The Turducken Disconnect: An SEM Fable for the Holidays

Posted November 25th, 2008, by Stephen Cobb

Insights into online marketing can come from strange quarters, even from strange recipes. Bear with me while I tell a story that began at a wedding reception in Toronto a few months ago. I was standing beside a delicious buffet served in a wonderful Canadian garden when a young lady asked me if I had ever heard of turducken.

Why did she ask me? Did the rate at which I was consuming bacon wrapped chicken livers suggest I’d be a turducken aficionado? Perhaps she mistook my gray hair as a sign of wisdom (actually, it’s just a sign of advancing age). In fact, until she uttered the word, I had never heard of turducken. But I didn’t want her to know that, so I bluffed: “Turducken? In what context?”

(For all I knew, Turducken could be the name of a band, or a dance, or something you do in night clubs when you’re not dancing. The last thing I wanted to do was appear uncool. I mean, if the kids were going turducken later, I wanted to be invited along.)

Fortunately, my bluff was not called. A handsome young guest, whose cool factor was apparently not in doubt simply blurted out, “What’s a turducken?” That’s when the young lady said: “Turducken is a chicken cooked inside a duck cooked inside a turkey.”

In a further stroke of luck the young man decided this turducken thing was a hoax and he began to question the lady’s sincerity. That gave me a chance to whip out my Treo and Google it, earning several cool points as I flashed the result with great chivalry. The young lady was right. Google had spoken. Turducken is real.

And so the story would have ended, were it not for two things: my wife’s health, which has not been too good lately; and Thanksgiving, which kind of crept up on us this year. That is why, a few days ago, I was sitting at my computer wondering: “What could Stephen cook for Thanksgiving dinner?” In the past I’ve managed to cook several chickens; a few Christmases ago I roasted a goose, but to be honest I have never tackled a Thanksgiving turkey. That’s when turducken came to mind!

So I Googled it. As expected, the search results were sprinkled with words that suggested one could order turducken online, for immediate delivery, pre-cooked if necessary. Indeed, it looked like several vendors were vying for my turducken business. So I began to click away.

And that’s when I found the turducken disconnect. If you are trying to sell turducken online, anyone who searches for turducken and clicks on your paid search placement should be greeted by what? Yes! Turducken. It doesn’t have to be an animated turducken. It doesn’t have to be a talking turducken. It doesn’t even need to be a specially-priced turducken (although that could be a good way to convert first-time visitors into first time buyers). The point is, we should see a turducken not a sausage. And we shouldn’t have to scroll down the page to find our search target. Most online shoppers are not lazy, they’re just busy. If I Google turducken, show me your turducken and I may well order one.

Now, I realize that turducken is not, as yet, a major segment of the online food market. So is it fair to pick on fledgling e-tailers who haven’t yet learned to hook their search engine marketing efforts to custom landing pages and behavior-based visitor-metrics? Maybe it’s not fair, but the turducken disconnect is not confined to regional cuisine.

When I Googled “cooked turkey” I got a paid ad proclaiming “Roasted Turkey…Gourmet Prepared Turkeys. Memorable Meals since 1957.” It took me to a page totally bereft of turkeys. Of course, it’s not just online food retailing that suffers from this problem. Time and again when shopping online I click a search result that leads me to a page only vaguely connected to my search string.

Given the amount of money companies are spending to be at the top of the search result stack, it’s a real pity they don’t spend just a little more on converting that initial click into an engagement, a conversation, and a better chance at conversion. Merchants who don’t keep an eye on what happens post-click are not going to get results as good as those who do.

And thus endeth the fable.
The moral is hopefully clear.
Don’t waste your money on search results
If you don’t know how to take it from there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Posted in General, Housekeeping, Industry, Opinion

The (Free) Shipping News: Pre-holiday update

Posted November 17th, 2008, by Stephen Cobb

The importance of “intelligent shipping” to Internet retailers is underlined by a recent report indicating that the number of online stores offering “free shipping on everything” will decline this holiday shopping season. According to the 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla® for Shop.org, approximately one in ten e-tailers plan to reduce their use of unconditional free shipping offers.

While the percentage of Internet retailers offering online shoppers “free shipping with conditions” at some point during this year’s holiday shopping season (78%) is about the same as last year, one fifth of online retailers say they will require “a higher purchase amount for customers to be eligible for free shipping.”

This trend underlines the need to personalize and target intelligent shipping offers that are based on a range of factors, including shipping zone, ZIP code, cart size, brand, purchase frequency, and other behaviors.

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Posted in Industry, Strategy

That Which Connects Us

Posted November 10th, 2008, by Stephen Cobb

Kaila Colbin’s Search Insider post amusingly titled ”What Do Search And Toilet Paper Have In Common?” actually concludes with a very thoughtful sentence:

The president-elect said, “That which connects us is greater than that which divides us.” I don’t think he was talking about technology — but it would certainly apply.

Indeed it would, and probably should, given the game-changing role that the Internet played in the election and continues to play in the transition. I find myself finally daring to hope that the new administration “gets” connectivity to a degree unprecedented in government and public service, at a level that can command respect in the garages and basements and cubicles of startups where the geeks and coders and emerging gurus of enterprise are pushing the envelope of connection.

A few years ago, very few people would have dared to believe that a change in government could inspire those who are driven to make information technology deliver the most benefit to the most people. When the president-elect said “spread the wealth around” some people thought the phrase could be taken–out of context–and used against him. They were wrong. Why? One reason might be the large number of people who have been happy to “spread the technology around” for many years. Few things can generate wealth like technology and few technologies enable spreading better than search and the Internet.

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Posted in Industry, Opinion

Corporate Blogging in the Best (and Worst) of Times

Posted November 6th, 2008, by Stephen Cobb

It’s been over a week since the last post here and it’s tempting to claim that, between the Phillies winning the World Series and Obama winning the presidency, we’ve been a bit distracted. But there’s more to it than that. About ten days ago we read a column in BtoB magazine by social media expert Paul Gillin that had this arresting headline: Corporate blogs fail crisis test.

During some of the more turbulent days of the current financial crisis, Gillin monitored 20 of the most prominent corporate blogs in America. He was hoping to find “thoughtful perspective on the future of our economy.” However, what he found was “smiling faces, happy talk and an almost eerie disregard for the most troubling business events of our time.”

Ouch! We immediately took a look back at the Monetate blog posts, even though this is not–currently–one the 20 most prominent corporate blogs in America. We were relieved to see that we had not completely ignored the downturn in the economy. Indeed, some of our comments could be construed as ”thoughtful perspective on the future of our slice of the economy.”

Then we checked the examples that Gillin listed in his blog. We won’t repeat them all here–the title of the blog post says it all: “Corporate Blogs Blather While Markets Tumble”. Not surprisingly, some corporate bloggers were stung by this characterization and let Gillin know their positions on the subject. He summarizes these as: “the company blog is a place to talk about products and people, but not issues.”

Gillin does not agree: ”A time of crisis demands leadership, and a blog is the most direct path between business and customer. Nervous investors…needed reassurance, or at least perspective, from the institutions they trust.” Noting that Wells Fargo posted something about finding Wifi connections the day the Dow “capped a three-day decline of nearly 800 points,” Gillin concluded:

“In choosing to ignore these concerns, business leaders whistled past the graveyard. Instead of demonstrating leadership, they showed indifference…. Corporations may have embraced blogging, but they have yet to internalize conversation. To most, the blog is still a marketing hopper in which to shovel sound bites and happy talk. Perhaps leadership will emerge as the scope of the crisis becomes clearer but, for the moment, America’s biggest corporations earn a conversation grade of D-.”

That’s pretty strong stuff because it calls into question exactly what a corporate blog should be. Obviously companies are free to post whatever they like on their blogs and no doubt some companies decided that the meltdown on Wall Street was something they would rather not talk about. To some extent that’s understandable. It’s a hard subject to make sense of, particularly when you’re right in the middle of unprecedented events that are still unfolding.

So, what is the right way to blog when momentous events are in progress? Is it okay to stop posting until you have something useful to say about what’s been happening, or should you keep the blog going with lightweight posts that simply ignore the wider perspective? Some examples of the latter option, cited by Gillin, could strike readers as a cop-out, a betrayal of the implied promise of the blog format, namely that you are having a conversation with readers, not just feeding them marketing fodder. Consider the old adage: “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Perhaps the guiding principle of corporate blogging should be: “If you can’t post something that’s both helpful and relevant, don’t post anything at all.” To be honest, we’re not sure.

Consider the historic events of this week. The election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America is something we will remember for the rest our lives. We know what it means to us as individuals, but right now we can’t claim to know what it means for our clients or our industry. We could speculate. We may do so in a future post. But right now it feels like the right thing to do is simply reflect on this amazing moment in our nation’s history.

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Posted in Industry