excess voice: nick usborne's blog

My review of MarketingSherpa's Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007

I have finally written and uploaded my review of MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007.

This is an incredibly comprehensive guide, with charts, tables and data on almost every page.

Here are 10 questions I pose in my review. If you would like to know the answers to all or any of these, you may want to get yourself a copy of the guide.

1. What do companies typically pay per click in various different industries and industry categories?

2. How do the top four search engines compare when it comes to demographics and usage?

3. What kind of budgets do my competitors have for search marketing? What should my own search budget be next year?

4. What should I test to improve my search marketing results?

5. How much should I worry about click fraud?

6. Is it worth hiring a professional Search Engine Optimization company for organic search? Will they deliver better results than we can achieve in-house?

7. Has the way in which people look at search results pages changed? How much of any given page do they actually look at? And are there differences in this regard between the major search engines?

8. What kind of conversion rate should I expect from my PPC and organic search listings?

9. How many of my prospective customers use shopping comparison sites?

10. Are Press Releases really a good way to generate qualified traffic and inbound links?

Read my review of The Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007...

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The importance of organic search optimization.

I’m just reading through my copy of MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007.  I’ll be reviewing it in time for next week’s issue of the Excess Voice Newsletter.

And while I hesitate to give too much away, one thing is becoming abundantly clear to me:

When it comes to organic search optimization, you have to try harder not only to get your key pages listed on the first results page of the major search engines...you have to get up within the first three or four results.

This is real, and a growing trend. Searchers have less patience and appear less willing to look beyond the first few listings. A few will, but the vast majority won’t.

You can find out more about the MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007 here...

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The first two job listings for writers at the Excess Voice Job Board...

Here are the first two listings from the brand, spanking new Excess Voice Job Board:

- Breakthrough Strategies is looking for part-time/freelance copywriter to produce fundraising, marketing, and advocacy email copy for progressive nonprofit organizations.

- Angel Publishing is looking for two editors to help shape the future of its financial and travel publications.

If you want to hire a writer, copywriter, technical writer, editor...or just about any other kind of commercial writer, post your job listing here...

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A slight change in my work situation...

As you may already know, I have been working full time for MarketingExperiments.com for the last 15 months or so.

It’s great work. Not only do I get to do copywriting and optimization for some very interesting companies, I also get to see the results – because everything we do, we test.

And I am still working for them, but with a slight shift in our arrangement.

I’ll now be putting aside some time to take on independent clients of my own. Just like I did during my freelance years.

Why? Essentially because I like the space to be able to stretch my wings on my own from time to time. Just a personal thing.

My regular work:  MarketingExperiments.com

My wing-stretching work: nickusborne.com

Want to hire a copywriter, web content writer or search engine copywriter?

I’m adding a job board feature to my Excess Voice site. So if you are a company or marketer looking for a copywriter, web content writer, search engine copywriter, web designer or editor...this could be a good spot to advertise your opening.

The Excess Voice site gets about 14,500 unique visitors each month. Plus I’ll promote the job board in the newsletter, which goes out to 12,500 subscribers twice a month.

For targeting both online and offline copywriters, search engine copywriters, content writers and editors...this is a very tight, niche audience you will be reaching.

And of course, if you are a writer looking for a new job or new freelance assignments, bookmark the Excess Voice Job Board and check it regularly (but keep in mind that today is launch-day...so it may be a few days before any jobs are posted).

Post a Job on the Excess Voice Job Board

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"Feel like a Customer again."

This is the tag line to a radio commercial I heard over the weekend. It was for an electronics store. Not a big box store, but something a little smaller, and more friendly.

At least, I think the tag line is trying to tell me they are more friendly.

There is a problem with this line. And the problem begins when language from a company’s marketing group or ad agency begins to leak out into their advertising.

Marketers think of those people who buy from their stores or their web sites as “customers”. It’s the language they use as marketers. They talk about customer satisfaction, and customer feedback.

But what do regular people feel? How do they view themselves as they walk into your store?

More specifically, to a person’s ears, does the line, “Feel like a customer again” make sense or ring true?

Do I want to feel like a “customer” again? Do I not feel like a customer when I buy from a big box store?

Or put it this way...as a regular person, do I differentiate between big stores and small stores by the degree to which I am made to feel like a “customer”?

I don’t think so.

I can see what the ad is trying to achieve. But they have picked the wrong phrase and wrong word.

It’s not about people feeling like customers...they feel like customers wherever they shop.

It’s about how comfortable, confident and trusting they feel.

An email trick you shouldn’t use, unless you are truly desperate.

This has probably happened to you a few times.

You receive an email from some marketer.  And then within a few hours you receive a second email, which apologizes for the fact that the first email contained a broken link. And they provide the link one more time.

There are two ways to view this occurrence.

First, if you know and truly respect the sender, you can give him or her the benefit of the doubt.

Second, you can conclude that the sender is being just plain sneaky...particularly if the link in the first email wasn’t broken at all.

This double-dipping ploy simply gives the sender double exposure for the most profitable link in the first email or newsletter.

It’s sneaky, dishonest and will alienate all those subscribers who recognize what is happening.

So why do people do this? Because it works so well. That second email, with just a short, apologetic message and a single link gets great clickthrough.

If you’re having trouble making your mortgage payment for the month, give it a try. You might make some extra bucks.

But unless you are in a desperate financial situation, this is a very bad thing to do.

It simply erodes the greatest asset you have with any email or newsletter list...

Trust.

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How to find a great headline.

Find a great headline?  It may sound strange, but it is something I do often.

When I am asked to rewrite a web page, one of the first things I try to do is make the headline more effective. Many web page headlines don’t work nearly as hard as they should.

The headline needs to communicate a strong value proposition and be powerful enough to capture the reader’s attention and pull him or her into the body of the sales text or content on the page. And it needs to be very focused, and very clear.

So here’s what I do.

When I come across a weak headline I know there is a pretty good chance that the original writer probably got much closer to what needed to be said – but somewhere later on in the text.

That is to say, either a complete headline, or the core of a good headline is often buried deeper in the text on that page, or even on some other page on the site.

How come?  Writers sometimes feel too tense or in some other way restrict themselves when it comes to headline writing. Then later on in the text, they loosen up, relax a little and often come up with a line or phrase that better communicates the key benefits for the reader.

A more experience writer or copywriter will recognize when this happens, and then go back and rewrite the headline. It’s all part of the writing and rewriting process.

But whether through inexperience or time pressure, writers all too often leave their best phrases and sentences buried somewhere within the body text.

I don’t always rewrite headlines this way. Sometimes I start from scratch. But this process of finding a great headline happens often enough to be worth mentioning.

Next time you have to study the text on a web page, keep this in mind. See if you can find a better headline somewhere within the body of the text on the page.

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Does the placement of photos and other graphic elements impact sales page conversion rates?

How many web designers consider the impact of their choice of images on a web site sales or subscription page?

How many consider the impact of these choices on the page conversion rates?

And how many actively use and position graphics in such a way as to increase sales and revenues?

I’m not sure too many designers think about how the design of an offer page, and the graphics which are included, influence how the page is read and how many people ultimately make a purchase of complete a subscription form.

But one thing is for sure – the use and placement of images and graphics DOES have an impact on conversion rates.

I have written about this in more detail in a recent article on my nickusborne.com site, Do too many graphics reduce sales page conversion rates?

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The Power of Social Media Optimization

It’s interesting the difference it makes when you put a name to a process.

Social media optimization is the process by which you optimize your online presence to be more visible through searches within social networks.

It’s like SEO for social network sites. It’s how you make your sites, videos, podcasts, RSS feeds and blog entries more visible to tens of millions of people who are connected through social networks sites like MySpace, YouTube, Del.icious, Reddit, Facebook, Magnolia and dozens of others.

- Traditional “connectors” for more static sites comprise linking strategies and search engine marketing.

- Social network "connectors" include bookmarks, tags, RSS, reviews, comments, ratings and participation in networked groups.

While the process of social media optimization has been practiced for quite some time, the process has been defined clearly only within the last few months. An excellent definition of the process has been  written by Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations with his 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO).

One aspect to this I find very interesting is that SMO has the potential to dramatically highlight the difference between companies which have a static, traditional presence online, and those which understand the principles of social networking.

The former group runs a very real risk of being "left behind".

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