In late 2009, DemandResults began using Bing for legal industry paid search ads. Once our team got past the Bing/MSN Ad Center’s archaic user interface, we were able to focus on results that were, initially, so much higher than Google’s that we thought it might be a fluke.

We increased our spend, and in a matter of weeks were able to confidentially identify Bing as the best value for lead generation in that particular industry.

In early 2010, we began using Bing as part of an overall paid search strategy in several healthcare-related verticals. After several months of combined PPC testing in these verticals, we know that while we can still get more leads through Google AdWords due to its sheer size, we get proportionally far more conversions from Bing than you could reasonably expect given its current market share (12.1%, according to ComCast’s May figures). In addition, cost-per-conversion levels in Bing have been substantially lower than Google: 24% for the legal industry, and 85% in healthcare.

Keep in mind that these are true apples-to-apples tests, running the same ads, keywords, landing pages and geo-targeted settings in Google and Bing campaigns. Conversions were tracked both via form submissions and call tracking. The results are lopsided enough that we are executing an all we can eat strategy in Bing, whereas we’re actively limiting our spend in Google.
While we like the outcomes, we’re still left to speculate as to exactly why Bing delivers better results. We’ll ponder these findings and blog about that next time.

This may seem like a small development – and it was indeed a minor event in Boland’s address to OMMA Social attendees – but it is actually one of the most significant steps in Facebook’s revenue model thus far. There are plenty of businesses that are already using their own methods of conversion tracking, but this model will allow businesses of all sizes to begin to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Not surprisingly, nearly all the followup questions from those in the audience were about ad conversion tracking. The product is expected to be released to the wider public in late March.

Bolan also talked up the success of “Friends of Connections,” an ad targeting feature that allows advertisers to target the friends of Fans and connections that have installed Facebook apps. According to Bolan, this feature has so far shown a huge lift in conversion rate.

See the video featuring Brian Boland here:

According to Google, the tab will feature a broader set of search engine management optimization tools in the future. A Google blog post hinted at competitive bidding data and better analytics tools in the coming months. The company also invites customer feedback during the beta period, which may be a good thing. In the past, our experience with the AdWord’s optimization suggestions have been underwhelming. What’s there now may be useful for more inexperienced users, and it would be great if they could bring in a range of expert-level tools that can currently only be found in 3rd party applications.

Say what?

The continuation of this nonsense from Yahoo is bound to confuse even many in the industry. Here is what we know as of today:

* Yahoo and Bing are Still Separate Entities – the planned merger will probably not take place until 2010.

* Yahoo Search users will Really Use Bing – Even if the “front-end” is branded Yahoo!, users will really be using Bing. Any “competition” that Yahoo may be planning is purely over window dressing.

* Bing will Power Yahoo Search Marketing – Bing will take over Yahoo’s Search Marketing, replacing it with Microsoft Ad Center, and give Yahoo a cut of the revenue. This is what makes statements of continued competition even more ludicrous.

* Congress May Need to Approve the Deal – Others in the search landscape may wish to force Congress to review the proposed deal on grounds that it might violate anti-trust regulations.

Those are the basics as of now. Stay tuned.

B2B Keyword Discovery

Before we can tackle SEO-centric content development or revision, we have to define what keywords we’ll be optimizing. Without a tight focus on a defined set of keywords that we want to dominate, search result gains will be middling at best.

Sadly, it’s here that many B2B campaigns are doomed from the start.

In many cases, especially when a company is involved in a complex or high-ticket sale, there is a vast discrepancy in the lexicon used by the company and its customers. For example, let’s imagine that Acme, a cloud-based technology company, creates a product that does many things related to tracking employee productivity at agencies that bill by the hour (law firms, spa services, etc). Those services include client tracking, task management, project management, time tracking, productivity reporting and automated billing. But because the product does so many things well, the company decides that no existing names in the marketplace do the product justice. They then decide to create a new category for the product, which they call an “Agency Workflow Automation System.” This decision alone creates a common pain point – the good people at Acme are the only people in the world who would describe their product this way, meaning that their product almost never appears in search results.  This is something that is far more prevalent in the B2B world.

The SEO’s job is to unpack the product’s impressive feature set and try to match it with language that will drive traffic to the site. This means language that people will actually use when conducting search queries. More importantly, it also means using search terms that are accurate, ethical and within the company’s comfort zone.

Product Research

Acceptable Entry Features – Does the product really deliver on all the individual things that it claims to do? For example, does the product really have solid task management features, or are those just “sideline” features? Because the SEO campaign will be responsible for much of the product’s lead generation, we need to consider whether consumers looking for a particular feature will be satisfied by what they find as a result of a keyword query. In the long term, this can also have serious online reputation management implications as well.

Keywords

Once we’ve nailed down all the individual features that we want to promote, we have to figure out what potential customers actually call these features. In most B2B cases, customers use completely different keywords for products than the product providers. This is true in the case of Acme’s product – very few searchers would think to search for something called “Workflow Automation System.”

For Acme, we’ll conduct our keyword discovery in three ways:

•       Internal Surveys – sales reps and customer service representatives are among the best sources for discovering what types of language real customers are using before they are “educated” with industry terminology. This pre-education lexicon often translates well to search queries.

•       Customer Surveys – customer keyword acquisition can be achieved through online polls, or through perusing the online forums and reviews for competitor’s products.

•       Keyword Tools – looking up customer keywords, searching for synonyms, and identifying keyword combinations that are both targeted enough but also have the highest possible search volume.

Narrowing the List

For Acme’s “Agency Workflow Automation System,” some of the resulting keyword queries – taking into account search volume trends and the language that customers actually use — might look like this:

•       “track employee productivity”

•       “project management software”

•       “resource management tools”

•       “quickbooks billing software for agencies”

Once we have this list, it’s essential to run it by Acme decision makers for final approval. Even though they realize that they might get a few dozen extra leads each month through customers searching for “project management software,” they may decide that this could ultimately harm their brand management. Whether it actually would do that is debatable, but brand considerations are tricky corporate decisions that SEOs should never second guess.

PPC Campaign

Ideally, the ensuing list of keywords should be tested using a Google or Yahoo search campaign. This way, keywords can be tested all the way through the sales pipeline, giving the SEO the ability to see which keywords not only lead to clicks, but to conversions as well. The downside of doing this is that many B2B cycles can take several months or years, making this an unacceptably long process to build into the cycle.

Organizing the List

The list should be organized into a spreadsheet with four columns:

•        Page (the actual URL with keywords in the folder structure)

•        Primary keywords

•        Supporting keywords

•        Remarks

There should also be a key. For example, primary keywords might be utilized whenever possible in H1 tags, including top level menu items, and used in text using bold or strong styling. Supporting keywords would be used in context and, if possible, repeated with synonyms, and so on.

Content Generation

Now that we’ve got a defined list and a usage key, content creation can actually begin.

If this work is delegated to a creative team, the SEO’s role will be in an editorial capacity, making sure that proper usage is employed without stepping into the realm of keyword stuffing, resulting in penalization.

This process, used in coordination with numerous other SEO strategies, should product competitive web pages in any given category.

There’s a new player in the paid posting space, however, and its name is PaidPerTweet.com.

The PaidPerTweet model is very simple. Users sign up to join the PPT directory, writing a short bio about themselves and listing their PPT rate (i.e. $1/tweet). Advertisers can click to “hire” these users to tweet about their brand, but must register with the site to contact them. The service is nothing new. There are at least 3 others operating publicly, and it’s not difficult to find stories from Twitter users bragging about how much they’ve made to tweet about everything from Blockbuster to hair products.

The existence of the service raises important questions about whether social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter should impose standards and guidelines governing paid status updates. Do non-disclosed paid status updates really compromise the integrity of a social network? Should social media users be forced to distinguish paid updates from nonpaid updates?

Policing Brand Ambassadors

The commingling of paid and non-paid content is nothing new. Print magazines have long clearly marked paid content as an “advertisement,” “advertorial” or “sponsored content”, sliding it in right alongside non-paid articles. Radio stations have for decades promoted spots that are intercut seamlessly with live on-air chatter, blurring the lines between programming and advertisement. For sophisticated media consumers, however, it’s still relatively easy to spot a promotion in traditional media.

Last week, the NewYorkTimes ran a piece on Mommy Bloggers and the ethics surrounding product endorsement. The article cites advocacy groups concerned about blogging, and to a lesser extent, micro-blogging. Paid status updates are even more problematic, both for site users and also for social media networks to police. If a social media user begins spouting the virtues of the latest iPhone, or little-known TV show, who’s to say that the user isn’t merely an enthusiastic brand ambassador?

Dealing with this issue is considerably easier in Facebook, where networks will naturally self-police. Many Facebook users in the prime growth areas (35-50 years olds) favor semi-private networks with a limited number of friends and family. In these networks, strangers are looked upon with suspicion, greatly lowering the chance of being bombarded by paid status updates. However, should someone in that user’s network begin shamelessly plugging a slew of products over and over again, to the point of annoyance, that person will surely find himself “unfriended” or hidden from view in short order. Likewise, a Group administrator can easily cut a user who barrages the Group’s message thread with sales pitches.

Twitter is another matter entirely, where most Twitter users maintain public profiles and invite strangers to follow their status updates. Many already put up with a high level of unwanted contact and deal with spammy false personas on a regular basis. PPT introduces yet another layer of potentially problematic complexity. Some well-known pundits are calling for guidelines from the social media sites themselves, including social media transparency advocate Brian Solis.

Brand Ambassador Campaigns and Ethicacy

These issues pose several important questions for companies that are integrating brand ambassadors into their marketing strategy.

Can real customers be counted on as potent brand ambassadors in social media? Is a real customer’s credibility compromised if they receive payment?

Is the practice of paying non-customers to perform a PPT campaign any less ethical than the widely accepted practice of hiring an actor to play a customer in a TV commercial?

We look forward to continuing the conversation as more consumer advocacy groups, companies and brand ambassadors weigh in.