Google's tilt towards the semantic indexing of Web pages and establishing relevance through this brilliant statistical method may have been the influence of Applied Semantics, the company known Boston Pubcon, the online marketing conference, got off to a great start today.
It is held twice a year to discuss latest online marketing strategies and trends.
It is divided over multiple sessions in four tracks. These tracks cover almost the entire gamut of online marketing arena from Search Engine Marketing to Affiliate Marketing.
( www.pubcon.com)
The conference was kicked off with a keynote address from Malcolm Gladwell author of The Tipping Point and Blink.
Malcolm talked about the changes and the carriers of changes that transform societies, industries and nations.
He primarily stressed on three points:
1) It takes a short time to bring about a change. We need to decouple the notion that huge cause is required to produce a huge change. In fact, smallest of events can trigger of large and cataclysmic changes.
2) For anything to reach the tipping point one needs to reframe the original positioning of the thought behind it. In other words it has to be presented to people in a different light. Once you change the application perspective of people it is only then that they view it differently and mass adoption follows.
3) Social power is the instrument of big change (as opposed to financial prowess or political authority). Tipping point is often reached because of a social change and these social changes are carried through people who he calls connectors. Connectors are people who yield social power and are connected to at least 14-15 disparate social groups. They are linked through web of networks and when they act as messengers, the message gets percolated very well.
The relevance of this to online marketing world is that, consumers, to navigate information rich environments bank on relationships. They need counsel and trust. So for online marketing to reach its tipping point, companies will need to act as connectors and bring with them a huge investment in relationships with customers.
Once that is effectively done the penetration and presence of online marketing will be a force whose time would have come.
From all the other sessions in the pubcon one of the most interesting one was about Local Marketing.
Local Marketing within the framework of online marketing is a service which might be reaching its tipping point.
This service is primarily meant for businesses which have a bricks and mortar outlet and want to promote their services in their local area. Web by its definition is a medium which takes you global. So to retain focus on delivering local advertising is a challenge which marketers have to face.
Some of the best ways to deliver local advertising are:
Search Engines
Google Local (google maps, Google earth and Google local)
Yahoo Local
Classified ads/Yellow pages
Craig list
Super pages
Switchboard
DEX
Another thing that works very well for local advertising is the localized keywords on regular PPC campaigns. In fact the local keywords are typically 200% more expensive than global keywords. Almost 43% of total searches (implied local access as well) on search engines are local searches. The CTR (click through rate) on these searches are also far higher (almost in the range of 20-25%).
In fact Number one local search on search engines is for restaurants though ironically it does not work very well.
The local searches work brings great ROI for some categories of businesses and not so great result for some others. Some of the categories it works well are: services providers, Golf courses, B2B service providers.
Some of the categories it does not work well are: restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations.
Local marketing is slated to be a 2.44bn USD industry by 2008 comprising almost 14% of online spends.
Watch out then, as this space is heating up and nearing its tipping point……… |
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