Archive for November, 2011

ANA Masters of Marketing attendees were treated to a case history from Cheryl Callan, Senior Vice President, Marketing Weight Watchers International, Inc.  Cheryl set the stage for the discussion noting that Weight Watchers sales closely tracks the consumer confidence index which has created serious challenges for the brand.  That ultimate human ability to procrastinate along with the view that investments in weight loss are seen as a luxury by many compound the problem as Weight Watchers competes in the 3.7B space.
To tackle the challenge, Cheryl noted that Weight Watchers is not in the business to try to convince customers to lose weight, rather to inspire people to believe the can.  To “stop dieting and start living” they’ve launched The Points Plus program which has been their most significant program innovation in 13 years.   The results are bearing themselves out with 2 million people currently succeeding with the program.

One lesson learned through their efforts is that “talking at consumers” doesn’t work, it’s “like wallpaper”; it’s better to unlock the power of your brand advocates.  Lucky for them they have many to work with; more than 2 million page views on weightwatchers.com and 1 million visits on Facebook highlights a large pool to activate on their platforms.   To unlock the power of advocacy Weight Watchers has tapped into the fact that their customers were “social before social was digital”.  Word of mouth was key before digital and that hasn’t changed.  These social platforms play a key ingredient in the success as it gives members a place to connect and to share, speak the truth to one another and even brag about successes.

Weight Watchers has viewed celebrity endorsements as part of the problem in the industry, but given the right approach could be used as part of the solution.  After sharing an amusing mash up video of celebrity endorsements gone wrong (no names will be disclosed to protect the innocent) Cheryl shared their views that Jennifer Hudson tenure endorsing Weight Watchers has been an unqualified success.  This view was supported by a video clip from the ultimate endorser Oprah Winfrey who reacted dramatically and favorably after viewing Jennifer’s Weight Watchers spot.

What set this session apart from others was the dual presenter format where Cheryl presented the case history accompanied by Nick Brien Chairman and Chief Executive Officer – McCann Worldgroup who interjected throughout with higher level learnings and take-aways that all marketers could learn from, regardless of industry.  Throughout the session Nick touched on and intertwined these key learnings; a great list to keep handy when thinking through most any marketing challenge:

1. The consumer comes first, and the category second.
2. You must find a simple human truth.
3. Innovation can happen within the existing brand paradigm change for change’s sake is not a strategy.
4. Bring social media principles to traditional channels.
5. Don’t allow copy testing to replace creativity and innovation.
6. Learn how to experiment forward with your agency partner.
7. Never underestimate the power of a big, transformative, idea.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

To celebrate the launch of the 2012 Ford Escape, the company, who has a sizable presence at BlogWorld, Ford announced the Escape Routes that will show an entirely new method of vehicular promotion.

While discussing the benefits of the new Escape model  you can apparently open the trunk with your foot  some of the details of the promotional strategy were revealed. In order to promote the vehicle, Ford is having it take part on some global adventures. It appears as if Ford is tapping into the reality television The Amazing Race model by having teams compete while showing off the new Escape. However, instead of racing to see who comes in first, the winners will be decided by voters.

The teams will be competing in what speaker Jim Farley referred to as a “series of spontaneous adventures.”

Apparently, the social media aspect of the web is going to come into play a great deal as well, because Farley mentions using the “social media graph” in order to win. To facilitate the social aspect of Escape Routes, the teams will make short videos to promote the competition and each team will feature blogger/content creator with them.

During the presentation, Farley stressed that people are desperate for authentic content, which is what motivated the Escape Routes promotion. Farley also feels that vehicles are social objects, and if you doubt that, ask yourself why people spend so much on stereos and/or chrome rims.

It’s all about getting noticed, as are new approaches to marketing, which is something Ford is clearly committed to.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

We are better off if we ignore what Google is saying and follow one thing: Google wants more money for Google. When we make this assumption, everything Google does makes sense. Deception and doublespeak are logical and expected rather than shocking and upsetting.

When it comes to scale, as pointed out with Groupon, all of these rules go out the window. If you look at the biggest advertisers, replace their account with one with no history and the brand “Geico” with “SEOBook auto insurance” and the campaign will simply not run. You are spam. In some cases larger advertisers are able to run ads which are clearly deceptive and go against guidelines which they actively enforce on smaller advertisers. I have a strong suspicion now that this is in fact institutionalized in Google’s rating process rather than any employee going out of their way to overturn some sort of penalty.

Google will not disrupt a site or advertiser that will negatively impact their own quarterly earnings. When Google does disrupt one, it is because they have a backup in place. That backup may be their own internal project or a competitor of yours who sends 95% of their advertising through Google’s ad platforms. When Google claimed they were going after content farms, and Demand Media’s properties were spared, the reason was obvious, because it would have visibly impacted their bottom line.

Brand is a deceptive concept. A hairy, smelly drug addict that compulsively molests women is not a sex offender but rather a globally famous rock star. Much the same holds true to many of the biggest brands. As long as a brand spams, that spam is opaque to Google’s customer base and their customers do not bring a negative association with Google’s brand. However, when that same hairy, smelly drug addict is anonymous he is a nuisance which destroys your reputation when you publicly associate yourself with him.

Google is like an oil company which not only dictates the price of oil but also chooses where an oil field will exist. Google is now “too big to fail” as indicated by the recent DOJ investigation which could have resulted in a felony charge for their co-founder, and most certainly would have for a smaller firm without $500m of liquid cash. We should be thankful that visitors are still directed to our websites when they could simply receive excerpts of what they are searching for.

My conclusion: first, I monetize my existing sites with Google’s own products as much as possible. Second: I no longer invest my time or money in new businesses that require Google’s traffic. Google should expect more walled content gardens in their future. Google’s biggest challengers such as Facebook and Apple recognize this, and their platforms are very much walled gardens. That is too bad for the web as we know it today.

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.

SEOmoz readers are no strangers to the concept of search engine ranking factors. In general, much of the community that comments seems to delight when some new factor is discovered that may provide a potential ranking boost. Who wouldn’t, right? But in this post, I’d like to suggest that perhaps some refocusing on the “forest” of the ranking factors world, rather than the individual “trees” that populate it, might be in order.

I’ve been writing about SEO since 1996, from before we even called it SEO and from before Google existed. In those 15+ years, I’ve seen no end of attempts to “chase the algorithm.” My goal, writing to a broad audience, has always been to highlight the important factors that stand the test of time.

It’s not that I’m against testing. I love good discoveries as much as anyone, assuming they’re real, backed by solid data or can be easily confirmed (too many don’t meet these criteria). Understanding if the first use of anchor text overrides further uses or how variations of anchor text across the web might impact rankings is fascinating reading to me. It can help break new SEO ground.

What I am against is wasting time chasing things that might not be helpful for more than a day, week or month, versus time spent on the proven, time-tested factors that matter.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

That was the genesis behind the Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors that I developed earlier this year, working with the talented folks at Column Five Media to illustrate:

It was a labor of love for me, combining my former profession  that of being a newspaper graphics reporter with my current one as a journalist who writes about search engines and search marketing.

The table was designed to highlight what I considered to be the most important ranking factors, so that any experienced SEO could work with someone less knowledgeable and easily explain, in a visual manner, things that might help a site from an SEO perspective.

Want to rank well? It remains incredibly important to have quality content, or Cq. That’s why it’s the first factor listed on the chart.

Want to rank well? It remains incredibly important to have conducted proper keyword research, or Cr, a topic that sometimes feels forgotten in the quest for more exotic ranking factors.

Want to rank well? The locality of a searcher  Pl  has grown into a major ranking factor that can seem all-but-forgotten by some SEOs who assume that “normal” results still exist and can somehow be found by running proxies or using the pws=0 trick. Google personalizes results down to the metropolitan level in the US and elsewhere. Good luck “adjusting” for that to get your “normal” results.

The Ranking Elements

The table contains four major “element” groups:

• On The Page Factors
• Off The Page Factors
• Blocking Factors
• Violation Factors

Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy. Through Internet Marketing he places his name on great search engine like-GOOGLE who is also called as Innovator, Investor, Internet Marketing Guru and Entrepreneur. For more updates don’t go away, please stay with us.