Archive for February 17th, 2010
Deliver what you promise
Warning: This is a rant
I came across a cool copywriting blog on Twitter yesterday. They were giving away an ebook on copywriting for signing up for their newsletter. I liked what I read on the blog, so I entered my name and best email address on the opt-in form. I get sent to a new page where I am thanked for signing up, and given a second offer. I can get a companion “cheat sheet” for the ebook that I will be able to download as soon as I confirm the opt-in, and all I have to do is fill in their “tell a friend” form with a few names and email addresses. Of course, those email addresses will NOT be saved anywhere. I thought of one person and filled in her first name and one of her email addresses. Next page says great, thank you.
I go merrily off to my email inbox and confirm the opt-in. I get the obligatory welcome email message immediately thereafter, complete with download link for the ebook. I am promised another email with the link for the “cheat sheet” that I was promised for telling a friend about the ebook. So far, so good. A couple of hours later I get an email from a name that I do not recognize pitching me some product that I have absolutely no interest in. Worse yet, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message, and I am so sure that I have never heard of this person. So I click the unsubscribe link, and lo and behold, it’s the list I joined from the copywriting blog. Okay, I do remember joining this list. I joined for a “newsletter.” Maybe I joined at an odd time and the next message in the autoresponder was the pitch. I’m upset, but I’ll forgive this message. I mean, I did join. I know people are online to make money. I expect to get a few ads along with a newsletter. I decide not to unsubscribe from the list.
This morning, I get another message from that same list. It’s another pitch for that same product. Just for kicks, I click the link to check out the price on this puppy … it’s $1997. That’s one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven dollars. I didn’t miss a decimal.
I have yet to receive any “newsletter.” Heck, I still haven’t got the download link for the “cheat sheet.” But it’s only my second day on the list. Maybe I should be patient. How many more messages should I accept about $2000 products before I give up on getting the free newsletter that I signed up for? Or is the “newsletter” those email pitches? Hmmmm.
Well, I got an ebook. THAT promise was kept at least.
Pack Your Bags: How Content Marketing & PR Combined Can Generate Leads
You’re buying a new suitcase. What do you want to know about luggage? Ballistic strength? Capacity in cubic centimeters?
I didn’t think so.
You want to know, “Is my weekend wardrobe going to get through security, fit in the overhead bin, and will I even be able to lift it?”
Hot off the Valentine’s holiday weekend, we learned of a romance that unites unlikely bedfellows. PR, which HubSpot’s CEO Brian Halligan claims may be dead, joined up with content-based inbound marketing to deliver the ultimate result: leads for Suitcase.com!
Inbound marketing rests on the assumption that people seek out and want to consume remarkable content. PR, historically, has been about getting a message, remarkable or not, in front of an audience. In this case study, PR 20/20 (a HubSpot certified partner) and Suitcase.com combined the best of both worlds to deliver meaningful results.
As travelers, we are Suitcase.com’s target market. For a spring campaign, Suitcase.com and its agency, PR 20/20, wanted to get more qualified visitors, e.g. travelers, to its website to check out new luggage. Knowing that yet another luggage sale would deliver only a minor spike while eroding margins, they wanted to approach it differently.
Enter inbound marketing. A new promotion, sale or product announcement really wouldn’t do much for long-term leads. But a valuable content asset that travelers care about could provide a spike and continue to drive meaningful traffic and leads over time. Because Suitcase.com has an email database of 20,000 travelers, they were able to survey customers to find out their top travel concerns. The resulting 2010 Consumer Luggage Report identified trends and behavior changes such as:
- 57% pack lighter
- 72% use carry-on bags for each trip
- Size & weight are the top two luggage purchase criteria
PR 20/20 helped craft the survey and content, then played a key role in sharing the outcomes with media outlets nationwide, securing coverage with ReadersDigest.com and the Taking off Travel blog. Building on the content created from the Suitcase.com study, an entire feature, “10 Ways to Pack Lighter When You Travel” was created on Reader’s Digest. There is some great advice there, but the real story is that the inbound links resulted in a spike in traffic to Suitcase.com and a surge in leads for downloads of the report. Suitcase.com measures inbound links, traffic and leads to monitor results after the release of its content-driven campaign.
To borrow a sports analogy … this was a classic ally’oop. Content served up the ball and PR gave it a slam dunk. Perhaps a more romantic and Valentine’s appropriate way to express this would be that content is your champagne and, when used appropriately, PR can pop the cork!
If nothing else, this story may provoke you to think about your industry with a bit of ingenuity. If you think your company doesn’t lend itself to creating interesting content, you may be mistaken. Companies across various industries are blogging, reporting and creating remarkable content that matters to their target market. Why? Because it drives traffic and generates qualified leads.
Are you sitting on data that might be interesting to others? Did this story give you any ideas about how you can evolve your content and PR campaigns to embrace inbound marketing and drive new sales?
Webinar – PR 2.0 for Marketers: Why Social Media Participation Matters
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Want to learn more about how creating remarkable content can lead to PR coverage and lead generation? Download the free webinar to learn how inbound marketing and PR can be combined for results. |
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Is Google Getting Too Personal?
Posted by Dr. Pete
Late last year, Google announced that they would be rolling out personalized search even for visitors who weren’t logged into a Google account. There’s been a lot of talk in the SEO community about how this affects the already dubious future of rankings, but it seems to boil down to one simple fear: does my client (or boss) see the same rankings that I do? I decided to put this to the test – take one client’s real-world keywords and see how much rankings changed depending on how I measured them.
Experiment I – 4 Keywords, 5 Methods
In Experiment I, I took 4 of my client’s most sought after keyphrases (from a popular 1-word query to a long-tail 4-word query) and measured rankings for a week using 5 different methods:
- Default – Standard, logged-in query
- PWS=0 – Adding the &pws=0 query parameter
- Logged out – Standard query, but logged out of Google
- Rank Tracker – Data from SEOmoz’s Rank Tracker tool
- GWT – Data from Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools data was only measured once, after the fact, using the "Last 7 Days" option. All queries were limited to web search on Google.com (US). The mean ranking for each keyword by method appears below:
Practically speaking, rankings for this particular set of keywords didn’t vary much across methods. Keyword 1 tends to bounce between the #1 and #2 spot, which the Logged out ranking showed, and there was some disagreement about Keyword 3, but the differences were mild at best. All methods correlated strongly with the default search (r = 0.97 to r = 1.00).
Experiment II – 20 Keywords, 6 Methods
Of course, this was one set of data and only 4 keywords/phrases, so I figured I should up the ante. I pulled the Top 20 search queries (by impressions) from Google Webmaster Tools and did a second round of one-day measurements. I also added a 6th method, "Caribou". No, it’s not a secret codename – I took the laptop to Caribou Coffee to pull a new IP and tried a logged out search from there. Experiment II’s numbers turned out a bit more interesting:
This one takes a bit of explaining. Graphing 20 keywords x 6 methods is ugly at best, so Figure II shows the number of times each method’s ranking varied from default across 5 levels, from ±0 (same ranking) to ±4 spots. The PWS=0 and Logged out groups showed the least variation from default searches, with the Rank Tracker, GWT, and Caribou groups showing more variation (especially at ranking differences of 1-2 spots). Correlations ranged from a perfect 1.00 for the PWS=0 group down to r = 0.71 for Caribou and r = 0.69 for Rank Tracker.
What Does This Mean, Exactly?
I’m glad you asked. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the Rank Tracker and Caribou measures are unreliable. On the contrary, both correlated strongly (r = 0.90) with Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) rankings. What it does suggest is that, given enough keywords, rankings do vary a fair amount depending on how you measure them. There are a couple of general conclusions I think we can draw:
1. PWS=0 Is Unreliable
I’d welcome more data on the subject, but it looks like the "pws=0" parameter does little or nothing for many queries. If you’re using the de-personalization parameter and taking the result at face value, I’d strongly suggest you reconsider. It does appear that turning off personalization may affect some geo-targeted personalization, but the query parameter doesn’t make Google completely ignore your search history.
2. "Logged out" Probably Isn’t
Google’s announcement last year as much as admitted this – if you think being logged out will de-personalize your searches, think again. The open question is: just how much different is it? This data suggests that being logged out has very little impact on rankings, assuming that you’re on the same machine with the same IP. Move to a new machine/IP, and the difference is much more substantial.
3. Second Opinions Are Gold
There really is no gold standard. The rankings in Google Webmaster Tools are the closest we can get to being inside Fort Knox, but these numbers are completely opaque and many SEOs have reported occasional rankings that differ wildly from observed searches. If you rely on rankings as a primary metric, get a second opinion, preferably either a fully logged-out ranking on a browser/IP with no history, or by using a 3rd-party tool like SEOmoz’s Rank Tracker.
4. Skepticism Is Healthy
It always makes sense to check your facts, and search rankings are no different. Rankings vary – you can occasionally type the same query twice in a row and see two different results. Smart SEOs have already diversified, considering metrics like search traffic and conversions. On the other hand, even across these test cases, rankings don’t vary a huge amount. So, don’t panic, but as always, the key is not to put too much trust in any single number.