Advertising vs. Search Engine Marketing

The need for a web presence in today's world cannot be overstated. If you're not online, you don't exist. But presence alone is no longer enough. You need to attract visitors to your site that will be inspired to purchase, donate, participate, or take other actions.

But how best to do that?

The easy answer is through online advertising and search engine marketing (SEM). The hard task, however, is deciding which is most effective. Let us help.

First, an overview of online advertising. Many are familiar with banner ads and their cousins, pop-up ads. These are the origins of online advertising and inspired by print media advertising. And like print media, they are associated with a website (publication) and that's the end of an advertiser's ability to target their audience. But that's only the beginning of the Internet's ability to target your ad to your audience.

The race to target advertising as specifically as possible is clearly being won by Google. Their flagship service, AdWords, earned the company $21 billion in 2008, perhaps because it works. AdWords takes banner and short, text ads and places them according to context. Fort instance, a recipe site would receive an ad for Better Homes & Gardens. Other examples of contextual advertising include ads associated with keywords searched in the search engine and hyperlinked keywords in the body content of a story, which many readers find annoying.

For AdWords, advertisers pay every time a viewer clicks on their ad, or pay-per-click (PPC). Other, similar models for payment exist. The three most common are PPC, cost-per-impression (CPI), which charges each time the ad is displayed, and cost-per-action (CPA), which requires the user to sign up, buy or commit to some other action. The benefits to the advertiser for this last option are obvious, but it is far less common than the CPI and PPC. Many complain that an impression does not signal a viewing, like a click. Could be an impression is made from a "spider," a surfing robot that scans the Internet. But the pay-per-click option leaves you open to fraud, and even sabotage, from competition. It's estimated that 10 to 20 percent of clicks charged are fraudulent.

Site owners subscribe to Google's AdSense to host AdWords on their own websites, and share in revenue generated with each click. This spreads AdWords beyond search engines, as the ads are displayed on relevant websites, as well. It's the best, most prolific model and worth considering in any advertising plan, but Google isn't done yet. Soon, handheld devices - what some still call "phones" - will signal to Google where users are located geographically, with ads that correspond to location. This is an example of where contextual advertising meets behavioral advertising.

Behavioral advertising is - surprise, surprise - ads placed by a user's behavior. For instance, the ad is placed based on past sites visited, which is drawn from cookies that websites save on your computer when you visit the site. To think of where you are geographically as a type of behavior shows how potentially far-reaching this type of audience targeting can get. Imagine your phone not only tracking where you are, but where you've been. It removes context and behavioral advertising from the virtual to the real. Sorta scary, right?

We don't want to leave you with the impression that Google is the *only* place to advertise on the Internet. There is also Facebook, for instance, which lets you select demographic indicators like geographic location, gender, etc. to target users. For many campaigns, this is a viable option. What we do suggest, however, is that you advertise with someone that offers targeted placement - Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter are two other examples. But really, the Google algorithm is without compare.

So, now, what are SEO and SEM? And how do they compare to advertising?

SEM is "search engine marketing." Widely, this is understood to be the practice of paying for search engine placement. Essentially, SEM is what is described above, but with the ad appearing in search engine results not a website.

SEM is often confused with SEO, which is search engine optimization. For SEO, you don't pay for placement, but you pay someone like A-Train to optimize your website so it appears high in search results. The understanding is that most select a site on the first or second page when they search a keyword. We don't need to get into all the technical details on ways to do this right now - perhaps in another B-Sides - but we will warn about black hat SEO, or spamdexing. Essentially, a false index of links is created to fool search engines into believing your site to be more relevant than it actually is. This will create a spike of visitors to your site, but a sustained effort to optimize your site for search engines, and creating legitimate links with marketing, will ensure the spike is genuine, and lasting. It will also keep you from getting blacklisted by the search engine, which is likely to figure out that you're trying to fool the system eventually. If you get blacklisted, you won't show up in the search engine results at all.

So, which do you choose, advertising or SEO? The answer is both. A study released in May 2009 that compares these two marketing tools had some surprising findings. For one, visitors that visit your site via a search engine may have actually found you through an ad. Nearly as many users search for the company after seeing the ad as users who click on the ad directly. And over half of Internet users respond to online advertising, with over one-third of those following through to action.

Try to find another advertising media that offers these results.

Ask A-Train about how we can help you include online advertising in your marketing plan.


A-Train Update

Well, by now you may have heard that our CEO and co-founder, Ryan Keiffer, will be leaving us to take the helm of Beet Street. Around our office, the emotions run the gamut. His contributions are immeasurable and his influence on the great work we do cannot be extricated from who we are as a whole. He will be missed; it's a bit sad to see him go. But we are not only happy for him; we are also happy for Beet Street. We've always felt aligned with the Beet Street mission, and knowing him as well as we do we are confident he can lead the organization to achieving its goals. We consider it a compliment to A-Train that he was selected. We are proud. We also know that, other than Ryan's absence, not much will change around here. This change in no way reflects on A-Train's success -- we've continued to grow over the last 18 months and are on track to have another great year of growth in 2009. There will be no change in our drive to do great work. Every aspect of A-Train's approach -- excellent creative, based in sound strategy, implemented on-time and on-budget, for organizations who share our commitment to driving the greater good, with an unwavering focus on serving the needs of our clients -- will continue to drive our growth and our clients' success. We are a dedicated team of talented people; no organization should be defined by a single person. And A-Train never was defined by a single person - our talented co-leader, Gretchen, will take on the role of President and CEO and continue to lead us and our clients to greater success. A-Train will barrel on doing the quality, important work we're known for. It is a testament to Ryan and Gretchen's leadership that we can absorb such a huge change with very little actually changing.

In other A-Train news, we placed twelfth on Northern Colorado Business Report's (www.ncbr.com) Mercury 100 list of fastest growing companies with revenues under $2 million annually. This was an honor comparable to the one we received from United Way of Larimer County (www.uwaylc.org). On June 11, we were proud to accept the Outstanding Volunteer Group award from UW at its State of the County luncheon. It's an honor, for sure, but our pride lies in our contributions to our community.

The Elderhaus Rock-a-Thon (www.elderhaus.org), which had been postponed to the end of May after an April snowstorm, was a huge success. Folks spent the day rocking - literally, as in chairs - for adults with special needs.

The Washouse (www.fortcollinslaundries.com) was recognized nationally for its innovation with a cover feature story in the June 2009 issue of The Journal, the Coin Laundry Association's (www.coinlaundry.org) publication. The irony, of course, is that the Washouse has innovated beyond using coins - they use cards - at their café-style Laundromat with the most efficient washers and dryers available in the industry.
The Hook Up
To Friend or Not to Friend... Your Boss
A recent ethics and the workplace study released last month, which made headlines around the nation, revealed that 60 percent of business executives feel they have a "right to know" how employees portray themselves and their organizations online. Guess what employees thought. "No way, José!" The majority contended "social networking pages are none of my employer's business."

But let's be real, how an organization is portrayed in these venues can have a profound effect on its brand. Even those employees who don't want to be restricted know this. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed agree that Facebook, Twitter and the like can "make it easy to damage a brand's reputation."

For an example, we only need to turn to the viral YouTube video from a few months back that depicted Domino's employees doing things to subs you'd think even they wouldn't want the world to see. No telling how that hurt the brand.

But that is the exception. We have always granted employees personal lives, as we should. Safety and performance concerns often intersect with employees' personal lives - for example, very few will deny that someone who operates a motor vehicle or heavy machinery at work ought to be drug tested as part of their employment agreement. But there are no safety issues with surfing Facebook, and another study recently released found that short bursts of pleasure surfing throughout the day at work significantly improves employee performance. But what if their "pleasure surfing" actually involves trashing your brand on Facebook? Well, you take the same disciplinary steps you would if they were trashing your brand at the bar after work on a Friday. Facebook is a social venue, and management has rarely had the ability to extend its reach into all social spheres trafficked by employees. You must simply trust the employee has the company's best interest in mind and allow them to request your virtual friendship.

As for employees, what if your boss tries to friend you? Or what about a client? Or even an influential member of the business community? To accept may reveal to a colleague that the movie you are most like is E.T. and in high school you drank Bailey's through your nose. Not exactly the pinnacle of professionalism. But to deny may be seen as a snub.

Obviously, certain colleagues and special bosses are - well, cool. We suggest you develop a consistent policy. If it is to keep work to LinkedIn, which in many ways is wise, then tell the colleague requesting friendship just that. Or you can set a privacy level on Facebook that extends to all professional contacts. Or perhaps you have nothing to hide and all your friends are well-behaved, then openly friend them. Just like how many beers you can have at an Emerge event, it's your call. But don't regret it.


In The Know
Odell Makes Twitter History

In May, Odell Brewing made history. No, it wasn't with the groundbreaking for their expansion; that happened on June 9. Odell made social media history.

The craft brewery had been on Facebook for a little over a year with about 4,000 friends and understood the value of including social media in their marketing plan. When Odell expanded to eight states, with the inclusion of Arizona, they saw the real power of Facebook.

"Facebook ads were a big leg up for us," says Marketing Manager Joni Denyes.

Denyes says that Facebook advertising seemed particularly successful for expansion, since new fans were curious and clicked through, whereas old fans may not have the same curiosity. But this is not a history-making concept either.

The real groundbreaker is how Odell mixed Twitter with beer. Denyes had heard some buzz about tweeting and signed the brewery up. Within three weeks, they had four- to five-hundred followers. Then, a colleague at Reel Motion Video had a suggestion: Why not get Twitter followers to craft a beer? No one had every built a user-generated beer over Twitter, and the new media was itching for novelty.

"Twitter is an ideal platform for a campaign," says Denyes.

"When there is something good, people tend to share it and that creates some buzz around the brand," Says Yann Ropers a principle at Extanz, a social media and PR 2.0 company in Fort Collins.

Beer is definitely something good. The response was explosive. Followers of Odell Brewery designed Blackbird, a "twitterbrew" that selected qualities ranging from style to alcohol content, name to label.

"The main thing is they've involved the people. This is the key," says Ropers.

By the end of the beer design, which culminated with a label design contest, Odell had over 2,400 hundred participants voting. Followers of Odell on Twitter had tripled, and the label design contest attracted attention from regional media outlets like Northern Colorado Business Report and CBS news.

How Odell managed to use Twitter to create brand buzz, Ropers and Denyes both say, has a lot to do with the beer community. Odell knows its audience - craft beer fans - and knows how to reach them. Simply having a Twitter account and broadcasting messages is not enough.

"Social media has to do with context or else you just create noise," Ropers says. "Contextually speaking, Odell's brand already has fans, so they can leverage that."

But every well-branded, successful business has fans. A-Train Marketing's research can help you determine who they are, or even help develop a brand identity, if you are lacking one. (As Ropers puts it, "Your Twitter account is not gonna solve your problems.") Once you know who these people are, social media allows you to hang out where they gather and listen to their ideas. Then, you can engage them on their level, as Odell Brewing has.

"Research to identify conversations that are already taking place; then, engage with those people," says Ropers. "It's like a friendship."

"These people are people who want to know what you're doing," says Denyes. "They support you. Don't be afraid to reach out to them. And don't over think it. The idea is that it is in real time, off the cuff. The Twitter community would smell a phoney if it was too slick."

Now that Odell has a social media following, they need to keep them engaged. Blackbird was tapped at a brewery party with face-to-face social engagement, and the brewery asked followers to vote for them as the best brewery in the West in an online poll. As a result, they placed in the top three.

And Denyes is keeping her eyes peeled on the social media horizon.

"Twitter is the buzzword right now. I'm interested to see what is next."