Full Text of Announcement found at http://www.acquitygroup.com/News-And-Ideas/News/Acquity-Group-Announces-Acquisition-of-Analytics-C

Chief Marketing Officers should be noting that years of SEO investment by these companies were literally wiped away in hours.   If SEO investment were an asset on these companies balance sheet, they would be disclosing huge earnings write downs.   In addition to the SEO drop, these companies also receive a brand hit as they have been called out as cheaters and spammers.

The bottom line is that Google is trying to connect people to outstanding, original and relevant content.   The SEO link building schemes and low value content approaches were working on the premise that they could disguise their flimsy content from Google.  Sooner or later, these schemes inevitably have to collapse like Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.

On the other hand, if these companies had invested in great content over the past few years, they would benefit from not only an improved SEO position but also from a more positive interaction with prospective customers.  In the end, all efforts to trick Google or a prospective customer are going to end badly.  If you haven’t been caught yet, you will be.  However, it  is not too late to start focusing on a sustainable SEO strategy built upon great content.

Posted by Jeff Aliotta. Jeff is Managing Partner and co-founder of Anova Marketing Group.

Online communication is no longer dominated by email. Everything from formal emails between clients and colleagues, to informal chatter between friends and family, and even information from news sources and discounts from online retailers was done via email. Today this is no longer the case. Yes the total number of emails sent per day dwarfs that of tweets, 294 billion to 65 million, but that figure is deceiving. Nearly 90% of all emails sent are spam. When only 1 in 10 emails are of any substance people begin taking their business elsewhere, spam has become the Achilles heal of electronic mail.

People utilize Facebook’s private messaging system much like they once utilized email. I use Facebook for just about all of my personal communication. Facebook is great for casual communication because it’s so much quicker to write on someone’s wall or send a private message than having to draft an email, it also comes without the negatives of spam.

The great thing about Twitter is that it packs an expansive amount of information from thousands of sources into one central location, all at the discretion of the user. So instead of turning to email people turn to twitter and can get their daily news fix, gossip, and sales discounts without having to wade through all the annoying spam. I love Twitter because I can view information from several different sources all on the same page without having to individually visit each website.

Social networking sites are allowing for easier communication, efficient surfing and gathering of information, for extremely personalized web experiences. Emailing and traditional online sources of information still have their place but will only see their share of trafficking dwindle as more and more sophisticated sites and services come into the limelight.

Over 500 million people are currently members of the Facebook network. It is used by a lot of people around the world, especially by college students, to stay connected with one’s peer group. Be it friending that one girl you just met at the bar, checking in on your buddy who goes to school two thousand miles away, or just staying current with your friend’s constant profile picture changes and status updates, Facebook has infiltrated the favorites bar on virtually every undergrad’s web browser in the world. There’s no denying that the “book bug” has plagued numerous individuals. Yes it’s abused, yes it’s impossible to ignore this post or that status, and yes I personally check Facebook daily and against my better judgment it has become a part of my routine web surfing, but are these facts any indication that advertising on the social media mammoth really works? Simply put, no.

My generation has grown up hand in hand with the Internet. We were born with dial-up in our homes and now have 4G cell phones with video chat capabilities in our back pockets. My peers are extremely well versed in the ins and outs of the World Wide Web and have learned to filter what they wish to see, and not see, while using it. If there is anything we have instinctively learned to ignore while surfing the web it’s banner advertisements. While I hop on Facebook to check the daily news feed and write on a few friend’s walls I’m more concerned with the political instability in North Korea than with what advertisements Facebook is lamely running. Banner ads and referral marketing are white noise to the veteran Facebook user. Over the years of perusing the internet people have become hard wired to ignore the side bars and pop-up ads that seem to be on almost every website.

People are not going to Facebook to be told what they should buy or where they should buy it, people are going to Facebook to simply utilize the network and stay in touch with their friends and family. When I reflect on what persuades my purchasing habits it never seems to be what ad I just saw on Facebook, and honestly I couldn’t tell you what ad I just saw on Facebook because ignoring them is an automatic response. For Facebook to retain their dominance they must create alternative avenues for generating revenue. The more time users spend on Facebook the less effective their advertisements will become. As new Facebookers become veteran Facebookers they will start to navigate the website more efficiently, get done what they came to the site to do, and then continue on with their web surfing routine, all while ignoring Facebook’s main revenue generators: banner advertisements and referral marketing.

-Max Blankenhorn

DePauw University Economics Student and Anova Group Intern

Chief Marketing Officers and brand managers have been increasingly asking these questions. Previously, they monitored revenue attributed to SEO as the yardstick of SEO effectiveness. Not surprisingly, SEO revenue steadily increased with an overall global digital sales uptrend. However, simply seeing SEO revenue growth really doesn’t answer the question of whether your SEO performance is better than your competitors.

SEO Benchmarking provides the critical insights into SEO performance for companies to strategically make their next SEO investments. Unfortunately, marketing’s primary SEO benchmarking tool was to manually enter search phrases into Google and log their SEO position. Even with an army of marketing interns, this SEO benchmarking approach is unsustainable.

Anova Group’s SEO benchmarking technique involves automatically capturing SEO positions for thousands of keywords and monitoring those positions over time. Anova Group then applies sophisticated segmentation routines to the SEO benchmarking results so as to refresh our clients’ SEO strategies. Over and over again, this SEO benchmarking approach provides the following insights:

Every company has the same SEO tools and tactics at their disposal even as those tactics may evolve over time. In 2011 and beyond, the SEO Leaders will be those who apply these known SEO tactics in the most strategic manner.

If you would like to discuss how Anova Group’s SEO Benchmarking can help you strategically tackle search engine optimization, please contact us.

Posted by Jeff Aliotta

The Coupon Site Misrepresentation

Coupon site’s claim their value is similar to the value of the coupon section of the newspapers. The theoretical value proposition is that consumers are perusing sales and by seeing the coupon code, the consumer is then motivated to purchase from the retailer’s store. In practice, however, the coupon sites simply target consumers who were already going to the retail store. To compound the lack of value, the coupon site usually just repeats the coupon or sale that is prominently featured on the retail website. This is critical for retailers to understand – the coupon sites SIMPLY TARGET CONSUMERS WHO WERE ALREADY GOING OR HAD ALREADY VISITED the online retail store. Additionally, the coupon site usually highlights the deals that are either ALREADY DISPLAYED PROMINENTLY ON YOUR WEBSITE or expired.

How the Coupon Sites Create a Toll

To illustrate how the coupon site toll works, let’s walk through two scenarios of how consumers interact on the web and how the coupon site gets a commission.

Toll Scenario #1:

The base case is that the consumer starts to type in the retailers store online (e.g. target.com). Google, in its effort to help consumers, defaults into the search box coupons. The retailer, however, should note that the consumer was already searching and intending to visit their online retail store and likely will see any coupons on the site directly. However, the consumer might skip the retail site and goes first to the coupon site who is offering ‘special deals’. In reality, the coupon site often repeats basic promotions and/or general policies. A common promotion on the coupon site is Free Shipping for orders over $X which is usually basic policy for any retailer. The user then clicks on the free shipping “promotion” and goes to the website to purchase a product. The coupon site gets a commission for the following:
(1) Re-directing traffic heading towards retailer in the first place
(2) Offering a basic promotion such as Free Shipping that the consumer would have gotten without going to the coupon site.

Toll Scenario #2:

The consumer is already on the retailer website and identifies a product to purchase. Before purchasing, the consumer decides to look for additional coupons and then searches for coupons and goes to a coupon site. The coupon site actually provides no additional discounts, but the user – for convenience reasons only – clicks on the link back to the retailer website to complete her purchase. In this case, the coupon site still gets a commission for the sale because of the convenience click even as the coupon site neither attracted the consumer in the first place nor added any additional value to make the sale.

www.RetailMeNot.com Toll on Target.Com Profits

To see an example of the coupon site toll in action, search on Target Coupons and click on www.RetailMeNot.com – usually on the first page results. I have attached a screen shot below. You should first notice that the coupons include a free shipping coupon on purchases over $50. Free shipping, of course, is just Target.com standard policy not something Target should be giving a commission to RetailMeNot. You should also note how much they encourage the visitor to click on their links as that is how they receive a commission. Finally, the other ‘coupons’ are out of date and thus worthless for Target but still provide a commission for RetailMeNot.

In summary, Retail Me Not provides no benefit to Target and simply collects a toll if a visitor happens to go to RetailMeNot.com before they go to Target.com. It is a great business model for the coupon sites and terrible for the retailer.

Posted by Jeff Aliotta

The first would be Greenpeace or any environmental non-profit organization. Regardless of who is to blame, the oil spill illustrates how human error can lead to tragic consequences regarding the environment. For these organizations, they have the opportunity to connect with a much larger base of citizens concerned about the environmental impact of the gulf oil spill

The second would be manufacturers of hybrid or electronic cars. They could emphasize the angle of by owning an electronic car, the oil companies won’t be drilling for oil for you. There could even be a guilt marketing play that says that anyone who drives a non-electric car is at least partially to blame for the oil spill.

The third organization that would benefit from actively marketing to those searching on the BP oil spill would actually be BP itself. To their credit, I have actually seen some ads offering information to citizens on how they are trying to address both stopping the well and protecting the environment from the oil that has already escaped. Although BP is suffering a public relations nightmare, someone on the search engine marketing side was at least paying attention.

To show that Anova Group puts our money where our mouth is, we ourselves have launched our own agile marketing campaign. This includes the blog that you are currently reading as well as a search marketing campaign shown in the screen shot below. You will notice that only BP and Anova Group have taken advantage of paid search marketing here. We will let you know how it turns out!

June 21st Update
Two weeks after we wrote this blog, NPR had an article on BP bidding on search results which caused a furor on how BP was spending money.

Anova Group differentiates ourselves from other digital marketing agencies (whether they are a Google Certified Partner or not) by ensuring that our compensation is aligned with our clients’ interests. We accomplish this by structuring our engagements so that on average, 75% of all our compensation comes from performance-based fees. This model let’s our clients know that Anova Group will always go the extra mile to improve our customers’ bottom line results. Furthermore, our clients know that we have the confidence to put our fees at risk and are not expecting our clients to assume all the risks associated with digital marketing.

If you would like a digital marketing partner whose interests are aligned with your business goals, we would welcome the opportunity to speak with you.

Bay Bridge Construction

In one great example of a company demonstrating agile digital marketing, a news article described how a brand of dishwashing liquid was used as a lubricant when the repairs were made to the Bay Bridge last winter. Needless to say, this news story generated a lot of searches.  One savvy competitor brand took advantage and put their brand message front and center by immediately launching new SEM campaigns on relevant keywords.  This real-time reaction to a current event allowed them to gain a competitive advantage.

Contact Anova Group if you would like information on how we help our clients maximize their digital marketing investment through Just In Time Digital Marketing.

By their very nature, no marketer can predict exactly an upcoming social media mania. However, at the same time, I would bet that some social media activity concerning Olympic curling is not that surprising given the history of jokes (at least in the U.S.) about this sport. Furthermore, while a few entrepreneurs have jumped on the bandwagon in attempting to sell similarly styled golf pants, for the most part, this social media event may live and die without any marketing gurus taking advantage of the situation.

The lesson, I think, is that marketers who want to take advantage of social media should both be constantly brainstorming potential social media manias and have the capabilities in place to pounce within days or perhaps hours upon the temporal mania. For large companies, this is a scary proposition to have a team plotting for a social media eruption and expect that team to respond quickly without bureaucratic reviews and approvals. At the same time, considering the recent Toyota recall fiasco, not having a team in place to respond to social media eruptions may soon be the cause of senior executive firings.

Posted by Jeff Aliotta of Anova Group.