Looks like we are getting there, finally – The book I am co-authoring with Anne Kennedy is on Amazon and the date is set. The book is published by Que Biz-Tech and is called “Global Search Engine Marketing: Getting Better International Search Engine Results“. The description is as follows:

“For companies that operate internationally, English-only, U.S.-centric search programs leave far too many customers behind. Marketing through search engines to non-English-speaking customers outside North America has become essential, but it presents complex and unfamiliar challenges.

Now, for the first time, there’s a complete and practical guide to succeeding with global search marketing. In Global Search Engine Marketing, two leading experts bring together proven solutions to all the issues marketers will encounter – from culture and communication to technology and law. The authors cover all this, and much more:

” Understanding key cultural and behavioral differences, including the surprising local differences in how people search ” Crafting online marketing campaigns that reflect local cultures ” Selecting the right search media in each market – including markets where Google doesn’t dominate ” Achieving higher rankings in search engines around the world ” Organizing effective global pay-per-click search marketing campaigns ” Optimizing online press releases and other content for global search media ” Leveraging non-U.S. social media tools and platforms ” Optimizing mobile sites and apps for worldwide audiences ” Using web analytics to track key performance indicators (KPIs) in multilingual/multicultural campaigns – even if you don’t speak the language”

An article by me was publised last Februar in the annual Baidu Magazine. The article was written in cooperation with Baidu’s marketing team and the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Organization) were I am on the board of directors. The idea behind the article was to give Chinese marketers an insight into the markets out side of China and how the Internet with focus on search and display was developing.

The 8th annual Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference is now underway with Ingvar Hjálmarsson currently giving the opening speech.

Ingvar has also been honoured with the title of Icelandic Internet Personality of the Year — the first time RIMC has awarded the prize. Congratulations to him!

Ingvar is giving a very informative and funny opening speech from his position as the founder and face of mbl.is — Iceland’s most popular website by far.

At the SAScon (Search – Analytics – Social Media Conference) Great set of speakers and the venue looks fantastic! Just saw TouTubes Bruce Daisley talk about the impact and possibilities of Youtube and now watching a session called “Black Hat/White Hat – Does it Matter Anymore?”.

Reykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.

You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is

Search Marketing Expo or SMX is again held in London on 18 and 19 May at the New Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden. SMX has changed its agenda in response to recent customer feedback. The now-even-better conference will bring together professionals doing online marketing from all over the world later this month. This is a must go-to conference that you need to attend if you are seriousin gaining online success. Nordic eMarketing has a speaker there, Kristján Már Hauksson will be doing speaking on online corporate communications and online PR.

For more information go to www.searchmarketingexpo.com

The speaker is Mark Killingley from the NFL. He says online is the best place to be in the recession – although people go out less in such times, meaning they watch more TV. And TV is getting cheaper to advertise on. So he says the internet is great but still only part of the overall media mix.

The philosophy these days should become “we don’t have any money, so we’re going to have to think”.

Client agency relationships are just a lot like marriage counselling in the end. Trust, respect, communication, proactivity, understanding, involvement, partnership, creativity (and ownership – which is less like marriage). In other words, it’s a two way relationship.

Things go wrong when the partners fail to listen to each other. Inflexibility has no place in a creative environment. Lack of hunger and stale thinking are the agency’s nemeses – but on the other side, clients need to avoid loss of focus and inflexibility.

Setting clear expectations is important to make things go right. Who does what, when and why? New relationships need these questions answered. Clear communication is paramount. If either partner is unhappy, it must be known. No politeness for politeness’s sake. British stuttering modesty out of the window.

Of some of the aspects of relationships: partnership, integration, imbalance, confusion and the adversarial approach, only confusion is entirely negative.

Research shows 70% client satisfaction with traditional agencies and only 50% for digital ones. That is a problem for digital agencies. Making clients understand what they do is of great importance. Lose the jargon and don’t make it sound more scientific than it actually is. And clients, on the other hand, should ask more questions.

He then gave a case study of the NFL’s dealings with Nordic eMarketing. The brief was basically non-existent. Just get me some web traffic! And it helped to drive users to a new NFL introduction website.

Sometimes short briefs are the best for creativity and excellent results.

At Nordic eMarketing, one of our big goals right now is help even more companies to increase and strengthen their presence on the Scandinavian markets. We are therefore really excited about the latest report on digital media consumer behavior and trends in the Nordic and Baltic countries, from one of Scandinavia’s largest telecom providers, Telia Sonera.

The report divides digital media consumers up into four different categories, “tech parents”, “iToddlers”, “infomaniacs” and “IT high society”. The latest group is defined as the most important and influential one. The report even appoints the “IT high society” as the new “upper class” of digital media consumers.

The common denominator for this group of consumers is that they consider constant access to Internet connectivity through a computer and/or mobile phone as essential for their social life. They consider the time spent online as an investment in nurturing relationships, creating new ones and building a social identity. They see the opportunities of constant connectivity offered by mobile technology as a natural extension of themselves in a social context. Sixty percent use their mobile devices to surf the Internet regularly and seventeen percent goes online with their mobile phone every day. Almost 40 percent even use the mobile phone in bed.

Almost half of the IT high society population read blogs regularly, compared to one third of the population in general.

What differs the IT high society most from all of the other consumer categories in the report is that it is the strive for social connection and communication that drives curiousness for exploring new technology rather than strive for search of information.

The IT high society consists of a fifth of the adult population in the surveyed countries. A majority of them are women (60 percent) and one third are 25 years of age or younger.

Even though the IT high society can still be considered an elite, it is expected to grow in a rapid pace and to have increased considerably in size by the end of 2009. The report also points out that even though this group is ahead in using digital media and the Internet, the remaining parts of the population in the surveyed countries are in no way an “under class” in digital media consumption. It is rather to be considered as a mainstream “middle class” of users with a relatively small but growing knowledge and interest for the social aspects offered by digital technology.

To successfully create a dialogue with this growing group of demanding and fastidious consumers will be a requirement for many companies that target Scandinavia with their Internet marketing. At Nordic eMarketing, we feel confident that our knowledge of Scandinavian market landscapes and our holistic approach to digital marketing makes us well equipped to help companies continue to achieve success in Scandinavia.

Despite trends in former recessions of decreased marketing, there are signs that many companies might keep their marketing efforts unchanged or even increased this time around.

For the airline industry which is traditionally very recession sensitive, this might be particularly true. The flight industry magazine, Airline Business, in its latest issue publishes the results of a survey conducted among 22 top level airline executives. The surveyed focuses on the airlines marketing directions and size of their marketing budgets for 2009. Interestingly, as much as 60 percent of the participating airlines claim that it is important to invest more in marketing during a recession, to stimulate demand.

Compared to last year, only 15 percent of the contributing airlines plan to decrease their marketing budget. 45 percent plan to keep the size of their marketing budgets unchanged while 30 percent of the airlines plan to spend more and 10 percent plans to spend “significantly” more. Birkir Holm Gudnason of Icelandair says in the article that his company intends to spend 10 to 20 percent more on marketing this year, compared to last, adding that Icelandair conducted a similar marketing effort as a direct response to the markets reaction of the 9/11 incidents.

In terms of marketing strategy, 81 percent of the responding airlines viewed the Internet as being very important to their marketing strategies. 57 percent responded that they would spend more money on Internet marketing this year compared to last and a further 29 percent said that they would spend “significantly” more. 75 percent of the airlines recognized optimization of their websites as a “very” important cornerstone of Internet marketing while the remaining 25 percent graded it as “important”. Search engine optimization and focus on achieving high organic search results was graded “important” or “very” important by 75 percent of the airlines.

Among the vast majority of respondents that valued Internet marketing, many mentioned social networking forums such as Facebook as interesting opportunities to look into. Some of the responding airlines are further ahead than others in exploring Internet marketing strategies. One of the Internet marketing front runners among airlines is Icelandair. Its CEO Birkir Holm Gudnason interestingly enough says that they have tried social network marketing in recent years but are going back to focus on visibility through search engine optimization as it has generated the best ROI for them so far.

Although we at Nordic eMarketing are very pleased that more and more companies are realizing the impact and strength of search engine optimization in the long term perspective we are devoted to all types of Internet marketing methods, not the least social networking. We are even happier that we keep hearing about companies and industries which will keep the size of their marketing efforts unchanged and maintain or even strengthen their brand communication during the coming years of recession. We are convinced that the players who spend their money wisely and a large part of it on Internet marketing will come out as the strongest on the other side of the recession.

Sometimes its good to be taken back a few steps and being reminded of the world that is inhabited by “normal” Internet users. Working professionally everyday with the Internet as a sales and marketing channel, easily makes you loose the perspective of those people. The people that are the end receivers of our clients messages and products.

Luckily though, an article in The Mail on Sunday on the 15th of February reminded me of the Internet reality that actually reigns out there outside of our office walls. Entitled “Millions lost by firms who ignore the net”, the article reveals that six out of ten British companies do not use the Internet to sell their products, even though they are quite happy to use the Internet to buy goods and services for their organizations. A survey on small businesses (up to 50 people) showed that four out of five use their website to showcase their goods rather than sell it. Even more surprising, 67 percent believed that they would not find customers online if they were to try. Considering the fact that 20 billion pounds was spent online during 2008, it feels safe to assume that they are wrong and that they are loosing out on considerable earnings by not incorporating the Internet as a serious marketing and sales channel.Our experience, among clients and partners that sell their product online as well as in physical stores, is that an online store usually outperforms physical ones in terms of turnover, distribution and sales volume per store. Likewise, our clients experience that active Internet marketing (rather than passive showcasing of products) such as SEO and online PR, more effectively generates substantially higher (and fully measurable) ROI, visibility and brand attention compared to marketing in traditional medias.

In the article in The Mail on Sunday, Phil McCabe of the UK forum of Private Business conforms this by emphasizing the need for businesses to become more cost effective in the current financial situation. Saying that the Internet is often a simpler and more cost effective way of boosting business.

For a web marketer the reporting in the article are stunning. Twice I had to check the date of the paper in my hand. Does it say the 15:th of February 2005? No, it is 2009. If it wasn’t for the mentioning of the financial crisis and the Obama article in the same issue, I would probably have taken it for a printing error.

From this, I can only conclude that we in the Internet marketing industry are still facing a huge communication challenge concerning what we do and how we can help virtually any company achieve higher ROI on their marketing budget. It is essential that we work to distance ourselves from the “tech geek” image and present ourselves and our knowledge to marketing decision makers as the choice of the future.

More on how we achive this in future postings.