Last night, I was online shopping for a new beach bag and bikinis for my upcoming trip to the Outer Banks. I typically prefer to shop in brick and mortar stores, because I enjoy the shopping experience – touching and feeling what I’m buying. However, I had a busy work week and hadn’t had a chance to get to the mall.

For the bag, I started with my default luggage site – eBags. I don’t say this about many ecommerce sites, but I love this site. It is user-friendly and exemplifies a near-perfect ecommerce experience. I quickly found the perfect bag and moved on to swimsuits. I started at beachbliss.com, a site InStyle magazine recommended. Due to poor navigability, I gave up after two clicks and went to my old standby – Victoria’s Secret - where I ordered a cute suit that I’ll be sporting next week.

What differentiates eBags and Victoria’s Secret from Beach Bliss and what defines a good ecommerce site? Quite a few things:

Searchability – When shopping online, I need to be able to easily find what I’m looking for. I don’t have the time or the patience to click through multiple pages, requiring reloading. In an offline store, I can scan over an area within seconds to see if they have what I’m looking for. I need that same efficiency with my online experience.

eBags has great navigation, search, and filtering. Users can shop by brand or type of bag. The categories/types of bags are spot on and are very descriptive — not just “messengers,” but “men’s” or “women’s.” To make searches even more precise, users can easily filter down to cost, color, material, and top rated.

On the flip side, Beach Bliss has virtually no filtering or searchability. When I clicked on Swimsuits – Bikinis on the home page, I was taken to a page with 30+ brand subcategories. Users have to go to each brand to see what kind of bikinis that particular brand offers. I don’t search by brand unless I’m looking for something specific. When browsing, the last thing I want to do is page through brand after brand. A “View All” option would have been nice, but no luck.

Product Info and Photos – Since my preference is to touch and feel something before buying it, I want to be able to virtually touch and feel it online. eBags does an excellent job of communicating a bag’s size, scale and look via multiple photo angles and techniques. They put items (running shoes, water bottle, ipod) into the bags, as well as take a shot with the bag on a mannequin.

Free Shipping and Returns – All three sites offered free shipping if you spend over a certain amount. However, eBags was the only one who offered free returns as well. This makes ordering from them virtually risk free. Victoria’s Secret also makes returns easier – providing a pre-addressed label, but users are charged $5.95 for returns. Free returns from VS would be a big plus, since swimsuit cuts and sizing vary so widely.

Customer Ratings – I love to know what other people who bought the bag thought of it. Consumers have less incentive to lie/mislead – unlike product manufacturers. So, I weigh their objective opinions much more heavily. I have often changed my product selections based on customer ratings…and have never been disappointed. ebags has customer ratings, plus a “Best of the Best” category that highlights bags customers rated highest.

Upsells/You May Also Like/Recommendations – Just like when I’m at the grocery store and I throw in a pack of gum and a magazine while in line waiting, I will usually fall for an impulse buy if presented with a targeted, easy offer. When buying a swimsuit, the odds are good that I’ll add flip flops or a cover up, especially when the site features them on a page I’m already on and makes it easy to add them to my cart.

Victoria’s Secret has definitely learned that this tactic works…Beach Bliss has not. BB is losing out on many upsell opportunities. Offering a glimpse at similar items is also a good strategy – gets users to browse more product and thus, more likely to buy something.

Nan wrote a few weeks back about Brand Whores and Brand Evangelists. I am definitely the latter, as you can see by my longer-than-recommended blog post (ignoring our own Blog Tips). But as I’ve demonstrated, when you have a great product/experience, users will become your biggest cheerleaders, just because they want to share a good things with others. No incentive necessary, although if offered, I’d be happy to accept commissions from eBags.

Do you have any favorite online shopping sites?

Remember when name brand goods were never blatantly shown in movies or on TV? Soda cans simply said “Cola” and looked generic. Those days are long gone.

Over the last twenty years, a major shift in product placement has occurred. Advertisers and media realized how valuable subtle placement and outright endorsements could be. Slowly, brands made their way into movies, TV, and even video games.

Brands pay directly for product placement or they can pay “in kind” where companies hand over free goods/services in exchange for promotion. The producers of Cast Away, basically a glorified FedEx commercial, claim FedEx did not pay directly for inclusion.

Although product placement started subtly, movie-makers are now very comfortable with a “hit-them-over-the-head” approach, as was seen in You’ve Got Mail (AOL) and The Italian Job (MINI Coopers).

TV had still shied away from the shameless plug – the king of all product placements – until recently when TV powerhouse American Idol broke that mold. Simon, Paula and Randy sip from Coke cups and artists (yes, I’m talking to you George Michael) agree to sellout performances to hawk their latest CDs. But what I love about American Idol, is that they are completely open and unapologetic with their sponsorships.

I’ve worked with companies who question the ROI of product placement. I assure them, it works. Here is one startling example:

I was driving my five year old daughter to school the other day and we were playing “I Spy” to pass the time. Typically, we play with school busses, or the cars we own (Sequoia, Prius). This time, my girl throws out “I Spy an American Idol Car.” I looked around quizzically not knowing what she meant. Right in front of us was a Ford truck. She had seen the Ford logo and associated that with the Ford product placements she had seen on American Idol.

Now, all Fords are American Idol cars. Ford has planted their brand into the mind of a five year old and associated themselves with a TV show our family loves and watches together. That is powerful and invalauble. So yes, it does work. Now the challenge for Ford is to continue to reinforce that positive brand associaton for the next ten years until my daughter starts driving and purchasing cars.

Yesterday, Google announced a new media research and planning tool called Google Ad Planner. It is targeted to media planners and is intended to allow them to easily create media plans based on the demographics of their target audience or sites that the media planner knows their target audience frequents. The tool will then allow the media planner to dig deeper into the details of each site that matches their criteria to find the optimal mix of sites for the particular buy.

The sites that are included in the database include both those that are in the Google content network as well as other sites from across the Web.

If the new tool is adopted by media planners, Google stands to really benefit. I don’t have the statistics, but I would be willing to guess that there isn’t significant demand for the non-text based creative inventory in the Google content network. If Google Ad Planner is adopted by media planners the inventory is likely to be in higher demand which in turn will drive up the costs for the inventory.

It can also potentially benefit advertisers since it will allow media planners to find many smaller sites that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about. This should allow for media buys to have a greater reach at a potentially lower cost since, at least initially, there won’t be the demand for the impressions on the smaller niche sites that are likely included in the Google Ad Planner database.

It will be interesting to see if media planners are willing to give Google Ad Planner a shot. I would say it’s at least worth testing to see how it compares to the current methods that media planners are using. As long as the buys are being properly tracked and the visitor behavior is being analyzed using the sites web analytics package, then it should be fairly easy to determine if the new tool is cost effective.

For the launch Google has made Ad Planner invitation only so if you’re interested make sure to apply.

How many times have you received a note from the ‘widow’ of a deposed Nigerian General, or an email informing you that your email address was selected to win the UK lottery for 62 million Euros?

Obviously, they’re scam emails. Yet there must be people who fall for them or they wouldn’t keep sending them out.

An even more insidious crowd are the Phishers. These are sites that replicate the interface of your banking website, or your credit card site in order to get you to enter your account information, which they can then use to empty your accounts.

These are more difficult to detect, simply because they look like they are legit. In most cases, the only giveaway is the URL associated with the email / link.

For example, yesterday I received an email allegedly from Yahoo, informing me that my PPC account was out of funds. Clicking on the link brought me to what looked like the login page for Yahoo, yet it was the wrong URL, and my browser was kind enough to inform me that I was on a Phishing site.

Another email I received yesterday was regarding my PayPal account being suspended (I used to love getting these when I didn’t have a PayPal account). Looking at the URL sent with the message, I somehow doubt that Papal.com is legitimate, although I do have to say that it most likely isn’t anything to do with the Pontiff.

I will admit though that I sometimes do have a false positive. I received an email from a local car dealer which I immediately discounted, as the domain of the email address didn’t match their website. However, after I did a little research I found out that this was the domain of the email vendor that they were using. I do have to wonder though, how many potential customers they are losing because of this. Do they realize that people are more aware of phishing scams these days? If they’d have only used their own domain in the from field they may have seen a larger open rate.

What about you? When you’re sending emails are you making sure that the ‘from’ is from your domain? If not, are you missing out on potential customers because they think that your email may be a scam? If you’re using a service that doesn’t use your domain, try doing a campaign with your domain and compare the open rates.  If you see a difference (which you should), then you’ll know what you’re missing out on – and can make the decision to switch vendors / packages.

Last week I wrote about how to track word of mouth traffic. Once you benchmark the data for your word of mouth traffic, you can begin to improve on it, to increase the traffic from word of mouth.

1 – Make it easy to spread the word
On every email you send, landing page you create or any other promotion add a ‘Send to Friend’ link. Make sure you test the link to make sure that it does not break and it is easy to use. Also make sure that it is obvious that the user was successful. There is nothing worse than ruining someone’s experience with your brand by lack of testing or confusing functionality.

2 – Make it worthwhile to spread the word
Reward your loyal customers and visitors. It is likely that a small percent of your customers will become true brand evangelists. These are your BEST and most important customers and you need to keep them happy. It is well worth the effort to go out of your way to make sure that these customers are appreciated and know it.

3 – Use contests to grow word of mouth traffic and email marketing database
This is such a simple and great way to increase the volume of quality, word of mouth traffic, but it is so often ignored. Create an email contest for your opted-in list that explains the contest. In the email, add a form so recepients can forward the email to their friends (e.g. five or ten) by simply entering the email address and first name into the form. It will involve some simple database programming, and some validation that the email addresses received are valid and qualified. But it is a simple way to encourage your loyal customers to spread the word, and grow your email marketing database at the same time.

There is a fourth way to encourage word of mouth traffic. Be remarkable. OK – so that is not easy, not by any means. But it is great when companies really go the extra mile to be remarkable.

My parents came into town last week.  So, the weekend before was spent frantically cleaning the house from top to bottom. Of course, this led to me finding many things forgotten or thought lost, and other items began to accumulate with like objects. Towards the end of the cleanup, I was left with the realization that I had a heck of lot of books that I had not yet read.

Ok, not all of those above are marketing books, but that’s because I have been knocking those out recently. The other week, I finished Charlene Li‘s Groundswell (here’s a review of Groundswell), followed by the excellent Join the Conversation by Joe Jaffe (which I highly recommend), and I’m currently working my way through a couple of others.

I love to read, but my problem is finding the time to do so.  In days past, I had a job where I’d take the metro in to work every day, that gave me a good 40 minutes each way to get into a book.  These days I can’t do that, as people tend to not take so kindly to a person reading a novel while negotiating the traffic on route 66…

I will eventually make my way through these books (well, maybe not the one at the bottom there, but don’t tell my mum, that was a gift from her).  But, am I missing out on any great books on social marketing, search marketing, reputation management (and if you read this, I’ve already gone through your book Andy), analytics, or marketing in general? If you’ve read something that you think I should, leave me a comment below, or drop me an IM (x3259626 on AIM), and let me know.

After growing weary of story after story of girl fights, sexual deviants, and copyright infringement on YouTube; it was nice to read a positive story covering a true Internet fairytale.

A few years ago, Arnel Pineda was just a singer in a cover band in the Philippines. Now, he is the new lead singer of Journey (yes, that Journey). Pineda was discovered on YouTube by the band’s guitarist Neal Schon. After seeing the video of Pineda, Schon picked up the phone, invited Pineda to audition, and the rest is history. The story reminded me of one of my favorite movies – Rock Star starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston.

Take a listen for yourself. I’m not sure I could discern Pineda’s Separate Ways from Steve Perry’s original. Journey fans rejoice.

It’s been a full year now since we started our blog. During the past year, we have hopefully provided you all with some great insights into the digital marketing world that we here at Serengeti Communications spend so much of our time in.

For this post, I’ll share some of the stats and trends from our first year. Visits and Unique Visitors have fluctuated some, but they both have a nice upward trend.

1. 10 Public Speaking Tips
2. 8 Tips for Blogging Inspiration
3. Google Grants Enforces Spending Cap Policy
4. SES Chicago 07 – Dealing With Difficult Clients
5. Google Grants Application Process for Nonprofits
6. Cutting Edge Linking Tactics – SMX London
7. Is it Teal or Turquoise? Avoiding Design Pitfalls
8. SES London 2008 Interview – Piers Stobbs
9. Sprint, Social Networks and a Bad Reputation
10. Social Media Marketing Campaign Process

The top 5 sources of traffic during our first year were:

1. Stumbleupon.com
2. Google
3. Direct/No Referrer
4. Searchengineland.com
5. Yahoo

If you break the top posts down by source it reveals how most of the top posts made it into the top 10. The reason goes back to Simon, our social media expert, and what posts get stumbled. The top 10 posts that stumbleupon.com drove traffic to were:

1. 10 Public Speaking Tips
2. 8 Tips for Blogging Inspiration
3. Google Grants Enforces Spending Cap Policy
4. Is it Teal or Turquoise? Avoiding Design Pitfalls
5. Sprint, Social Networks and a Bad Reputation
6. SES Chicago 07 – Dealing with Difficult Clients
7. Facebook can Destroy Your Future
8. SES London 2008 Interview – Piers Stobbs
9. Cutting Edge Linking Tactics
10. 20 Steps to Driving Nonprofits into Web 2.0

Seven of the top 10 posts for the year were also part of the top 10 posts from stumbleupon.com.

Looking at the top 10 posts that Google referred visitors to reveals what posts ranked well organically. These varied considerably from the top 10 overall posts and the top 10 from stumbleupon.com. There were:

1. How to Measure Brand Awareness
2. Measuring Conversions
3. Social Media Marketing Campaign Process
4. Steps to Create a Successful Campiagn
5. Integrating Marketing Efforts for Your Nonprofit Social Media Plan
6. Google Grants Application Process for Nonprofits
7. 6 PR Disasters from Late 2006 to the Present
8. Googles New Youtube Program for Nonprofits
9. PayPal Pushes Nonprofit Program
10. SES Chicago 07 – Dealing with Difficult Clients

Comparing the top posts from various sources gives us great insights into what resonates with our audience and how best to expand our reach. The coming year should continue to see an upward trend for our key metrics as we are able to expand our reach with posts that hopefully, our readers enjoy.

As we grow as a company, so to will our list of blog contributors who will provide their own perspective on our industry The coming year should be filled with new insights and helpful tips to help guide you through the vast digital landscape. So, thanks for reading our blog and we look forward to what lies ahead in the coming year.

Warning:  This post is a bit of a rant.

My daughter came across the term “Brand Slut” in The Little Hiptionary (a Bangin’ Pocket Reference for Kewl Peeps Everywhere) and remarked “Oh Mom, this is so you.”

Now, I’ve actually heard that term (being in marketing).  It refers to someone who displays loyalty to no single brand. I never really thought of myself as a Brand Slut but as I pondered this, I realized that my daughter was right.

I love handbags, but I’ve got equal numbers of Coach, Kate Spade and Dooney and Burke in my closet.  I will try any and every new fitness product.  (In fact, I have an entire closet dedicated to fitness wear, shoes, bike tools, various shapes and sizes of fuel belts, water bottles, gel containers, wetsuits, swim caps, etc. I peeked into the closet as I thought about this: No brand consistency; none whatsoever.)  I’m not even loyal to a particular tri bike (very unusual among triathletes) or a specific brand of running shoes. 

I tried and tried to think of a brand I’ve been loyal to.  There are brands I like (Starbucks coffee for example), but none that I would go too far out of my way for (if it is raining, I’m hitting the Mcdonalds drive-through). 

The only brand I can remember being an evangelist for was an infant formula that stopped my colicky baby from crying (full disclosure: one of our clients sells a similar product, although not the one that I used).  I actually baked cookies and Fed Ex’d them to the CEO.

Perhaps, being in marketing for so long has made me marketing-immune.  And yet, who ISN’T marketing-weary these days? Consumers are saying “NO MAS” en masse these days – something that marketers still don’t seem to be grasping.  In fact, there is ample evidence that marketers are still living (for the most part) on Planet Fantasy when it comes to their understanding of consumers.  Take this lead-in to a recent Marketing Prof’s article:

“Just as sports teams have fans, brands have evangelists. And just as each fan feels a sense of ownership in the team, a brand evangelist has that same sense of ownership in the brand. That sense of ownership gives brand evangelists a powerful incentive to see the brand succeed.”

Reality check: Consumers don’t care so much about the *success* of your brand.  Even if they love your brand enough to create a YouTube video or drive around the country to visit every single store you own or bake cookies for the CEO, they do not care about — and, in fact, are blissfully unaware of — how much product you are selling (unless of course the brand is failing so miserably that it goes away, which would be a bad thing for someone who likes the product). 

When I told my friends about the infant formula I loved, I didn’t do it because I wanted the formula company to succeed.  I did it to help my friends, who were also young mothers.  We had a pact to share information and resources as a way of supporting EACH OTHER – not a particular brand. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that there is no such thing as a brand evangelist – far from it. Even Brand Sluts like me will likely find a brand or two to be totally loyal to (and evangelize for) at least once in their lifetimes.

But marketers will never find the holy grail of brand evangelism (much less “create” evangelists) if they continue to drink their own Kool Aid about what drives consumers (hint: it has nothing to do with YOU and everything to do with THEM).  In fact, if Marketing doesn’t change its ways fundamentally (and by this I mean continuing to talk without listening, continuing to interrupt, annoy and even mislead consumers), I predict we may end up creating more Brand Sluts than Brand Evangelists.

Word-of-mouth traffic can be some of the best, most qualified visitors to your site. But, how do you actually know if you are getting traffic from word-of-mouth? PPC and SEO efforts are easy to track because you can segment out traffic based on the specific referrers or entry pages (PPC). You have to be a bit creative to find the word-of-mouth traffic.

1. Check out your direct traffic (no referrer). These visitors either knew your URL and typed it directly into the browser (or they had your site bookmarked). As your brand becomes part of more and more conversations, the number of visitors who will know your URL will increase.

2. Check out your branded keyword traffic. This is the same concept as the direct traffic.  Only for those visitors who cannot remember your URL, the most likely place they’ll look for you is on one of the top search engines. Word-of-mouth conversations about your brand will result in more traffic from the search engines by visitors searching on terms related to your brand.

3. Check out the blogs – free tools (http://blogsearch.google.com). You can enter specific dates to see if the number of postings is increasing month to month. You can set up a Google Alert to periodically receive this information.

4. Check out the blogs and other conversations – paid tools (www.trackur.com). As many companies understand just how crucial it is to know what people are saying about their brand, tools like Trackur are becoming very popular. You can proactively see the conversations about your brand (and your competition) just by logging in.

5. Ask your customers. This is perhaps the most obvious and the most overlooked way to find out if people are talking about you. Talk to your customers. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you customers have to say about your brand. Encouraging and rewarding feedback is a great way to grow loyal customers who will be happy to say positive things about your brand to their friends.