Recently you might have noticed that some of the sponsored results on Google searches feature a small strip showing Yelp reviews on sponsored link ads. This appears to be a new feature that Google is testing out on some AdWords ads.

Users are given the option of clicking the regular ad that directs the user to the advertisers web site or they can click the Yelp link that directs the user to the advertisers Yelp page. If the user clicks the Yelp link the advertisers is not charged for the click-through.

This is most likely a Google experiment that is close related to Googles current desire to acquire Yelp. Google has been pushing to develop their own local map feature with stronger ratings and information that rivals Yelps network. We will see if Google continues this practice and makes it a permanent feature in returned sponsored links.

Users currently don’t have any control over when or how their ad shows Yelp reviews or if they even show reviews at all. Google chooses at their own desecration to integrate Yelp reviews with ads on a semi random basis. From my observation Google will only show Yelp reviews in your advertisement if your business has a critical mass of 5 star ratings or ratings in general.

We will see if Google continues the practice encouraging more Google advertisers to build their Yelp reviews so that their Google Ads are more attractive. This will be an interesting new addition to advertising optimization on the Google ad network.

Google Search Showing Yelp Reviews in Sponsored Results

Tags: Google, Sponsored Links, Yelp.

Today I was returning home from a client meeting when my girlfriend called and asked if I could pick her up some frozen yogurt on my way home. She had just had her wisdom teeth pulled so she was craving a cold and soft treat.

Not being familiar with the immediate area I decide to pull out my new Google Android phone and utilize the built in map search feature. I found the closest frozen yogurt shop on the map and traveled over there.

Later I found out that there was a Yogurtland shop 2 miles from my location I had driven 7 miles out of my way to visit the yogurt shop I found using the Google local map search. Yogurtlands failure to list their location on Google resulted in them missing out my sale.

The point is that in our search based society empowered by the blossoming of mobile technology it has become paramount to establish your business on local search maps. Small businesses cannot afford to forgo customers who are in their direct proximity as in the example of the yogurt shop.

Currently the Google Map reigns supreme and the listing process is relatively painless.

Go online today and see if your business is listed on the local search map in the appropriate category. If your business is present use the claim your listing feature to verify the listing and add additional information. If your business is not present follow the steps below to get your business location online.

- 1. Visit google.com/lbc Create a Google account if you don’t have one, or sign in with your account.

- 2. Enter information about your business, including address & phone, hours & more: You can even add photos of your business and coupons.

- 3. Verify that you own or run the business: Follow the instructions and enter a PIN code when you receive it, to complete the process.

- 4. Now you’re all set. You can log in daily to see how your business listing performs on Google, including how many times people found it, and what actions they took.

To get started today, visit the Local Business Center.

Tags: Google Maps, Local Business Listing.

There was a time for small business when you purchased some yellow page advertising, got a phone and you were in business. But more so now than ever the yellow pages have become an antiquated advertising dinosaur.

Search marketing is quickly becoming the new standard, replacing the yellow pages as the go-to place for consumer searches. Lead by the tech savvy younger generations, consumers know that a quick trip to a search engine will yield quicker more relevant results for a local pizza parlor, a roofer, an auto body shop, or a web designer. Google leads the way as the yellow page killer simply by building a better form of search.

Search marketing has improved the process for both the consumer and the marketer. From a marketer’s perspective, search engines have effectively killed the yellow pages by out-performing them in three unique areas.

Analytics: Search marketing is much more appealing to metric hungry marketers. Search marketing provides rich, in-depth analytics. You can get traffic information, conversion rates, impressions, clicks, bounce rates and more. And now with the new Google Local Business Center, marketers and small business owners can get detailed stats outlining crucial metrics. Yellow pages provide zero metrics. The only way you can track your success is through inbound phone calls.

Flexibility: Search marketing with pay-per-click gives you the ability to modify your ads on the fly. You can quickly respond to competitive pressure and you can continually improve the performance and position of your ad using the built-in analytics. Unlike the yellow pages, which require you to sign a one-year contract, you can use ad words at your disposal.

Control: With search marketing, you direct the consumers to the relevant content you want them to view. You can present different messages and ad copy using multiple ad versions. You are able to use landing pages to convert leads. In short, your ad is more than just a piece of paper; it is a dynamic, informative portal leading to more information that aids in the selling process.

Despite all the up sides to search marketing, I continually come across small businesses and clients who rely too heavily on the yellow pages. Many small businesses still make the yellow pages a substantial portion of their yearly marketing budget. The yellow pages continue to be a huge industry. According to Simba Information, the “U.S. yellow pages revenue is expected to total $16.54 billion in 2009. ″

Like many things in business, our marketing expenses are often institutionalized and remain in use even when better alternatives exist. Take a good look at your marketing budget and see if you can put your yellow page spending in a better place. My recommendation is to reduce or eliminate your yellow page spending, opting instead for ad word search marketing and a continual search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. Search marketing will likely give your small business more bang for your buck.

Tags: bye, bye yellow pages, google ad words, search marketing, yellow book.

Marketers often draw comparisons to the competitors of their products or services in marketing collateral and advertisements. This is a common tactic used to differentiate your company’s brand in the market place. Demonstrating your product’s unique characteristics through comparison is often a very effective tactic, but it must be used with caution.

Comparative marketing is best used when the competitor you are comparing against controls a large market share and has strong brand association. This strategy works well for new market entries and developing companies.

If your brand or company is well established you should use extreme caution when engaging in comparative marketing tactics. By comparing your product or service to that of a competitor you are vindicating the legitimacy of the brand you are comparing to.

By using comparison advertising you will be passing on validation that your competitor’s product is indeed a substitute for your offering, thereby communicating that the competitor is indeed a comparable competitor in the eyes of the consumer.

When you carefully use comparative advertising you are effectively calling out your competitor into to a battle of product vs. product.

If you are a smaller brand calling out a larger competitor in the market place it is often desirable to provoke your competitor to respond to your claims. When you call out a larger competitor and they respond to your advertisement or claim it adds validation to your message. In this scenario, your brand is able to derive some value through the interaction with a larger competitor who has more brand equity.

Because of this occurrence, established brands will often refrain from engaging in the competitive nature of the “Call Out”. These established brands have nothing to gain from participating in comparative marketing campaigns, since their brands are already perceived to be superior in the market place.

Occasionally the established brand will respond. When an emerging brand issues a challenge it can draw some attention to their offering but at the same time it opens them up to having their perceived “weaknesses” attacked by the party they are challenging.

Recently Audi has been attempting to maneuver themselves into the elite class of luxury cars currently held by BMW, Mercedes, and the newcomer, Lexus. But blunder after blunder and inconsistency on behalf of Audi’s brand marketers have stunted the company’s growth in the American market.

The latest attempt by Audi in a billboard advertisement featured in Santa Monica, California is a perfect example of how “calling out your competitors” can backfire on you.

In the advertising battle between BMW and Audi, Audi challenges BMW stating “Your move, BMW”. BMW casually and wittily responds to Audi’s ad with the snide remark “Checkmate.” In this clever advertisement BMW implies, “We are better than you and the market place already knows this, and that is why you are attempting to challenge us.” Touché!

Go see the ad on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Beverly Glen Blvd in Los Angeles, CA.

Congratulations to BMW and Juggernaut Advertising for a quick and witty response to Audi’s challenge. This was a perfectly executed rebuttal from a well-established brand in the marketplace.

Tags: BMW V. Audi, Outdoor Advertising.

Outdoor advertising needs to catch our attention to be effective. It aims to reach a captive audience by interrupting the natural environment and catching our attention. Nothing catches our attention while driving like those pesky little speed bumps.

Well with McDonald’s new outdoor campaign by DDB New Zealand promoting the new McDonald’s Shaker Fries you get just that advertising on speed bumps. This clever campaign attempts to capture your attention as you pass through the drive thru. The campaign attempts to associate the shaking sensation created by the speed bumps with the new Shaker Fries.

The idea is that this will trigger our natural sub conscious impulsive feelings and encourage the viewer to go ahead and try those delicious shaker fries.

This is an interesting idea to boost average ticket spend and promote a new product. But I would be a bit cautious of tying a campaign to an impediment that at most is a nuisance to the driver. These bumps might catch your attention but they are probably more likely to frustrate you than motivate you.

This is a creative idea and it will be interesting to see if they apply it in larger markets. I am sure that in the future we will see more ads transposed on speed bumps.

.

The “cheap chic” marketing machine of target has come out with a novel idea for this holiday season. Instead of just giving a thoughtless gift card how about giving a gift card that is a gift it’s self! Sound confusing?

Target recently introduced the new Target Digital Camera Gift Card ($50-$1000). This is the Hybrid of the retail world. The gift card features a 1.2 mega pixel camera that holds 50 pictures. The camera / card comes with a USB cord, driver disc and voucher for 40 free prints at Target.

The gift card works the same as all other gift cards you chose how much store credit you want to load on to the card ranging from $50 to $1,000 of store credit.

This is a great idea to help spark lagging retail sales during the holiday season. The camera is fairly useless but it offers a fun cool factor that is sure to attract attention to the otherwise boring gift card.

From a marketing standpoint this move makes a lot of sense for the retail chain.

1.) It is a novel concept that is sure to attract attention and excitement.

2.) Encourages shoppers to purchase gift cards and it will also entice gift card purchasers to up their spend to a minimum of $50 so they can get the camera.

3.) It empowers the lazy gift givers, it is a simple holiday gift solution that keeps the giver from looking like a thoughtless shopper.

4.) It is cool ideas that will attract lots of word of mouth and positions target as a hip creative innovator in their market further differentiating Target in the minds of consumers from the relic Wal-Mart. This is a strong move since Wal-Mart has attempted to re-energize their brand with a more positive, youthful look. Their new logo looks remarkably similar to Targets. And their new tagline: Save money. Live better seems inspired by Targets tagline: Expect more. Pay less.

We will see if this gift card campaign is successful as we approach the holidays.

But it feels like this trend of incorporating utility into gift cards is going to carry on. I could see a company like Apple jumping on this trend with an IPod gift card hybrid. With the high priced items in an apple store they could justify the cost of a music playing gift card. With a minimum spend starting at $300 dollars or so.

I am sure Jobs is already on this and if not Steve better give me a shout out on this one!

Tags: Apple, Digital Camera Gift Card, Retail Sales, Target one ups Wal-Mart, Targets New Gift Card.

Days after the monumental election of Barack Obama I am still struck by the power of his words and the vision of a better America he has created. As marketers there is something we can learn from Obama and his campaign. Obama a little know junior Senator just two years ago has transformed into the symbol of change and progress for the United States and I argue the world. This did not happen by accident, or over night.

Obama’s 22-month campaign has set a new standard for the effective use of media and advertising to create a lasting and differentiated brand. The Obama brand has been perfectly honed and shaped into a winning presidential candidate.

This was a brilliantly composed fully integrated marketing campaign that will serve as a new standard for all campaigns to come. Every component was successful in creating the perfect mood and brand image to help Obama succeed. Obama executed speech after speech and debate after debate with grace and charisma; I have never seen a president use the camera so effectively.

Many would argue that $426.9 million in record campaign expenditures cant hurt. But there are many aspects that helped set Obama’s campaign apart.

The Obama campaign was the first campaign to effectively tap into social media and the Internet to communicate with young voters. These young voters came out in record numbers. From Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to many other social media sites the Obama campaign was able to effectively open dialogue with crucial voters and rally support. The Obama campaign tastefully used viral media components remember“I Got a Crush…On Obama” and they where very successful in utilizing bloggers to spread the Obama message to select groups.

The over all result is a perfectly differentiated, consistent and authentic campaign message that touched the heart and mind’s of 64 million voters who voiced their opinion to elect barrack Obama the 44th president of the United States of America.

This is a truly inspiring election and a beautiful orchestration of marketing effectiveness.

Tags: Change, Obama, Presidential Election.

MySpace is targeting small business with this week’s release of MyAds a low-cost do-it-yourself advertising tool. MyAds allows small businesses to target the social networking giants 122 million users worldwide.

Users of MyAds will be able to create their own banner ads to display in targeted marketing campaigns ranging in price from $25 to $10,000 dollars.

Ads will be targeted at MySpace viewers based on the selected target audience of your choice, markets are segmented based on age, sex, location and the expressed interests of MySpace users.

MyAds provides a simple process, you design your ads using pre-made templates, select the campaigns target audiences, designate a budget, and plan a display schedule and you are done. You can then track the performance of your campaign on MyAds using real time-analytics.

So what does this mean for small businesses?

Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing at MySpace feels that “MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream-providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market,”

MySpace is a very tantalizing advertising platform that will give small business the ability to connect with specific niche markets easily and effectively. MyAds could make a good addition to your current on-line marketing mix.

MySpace MyAds

Tags: MyAds, MySpace, On-line Media.

Recent negotiations between Yahoo and Goggle have lead to a pending partnership. Yahoo will now host Google adwords within its own search engine.

Yahoo will continue to display its own paid search advertisements right next to Google’s ads. An interesting juxtaposition that is sure to cause some initial confusion.

A statement released by Yahoo estimates that the union would bring in an additional $800 million in ad revenue annually. Google and Yahoo will share the revenue generated from the partnership, which is estimated to produce $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow for Yahoo in year one.

This partnership is sure to increase Google’s preeminence in the search advertising market while increasing the reach of Google’s brand. Google already has a similar ad agreement with AOL and Ask.com.

A Yahoo/Google ad merger has some interesting implications for search marketers. The reach of Google adwords will be greatly increased and the possibilities for reaching new market segments all in one application is a nice benefit, but all of this is going to come with a cost. The pay per click and pay per impression cost of ads will increase due to the rising demand for Google’s ad services.

This move comes at an opportune time for both companies. With the current financial crisis and rapidly declining stock values both companies are sure to benefit from the increased cash flow. But this move is especially important for Yahoo because it will help Yahoo retain their current customer base and help revive the declining usage of Yahoo’s SERP (search engine results page) and allow them to survive in the market place with out a Microsoft buyout.

Anti-trust concerns have been waged. However, most analysts contend that the deal will withstand regulatory inspection. Until committee approval is reached Yahoo and Google have voluntarily delayed the agreement.

I guess in the end sharing is caring. 

Tags: Adwords, Google, Merger, search marketing, Yahoo.

When this month’s issue of Esquire arrived in my mailbox the cover didn’t Immediately grab my attention, it felt like a predictable modern cover design. However as I read through the issue something caught my attention. It turns out that the cover was designed to be printed using a revolutionary new feature “Electronic Ink”.”.

Electronic Ink? Yes Electronic ink!

A limited number of Esquire’s 75th Anniversary issue will feature an experimental cover that is printed with electronic ink. The electronic ink cover displays moving words and flashing images all on a paper-thin sheet know as “e-paper”. 

Esquire is the first publication to utilize this ground breaking technology that is sure to change the way we view and read paper magazines in the future.

The technology for “E-Ink’ has been around for over 7 years but until now the logistics and cost of using it for print media have been to high. We are still a few years off before we start seeing “E-Ink” on newsstands but this initial move is very exciting.

From a graphic design and marketing stand point electronic ink opens up a whole new avenue of design and message flexibility. This application would allow advertisers to provide customized adds to specific consumers quickly and easily. It would also give readers a chance to customize the content of their publication. No longer will we be forced to wade through irrelevant ads and content. Or at the least bad adds will be in bright flashing “E-Ink”.

The future applications are endless but until the cost of “E-ink” comes down we are still left to dream.

Check out a video featuring the cover! Esquire\’s E-Ink Video 

Tags: Electronic Ink, Esquire, New Media.