1. First, conduct extensive keyword research. From your potential keyword universe, you filter your preferred sample of primary (and some longer tail) phrases for onpage SEO. The full universe of keywords is applied to PPC.

2. If you are unsure of which phrases to target from an SEO perspective, then complete your PPC campaign and make it live. Careful review and analysis of your top performing PPC keyphrases (based on your predetermined KPIs) will give you a great indication of which terms to target from an SEO perspective. Bear in mind, for many major or well known brands, the brand and product names usually account for more than 90% of all traffic. Adding the primary non-brand keyphrases to the mix in the primary on-page SEO elements will not detract from the strength of the brand exposure, but will likely improve your appearance in the SERPs for related non-brand searches. Ensuring that these non-brand keyphrases form part of the anchor text in a backlink strategy is a great strategy.

3. When conducting your keyword research, pay close attention to potential negative keywords for application to the PPC campaign;

3.i. In practice: If you are performing keyword research for a prostate cancer clinic, words you want to include to add your running negative keyword list will include words that crop up in the research on the primary research phrase ‘cancer’, and will probably include:

• sign (people with cancer tend to search for cancer ‘signs’ plural while people interested in the astrological cancer ‘sign’ need to be filtered out)
• tropic
• horoscope
• astrologic (anything to do with ‘astro’ really)
• every other body part (you’re targeting prostate cancer, so you are not interested in ‘brain’ cancer, ‘breast’ cancer, ‘colon’ cancer, ‘kidney’ cancer etc)

3.ii. On a slightly different (and happier) note; if you are a winter vacation resort, and you don’t offer an outdoor hotpool, hot tub, warm spring, steam bath, jacuzzi (and all other combinations) make sure you are not ‘broad’ phrase advertising on the term ‘winter vacation resort’. Run that logic throughout your campaign creation, specifically ensuring you refine your exposure to terms you actually can service, and for which there are dedicated pages on your site.

4. Effective PPC campaign conception, creation and management is not the remit of this post, but in summary, make your campaigns geo-targeted if you serve multiple locations; if not then set campaign by primary topic such as ‘treatment’, ‘signs and symptoms’, ‘statistics’, ‘support’ etc. This step would be the adword level for a geographically diverse campaign. Ensure that adcopy includes the adword level primary search term in the title and at least once in the description, with the primary search term in every URL; i.e. ‘cancer’ at a bare minimum. Create multiple adcopy to allow for a/b testing, make sure you have your goals set, watch your budget, watch your KPI and make sure your landing pages are relevant, highly appropriate and easy to navigate with clear purpose and direction in both copy and call-to-action. Here’s more info on PPC creation why’s and how’s.

5. If your SEO contingent is targeted with assisting IA in the development of a new micro-site to complement a banner ad/TV/radio/magazine etc ad strategy, make sure knowledge of the objectives, along with all the keyword research, is passed to the PPC folks for integration into the PPC initiative.

6. If the company decides on a short term promotion targeting PPC and banner ad placement online, pass the information to SEO where they can include the target tag-line and primary likely converting phrase into a link off the home page to the PPC landing page. The chances are that your home page is crawled at least once every week to two weeks (if you are a small business and don’t update very often). If you are a larger business with more dynamism in terms of visitor volume and interaction, and if you regularly change your content, your home page may be crawled multiple times a day.

7. Most active blogs are also crawled far more frequently than less ‘dynamic’ sites. Therefore, link the corporate blog to the PPC landing page as well, ensuring that the PPC landing page is not excluded via robots.txt, or misuse of noindex etc. I read a great article on crawl and cache rate (due to effective page management and maintenance) and the effect on rankings a few weeks ago by Scott Hendison – totally worth a good few minutes of your time.

8. SEO and PPC may have very different KPI; for example, PPC may be aimed at pure profit or ROAS (return or adspend), while SEO may be aimed primarily at brand exposure.

This does not mean you need to limit either approach to any single goal. In fact I strongly urge you to set up a number of PPC and SEO goals including registration, conversion and contact as well as more tactical goals including bounce rate on select pages, most visited sub-pages, visitor paths and visitor locations. Insight into general web analytics geographic location of visitors can give insights on where to further promote PPC, or withdraw it if it is not effective.

Bounce rate can indicate landing pages that are not working, both from a PPC and an SEO perspective. Apply full web analytics to both and integrate them so that you only have one primary interface. It is very easy to tie your Google Analytics to both AdWords and general data. I strongly urge you to do so.

In Closing: Integrating, managing and reporting on both SEO and PPC initiatives simultaneously with the same team, or with teams that are encouraged to work effectively together to complement and support each other will make an enormous difference to your online presence in the SERPs. It’s not getting easier out there, but while competition is increasing, effective management is not necessarily following suit – yet. Give yourself a competitive advantage in 2009 and start today!

Happy New Year!!!

• ‘A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression is when you lose your job’

It ain’t sounding so funny these days…

But wait. It’s not that bad for search marketers, depending on how the industry deals with it as a whole, and how independent practitioners and companies deal with the current economic climate on a micro level.

From a business perspective:

Traditionally, marketing budgets are cut during a recession. But search marketing is not traditional marketing.

Search marketing is basically virtual point of sale display marketing, but far more relevant and targeted:

• PPC enables an ad to be displayed for the exact term a consumer is utilizing to search for a product, service or information at the exact time of interest.
• Efficient SEO ensures a businesses visibility on its brand name in the search engines, and its visibility on highly relevant and targeted converting phrases which are of personal interest to their target market, particularly if they are geo-targeted.

Even if businesses stop or cut-back on advertising on TV and radio or in print, many already have a web site. This is the time for them to maximize their internet exposure.

People still need goods and services in a recession. Mayhap not as many as they would like to have, but wants and needs are very different animals. If people are strapped for cash, if filling their car is becoming a burden, if their job situation means they need to sell their car, if they are at home due to job loss, the fact is that for reasons of both necessity and time to kill they may very well be online a lot more. If they are, they are (apart from fluff internet use) most likely going to be looking for certain goods and services they can purchase online and have delivered via the postal service.

What is it we do again? Bingo…

And we’re not the only ones that know it. While SEO is still a mystery for many, its use, benefits and potential profitability in terms of ROI are becoming more and more well known:

• According to research supplied by PRstore early this month, more than 25 percent of new orders from their 40+ markets nationwide are for website design, and sales of related products, such as search engine optimization (SEO), are also up. ¹

Apart from the obvious benefits of being able to search for a product or service as well as related reviews online which save time and money in terms of opportunity cost and actual transaction costs, there is also the issue of immediate gratification:

• When people are stressed about money and concerned about their next pay check, the impulse-buy phenomenon in almost all types of purchases (apart from luxury purchases) is heightened. If a consumer knows they actually need something but may not be able to pay for it next month or the month after, they are in many cases more likely to purchase it as soon as possible with the cash they do have to off-set the possibility or likelihood that they may not be able to do so in the coming months.

While this is not a great outlook for the consumer, it does offer a great deal of fodder for effective SEM practitioners who are targeting the right words, with usable targeted landing pages that offer a good user experience, support and great returns policies; both from a PPC and an organic search perspective.

The impulse-buy behavior doesn’t stop after month one – people continually ‘need things’ in our consumer society, and if money is short they are more likely to purchase immediately they have the cash if they perceive the purchase to be necessity. A new dish-washer is certainly not a ‘necessity’ in general economic terms, but I know few housewives in middle class America who wouldn’t consider it to be so if their old one packed up. This is not a commentary of our society, and personally with three kids under 8, a fulltime job and a blog I love, my dishwasher, my washing machine and my tumble dryer are pretty darn necessary – while we can afford them… There is no dichotomy in that statement; if I had to choose between ‘extras’ for the kids in my weekly shopping bill or getting a new washing machine after 3 months, I’d get the washer – no contest. Maybe not my perfect washer, but it would sure be good enough to last me a year with the warranty. My mind-set may not be perfect, it may be warped by our society, but it’s what I grew up with. If I had to start washing by hand for some reason, I’d do it – right now I don’t. And yes, I recycle.

While it is true that people tend to focus on saving and conserving money during an economic downturn, saving behavior is greatly influenced by their levels of consumer confidence in the economy; and consumer confidence is fed by business confidence.

If businesses shore up, cut back on inventory holdings, slash prices and go belly-up, consumers get the willies and save harder. Most businesses are price takers, so it’s up to the industries to get together and keep themselves solvent by forming price strategy and inventory (supplier) agreements. If they can effectively do this, appease the consumer by enabling purchase with discounts, but upholding inventory levels within reason, not only is their industry more likely to survive, but the consumer confidence in their market will increase, as will the consumers independant incremental appreciation of economic stability.

The problem with a credit crunch is that it feeds right down to a supplier level. The raw materials suppliers can’t get the bucks on a monthly basis to purchase the inventory they need to make the products their manufacturers or retailers need; or the interest rate is prohibitively high and they are limited due to cost. The lack of supply of these ‘raw’ materials causes a shortage for the retailers. Consumers see a shortage of goods and panic. These shortages in the business sphere can usually work themselves out in a few months, the problem is that the precipitate consumer panic creates a tidal wave of concern that is usually at least 50% unfounded, and that in turn knocks back on the businesses who, after severe shortages, suddenly have (despite a shortage of goods in a normal market) an excess of supply as consumers aren’t buying… they cut purchases from the suppliers, who are already struggling with credit and interest rate problems, compounding the suppliers issues as they try to pay for what they owe, and the suppliers may go bang… It ain’t no fun being a first-point supplier in a recession, which is why they are so very cautious. And that is the vicious cycle in a (totally blase) nut-shell… It’s not necessary, but it is a fact – mob mentality rules in a recession… Industries, businesses, households and individuals need to think for themselves.

Sorry, got side-tracked…

Businesses need to market their goods, especially in a recession – assuming you aren’t Ferrari… If you are, you shouldn’t be too bugged by the recession anyway – if someone has the money to buy your vehicle, they are unlikely to be hit too hard, unless they were invested in AIG…There’s always the exceptions to the rule, eh? But the economy is not ruled by the stock market; it is influenced by it to a great extent… but wall street in many cases and to a great degree doesn’t impact on the SMEs for many months… the collapse of banks is an entirely different story.

I don’t live in the states, but I agree with Trump’s statement that this may well be a cleansing – and in my view; about time… but that statement of mine is entirely economically biased, and as a wife, mother and employee – my heart goes out to the American people. I will say as an ex-economist I don’t think it’s going to be all that bad, and give it 9 months, the DJ will be back up past the 11.5K mark and employment will be above current levels. Prove me wrong I hope you do.

Laura’s SEMI-thought Conclusion:

Here’s a random thought…if SEMPO, SES, SMX etc were to contact all registered members and do a membership drive to boost numbers, and then band together to actually target mass audience portals including TV, radio and the internet promoting SEM services, it would be in the interest of the industry as a whole.

If registered members were allowed to provide geo-targeted hourly rates on specific web portals hosted by these ‘authority sites’  for specific services in a transparent manner, it might not only clear up some of the mystique, but also serve to drive demand for the services we provide as a whole.

I wish I had the money to start a portal service for SEM services on a geo-targeted basis around North America, facilitated by some overt advertising to businesses on a mass level. I don’t, but I think it would work, and I hope it happens.

This is a totally un-thought out thought – but I think further thought (thought over-load) would grant it both merit and substance… this is just a blog post. If I got you err.. thinking, I did my job. Thanks so much for reading.

^{1. PRstore (HitSearch Ltd)}

The SEM Canada Conference has been postponed until October of next year for the following reasons:

1. We are in final talks with a new corporate sponsor who will enable us to really make the SEM Canada series world-class. Details will be forthcoming within the next 6-8 weeks

2. We did not think anyone would necessarily want to come to a rescheduled conference in winter at -40’C – so that rules out everything until Spring

3. In Spring we hit the SES (Search Engine Strategies) New York & Toronto, and SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Advanced and other conferences, and we are not planning on competing for market share

4. In summer everyone is on holiday, or already going to SES San Jose

5.  …hence October 2009… It will come around a lot faster than you think. It feels like yesterday that I was at last year’s SES San Jose, and it’s nearly a year… I’m sayin’

By no means are we giving up on SEM in Canada, or on hosting a fantastic conference in Calgary!… But a few things have recently come up that are simply far too good for us to ignore. Basically, we would be total idiots if we did. We’ll have more news within the next 2 months for everyone.

I’m going to close this post with a copy of an article of mine that was published in the summer print issue of the fantastic search magazine ‘Search Marketing Standard’. If you don’t subscribe, I highly recommend you do.

SEARCH MARKETING IN CANADA: A STATE OF CONFUSION

Search marketing in Canada is not exactly booming. SEMPO Canada says that Canadian businesses simply “do not get search marketing”.

They conducted a survey in January asking Canadian search based businesses to provide their input in an attempt to understand why this is so. Three days before the survey closed, only 60 companies Canada-wide had responded.

This is very disillusioning as there are thousands of SEO/SEM companies throughout Canada, and even more agencies who offer search marketing as part of their service offering. Google alone returns over 170 results for the highly targeted search on ‘allinurl:seo company Toronto’.

The question is: Why the lack of interest?

STATISTICS: Canada’s Online Population

To further confound search marketers in Canada there’s the fact that 72% of Canadians are online compared to 71% in the US.

While I realize that 71% of the US equates to 10x as many people, there are two clear opportunities this data provides for companies doing business north of the border:

1. There are 24 million people online in Canada. This online population is a significant market when you consider that Toronto, the most populated Canadian city, has in comparison only 5 million people. The opportunities for increasing national market share, exposure, and sales/leads are real and viable.

2. 88% of Canadian households have high-speed internet access. This is currently the ninth highest level of broadband penetration by country in the world. People with broadband connectivity are usually internet savvy; they are more likely to bank online, research online, search online, and purchase online.

STATISTICS: Behavior of Canada’s Online Population and Insights

If we consider comScore’s February data on ‘Top Ranking Canadian Sites’ we can gain some interesting insights into the state of search from the consumer’s perspective:

• In February, 94% of online Canadians interacted with Google and Microsoft sites, while 67% visited Yahoo! sites. Canadians are searching online.

• Ebay, Amazon, and Yellow Pages all received visits from 33% of the online population or more. 33% of online Canadians visited electronics goods websites, 27% downloaded e-cards, 20% visited a gift/flower web sites. Canadians are looking to buy and are buying online.

PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that online ad-spend* will grow faster in Canada than anywhere else in the world over the next 5 years for two primary reasons:

1. high broadband penetration

2. lower online market saturation

*[It is important to note that while online ad spend figures traditionally include paid search data, they do not include spend on SEO].

Insights: The data consistently reiterates the massive opportunities within the Canadian online marketplace, and yet businesses in-country remain very slow to consider search engine marketing as a viable opportunity.

*EDIT* NEW DATA:

• Only 8 % of private sector companies in Canada sell goods or services online

• That 8% sold S58billion worth of goods and services online last year – that’s up 25% on 2006

Canada Remains Unconvinced. Why?

My opinion is that it simply boils down to a lack of commercial education. To further explore this point I’ll look briefly at both the US and the UK, and follow with a more targeted look at Canada:

• SEO is booming in the UK (61 million people on an island 3x smaller than Newfoundland, and smaller than the state of Michigan). Why? Competition is enormously fierce. Word of mouth and knowledge spread along with the need to be on the cusp of new technology and marketing, whatever that may mean, is of paramount importance to the success of businesses.

The UK has numerous advertising, marketing, search based, technology and other conferences throughout the year and it’s no big deal to get to one as nothing is more than a days drive away (depending on traffic congestion). It is also relatively cost effective, and not terribly time consuming, to nip over the channel for a day or two to attend the Madrid SMX show, or the Paris SES show, or numerous other European and Asian search marketing conferences.

• The US is the home of the search marketing conference. Between SMX, SES and Pubcon there are 12+ dedicated search marketing conferences alone in the US, to say nothing of the other marketing conferences that mention SEM regularly in their session lineups.

People know people, people meet people, the conferences are spread all around the US and the search community is growing constantly. Conference attendance and knowledge are increasing as both businesses and service agencies learn more from the experts. As a result these businesses and agencies (on behalf of their clients) are consistently and increasingly implementing search strategies effectively. They are seeing increases in exposure, conversion rates and ROI. The cycle continues to gain momentum, and search marketing continues to grow in stature and acceptance as a viable opportunity for channeling hard earned advertising dollars.

We’ve looked at the UK and the US; let’s take a peek at Canada:

• It is nearly 4 million square miles in size (42x the size of the UK and 460,000 square miles larger than the US).
• It has the equivalent of 10% of the population of the US, and 20% of the population of the UK.
• It has in the past had only one major search conference per annum – SES Toronto.

How Does This Data Affect Canadian Businesses?

If they are even aware of search marketing (which is less likely than either of the other two countries due to immense dilution over space and time) they have traditionally had only one significant educational seminar in one city in a massive country each year.

There does not appear to be any national push in the agency or marketing world towards gaining knowledge about SEM. As such, businesses have not yet felt the need to explore the field more thoroughly on their own behalf. It is a fact that many of the larger more competitive and thus benchmarking businesses are tied to agencies. While numerous agencies offer SEM services, they do not push them to the fore as the fires of interest on the client side have not yet been lit.

What Does It All Mean For Canadian SEM (SEO and Paid Search) Agencies and Providers?

Educate your clients. Join SEMPO and other search based driving forces to understand the state of the search marketing interest in Canada. Find out about all applicable search marketing conferences and go. Take your clients, blog about your attendance and learning’s, push SEM into to the forefront of online marketing

What is the Forecast for SEM in Canada?

It will gain momentum, and it is important that Canadian search providers start pushing their services before US based businesses take over the market landscape. There is no longer a financial disadvantage to outsourcing to the US, and US search agencies are already taking up market share.

I’ll end with a reference to an article by Gord Hotchkiss in June of last year entitled ‘Canada, It’s Time To Clue Into Search!’. This is not a new issue, it remains an issue, and the opportunity will be exploited. I can only hope that it will be Canadian businesses and providers who take up the slack and benefit.

The new ‘improved’ SEM Canada Conference in ‘09 will hopefully go a long way to addressing this issue in-country.

Other articles in the Search Marketing Standard 2008 Summer Print Issue include:

• Industry Analysis Articles including; ‘Convergence of Search and the Rise of the Marketing Technologist’
• SEO Articles including; ‘Top Secret: Tactics for Online Competitor Analysis’
• PPC Articles including; ‘Buying Brand: Why Trademarks Matter’
• Interview: ‘Marketing on Facebook – and Interview with Rodney Rumford’
• International: ‘Global Search: Rich Opportunity or Risky Proposition’
• Jobs, Usability issues and more!
• Find out more and subscribe!

My favorite is Boucheron, so I Googled it – see the results:

So they have the first organic, and I am going to assume their major market is France, but come on people – they have a great scent (it’s not cheap either) but the entire snippet is in French?

I would think (just thinkin’ here) that most French speakers speak English, and perhaps there is a rather large market that may be interested in purchasing or knowing more about Boucheron if it was in… say… English, if they don’t speak French?

Or maybe I’m lacking a language, and I speak three – unfortunately French is not one of them. I mean I can hold a vague conversation in French, but nothing specific. French is a bit like Afrikaans, dead in most part, but beautiful. No, I’m not being a segregationist, just s realist in terms of ONLINE LANGUAGE. I speak Afrikaans, I sure as hell would be surprised if I was expected to buy a product from South Africa that had a Google snippet IN Afrikaans… If you can’t make sense of this, please stop reading.

This illustration simply harps back to my personal adage regarding your snippet:

Make it
• easy to find,
• easy to understand,
• English in most countries,
• subtly motivational,
• include the primary URL,
• include offers and contact details if you are not selling online yourself

The other issue I would like to touch upon is that if you are an affiliate of a great brand and actually selling it off your site, use your brain…

Let’s say your affiliate site, call it www.mysite.com, is struggling with sales, let’s say your affiliate content is very close to your core sell. Simple:

• Buy a new URL, call it; www.mysite-shop.com
• Send purchasers from your ‘shop’ www.mysite.com site to the www.mysite-shop.com, and nofollow all links.
• This www.mysite-shop.com leads to the affiliate owner site.
• Apply nofollows to the prime affiliate site.

This all assuming you have great quality content on your product pages in the first place – I’m all about quality search results… I’m sayin’

Trends From an Investors Perspective

• Microsoft bid for Yahoo!, then withdrew the offer and Yahoo!’s shares dropped nearly 20%
• Google and Yahoo! are still skirting around a search advertising partnership
• Ask withdrew from main stream search to focus on women searchers
• Google’s search share has increased slightly
• Yahoo! search share has remained stagnant in aggregate
• Microsoft’s share has fallen

What to do from an Investors Perspective

Yahoo! (Nasdaq) is not dead by a long shot. While the 2 year trend has been a decline, there is much positive speculation about the future of company and thus the stock.

Google’s share price saw a sharp decline in the first quarter (roughly 45%), but has increased approximately 43% on March values in the last 6-7 weeks. Google’s not going anywhere, and I’m not convinced the share price will experience a similar drop in the near future.

Microsoft’s general trend over the last 2 years has been strongly positive. The share value decrease from February to May 5th can be almost entirely attributed to the Yahoo! bid. Prior to that, many technology shares were hit by poor estimates, the oil price and general instability in the market – all of which fuelled concerns of a general recession.

Off on a mini-tangent, it may be worth looking a little more closely at Apple shares…

[DISCLAIMER – I am not suggesting that anyone who reads this blog pay the slightest bit of notice to my investor ramblings. I have no idea what is going to happen with any of these shares. I thought it might be nice for our readers to see what’s been going on in summary in one place all nice and easy like . If you choose to buy or sell any of the shares I have mentioned, please do so at your own risk. Neither I, nor this blog, take any responsibility for your actions - or the results and consequences of those actions in any way - should you choose to buy or sell any of the shares discussed above.]

Trends From a Marketers Perspective

If we look at trends from the perspective of consumer behavior we see:

• Continued growth in the use of image and video search
• An astronomical increase in the influence of social media marketing in the form of consumer feedback and reviews
• Impact on the traditional F-shaped heat maps generated by eye-tracking studies due to Google’s Universal search results as ‘eyes’ are drawn to image and video search results
• Increased local awareness and power due to the inclusion of the OneBox ten-pack
• Increased SERP interaction due to the roll-out of more Sitelinks and ‘Search Within a Site’ search box features

User interaction is facilitated by these features and the probability is that the trend in click-throughs will skew towards increased searcher interaction with more ‘visible’, usable, graphic listings – assuming the relevancy factor is retained.

If we look at paid search changes in Google alone we see that:

• Google has also recently revised its display URL protocol in AdWords, and
• Google has been experimenting with the inclusion of video results in the paid search listings.

What to do from a Marketer’s Perspective

• Marketers should seriously consider budgeting for continued SEO initiatives, particularly regarding internet market research on consumer search behavior.
• Assigning marketing dollars to image and video production and optimization is imperative as is integrating with relevant social communities.
• Brands need to aggressively begin to empower brand proponents and embrace reputation management (RM) tools. RM has only recently gained the recognition it should have attained years ago.
• With the astronomical growth in both social influence and social media marketing, and the impact of reviews and consumer feedback on online purchase decisions, the need for brand transparency is becoming ever more important.
• Consequently, the need to facilitate consumer feedback and interaction is key to future success in the search and ecommerce space.

Future trends…

If you know – please let me know…

• Laura can be found here and on Twitter.
• Come to the SEMCanada Conference September 2008!

As Canada is on the border of the US, and is affected by the economic status of the US (as is the rest of the world), this post applies. One specific point worth mentioning is that Canada has 66% internet penetration (Nov 2007).

How is this going to affect SEM?

Traditionally, the first thing to be cut in times of recession is marketing budgets. Companies decide to rely on their existing clientele, on word of mouth, and on old-line discounts and sales.

While it does appear as though traditional media will be hit during a recessionary period, the opposite seems to be the case for internet marketing initiatives.

Some data:

• eMarketer is forecasting that the import US advertisers placed on social media throughout 2007 will continue. Their data indicates that the predicted social network spend of more than of $1.5 billion this year (an increase of 162% on last year) will not be solely focused on FaceBook and MySpace ads but on emerging, niche social networks.
• TNS Media Intelligence expects internet share of adspend to surpass that of radio this year. They also predict that internet marketing will gain popularity at the expense of newspapers. The truth of this can be seen in the WSJ’s recent moves.
• Piper Jaffray believes that the proven high ROI of online advertising will make online advertising resilient in the face of an economic downturn. They anticipate a 20% growth in online adspend this year compared to low single figure growth for all US advertising.
• JP Morgan is anticipating a 20% increase in spend in the US geographical online display ad market this year (to nearly $8.6bn).
• NielsenMedia saw a 15% increase in internet ad spend growth over the last three quarters of 2007 while all other ad spend remained stagnant (and decreased by 0.1% YOY).

So what does the data really tell us?

• It tells us that the ROI from online advertising is higher than almost all other media in general.
• It tells us that during the current/coming recession (depending on your view point) that online ad budgets will not be slashed as they were in 2000 when the internet as an advertising medium was still in its infancy.
• It tells us that projections and predictions for online ad spend remain strong even in the event of a downturn.
• It gives us a ‘take-away’ that our hard won ad spend dollars are likely to perform for us regardless of a downturn – not as well as if there were no recession – but better than other media.

What to be aware of

• The data is generic. If you are a purely online business the chances are that if you stick to online advertising you will:
  •  weather the storm better than if you do not advertise
  • do better by advertising online than via other channels.
• You know your target market better than those who provide the generic predictions. If you have not tried online, it’s worth a shot with a reputable firm who knows what they are doing. If you have tried it and yet TV or radio works best for you, don’t be swayed by the promises of higher ROI, unless your online campaign was poorly conceived and managed.

What to consider

• The US government has been cutting the interest rates in an attempt to alleviate and /or minimize the effects of a recession. While they are always worried about consumer confidence, they are also very aware of the fact that businesses bear the brunt of the debt issue. If businesses feel that consumers will not be buying, they will cut their stock orders. The impact of businesses hanging onto their cash cannot be overestimated regarding the countries level of aggregate demand and thus the GDP (gross domestic product/output), and if businesses are short on the shelves, this will impact the consumer confidence index further.
• Economics is not all black and white. It’s also not that convoluted.
• The US has a very mixed economy. 71% of the US has internet access according to InternetWorldStats.
• The Dow Jones is also only down (roughly) 500 points on January this year (4%), but is actually up just over a hundred points or so on figures for early March 2007.

What to do

My recommendation is to take the advertising dollars you have, and invest at least one quarter of them in targeted search marketing campaigns.

Who to contact
I’m only including three, and in alphabetical order.

• Epiar.com
• Mediaboost.com
• Rangeonlinemedia.com

Feel free to add your company in the comments with blurb if you like!

Contact the author on [ laura at semcanada . org ]