, it is much like choosing the right code base, e.g., .Net or PHP. Each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Water can accentuate hop flavor or malt flavors. It can affect the efficiency of our mash (similar to making tea with grain). And, if you’re like me, this complicated chemistry gives you a headache, much like the programming languages and networking/hosting required for making a website.

The quality and balance of your code and HTML is much like water in brewing. Bad code can really ruin a website, and chlorine can ruin a beer. Gross.

The Experience

The overall experience, or taste of the beer, is crafted in part by the water quality, as well as, the ingredients and techniques used during the brewing process. In web design, this crafting is done by our User Experience (UX) Designers. They’re major players throughout the entire life-cycle of the project. Everything that is done passes through their UX filter. Their chief concern is always how the end-user will experience and use the website. For beer, if a flavor component is off, the consumer will reject it because it doesn’t taste right or it is too hard to drink.

This “experience layer” in brewing has many moving parts. There’s the malt, the hops, the pH balance of the water, and the temperature control (at each step). And, if the style requests, a spice or adjunct may be in the mix.

Malt brings sweetness and potential alcohol. Hops brings bitterness or balance (it also preserves the beer). Chemicals in the water accentuate each of these flavors as well as improve the efficiency of the process. But, temperature control can easily become the biggest player in the result of the final product. I can add the right amount of hops, but if I mash too cool, then I won’t have enough residual sweetness to balance the beer. I’ll be left with a harsh, thin, liquid. Been there before.

This is much like adding lots of eye-candy, frills, and information to your site, only to find that you didn’t pay attention to what the users (not you) are looking for from your website. If the frills don’t help the experience, then don’t add them. And, like-wise, if all the moving parts parts (designers, developers, marketing, and UX) don’t come together in perfect harmony, something might break.

The experience is a double-edged sword. It’s all about balancing the frills and ingredients to achieve the perfect experience.

The Consumer and Keeping Them Coming Back

You may have noticed that I left one key ingredient out of my beer analogy so far. That is yeast. Yeast is our consumer. And, so is the actual consumer. But, to be fair, yeast is the first organism consuming our beer.

During the entire process, you’re attempting to make a sugary water extract, called wort, that will be like a Candy Land for these tiny single-celled creatures. Unfortunately, though, it’s not as simple as that. If you mash the malt too high, you’ll be left with an un-fermentable extract. Essentially, you’ve made a beer with too much sweetness. Or, a website with too many frills and not enough digestible substance. This could be too much content or, conversely, too much JavaScript fanciness hiding the lack of precision. We want those yeast cells to consume and multiply. We want them to have families that consume the beer too.

Another potential problem is not adding the right amount of yeast. This would be comparable to hitting the market without proper marketing. What happens? The fermentation happens too slow resulting in off-flavors. And, possibly, you end up with a stuck fermentation. In the product world, this is slow growing and painful return on investment. Or worse, no growth at all.

There’s lots of ways to keep the fermentation going, or entice the consumer. We could control the temperature, making sure it’s appropriate for growth. We could use the appropriate yeast and pitch the perfect amount of it. This is similar to choosing the right target audience and controlling the amount of marketing. During the products life, how much marketing are you investing into your product?

Or, if the style allows, stick the beer in the corner and allow it to open ferment at what ever temperature it gets in the room during the day. This would be like viral marketing–letting the consumer run with it! But, then again, it all comes back to the initial concept: what style or what am I selling? And, how do you market the product appropriately?

Final Product

Once the yeast has done it’s thing, you’ve got a tasty beverage waiting for you in the icebox. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the product you’ve created. And, if you venture beyond the hobby, maybe it’ll make you lots of money one day. Cheers!

By the way, what’s your favorite beer?

Google caused a stir in the Internet a couple weeks ago. Google announced that they would encrypt the search sessions of users signed into Google accounts (also called SSL or secure socket layer encryption.) Why would Google do this? That’s a great question. This question is creating heated Is Google Good Or Evil debates all around the web (read my colleague Brian Chiou’s Google Good Or Evil article for his take).

What does SSL Encryption really mean?

SSL encryption means search queries and search results are private. Search results are only visible and accessible to the individual user on the other end of the computer (or phone)…well, AND to Google of course.

Did search engine optimization get harder?

Yes, since search engine optimizers lost the ability to identify keywords searched for a large portion of web traffic. SSL encryption means Internet marketing analysts can’t tie a keyword searched to a goal (or conversion) on a website for users signed into their Google Account.

Were we spoiled with free access to such valuable information in the past?

Google’s decision to limit analysis comes as a blow. SSL encryption isn’t Google’s first paradigm shift and won’t be their last. But why would Google cloak something we are used to knowing? Something we used to help clients optimize content for search marketing?

Google says in their official blog that they want to “make search more secure”:

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.

Is Google really concerned about our privacy? I just looked up my house in Google Earth. There is my car sitting in the driveway. I could zoom and see me sitting on the couch watching TV. Security? Really?

Google says they will continue to pass across secure socket layer data for those using Google’s advertising platforms. SSL encryption only affects organic (non-paid) search results. The lesson here: Pay the price and Google will giftwrap keywords, tie a bow around them and drop them in your lap.

Not convinced money is at the bottom of Google’s SSL encryption?

SSL kills retargeting, the practice of showing ads related to recently visited sites. Retargeting works for old advertising reasons. Retargeting works because repetition works. Retargeting works because customers think serendipity when a massive, intelligent, invisible hand sends subliminal messages and influences free will. Leaving aside the used car salesman feel to retargeting for another post, Google killed retargeting because of how this marketing tactic impacts search. Retargeting reduces search volume. Reduce search volume and Google’s PPC money takes a hit. Money–not security–is at the bottom of Google’s SSL encryption change.

Does Google have something else up their sleeve?

The answer to that question is always YES. Are they prepping us for a paid tool that will allow access to this valuable data? Is Google pushing us to pay for data to improve their $10 billion revenue (from last quarter alone)? Answer: YES.

Or is Google responding to a security backlash? An “adbusters-like” attack on retargeting? Is Google taking steps to improve their privacy policy to benefit the end user? Like most things Google, the answers to all of these questions and many more is always YES. Personally I will believe in the divine Goodness of the “do no evil” company when my house isn’t so easily accessible from any cell phone, iPad or computer on earth.

So, where do we go from here?

As Internet Marketing Specialists, SSL encryption means we have our work cut out for us. We need to be creative in how we collect, analyze and report with our new search engine marketing (SEM) reality. Our Internet marketing world is challenged once again. But who isn’t up for a good challenge?

We say bring it on, Google. We’ll adapt. We’ll figure out ways to help clients understand your new SSL world as we’ve figured out all the other new worlds you’ve created. You’ll make us better Internet Marketers because of it. So thank you Google. I knew I loved you for a reason.

Here is why:

• Email
• Intimacy
• Darwin
• Emotion
• Influencers
• Social
• Network Effect
• iPad and Flipboard and Zite

Email
Your un-subscribe rate will more than double if you do not use sniffer code to format your emails for mobile devices. I’ve been on the wrong side of this equation and it hurt two years ago. Today sending poorly formatted emails to mobile is a killer. The real killer is you won’t know when or who chooses to receive THIS email or THAT email on their iPad or BlackBerry. Life and not knowing who needs mobile formatting is a test. Fail it and watch 3% of your most influential valued customers walk away from your highest margin marketing (email).

Intimacy
Mobile phones are friends, the new time keepers, wallets (the new picture keepers) and an always on connection most never break (believe me I’ve tried). If such an intimate connection is grudgingly true for my generation it is axiomatic for the next and a forgone conclusion for the one after that. Watch your children’s behaviors or try to take their cells and please film reactions. Mobile marketing is more intimate than email or social network marketing. Increased intimacy means different stories, graphics and navigation (at least). Can your company, no matter what business you inhibit, afford to miss another marketing tsunami? How well did that work with Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or social network marketing? I prefer to THINK and create advantage as often as humanly possible. Playing from behind is more expensive, requires twice the creativity and generally stinks. Would rather HAVE than STEAL what about you?

Darwin
This is a TOUGH marketing concept to grasp especially for “secure” growth companies (as if those still existed . I’ve looked LARGE and IN CHARGE CMO (chief marketing officers) and CEO (chief executives) in the eyes telling them they are vulnerable and weak. This is NOT a fun conversation since shoot the messenger is the next game we play. I always ask a question. I ask how much money they spent at their last trade show and it is invariable more than $50,000. Next I ask if they could have gotten by with less. “Yes but that would hurt our brand,” is the reply I get and the one I’m looking for so I typically just say, “exactly” and shut up. Nothing like silence to get powerful people to lean forward and pay attention (and very hard to actually do during a sales meeting LOL), but they get it. They realize the coming mobile marketing tsunami is something they can’t afford to miss just like they can’t go cheap on trade show spending. They get in line to pay our client The Godfrey Group for their biggest, baddest display to say, “We are here, we matter”. Doing anything less is suicide.

Emotion
Our cell phone is winged Mercury. Cell phones deliver babies, archive our lives and notify our loved ones of momentous and sometimes unexpected change. Clearly mobile marketing rules are different and as yet largely unknown, but how do you NOT want to answer the riddle of such a platform? We’ve figured out Google’s math, Social’s connections and we will understand Mobile’s emotion one day soon. We need to act Jobsian, to see the future before it is here and work backwards as fast as possible. This is another way of saying we are late, tardy to our most important and longest lasting marketing class. Figure out nothing in 2012 but your mobile marketing strategy and you will live off of it for the rest of your marketing career. Figure out how your company’s mobile strategy fits consistently into your audience segments and personas and assure your company’s future. That is the size of the bet you, we and ever Internet marketer is making on mobile marketing whether we know it or not. The opposite is also true. Seed high ground on mobile marketing here and now and regret it forever. Recovery may not be possible in this lifetime and you will be known as the one who passed on the NEXT BIG THING. I’m not that guy? Are you? Is your company?

Influencers
Looking at your metrics you probably think mobile doesn’t matter. I can’t tell you how familiar such logic sounds to social network marketing a mere two years ago. Mobile matters and mobile matters now if only because every major salesperson, connector and maven (to quote Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point) is tied to their cells like Linus to his blanket. Excel at mobile marketing and the message goes around the globe fast to all the right people. Fail or decide not to play and the damage is incalculable. One hard concept I’ve had to adjust to once I became an “Internet Marketer” (around 1999) was doing stuff because my gut told me so without really understanding the WHY and ROI of it. I bat well above .300 on this “bet the future” poker having hit many unseen curve balls out of the park (fiction contest blows up and helps SEO, buzz team makes reviews 2x as valuable, video creates 4x conversion on product pages). Trust a better than .300 hitter when I say mobile marketing matters now. We are on the beach, the water has strangely withdrawn and a large wave is forming. Surf or die.

Social Media Marketing
Continuing to watch your daughter’s mobile behavior what is she doing? Texting? Facebooking? Tumblr? These and other stuff we parents don’t need to know at least not fully. Mobile and social are so close in the future they will be one thing. You’ve missed the social media marketing explosion. Want to miss it again?

Network Effect
You can’t catch a speeding train. Mobile is chugging its way out of the station picking up seed from applications like Paper.li,  FourSquare, FlipBoard and Zite. If you don’t know these applications hire someone who does. They are changing your Internet marketing world. In the future we move from large centralized sites built to create HUB status in Google to tagged snippets spinning in infinite networked space. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to demonstrating our snippet, tagged and free form data future is Siftables from MIT’s Media Lab.  Noticed how stuff on one side of your fire walls impacts things on the other? Predicting the path of weather is easier than knowing technology’s true path. Better to surf than drown no matter what.

Here is how our current HUB conten network marketing world gives way to a free form snippet infinite universe where summing the parts, brining dissparate and seemingly random parts together to mashup a new whole, will exceed the value of a simple part summary:

Mobile marketing is here now. The tipping point fades in our rear view. The train is picking up momentum (love mixing metaphors). Set aside 5% of your 2012 marketing budget to lose money in mobile, to play and see if you, your agency or your marketing team can win the mobile marketing lottery. We have serious bets riding on the mobile marketing table and so should you. If we compete with you, please feel free to ignore this post, continue to harp lack of mobile marketing ROI and believe an empty beach is just a strange day. The water will come back and our boards are waxed and ready to surf the NEXT BIG THING.

David Merrill of MIT demonstrating Siftables, the closet representation of our snippet,tagged free form database future: