Insights and Observations

QR Codes; My New Favorite Toy!

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:08:00 GMT

When it comes to Digital Marketing, the tools we’ve had to work with have always been interesting, but this one is actually way more fun than most. Limited only by your imagination, it’s essentially free and almost anyone can adopt it!

QR Codes (abbreviation for “Quick Response” Code) is a digital image that virtually anyone with a Smartphone can instantly scan and immediately go to a webpage, download specific information, add you to their contact list…or go to almost any digital destination. It’s kind of a barcode scanner for everyone.

There have got to be hundreds of different applications for QR Codes. Some are obvious, and some are just functional. You don’t have to be clever…but where is the fun in that? Here are 7 ideas literally off the top of my head:

1: Your Website: This is a bit obvious, so think it through… If your prospect is already on your site, you could give them access to a special mobile enabled special offer page that can only be accessed with their phone. Or you could just set it so they could conveniently download your contact information.

2: Business Cards & Flyers: Sure, this is one of the more obvious places to take advantage of the technology, but there are so many ways you can leverage it. You could link it to the home page of your website, or better yet a “Special Offer” page that can only be accessed through the QR Code. Just make sure it is a mobile enabled page because the only way it will be viewed is on the miniature screen of a smart phone. You could simply set it up to download your contact info into your prospects Smartphone (where it belongs in the first place).

3: Social Media Badges: Why not use it as a profile image on your Facebook business page, or as your Skype image, or as a secondary logo on your LinkedIn profile?

4: Tee-Shirts: OK, now we’re getting clever. Think about your entire staff buzzing around your tradeshow booth with oversized QR codes emblazoned across the front of their shirts. That by itself would be an attention getter… but the sight of other event goers continuously pointing their phones in your direction might garner some attention as well. Linking the QR code to an “event only” special would be the perfect payoff.

5: Menus: A restaurant could simply post the QR code outside the entrance so a patron could just scan and go and check what’s on the menu at their convenience. If the menu is on a mobile enabled webpage it could constantly be updated so the next time the patron checks in, the menu is up to date with the latest dishes and prices. To encourage people to check the mobile menu more often, the restaurateur could post mobile only specials and coupons that can only be accessed through the mobile version.

6: Urban Art: OK, graffiti… Could you really resist scanning some hi-tech tagging on the side of a wall or on the door of your office, shop or store?

Tattoos & Tombstones: Admittedly this takes a bit of commitment. Why not tattoo one on your body? Nothing embodies permanent proof of temporary insanity like a tattoo. Speaking of “permanent”, nothing says forever like chiseling your final epitaph on your eternal resting spot. Now that’s commitment!

Here is a little step-by-step guide on setting up a QR Code. Of course in many cases you might need help in setting up a mobile enabled website or specific mobile web page. Your Kreative Webworks team can help you with that.

Digital Marketing Blog

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Affordable Internet Marketing Solutions in Orange County

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Viral Radio Marketing?

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:45:00 GMT

Web Presence Optimization is all about being in more places with more content to get in front of more people. Consumers used to spend a lot of time on a few media choices. Now they spend a little time on a lot of media choices. The trick is to get in front of as many of the “right” people as you can.

Here is a unique approach:

Get yourself an Internet based radio show, interview a bunch of influential people, and have them send the link on to their influential friends.

Sounds like a long shot doesn’t it? Ironically it is becoming a bit of a trend. I was recently interviewed twice by two unrelated interview programs here in Orange County California.

The most recent was just a couple of weeks ago by Will Crist of “Pilgrim on the 405”, a live drive-time radio show catering to commuters on the 405 freeway traveling through Orange County. You can listen to Will’s interview; Pilgrim Talks: Chuck Bankoff and Mark Friedman to get an idea of the format.

The first was just a few days earlier by veteran journalist Tony DeMaio of Big Media USA on the realities and myths of Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I’m working with Tony to take the concept on a test ride myself with my own radio show.

Does the concept work? Well, after I was interviewed I posted this article on blogs, Facebook and Twitter and you’re reading it.

Our Digital Marketing Success Story… Everyone Wins!

Mon, 30 May 2011 16:38:00 GMT

Seriously, everyone made out….
Our client, ABC Glass & Mirror made out because they have literally hundreds of first place rankings on Google and the other major search engines. We even trained them on how to blog and do their own social media promotions.

We made out because our Digital Marketing Success Story was printed in the May issue of Glass Magazine. The notoriety is great for our egos, but the tangible rewards are that we became minor celebrities in the glass industry. That may not sound so interesting (actually it’s not) until you understand that we’ve become the digital marketing firm of choice for several other glass and mirror installation companies around the country.

These other glass companies make out because they are able to leverage our experience with ABC Glass & Mirror for their own success.

It’s not all Glass and Mirrors

The strategies are the same whether it is for glass companies, painters, dermatologists or lawyers. Read the article Moving up the Google rankings in Glass Magazine just to get an idea of the strategies we employed, and how you might be able to apply them for your company.

-Chuck Bankoff

Offline Conversions - Measuring Phone Calls

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:10:00 GMT

One thing that many businesses overlook is how important offline conversions are. When reviewing the success of your SEM program, you should remember that often times people find you on the internet, but choose to visit your place of business or simply call instead of using the internet to make their conversions. Offline conversions can be hard to track, but if you are not tracking them, the ROI data for your online campaign will not be accurate and might cause you to under-budget your SEM program.

Phone Lead Measuring Techniques:

Through our research and analysis, we have found a few effective methods to measure your phone leads that are a direct result of your online marketing. Here are a few of them:

Campaign On / Campaign Off: The way this method works is that you can see how many calls you are getting over a set period of time with your campaign on, and then turn it off and see if you are getting the same amount or fewer calls. You can do this a few times in order to really get an idea of where your phone calls are coming from.

Multiple Phone Numbers: When running a PPC campaign, the landing pages can have a different phone number than the rest of the site. The only down side to this is that occasionally an individual will find you through your PPC campaign, but then revisit the site using your main url. While this method is not 100% accurate, it provides and easy way to determine the general success of your marketing campaigns.

Telephone Tracking Software: This method can be extremely helpful especially when running mixed media campaigns. What it does is assign different unique phone numbers for each search engine. If you wanted to also track beyond media vendor, you can assign coupon codes or extensions at the listing level. You can also utilize pop up software that has the ability to initiate a call or voice chat that would be fielded by a sales person. The only downside to this method is that often people have pop up blockers enabled.

Dynamic Reverse Proxy: My personal preference is an intelligent system that that can differentiate the source of the visitor to the site. Depending on which source, the visitor will see a different phone number. Your phone would ring just as it normally does, but all the calls will be tracked, the phone number of the caller, and the length of time the call lasted will be recorded. Not only that, the actual voice conversation with your sales rep will be recorded as well for playback on demand.

Obviously phone calls that are generated from your Internet marketing efforts are among your top KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Several of these methods are very easy and you can probably handle them yourself. You might want to seek the advice of a certified Digital Marketing Consultant to really leverage the techniques and technology.

What Are Key Performance Indicators?

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:40:00 GMT

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the metrics most indicative of how well your internet marketing campaign is performing. These are the big things that “move the needle”.

For example; if you have a high “Bounce Rate” (visitors come to your website and never go beyond the landing page) that is an indication that there is an issue with the relevance of your landing page to the visitor.

There is no one set of standard KPI’s for every business, it really depends on what your objectives are. For example, if you are in a service related industry, the amount of phone calls generated by your online efforts would be a primary KPI. Digging a little deeper, the length of each phone call would tell you even more. Short phone calls (under a minute) might mean that no one answered the phone and no message was left. Longer phone calls are a good indication of customer engagement.

“Time on Site” is often an indicator of how relevant and engaging your site is. “Pages Visited” may indicate if your sales funnel is set up properly. The impact of any particular KPI may not be readily obvious. It often takes some insight to look past the numbers to find their true meaning.

Key Performance Indicators are somewhat unique to each type of business, and their individual objectives, but here are a few that I consider relatively universal:

Some KPI Definitions

Visit – This is when someone visits one or more of your web pages with 30 min or less time in between page visits.

Visitor – A visitor is a person that visits your website. Visitors can be broken into 3 categories:

New Visitor – This is only measured once for visitors who have never been on your website before. It is different than a unique visit because a unique visit is measured over a specific period of time.
Repeat/Returning Visitor – This is a person who visits your website two or more times over a given period of time, this is only measured once over that given period of time.
Unique Visitor – A unique visitor is a person tat comes to your website for the first time during a specific window of time. Usually daily, weekly or monthly.

Conversion – Conversion is when a visitor or customer completes the action that you want them to take, for instance, making a purchase or filling out a web form.

Examples of Some Key Performance Indicators

General KPI

Average Time on Site – This is based on the assumption that if a person searches for a particular keyword or phrase, and they visit a page on your site, if it has relevance to what they were looking for, they will spend more time on that page than if they found information that was not very relevant to their search.
Page Views / Visit – This will tell you how many pages a visitor to your website views on each visit. Multiple page visits will affect this multiple times.
Page Views / Visitors – This is very similar to page views / visits except that it ignores the amount of visits that a specific visitor makes.
New Visitors / Visitors – Measures how many of your visitors are first time visitors; this is good for telling you how many new potential clients/customers are visiting your site.
Repeat Visitors / Visitors – Shows you how many of your visitors are returning, therefore showing you the site’s ability to attract visitors or customers back to your web site.

The Importance of KPI – Taking KPI to the Next Level

Developing the best KPI for your internet marketing goals will allow you to measure how well your different strategies are working to positively affect your business objectives. They can give you a warning sign to let you know what is working and what isn’t working. Once you are able to determine the results from examining your KPI, you can make the important adjustments to fine tune your sites effectiveness.

KPI’s may require more analysis than meets the eye. You might want to enlist the services of a professional digital marketing specialist. Sometimes it’s just a matter of interpreting your current data, and other times actual experiments might need to be setup to measure cause and effect of incremental changes. Professional Digital Marketing consultants with the right tools can even do a Competitive Analysis on the KPIs of direct competitors in your industry.

5 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Strategy

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:29:00 GMT

For some, “Social Media Optimization” is a buzz phrase with no definition. You know that you have to “do” Facebook, or that you have to Blog, but face it; you don’t really have a plan do you? The fact is that everyone is migrating to social media, whether they know it or not. Whenever you go online to see what other people are doing or what they recommend, you are leveraging Social Media whether you know it or not. If you use Social Media for business, why not take full advantage of a population of users that exceeds most major counties?

1. Focus On What Is Important

One of the most important things you can do is listen to what your customers are saying on their social media posts. This will help you gain a better understanding for their needs. Connect with them; see what they are up to. This will help you have a better understanding of what you can do to help them.

2. Personalities and Style Make a BIG Difference

When using social media tools like Facebook or Twitter, the two most dynamic ingredients for success are personality and style. This is often what makes the difference between a post and a viral post. It can also give you more credibility when it comes to being a trusted source in your industry.

3. Implement Good Habits In Your Strategies

Making sure your policies, guidelines and structure matches your company’s size. What may work for a smaller company won’t necessarily work with a large company. You will need to adjust these to fit your needs as your company grows. You will want your team to exhibit qualities that enhance your relationship with customers. Customers value quick, consistent and well-spoken responses and posts.

4. Rules and Regulations?

You will find that having a few rules and guidelines regarding your social media strategies will seem more and more necessary as your company grows. Keep in mind that every situation is different and that your may have to bend the rules when necessary. Trust your team’s intuition; don’t blindly lead wit a book of rules and regulations.

5. Utilize Metrics

In order to effectively manage you social media strategies, you should pay attention to metrics and tie in the social media aspect to you overall business goals. When starting up a brand new project, you should determine what metrics and goals you should set before getting started.

Wondering where to start with Social Media for your business? Let us offer you a Social Media readiness evaluation. We examine your company goals along with your existing assets to determine what is the best media and the best strategy for you.

Anatomy of a Facebook Business Page

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:47:00 GMT

Just like the IRS insists that you separate your personal finances from your business finances, the same is true with your Facebook Personal page and your Facebook Business Page. Sure, it’s OK to have fun on your business page, in fact it’s desirable, but at the end of the day, it does represent your business.

There are entire whitepapers ready to write themselves about the type of content to post on your business page, marketing the pages, etc., but I want to focus on now is the branding of your page.

The average Facebook user is a fan of 9 Fan Pages. 41% of them use Fan Pages to let their friends know what products they like and support. With those types of numbers, it may be worth the effort to “spruce up” your page a bit.

At a minimum, you should upload a profile picture that tells your followers who you are and what you have to offer. Your logo is a good choice, but you can do better than that. For example, if you have a single store location you could put your address and hours of operation right on the photo.

Here is an example of our profile or “badge”. We have decided that I am the “Voice of the Company”, so we use my image to represent our firm. The information on our badge works for us. You have to decide how your company should be positions, and what images and information your want to spotlight.

Notice that we have a “Find us on Facebook” icon on the bottom of the badge. It may seem a little unnecessary considering that you may already be on Facebook when you see this. However we can use this badge in a number of different web properties to help build our fan base.

The next step up if you really want to make an impression is to design a custom Tab page. Below is our custom “Welcome” page. This is what we link to from other web properties and other Social Media:

Finally, you might even consider custom or out-of-the-box aps. Check out this one from Old Navy, where you can actually “dig” for your own coupon:

As you can see, with a little imagination, some graphical expertise and perhaps some professional programming, you can go a long way in branding your company on the worlds reigning Internet destination.

How much is Your Customers Life Worth?

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:19:00 GMT

No I’m not talking about a contract hit or an intervention. I’m talking about looking at a more appropriate way to measure your online marketing ROI.

A typically mistake most marketers make is to overlook the amount of revenue a customer brings in over the lifetime relationship. This info is important to track because it indicates how valuable each new customer is, and what it is worth spending to attract them. It also lets you know just how good your customer retention program is and how much you should invest in that.

The simple way to measure the Average lifetime value of a customer is: Total value of sales / Total number of customers.

Once you have an idea about how profitable each new customer is likely to be, you can make better decisions about allocating your online marketing budget. If the lifetime value of a new client is very high, then you can afford higher acquisition costs to obtain new customers.

One of our clients, Chris, from Oregon Mushrooms grasped this concept immediately. Years ago she told me that she didn’t care if she lost a little bit of money on each new customer because her product was unique, her service was great, and the average customer reordered every few months indefinitely.

In fact, we’ve been running her PPC and SEO programs for years, and over time her cost per acquisition has actually gone down as we fine-tuned her Pay-Per-Click program and our Search Engine Optimization efforts have matured.

I’m thinking the “intervention” should be reserved for the business that doesn’t measure the lifetime value of a new client. Oh-and Chris? She never did lose money on any of her Internet Marketing efforts.

If All You Have is a Hammer… Everything Looks Like a Nail

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:48:00 GMT

No I didn’t make that up, but I can’t think of a better way to say that as an Internet Marketing Professional it’s essential to have the right tools for the job.

In preparation for our Excellence & Innovation Conference this week in Miami, I will be sharing a variety of my most useful tools that my team uses to give our clients a competitive advantage. In particular I want to highlight one of my favorite analytical tools, the WSI WebScan™.

Individual tests cover many areas, including spelling, broken links, speed, optimization of keywords and much more – over 30 tests in total.

Results are summarized into 5 areas:

1. Search: how well optimized the website is for search engines like Google and Yahoo

2. Content: how well written the content is

3. Quality: how well built the website is

4. Accessibility: how accessible the website is to users with disabilities

5. Site: overall, how good the website is.

The technology behind WebScan was originally developed for FORTUNE 100 companies to test thousands of high-profile websites worldwide. WSI has since acquired exclusive access to this technology and made it available to our clients.

WebScan is now used to test over 10,000 websites each month in over 10 countries. The technology continues to be used by a huge range of websites, from corporations to small businesses, and is updated monthly with the latest in best practice.

All of our consultants are familiar with this tool, but I will be sharing unique ways to utilize the data in combination with other tools that I will be highlighting to the network.

If you would like to see a sample WebScan™ or request one, contact your WSI consultant, or just click here

Why is Fresh Content So Important?

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:26:00 GMT

I received call from a noted cosmetic surgeon in Denver a few months back. His issue was that he was stopped and cited for a DWI (Driving While Intoxicated). This made the local newspaper (the online version) and despite the fact that he was acquitted, his business dropped off substantially.

I don’t know about you, but before someone takes a knife to my face I prefer they not be intoxicated. Apparently this is unavoidable in some pubs and taverns I’ve been to…but that is another story. In this case his potential patients easily found this out simply by Googling him by name.

He wanted to know how to make that article disappear. The problem is that content on the Internet is forever. You can’t make it disappear; you can only bury it onto deeper pages on the search results.

What makes this such a tough assignment is that the content came from a Newspaper website. That makes it extra challenging because by its very nature news sites are constantly updating their content and search engines give extra weight to pages that contain “fresh” page content. “Fresh” content refers to page content that updates regularly as opposed to being static.

A good example of this would be the home page of news sites like CNN.com. Essentially, the home page automatically updates whenever a new content page (a new article) is added. So do the links to other related articles.

It is important to consider fresh content when planning out your site architecture. The home page and all category-level pages should include a content element that will automatically update when new content pages are added. That is why Blogs and News modules have become so important.

And the Cosmetic Surgeon? In a fleeting sober moment he did the math and realized that the cost of a Reputation Management Program paled in comparison to the devastating effects of bad PR. It took a few weeks, but we were able to push the nasty article off the first page. Cosmetically enhanced faces in Denver are once again on the rise.

Don't Welcome Your Visitors

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:23:00 GMT

I think we can all agree that the Internet is not as shiny and new as it seemed a decade ago. Arriving on a website is no longer such a unique experience that you have to sacrifice the most valuable piece of real-estate (your top Headline) with “Welcome to Our Website!” Frankly, nobody cares….

If you want to make your visitors welcome, give them what they are looking for; A headline that lets them know they are in the right place.

Depending on personality type, you have 2-8 seconds before they decide to leave your site. There are very few things that you can almost guarantee they will look at during that time; one of them is… the Headline.

Statistically, women will read more than men, older people will read more than younger people, and few people will read your body copy unless they are intrigued by the headline. Heck, even search engines give your headlines (H1 tags) more weight when indexing your site.

Therefore your headline is arguably the most important element of your landing page. Don’t waste it!

Instead of “Welcome to our Website”, how about something interesting that will really welcome them like:

“Who Else Wants a Great Blog Template Design?”

Or…

“Here is a Method that is Helping Bloggers Write Better Post Titles”

Or…

“Get Rid of That Lame Mullet Hairdo Once and For All”

OK, maybe not the best examples off the top of my head, but you get the point. Any one of those headlines trumps the universally lame “Welcome to my Website”. If you are clever enough to weave a keyword or two into an interesting headline, search engines will be as interested in you as those lucky visitors who found your website.

In House vs Outsource

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:51:00 GMT

In September of 2007 Marketing Sherpa conducted two surveys in an effort to learn what challenges in-house marketers have designing a landing page program, and what challenges Agencies have managing a landing page campaign for their clients. Notice the common frustrations in each case:

Frustrations of In-House Marketers round analysis of Landing Pages

The biggest obstacle to in-house landing page optimization is by far is the lack of resources. In mid-sized companies the marketing department is typically overloaded. In smaller companies without a marketing department, the owner of the staff, even if they had the right credentials is (or should be) too busy minding the core business.

Frustrations of Agencies in Providing Better Analytics to Clients

Resources: It is tempting to try and do it yourself or assign it to existing staff. Take into consideration the true cost of doing it in-house. Are you diverting staff members from other necessary duties? Are you paying them to learn on the job when an agency or consultant may have already cultivated that know-how? You may indeed have the talent under your own roof; just consider carefully the true costs.

Aptitude: Most individuals are either left brained or right brained. That is to say technically or creatively inclined. Since a landing page campaign is a combination of creative and analytical, a technical oriented team or individual is not likely to come up with the compelling creative, and the creative team may not be able to interpret the data. That applies to agencies as well as you and your staff.

Experience: Agencies may have strengths in either creative or analytics; however they may not have the full array of skill sets necessary to do it any better than you can do in-house. If your current levels of web traffic are insufficient, make sure you work with a consultant that can deliver everything that you need, either in full or in part with your in-house team.

Summary

The limited scope of this white paper covers only some industry best practices. Virtually every element on a web page has some effect…positive or negative on the actions that a visitor takes. Ultimately only testing will determine what works and what doesn’t.

Whether you are working with an Agency, a Consultancy, in-house staff, or doing it yourself, this paper was designed to help you avoid costly mistakes and wasted effort. Use the information in this paper to help you implement, or manage others to implement best practices. There are however other considerations:

Traffic: If you are not driving enough traffic to your website, no amount of landing page best practices will help. There is still a common misconception that if you build a website your customers will automatically find it. Before you can gauge how your visitors react to your landing page, you need to have visitors.

Testing: It’s easy to say that you will test the results, but do you have the mechanisms in place to capture the data? Do you know how to interpret the data?

Implementation: Who will implement these best practices? Should you hire professional help or task you in-house staff? If that is a budgetary decision, what is the true cost of re-taking your staff?

Choosing The Right Domain Name

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:51:00 GMT

There is a lot more to consider when choosing a domain name than once might think at first glance. Once you build your website, publish your domain name on collateral material and optimize it for search engines, you are somewhat committed… so better make a good choice up-front.

In general, here are my rules of thumb:

Shorter is better than longer: 

Obviously shorter domains are easier to type, and in most cases are easier to remember. The problem is that almost all the good short domains have already been taken. You may have to get creative, or go to a new extension (Dot Net or Dot Biz, etc.). Shorter is definitely desirable, but not at the expense of some other considerations (read on…)

Easy to spell: 

Face it, some words are just commonly misspelled… consistently. I would never recommend taking on a purposely misspelled domain name as your primary, but you do need to weigh the ease of spelling vs. the targeted nature of the words in your domain. The worst case scenario is if the common misspelled name is that of your competition.

Avoid special Characters: 

Dashes, underscores and dots are all easily missed. More than likely you are resorting to special characters because the versions without all those dots and dashes have already been taken.

No Acronyms: 

Unless you’re already a brand name…or trying to establish one, don’t expect people to remember that www.scvma.org is the domain for the “Southern California Veterinary Medical Association”. OK… that is a tough one, but if possible go with something longer that is memorable an easy to spell before you try to make someone remember SCVMA…

“Dot Com” trumps “Dot everything else”… most times 

Dot Com is the granddaddy of all domains. If you have a good “Dot Com” most people will give you credit for being around a while… or at least being the original. There is no shame in going to a different domain extension, but see what you can do with a “dot Com” first. The exceptions are a “Dot Org” if you are indeed an organization. Or “Dot Info” if you want to be perceived as a source for information and not commerce. Don’t knock yourself our trying to force-feed yourself into a leftover “Dot Com” if it doesn’t make sense… Just take a look first.

Easy to remember: 
Sometimes even short domains are not easy to remember. Acronyms can be very hard; meaningless words or easily confused names can be a challenge as well. This becomes a factor when trying to leverage word of mouth advertising (one friend telling another) or collateral advertising that requires the target audience to visit the site after the fact (such as radio advertising, of billboard advertising).

It’s not particularly relevant if someone is clicking on a link, but if they have to remember your domain name or spell it… they better be able to remember it.

Use Keywords: 

Search Engines assume that if there is a keyword in your domain name, that your website must be relevant for that word. If possible, use a word or words that are appropriate for you to show up for on the search engines as part of your domain.

One more tip:

When publishing your domain use a technique called “stemming”. That is; instead of www.mydomainname.com, publish it as www.MyDomainName.com so that human beings can actually make sense of it whenever they see it. That will make it easier for them to read it and memorize it.

None of these rules are absolute. The best alternatives available might require you to break a rule or two. Just consider that you are probably going to have to live with your domain name for a long time… so make a good decision.

Search, Surf & Social…a Love Story

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:35:00 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of listening to a good friend of mine and Co-Founder of ReachLocal; Nathan Hanks talk about the relationship between searching the web, surfing the web, and socializing on the web, and how they are all related to how consumers make decisions about buying. To illustrate the relationship he made up a little story (or did he make it up?)

Search:
Vicky has a friend that in Dallas Texas who is getting married. Vicky is the bridesmaid wanting to take her friend and three of the other bridesmaids to a special day at a local spa. She is taking all five ladies and is looking for a place that has great pre-wedding spa packages.

Vicky is at work and its 2:00 in the afternoon and she is taking a break and starts searching on Google for “wedding party spa packages dallas”. She hits “enter” and boom!...there on the page are 5 or 6 different search results. One of those search results is “Suzie-Q’s Day Spa”, and another one is the Crescent spa; which is a very well known spa in Dallas at the Crescent hotel.

Vicky clicks on a couple of sites and says “what about the Crescent? I’ve heard of them”. “What about this Suzie-Q spa?” She clicks on a few pages and minutes later she realizes that she has to run over to a meeting and takes off.

Surf:
At the end of the day Vicky comes back to her desk and as is her afternoon ritual she goes to check her email and the news online. She opens up her CNN news and wow! There is a display ad… (banner ad) for Suzie-Q’s spa!

Vicky doesn’t know or care or even think too much about why Suzie-Q’s banner ad showed up just when she was thinking about a local spa. But we know it wasn’t an accident. That is something called “remarketing”. When Vicky originally visited Suzie-Q’s website, a tag or a “cookie” was dropped on Vicky’s computer. Later when Vicky went to look at the news, there was the banner ad for Suzie-Q’s business just waiting for her.

Vicky remembers that she has to book that spa package for the girls. “This must be a pretty cool spa; they must have a pretty large advertising budget”. So Vicky clicks on the banner and finds herself back on Suzie-Q’s site. Vicky browses through the site and thinks it looks pretty good. She sees some pages and some programs and thinks it looks pretty reasonable.

Maybe she doesn’t know what to make of the pricing, or maybe she just hasn’t seen enough pictures, maybe she is leaning on going to the Crescent because she suspects the Crescent is a sure bet based on its reputation.

Social:
Vicky turns around and goes to Yelp or CitySearch. Now instead of searching on “wedding party spa packages dallas” she types in “Suzie-Q day spa”. Vicky is no longer searching, she is researching Suzie-Q, and she is doing it on a review site. Maybe there weren’t any listings, so Vicky goes back to Google and searches on “Suzie-Q spa” to see what comes up. Well Suzie-Q’s map listing shows up on Google maps section with 3 and a half star rating. In fact there are 3 reviews on Suzie-Q’s spa.

Vicky thinks “only three reviews, that’s not a whole lot of reviews for a spa in downtown Dallas”, but she clicks on the first one. It just so happens that review is by another woman who brought her friends there for a pre-wedding spa getaway who wrote that “it was the best value for her money and really a great experience athletically and in terms of and relaxation”.

Conversion:
Vicky likes what she sees and is now ready to pick up the phone and book a package for her group.

This is just an example of how Search, Surf & Social work together to drive a conversion. Now this of course is just a made up scenario, but I can tell you that is a typical scenario that happens more than you might think.