As part of YPM’s annual Kick Off meeting, the entire company convenes to join forces with skill, strategy and precision, working towards an ultimate goal…much like the daily commitment of the YPM team itself.

With a singular focus on performance, crews are formed and the race to the Finish Line begins. The task: working in unison, bring together pieces which by themselves do little, but structured properly may be a winning formula for success.

Each team has the same parts, the same restrictions and the same opportunity to build for its success on the track. So why would it seem that one would outperform another? All the pieces are the same, the track is the same and there would be no apparent advantage of one over the other, right?

There is no guarantee of making it down the track much less crossing the Finish Line in this race. For it is not in the pieces themselves which are awarded in this race, but rather how the pieces are constructed, how they fit together and how working in concert with one another, they achieve one goal…together. Make no mistake there is plenty of trial and error, test runs, and going back to the drawing board to calculate the odds of success against the competition.

Whether it is brand building, team building, or even Tinker Toy car racing the same rings true, one strategy, one person, one piece, will have limited success by itself. A singular media channel will capture only one audience, a single person can only do so much and a lone wheel will propel the car only so far. For it is only through strategic coordination, careful planning and results measurement that true synergies are realized for the ultimate winning combination.

]]> http://www.ypm.com/when-the-sum-is-greater-than-the-equal-of-its-parts/feed/ 0 http://www.ypm.com/search-social-just-a-matter-of-time?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=search-social-just-a-matter-of-time http://www.ypm.com/search-social-just-a-matter-of-time#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:21:01 +0000 YPM Digital http://www.ypm.com/?p=2284 Read More]]>

It’s been clear for some time that Google’s greatest rival was never going to be Yahoo, Bing or the combination thereof. Instead, the explosion of consumer generated content where the user IS the product is the greatest threat to even a behemoth such as Google. Enter Facebook.

Google’s social facelift from Buzz to Google+ in June 2011 was its latest attempt at getting social right in the hopes of turning billions of searches into a social network, thus locking users onto Google instead of straying elsewhere.

In fact, Google has been trying to get ‘personal’ since June 2005 when based on personal behavior and interests, results would be given a boost. By February 2007, personalized results were expanded and repackaged and by December 2009 by default, Google would show you personalized results whether you opted in or were signed in, or not. Social search results entered onto the scene in October 2009 which were not only personalized but were based on people you know, rather than the searcher’s own behavior.

Google’s integration of social and regular search results came February 2011. It expanded to include not just content created by those you know but also content shared by them through a variety of social networks.

Henceforth, the intersection of private, public, personal and social was born…

While Google+ is still in its infancy, it’s wasting no time being integrated with other Google experiences. In January 2012, Search plus Your World emerged, which finds both content that’s been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings. You’ll know it when you see it as a Google will alert you with a message like this above your search results:

While this convergence is underway there is no shortage of questions and user privacy concerns bubbling to the top not unlike those which surfaced surrounding the Facebook Timeline. Time will tell how this plays out.

In the meantime, the prominence Google is placing on Google+ and Search plus Your World is giving rise to a new way marketers must look at their Search + Social strategy. Here are a few ways to take advantage of the emerging space as excerpted from Search Engine Land:

The Internet has emerged as a new marketplace and a primary medium for reaching and influencing consumers. Consumers are increasing the number of purchases they make directly through the Internet. Which consumers use the Internet to make online purchases? This paper reviews data from Simmons (Spring 2011) to identify the key demographic characteristics of those most likely to make purchases online.

Download the article here – Online Shoppers 2011

Consumer generated content has long since been a digital Pandora’s Box, the veritable soap box for testimonials, reviews, customer service outreach and even rants. When the message is positive and supportive, good news can travel fast, when it’s negative, bad news will travel even faster.

And while brand transparency is good for consumerism, how does a century old company who painstakingly has built its reputation with one to one personal connections insulate itself from the potential single unsatisfied customer from tarnishing its good name online?

First, a reality check – every single business has had more than one unsatisfied customer. Period. Consumers by and large recognize that no company—large or small, public or private—can satisfy everyone, all of the time. The difference however lies between reality and what a potential customer perceives, and reads.

Review websites such as Yelp, CityGrid, Insider Pages and Merchant Circle, as well as the growing list of service directories which compile consumer ratings of local service companies such as Consumer Reports and Angie’s List, all thrive on peer to peer referrals and reviews.

“New Cone research reveals 80% consumers have changed their minds about purchasing a recommended product or service based solely on negative information they found online. This is up from just 67% of consumers who said the same in 2010. Online information, a trustworthy source for 89% of consumers, has the power to make or break a product recommendation, concludes the report.

Positive information has a similar effect on decision making, with 87% of consumers agreeing a favorable review has confirmed their decision to purchase. But, negative information is gaining traction and is now just as powerful in tipping the scales against a recommended purchase.”

While most brands have attended to the business of promoting themselves online, many are left exposed and unaware of what is being said about them across review websites, blogs and throughout social networks. With 64% of consumers seeking out user reviews before deciding to purchase, knowing the sentiment about a brand is vital, remember what they say about one bad apple.

If the best defense is a good offense, here are a few ways to get in the game:

Finally, give outrageously great customer service, in the end isn’t that what this is all about?

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Today Google launched a paid version of Google Analytics that processes higher volumes of page views and provides additional support. The general feature set and user experience remain the fundamentally the same as the standard product. This comes as an important addition to the enterprise set of tools that Google offers. The new version audience is mainly enterprises that receive a high amount of traffic and need a certain commitment from Google’s part on data collection, up-time, and support.

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