In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the age of images in search, as so aptly put in AdAge Digital’s recent article, In Age of Pinterest, Instagram, Marketers Need an Image strategy.

Pinterest, currently hot after two years on the Web, has over 11 million registered users, 9 million of which are monthly active Facebook-connected users.

It’s the only social networking site with a predominantly female audience. With over 100 million unique monthly visits (MOVs) in February, Pinterest is one of the fastest growing sites on the Web.

Experian Hitwise put Pinterest among the top 30 websites in the U.S. A recent referral traffic report by Shareaholic states, “Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.”

Pinterest works for retailers because it gives them the ability to share merchandise with the power of visual imagery. Additionally, a presence on Pinterest gives retailers the ability to listen and learn what consumers want, while engaging with consumers across other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter (reached through Pinterest’s platform).

Pinterest Drives Retail Sales

Rapid adoption of Pinterest is fueled by reports that its users are highly likely to purchase items from the social network.

• PriceGrabber reports 21 percent of respondents have purchased items found on Pinterest boards.
• A Bizrate Insights survey, based on 3,741 online shoppers in March, reported over 1 in 4 shoppers purchased an item directly from image-sharing sites such as Pinterest by clicking an image viewed. Additionally, 37 percent of consumers saw items they wanted but did not buy.

Pinterest Demographics

A large percentage of Pinterest users are women. Google DoubleClick Ad Planner shows Pinterest with an 80 percent female vs. 20 percent male demographic, primarily in the 25-44 age group. Men, however, have started using the site, with sports teams creating Pinterest boards for their male audience. President Obama also pins on Pinterest.

Pinterest Provides A Targeted Audience

Retailers can use information from Experian Hitwise and Google Ad Planner to see exactly who makes up their user base on Pinterest and what products might do well. Women are the core audience, which is good for retailers. Research shows that women make the online purchasing decisions for roughly 75 percent of American households, making Pinterest a good way to reach this highly coveted demographic.

Rise Of Images In Search

Since search became more social, images have played an increasingly important role. The attractive content on Pinterest, and continuing user interest in visuals, may be reasons behind Pinterest’s sudden rise.

The visual aspect is what separates Pinterest from other social networking sites as it allows users to share visual concepts (a picture is worth a thousand words). Visuals remain in the mind’s eye; whereas, text content in tweets and updates can be forgotten tomorrow.

Marketing Your Retail Business

Pinterest is an ideal digital medium for retailers catering to the 25 to 44 demographic. However, the site also has many active users beyond that demographic. Ecommerce websites offering fashion, accessories, food, home decor and other visually-appealing products can use Pinterest as an extension of their site, driving links and displaying products with the use of photos with very little text.

It’s easy for any business to request an account on Pinterest, and many are providing inspiration and product ideas for their customers already. Below are some examples of small and big businesses increasing traffic and business through Pinterest pin boards.

• Lindsay Hopkins of TheDessertSpot blog began pinning in February. “After starting Pinterest, I experienced a 64 percent increase in monthly unique visitors within the first 60-days. While it’s premature to draw conclusions from stats over a short period of time, the traffic on my blog has definitely increased as a result of my Pinterest activity,” said Hopkins. “It helps me connect with my target demographic and people with similar interests,” she added. As an amateur photographer, Hopkins said she gets more pins with better quality photos and when pinning from afternoon to evening.

• The Gap has many different boards on Pinterest, including the GapFit, which markets its new line of athletic apparel. Users interested in learning more about a product can click through the image to a product page for information and ordering. Note The Gap’s board includes links and images providing relevant information and resources on fitness and health motivation in addition to its products. This helps consumers connect and presents the company as more of a resource than just an advertiser.

• Surya, a rug and home décor company that sells through Macy’s and other retailers, launched 24 boards on Pinterest the week of April 19. It didn’t take long before the company had 148 followers on Pinterest, with one board gaining 270 followers as of the morning of April 26.

For more ideas on how merchants are using Pinterest, check out these boards : American Eagle, Etsy, Gilt Groupe, ideeli, Lowe’s and Nordstrom. 

Optimizing & Testing Your Pin Boards

To optimize your images, see the infographic by Pinnable Business shared on Mashable. It illustrates the important optimization areas for your images. From file name to description length, it’s important to craft and optimize. And don’t forget to test, measure, and track your efforts for fine tuning.

Optimizing For Pinterest Search

Pinterest users search the site to find the pins they are interested in. Following are a few tips to help optimize for Pinterest Search, making your boards more visible.

• Pin It Button: Place the pin it button on your product pages to help increase visibility and sharing on Pinterest directly from your site.
• Your Profile: Optimize by completing your entire profile, which makes your business and products/services more findable. Your name and location help in brand and location searches, while your description helps fuel traffic for relevant keywords to your profile.
• Your Boards: Optimize your boards by creating meaningful, keyword rich titles. Categorize correctly to help increase visibility in Pinterest search.
• Your Pins: Optimize your pins with strong descriptions, prices and keyword use. With a 500 character limit, you can use keywords several times, which helps with search prominence in Pinterest. However, don’t overdo it and make sure keyword use is relevant.
• Image Optimization: Use traditional image optimization techniques whether the image comes from your site or via an upload. Google Webmaster Central Blog recently posted tips for getting your images indexed.
• Quality Photographs: The better the quality of your photos, the more pins you’ll get.
• Video Optimization: Pinterest has a special section just for videos. Currently, only YouTube videos can be embedded. Use traditional video optimization techniques.
• Pins on Facebook and Twitter: Pinterest integrates with both sites. By including your pins on two of the most popular social networks, they could go viral.
• Copyright Infringement: Pin only images you own or have a license to, as users and re-pinners can be liable for copyright infringement. Pinterest has a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) policy, which provides a safe harbor, protecting sites from liability as long as they provide the means for copyright holders to report alleged infringement and then remove the infringing content.

In closing, smart retailers will want to get out there and share their company’s products and services while providing relevant information and resources on their Pinterest pinboards. Go ahead: connect with consumers, make your company a resource, drive more traffic and sell more product. Many consumers will see your beautiful pins and share them with their friends, while others will discover your images in the SERPs.

So why is it a “secret”?

Historically, it has been quite difficult to get Google Shopping set up, and it was almost certain that you’d need to hire a company that specializes in running shopping feed programs. While I still highly recommend seeking out experts with specialized experience here, it is actually quite possible to begin this process on your own. Here’s how:

First, you will need to open a Google Merchant account within Google. If you already have a company Google Adwords account you use, I would use the same login credentials to open the Google Merchant Account to keep your accounts and management process streamlined.

Once you set up your account, you will need to verify and claim your url, create your product data automated feed and launch the store.

Here is some in-depth information on how you can set up your Google Merchant Store.

Once you are running a Google Shopping program on your own or through a provider, there are some great opportunities available for advertisers that are on Google Adwords and are also running Google Shopping.

Google Product Extensions

Product Extensions are an excellent way to enhance your existing AdWords ads. It’s a great tool to increase click through rates and drive more sales.

Product Extensions are based on your product feed. They will show in a plus box under your regular text ad on the search results when the search query typed in by the user is related to one or more products on your Google Merchant Center account.

This is a core reason to  keep your product feed updated with as much information as possible about your products. The more complete and updated your feed is, the higher the chances your Product Extensions will display with your text ad.

Just like a normal text ad, your Product Extensions ads are also charged on a CPC basis, which means you will pay the same price per click regardless if the user clicks on your text ad or on one of your Product Extensions.

You can track Product Extension metrics on a campaign level through your AdWords interface. Here, you can view impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, AVG position, conversions etc. You can also track Product Extensions revenue using Google Analytics, but you will need to add a unique tracking code to your destination URL on the product feed. This way, you can identify revenue that came from clicks to your Product Extensions versus your text ads.

Setting up Product Extensions on your AdWords account is quite simple. Once you have your product feed uploaded to your Google Merchant Account center, just click on a campaign and click on the “Ad Extensions” tab. Once there, just select the “New Extension” button and choose your product feed.

Keep in mind that if you are running Site-Link Extensions simultaneously for the same campaign, your Site-Link Extensions are more likely to show than your Product Extensions as they have a higher priority in terms of extensions rankings. Sometimes both extensions will display at the same time but it doesn’t occur very often.

So, if you really plan on gathering accurate data from testing Product Extensions, make sure you disable all other extensions for that campaign.

PLA’s – Product Listing Ads

Product Listing Ads campaigns are fairly easy to set up, and you can manage them through your Adwords interface or Adwords Editor just like any other campaign. PLA campaigns, unlike your normal text ad campaigns, are not keyword-based. Google will choose to show your ads based on the quality and relevance of your product feed.

This means you want to make sure your product feed includes as many details as possible about your products, such as product name, description, color, size, images, price, etc. Make sure that your destination URLs are updated constantly and are taking your customers to the correct product page.

Even though your PLA campaigns are not keyword-based, it’s important to understand how different products and categories are performing. The best way to do this is to split your campaign into Ad Groups. One best practice to employ when creating Ad Groups to your PLA campaign is to separate them according to the product labels column on your product feed. This will allow you to easily manage your bids and ads.

To set up the Ad Groups with the product labels, just click on one of the Ad Groups and go to your “Auto targets” tab on AdWords. Once you’re there, you will want to click on the “Add product target” button and select “Add a group of products.”

From the combo box below, you will choose “adwords label” and on the input box just type the name of the label. Click on validate, and a green check sign should appear. That means your label is set correctly.

Now, just repeat the process for all of your Ad Groups. If you get an error message saying that your label is not validating, it could be that you have your product label name typed incorrectly or that you have too recently uploaded your product feed. It often takes up to 48 hours for a new feed to be available to validate your labels.

Now that you have your campaign set up and ad groups in place and validated, you must also create Ads for your PLA campaigns. PLA ads are a bit different from your regular text ad copy.

A PLA ad consists of a single line and only allows up to 45 characters. So you want to make sure you create a very concise and direct message. If you offer free shipping or some type of discount, make sure you state that on your ad. You can also run multiple ads per ad group.

Here is an example of PLA ads for “adidas shoes”

As you employ these tactics, continually test messaging and visuals to determine what works best for your brand and products within the Google Shopping arena. I hope to have demystified this rather easy-to-deploy channel, as it is a prime opportunity for incremental traffic and competitive leadership in the search space.

Do you have any Google Shopping “secrets” of your own? Please do reach out and let me know what is working for you, or where you’d like to see guidance in future columns.

Search Engine Land author and Ontologica semantic services provider Barbara Starr said, “It’s inevitable that lots of verified structured data will give rise to the ability of search engines to become answer engines.” And that’s happening now. Google wants to better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of entities on people, places and things that the company has been collecting over the last two years, while focusing more on structured data.

With this algorithm enhancement, Google hopes to provide answers to certain queries by using structured data and leveraging semantic technology such as structured markup from the ecommerce ontology it supports (GoodRelations and Schema.org).

This is great news for online retailers, because now your products and services can display more completely and prominently with rich snippets in search results when you use structured markup.

As part of its algorithm change, Google will add semantic technology to its keyword search system. Right now, keywords play a dominant role in the algorithm for ranking websites, along with authoritative links and the person searching (personalization). Adding semantic search technology allows the understanding of actual word meanings.

With semantic meaning in the algorithm, users can differentiate between words with more than one meaning, such as a mustang car vs. a mustang horse.

Google wants search to include semantic meaning because that’s the way humans process and understand information. Therefore, when providing answers on entities not currently in its database, Google will blend new semantic search technology with its current system.

This will increase its ability to recognize the value of information on websites for ranking purposes. In the future, the Googlebot will be looking for more than keywords and authoritative links; it will be able to identify more meaningful information e.g., structured data or semantic markup. That means better search results for users, and better exposure for retail sites.

RDFa Structured Markup

The foundation of structured data is the Resource Definition Framework (RDF), “a standard model for data interchange on the web” that permits data to be shared across different applications, and supports the evolution of different schemas over time. RDFa provides a set of attributes that allow the embedding of rich metadata within Web documents, e.g., the addition of machine-readable attributes to standard XHTML.

GoodRelations RDFa is a semantic markup technology designed specifically for ecommerce. It allows retailers to send precise data on their products, items or services when communicating it to search engines.

Without RDFa, retailers send only unstructured text, even though they may use precise data when creating item pages, making it hard for search engine’s to extract, interpret, and properly rank their individual pages.

With RDFa, retailers can add a small, yet rich piece of structured data (e.g., small product datasheet), which search engines, browser extensions and mobile applications can use to precisely inform potential customers about your products.

GoodRelations markup can be used for displaying price, product, store, payment, and delivery information on search engine listings. This ontology language can be used by retailers to precisely describe what their business offers. Retailers can use GoodRelations to create a small data package that describes their products, features and prices, in addition to their stores and opening hours, payment options and so forth.

Just simply paste your data package into your webpage using W3C’s RDFa format, or use the snippet generator to generate GoodRelations-specific markup for you page. And, that’s it; you’re done.

When adding GoodRelations to your webpages, you increase the visibility of your offers in search engines and recommender systems. While traditional SEO attempts to put you on top of search results, the reality is not everyone can be on top. GoodRelations gives top visibility to buyers looking for your retail products and services. That means your offer becomes visible to those with a matching need.

GoodRelations is supported by Google Bing and Yahoo!, which render your product pages better with GoodRelations data on your site. It is being used by companies like BestBuy, CSNStores, and thousands of retail shops with great success.

Why Use Structured Markup?

As reported on SemanticWeb.com, Webnodes AS content management system version 3.7 with schema.org support resulted in tests showing a 30 percent increase in organic search-engine traffic to websites using Microdata or similar technologies.

From a GoodRelations case study:  “There is preliminary evidence that search results with respective extensions get a 30% higher click-through rate (CTR).”

How To Apply GoodRelations RDFa

You can learn more about RDFa in this 15 minute presentation titled, Extending Schema.org with Good Relations and Productontology.org, which includes Martin Hepp’s Presentation of September 21, 2011 at the schema.org workshop, indicating how schema.org and GoodRelations can be used in combination for sending richer data on retail sites to search engines and browser extensions, helping retailers articulate their value proposition as data.

For more information on semantic SEO for Google with GoodRelations and RDFa, you can use this modification, which shows you how to add additional mark-up to your pages so Google can use the information to substantially enhance the rendering of your pages in search results.

Below are some additional useful links with information about using GoodRelations.

• GoodRelations extension for VirtueMart, the OS ecommerce solution of Joomla CMS.
• Quora (Q&A) on web ontology for ecommerce
• Strategies for Building Semantic Web Applications
• SemTech 2011 Presentation by Barbara Starr

Additionally, SMWCon Spring 2012 will be held in Carlsbad, CA, April 25-27, with presentations and discussions about state-of-the art applications and future development of Semantic MediaWiki and its extensions. The conference brings together developers, users, and organizations from the Semantic MediaWiki community around the world.

With Google changing its algorithm to ameliorate the shortcomings of its current technology by incorporating semantic search technology, retailers have an excellent opportunity to fully exploit this change by incorporating structured data on their websites and product pages. It is rumored these changes will be among the biggest in Google’s history. Don’t miss this opportunity to get ahead of your competitors.

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with GoodRelations in any way.

The challenge retailers face is how to engineer a broader keyword portfolio that widens their reach in the query space and deliver relevant products to satisfy consumer demand.

In this post, we’ll discuss several keyword expansion resources already available internally to many retailers and the ways to best organize expansion techniques to ensure optimal performance.

Identify Product Intent Through Inventory Feed

Perhaps the most valuable resource for retailers seeking profitable keyword expansion is within their product catalog, or inventory feed. For retailers, inventory feeds consist of an entire database of products available for sale within a given inventory. These products frequently contain specific facets appealing to consumers.

For our purposes, facets are defined as aspects or features of each individual product (brands, sizes, colors, materials, styles etc). The combination of products and their corresponding facets is defined as product intent.

Each time consumers execute a search on a search engine, they are asking a question. Some questions, or queries, do not reveal much specificity about the product intent, in cases where product intent is in the query.

For example, consumer A queries the search engine for “dresses”; Consumer B, on the other hand, queries the search engine for “black dress size 4”. In the first example, the consumer did not include any specific features of the product they were searching for. Conversely, the second consumer is very specific about the color and size of product they desire.

There is an abundance of information found within the facets of your inventory feed that can help retailers build a more robust exact match keyword portfolio. By combining every possible searchable combination of facets that relate to products in your inventory, retailers can specifically market products at a much more granular level.

Consumer Intent

In addition to resourcing product feed for product intent, retailers need to evaluate the consumer behavior to identify what are the common features relevant to the products being searched for, or consumer intent.

While sometimes consumer intent can be found within inventory feeds (as in the previous example of size, color, material), often intent exists outside of what retailers define as product features.

Some examples here may include “sassy dress”, “sexy dress” or even “holiday dress”. These examples illustrate either emotion (sassy or sexy) or occasion (holiday). Site search logs contain very valuable information for advertisers — exactly what product consumers are searching for while visiting your website.

Advertisers can develop an arsenal of exact match templates based on analysis of their site search logs. Google AdWords and adCenter search query reports also provide a wealth of information surrounding consumer intent. Using search query reports from the search engines enables retailers to identify new consumer intents and weed out poor performing or irrelevant intents by adding negative keywords.

Promotional calendars can be also leveraged to expand upon additional exact match keywords.

For example, many mattress outlets offer sales during Memorial Day for consumers who want to throw out their old mattress and purchase a new one. For mattress retailers, knowing your promotional calendar ahead of time can help to create keywords surrounding the specific holiday and place these keywords into their own ad group with ad copy specifically targeting promotions.

Poor Structure Leads To Poor Performance

Poor account architecture can impede a retailers ability to create quality ad copy post keyword expansion efforts. Historically, incrementally adding keywords without structure can adversely impact an account’s quality score and performance.

As retailers obtain new product lines or discontinue old products, they need to ensure they are keeping their account architecture as clean and tight as possible.

Adding new keywords from the new product line into the same ad groups as existing keywords with a different product line will clutter up the ad groups and leave room for a poor and irrelevant structure. Adding keywords without structure leads to a high number of keywords in ad groups which can also impact the relevancy of the ad served to the consumer.

Also, retailers should avoid adding products from different categories to the same ad groups and/or campaigns. By having tightly themed ad groups within campaigns, retailers can target the specific facets of each product within their inventory feed.

Retailers that are able to expand their portfolios by aligning the consumer intent found in the query logs and the product intent found within their inventory feed, will end up with more keywords that are significantly better targeted than those retailers who do not maintain this alignment.

By tightening the reins on the ad group structure and producing ad groups with a small number of keywords, retailers can develop more targeted ad copy based specifically on the alignment of consumer and product intent.

To succeed, retailers must avoid missed opportunities. This article identifies three opportunities retailers can take advantage of: (1) use every available local search tactic, (2) have your site ready for smartphones and tablets, and (3) be able to identify new, incremental sources of traffic and conversions.

The Marketing Sherpa 2012 Search Marketing SEO Edition Benchmark Report, which surveyed over 1,500 organizations, found that local business listing tactics are underutilized.

Since local business listings and reviews are displayed before natural search results, it’s now more important than ever for retailers to be found in local search.

This report indicated only 37 percent of the businesses  surveyed claimed their local business listing on search engines. Of those that did, many did not use every available listing tactic, as shown in the chart below.

Local Business Listing Tactics Used For Local Search  

While many businesses optimize for local search as part of their SEO strategy, few utilized every local search tactic such as encouraging customer reviews on Google Places and Yelp, posting directions, store/product images, etc.

This is an opportunity retailers don’t want to miss, as local search gains more visibility in the SERPs with more local searches conducted by consumers on smartphones and tablets.

The Future Of E-commerce

Every retailer should know by now the future of e-commerce lies in tablets and smartphones. A new study, Mobile and Tablet Ecommerce: Is Anyone Really Ready?, by mobile services provider Zmags found that only one-third of the U.S. top online retailers are optimally ready for mobile e-commerce today.

That means two-thirds of U.S. top retailers are overlooking this market opportunity. Many retailers aren’t ready for today’s shoppers on tablets and smartphones and also don’t have the ability to identify new, incremental sources of traffic and conversions.

Readiness For Tablet & Smartphone Shoppers

Tablets and smartphones are used more than desktop and laptop computers to make purchases today. Additionally, tablet users spend more per purchase (Adobe Digital Marketing Insights).

Other studies show that people are buying and spending more from tablets and smartphones. A new study by comScore, 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus, reports smartphone and tablets are drastically altering “consumers’ digital media consumption,” concluding the majority of mobile phone owners used their devices for accessing the Web in 2011 for surfing, shopping, banking or any desired action.

The increasing number of U.S. tablet users is gradually changing the way people shop by purchasing online rather than visiting stores. Twenty percent of all mobile e-commerce sales now come from tablets, wutg 60 percent of tablet owners using them for purchasing goods. Evidently, this beats the heck out of fighting traffic and standing in line in crowded stores.

By 2016, mobile commerce is expected to increase to $31 billion in the U.S. – a substantial increase from $3 billion in 2010.

While most retailers are not ready for today’s’ shoppers on tablets and smartphones, another opportunity is being overlooked that can be even more costly.

Retailers make blind commitments in Local, Organic and Mobile search. Armed with little or no data, they engage in optimizing these channels without knowledge (or measurement) of their local, organic and mobile presence.

Ability To Identify New, Incremental Sources Of Traffic & Conversions

It’s important for retailers to run a search for their primary keyword/s in every city and state where they have physical storefronts, offices, dealers or franchises, etc. All three major engines will display performance and coverage.

The above example shows an automotive retailer without first page coverage in 39 of 100 top metropolitan store locations.

Assuming a $50 Average Order Value (AOV) and one percent (1%) market share, this retailer has the opportunity to be in front of an additional $16,309.00 of monthly local market opportunity, per location.

The second example shows a department store accessories retailer without first page coverage in 72 of 100 top metropolitan store locations. Assuming a $20 Average Order Value (AOV) and one percent (1%) market share, this retailer has the opportunity to be in front of an additional $9,090.00 of monthly local market opportunity, per location.

It is valuable to identify what percentage of improvement is available, and which locations have no coverage. Incremental monthly unique visitors (MUVs) are available when you define a very specific missed market opportunity. Without this information, retailers are moving forward blindly.

Local Market Opportunity

When we drill down to the local level, we can identify the local market opportunity.

Assuming a $250 AOV and one percent (1%) market share, the insurance company above has the opportunity to be in front of an additional $76,576 in monthly local market opportunity, per location.

Specific Measurable Results

Once a retailer has identified its lack of coverage, it can begin to track the improvements moving forward, while capturing incremental MUVs in local, organic and mobile search.

Analytics at the local store level reveals valuable information, e.g., the number of coupons downloaded for the store, the number of click-throughs to weekly ads, the number of users clicking on map directions and other in-store related events specific to an individual storefront location.

Lack of coverage translates to a local market missed opportunity.

• 82% of local searches result in an action (phone call, store visit, purchase). Of these, 61% made a purchase. (TMP/comScore)
• 76% of Internet users first look at Local Search or maps area of the 1^st page, then Organic and last, Paid Search. (Neilson)
• 73% of online activity is related to local content. (Google)
• 63 percent completed a purchase offline following their search activity. (comScore)

Proprietary software, such as digital storefront software and mobile store locator software, can uncover these opportunities, providing insight to discover sources of new and incremental traffic and conversions. However, this type of software is only available to interactive and traditional agencies. Contact me if you’re an agency interested in software solutions, or if you’re an end user and would like to be put in touch with a licensed agency.

Disclosure: I advise enterprise level organizations and interactive/traditional agencies on local search and semantic SEO and am not a licensed agency selling software solutions.

With the fast-paced digital environment that we currently live in, it’s not only important for SEM agencies to understand how to analyze and optimize advertiser data, but also how to efficiently manage client interactions.

Even though I work at a technology company, I’m responsible for client interactions. Many of my best practices are transferable to the SEM agency/retailer relationship. As such, in this article, I’ll explore:

• Where agencies get client management wrong
• Why retailers require different level of service from agencies; and
• Applying traditional business practices to digital agency relationships

Agency Communication

Developing and maintaining trust among all client contacts can be very labor intensive, but it’s instrumental in maintaining a positive partnership. Simply setting up weekly calls and sending reports is not enough to engage your clients.

Each client will have different preferences on how to engage with them on an ongoing basis. Some clients prefer half an hour once per week, while others prefer an hour twice per month. Be flexible with your clients and let them dictate what kind of schedule works for them.

Here are some simple but often overlooked tips for agencies to improve their communication with retail clients:

Meetings

• Send out agendas and presentations to your clients ahead of time — not 15 minutes before a meeting, but at least 5 business hours ahead of your call. If you have a recurring call at 10:00 am on Tuesdays, get reports out to clients by 2:00 pm on Mondays. Providing presentations ahead of time enables your client to review the data you have prepared and prepare questions.
• Keep it short and to the point; meetings that run longer than 45 minutes tend to lose both momentum and attendee focus.
• Keep the number of attendees to the minimum required; for each additional attendee on the meeting, input is significantly reduced for those participating.
• Visit personally with important clients 1 – 2 times per quarter; getting face time builds a certain rapport that phone calls cannot satisfy.

Reporting

• Transparency is a must; when clients ask for data, agencies need to provide it, along with any insights that can impact the performance of a client’s campaign.
• Schedule weekly high-level reports to go out to your clients at the same time every week so they know when to expect it.
• Fully engage your client by providing deep-dive monthly reports. This is also a good place for a sanity check on how current performance is lining up with original goals.
• Tech-savvy clients may want to hop on Skype or do a Google+ Hangout in order to have the personal touch to the interaction.

Email Etiquette

• Respond quickly to email requests, even if it’s a response that says “I’ve read your email, I’m going to investigate and will report back within a certain time frame.”
• Be concise with your emails. Don’t send your clients a novel. If clients have to scroll, your email is too long. Make sure to cover meatier topics with presentations and a phone call so you can walk them through the information
• Document all calls with call notes, objective setting and milestones reached with emails. Keeping a record of what you’re going to be held accountable for is important to ensure you understand client goals correctly.  It also gives your clients the opportunity to review and confirm the accuracy of your notes.

Retailer Communication

Client/agency communication is a two-way street. To maximize their relationship with agency partners and desired results from those relationships, retailers should follow these best practices:

Communicating Objectives

• Communicate both short-term and long-term objectives up front.
• Be specific — clearly define what metrics are important to meeting the end goal.
• Establish timeframes to measure results and track progress.
• Be responsive in a timely manner; you cannot hold an agency responsible for work that you have failed to execute on.
• Communicate with clarity about the current year’s goals compared to last year’s goals.

Sharing Necessary Data With Your Agency

• Grant them access to your legacy AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and web analytics tools. If you’re going to hold them accountable for performance, they should have access to any and all reports they need to improve campaign performance.
• Share promotional marketing calendars. Sharing promotional calendars can help your agency plan ahead for ad copy changes. Furthermore, trends in performance can be more easily identified if your agency is aware of what is going on within your business.
• Leverage your product feed data; your inventory is constantly changing and your agency needs to be aware of the changes happening within your product catalog to adjust performance. Your agency can help manage your keyword portfolio by activating/deactivating certain keywords based on current inventory.

Questions To Ask Before Engaging With An Agency

• Technical– will your database impede the ability to implement agency SEM best practices?
• Human– do you have people to write content, make site changes, champion results, etc.?
• Financial– do you have the financial resources to dedicate to paid search or is paid search a smaller byproduct of your marketing department?

Educate Yourself, Don’t Take Your Agency’s Word For It

Demand that your agency send reports in advance of the call. Allow for proper time to investigate their analysis and recommendations and challenge their analysis if you disagree.

Strategic partnerships between retailers and agencies develop stronger bonds when both sides are educated on the data at hand, are able to approach analysis from different angles and agree on conclusions.

Agencies – clear and timely communication with your retail clients around the above framework will go a long way towards maximizing the impact you are able to deliver and establishing the deepest relationship possible.

Retailers – clear communication with your agency encourages them to act as a catalyst on your behalf. Challenging their analysis and providing your own insights breeds a partnership that is certain to grow better and better every month.

In upcoming posts, I will focus on search campaign optimization techniques and tools to help facilitate some of the issues retailers encounter.

As we prepare our clients for the changes that Google+ brings as part of the constant evolution that occurs across the search industry, we are once again reminded of the saying, “There is nothing permanent except change.” So, let’s get into this latest round of changes.

Before we dive into how to prevent and minimize traffic impact, we should first understand the current impact of Google Search Plus Your World. (SPYW)

CEO Larry Page announced recently that Google+ now boasts more than 90 million users worldwide, more than double the number of users it had in the previous quarter. Also, Page said “that engagement on the social networking site has been ‘growing tremendously’ as ‘over 60% of [users] engage daily, and over 80% weekly.’ ”

From an Adwords perspective, the left side of Google paid search results is now overwhelmingly replaced by Google+ relevant searches.

For advertisers that had been capitalizing by being in lower position to control cost and ROI, the table has turned completely. The new landscape dictates that you increase your maximum CPCs and get in the Top 3 or find alternative ways to make up your loss in revenue.

From an SEO perspective, many of the top results are now based on sites that users in your circle like rather than search relevance. Greg Finn recently addressed in great detail the good, the bad and the ugly truth about Google Plus.

Over the past couple of months, we have tried and tested every variation of Google+ avoidance and embracement. As all of us marketers are trying to wrangle the new parameters of Google+, I thought I’d share some of our findings.

Google+ And Your Brand Presence

I will assume that if you are reading this article, you already have a Google+ account for your website/brand and that you have Google+ button on your website.

With that assumption in place, the first thing you should is “pimp your Google+ presence.” In essence, I want you to treat it as your own website.

• Fill out your information and profile in as detailed and engaging way as possible
• Add pictures, videos and content specific to your brand
• Optimize your posts and descriptions as you would any other SEO page
• Grow your circles by integrating Google+ within your current social media network (Twitter, Facebook, etc)

Adidas Originals is a great example of Google+ brand page done the right way.

Here is an in-depth article by Neil Patel with additional details on pimping your presence.

Once you optimize your presence, make sure that you incorporate your Google+ button in all of your PPC ads. For a lot of our clients, we treat a Google+ interaction as a secondary conversion, similar to a newsletter sign up. Setting up a monthly budget specific to this is helpful in tracking and monetizing Google+.

You Have Lost Traffic From Your Top 3 Position Keywords… Now What?

If you are large brand with (nearly) unlimited budgets and high ROI, read no more. Just increase your maximum CPCs, and you are fine.

For the 99% of us that don’t fall into this category, here are some suggestions:

• Take advantage of ad enhancements – Google SPYW is getting more and more visual, and users are gravitating towards that vibrant content. Product Listing Ads (PLAs) and Product Extensions are two great ways to add significant, highly visual real estate to your PPC campaigns.  This can help deliver incremental volume on non-brand keywords, and help minimize traffic loss on brand terms as the Google SERPs evolve.
• Look for alternatives – If your traffic starts to get impacted significantly, take some of your budget and get more competitive on other engines or invest in other programs. Display media, affiliates and Facebook ads are all areas that you can turn to make up some of your lost traffic.
• Leverage Google+ opportunities early – As Google releases more and more G+ related products and betas, the advertisers who get in early will see the biggest benefits. Don’t be afraid to take some risks, and adopt a “get there first” approach to SPYW.

From Matt McGee’s recent post on Two Google+ SEO Guides You Should Read to these findings we’ve gleaned ourselves, there are and will continue to be countless ways to learn, test and succeed within the new Google+ framework. And, the great thing about this constant change is that none of us are doing it alone. Let’s keep this conversational. You tell me what works for you, and I’ll do the same in this forum.

Google+ may present some unique changes, but most of us got into this industry for those very reasons – no two days are the same, and we have the ability to blaze new trails. I’d love to hear your feedback.

In fact, the Internet and search engines have changed the nature of retail marketing forever. And that’s good news for retailers.

What can retailers do to take full advantage of Internet marketing?

Here are three marketing strategies that, when combined, can give you enhanced visibility in search engines and more traffic to convert to sales: optimize for local search, the mobile Web and organic search listings.

1. Reach Consumers Through Local Search

PEW Internet conducted a survey of 1,087 adults on local business and search engines in December 2010. Below are some of the findings.

When viewing the numbers, note that respondents could fill in more than one option. All were asked where they get news and information about local businesses (other than restaurants and bars).

• 47% said they relied mostly on the Internet for local information
• 36% rely on search engines
• 31% rely mostly on newspapers
• 22% rely on word of mouth from friends and family
• 8% rely on local TV
• 5% rely on local radio

The takeaway from this research is that you need to market to every local search site on the Web −sites like Google Places (maps), Yelp (reviews), Internet Yellow Pages (business listings), City Search and a number of other key business information aggregators.

There are three primary Information Services for retailers on the Web: Info USA, Acxiom and Localeze. When feeding your business information to these services, you must ensure that all the data is optimized for each service and that the information is consistent.

If the information varies, it won’t help your local search listings as much as when all the information matches. Your business information includes the company name, address, local phone number, map directions, optimized images, rich media, coupons, social sharing, reviews and more.

2. Reach Consumers Through The Mobile Web

We know more consumers will access the Internet by mobile devices than by desktops and laptops by 2013. With over 300 million smartphones in the U.S., consumers are ready for mobile content.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley also estimated mobile commerce will account for approximately 2 percent of U.S. retail sales by late 2012, while Internet retail will account for 5 to 6 percent. We could have a fast rise in U.S. mobile commerce similar to what happened in Japan where leading retailers were getting 19 percent of their sales from mobile devices back in 2009.

Consumers are moving toward tablets and smartphones for every kind of personal task, from banking to shopping, because of the ease, convenience and time savings.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that the retailers who handle mobile inquiries and sales expeditiously will be those that prosper. Hence, my oft repeated recommendation to use mobile storefront software that automatically builds an entire mobile Web-formatted store locator, while providing data fidelity between the Bots, Information Services and IYPs.

3. Reach Consumers Through Organic Listings

Another strategy retailers can use to compete more effectively is to optimize for organic listings. While not all retailers are optimized for the mobile Web, many also fail to optimize for organic listings.

Optimized static location pages for every business location, in addition to optimized city and state web pages will increase your digital footprint and retail visibility. The SEO elements to apply include:

• Local Title tags
• Local Description tags
• Keyword Meta tags
• Locally optimized content
  • Local keyword anchor text
  • Locally optimized ALT tags for images
  • Headline tags (H1, H2)
  • Localized body content
  • Breadcrumbs
• Schema.org Microdata mark-up
• Semantic RDFa and Facebook OpenGraph tags
• Localized Mapping and Reviews feed
• Local links to Places and Maps (Google,  Bing, Yahoo,  Facebook, Yelp and more)
• Optimized bulk feeds to IYP and Local Search Engines for relevant consistency

From Zero To 500,000+ MUVs In Local, Mobile & Organic Search

MUVs (Monthly Unique Visitors) are the lifeblood of new business year over year. Every business buys MUVs in the form of print advertising, paid search advertising, search engine optimization, direct mail, TV and radio advertising, affiliates and other forms of marketing and advertising.

Multi-location businesses operating physical storefront locations in hundreds and thousands of cities have a unique value proposition and some very serious hurdles to overcome quickly if they want to stay ahead of the competition.

Businesses in retail, services, financial, real estate, dealerships, franchises, manufacturers, medical and legal directories must get control of their Web and mobile Web data.

Google, Bing and Yahoo!  love to consume accurate, updated, verified business data, and these engines are rewarding those businesses that optimize their data at the local store level. I call it a relevancy reward. If you publish the most accurate data in a way the engines can consume it… you will grow significantly more and more MUVs.

Local, organic and mobile Web searchers expect to find accurate, updated business information on the go, and they reward such businesses with  phone calls, walk-in traffic, coupon redemptions, rich media views, social shares, check-ins and clicks to shopping.

Manufacturers with dealerships nationwide, e.g., windows, carpets, power tools, bikes, motor vehicles, etc., all have this unique opportunity to provide the search engines with their most recent, updated business information at the location level.

The same thing goes for services like “credit repair,” servicing the entire U.S. geographic population down to the neighborhood level. Franchises with physical storefront locations in various city locations. Insurance companies with thousands of individual agents at different office locations.

Building materials stores like Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Lowes, etc. Electronics and computers stores like Frye’s and Best Buy − they all stand to gain by providing search engines with recent, updated business information at the local level.

Build and optimize a location landing page for each individual location. Make sure to arrange for the instant publication of any changes on the Web and mobile Web with consistency and accuracy.

• Edit Operating Hours as needed
  • Holiday hours
  • Manage Coupons
    • National, Regional, Local
    • Manage Local Pictures/Images
      • Storefront Locations, Managers, Employee of the Month
      • Monitor and update Social Networks via analytics data
      • Text to phone promotions
      • Add local Call to Action

Include a breadcrumb for all the state, city and location landing pages. Link each location landing page with all social links from CitySearch, Yelp and others. Ensure that you take the time to optimize your business data and bulk feed to the Information Services: Info USA, Localeze and Acqiom, as well as all the IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages etc.).

In closing, a bit of good news: comScore just reported $50 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce spending during the last quarter, up 14 percent vs. 2010. Online retailers sold almost $50 billion worth of goods to U.S. consumers in the last quarter. That made it a solid year, as 2011 ecommerce sales increased 13 percent over 2010 for a record $161.5 billion in sales.

The future could be promising for retailers, and it will be more so for those that optimize for local search, the mobile Web and organic listings.

For a year that started with fears of a 10% unemployment rate, things seemed to end on an up note.

The economy seemed to improve, digital marketing rebounded nicely after a few shaky years (roughly 15% growth according to comScore), and heck, Bing managed to not go bankrupt and even gained a point or two of marketshare – all-in-all, 2011 shaped up to be an alright for many retailers.

Unfortunately, the early projections for 2012 don’t look quite as rosy. Just this week, the National Retail Federation released its numbers projecting U.S. retail sales should rise 3.4 percent this year, down from an increase of 4.7 percent in 2011.

Given the terrible economy of the last few years, any growth is good growth, but slowing retail demand makes all of our jobs harder. But this is by no means a death sentence for 2012, and by focusing in three key areas – evaluation, improvement, and testing – we can not only survive, but grow our business in the coming year.

Take The Time To Really Evaluate 2011

This is probably the most boring, unsexy part of our jobs, but in order for 2012 to be better than 2011, we have to truly evaluate what worked and what didn’t work last year.

Look at your normal metrics like revenue and ROI, but take things a step further and look at secondary and tertiary metrics like new customer acquisition or the influence search had on email signups, or even the interaction of each of your marketing channels.

Only after you have truly evaluated what worked and what didn’t work in 2011 can you determine your approach for 2012.

Trash What Worked

Take your best, most effective channel from 2011 and trash it. I don’t mean that literally – if you just hit “delete” on your Adwords account, you jumped the gun just a bit – but theory goes something like this:  When things are broken, you have to rush to fix them just to get them up to the status quo.

But once things are in a good spot, people tend to be complacent and stop working to improve them (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right?).

Unfortunately, complacency inevitably leads to things not working as well as they should, and the cycle repeats itself. So instead, take your best channel and challenge yourself to change it, think about it differently, revamp it, and improve it.

It is always easier to improve things when they are working and there is no stress than when things are broken and you are stressing just to get your head above water.

January Is More Important Than December

It is exponentially easier to affect your annual numbers in January than it is in December. This one seems like common sense but an incredible number of marketers hold back their budgets, testing ideas, etc. until it is late in the year and they realize they are short of their goals.

This leaves them with only a few weeks to try to find new tactics, test them, and implement them – and since you are so late in the year every test must work or you risk missing goal.

Instead, front-load your budgets a bit and test early in the year. This will do two things: 1) you will quickly learn the effect each tactic has on your business (meaning you will know which new tactics work and which don’t) and 2) you will be able to more accurately project results for the rest of the year. In the end, you are left with more accurate projections and a list of proven tactics you can implement whenever you need.

Ultimately, there is no silver bullet that will magically make 2012 better than 2011 and there are a ton of outside factors that will ultimately determine the economic climate for 2012 (on the downside, escalating tensions with Iran, but on the upside, what if Europe solved their debt crisis – wouldn’t that be nice?).

But if you prepare for 2012 to be a slower year and you take the proper steps to strengthen your campaigns, you should be able to do much more in 2012 despite less retail demand.

With mobile usage increasing dramatically in 2012, it’s important for retailers to start accommodating mobile shoppers.

This article will review mobile trends of interest to retailers, offer some tips for going mobile, and include some information on Mobile Store Locator Software for multiple location retailers.

First, let’s start with some mobile stats that impact retail sales:

• Over 1 billion of the worlds 4+ billion mobile phones are smartphones with 3 billion SMS enabled
• In the US, 9 out of 10 people are mobile subscribers
• 79 percent of smartphone owners use their phones to help with shopping
• In 2011, over 50 percent of all local searches were conducted from a mobile device
• Tablets are rapidly replacing laptops and will total 100+ million globally by year end
• Tablets made major inroads in retail: 77 percent of all mobile traffic is from tablets
• In 2014, mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage (est.)

• 86 percent of mobile users are watching TV while using a mobile phone
• More than 350 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices
• On average, Americans spend 2.7 hours per day socializing on mobile devices
• 29 percent of mobile users would scan a mobile tag to get coupons to be redeemed instantly in store

Consumers Use Mobile Devices In Store To Check Prices & Inventory

Next, we want to talk about how consumers are using mobile devices when shopping. In the future, it will become common place for consumers to use mobile devices to guide purchasing decisions as retail employees use them to check inventory and pricing.

According to the Motorola Solutions 2011 Holiday Shopping Survey, consumers and retail employees want to use smartphones to find product information inside stores.

The trend toward using mobile devices to find prices, product reviews and item availability, and then using that information to make purchase decisions was highest among consumers in the mid-20s to mid-30s age range, said the report, which also found:

• 43 percent of shoppers want to use a mobile app to find items in the aisles
• Nearly 11 percent of consumers have used smartphones in store for purchase decisions
• Retail employees (71%) want to use store-provided mobile devices to check inventory for shoppers

“The majority of retail associates feel they would benefit from a widely deployed mobile device with inventory and price-checking applications,” said the report.

Tips For Reaching Consumers Across Devices

The average consumer uses multiple devices and/or browsers during the purchase cycle. For that reason, retailers must ensure a good consumer experience on all devices.

When it comes to advertising, retailers must plan targeted campaigns to reach shoppers on mobile devices. Text messaging (SMS) is one option for providing instant communication to shoppers on the go.

It’s important to offer your customers something of value with a strong call to action encouraging them to buy. Retailers could reach out to their customers once a month with mobile coupons, discounts or other incentives and rewards.

Tailoring your advertising campaigns to mobile users is also important. Retailers must reach the consumer in a manner consistent with the way their devices are used. For instance, focus on short text as query length is generally shorter.

• Text messages get read over 96 percent of the time with 8 times the redemption rate of email
• Create focused, mobile-only campaigns that reach your audience with unique offers
• Schedule text messages to coordinate with important events and promotions
• Send automated followup messages when mobile users have engaged in a transaction
• Reach mobile users when they approach your store using geo-locating technology

Before you advertise, first ensure you have a mobile friendly website. With more consumers using mobile devices, retailers must maintain a user-friendly mobile presence. Your conversion rates will double from your previous rates once you optimize for mobile users.

Optimizing Your Website To Accommodate Mobile Shoppers

Despite the increases in smartphone and tablet traffic, retailers are not yet prepared to accommodate mobile shoppers. Many retail sites have text and images that are not suitable for the small screen, making pages slow to load and hard to read with minimum functionality.

In a survey of over 4,000 mobile Web users, 74 percent said they would only wait 5 seconds or less for a single webpage to load before leaving the site. You need a mobile site that offers a good user experience and seamless transactions.

Retailers with multiple locations may consider employing mobile storefront software which automatically builds an entire mobile web-formatted store locator platform based on your existing business location data, accommodating mobile users by GPS location, IP address, city, state, zip code, neighborhood or street address, and promotes social sharing.

As you can see below, the user experience with the mobile store locator allows users to see all tabs on one page rather than having to click through several mobile pages to find what they’re looking for. Not only that, all tabs have user analytics reporting the number of clicks to Maps, Directions, Specials, Coupons, Rich Media, etc.

When it comes to your mobile presence, you have three options of mobile functionality to choose from: 1) redirecting your website for mobile users to a mobile version of your site, 2) building a mobile website and, 3) building a mobile app.

You’ll get your greatest reach with a mobile website, and many of your loyal consumers will use your app. Below is a quick checklist.

• Style Sheets: To render your mobile website properly on mobile devices, you’ll need two style sheets: one for the iPhone and one for all other handhelds.
• Think Small: Because mobile users have little patience, make your site simple and user friendly for the small screen. Consumers want basic information like product, price, hours of operation, specials, coupons, etc.
• Webpage Design: Create mobile pages for a screen size of 320 by 240 pixels. Use Alt tags for images. Don’t use tables, large images, frames or lengthy text.
• Mobile Sitemap: Create a site map so crawlers can find you and include the sitemap link in your robots.txt file.
• Local Search Submission: Display your business on Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Business Portal with map,  directions, etc. in search results.
• Test: You can submit your site to the Gomez Mobile Website Performance Test to see how well it performs.

In conclusion, 2012 will certainly be the year that retailers must focus on mobile users by reaching out to them across devices with a mobile optimized website. Being aware of the many trends reviewed above can help you increase retail sales throughout the year.

Disclosure: I advise firms that provide and/or distribute digital storefront software.