Scott Smigler's BlogYoung Internet Entrepreneur and E-Commerce Marketing Leader

Each month I will be working with members of the Exclusive Concepts PPC Management team to construct an article for Practical E Commerce.

This month’s article just went live, check it out here:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Six Metrics that Drive Performance

Title: Christmas in July? Pleeaaazzzeee…

Why Read It: 5 “Should Haves” you (online retailers) might tell yourself when UPS and FedEx pick-up your last holiday shipment later this year

View it here

Meet Stella!

Last week was a busy week! Exclusive Concepts exhibited at the Internet Retailer Conference (Tuesday through Thursday), then on Friday we were the Patron sponsor of the Yahoo! Merchant Summit, and on Saturday morning I moved into a new house! At the Yahoo! Merchant Summit I participated on several panels, including SEO and SEM for Managers and a site review session at the end of the day which was a lot of fun.

The highlight of the week, of course, was meeting face-to-face with many clients and partners who we work with throughout the year. As a life-long entrepreneur I have a passion for business, and I find it incredibly energizing to be around other entrepreneurs and business owners who do as well. In addition, I continue to be impressed by the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Account Management team. These true e-commerce experts, led by Mike Ober, care about the merchants they work with and become a partner in their growth.

In my SEO and SEM for Managers panel, one of my central points was that many merchants should think differently about their marketing goals. Yes, traffic is incredibly important, but I suggested that merchants think more strategically about which traffic they seek rather than making the assumption that all traffic is equal. To illustrate my point I talked about the Consumer Behavior Cycle and how shoppers have different needs along each stage of this cycle.

For example, a shopper in the earliest stage of the cycle, problem recognition, may be very unlikely to convert into a sale, especially if your website does not have content that caters to the needs of shoppers in this stage of the cycle. As a result, it probably would not be a good idea for a merchant to commit to targeting such phrases with their SEO and SEM campaigns at the expense of phrases that are more in line with the experience the site offers. Instead, this merchant may want to commit to generating traffic from shoppers who are in stages of the Consumer Behavior Cycle that their website DOES cater to. If the merchant has good content that makes it easy for shoppers to evaluate a number of options easily, they may want to target shoppers in the “evaluation of alternatives” stage. Or, if the merchant has very low prices or other major benefits, the “purchase” stage may be a good fit.

The whole point is to commit your SEO and SEM efforts to luring shoppers that you can deliver a good experience for. This will enable you to gain a better return on your marketing efforts as conversion rates go through the roof. This mindset is also helpful because it offers a simple yet effective framework for growing a niche store: If you want to dominate your niche, engage in a long-term, systematic strategy to attract, convert, and retain shoppers at all levels of the consumer behavior cycle. This is a holistic approach.

I’m looking forward to sharing more perspectives at future Yahoo! Merchant Summit events. In the mean time, please be sure to check out the Exclusive Concepts Blog. Every day one of our experts posts a 5-minute video on one concept of Internet Marketing. The videos are free and you can sign-up to receive daily notifications by going to:

http://www.ExclusiveConcepts.com/blog

Have a profitable day!

Exclusive Concepts will be exhibiting at IRCE 2010 next week, and will also be a Patron Sponsor of the Yahoo! Merchant Summit. I’m looking forward to meeting up with valued clients and partners.

Nik posted a summary of what we will be doing at booth #646 at IRCE next week.

In addition, you can follow Exclusive Concepts on Twitter (@ExclusiveTweet) for in-the-moment updates.

I’m going to take a little break from blogging on my personal blog, but i’ll continue blogging over at the new Exclusive Concepts blog. Just look for the “Scott Speaks” section in the left column.

And of course – don’t forget to check out the Exclusive Concepts website!

Interesting news. Everyone has been talking about when FaceBook would sell or IPO, but here they come and announce an acquisition! I had made the prediction on my blog many months ago that MySpace would eventually die at the hands of FaceBook… because FaceBook would do exactly the kinds of things that they are doing… and it looks like they are moving in the right direction. They are adding hundreds of thousands of new users per day, and their users actually USE FaceBook frequently.

MySpace will cite heavy numbers, but ask them:

1) How often their users USE the service
2) What percentage of their users are ACTIVE

Bottom line is this: Just as I predicted, MySpace is not innovating. They are moving slowly. They just don’t seem motivated.

Much as I am jealous of Mark, I respect the fact that he is not just some dumb kid who stumbled upon a great opportunity in FaceBook. Well, he did just stumble on it, but once he did, he realized what he had, and now he is building something great.

It’s been a long time since i’ve updated my blog… way too long. The last few months have been incredible, both on a personal and professional level. So, here’s the quick update!

What have I been up to?

I taped my first radio interview on the Frugal Yankee Radio show – all about blogs and viral marketing.

I was on my first television panel – MSNBC’s Your Money with JJ Ramberg.

I attended my first Search Engine Strategies conference (the big conference in our industry), at Yahoo!’s invitation (as a guest speaker).

The Financial Times is compiling an article about me for their mergers and acquisitions report (no, i’m not selling!)

I’ve conducted several seminars at Bentley College – one on online community building, and the other on the topic of search engine optimization. I also judged an enterpreneurship contest for the Bentley Entrepreneurship Society.

I booked a trip to Israel in June that i’m VERY excited about.

We’ve almost doubled our staff at Exclusive Concepts thanks to some very loyal clients and the very dedicated team I am lucky enough to work with on a daily basis. There will be some very interesting developments coming soon.

I’ve also had the opportunity to catch up with some great friends, who remind me what I work so hard for.

Have a great day everyone.

I talk a lot about online community building and the potential for online communities to inspire people to take action OFFLINE, in addition to taking action ONLINE. This past Monday I put my money where my mouth is and I attended my first ever Meetup through MeetUp.com:

The Cambridge SEO Meetup.

Brian Hawkins, master networker and all-around good guy, invited me to take part in the event and present a case study on how we get our clients out of Google’s supplemental index. Mark from MarksGuide.com (a GREAT local blog about networking) posted a review of the event here.

In attendance were very interesting people with varying levels of SEO knowledge. I’ve been to a fair number of SEO events, and I actually learned something from this group. I’ll be back!