Commentary
The Failure To (Completely) Serve
- by Derek Gordon , November 9, 2009
We had a booth at the Expo, so I got to talk with a huge number of folks I would otherwise not have met, and learned a lot from our conversions together.
First and foremost, the message I got loud and clear is that businesses are gearing up to start investing in marketing after more than a year of increasing austerity. This, of course, is great news and portends good things for the larger economy (here's hoping those good things come quickly, given the jobs report on Friday).
The other message I heard, over and over again, is that people seem exhausted by the huge inefficiencies in marketing today. This is particularly true for Web marketing, including display, search and especially social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Specifically regarding search, the overwhelming sense I got is that it is still so mysterious. There's real confusion among everyday businesspeople and rank-and-file marketers about how things work, despite the many blogs, newsletters and columns on the topic. Folks get that Google, in particular, provides a range of "free" tools -- AdWords, Website Optimizer, and a huge number of help pages -- but still feel they can't quite figure out how to make everything work to their advantage. They don't understand why ads are rejected, or why, despite placing a maximum bid, they don't get into a top position for their preferred keywords. The concept of quality scores confounds.
(Forget SEO: most view it as pure voodoo.) And where, in the name of all that's holy, is the bonanza of traffic they've been promised?! Beyond search, I heard real frustration around managing email marketing campaigns ("Gmail is just a black hole!" one woman asserted, despite, she said, real efforts to follow all the rules.)
And many folks want simple, easy-to-use tools for planning and managing integrated campaigns, but can't seem to find them. They want to run display ads across publisher sites, on Facebook and on other social networks. And they'd love to figure out how all this integrates with their conversations on Twitter. More than anything, they want an efficient way to report on the whole kit and caboodle. And while there are a ton of tools, technologies and consultants of varying depth and quality, all seem to address one specific point across the spectrum of need -- and none play well together.
So what's to be done? Well, for starters, the folks who own search engines, ad networks, content platforms and all rest could work to make the rules of the game a lot clearer. The businesses I spoke to and the agencies that serve them just want a level playing field. Also, it's well past time for common standards in the marketing profession. Though the IAB has done a wonderful job in recent years, their work is just an opening salvo.
Marketing needs a movement along the lines of the microformats effort to create common standards for structured data. Finally, technology players of all types who seek to serve marketers must more fully embrace the use of APIs so, for instance, common dashboards can be easily created to allow for efficient reporting across the Web marketing remit. If we can't all play nicely together, let's at least allow a strong ecosystem to grow up around us that will enable marketers to efficiently knit our technologies together into an integrated solution.
Those of us at work enabling the business of marketing do it to produce a profit, of course. But we also do it out of a genuine desire to be of service to our customers. I see this where I work; I see it across our competitors; and I see it throughout the Web marketing universe. So it should be natural to consider our customers' whole needs even as we narrowly focus on meeting one in particular. Marketers are about to start spending again. Let's make it easier for them to do it.
You are right mostly on this. Most businesses don't really know how this all bolts together, so they create expectations that are not real. And SEO is seen as voodoo.. and Social Media is going to suffer the same fate if not managed well.. Business needs to say "I got this result because I did this." Short of that, you have voodoo.
http://gerardmclean.com/social-media-failing-social-media.html
The nay sayer in me says there will never be a level playing field especially since the level changes so rapidly that catch up reminds me of that old saying, "The aheader I get, the behinder I am." It's the shape shifting. ;)
Dear MediaPost Search Insider,
Why are you having people who don't understand search write an article about it?
I know.. let's tell all your readers who are interested in Search, to "(Forget SEO: most view it as pure voodoo.)"
do we need to change the #NOrtTechCrunch to #noRTMediaPost? for posting non-credible articles by people who don't understand the subjects they are to write about?
Gord, Rob, Todd Friesen and Matt from Razorfish all have no problem articulating things about search.
And sure you think "making things easier" would make search better?
NO!! you would just give more people such as yoursaelf who don't have a clue about search to pollute it more with spam. It's a good thing not everyone understands it... some people, such as yourself, don't get it and sure shouldn't be writing about it. Much less contributing to "relevant" results in google.
you want to understand search?
go get an analytics program that measures bounce rate.
create web content, watch bounce rate. if it goes down, you are figuring out search. if not.. then modify the page content to provide the MOST unique, MOST relevant results for a keyword query.
Search isn't hard.. it's easy... just..
CREATE UNIQUE RELEVANT CONTENT specifically targeted to your keywords.
oh.. but you don't understand "keywords"??
- keywords are what people call a business and ask for.
- keywords are what the CEO thinks you call the product or service that they offer.
- keywords are what the engineers call the product.
- keywords are what the sales managers call the product, despite what the engineers tell them to call it.
A level playing field... you want a level playing field.
HIRE a credible, experienced SEO.
Seo is to be done by someone who understands what they are doing.
email marketing campaigns are to be done by people who understand the CANSPAM act. maybe even understand maslow's heiarchy of needs to create a compelling subject line, that passes the junk email filters and get people to read the email instead of delete it.
it's not VOODOO! YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! (either of you)
The same way i don't need to be googling "electricity" and re-wiring my condo..
what is even funnier.. is that http://www.yieldsoftware.com/
is supposed to be some automated tool to do SEO, yet if you don't understand it, how does the software know what to do... answer it doesn't.. software is only as good as it's programmer.. or maybe this guy isn't a programmer, doesn't understgand SEO.. he is a "MARKETER"... which explains EVERYTHING. except why MediaPost would post such an article.
Again MediaPost.. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????
#FAIL
"Data plus wisdom equals success in SEO." - @oilman MediaPost
Steve -- just to be clear, I was relating what I heard at ad:tech. I do not believe SEO is voodoo, but many people trying to understand it do. And because many of these folks have tried using SEO professionals to help them in the past and have been burned, they approach the whole thing with an understandably cynical perspective. I believe it is possible to make it easier for marketers and business people to understand what is going on under the hood, and the result doesn't have to be bad for search overall. -- Derek
"SEO as voodoo"? "Where's the traffic"? "Search as mystery"? Are you kidding me?!...
You guys need to vet your guest writers a little more throughly. It is stunning that 13+ years after marketers started making a decent living engineering search - visibility, distribution, traffic, sales! - someone in a trade would publicly appear so clueless.
TK
Thanks Thom,
I didnt think I was alone.
<a href=http://www.dallasseoblog.com/2009/11/seo-is-voodoo-cmon-man-really.html>blog response</a>