Waiting for the Tide to Go Out

See the picture to the right of "Mason Power, Search Marketing Guy".

This quote from yesterday at the Search Engine Strategies conference captured the spirit of search marketing:

You don't know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out

This was to illustrate that without web analytics, you can't track what your customers want and where they are struggling to find it.

Further, Google Analytics apparently has automatic uploads to CRM systems. This level of sophistication means there's an incredible opportunity for Advisen to further raise the bar for insurance professionals looking to grow their book of business.

In a soft market (see posts here), the job is to increase efficiency by doing more without increasing your expense line and the tools & techniques I saw can definitely help Advisen help our customers.

Search Marketing 101

It's been 7 years since I worked for internet.com which owned and operated the Search Engine Watch web site and related trade shows. I am currently attending the London show thanks to friend and former colleague Susan Leiterstein (contact info here), a VP of Sales at Incisive who bought the properties from internet.com.

While online marketing is still <10% on average of corporate marketing budgets, it offers pinpoint performance tracking. While this has always been the case online, the breadth and depth of what's now available in analytics and benchmarking of online ad performance is incredible.

The big news in web analytics is that the cottage industry of analytics providers now has to compete with Google which has launched Google Analytics and Google Optimizer as FREE companion products to Google Adwords.

Advisen has so much to offer subscribers and I am amazed by how many simple tactics now exist that can help our subscribers find more of what they want and to help us find new subscribers.

This has all been sparked by high demand for our recent reports on subprime and other topics, as posted here. More to come on this subject.

Long live the King (content)

I have worked for most of 14 years in businesses founded on business-critical content with embedded analytics to enable more informed decision-making. See my LinkedIn profile for a list including Bloomberg and internet.com.

This week's Advisen report on the expected $3.6b D&O loss from subprime has been an important story for insurance professionals globally. It's not a matter of if, but when, the tide will turn in the insurance cycle and Advisen has proprietary data sets which enabled the prediction.

We charged for the report ($200 for customers, $500 otherwise) and this has led to an intensive review of how we charge for our content and analysis. Advisen's is a blended model meaning that there is free, ad-supported content and we have password-protected content.

Taking stock of where consumers are willing to pay for content, the most notable story is whether Dow Jones' WSJ.com is to remain a subscription service. See a post with interesting comments here.

First, Dow Jones made their editorials free (opinionjournal.com) while charging smaller fees for certain columnists. Second, in Davos Rupert Murdoch confirmed that there will still be subscription-only WSJ.com content and that, in fact, subscribers should expect a price increase.

While only 4% of Dow Jones' revenues, WSJ.com annual revenue is around $75m, the envy of internet content publishers. Estimates are that WSJ page view traffic would have to increase anywhere from 3 to 12 times to replace subscription revenue with advertising revenue (Lehman Brothers analysts said 2x-3x while Bear Stearns said 12x). Also, while traffic would certainly increase, the impact on the massive print revenues are what keeps WSJ.com for subscribers only (for now).

Search guru Danny Sullivan blogged (here) about how WSJ has (knowingly?) allowed access to subscriber-only content via Google News.

The New York Times gave up on its online subscription product Select awhile back and according to Eliot Pierce, Vice President, Strategy & Operations there, the Online Grey Lady has never looked back. Real Estate classifieds and advertising are strong. These are different content offerings, the WSJ boasts some of the best reader demographics available to advertisers.

Here in the UK, the Financial Times just announced a blended model for FT.com where "casual readers" get free access to 30 stories/month. And, oh by the way, FT content is no longer included in Factiva's subscription fees, it's now a big premium (see post here).

The Street.com and Bill O'Reilly.com both offer premium subscribers additional content and also online chat access to Bill and to Street.com analysts like Jim Cramer.

On the other hand I worked for Alan Meckler long enough to hear his many arguments about why subscription models don't work (this was before he built an images business). Certainly search engines don't find password-protected content, depricvng publishers of valuable traffic.

While business models and consumer take-up vary, there is one irrefutable truth: If you have content that is business-critical, consumers will pay for it. Our subprime report is a good example.

Just Do It

In the couple of weeks since I started blogging:

1) A colleague at Advisen started a blog to promote a series of educational initiatives for our subscribers. Very little of our freely-available content shows up in Google searches. Blogging allows us to target particular niches of the insurance industry with relevant content and to offer sponsors additional ways to connect with our audience. We are also looking to link to other bloggers with great content relevant to commercial insurance professionals.

2) I relayed an idea to Fred Wilson who's AVC Blog I read daily and Fred responded with a nice note.

You have to start somewhere and I can see more of where it can lead.

The Monty Hall of Search Marketing?

And behind Door Number Three...

Chris Elwell and Danny Sullivan, colleagues while at internet.com establishing Search Engine Strategies as the runaway leader in the space, have teamed up to start a new network of information websites and associated trade shows for marketing professionals.

Third Door Media debuted its fast-growing Search Marketing Expo series in London last week.

We got to spend Friday night with Chris re-telling our favorite stories (we didn't even get to the one about the ad salesguy at internet.com who regularly wore black leather pants to the office - a clear sign of the end of the bubble that we clearly missed).

I'm now looking at sphinn which is packed with content generated by search engine/interactive marketers - a great example of a business application of social media.