For any online business, customer feedback and reviews of their product are essential to increasing quality and sales. Many businesses employ people full time to test products and request feedback from customers to analyze the product and see where there can be improvements, or worse case scenario, see where the flaws are.

Waiting around for customer feedback can be a lengthy process, though, and often a fickle one as many people only call customer service when they have something negative to say.

With Twitter’s purchase of Summize, a search engine that specifically crawls Twitter posts, business will (eventually) be able to get some real time feedback on their products and services.

I know that some advertising blogs are pretty ho-hum on this subject, with a few people saying that Twitter essential bought its own search engine, but I disagree with the blasé response. Let me explain why:

People talk. People Twitter. People talk and twitter about the new products and businesses that that purchase things from. People have these conversations at random, often a half sentence here and there. This is a huge difference from the type of specific posts on, say, a blog or a review site. Summize searches the twitter posts for conversational sentiments related to your specific search terms and analyzes them for positive, negative, or whatever sentiments.

Just think about it for a moment… if you could zero in on all of the casual conversations in the world that mention your product… wouldn’t that be a gold mine of insider information about your business?

David Szetela got my attention with a small blurb on PPC advertising.

Playing the PPC game without first taking the time to learn the fundamentals of advertising copywriting is like sitting down at the poker table with scant understanding of the rules, and proceeding to drop dollars into the pot while better-trained players scoop that money out.

Granted the gist of what he wrote is simple and those of us in the advertising business already know it, but I like the way he worded it. The reminder that businesses jumping into the PPC field without understanding it are throwing money away is an important factor. Yes, a correct PPC campaign can be financially rewarding, but if it is done without an understanding on of the process than you not only blow your advertising budget, you also throw away the time spent on that campaign. Time is something that no business really has, as each moment a competitor is striving to catch up to you and, chances are, they are doing it the right way. You can’t bluff your way through an Ad campaign.

Dave‘s article goes on to discuss both the art and the science of PPC advertising, saying that the science makes up to 90% of the PPC proficiency and financial efficiency.

This is an important item to remember because PPC is mostly about the analytics. Measurements, benchmarking, trends, algorithms, the correct PPC campaign uses it all to understand what your customers are searching for, how they are searching for it, and where they are buying it from..

If your company is going to spend the time and money to invest in a PPC advertising effort, make sure that you hire someone with expert knowledge in the field to avoid throwing your money away.

Some companies that hesitate to build an online marketing campaign do so because of a firm belief that if you have a quality product and service, people will find it and come to your site. While that is true in the most minimal way, the fact is that while you are relying solely on product, your competitors are relying on product and advertising.

If the best chef in the country is opening up a fabulous new restaurant in your local area, will you know it just because of the smell of wafting cuisine? Probably not. You will know about the restaurant opening because it was advertised. People saw the ads, got curious, and went to the restaurant. While there, they ordered. Luck favors those that tweak fate in their favor, plain and simple.

To make the most out of your local advertising budget, don’t be afraid to embrace both marketing and public relations. If you are opening a new local online business, you want people to know about it and show up. Just like the opening restaurant, you want to market the online business and get people to be curious, follow the links and come on in.

Whether you are marketing a local online business product, service, or facility, you need to advertise to let people know that you exist, that you are out there, and that you are ready for customers.

Don’t rely on search engines alone, look for a human factor to grow your online business.

Advertising companies have long cashed in on the voracious appetites of online gamers. Of course the ads are usually FOR the games that they are trying to sell, rather than ads for other products, but targeted to gamers.

Yahoo Games recently announced that they will expand their online gaming to include into ad-supported online game options by the end of the year.

Basically, Yahoo Games is expecting to offer ad-supported downloadable games by partnering with other online gaming partners such as Double Fusion and NeoEdge Networks. The partnership with these gaming communities will result in ads sold to display before and after the games, and occassionaly during. (During the game is not going to be all that popular, and probably result in a backlash from gamers.)

The problem that comes with this is gamers, the target audience, will be viewing a lot of these ads as interruptions and intrusions into their gaming activity. Resentment is NOT the kind of feeling that an advertiser should want to instill into customers.

Another way of looking into this (basically same) advertising ploy is to use ads as virtual gamer money. In essence, let the gamers pay for the game with their time. Ultramercial, LLC allows a gamer to pay for their game by watching an ad. Their attention to a 30 second spot pays their way to the game that they want.

This advertisement style will gain appreciation, not resentment, from the target group that the advertiser is focusing on.

Incidentally, Ultramercial, LLC is claiming a click-through rate of over 4% for sponsors’ ads. Appreciation goes a long way.

With all of the local online advertising techniques available to businesses, we expect those businesses to choose the strategy that works best for their model, their product, and their business culture.

In a frenzy of advertising budgets and end-of the-quarter-profit-margin-reports, some ad execs go off the deep end and choose the most obnoxious and hated strategies that end up costing, not making, their company money.

When it works, advertising is an integral part of a internet consumer’s web experience: As users surf their daily news, sports, entertainment and business associated sites, they encounter ads. Entire business sectors are invested in understanding how much traffic was driven to the sites advertised. They measure the traffic flow; analytics, metrics on click through rates and anonymous profiling are a part of business.

To the detriment of the advertising industry, for years studies ignored or just didn’t look for how ads affected users and therefore the traffic. How many sites lost viewers because of rude advertising techniques?

Here are some of the most rude, crude, obnoxious and customer alienating techniques used.

1. Pop-Ups
2. Pop-Unders
3. An ‘X’ close box that doesn’t close, it just sends you right to the site
4. Ads that move with your curser, forcing you to read it
5. Ads that occupy the entire page
6. Ads that blink
7. Ads that take too long to load and stall the entire page

It is entirely possible, and most likely probable, that you have alienated your customers if you have used techniques such as those above. Customers surveyed have said that they avoid sites with guerrilla advertising and view it as highly intrusive.

If your intention is to gain customers and sell a product or a service, don’t go the way of the rude, it will back fire on you.

Today is the day for Pegasus News’s launch of their iPhone App. The app will feature a host of events, restaurants, even garage sales that are all searchable by the hour and location.

What is it?

Pegasus News is a digital news source that features over 100 DFW neighborhoods and suburbs. We have the deepest local coverage of entertainment, events and news of any local media outlet in town, and all of this is customized for every individual user.

The app melds beautifully with the GPS enabled iPhone 3G to keep it’s users feeling like a vital part of their city’s life, in touch everywhere they go, the next point of interest only a click away. The phone knows where you are and the Pegasus News App can make recommendations based on your location. If it’s 7:30 in the morning you won’t have to deal with a recommendation for a bar that night…you’ll get recommendations for a great breakfast spot. I love the smell of well-timed advertising in the morning.

Pegasus is really going after local advertising opportunities. Their website shows that they are no-holds-barred for what they are willing to offer for local advertising:

• Display - Three different sizes of traditional banner ads placed on the site linking to advertisers’ site or business page on Pegasus News. The most common form of internet advertising.

• Direct Email - Weekly email message sent to users that can be sent to the entire database or custom segments.

• Mobile Edition / Text Messaging - Mobile version of the site with entertainment information and opportunity to text message users advertisements.

• Video - Video advertisements placed on the site.

• Audio / Video - Video and audio messages placed before or after Pegasus News generated content such as interviews and radio stations.

• Map Placements - Showcasing your neighborhood locations.

• Geo / Behaviorally Targeted - Target a specific group of people based on their location in the area or behavior within our site.

• Daypart / Time Sensitive - Like traditional broadcast media, you can daypart when your ads run without paying a premium daypart price.

• Contests & Promotions - Integral part of your marketing plan. We can implement and execute a customized contest or promotion just for you.

• Challenge Us! - You will never hear us say it can’t be done because we will always want to try. What can we do for you?

With the opportunity to for a local business to target the right customers at the right time, in the right location,they are looking at a great opportunity.

Until now, Local.com has been relying on third parties reviews of local businesses that turn up in its searches. Now that Local.com has launched it’s own review capability, its game on. Personally I always thought a little strange that a site that specializes in local search didn’t have its own review capability. After all, local businesses are highly review-driven, often having neither the name recognition of the big-box retailers or the advertising budget.

What Features are there? What are they offering?

The start up launch of the Local.com’s reviews offers a free basic listing to all businesses, in addition to its PPC ad product. The PPC ads are based on an auction model and are placed on SERPs depending on keyword and category.

As an added feature, they are also offering a “Local Featured Sponsor” option that guarantees your ad will be placed above the organic results. The LocalPromote product will align your add with the mapping section.

Local.com ratings and reviews section will allow users to create an account and enter ratings and reviews for any business listing that appears on the site. (Again, listing your business is free.) The site gives users the ability to enter comments and a rating, and also view past reviews that they have submitted previously.

There are some people who think that reviews are just added clutter for businesses online, but I can’t see myself firmly in that camp. Online reviews cannot and should not take the place of good product description and text, but they are a serious value add for any small business. Local.com did a smart thing by adding that capability to their well trafficked site.

Tony Dietrich posted an interesting blog about local advertising and infrastructure today called Advertising Pays for a Lot of Things… What Happens When the Ad Budget Dries Up in a Recession?

I loved the promise of the first paragraph of the article and how it set up questions, issues, solutions and possible market targets for me to think about.

Doing some research on the effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s, I started wondering what happened to advertising during that period.
Although I haven’t turned up any detailed studies, I took a look at the various archives of advertising that allow Internet access to their exhibits, and noted the general move to less expensive, more localized advertising, and fewer adverts for more expensive goods.

Now obviously everyone in the marketing business is feeling the results of the American Recession, heck, just about every business sector is feeling the pinch now. I thought it was great that Tony took the time to try and dig up some information about advertising during the Great Depression to try and forecast what kind of trends we are all going to be facing in the near future.

It’s a feature of the 1930s depression that countries and individuals became more and more localized in their habits and mentalities, concentrating on survival rather than expanding their horizons.

The article itself was more about what (might) happen to the infrastructure demand if a depression were to hit full on, but the sideline of local advertising is, to me, the juicy part.

As businesses begin to scale back on their advertising budgets as a whole, focusing on their local market will be wise choice. To do that though, they’re going to need the tools to do the analytics carefully enough to target the RIGHT market, at the RIGHT locations.

The ultimate prize for any local internet advertiser is a site with thousands of thousands of hit’s a day, with 90% of the incoming traffic voluntarily entering their zip code upon entry to the site. No scrapping for ISPs that can be highly unreliable to pinpoint a user’s exact location. No begging the user for a hint as to where they are located…just precise, immediate and voluntary giving of their zip code.

Internet Advertising gold, people, and it isn’t just a platinum-lined cloud in an ad-exec’s dream world, it’s real. What site is it? What is the URL of this ad-utopia?

Lean closer. We’ll whisper it.

The Weather Channel at www.weather.com. Heck, you’ve probably already gone there this morning to check the beach forecast. And did we mention that they have a healthy mobile traffic, too?

The weather channel has been overlooked by some advertising companies who mistakenly believe that only ‘weather nerds’ go there. That’s a mistake. Business people, housewives, sports fans…. The weather channel is a great common denominator across the advertising board. Everyone wants to know the weather, and the URL is the easiest thing in the world to remember. The catch is, to know your weather, you have to type in your zip code when you get there. Something that we all dutifully do.

At that point there are numerous ads from local businesses targeted to exactly that area, exactly that zip code.

Clickz.com reported on NBC’s buyout of the (previously) privately owned Weather Channel, which encompasses its TV, Online, ad Mobile businesses.

NBC Universal’s joint acquisition of The Weather Channel properties in conjunction with Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group will result in a stronger local online business for NBC. In addition to the dominant cable television network, The Weather Channel’s properties include its well-trafficked weather.com site and mobile offerings.

This is bold and intelligent move for NBC’s Local Advertising business and I expect to see it grow exponentially.

There was a post a while ago on a forum asking for SEO experts to apply for a job. In the body of the post was a terrifyingly beautiful sentence.

“SEOs with ethics need not apply.”

Wow. Simple. Direct. The company really went right for the jugular on that one; they didn’t even bother to conceal their black hat tactics under pretend white hats, instead they just put all their cards out there and asked for the sneakiest Ban-worthy SEO willing to make a buck.

I do not know about any of you, but I’m not sure I would want to work for a company like that. Honestly, do you think they will pay you? On time? Or is that another grey area, too? Being an SEO for an ad campaign like that can quickly ruin your online reputation, thereby discrediting your career in two online advertising realms at once.

But the ad did get me thinking about White Hat verses Black Hat SEO techniques, the good guy verses the bad guys and the grey stuff in between.

One of my favorite Matt Cutts quotes is from an interview given a few years ago:

Truthfully, much of the best SEO is common-sense: making sure that a site’s architecture is crawlable, coming up with useful content or services that has the words that people search for

That is the best SEO advice for any serious, reputable company.

AH Digital FX Studios wrote a post about White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO, and in the end said this:

SEO = Good Website Design. That’s it.

That statement is as simple and direct as the ‘job posting’ from my earlier quote, but the underlying meanings are worlds apart.

A negative review of your business or product is detrimental to your online reputation, but if it is managed correctly you can negate some of its worst impacts. When you find a negative review about your business, under no circumstances should you knee-jerk a reply defending your business. This can quickly devolve into a nasty thread of replies that will in perpetuity online, for anyone to read. You would not want have a heated argument in front of your customers in public, and make no mistake, an online post war is public indeed.

The best way to manage a negative online reputation slur is to take moment to collect yourself and then investigate the situation before your reply.

Your first course of investigating should of course revolve around the facts listed in the negative review.
Was the review about service? If it was, find out when, where, and who, and then interview that employee to understand what happened.
Was the review about a product? If it was, look into the product and the complaint to find out if that particular product had a flaw that caused an issue.

Whether or not you believe the negative review is substantiated, you need to look into the identity of the person who wrote it.

Who is the poster?
Are they connected to competitor?
What is there sphere of online influence?

If the negative review stands, because of a bad employee or a fault in the product, reply back that you have or are addressing the situation, and how. So many negative experiences can be turned into positive ones if the company takes the time to take action.

If the negative review is factually incorrect, ask for a removal or a retraction of the post, and explain why.

We have talked about one of the most important things for any business to manage, their online reputation. The ability to monitor what is being written about your business or products online is the key to keeping your business and product names out there in a positive light. A good review about your business can bring an onslaught of customers to your site and increase your product awareness, but that also means that one bad review can do just the opposite. It can challenge your business like nothing else, forcing your small business to overcome negative press in what was once a playing field reserved for only large businesses.

Monitoring your business’s online reputation, however, is only half the battle. It is very possible that you will find negative reviews and statements about your business that you will need to either refute or correct.

After you are actively monitoring your business’s online reputation, the vital part is to manage it.

When you find positive reviews about your business, don’t just sit back and congratulate yourself. Take the time to find out about the person who posted the review. Who are they? What is their sphere of influence in the online world? What did they like best about your business or product? If they mentioned any specific names of employees, take the time to thank that employee for a job well done.

When you have an employee that is really going above and beyond, your first order of business is to recognize them and make sure that you retain their services. You don’t want them heading off to a competitor.

We’ll look into dealing with negative issues related to online reputation management in our next post.

One challenging issue for businesses is the ability to monitor the ever-increasing reviews online. While at the outset this may seem to some as yet another online social media issue, the reality is that a business’s online reputation depends on how it is managed. Bad reviews are going to happen, but in oder to negate it’s impact, you have to know about it in the first place.

Reviews about a business can be anything from a one word deal, “The Oak Hotel – Sucks!” to a glowing or scathing three paragraph review that encompasses everything from dining to concierge service to room cleanliness. Believe me when I say that both reviews are going to matter to your business’s online reputation. It doesn’t matter if your business is being discussed on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Yelp, people will read it and your business will either soak in the glow of increased business or sit in the dark wondering where your customers went.

In order to manage your online reputation, you must monitor your business’s name and any derivations online. If you own The Oak Hotel in Boston, you would need to make sure you monitor phrases such as “Oak Hotel,” “The Oak Boston,” “Boston Oak Hotel,” “The Oak,” etc. You need to be completely up to date on mentions of your business whether it is in blogs, social forums, or travel sites.

By monitoring your business’s reputation, you’ll be getting a insider’s look on what customers think of your business, your products, and your employees.

Technorati Watchlist and Google alerts are two easy monitoring tools to help you look into what is being said about your business online.

Techdirt posted earlier this month to talk about the relatively underwhelming need for Powerset.

We never understood the hype around Powerset. It was the latest in an extremely long line of startups that claimed to focus on “natural language search” — which is one of those holy grails for computer scientists who never stop to ask whether or not there’s actually any market demand for it. As Google has shown, people don’t need to use natural language to search. They’re just fine doing keyword search. Yet, for some unclear reason, Powerset was able to raise a ton of money at a ridiculous valuation, and did so using all sorts of buzzwords (and vague patent threats). But when it finally released a product (just to search Wikipedia) it proved to be rather ho hum. Searching Wikipedia via other means was still more effective.

Many people consider that Natural language searching would only be useful in a two areas:
1. The Jitterbug phone demographic
2. College students caught in a space/time continuum 2 decades ago

The fact is, natural language searches have not become extinct, they have just evolved for the current market. The generations that grew up with an on the internet now think in terms of keywords when they are looking for information. The askjeeves.com search engine tried to go the way of Jeopardy by asking users to search in the form of a question. It turned out to be more difficult to change the innate way people learned to search.
When internet users need to find information, they mostly instinctively form their thoughts by keyword. It was not taught so much as it was learned.

While keyword searches are growing in length, they still average only about 2-3 words. The communication method and the way in which people form searches are much the way toddlers communicate. Short, to the point, and with lot of nouns. A toddler can get his point across by simply yelling “Ball! Purple! Mine!” He doesn’t really need to say “I would like the purple ball for my own.” Just because the other words are missing, it doesn’t mean that the thought process isn’t there.

Keyword searches act in much the same manner. Users haven’t lost their ability to communicate or ask questions or form complete thoughts, they’ve just narrowed down the extraneous words to the ones that will focus the search the most.

I don’t think that natural language searches should be abandoned altogether, though. Someday soon we’ll just ask our computers directly for information, and personally I don’t think I can speak in just keywords. When the time comes for true interaction, natural language searches will have their day.

Pay per click analytics are the core base for understanding the effectiveness of your keywords and their playback value. Before analytics tools came on the market most companies bid top dollar for the broadest keywords that they could in the hope that using a bigger net would catch more fish. In time however, the analytics tools came on board and some businesses found that the broadest search terms were not the ones that were actually bringing in the traffic.

The PPC Analytics basics were as follows:
Your PPC campaign analytics showed you a direct response model. A customer clicked on your ad after searching on a particular keyword that you have bid on. But did they convert? And more importantly, did enough of those clicks convert to justify the expense paid for that keyword?

The PPC managers took note and started to narrow down their keywords to the ones that seemed to bring in the most conversions.

The results were not always as expected. As it turns out, research heavy online shoppers were often visting a site multiple times on broad, then narrower, then focused keywords, and only after the final focused keyword are they converting and actually purchasing the product. Does that mean that the first two visits were meaningless? Does it mean that the broader keyword bids were a waste of money? Of course not!

The first couple of visits bring site and business name recognition with the consumer who then narrows down the keyword to exactly what they want. The next search brings your site up again. The customer is already familiar with it, and your site encompasses everything that they’ve looked for. Company name recognition and site familiarity will encourage customers to buy.

Think ahead before you turn off the broad keyword campaign and deem it unnecessary. If you want more information, look to analytic tools that will track multiple user visits and see what’s working for you.