I'm reading a book "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This", by Luke Sullivan, a big-agency copywriter, and a disciple of William Bernbach. From the start he rants about marketing being more art than science, and about research killing good ideas. It was Bernbach who famously said:

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

When you look at what exactly Sullivan complains about - and he complains in detail - what he is complaining about is BAD research. Meaning research based on methodologies that don't work, or are improperly applied or misused.

Like focus groups.

It's as though someone complained that all vehicles are bad, because some of them are of poor quality.

I think what is going on here is marketers who don't know research don't distinguish between one form of research and another.

Let's stamp out bad research.

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You're welcome.

How will this actually look?

Some examples:

1. Print design depends on the quality of the print job. Your beautiful black and white photo can suddenly develop a sickly greenish cast.

2. Print ads appear in a context. How will it look against the backdrop of the other ads or copy on that page or in that periodical? Will your ad disappear because it looks like all the rest?

3. How a web page looks depends heavily on the monitor on which it is being viewed.
4. Signage and packaging aren't going to look the same lit by sunlight as by indoor fluorescents.

This is not a new problem - marketers have been struggling with this for ages, as this photo from 1955 illustrates.

Now isn't THAT interesting?

There's lots of speculation on why that is. My own guess, it's a combination of factors:

1. People have less time for aimless wandering around the Net.
2. People have found sites that work for a lot of things, and have them bookmarked.
3. Google has gotten smarter so people are taking fewer searches to find what they are looking for.
4. People have gotten smarter in their searches so take fewer searches to find what they are looking for.
5. Alternatives to search are rising (such as mobile apps).

I've put them in order of what I think are the biggest to smallest factor.

In any case, pat yourself on the back, if your website is getting found as much or more through searches as it was a year ago.

More and more, they are tending to show a wider variety of results.

It's all about ensuring they hit what you are looking for - even when your search may mean several things.

If you are searching for "mister" are you looking for a male person, or for a device for spraying little droplets of water?

If you search for plumber, are you looking for a plumber in your local area (probably), or maybe you just want to know more about the profession?

Are you looking for a web page, video or images? Information? A site where you can buy something online?

One way Google has dealt with this: It has been a firm rule for about a year, they will not serve up more than two pages from the same website.

That way there are eight other chances (not counting Places and Sponsored listings) to hit a home run with the searcher.

You see this where the second listing is indented slightly indicating it is another page from the same domain. Usually one is the home page.

Now Google has announced another tweak. Under certain circumstances, they will again show more than two pages for a domain.

For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site:

Note that in the example given, they still show only 7 results from the amnh.org website. This puts three other listings on the first page of results. Google still hedges their bets.

Smart. Very smart.

They are about the three most important elements of a web page.

Most CMS (Content Management Systems) use the same content (and name) for all three.

And yet, and yet, they are NOT the same thing and you don't necessarily want them to be identical.

1. Page Title. This is the line of copy at the VERY top of the screen (above the browser menu / tool bars and everything). It is determined by the "title tag" code. It is the single most important thing Google looks at to determine what your page is about. And Google usually picks it up for the first line of your listing on a search results page.

Because of its location, most people aren't aware of the page title on their screen. So Google can downgrade or even ignore the page title if it doesn't match the other content of the page.

2. Page Name. This is the URL (address) of the page, such as "marketing.html." Again, search engines consider this an important clue to what the page is about. So page names like "page37.php" are not going to buy you any rankings. Also you can lose people with completely unfriendly page names like "z132503577.asp" - page names should say what they are, and they should be as short as is realistic. Use a "-" or an "_" to separate words, for example, "tampa-marketing.html/"

3. Heading or Headline. The first, large copy in the main content of the page, could also be called its title, just as it would if were a scientific paper or perhaps newspaper article.

Again, it is a big clue to Google what the page is about. Oh yes, and to the visitors.

Let's call it the headline and make it say something. "Welcome" not only doesn't buy you any search engine rankings. It doesn't give the notoriously skittish website visitor any reason to stick around.

We have shot a website up from obscurity to excellent search rankings just by editing the home page title tag.
Like I said, three of the MOST important things on a page. So worth paying attention to.

Officially announced yesterday.

(Link is to a good article about the change and what it means, on Search Engine Watch.)

"MicroHoo" = Microsoft + Yahoo, and yes it is a bit derogatory. The combined market share is now somewhere around 25% of all U.S. search, compared to pushing 70% for Google. Will this change make them a viable challenger? No.

But one big change will be not having to run Bing and Yahoo click ad campaigns separately (starting probably in about a month). Possibly, it will drive Ask and the other miscellaneous search engines even further down into the weeds.

More and more though, ads are expected to do both.

Time-Life infomercials get people to call up and order their music CD collections. They also get people to know the brand Time-Life as a source for really good themed music collections.

A lot of advertising is what is called "TOMA" = Top of Mind Awareness. But not exclusively so. In short, some people will have an immediate need for what you are selling. Most people will not, but through repetition will come to remember you so that when they DO have a need, they call you or go into your store or buy your product.

Notice the difference. Some things (CD music collections) are not need based. No one NEEDS one of these. Whereas some people NEED their teeth fixed. Or a new car.

You do get some pure Direct Response advertising, where there is no effort whatsoever (nor any reason) to create a brand awareness. That is rare.

And you get some pure Branding advertising, but that is mostly baloney. If you aren't trying to sell something, why are you advertising?

A website visitor doesn't see it when he views a page. For that reason, Google gives it little importance in determining search engine rankings.

However, when a description tag is present on a page, Google will normally use it for the "snippet" of your listing - the two lines that follow the title line - on a search engine results page.

Your page title usually becomes the lead line - call it the headline - of your listing. It either grabs someone's attention and resonates or it doesn't.

Think of the snippet then as the body of an ad. THIS is your opportunity to tell the searcher who you are and what you do.

And it is almost completely under your control.

If you aren't paying attention to this, you are missing a hugely important aspect of your Internet marketing.

If you hire an SEO company and they don't test and edit description meta tags, well then, they are skipping a factor that could easily double or triple the amount of traffic to your site.

No exaggeration.

At the same time, they do produce brilliant work. Current reading is "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This", by Luke Sullivan, a copywriter at one of the Bigs. He has a lot of good things to say about the creative process.

This - harnessing creativity - is the toughest part of the marketing game, because you can't bottle it.

The difficulties are legendary. "Writer's block" immortalizes the idea, but it applies to all the arts.

Ultimately, it's the artist closeted alone with his soul, pleading for an Idea.

Any successful marketing company, to be successful, has to find a way to make this process work.

I finally made a breakthrough on this, and,of course, it turned out to be a Homer Simpson moment ("Doh!").

We've long had a system on website designs to have the client send us links to some websites they like, along with what they like about them.

That's because when you are talking about visual preferences, they are very difficult to communicate completely in words. MUCH easier to say, see this? I like the contrasting colors. Or that swooshy shape.

That is even more true with logos.

All successful websites are going to have things in common about their looks. There are technical limitations (they are always going to be on a rectangular grid, unless done all in Flash). Also you need to work within usual expectations (menus are usually horizontal, near the top) or you lose people with confusion.

Logos are more different than websites. So much so that there are five complete classes of logos plus combinations.

So (as I wrote) logo design should start with a decision about what TYPE of logo it is going to be.

But then it should go into "what are some logos you like, and what do you like about them."

THEN logo design can be a smooth process.

Many design companies deal with this by offering you a certain number of complete designs to choose from. But what if none of them work for you? Eat the fee and hire someone else? Complain until they try again? Pick the least worst choice?

Much better to have a process that really nails it.

How to write an interesting ad? Try this: "Hello. I want to tell you something important or interesting or useful or funny. It's about you. I won't take very long and there's a prize if you stay till the very end."

First there was Scientific Advertising. Then Image Ads ("The Man in the Hathaway Shirt", or to cite a modern example, "The Most Interesting Man in The World").

All concepts of how to market effectively.

And each was (and is) presented as though it were The Whole Story. And replaced or is in opposition to another or others.

The fallacy in all this is each of them is a valid aspect of marketing. None of them is complete.

Irritating ads work because people remember them? Yes, marketing has to be noticed and remembered to work.

Your marketing can be much more effective if you actually test and measure results. A no-brainer!

It takes a bright idea to sell? You betcha! Unless, that is, you have an unlimited stream of dollars to spend without concern for return on investment!

You know what is really going on here? Each new marketing theory tries to present itself as better than ____ (fill in blank with last Big Thing in Marketing). So what is that? Positioning!

And each one presents itself as having some special benefit different than other ideas. Oh yes! They have a USP.

And each one has a cute name and presented cleverly (oh yes, creativity in advertising)!

You get the idea.

I gotta laugh.

Well, they do sell books and get accounts that way.

But we don't have to be dumb.

Just because these guys are presenting some piece of the elephant as though it were the whole, doesn't mean we can't know and use the whole Beast.

THAT'S how to succeed in marketing.

SEO is Search Engine Optimization which refers to what has come to be called ORGANIC search engine listings - the listings you get because Google or other search engine evaluates your website as important for the search term.

Usually companies specialize in one or the other of these.

What's odd about that is they are not completely independent subjects. If you are doing a good job of SEO for a website, you will know probably 50% of what you need to know to do effective SEM.

Likewise, if you are running an efficient, effective pay-per-click campaign for a website, you probably now know half of what you need to optimize the site for organic search engine rankings.

That is, if you are experts at both subjects, which few companies are

And yes, at FastF we are experts at both. And more.

What no one talks about is the huge, vital areas of Internet marketing that aren't covered by EITHER of these terms.

Like what we call the Visitor Experience. In short, what happens once someone actually arrives onto your site? Most sites do a poor job of it and waste most of their visitors.

Then there's the various aspects of Market Research, Directory Listings and Reviews, and so on.

There's a lot to do to maximize your potential on-line. A LOT.

The theory is it bulks up the site (gives you more pages) plus gives you individual pages for important keywords.

I saw this the other day: A 100 page website, but the content was all clone (duplicates) except for 9 pages. They had multiple copies of a page, one would be for Largo, one for Clearwater, one for Tampa, etc. Or one for water damage, one for flood damage, and so on. Most of these pages were linked only from a site map, on which the background and text color were nearly identical (why they did that, I have no idea).

Remember, Google has hundreds, maybe thousands of full-time researchers devoted to improving Search. The goal is serving up what the people are looking for.

So what do you think their algorithms made of this? Do you really think Google hasn't long since figured this one out?

On rankings, that website is having its butt kicked by a 13 page website.

Surprise.