5th edition of the Search Marketing Benchmark Guide out

MarketingSherpa's 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide is out. This is the 5th edition. To come out with this books, they surveyed 1,928 search marketers. It also contains 170 charts and 45 tables along with 12 eyetracking heatmaps.

The executive summary points out that Google is indeed the biggest player in the search World but also points out the latest developments, such as "mobile search" that a lot of people miss out.

Some of the fresh data in the book includes:
- The impact of analytical tools on search budgeting strategies.
- How search advertising affects brand metrics?
- Impact of mobile search, geotargeting, and local search on local business markets.
- Effect of new analytics tools on the industry.
- What analytics are critical to follow to improve campaign performance?

If you are planning to come up with your company's online marketing budget, I suggest you get a hold of this book.

MarketingSherpa's Online Advertising Handbook reviewed

I have been neglecting this blog - not due to blogger's block or lack of topics but simply because I am up to my neck with work. Unlike other full time bloggers, I have to juggle blogging with my research, part-time jobs and taking care of my kids. Really busy with my research work and have my upgrade presentation on the 6th of next month. Anyway, I have had some free time and this is a long overdue review of MarketingSherpa's new book- the '2008 Online Advertising Handbook with Benchmarks'.

The book has four chapters and covers everything from budgets and analytics to online branding and method of delivery. This is clearly targeted at practitioners, with real life examples (meaning less theories) and the text is easy to read with easy to understand figures and graphs. For example, a special report on matching rich media design tactics to strategic goals, they have used EyeWonder as an example. The books goes through each of their major campaign objectives along with the strategies used. They are but one of the examples used through out the book to illustrate various online advertising techniques and strategies.

The executive summary points out how online advertisers are ignoring the use of online ads for branding purposes and instead emphasising clicks. I found the book really useful as it is quite relevant to my doctoral research. However, I feel that this book will be highly useful to online advertisers as well as business managers thinking of advertising online. Another feature of the book that I found quite helpful was the Glossary which defines most of the technical terms used in the book and in online advertising circles, some of which have not come into popular academic usage.

This book costs $497/ and I recommend it for both practitioners and academics alike, as well as anyone who's interested in the latest trends in online advertising.

Thanks to Jeanne Hopkins and other guys from the MECLABS Group, MarketingSherpa for sending me a complimentary copy of the book.

MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook is AWESOME

MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in "what works in marketing", recently launched the 2nd edition of the "Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions – Data & Design Guidelines" on the 5th of November.



I was quite excited to receive a hard copy of the handbook as it has been three years since they published their first edition of the handbook. The first edition, which was launched in fall of 2004 became a best-seller and literally changed the way online marketers and web designers looked at the impact of landing pages in the success of online campaigns.

For your information, “Landing pages” refer to the pages on your site that visitors land on when they click on a banner ad, link ad, email link or search engine result.

It took me sometime to go through all 273 pages of the book and I have one word to describe it – “AWESOME”.

There are dozens of real case studies along with graphics and statistics. I didn’t count but according to their site, the new edition has a total of 114 sample landing pages. The new edition also has some information about blogs. The information only covers 5 pages but I still found it quite useful – especially the part about email subscription sign-ups. That is something I never even considered.

One feature I especially found interesting was their "eyetracking heatmap" in colour, that shows the high attention zone on a web page.

This book is absolutely invaluable for marketers, web designers, web consultant and SEO practitioners alike.

What do I wish they had included in the handbook?

- More info on blogs
- An index page that would make it easier to search for certain key words.

Other than that, the book was really an eye opener. There are so many small things that is quite obvious but you never thought about. I wish I had come across this book before as I realized the mistakes I had made in the past as a freelance web designer. The book points out simple yet common mistakes we make like not taking into consideration the impact of screen resolution and different browsers – something I learnt through trial and error.

To learn more about the handbook or to purchase a copy, go to: http://www.SherpaStore.com/LandingPageHandbook.html

Thanks Jeanne for sending me a copy.