Between and Among the Hyperlocal - Intergeostitial Marketing
We've been experimenting for some time with internet marketing to the areas that are difficult to define in terms of set geopolitical boundaries and zipcodes. Areas you know, and can describe to your friends and neighbors, but nobody else knows about. Most hyper-local marketing initiatives by advertisers and media organizations (like myzip.com and loudounextra.com) zero in on consumers and readers by zipcode, town or community name. A very few are able to organize by the concept of "neighborhood" - but when the area and group of consumers isn't definable from the outside with legal names and numbers, it must be defined from the inside (i.e. by "social media techniques") by place names, descriptions, relationships and a loose aggregation of zipcodes, boundary lines, landmarks and perhaps business names.
We love making up new words (like our last "avonym"); so here's our term for this sort of Internet Marketing - "intergeostitial marketing". Interstitial literally means "standing between", and refers to the space among other notable interest items - interstitial marketing refers, on the web, to those nasty pop-unders that appear between web pages and sessions. The "geo" obviously refers to geospatial determinants - think of an area you'd like to market to in terms of what the Google map looks like, bounded by lat/long degrees - not in terms of what the post office or county treasurer's office thinks of it. More like a politician's view of an area, with boundaries drawn around people and their activities, among referenceable geospatial landmarks.
Our primary example is
Dulles South, an area of southern Loudoun, western Fairfax and western Prince William counties in Virginia - generally known as Dulles South from its relative placement to Dulles Airport. Our visitors and readers habitually drive on local segments of Rt. 50, 28, 29, 606 and 629, live in HOA-managed neighborhoods or the few small towns, shop easily among the three counties, typically identify themselves with respect to the county (i.e. eastern Loudoun or western Prince William), send children to private schools in multiple counties, and include a large number of zipcodes that to most marketers don't seem to relate to each other in terms of demographics. But they do, to those that live there.
So in order to market effectively to this interstitial area, it's mostly a social marketing effort, driven by a deep connection, interest and understanding of what seems to outsiders as a very transient and loosely-coupled demographic. News, information, business openings, bake sales, school events, traffic incidents - all these information types need to be promoted, harvested and leveraged to build and maintain the tapestry of keywords/keyphrases that make sense to the area. The advertising and marketing needs to be coupled with the network of local affiliations among bloggers, small-town newspapers, home businesses and email networks. This kind of intergeostitial ad network is also a very new concept - more traditional "vertical ad networks" aren't yet quite getting the concept that a "vertical" market can be a self-defined and self-maintained "super-neighborhood/businesshood", that basically revolves around family life.
We've got lots more to share on this concept and practice of "intergeostitial marketing" as our experiment continues - let us know of an area you feel is similar.
Labels: intergeostitial
Tags and Keywords
For those who don't understand the SEO process, one of the very first things we do is try to identify your business, product, service or message in terms of single words or short phrases - called "keywords" or "key phrases". This is because people using search engines typically use single words or short phrases to begin their discovery process, as the initial filter for a set of results. Search engines compare these words against the words used on webpages, and try to make the best matches for delivering results. Many times, you as a business owner may describe what you sell in terms that your customers may not actually, typically use. It's our job to try to make the connection between the kind of language your customers are using, and the language on your website.
One note about "keywords" vs. "tags". "Keywords" are really the actual words that are used by both search engine consumers (i.e. searchers) and providers (i.e. website owners) for direct links between ideas and content. "Tags" are user-defined words used to categorize or classify content, to help others organize or navigate the content. "Tags" are basically more informal, less precise keywords. Sounds like the same thing, but you'll find the term "tags" being used on many social media/bookmarking sites, vs. keywords.
Therefore, we'll start with identifying all possible keywords/key phrases that may best describe your business, that are either most often used by searchers, or should be used (based on industry expertise). We'll test these (by updating copy in ads, blogs or your website), and start narrowing down those that seem to resonate the best, and drive the best search results. Our keyword research is most effective when we're researching topics we're very familiar with. For example, we were asked to help sell "technology governance services". What words ought to be used for this, or might people use to search for more information? Here's a first list we generated...our point is, with this blog entry, that most marketing efforts really need to start with a basic agreement of the target keywords/phrases. If this isn't done first, then all following efforts may be misguided.
Governance Process Issues
IT Governance Improvement
Lack of IT Governance
IT Governance Solutions
Bad IT Investments
Investment Portfolio Management Techniques
Governance Process Integration
Business Process Governance Issues
Governance Decisions
IT Process Governance
Governance Framework
Governance Process Framework
Governance Roadmap
Architecture Governance
Data Governance
Process Governance
Information Governance
IT Governance Practice
Compliance Driven Governance
Governance Decisions
Governance Assessment
Governance Diagnostic
Information Technology Governance
Regulatory Compliance
Technological Accountability
IT Decision Rights
IT Decision Process
IT Risk Management and Governance
Enterprise Governance
Strategic Alignment
Performance Measurement
Resource Management
Value Delivery
IT Alignment
Enterprise Architecture Governance
IT Objectives
IT Accountability
CIO Accountability
CIO Strategy
CIO Agenda
IT Business Value
IT Governance Model
IT Governance Definition
Corporate Governance
CobiT Governance
ITIL Governance
ITIL Assessment
SOA Governance
Reengineering IT Governance
IT Governance Executive Dashboard
IT Roadmap
Enterprise IT Governance
IT Business Value
Integrated IT Governance
Labels: keywords tags
Business Owners - You need BOTH a Website Team AND an Internet Marketing Team
Many businesses hire consultants, engineers or website design companies to deliver projects, capabilities and subject-matter expertise regarding Enterprise Content Management, including the entire lifecycle of digital content/asset management. This includes delivery of Portal and Search capabilities, website content management and process capabilities, and back-end data management and storage architectures. The business goals are ultimately about efficient, effective and secure management of information in support of delivery of business products and processes. From a business perspective, however, how do you really know these technical engineering efforts were actually well-executed and ultimately successful?
Most likely the website engineering efforts are measured in terms of contract compliance, adherence and mapping to specific requirements, and satisfaction with delivery and communication on the part of the customer (i.e. your business). In other words, performance is measured only from the perspective of the “Business-to-Business” (i.e. B2B) relationship (i.e. between you and your web design/build team), and from the perspective of your own internal B2B relationships (i.e. cost and process efficiencies gained within your own company). Can your web consultant demonstrate gains or actively improve your business performance from the perspective of your own Business-to-Customer relationships?
Consider this website project scenario. You buy services to develop a great new externally-facing website or portal, with a robust content management capability to support it. It includes very efficient and secure data management architecture, including a secure, SOA-based integration architecture for delivery of messages between the sub-systems and external systems. You also get extensive portal usability features and website statistic reporting functions. The capabilities are implemented in a manner that maps successfully to your Enterprise Architecture (or at least best practice standards), from an IT investment perspective. Then the consultant company either continues to run the website, or it's turned over to another Maintenance team. It's a total success, and a great system. But you may have completely overlooked the competition, and failed to manage your external digital assets.
The competition has evidently also upgraded their website. Additionally, they’ve invoked an extensive Internet Marketing campaign to make sure their customers and partners can quickly and easily find all of the information and products they have to offer, and find it before they find any information you have to offer. Steps they’ve taken, that you didn't:
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques were used across the site, to make sure that it ranks exceedingly well for all target keywords/phrases used in search engines
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques were used in coordination with all other marketing and advertising, including keyword-optimized backlinks, copy, advertising, articles, whitepapers and press releases being deployed and managed among all relevant third-party sites, directories, news outlets and online industry destinations. This marketing included multi-media (i.e. photos, videos, audio), and both organic (i.e. “free”) and paid (i.e. multiple “pay-per-click” and other paid advertising) channels.
• Social Media Optimization (SMO) techniques were used to help generate additional, on-site, relevant and search-engine friendly content for the website, leveraging Web 2.0 features – this included Blog-style content, feedback/commenting capabilities, participatory forums, consumption and publishing via RSS format, demographic targeting/referrals to feed mashups, etc.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) techniques were used to encourage additional, off-site content and information that linked to the website and its information, and to encourage positive reputation-building among target demographics and communities on target channels - these techniques yielded even more great search results and collateral press.
These Internet Marketing steps yielded very rapid results. Your site experienced an expected “bump” in traffic, and steady increase in conversions, though some apparent “anomalies” in decreased traffic for particular segments you didn’t focus too much on.
Their site experienced overwhelming “flash traffic” from many online and offline sources, was picked up by media outlets, clobbered you in the search engine rankings (SERPS) for hundreds of keywords and keyphrases, and resulted in a dramatic increases in both their customer awareness and actual market penetration/share.
How could this have been avoided? You need to make sure there's synergy and integration between the provider of your INTERNAL Content Management, Search and Website/Portal capabilities (i.e. B2B), and the provider of your EXTERNAL Content Management, Distribution and Search requirements (i.e. B2C and C2C). A Website Design/Engineering Team AND and Internet Marketing Team. These providers may well be different companies, but make sure you consider utilizing both of these perspectives and types of providers at the same time.
Labels: performance
Virginia Internet Marketing Training - Ask Kelly & Ted
Here's a question that's come up - "why is my Alexa ranking so low"?
Here's our answer:
Alexa is just one indicator out of many of your site's traffic and trends, and isn't ever as accurate as metrics collected with your own website statistics package. Alexa gets its rankings via installations of its toolbar - which is a bit skewed towards the Internet-literate and somewhat technical crowd (who actually decide to install the toolbar). That's why sites that don't have anything to do with technology will be ranked artificially lower.
Also, the Alexa toolbar doesn't install at this time for IE on Microsoft Vista machines - so basically you're getting evidence of traffic from just a few segments of Internet users, not all. Additionally, any ranking by Alexa is usually quite delayed, and tends really not to be statistically relevant or useful for sites that aren't in the top few 100,000. We don't view Alexa rankings as useful past a possible general indicator of trends; your Google Analytics are the very best source of traffic trends.
Alexa rankings can be manipulated to some extent, thereby not being very objective measures. For example, in your next newsletter, tell everyone to go ahead and install the Alexa toolbar and set yoursite.com as the default homepage. You'll get a boost, for sure, in Alexa's rankings - but it's a false indicator of actual, useful traffic.
So for now (if you're a smaller site, just getting started, etc.), just ignore Alexa - focus on the Google Analytics (or whatever your site metrics package is). Your overall "ranking" in Alexa doesn't really have any relevance in terms of SEO. What's important is that all the keywords/keyphrases you're focusing on are coming up high in the search results, AND more and more people are actually clicking on them, AND you're getting more "coversions" (i.e. email signups, advertising signups, etc.) from your site. Instead of "ranking" against all other general sites, focus on "ranking" against your competition for advertising dollars and subscribers.
Labels: rankings alexa
A little experiment with images
According to
this blog from Search Engine Land, much more emphasis needs to be addressed by online marketers on achieving results via universal search - i.e. pay attention to your images and videos.
The fact that images are highly appealing, can convey an enormous amount of emotion-provoking information in a blink, and can be nearly universal from a language and culture perspective isn't new. The fact that image management should be a serious element of your online marketing strategy might be new to many businesses.
In our marketing travels, we've seen many genres of images competing for consumer eyeballs - some focused and niche, some global and mundane. Here's a bit of an experiment - the next few blog posts will include a photo of what we think is probably one of the most appealing types of images for marketing and advertising - a woman working on a computer, or with a computer-driven device. There's many reasons and opinions for this; but we'll simply test it right here for a while to prove the point.
Labels: images
Northern Virginia Multi-Media Advertising, Graphic Design, Production and Distribution
KME Internet Marketing will shortly be offering logo and graphic design, multi-media advertising and production capabilities to its customers, for coordinated business advertising across the Internet, TV, Radio, Print and Point Displays/Billboards. Formats will include not only websites, blogs, social media outlets and email, but also AV-audio/video (online files, streaming and CD/DVDs) and print production. Production capabilities will include website design, graphic design, AV studio production, and photography.
For businesses who want to coordinate and extend their advertising dollars and presence across all Internet channels and media, as well as into more traditional channels (i.e. "offline") including local TV, Radio, Print and other distributed media, KME Internet Marketing and its partners can provide a "one-stop shopping" capability and campaign management resource from its Northern Virginia Internet Marketing and Multi-media advertising production headquarters.
Labels: multi-media graphic-design production
Top 12 Fairfax County Online Advertising Destination Websites
Following up on our quarterly Loudoun Online Advertising reviews, here's a top 12 listing of
Fairfax Internet Marketing online local community destinations for business advertising dollars.
Advertising your Fairfax County business online, on the Internet, includes several categories of spending that attracts different kinds of consumers. Fairfax County Internet Marketing effort and dollars should certainly be spent on localized global search directories (i.e. Google Maps/MSN Live), localized national directories (like DMOZ, Superpages, Resourcelinks and Yellowpages), localized national review and social media directories (like Facebook, Discoverourtown, zip.net, Yelp and Delicious) and industry-specific sites offering advertising. This review doesn't cover those resources, nor does it include government-sponsored or business-only sites like visitfairfax.org or the various area chambers of commerce.
Note that as
Northern Virginia Internet Marketing specialists, KME Internet Marketing maintains a comprehensive directory of all the relevant online advertising services, social media and content sources, and seach engine focused tools and websites on the Internet successfully catering to those searching for businesses and information in this area, though all options aren't necessarily appropriate for all advertisers. Contact us if you'd like to discuss all the options.
A very effective way of quickly and reliably getting your message in front of a very targeted group of Fairfax County residents, including those in Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, Mclean Reston, Herndon, Burke and Centreville, is to advertise on the general, local community news and information directories, that exclusively cater to residents and businesses of the area. Most are very reasonable, tend to show up well in search listings, and drive many opportunities for cross-selling (i.e. someone finding information for neighborhoods finds real estate, home improvement or gardening supply ads).
Here's our initial take on this top 12 list of Fairfax Internet Marketing community directory sites, to be refined and updated next quarter. They're ranked according to our professional
Northern Virginia Internet Marketing and SEO/SEM opinion regarding their effectiveness, exposure, page ranking and overall value in terms of local or regional businesses reaching out and attracting broad demographics among residential and business consumers. We don't include pure landing pages, SPAM sites or link farms. Note that Fairfax, with such diverse population centers and large communities, has very different online focus between the different communities, and very active sub-regional site specifically for areas like the cities or communities of McLean, Falls Church, Arlington, Herndon/Reston and Alexandria. Our list includes the broadest possible exposure for the whole of Fairfax County and close-in DC Metro regional locations in Loudoun and Prince William Counties.
A note about the Washingtonpost - while offering great online advertising focused to regions around DC, we don't agree with its policy that you must register to view the online site, and so it's not included here - its Loudounextra.com site doesn't require this, and its soon-to-launch Fairfaxextra.com site likely won't either.
1 - fairfaxtimes.com - great advertising opportunities on a well-built online platform, PR=5
2 - arlingtonunwired.com - although focused on Arlington, a really good site with high PR=5
3 - chroniclenewspapers.com - effective online newspaper in several areas of Fairfax (including the "South County" area), PR=4
4 - fairfaxcountyva.com - part of the "AreaGuides" network of regional sites, decent advertising opportunities and local exposure, PR=4
5 - Countywebsite.com sites - another network of county-specific and area sites, pretty good search engine exposure and number of listings, PR=4
fairfaxcountywebsite.com
www.alexandriacitywebsite.com
www.fallschurchwebsite.com
6 -
dullessouthonline.com - covering the whole western Fairfax, plus western Prince William and Loudoun county areas, great SEO and Internet Marketing exposure, plus reasonable advertising rates; PR=4
7 - fcnp.com - Falls Church News Press Online - decent, busy site focused on Falls Church with lots of front-page advertising slots, PR=4
8 - alextimes.com - focused on Alexandria, but a well-built site with lots of advertising options, PR=4
9 - Townlink LLC sites - a network of town-specific sites, decent SEO exposure for advertisers, though sites are a bit underwhelming - PRs = 3
nvaweb.com/business
herndonweb.com/business
restonweb.com/business
10 - centrevilleva.org - good local site with lots of advertising options, PR=4
11 - viennavirginia.com - nice directory focused on this particular area including Oakton, PR=2
12 - connectionnewspapers.com - partitioned into many community-specific areas around Fairfax, though the site could use some work, and much more advertising could be made available - Fairfax Connection PR=5
Labels: Fairfax Advertising
0 Comments
