Enjoy our photos with Santa, and create some of your own.

What do AM New York employees and search marketers have in common?

The business of handing out free newspapers is a high stakes, high pressure game that depends on location, weather, cleverness, looks, dress code, the economy, and knowing your target audience.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that dramatic.   But after spending months commuting to work, it’s hard to ignore the persistent cry of each AM New York employee.  Location, cadence, rhythm, attitude, message and tone can be the difference between being stuck with a large stack of papers, or walking home empty handed.  The same can be said in search marketing, where leveraging the right search management tools can be the difference between a great ROAS or money wasted. So, what makes a great pitch?  What makes for a good search campaign?  What gets us to convert?  Let’s examine the strategy of both these practices in tandem.

Below are three recordings of AM New York employees delivering their pitch.

1)  “The Stunner” – Unique and persistent, her pitch is less about the message and more about delivering consistency with great tone and attitude.  She obviously has found her ‘evergreen copy’ and rarely deviates.  You can find her on 32^nd and 7^th, right at the door step of MSG.

2) “Information-giver” – She is more concerned with delivering a pitch about what her product offers – coupons at Macy’s – and updates on localized current events.  Her message is long and drawn out, but not as effective.   You can find her by the subway entrance on 35^th and Broadway.

3)”The Mixed Bag” – She’ll let you know about the contents inside, but also repeat her core pitch every so often.  Her pitch occurs too infrequently, and seems drawn out, but her technique is better than only giving information.  You can find her at 34^th and 7^th, at the north entrance of the LIRR.

I’m not an expert in newspaper delivery, nor have I done any research, but I’m willing to wager “The Stunner” is walking home empty handed more often than her counterparts. With a limited amount of time to capture her audience, she has chosen to emphasize cadence and attitude over message to design a pitch perfectly catered to the medium.  This philosophy should sound familiar to search marketers.

Message & Cadence:  What are you saying in your search ads and how are you saying it?  How is the rhythm of your copy?  Does it read well? This can be the difference maker.

Tone & Attitude:  What is your brand’s voice?  Does it come across in your search ad?  Can you create a brand voice through search?

Location & Timing:  In search, geo-targeting and timing can be the difference between converting and not. Geo-targeting,  seasonality, time of day, and day of the week each inform how we spend our budget and manage our campaigns.

Examine all the parts that it takes to manage a good search campaign, study your competitors, and be data driven and be bold!

For fun, here is my own rendition of an AM New York pitch.  Feel free to post your own!

Our First Facebook DR Success

This chart could be the electrocardiogram of a nascent DR channel. It’s the results of the first convincingly successful Facebook DR campaign managed by Razorfish Search.

Since our second success was even more profitable, we thought it time to let the world know: It might not be long before moving money from Google Content to Facebook becomes a routine task for search managers with DR goals.

You need a savvy DR team and a state-of-the-art toolset to drive positive ROI with Facebook ads. (Razorfish uses Marin Search Marketer, which accesses Facebook’s API and tracks through our proprietary integration with Atlas Media Console). The publisher was helpful but can’t provide much guidance. This is all brand new, and Facebook’s stated focus is on brand advertising. It’s clearly in the up-and-comer’s interest to downplay the threat it represents to Google’s bread-and-butter. But for those of us on the buy side, the results speak for themselves.

Email us if you want to hear more.

Check out this tribute: Razorfish employees share their stories

It’s been almost six years when I first sifted through business school website after website. This comic, recently bestowed upon me, is pretty representative of my experience:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/university_website.png

I’m sure you can relate, whether it be shopping on Amazon.com for an over-the-shoulder purse (made of black leather, with good lining, a sturdy zipper…pretty much the only kind my mother likes), or finding the cheapest airplane ticket to multiple graduations, four months in advance. (The latter, taken care of by a beloved family member, resulted in me traveling to seven cities in two days. I’ll eat the extra $200 from now on.)

We all want everything to be easy, and we get frustrated when we don’t think companies are listening. By golly, all we want is a little digital empathy!

I’m not sure about you, but I tend to gravitate toward easy, intriguing and/or fun experiences. One of my aunts, who absolutely loves shopping, dragged me into her favorite store of the moment about one or two years ago. It was the Beverly Hills location of Madewell, a new concept by J. Crew. After returning to the East Coast, which lacked its gorgeous presence, I clicked on Madewell’s website, which popped up in natural search listings. It took a search or two since another company owned the domain (at the time it was www.madewell1937.com). To my disappointment, it wasn’t an e-commerce site! ‘They’re working on it,’ I thought wistfully.

And they were! Madewell.com finally debuted earlier this year, and it’s an experience. You may not find it to be as revolutionary as I do, but in my unfashionable, frumpy opinion, they did it right. I’m greeted by clean, clear images, and informative captions. I’m not overwhelmed by inventory or underwhelmed by it either. Shopping online here is relaxing and fun, and I think it’s all because of empathy.

Madewell is only one of many enjoyable experiences online, whose success is fueled by subtle partnerships, clever PR, and most important of all, good products. What other experiences do you find engaging and admirable? Are there websites out there providing stressful experiences but worthwhile purchases?

Disclosure:  J. Crew is a Razorfish Search client; Razorfish did not design or build the Madewell site.

Confession: my guilty pleasure and my true love are cupcakes. I go to great lengths to find the perfect cupcake, no matter which city I am in. In my quest to find the perfect cupcake shop, I search the web for all the local cupcake shops, read reviews and just recently started to turn to my trusty iPhone to use one of my location-based apps.

There is no denying that location-based apps are dominating the social space right now and are changing people’s approach to finding items or businesses. These apps are a simple way for business to build discovery and drive customer loyalty.  These interactions prove mutually beneficial: apps like foursquare allow local businesses to post specials and review data on check-in behavior and users can give tips, read reviews and redeem offers. Thanks to foursquare and businesses posting specials for check-ins, I have redeemed several discounts for free cupcakes, coffee and ice cream. I find myself visiting more local businesses to take advantage of specials they post via foursquare.

My increased reliance on these apps has highlighted areas that warrant further exploration. For example, I would love to see location-based apps recommend business or services based on my check-in behavior. Behavioral targeting would be a great way to facilitate new discoveries based on a user’s past behavior.

A recent Forrester report pointed out that adoption of foursquare and other location based apps is still too low to warrant strategies from major marketers. That may be the case, but adoption will likely increase with the recent Facebook Places launch and it’s time for big marketers to pay attention. With more and more people using foursquare and Gowalla and new location-based applications hitting the market, including Facebook Places, where is the future headed? Share your thoughts below (and any tips you have on the best cupcake shops in your city).

And in case you were wondering, here’s one of my favorite cupcakes from NYC:

image from billysbakerynyc.com

There isn’t a lot of variability when it comes to text ads. A search for mortgages leads you to ads that repeat the word ‘mortgage’ several times with perhaps a couple of rates thrown in. Most other keywords produce similar outcomes.

It’s rare that a simple text ad stands out among the crowd. And if it does, one is usually witnessing the work of an inexperienced search marketer (see our Playing with Matches column). So when there is a search campaign that thinks beyond normal constraints, it certainly needs to be called out. Tide’s search ads for its Loads of Hope movement break the traditional “rules” of search and build a brand in a channel typically seen as a simple direct response medium.

Though the ad in the screenshot broad matches into a less relevant query, there’s no denying that the ad has a couple of things going for it. At first you might wonder why Tide is showing up for Nashville, but in this case it only adds to the intrigue. Additionally, the landing page leads, not to the Tide homepage, but to a Twitter page where Tide can continue to have a conversation with those already interested after having clicked on the ad. Lastly, the Twitter page highlights Tide’s generosity with free laundry tweets for Tennessee flood victims rather than selfishly demanding something from its visitors. I don’t know how Tide is measuring success from this campaign, but from our point of view, it’s already successful.

Snaps for Tide.

This week, SearchShots introduces Best In Show, our new blog feature that allows team members to critique the work of others and showcase our standards for search marketing campaigns. Today, we are reviewing mobile search campaigns in the financial services category. Has a competitor (or anyone) caught your eye for being remarkable or awful in search? We want to hear from you! Email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com

In the US, Mobile phone internet usage penetration is projected to increase from 83.5% 2010 to 126.2% 2013 (source: EMarketer, November 2009).  “Searching for information” accounts for 66% of US mobile phone internet activities (source: Ruder Finn, November 2009), providing a new platform for our clients to reach potential customers.

Publishers are catching on and delivering new mobile targeted opportunities.  In 2009, Google released the functionality to target High End Mobile Devices (HEMD): devices that have full internet browsing capabilities, show standard HTML and can support conversion activity from start to finish.

We decided to search around in the financial services category to see who is taking advantage of the mobile search opportunity on HEMD.

Search Results and Mobile Site Experience for ‘Bank of America’:

Search Results and Mobile Site Experience for ‘Fidelity’:

When you compare Bank of America and Fidelity, it’s clear that Fidelity is not delivering on the mobile user’s intent, but rather opting their desktop search campaigns into HEMD targeting without a mobile strategy. The copy and the landing page are identical to the branded search results on a desktop. The message is not connected to the mobile user’s intent and the landing page is not easy to navigate from the small screen.

On the other hand, Bank of America’s copy has a call-to-action to download their mobile app, which is appropriate for mobile user intent. Their mobile messaging is relevant and the site experience is easy to navigate on the small screen.

Financial Services providers should take advantage of the mobile search opportunity: implement a local strategy, leverage mobile ads with Local Business Extensions and drive the user to nearest Branch/ATM.  The testing opportunities for mobile search are endless. Financial Service providers should also test to learn the intent of mobile brand searchers by rotating different messages and call-to-actions (i.e. supporting Mobile Banking App download, Branch/ATM locator, click-to-call for customer service messages, etc).

Our Mobile Search Recommendation: Isolate the mobile SEM experience from the desktop. Pay off the mobile search query with the right experience.  Improve your campaign’s ROI and position your client as an innovator among the competitive set. For more information, read our mobile case study that shows how a Fortune 100 retail client leveraged the advanced Google Mobile HEMD targeting.

Have you had a mobile search experience that you loved (or hated)? We want to hear from you, so post your comments.