“Don't say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.” In his advice on storytelling, Mark Twain’s timeless wit and wisdom holds true in the discussion of online video. Thanks to advances in Internet technology and increased bandwidth over the last few years, online video has emerged as the fastest growing media platform with an estimated 72% of Web users watching online video clips. In the next three years, Web video consumption is projected to double. The message to marketers? Visitors expect a rich experience when they come to your site. As one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal, online video offers a wealth of opportunity for rich storytelling, differentiation, brand building and traffic-generation.

The resurgence of video in storytelling
In the 90’s, corporate capabilities videos were commonplace, but distribution was limited to VHS and DVD.
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On December 4, 2009, Google announced that they were rolling out personalized search to everyone, whether you are logged in or not. Your personalization will be based on your past 180 days of search activity, using information stored in an anonymous browser cookie.

Have you noticed personalization yet? If you are unsure, here’s how you can tell if your results are personalized or not. Note: Not all results are personalized.

I ran a Google search for “cars," and directly above the search results there is a link that says “View customizations.” This tells you that the results you are seeing are personalized. So far, I have only noticed the personalization on broad searches.

There are a couple ways to turn off personalization:
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I remember taking a journalism class back in college where the professor harped on using the same adjectives more than once in a story. He urged us to be more creative to come up with different adjectives, and would even dock points if we duplicated words. Since then, I’ve always had a thesaurus at my desk.

Admittedly, this was before today’s search engine revolution, with its emphasis on keywords. Now, instead of using a thesaurus to help write a press release we turn to the Keyword Tool on Google AdWords, which allows you to test keywords or phrases and see how often they are being searched. You don’t want to select words with poor search results.

This presents a dilemma for many writers who like to use their official company lingo, abbreviations, or even generic wording (e.g., the word
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Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, has been supported by a generous advertising budget and drawn some interest from a variety of sources. But how does it affect business-to-business?

Do we have to create new pages or even entirely new sites, as some have suggested?
We may not know the definitive answers for some time. But right now, it looks as if the answer is no.

Microsoft own position is that good content, appropriately coded, will do well in Bing.
Assuming then, that B2B marketers will not need to take extra programming or content steps to take advantage of Bing, how will B2B audiences react? Will they be lured away from Google by Bing’s nifty new features, including categorized search, quick tabs and related searches?
The jury is still out on that point.
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Ah yes, math. As a creative, my old nemesis and I have made up and become friends.

In this day and age, analytics is helping us understand our target audience like never before. Because we can measure—well, just about everything, we are able to see what is working, and what is not. Analytics is an essential part of ongoing improvement for everything we do at Godfrey. As an art director, I have to pay close attention to the feedback we receive (which often includes numbers and percentages) to understand what I need to change and improve on.

So, if you haven't embraced analytics, now is the time to introduce yourself and become the best of friends, because your new friend will help guide you to your end goal.

In addition, art directors and creative folks must have an understanding of search because the visual world is changing fast, in relationship to
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A recent article in emarketer cites a study of senior-level search engine marketing executives who are not satisfied with how SEM is working for them. How about you?

As you plan for 2010, you should consider techniques and tactics that will help you get more and better B2B search results - organic, paid or both. You probably think I'm going to talk about landing pages, page URLs, meta descriptions, inbound links and other arcane tips. Nope. I will leave that to my colleagues, or at least to another time.

Today I want to urge you to use the "secret weapon" that will increase your search engine marketing results. It's called integrated marketing communications. Yes, boring, traditional marcom. Except that there is nothing traditional about web-centric, digital marketing communications the way we practice it.
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Ah, yes, the joys of summer! Warm weather has finally arrived in the Northeast. It’s hard to believe that the calendar year is almost halfway gone.

Now is a perfect time for marketers to take stock of their business-to-business programs. After all, the economy is starting to rebound and certain sectors are once again showing signs of life. But the big question is, when will we finally turn the corner? I’m placing my bets on the first quarter of 2010. (Nothing scientific here; just a “gut” feeling.)

In anticipation of a turnaround, marketers should take a step back and put their b-to-b programs under the microscope. Here’s some advice:

1. Revisit your goals and objectives. Is your b-to-b program in line with the goals and objectives of your business? If not, it’s time to make some adjustments.

2. Assess your priorities.
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Summer has officially started, and while some companies have been taking a “vacation” from their marketing budgets due to the economy, the recovery is in sight according to a recent survey by BtoB Magazine.

If you have not been proactive in promoting your web site, and making sure it is optimized for search engines, now is the time, so that when your customers and prospects budgets open up, they can easily find you. Search Engine Optimization is not an overnight fix; when significant changes are made, it can take several months for the top search engines to effectively crawl and index your site. Nor is SEO a once and done project; it should be an ongoing priority as part of your marketing budget.

Here are some key questions to ask if your site is search engine optimized:
•    Can you find the site easily? Not
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What Search Can – and Can’t – Do

Our friends at Enquiro recently published an article making some cogent points about search. 

On the one hand, it’s exciting to see search, including SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) flourishing as a marketing option. On the other, it’s alarming to see so many people jumping into an admittedly-sturdy lifeboat in a raging sea.

Rather than seeing search as a marketing channel, Enquiro suggests, we should view it as a connector, connecting interested prospects and customers with your place in cyberspace.

A similar article in Ad Age compares search to trade or in-store promotion.
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B-to-B marketers are looking for the most efficient ways to use dwindling marketing dollars. As the economic situation worsens and marketing budget cuts continue, the tactics to survive are the ones that are highly measurable. And more importantly, show an ROI. It’s no surprise that search marketing and search engine optimization are still a part of b-to-b marketing plans.

In 2008, only online video ad spending grew faster than search. Recent reports show that search marketing spending is slowing, but still dominates marketing budgets. (U.S. search ad spending is predicted to grow 14.9% in 2009, compared with 21.4% in 2008.)

However, in this weakened economy, b-to-b markerters are still looking for ways to minimize their investment, even in search-related efforts.
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