How Things Change

 Emma

 

Jack

I stumbled across this blog today and amazed at how much my life has and hasn't changed since I started it nearly ten years ago.

My work is still in automotive advertising - yet, I'm now in sales.  I wish I would have made this change sooner.  I can have an impact on many clients' businesses instead of just one.

On a personal note, I'm still shocked I'm back in Michigan.  The biggest surprise of all is I now have two dogs.  Emma is a Miniature Labradoodle and Jack is a Cockapoo. 

Just a quick update.  Maybe someday I'll get back into blogging.

Search Strategies That Eventually Fail

One of the New York Times' most e-mailed articles today is The Dirty Little Secrets of Search. JC Penney (JCP) had been showing up for several search results, due to thousands of back links to its site.

Of course, JCP denies knowledge of any black-hat search engine optimization techniques. What's amazing to me is how long they got away with this before Google was aware of it. The good news is Google adjusted the organic results for them rather quickly.

This begs the question - is black hat SEO worth it? It seems like it worked for JCP for the last holiday season. Yet, we don't know the bounce rates from their site. They may have generated traffic, but they may not have converted to leads.

I've seen many campaigns that drive traffic to a site, but fail to convert to sales and/or leads.

Google's goal is relevance. Relevance is what consumers are looking for.

At the end of the day, an increase in unique visitors to a site is nice, but more sales and/or leads is always better.

Apps versus Ads on Your iPad

Advertising Age posted interesting results on iPad user survey regarding advertising. A significant majority (86%) said they'd watch ads to receive free content like TV shows and magazines.

Users actually prefer to watch the advertising instead of downloading app's. I would have to agree. We're used to seeing ads on TV and in magazines. What benefit would an application have to the experience?

I find it's actually easier to view some sites on the web browser (Safari) than the publication's application. The Chicago Tribune is a perfect example. The New York Times app is nice for an abbreviated read of headlines and most e-mailed articles.

It's easy to get caught up in the hype about app's, but basic marketing strategy still applies. What's in it for the customer?

That is what separates the experienced marketers from the tech "wanna-be" marketers. Technology continues to change the face of marketing, but you cannot forget about strategy.

(As a note to last week's post, AdWeek reports that half of Super Bowl watchers watch for the ads. I'm not alone!)

The Buzz on Super Bowl Ads Begins

I thought most of the Super Bowl buzz around me was because I live in Milwaukee and am working in Illinois. Other than the cold weather, most of the conversation has been about that team in Green Bay versus the team in Chicago. I think they may be playing this afternoon...

This morning, I'm reading my normal news sites and notice many articles about Super Bowl advertising. Since I'm from Detroit (where no one I know has Lions' parties), this is my favorite part of the season.

AdAge.com is grouping Super Bowl spots by categories and the current batch features Coca-Cola ads. (The first grouping was monkey spots.) My vote? Hands-down, it's the Mean Joe Green spot from 1980. It's probably one of the best TV spots ever. Beyond just one of the best Super Bowl TV spots.

Looking ahead, CNN posted a link to the CNN Money "sneak peak" of Super Bowl ads. So far, nothing seems that exciting. But we'll see in a couple weeks.

The more immediate concern is who will be playing from the NFC. Either way, I'll be dealing with the happy and the unhappy fans from today's game. And I'll be looking forward to the ads.

Applying Skills to A New Industry

A friend of mine is getting into dog breeding and asked me to set up her website this week. As you know, my background is automotive advertising. Not German Shepherd advertising. But, hey, the same skills apply. Don't they?

Actually, they do. And I'm having fun learning about a new industry. The first obstacle was spelling Shepherd correctly. After checking the Google keyword tool, "german shepard" is searched a lot. And so is "german sheperd." Too bad neither of those is accurate.

As usually, the third time was the charm and I was able to secure Michigan German Shepherd dot com for her.

I just set up the site and am working on adding more pages. I should have an SEM campaign in place shortly.

My friend has promised to blog weekly updates and I'm excited about adding testimonials once her (the dog's) first litter is sold. Then we'll work on a Facebook page.

Of course, I'll continue to work on SEO with directory listings and backlinks. This is going to be a fun project in a new industry.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Actually, I'm not old, but I couldn't resist the pun.

I'm Back to Blogging

If you were reading this blog in '09, you may have wondered why my posts stopped in late November.

I started a full time job shortly after that with a 1 hour and 35 minute one-way commute. I'm still at this job, but my commute has now been minimized (it's actually less than two minutes now).

So, I'm back to my weekly blog posts here. I didn't give up blogging this last year, as I have been the author of the blog for my company. There, I post about four times/week. Those posts, however, are all auto and Gary Lang Auto Group related.

This blog is about advertising.

This year has seen a lot of change in the advertising world:

• Facebook surpassed Google for time spent online.
• Web TV trends growing and cable subscriptions declining.
• Time spent watching TV growing, with cable programming growing (contradicting the statement above).
• Internet usage matching TV viewership time.
• iPad launch and growth of tablet computers.
• Groupon's growth.
  
• And more.

I have much to blog about and am looking forward to posting weekly. I hope you are, too.

Evolution in the Ad World

We certainly live in exciting times. With the downward spiral of newspapers comes opportunity online. Per the Financial Times, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is in discussions with Microsoft to delist their news sites from Google. Microsoft owns rival search engine Bing.

This could change the landscape for the way newspapers monetize their sites. If the search engines pay them to index their content, this could breath new life into a dying media.

Consumers still want news, this is an interesting way to solve the funding problem. What's even more intriguing is the giants on one side lining up against Google.

As Google downplays the importance of generating revenue with news content, it's obvious they still need to be the primary search tool overall to continue to dominate in the pay-per-click arena.

The lesson is the ad world continues to turn... and evolve. How fun!