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My 2 featured articles for the week ending July 21, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Jul. 17, 2006

1204 - July 20, 2006 - 10.58 AM EST

Finding good, targeted prospects

Overall, one of the biggest benefits of direct marketing is qualified and targeted B2B sales lead generation. Salespeople in the B2B segment of the economy need many prospective leads in order to help them increase sales and to boost productivity.

Tried-and-tested techniques of efficient targeting, media selection, offer development, response management and campaign analysis can help them immensely, if done correctly.

As a whole, websites essentially constitute a passive medium. Most B2B sites don't offer to much interactivity. A company might be successful using search engine marketing to motivate clickthroughs, but they've accomplished nothing more than awareness building.

Studies have shown that as little as two percent of B2B site visitors ever become real prospects. The challenge of the typical Internet marketer is to find a way to better motivate visitors in leaving behind their contact information so that effective communication can take place.

The standard technique has been to make an offer — like a downloadable white paper or case study — in exchange for registration data.

But now, a new way to uncover the anonymous nature of B2B website visits has emerged: matching data to the visitor's company domain name. Plexis Healthcare Systems, a provider of insurance claim management software, is using a service called VisitorTrack for this purpose.

Here's how it works: When someone stops at Plexis' site, VisitorTrack grabs information from the visitor's browser and identifies the visitor's company and the keywords the person was using in his/her search.

Press Releases

This is matched against other data about the firm, such as other visitors to the site from the same company, or offline data such as company address, industry and individual contacts.

A report is generated and delivered back to Plexis for follow-up. From Plexis' point of view, knowing that people from a certain firm have been trolling around its site is valuable information. A sales call to that firm could be very productive.

According to Plexis marketing manager J.T. Gillett, the service has been a hit. “Our target for VisitorTrack is 10 to 15 leads per month, as determined by the number of visits, the visitors' line of business, as well as our ability to provide services for that business.

VisitorTrack consistently generates 15 to 20 leads per month and opens many doors for our sales team. For us, one sale can account for between $150,000 and $2 million in revenue.”

Everyone is aware of the power and popularity of keyword bidding. One of the most interesting new twists in search engine marketing is the move to specialized search engines that concentrate on certain industry verticals, such as IT, retail or industrial.

Posted on Businessblog™

1203 - July 20, 2006 - 7.33 AM EST

Corporate blogs increase media attention

Overall, most organizations say that corporate blogs help increase media attention and provide a broader exposure of their products and services.

Cymfony, a market analytics company and public relations firm Porter Novelli yesterday announced several findings from a recent study. The report helped to identify the best practices in corporate blogging.

Conducted during the spring by Russell Research, the study investigated various activities and overall interest levels across a wide section of corporate blogs.

The Cymfony report helps to better understand the resources, processes, personnel and management that corporations devote to their blog strategy, their monitoring programs and the results benefited from those programs.

Andrew Bernstein, CEO of Cymfony commented, "Early experiences with blogs show promising results and emerging implementation practices to efficiently manage the entire blog process. These blog pioneers show the importance of moving from experimental practices to a real discipline in the corporation."

Posted on Businessblog™

Paid Inclusion

1202 - July 19, 2006 - 3.25 PM EST

Disappointing 2nd quarter results at Yahoo

For the results of its second quarter, Yahoo did meet analysts' expectations with a net profit of $164 million, but the company said it postponed the introduction of a new Internet advertising idea, reducing hopes for substantially faster earnings growth later in 2006.

On the Nasdaq stock exchange, shares of Yahoo dropped almost 14 percent on yesterday's news, released just after markets closed.

Yahoo is currently the owner of the world's most trafficked Web site and it said it earned $164.3 million, or 11 cents a share in the three months ended June 30.

This represents a 78 percent decrease from the second quarter of last year, when the company earned $754.7 million, or 51 cents per share.

The subtantially reduced numbers are deceiving since Yahoo made a $552 million profit in the second quarter of 2005 by selling its remaining stake in one of its biggest rivals, online search leader Google Inc.

New accounting rules also required Yahoo to deduct the cost of employee stock options from its earnings, something it didn't have to do in 2005.

Revenue for the 2nd quarter totaled $1.58 billion, a 26 percent increase from $1.25 billion in 2005. After subtracting the commissions Yahoo paid to other Web sites (TAC) in its advertising network, revenue stood at $1.12 billion, up 28 percent from last year.

Yahoo's stock price dropped almost immediately after the second-quarter numbers came out because investors had been hoping the results would better the average estimate of 11 cents per shares among 34 analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

The backlash intensified during an analyst conference call when Yahoo management revealed a much-anticipated change in its formula for displaying ad links will be delayed by at two or three months.

Investors have been eagerly awaiting the new ad platform, hoping the improvements would enable Yahoo to do a better job displaying short ads for Yahoo's audiences to click. The clicks on those ads, which typically appear as text on the top and sides of Web pages, are critical because they trigger commissions for Yahoo and its partners.

Infomercials

Google's financial growth during the past two years has outstripped Yahoo's partly because it had developed a better formula for determining which ads to display alongside search results - an advantage that even Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel conceded.

Posted on Businessblog™

1201 - July 17, 2006 - 7.46 AM EST

Click fraud rate increasing

Today, Click Forensics LLC delivered their latest industry click fraud numbers for the second quarter of this year and the report reveals that click fraud has increased.

Click Forensics' report was based on the search advertising industry’s leading independent click fraud reporting service – the Click Fraud Index (www.ClickFraudIndex.com).

That index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network, which more than 1,300 online advertisers and their ad agencies have joined.

Network members can track their online campaigns for click fraud activity free of charge. Key findings from data reported for Q2 2006 include:

1) The overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.1 percent, slightly higher than the average of 13.7 percent for Q1.

2) The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms was 20.2 percent. High-priced terms are defined as terms that cost over $2.00. These higher-priced search terms often make up the majority of an advertiser’s total spending.

3) The industry average click fraud rate for companies running online advertising campaigns through:

o Tier 1 search providers was 12.8 percent vs. 12.1 percent in Q1

o Tier 2 search providers was 20.3 percent vs. 21.3 percent in Q1

o Tier 3 search providers was 27.1 percent vs. 29.8 percent in Q1

4) The average pay per click term cost for the top key terms across the five biggest search advertising industries, Retail, Financial Services, Health & Fitness, Technology, and Entertainment – for Q2 was $4.51. This compares to $4.75 from Q1.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.