The web has been a buzz for the last few days due to the Old Spice social media campaign where in response to fans on Twitter and Facebook, the Old Spice man replied to messages with short thirty second to one minute videos that were witty and funny and probably more important, timely. Over a two day period Old Spice, a Proctor and Gamble Company, worked with their advertising firm to produce dozens of Youtube videos, although I can’t find the exact number. This campaign used the same actor and built on some already impressive TV commercials over the last several weeks. It clearly will be the business case that will be studied and over analyzed for the next few years as the campaign generated tens of millions of pageviews, and caused a lot of offline conversation that will probably help to increase revenue for Old Spice which is ultimately the reason for the campaign.

When everyone is trying to create viral videos and understand how to use social media successfully, how did Old Spice succeed so overwhelmingly? They decided to take a risk. Most companies will never have great success in social media because they are too cautious to ever take the risk that it requires. Two aspects of the Old Spice campaign that made them successful were they made the quick videos without a major concern for the potential negative impact and the willingness to task a risk with their brand although my belief is the risk of the brand is not as significant as many might believe.

Potential Negative Impact Is Not That Significant - One of the biggest fears of social media for businesses is the inability to control the conversation and the potential that someone could have a negative statement about your company  and that is just unacceptable. For that reason, most companies are still having internal debates about the need to be active on Facebook or Twitter rather than just getting involved. The reality is that most people on social media sites do not have a large enough audience to have an impact. The person with 75 Twitter followers stating that they had a bad experience is not the end of the world. Most likely, there are less than a handful of people whom even will see the message. Mark Cuban stated this same belief about a year ago, that most of the messages on Twitter are not worth a response because it is not heard by many people. But worrying about the what-if possibilities will keep most companies from ever really getting involved with social media successfully.

Too Brand Conscious – Developing your brand is something that takes years and years to build and should be guarded in every way possible. This leads to very calculated marketing efforts with the approval of executives and lawyers necessary for every piece of collateral, message wording, a commercial production. Due to this, most companies couldn’t duplicate the Old Spice campaign if they wanted to as it would take too long for approval to make the response relevant. Assuming that I am correct and the potential negative impact is not that great, more companies should be willing to respond more timely on social media sites to improve success. That is not to say everyone should use twitter videos because that is not for everyone, but using creative timely responses would prove beneficial for social media success.

While most are studying the delicate intricacies of the Old Spice campaign, there also needs to be an assessment of your corporate culture and the willingness to take that kind of risk. My bet is that there are not many companies that would take the leap, but that also explains why there are so many “viral” videos that never went viral.

Lead generation is essential for any business that expects to be around for a while and prosper. I want to offer a couple of ideas for lead generation for small business that are relatively low cost, but can be very effective in generating new business. These methods focus on underutilized methods to reach new customers and engage existing customers and if implemented properly will yield positive results rather quickly. The four methods that I would recommend are:

Coupons – Coupon sites are all the rage with the exponential growth of Groupon.com and other group buying sites over the last year. These group buying sites that can have massive amounts of traffic, but also squeeze the margins on your sales and require deep discounts, which is why it is important to realize there are other alternatives to distribute your coupons and generate leads. The best place to setup and distribute your coupons are through your Google Places account, formerly Google Local Business Center. After you have completed their setup process and verified you business, there is a tab for coupons. This tab allows you to setup multiple coupons for your business that will appear on Google Maps alongside your business. Even if the discount that you are offering is not that great, there should always be an active coupon in your account due to the extra exposure it generates on on Google Maps. It sets you apart from all of your competition that has not taken the time to setup a coupon for their business.

Coupons can also be distributed through Google using Google Coupon Feeds, but this process is only for merchants with large numbers of coupons. If only have a couple of coupons and a couple of locations, Google Places is much more efficient.

Craigslist – Generating leads from Craigslist is a topic that I covered here and here, but it is worth mentioning again because it is such an easy and effective method that is still underutilized. It really is as simple as adding a reoccurring event to your calendar every two days to update your Craigslist listing. It does not need to be unique every time although mixing it up from time to time will help. A quick review of the posts mentioned above will provide much more detail about using Craigslist effectively, but this is a simple reminder to say get something posted.

Facebook Fan Page – A few months ago, I would have likely said that Facebook was not an effective method for lead generation for small businesses due to the amount of time necessary to maintain a page. With the additions and social hooks that have been added by Facebook over the past few months that allow for greater integration into other websites and greater sharing within Facebook, I would now recommend Facebook as a lead generation tool for small businesses.

The key to using a Facebook fan page effectively is growing your number of fans and creating activities that causes them to engage on your page which will spread to their friends as basically referrals. For instance, post a sign in your business for your customers to join your Facebook fan page or offer some incentive or discount to your customers that join and then post offers on the page that they may “like” which their friends will see. You may also offer an incentive in which anyone that “likes” your post will have a special discount coupon mailed to their inbox. As your list continues to grow and creative methods of interaction are utilized, your Facebook Fan Page can become an effective lead generation.

Local Business Referrals – It is also important to remember that lead generation should still occur offline as well as online. I recently read this story about a car wash with 12 locations that is able to generate over $40 million per year in revenue by placing coupons on the counters of other local businesses without even the need to reciprocate placement for those businesses. They simply would regularly distribute their coupons to each business as a “gift” to their customers and this led to an amazing amount of sales for each location. That’s it. Simple, but very effective.

There are many other methods for generating leads like Google Adwords and traditional advertising, but I wanted to highlight a few methods that have much lower costs and are very easy to maintain. Once these methods are put in place, they are very easy to maintain which makes it much more cost effective. Set a plan to have each of these methods in action within a week and I am confident you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

On Tuesday nights, for the past several weeks I have been watching (more often listening while multi-tasking) a webinar of sorts on Ustream called the Twenty Minute Tackle that is hosted by Justin & Chaunna Brooke of Sitefling.com. As the names states, it is a twenty minute long show that usually runs over that covers different topics related to internet marketing and probably more important is the implementation of the techniques that are discussed and realistic results of what the actions will be. There are usually about 40-50 people viewing the show which is pretty good considering the show starts at 11:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

As a part of the show, they always conduct a contest at the end of the show to give away different prizes. Some times it is software, or a book, or a learning system that they are no loner using. A few weeks ago the prize of the contest was an hour phone consultation with Justin. The contest is simple in that to enter all you have to do is guess a number between 1-100 at the end of the show and the person that is the closest wins. I guess 92 and the winning number was 87 (or vice versa) which made me the winner of the phone consultation. Chaunna worked with me through e-mail to get the call setup which was a bit of a challenge due to some things that Justin had in the works that required travel.

Since I really did not have any specific questions that I wanted answered, I was not sure how the call would go and since Justin does not know me, he did not really have a script for the call either, so we just covered some of the things that I was working on and he covered some of his and give me some ideas that I could implement. Justin seemed really cool and also seems to have tired of the over-hyped internet marketing world where people are selling crappy products and in many cases not providing great value for the money that people are spending. Justin has sold many of his sites lately and has started to focus more on offering services to clients than focusing on what can be the unethical world of people selling internet marketing techniques.

A few take aways from the call and some posts that I have liked from their site, www.sitefling.com over the past several months:

• PPC and SEO services are a gold mine when working with local businesses. Many do not have a clue about how to market themselves online and are willing to pay for help with these services.
• CPV(Cost Per View) advertising has been great for list building and it is still very possible to get clicks for 1 & 2 cents. Traffic does not convert as well as PPC traffic, but is so much cheaper that cost per conversion can be much lower. As with all internet marketing, a lot of testing is required. I also viewed Justin’s CPV Bully program with was very detailed and informative.
• Short reports are great for building lists and convert very well. Short reports are short informational products like whitepapers that require a person to enter their e-mail address to gain access to the information. An example of a short report that you might see is “30 ideas to help get your ex back.”  Lynn Terry of ClickNewz.com covers short reports in a lot of detail on her site.
• Outsourcing tasks to workers in the Philippines has been very effective in quality and costs. Justin says the benefits to using people in the Philippines versus other places is that that time difference is not as great as other places and the people he has used have been more consistent and reliable.
• I recently read Justin’s book, SEO Lies,  and it provided some great information about SEO and some of the myths that surround the industry. Much of the information I was already aware of, but some of the processes that he employs were interesting. A good book for well-grounded information about search engine optimization.
• A couple of posts from their site that I found very informative were “Free Traffic Is 100% Possible” and “21 Places To Buy more Traffic.“

Needless to say, the phone conversation went well and the price was unbeatable! The biggest takeaway from the call was something that applies to everything in life and Justin learned from his mentor Russel Brunson and that is to continue to do the small tasks repetitively. It is not about just hitting home runs, but hitting singles day after day so that you are ready to hit the home. The Twenty Minute Tackle is a good show and worth tuning into if you want to learn some internet marketing tips. You may even win a prize at the end.

Unfortunately, the United States is still in the middle of a recession/depression where depending on whose stats you listen to, between 10%-16% of adults can not find employment. Even at the low end, that is an alarming statistic that does not bode well for our national economy or the world economy. For our economy to do well, we need a larger percentage of people employed and contributing productivity.

But in the last week, three major companies released their quarterly earnings and based on the results, I have to wonder if the economy is really as bad as the media would have us believe or if there are parts of the economy that are doing well and that many of those that are unemployed are in industries that probably will not recover for a while or are supported by other industries.

Microsoft, Apple, and Google all released earning statements that far and away exceeded Wall Street expectations. What makes them important as I consider the real status of our economy is that for the most part they sell luxury items that in theory are not purchased as frequently during down times.

Microsoft reported revenue of over $19 billion and net income over $6 billion  as sales of personal computers and it’s new Windows 7 software saw strong sales. Consumers are buying computers at a record pace during a recession?

Apple, which sells primarily high- computers and phones, also had a record quarter and sold the most Iphones that they have in any quarter. Sales of their Mac computer were also up. What is also interesting is that their future forecast is even more rosy with many analysts predicting even better quarters with the introduction of the Ipad. Consumers are buying $2,000 laptops and $400 phones during a depression?

Google which generates over 90% of it’s revenue from advertising also had a record quarter with revenues increasing by 19%. They also have a rosy outlook as they expect growth in display and mobile advertising although the company does not make future predictions. So companies are advertising at a record pace during a recession?

There are other factors to consider with Google’s growth, like the decrease in traditional media spend could more than offset their gains, but what I find interesting is that it is typically believed that in tough economic times, advertising is the first budget to be cut. But it looks like companies are still advertising and doing a lot of it.

So maybe the economy is not as bad as projected and that it would even turn around more quickly if all the doom and gloom stories would stop. The people that are employed would feel more comfortable making purchases again which would stimulate the economy and create jobs. There is still much to be said about the jobs that are going overseas, the transition from manufacturing jobs to service jobs, and the increase of automation. All those things have an impact, but based on the earnings that have been released in the last week, there is money being spent, so there is some upside to the terrible economic stories that we are force fed on a daily basis. Let’s try to stimulate the economy by changing the messaging about the status of the economy and I would be willing to bet that would have an instant impact and increase the number of jobs. That’s just my hunch.

There has been more than enough hype over the last week as Apple introduced the Ipad. From most observers, the Ipad is little more than a larger version of the Ipod Touch and Iphone. The screen is about 10 inches and battery life is supposed to be 10 hours during active use and up to a month on standby. If that is true, then why is the battery life on the Iphone so terribly short. From my perspective, the importance of the Ipad is not the technology, but the increase in mobile device usage and what that means for marketers going forward.

As I detailed earlier this week, mobile data usage is exploding and will grow exponentially over the next few years as the introduction of more smartphones and other mobile devices drastically changes how and where we consume information. I believe this will lead to more accurate ways to target your market across any device that they are using. Within Google Adwords, there is already the option of targeting by device and phone carrier.

This system will become more intelligent and segmenting will become that more important. You will have the data to analyze the behavior of Iphone users versus Ipad users versus laptop users and adjust your ads, landing pages, and offers accordingly. No longer are the days of throwing ads out to the the wild and hoping for conversions. With the information and tracking that already available, targeting down to small user groups will be the determining factor on how to maximize ad spend as click costs increase.

Imagine that you can target Ipad users while they are on an airplane and give them an offer that appeals to most airline passengers during flight. You think that would help conversions? Undoubtedly. Or you know that a person in Florida is watching a Disney Movie and has visited sites pertaining to other Disney movies or child toys. You think you could find a way to put an ad in front of this person that appeals to their interests? Hope so.

We will soon walk that fine line between targeting and creepy as the intelligence of tracking improves. This will lead to better conversion rates if you are willing to invest the time and money into the technology and people to segment and target. If not, then you will probably waste a lot of unnecessary money hoping for conversions and not understanding why your visitors do not convert more frequently.

Yahoo recently introduced traffic segmentation that gives the option of segmenting your traffic between the search engine and their partner networks. This is an option that Google has had for years, but it is just making it’s way to Yahoo. This is important because as you track conversion rates and attempt to maximize your paid search spend, the type of traffic from the Yahoo Search Engine will perform very differently and probably convert differently than the partner networks, but if it is like Google, the click prices on the partner network should be much less than the search network.

It is important to note that the Yahoo Search network will still include other Yahoo properties like e-mail, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Finance, but will be separate from their partners which are properties like City Search, Buy.com, Forbes, Comcast, etc.

What is not yet clear is if Parked Domains are considered as part of the Yahoo Search Network. Parked domains are those domains that have great domain names like candy.com and benefit from tons of direct type-in traffic that the domain owner simply places ads on the page without any content as a way to greatly monetize the traffic. Yahoo has historically paid more than most other networks for clicks on parked pages, but for search marketers, this traffic does not convert very well. I am not sure what percentage of traffic that parked pages contributes to the traffic for Yahoo, but my guess is that it is a moderate amount. In my opinion, this traffic should be considered as part of the Partners network, but I have not seen anything that has said definitively either way.

This change by Yahoo should help tremendously to improve conversion costs and to identify the most successful traffic sources. It will also be very interesting to see how the click costs vary between the two networks.

To make the changes, simply edit your network distribution settings from the main campaigns page. Although setting up separate campaigns in Yahoo is not as easy as Google, it will definitely be worth it over the long term for tracking conversions.

The mobile web has not been fully embraced by most businesses and for good reason because up until now the return and usage has not warranted the investment. Over the last few months, that has drastically changed and the outlook for the near future, next 12-18 months, is that your mobile web strategy should be your top priority as the way people are using mobile devices is changing rapidly.

Yesterday, Apple announced their quarterly earnings and worldwide sales of the Iphone have doubled to 8.7 million units in the quarter. This is significant because iphone users spend much more time with other functionality besides just phone calls. As you can see in the image below, iphone users spend much more time on their phone on average per day and also use their phones for search and visiting websites. A quick glance through your web analytics will probably show that some of the visitors to your website visited from a mobile device. This is a trend that will just continue to accelerate.

There are a number of events from the last month that indicate mobile phone usage is about to explode.

1. Iphone Sales – As I mentioned, Iphone sales set a record in the last quarter and Apple predicts strong growth going forward. Iphones in the United States are still limited to AT&T, but it is widely expected that the exclusivity will end with an announcement this week that the Iphone will soon be available on the Verizon network. Verizon is the largest carrier in the U.S. and by most opinions have a network that is far superior to AT&T in coverage and reliability. This will lead to a larger explosion of Iphones sales and possibly an exodus from AT&T for many Iphone users.

2. Nexus One – Google introduced their own phone, Nexus One, in the last few weeks and this will increase mobile usage. I don’t expect many people to move to the Nexus One right away because there is not much that differentiates the hone today, when Google completes the integration of several acquisitions over the next several months, I expect the functionality of the Nexus One to increase dramatically. This will include a number of applications that attempt to bypass the phone carrier networks and utilize the web more. This will include Google Voice and other VOIP applications that reduce the reliance on the phone carrier networks.

3. Android – The Android software from Google is a few years old now, but adoption of it is still picking up. Verizon introduced the Droid phone from Motorola over the last two months that has seen steady sales and there are a number of other handsets from other providers that will lead to further adoption. Much like the Nexus One, the handsets using the Android software will move more and more towards applications that don’t require phone carrier networks.

All of these phones have built-in search functionality that is very easy to use and are very heavily location focused. My guess is that the next 12-18 months will see an increase in mobile web usage that advances faster than estimates and in some cases will push the phone carrier networks to their limits. If you have not given some serious consideration to your mobile web strategy and how you can engage your visitors, now would be a good time. It is probably a good bet that your competitors are already doing so.

Image Source

Google recently created a search option for businesses to find Google Adwords Certified professionals and companies more easily.  The search engine lists all of the companies that have completed the Google Adwords certification tests and who have completed the business information in the Google Professional admin panel.

In addition to the badge that is available, like the image above, this search engine provides more credibility to Google Certified professionals and depending on how Google chooses to promote the search engine could lead to an increase in traffic and new business for many of the companies. Especially if Google chooses to advertise against some of the better keywords to promote their database of certified professionals.

I found it a little surprising that there are only 442 certified professionals and certified companies. Although the criteria is different to become a qualified individual versus becoming a qualified company, I would have guessed that there would have been more of each. The test is not very easy to pass and my guess is that many attempt to pass without reviewing the material beforehand and therefore are disappointed with the results. It is a course that I would recommend that all advertisers that are working with Google Adwords should take because it begins to give you an idea of how Google looks at advertising, how it prices clicks, and how it determines placement.

Hopefully, this search engine is promoted properly and has an impact for the professionals and companies who have taken and passed the Google Adwords Certification exam as that will lead to more people taking the exam and provide a good resource for businesses to find quality campaign assistance.

You can view my Google Adwords Certification or search the database of qualified professionals.

Online marketing jobs are probably one of the few disciplines that is growing in the current economy. This need will continue to increase as the shift from traditional marketing to online advertising accelerates. I have compiled a list of quality job boards, some better than others, that keep up to date lists of online marketing positions where companies are seeking search engine optimization experts, search engine marketing managers, and web analytics analysts. These sites have a healthy mix of entry-level, mid-level, and executive positions and for many of the boards, the positions are exclusive to their site.

The one drawback of some of the sites listed below is they are not as quick to eliminate positions form their board that are 6-8 weeks old. My guess is that if they are too quick to remove these jobs, then the number of listings is too low at any given time. Besides that, the job boards listed below have done a good job of listing and aggregating some of the online marketing opportunities available.

This list is not ranked in any order as they have different jobs at any given time.

SEOMOZ Job Board - http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/jobs

Onward Job Search - http://jobs.onwardsearch.com/

SEMPO Job Board - http://www.sempo.org/jobs/

E-Marketing Silo - http://www.emarketingsilo.com/

Online Marketing Jobs - http://www.onlinemarketingjobs.com/

Web Analytics Association Job Board - http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/jobs/search.asp

Search Engine Watch Job Board - http://jobs.searchenginewatch.com/c/search_results.cfm?site_id=2660

Marketing Pilgrim Job Board - http://jobs.marketingpilgrim.com/

Search Engine Journal Job Board - http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/

SEO Consultants Job Board - http://jobs.seoconsultants.com/

SEOBook Job Board - http://www.seobook.com/jobs

Problogger Job Board - http://jobs.problogger.net/

Techcrunch Job Board - http://www.crunchboard.com/jobs/

If you know of any other resources that should be added to the list, drop them in the comments.

Google Analytics is the web analytics software for over 70% of websites which clearly makes it the market leader. When Google Analytics originally launched, it lacked much of the functionality that some of the enterprise solutions offered, but the price was hard to beat because it was free. It still remains free today, but the functionality has increased dramatically and in many ways Google Analytics is as robust as most of the other solutions available.

Google Analytics and any other web analytics software really begins to get powerful when you get past the surface level and start to dive into some of the functionality and reports that uncover nuggets of data that can have huge impacts on your user engagement and conversions.

The most comprehensive training program for Google Analytics is Conversion University. This is a self-paced training program that takes you step-by-step through Google Analytics and gives details about each of those element. I had been using Google Analytics for a few years prior to conversion university, but after sitting through the course, there are a number of elements that I am now aware of that I did not know about prior to the university.

Here are three resources that are not owned by Google, but provide great insight and techniques for getting the most out of Google Analytics.

Avinash Kaushik’s Blog (Occam’s Razor) Google Analytics Evangelist

Justin Cutroni’s Blog Google Authorized Consultants

Site Scan GA Analytics Site Scanner

I would also recommend a book by Avinash Kaushik titled “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.” Which is a great resource for learning Google Analytics. The book can be kind of wordy in parts and Avinash sometimes speaks at a level too high for the topic, but a book that is definitely worth reading if you are serious about improving your ability to dive deep into Google Analytics and truly realize the power of all the functionality.

I would also recommend “Advanced Web Analytics With Google Analytics” by Brian Clifton. This is also a good read, but covers the information in a different way than Avinash. The main difference is this book is written for less techy readers who are more concerned with the metrics than the coding that got you to this point.

Web Analytics will become increasingly more important for most organizations and the better your department can derive actionable data from the web analytics solution, the further in front of your competitor you will become.