Virtually Everywhere – Learning in Motion Part 2

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the ill tide washing over the digital marketing industry because of the economic collapse happening in the United States and around the world. The financial crisis has not affected Western Canada as thoroughly as it has other parts of North America I visited in the past two weeks. As I wrote previously, it is difficult to fully grasp the enormity of the problem until you see it in action or talk with those affected by it. While traveling across America, I received a crash-course in fear and desperation. Today, I intend to write about hope.

“I am going to cover the ugly stuff in this post and save the great stuff for tomorrow or Wednesday’s post. There is a method to my madness, one that will hopefully become apparent in the next post.”

Exactly two weeks ago today, Americans elected Barack Obama as their new president. I was fortunate enough to do a live-cast of the election for WebmasterRadio.FM from the Bridges Bar at the Midtown Hilton in New York City. We were in New York for the ad:tech conference, arguably the largest Internet marketing conference in the world. Where there was palatable fear on Monday November 3rd, there was hope on Tuesday November 4th and the morning of the 5th.

One of the most brilliant aspects of the American nation is its ability to rally around ideas, causes and community. Though extremely individualistic by nature, history and civics have taught the American people that they are a unified people, regardless of how nasty and partisan their political system appears to outsiders. That spirit is reflected on the Latin inscription on the Seal of the United States, “E Pluribus Unum”, which translates to “Out of Many, One”.

The ideal that disparate groups of people can forge a unified nation is unique to the North American experience. E Pluribus Unum. This spirit and philosophy could very well save the search marketing industry from the failures we are witnessing in other sectors of the economy. Here’s how my thinking goes…

The traditional advertising world is being decimated. Advertisers are pulling their ad-buys away from print, terrestrial radio and television. Those mediums are seen as being too expensive and too random to effectively track ROI. Because of the pull back, major ad agencies are reducing headcounts as their client rosters slim down. This presents the primary collective opportunity for search and Internet marketers.

In times of economic contrition, every dollar spent needs to be justified. Money is scarce and each ad-buy needs to show a demonstrable return on investment. At the same time, those dollars need to be stretched to fit as many opportunities as possible. In this, digital marketing has the advantage.

Where traditional marketing channels have been developed into creative science, online marketing channels are scientific creativity. There’s a difference that goes beyond the order of words. Traditional marketing is high on creativity but low on accountability (the science stuff). Conversely, any search marketing firm worth its name has incredible analytic skills and is thus very high on accountability. Where traditional ad channels can provide fairly accurate averages showing the assumed number of people reading, hearing or viewing an advertisement, digital marketing channels can show exactly how many people read, heard or viewed an ad. Moving a few steps further, digital advertising channels can even show exactly who the recipients of advertising messaging are, how they came across the message and what they did after receiving it. That’s downright scientific.

What’s really interesting is how digital marketing campaigns that cross multiple online channels can easily be incorporated into one another. For search marketers, the classic example is how a pay per click campaign can be bolstered or can bolster the effects of an organic search placement campaign. One facet of search marketing compliments the other. With the introduction and consumer adoption of social media channels, a similar set of circumstances is presented in which digital advertising channels can easily cross streams with supportive offers, enticements and adverts. The messaging associated with a Facebook ad, for instance, can be supported on a landing page that also ranks high in search results and has a thought out PPC campaign behind it.

This ability to mix and match digital channels inexpensively and virtually seamlessly is one of the great hopes in the future of digital advertising. It was one of the skills traditional ad agencies excelled at as they crafted magnificent campaigns that crossed mediums to create a set of product or brand related messages. The skill sets needed to do that in the digital marketing world, while shared amongst marketers working different channels, tend to be unique to each channel. Each channel has unique challenges and personalities. A great PPC copywriter and bid-placer, for instance might not have the requisite knowledge to do a great job at Facebook, even though the ad-buying and placement criteria are similar.

Many of the larger and tightly organized Internet marketing shops are able to provide extremely strong services in one or two similar channels generally PPC and organic search. Working the social media takes a slightly different set of skills and techniques than PPC so there is a lot of cross-over between SEO and social media but relatively little between PPC and social media.

As I wrote yesterday, PPC is again becoming the dominant area ad-buyers look at when considering their annual ad-spends. PPC is easier to project for and much easier to explain to one’s boss. Because the skill sets needed to run an effective PPC campaign and a smart social media campaign are so different from each other, synergistic alliances are being drawn between PPC ad-placers and social media influencers. Similar synergies are being drawn between digital video creation companies and online marketers.

The wondrous thing about digital advertising is the barriers to entry are so low. It is relatively easy to make and distribute professional video online. It is relatively easy to create a website, optimize it, build links and acquire traffic through strong search placements. It is relatively easy to drive traffic to a fresh website using paid search advertising. It is relatively easy to build a series of social media profiles and fan-groups designed to pass information to the consumer and pass consumer traffic to a website.

The difficult thing about digital media is that it is very, very hard to do everything one can do as well as one could do it. That’s why “one” doesn’t work as a singularity anymore. There is no one over-arching digital marketing solution. There are several solutions that can run both independently and in concert with each other. Similarly, there is rarely a one-stop shop for digital marketing solutions. Some can do two things well but few can do ten things well.

That’s why synergies are being found between the smartest companies and alliances are being struck. The wise ones understand that we are sitting on the precipice of THE major transition point of our lifetimes. The economic crisis, like the digital age that helped force it will redraw the landscape of communications and advertising for a generation to come.

That’s where the greatest experiment in American civic governence comes into play. E Pluribus Unum. In the search and Internet marketing industry, Out of Many, [we are] One…