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Keep the Tribal Algorithm by Jason Prescott (below) contains musings on search marketing, web analytics and why we don’t just feed the dog.
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We hear from newbie clients: Their web analytics tell them “this” and “that.” As we hear it, analytics are full of business wisdom, dictating advertising and search marketing decisions … which key word is Good, what distribution network is Better, and what PPC bid strategy is Best.

Take a closer look. Sure, web analytics offer valuable input for trend spotting, understanding user behavior and help measuring marketing success. But the operative word is HELP. Analytics are one tool in the marketing kit bag. And it’s a touchy tool, at that. Web analytics software can be very sensitive programming built on proprietary metrics. The huge data stream that analytics dumps into slick graphic reports demands interpretation, especially when you compare one company’s analytic apples to another’s pomegranates.

Am I saying ignore Google Analytics? Was Yahoo! foolish to play analytical catch-up buying IndexTools in early April to measure web behavior and paid search ROI??

Absolutely not.

All I’m saying here is that there is a Tribal Knowledge Algorithm you can’t ignore: It’s the collected knowledge of people who know your industry or product line, because they’ve worked it. It’s where Gut Instinct meets By-the-Numbers. It’s what still matters in successful business decisions.

Some in the search marketing biz dare to question 3,000-pound gorilla Google because Google relies on tech voodoo and search algorithms. Translation: Google depends on its proprietary search algorithms to go broad, horizontal and massively comprehensive, rather than organize around its users through their interests and their industries. (verticalizing)

Jim Meskauskas, director of online media for ICON International, observed that advertisers need not fear The Google after it acquired ad-serving network DoubleClick. Because marketing and advertising relies on ideas … and only humans have those. Successful campaigns don’t come from a another ad-buying auction technology or yet another intermediary in the ad-buying process. It’s still about the creative tribe and human strategy.

Because we don’t just feed the dog. ??

Says Jim: “If technology and engineering were the answers to all the questions, most businesses would consist of a machine, a dog and a man. The man would be there to feed the dog and the dog would be there to keep the man away from the machine.”

We run a lot of analytics here at TopTenWholesale. But we keep tribal knowledge and experience in the mix. We don’t just feed the dog.

I was pleasantly surprised and quite shocked to be awarded the Fast Growth 2008 award by bizSanDiego last night at the Prado in Balboa Park. We were notified of the nomination a month ago, and had no clue that we were the #1 Fastest Growing company in San Diego until the count down began. The bizSanDiego put on wonderful award ceremony and recognized 20 of some the best organizations in the area. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank: Brian Sacks, publisher, for his incredible coverage of the San Diego business environment. John Lincoln, associate editor and web master, for his interview of myself and every other candidate ( John is an amazingly talented young man whose got a shining future ahead of him! ). Roger Hurni, creative director, for his design and interactive development of the publication and all online media contributions. We all thank the entire staff at bizSanDiego for their contributions and can’t wait to see them grow!

None of this is possible with out having a vision and establishing an organization full of talented, passionate, and energetic people that add something that is irreplaceable: Human Power. Often the most forgotten asset in organizations are the people dedicated most to the cause. Businesses need constant innovation to survive and move forward. Providing an environment that nurtures creativity and growth is imperative if a company wants to attain any type of growth. There are some great companies that do this already. Google is a prime example with their 80/20 rule for engineers. What that means is that 20% of their time is spent just thinking and creating something they are passionate about. No strings attached. You can find many examples of human power out there, but I encourage all of you to listen and realize that micromanaging gets a company nowhere. Let your people try different tasks and let them develop on their own. Giving those most dedicated to any cause autonomy, independence and trust has huge rewards—-for everyone.

JP Communications Inc thanks all of you!!! for making this happen. Our customers, users, employees and numerous other contributors to the JPC network—thanks to all of you and keep letting us know what we need to build. You all make it happen.

ps: The bizSanDiego has some great community involvement. The bizSanDiego blog is a phenomenal read for all you locals.

In the day-to-day operations of running a successful online commerce business, it is easy to get exhausted putting out brush fires.

Daily e-Commerce Brush Fires

• Drop-shipping SNAFUs
• Catching a free-fall in your conversion-to-sale rates
• Cost-per-click keyword bids that jump and take your Click-through Charges with them
• That stuck feeling when you learn your purchase of last-season Girl’s Accessories just hit the “No Way” list at Crunch.com
• Burning up your planned paid-ad budget for three months in only 30 days
• Learning about the toy safety recall after your lot cleared imports

Sometimes it’s challenges we can’t see clearly through the thick layer of smoke on the daily horizon that pose the greatest threats to our ROI, profitability and business survival. The issue of Net Neutrality is one of those distant fires. Let’s clear some smoke.

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell
A threat to online commerce is from the opposite of Net Neutrality: A planned system of restrictive tollbooths on the information superhighway. These non-neutral Internet tollbooths will control access, speed limits and road conditions to all big-bandwidth packet streams (your content) by travelers (your dealers or customers with searches and purchase transactions) idling at their browsers while backed up at Internet on-ramps.

We all know that the “free” Internet has a planet-sized backbone and access control points, such as Internet Service Providers and national domain filters. (The latter includes censorship policies placed on Google, Yahoo! and other search providers for results allowed to China’s 100 million Internet users. Also, Yahoo! is being questioned by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee for its possible role in arrest of a Chinese journalist who sent an email criticizing Chinese media restrictions.

Aside from official censorship roadblocks, anyone with ISP Internet access anywhere can use the superhighway and go where they like.

Enter the tele-communications lobby. Long-term plans were to set up tiers of commercial service on the information superhighway, charging content providers and web destinations extra for the privilege of a big, wide, high-speed road on which their potential customers or readers reach them.

<!– Begin TopTenWholesale.com Contextual Ads  –>

<script src=”http://www.toptenwholesale.com/cgi-bin/searchapp/rem_ads.cgi?q=Products&amp;fmt=468_60&amp;ch=1013&amp;aff=8&amp;bc=336699&amp;bg=FFFFFF&amp;tc=0000BB&amp;dc=000000&amp;uc=008000&amp;new_page=1” language=”javascript”></script><!– End TopTenWholesale.com Contextual Ads  –>

The I-road narrows, clogs and gets bumper-to-bumpier for users trying to reach non-paying destinations, like smaller e-Commerce sites, start-ups, news and opinion sites and non-profits. Once you’re on the toll-free roads — Internet roads where smaller, lower-revenue businesses live and won’t pay extra to ISP networks — then you’re off the maps of tollbooth operators like AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner or Comcast. Customers may still reach your virtual storefront, but they will have stalled and hit potholes before crossing your digital threshold.

This old dog wears a new digital collar: In 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a telegraph company is a “common carrier” and obligated to provide non-discriminatory service to anyone who asks. Today’s Internet version of common carriage is Net Neutrality.

What’s In Net Neutrality for You?
This payment for special treatment (not being slowed or blocked) would be called “paying the vig” in a TV episode of The Sopranos. The telecom lobby calls it the “cost of doing business” or “the price of heavier data demands on networks.” What the National Cable & Telecommunications Association counted on is people not paying attention because the issue is “too complex.”

Apologies to readers who find the above too simplistic. For details, go to Net Neutrality sites at Common Cause < www.commoncause.org/NetNeutrality/ > and Save the Internet < www.savetheinternet.com/=faq >. For the other side, check NCTA’s site at
< www.ncta.com/IssueBrief.aspx?contentId=2715 > . Detail wonks can check “Broadband Internet Regulation and Access” at < www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22444.pdf >.

One thing online commerce free enterprisers can do is support Net Neutrality, especially to their U.S. senators. Legislation to make the FCC enforce Net Neutrality failed in both houses in 2006, in a vote that fell along party lines. However, advocates in the Senate left open voting on a bigger telecom bill; and largely anti-Net Neutrality Republicans lost control of Congress in November 2006. The vote is coming back.

Congress hears from lobbyists on why commercial Internet tollbooths are needed.

Congress also needs to hear from e-Commerce entrepreneurs who don’t have deep pockets or revenues of an eBay, Google or Fortune 1000 company. They need to hear from marketers like you; that is, once you stomp out that daily brush fire.

Back in the day, magazine publications and other service providers were perceived as the enemy of the trade show producer, and the publisher felt the same about trade shows.  The belief was that the clients—advertisers for magazines and exhibitors for trade shows—would choose either an ad or a booth.  It was a zero sum game.  However, research conducted over the past few years has proven otherwise. The client wants an integrated marketing program that will sell the most product.  The savvy media company provides the optimum combination of print ads, trade show exposure, direct mail, Internet ads and whatever else the client wants.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for service providers such as magazine and Website publishers to man up and attend these trade shows.  Do you hear that, service providers?  When it comes to promoting a trade show-publication joint effort, you’ll find that your goals aren’t that different from those of your clients—attracting the attention of your combined client/prospect base.

As service providers there are many benefits to participating in tradeshows.  In reality service providers (like magazines and other publications) and trade shows are ideal partners:

1. The magazine has the credibility in the market and is in front of the audience (advertisers and readers) year-round. The editorial pages validate the show and in some cases can even create it.

2. The magazine can provide to the trade show all the key elements for success: the
attendees (subscribers), the exhibitors (advertisers), and the conference (editorial).  The
show is like a 3D version of the magazine: The editorial is the conference, the advertisers are the exhibitors, and the readers are the attendees.

3. The magazine provides no-cost/low-cost attendance promotion via print ads and access to its subscriber database.

4. The trade show provides the magazine with a brand extension in the form of a live event.

5. The trade show gives the magazine a concrete location to gather its two customers
(readers and advertisers).

6. The pre-show, show and post-show issues of the magazine can be the largest of the year (in ad pages) if the event is effectively integrated into the magazine’s editorial calendar.

7. A trade show can provide profit margins that are 50 to 100% higher than a magazine, when done correctly.

Additionally, it’s a smart move to attend the trade shows because it shows a real commitment to your customers.  In fact, customers should be weary of service providers that don’t attend trade shows.  (We won’t give any names, but you know who you are.)  We’d like to see you at the next one, and so would your customers.  Furthermore, I’d like to personally thank all of the publishers that do attend the trade shows.  Kudos to publishers like Top Ten Wholesale, Closeout News, Sumner Communications, Wholesale Source and Forum Publishing.  Your commitment is greatly appreciated.  See you in a couple of weeks.

Vertical search, which has steadily gained user traction over the past few years, is about to explode.  Jupiter Research predicted two years ago that vertical search would drive industry growth and so far they’re pretty right on.  Outsell conducted a study just last year titled “Vertical Search Delivers What Big Search Engines Miss” which reinforced Jupiter’s claim that vertical search engines (VSEs) have a huge potential for growth due in large part to user dissatisfaction with the big guys, i.e. Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

As marketers, you’re much better off spending your ad dollars advertising on VSEs rather than on the broad-based search engines for several reasons, the three biggest being 1) the difference in advertising costs, 2) the difference in the types of traffickers that click through, and 3) the interactivity they offer.  Advertising on VSEs is sure to boost your return on investment (ROI).  Let’s take a closer look at what VSEs have to offer versus the other guys.

Advertising on VSEs is Cost Effective

According to Sapna Satagopan, a research associate over at Jupiter Research, “Increasing competition and rising keyword prices should motivate search marketers to look for newer, viable opportunities to diversify their incoming traffic.”  Google currently gets approximately 97% of its revenue from paid search, but the competition for certain keywords is so fierce that prices are being driven sky-high, far beyond the reach of most small advertisers.  The result is that many advertisers are being completely priced out of the market, a gargantuan mistake on Google’s end since they’re missing out on a huge opportunity to cater to these small and mid-sized businesses. 

That is where VSEs come in.  Because they’re smaller and more specialized, keyword competition isn’t nearly as cutthroat and your ad dollars have the potential to stretch much further.  Marketers can expect much higher clickthroughs and conversions on their search ads and a higher ROI on their marketing campaigns to boot.

Quality, Not Quantity

While VSEs don’t generate the massive amounts of traffic that the general engines can deliver, they can still increase your click-to-sale ratios.  This is because verticals are highly specialized and cater to niche-audiences.  They are industry-specific.  What this means for you is that you’ll be reaching a much more targeted audience.  People conducting searches on verticals are typically in “hunt mode” meaning that they’re likely to be somewhere in the buying cycle.  For example, a user searching for vehicles on Edmunds.com, an automobile vertical, is probably considerably more serious about buying a car than say someone on Google. 

Additionally, keywords specific to certain industries will yield much more relevant results on VSEs as opposed to the general engines.  The broad-based engines are so enormous with all of the universal information they’re fit to index that many search queries yield meaningless results.  Their Web crawlers must discern what’s relevant for millions upon millions of websites, so it’s simply not possible for a certain keyword to give every person exactly what they’re looking for.  Not so on VSEs.  VSEs use customized algorithms and search strings sending spiders out to highly refined databases where indexes contain information about very specific topics.  On VSEs, your customers will find you right away, and more relevant clickthroughs lead to higher conversion rates which will ultimately increase your click-to-sale ratio.

VSEs Are Interactive!

Not only is it much cheaper to advertise to more targeted traffic on verticals, it’s also more interactive.  As I mentioned earlier, verticals are industry-specific so information is usually focused on only one industry.  They’re typically run by a team of highly specialized professionals so these people are experts on the topics within their niches and are able to offer relevant information and content. 

Verticals also offer many enhanced services that the general engines don’t offer such as editorials, blogs, and banners to name but a few.  With banner ad programs you as the advertiser can request custom positioning for your banners because most verticals will go out of their way to please their customers.  Also, most verticals place direct links to their clients’ sites which gives advertisers an SEO edge because search engines can now associate the advertiser’s site with a highly ranked VSE.  Without direct links such as these, search engine spiders might never find some sites.

Because verticals are usually smaller and more versatile, they can accommodate client requests far more quickly and efficiently.  They are better suited to adapting quickly to changing market conditions and industry trends.  Additionally, VSEs cover issues related to specific topics or industries and can enable customers to blog on their sites.  This not only encourages industry participation but also contributes much needed keyword-rich content, a must for marketers who want their sites found by search spiders.  Some verticals even hire professional writers to add industry related content, a major SEO benefit. 

In conclusion, advertising with vertical search engines is a smart and effective way to give your ROI a boost.  Not only do they put your company in front of targeted B2B traffic, they also provide other interactive ways for your company to network and grow.  They may not be as mainstream as Google or Yahoo!, but they’re certainly on the right track.

OK, so 99% of ad agencies are probably good and have nothing but the best intention. But, get a load of this one!

We recently picked up a new client ( whom a salesperson had contact with for many months, but the account was brought in this week to us by their agency). Shortly after receiving the order for the client ( we wont use any names for now), their agency calls us back up ans say that they “have a lot of international wholesale clients and would like to bring us more business”….OK, great. Obviously, this agency sees our network as a credible place to spend their clients funds where a reasonable ROI can be achieved…..Errrrr……..Not the case…

Here is what happened next. After commending our services, this agency states that he’d like ( yes, small agency) to be listed in a few of categories and doesn’t believe he should pay for it. He also stated that if we didn’t list him, he wouldn’t advocate our network of over 30,000 buyers to his clients. Since we refuse to sell our souls to the devil ( and operate on policy of HIP- Honesty Integrity Professionalism) his request was denied and he was more or less told to go and pound sand.

This scares me, for many reason. An agency should always have their clients best interests at hand. Agencies that operate like that are nothing but fly-byes laundering their clients budget to achieve their own goals with no concern for their clients marketing initiatives. Buyer beware! Here a few tips to avoid a crooked agency:

1. Get references….And call them!
2. Inquire as to how much work the agency has done in your industry.
3. Meet the people! A handshake and eye contact go a long way.
4. Ask for case studies and white papers the agency has put out.
5. Check the BBB for complaints.
6. Is the agency too concerned about money issues? Most agencies want to get that out the way real quick and don’t want to appear invoice happy. They work because they love what they do.
7. Get documentation, insertions, monthly statements, and quotes before any job is started or when any job is finished.
8. Be involved. Your feedback is everything.Have market research prepared and if your agency doesn’t recommend a certain media you are sure of…Ask why!!!

Again, most agencies are good. I’ve used many agencies and contractors in the past. Most good, some bad. Be careful. Be cautious. Going that route is not cheap, and it’s always best to have assurance that the agency you pick is being help to a level of accountability that can foster a profitable relationship. For the Crook we mention earlier, we only hope that you see the light and learn how to conduct business with H.I.P!!

Jason

ps- Here is a copy of the VERY prefoessional email that our sales person sent to this agency:
Hi William,

I am very confused to why we are not moving forward with ** Trading’s
account. Is the only reason because we do not have the type of referral
program that will benefit *O Info? You need to unde