Archive for 2009

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Google Maps Search Results

August 14, 2009

I have noticed in my Google Local Business Center stats, my primary marketing site MarketngPrinciples.com receives a lot of generic search queries from across the US each month.

After seeing some of the keyword phrases my site is placing for in Google Maps, I decided to to try and replicate the same search results from different parts of the US while on a summer road trip.

I cleared my cookies and ran the searches from a classic Google home page without logging into my Google account.

To verify the authenticity of the Google Maps search results my Local Business Center stats showed my site recieving, I also ran the same keyword search queries from my son’s laptop.

Somewhat surprisingly, my business “Advanced Marketing Consultants” places first for more than a handful of what would otherwise be considered valuable search queries.

Results like the number one result out of 287,034 for “marketing consultants” below also explain why my Google Local Business Center analytics report at least once a month fielding driving direction searches from locations as far away as one hundred miles from my office location.

Google Maps Search

Google Maps Search

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Posted in Advanced Marketing Consultants, Analytics, Google Local Business Center, Google Maps, Google Maps Search, Marketing Consultants | Leave a Comment »

Brand Sponsorship Change Costs

August 13, 2009

Today I visited the Sears Tower in Chicago to try out the new Chicago SkyDeck.

Actually, I visited the Willis Tower which was once called the Sears Tower.

A tour guide said the Willis Company bought three floors of the Tower and negotiated naming rights for the tower as part of their purchase.

While touring the observation deck, I also learned the tower will soon be repainted gray to reduce energy consumption and costs.

How would a company go about assigning a value to acquiring sponsorship / naming rights to one of America’s most recognized landmarks?

How could the company for which the tower was named justify allowing their brand sponsorship rights to expire?

These questions aside – today while asking my hotel’s concierge about a tour of the tower, I asked for details about the Sears Tower because I wasn’t able to recall the tower’s new name.

After the concierge answered my tour questions, I then asked for the new name of the tower.

Once he told me Willis Tower, I then asked him how long he thought it would be before the general public would embrace the new towers namesake let alone the locals.

He replied, he thought locals would always refer to the tower as Sears Tower.

The concierge wasn’t able to predict when tourists or the general public would forget the tower’s original name and call it by its new name.

I am not sure how either Willis or Sears justified their brand sponsorship change costs, but I am pretty sure theirs will eventually become a case study for appraising and valuing the costs of changing brand sponsorship.

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Posted in Brand Sponsorship, Sears Tower, Skydeck, Willis Tower | Leave a Comment »

US Highway Construction Updates on Google Maps

August 12, 2009

If you came here looking for US Highway construction updates on Google Maps, I don’t think that particular mashup has yet been created.

I am traveling from Lake le Homme Dieu, MN to Chicago, IL by car today and searched for an up to date map – ideally on Google Maps – of the construction zones I will encounter along the way.

Lake le Homme Dieu to Chicago Road Map

Lake le Homme Dieu to Chicago Road Map

The US Department of Transportation has a National Traffic and Road Closure site that links to each individual states traffic information sites.

National Traffic and Road Closure Information

National Traffic and Road Closure Information

However, each respective state and local road construction updates data hasn’t yet been mashed up into a real time Google US Highway Construction Updates Map.

There is probably a business model in this idea.

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Posted in Google Maps | Leave a Comment »

Corporate Speak or Customer Speak?

August 11, 2009

Over the last several days, I have encountered several examples of corporate speak – language used by a service provider that in my opinion was different from the language their customers would have used had the customers been given the opportunity.

I checked into a hotel in Kansas City two nights ago and after checking in called the front desk to inquire about getting a larger room.

The front desk then told me if I wanted a larger room that I would have to pay an “upsell charge” of $50.00.

What?

I want to buy more of your products – ABC Hotel chain – but first I must buy a $50 “upsell charge” to get the larger room?

What corporate marketer instituted this particular customer service strategy and term across their hotel properties world wide?

What made them think the term uspell could be used to induce their captive audience to buy into their “uspelling” process?

Salesmanship in general raises prospects defenses – telling them your a selling let alone upselling them – only raises their defenses more so – and causes prospects to reject offers.

I didn’t buy the larger room because the ABC Hotel chain and I didn’t speak the same language – or share one  (Lingua Franca).

Are you speaking your language or are you speaking your customers language?

What is your market’s Lingua Franca?

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Posted in Corporate Speak, Customer Speak, Upsell | Leave a Comment »

Innovation: A New Dimension of Performance

August 10, 2009

While traveling across the country, I have begun considering what constitutes innovation.

Years ago, I read a quote from Peter Drucker regarding innovation where he defined innovation as “a new dimension of performance.”

While thinking about new products that successfully entered or disrupted markets, they all seem to have shared Drucker’s definition of innovation – a new dimension of performance.

What new product or service can hope to succeed ie., penetrate and serve a market let alone profit from it – without first having met his “new dimension of performance” definition?

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Posted in Innovation, New Product, Performance | Leave a Comment »

Where Google Is Headed

August 9, 2009

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was recently interviewed by BusinessWeek about the future of Google.

The following is an excerpt from the BusinessWeek interview:

Maria Bartiromo

Where is the growth coming from in the next 5 or 10 years for Google? Is it more search opportunities? Is it mobility?

Eric E. Schmidt

Probably a combination. It’s obvious that the highest growth is in our core business as we get better and better at targeted ads, and those ads become more valuable. Our whole theory about advertising is that an advertisement that’s not targeted—just a random ad that you just walk by—is a waste of somebody’s money because you’re not going to buy. It wasn’t relevant to you.

Aren’t there three times as many phones out there as there are PCs now?
More than that. The rough number of PCs is around 800 million; the rough number of mobile phones is on the order of 3 billion. Even more important, the growth rate of mobile phones is quite a bit higher than that of personal computers. There’s an estimate of about 600 million mobile phones that are data- and Internet-capable. And that is the group that we really care about because those are the ones that are able to run powerful browsers. This was all kicked off by the iPhone. The iPhone sort of showed what you can do with a very powerful browser. Now there are many new kinds of devices with powerful browsers where you can have very high-quality ads, new applications, and, of course, the phone.

So how do you get to the next step in the mobile business? Do you need to partner with other companies to make sure that the speed is there, that the connectivity is there?
We’re doing that with our telecommunications partners. We actually share in the revenue for the ads that show up on the phones. So the advertiser pays us, and then we share it, literally, with the handset and mobile operator. And often we divide between both. And that seems to be the only way to really get money into that system. It’s very, very important that the telecom operators have enough capital to continue the build-outs of the so-called 3G and 4G networks.

What are the biggest challenges the mobile Web presents?
Let’s start with the fact that the phones are not fast, the networks are not as capable, the ad formats are not standardized. But on the other hand it’s very, very important to solve those problems because a phone is very personal. And so if we know a fair amount about a person, with their permission we can target a useful ad—you know, “It’s Eric. You had a hamburger yesterday, do you want pizza today? There’s a pizza store on the right.” That kind of ad is likely worth a lot of money to an advertiser because it will generate a sale.

In other words, you send a message to the person’s cell phone, saying: “Look, we know you had a burger yesterday. If you want pizza today, just go around the block”?
Right. It may sound creepy, but it might also be quite valuable. People could use advice as to what to eat and where the food is—and of course you can turn it off. So the important thing here is advertising that has value to the person is advertising that is a valuable business. That’s the business we’re in.

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Posted in Google, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search | Leave a Comment »

New Adwords Interface Webinars

August 8, 2009

Learn the new AdWords interface from from the Google team that built it.

Final Adwords Interface Webinar

Final Adwords Interface Webinar

Ariel Bardin, Product Management Director for the new AdWords interface will host a final instructional webinar on August 20, 2009 At 9:30 PDT.

Webinar attendees will learn how to manage their accounts using the new interface and how to make use of the new features.

Bardin will close the webinar with a Q&A session where Adwords users can get their questions answered by the new AdWords interface team.

Participants can submit in advance the questions they would like most to have answered.

Ask a Google Adwords Question

Ask a Google Adwords Question

Webinar attendees can also vote for the questions already submitted they want to have answered.

Submit Adwords Questions

Submit Adwords Questions

With twelve days until the final New Adwords interface webinar, 226 people have submitted 94 questions and cast 830 votes.

Sign up here for the final Adwords interface webinar.

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Posted in Adwords, Google Adwords | 1 Comment »

Google Site Links Adds Images

August 7, 2009

Today while searching Google for pages indexed at one of my sites, I found images were included in Google’s results.

Google Site Search

Google Site Search

There were also play buttons with each image although they were no videos archived – just static screen shots.

Do you have any idea how long images have been included in the site search results at Google?

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Posted in Google, Google Site Links, Google Site Search | Leave a Comment »

Twitter Down: Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS)

August 6, 2009

Twitter.com is offline and has been for several hours now.

The Twitter blog says the service has been under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.

Twitter DDOS Attack Outage

Twitter DDOS Attack Outage

40+ million people like myself from around the world have come to rely on Twitter.

Recently, I became concerned with Twitter’s ability to preserve let alone archive my Tweets so I set up my on rudimentary ReTweetings backup on my personal blog.

Why?

Because, if Twitter can’t keep their service up – how can I trust they will keep my Tweets preserved?

If Twitter hopes to become the “pulse of the planet” they will first need to figure out how to check and keep their own pulse beating.

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Posted in DDOS Attack, Denial of Service Attack, Pulse of the Planet, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

OpenStreetMap.org Wiki

August 5, 2009

OpenStreetMap.org is an open map wiki.

From OpenStreetMap.org:

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.

OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

OpenStreetMap Wiki

OpenStreetMap Wiki

Through Open Street Map Wiki, I learned my favorite London hotel – the Conrad International –  is now the London Grand Wyndham Hotel.

Open Street Map Wiki Wyndham Grand Hotel London

Open Street Map Wiki Wyndham Grand Hotel London

Google Maps show results for both hotels – the defunct Conrad International Chelsea Harbour – and its re-branded replacement the London Grand Wyndham Chelsea Harbour Hotel.

What are the implications if any of an Open Map wiki for business listings?

What are the implications if any for Google Maps or MapQuest?

What other types of facts could be open sourced through this type of wiki and would have value to the global internet audience?

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Posted in OpenStreetMap.org Wiki | Leave a Comment »

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