Becoming a Better Marketer – February 2010 Edition

February 22nd, 2010 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

I’m trying something new on the blog where I post some of the best articles that I encountered during the month.  If people like it, I will do a link round-up at the end of each month highlighting articles that I find most relevant to the world of interactive marketing.  Leave a comment if you think I should continue on with this column!

When Life Hands You Lemons…

You make a documentary about how you turn your misfortune into lemonade – an inspiring tale about how to make the best of an unfortunate situation.  The premise of this feature film (35 minutes, available for free on Hulu.com and embedded below) is about how several people were laid off from large agencies during the recent economic downturn, and made the best of their situation by finding their true calling in life.

There are some very interesting stories to be told during this quick documentary and my words could never do all of them justice.  I suggest that you take a half hour out of your day to watch Lemonade!

5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code

I found this article particularly interesting because it lays out many of my thoughts about the disconnect between designers and coders. I often see web design mock-ups that are clearly more suited for print than the web. In my opinion, a good web design is far less about the creative presentation, look and feel and far more about creating a user-centric design that incorporates web best practices/standards and choosing creative that works with this user focused paradigm.  Needless to say, this is a quality that we are looking for as we seek to hire a front end web developer for Three Deep.

Here are 5 Good Reasons why Designers Should Code

Fortune 500 Spending $1.2 Billion on Paid Search, Because They Can’t Rank Naturally!

Hello opportunity!

For as long as I can remember, corporate websites have never provided much value to me and many years ago I simply stopped visiting them. I think it’s because they are projecting their vision onto me (in inhuman corporate speak) rather than taking the time to write their website with the users in mind.

As a result of a customer non-centric approach to their web presence, many corporations have forced visitors to find information about the company elsewhere, often through third party websites. They have lost the opportunity to have a dialogue with millions of potential searchers each year because they don’t understand how to speak in Vox Populi (the voice of the people).

Now we have an article that might finally cause corporations to listen.  Marketing Pilgrim’s piece about the Fortune 500 spending $1.2 Billion in Paid Search hammers this point home.

Rebuilding: The Strategist

I am a huge fan of Kevin Hillstrom’s “Mine that Data” blog because he provides incredible insight into multichannel marketing through examples, lessons and simulations. In this particular article, he talks about a role that many companies sorely lack: the strategist.

The word strategy and a position titled “strategist” can mean many things to many people.  Hillstrom’s article helps define exactly what a strategist is, and how a company arrives at a need for this position.  Here’s an excerpt:

“A CEO hires a Strategist only when Organizer, Miner, Targeter, and Futurist roles have been clearly defined. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without an Organizer skilled at providing a quality data infrastructure. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Miner skilled at telling the company how customers are behaving. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Targeter who takes profitable action on customer insights. A Strategist is unlikely to be successful without a Futurist who pushes the company in new and interesting directions that are likely to fail.”

Read the rest of Rebuilding: The Strategist

4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom

If you follow Three Deep’s twitter account, you may have seen a link to an article I wrote on Google’s CPG Blog (a blog dedicated to the Consumer Packaged Goods industry). I really appreciate Google giving me the opportunity to write a featured article on their blog and represent the voice of a CPG marketer. Over the years Three Deep has established a great relationship with the CPG team at Google, and we hope to publish more articles and case studies in the future.

You can read the entire 4 Things You Didn’t Know About Mom article on their blog. For those of you who just want to know what the 4 things are, here you go:

1. Moms use the Internet
2. Coupons Create Loyalty
3. Search Loves TV
4. Search Evolves with Mom

Want to be a Favorite Place on Google?

A few months ago I blogged about Three Deep becoming Google’s favorite place. While I was intentionally boasting about our designation, knowing that we were really just one of 100,000 businesses receiving the sticker.  Now Google has announced a new round of stickers going out to even more local businesses.  If you own a business with a retail location, I highly suggest that you read Google’s instructions about how to become a favorite place.

Moms Are Searching For YOU

February 8th, 2010 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

In December, several members of the Three Deep team attended an event at Google’s offices in Manhattan, NYC.  Google’s offices made for an intimate setting, and compelling presentations from BabyCenter’s Tina Starkey and Google’s Jim Lecinski made for a particularly worthwhile event for our team to attend.  Since many of our clients tend to be in the business of marketing to moms (and we often execute these marketing programs), this event was right in our sweet spot.

Parisian Love

The event started with a quick video that was produced by Google that told a love story through search.  It was a compelling video and told a great story of a long distance relationship where the subjects are brought together through the magic of Google.

Continue Reading Moms Are Searching For YOU →

Super Bowl, Chips and the Internet

February 2nd, 2010 | Posted by Brandon Smith

It’s time of year again – a night of exciting football and advertising frivolity.  Sunday, February 7^th 2010 marks Super Bowl XLIV (that’s Super Bowl 44 for those that are Roman numerically challenged), an annual event where commercials command just as much attention as the game itself.  Raking in as much as $3.1 million per 30-second spot, it’s the priciest bit of commercial real estate in the advertising landscape.

Over the years, folks have tuned-in to watch Cindy Crawford sip Pepsi, witness Ali Landry pop Doritos and learn that the FedEx package Tom Hanks held so dearly in the movie Castaway, ironically, contained a survival kit.

But times have changed.

Continue Reading Super Bowl, Chips and the Internet →

Keeping up with Three Deep? There’s an app for that!

January 21st, 2010 | Posted by Jake Dietrich

Those who are familiar with our company and our culture know that we are constantly thriving to be thought leaders in our industry. Our blog has proven to be an excellent channel for conveying useful information to our peers. By extension, many of our employees use Twitter and other social networks to further extend our reach.

To make keeping up with Three Deep one step easier for our followers, we have recently created an application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. After all, we figured if Seth Godin has one, we probably should too!

This flashy piece of digital goodness serves up our company blog, as well as Twitter feeds from individual team members that are frequently posting on industry trends, best practices, and even a bit of humor.

The app. is named simply Three Deep, and can be downloaded at no cost from the iTunes App. Store or by clicking the link below. If you like the app., please be sure to rate and comment. Enjoy!

Click here to download the Three Deep iPhone/iPod Touch Application

For our followers that do not have and iPhone or iPod Touch, there are many other ways to keep up with what’s going on at Three Deep. You can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

Thoughts Company Culture – What is Yours?

January 12th, 2010 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

Some time in September of 2009 I saw a “tweet” that contained a link to the slide deck embedded above – a presentation by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about how they formed an inspiring culture at Netflix.  Throughout this massive deck (128 slides!) I was both awed by the openness of the slides (revenue numbers and business models revealed) and inspired at how interesting and unique Netflix approaches innovation, compensation, and several other vital aspects of their business.

Hastings credits this culture and the core values of the company as a major reason why they have been able to consistently grow their business, fight off competitors (they rendered Blockbuster’s brick and mortar model obsolete), and constantly develop new ways to improve value they deliver to their customer base (like streaming to my Xbox 360 – which is an amazing value add to their service!)

Continue Reading Thoughts Company Culture – What is Yours? →

2010 is Going to be a GREAT Year!

January 5th, 2010 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

I am writing this post on the second business day of the new year, and I’m already very excited to see what 2010 holds.  At Three Deep, we have already had two great accomplishments to start off the year:

Upgrading Our Website Design

Depending on who you ask, our old website design needed anywhere from a “cosmetic refresh” to a “complete overhaul” – for this design, we chose to go somewhere in between. We updated the layout to be wider (using the 960 grid system) and make the site less cramped.  We also softened some of the corners and made other tweaks in order to make the site look more inviting.

The major change on the site is that we improved the animation/offer area on the home page to better highlight the core services we offer. Rather than our old home page focus of lead generation (which is definitely part of our business, but not the only part of our business as the graphic implied), we decided to create a very SEO friendly carousel that showcases our core services and easily understandable to our visitors.  Using jQuery, we were able to animate the features area while still keeping it search friendly; it’s amazing how well it works!

We had been talking about updating the site for months, and we finally put a date on when it needed to get done; January 1st.  We knew we had to get the site updated before January 4th, because we would be getting a lot of traffic from …

Continue Reading 2010 is Going to be a GREAT Year! →

Please Don’t Leave Me – SEO Trends for 2010

December 23rd, 2009 | Posted by Brandon Smith

My wife travels often for work, and by default, I usually act as her own personal car service.  As such, I am found searching for a flight status for whatever airline she may be flying that week.

Somewhere between April’s Delta flight from Monterey and November’s American Airlines flight from Indianapolis, Google has become fantastic at showing me the information I’m looking right on the SERP (search engine results page), above the organic listings without ever having to leave the search engine.  Every bit of information I’m looking for is right there.

Furthermore, if you’re lucky enough to have a Google enabled phone, you just push the Google Voice Search button, say the airline and flight number and, voila, the information you need is at your fingertips – making it very user-friendly while driving as well.

Continue Reading Please Don’t Leave Me – SEO Trends for 2010 →

Data Visualization: We Are Giving Away 9 Microsoft Pivot Licenses!

December 21st, 2009 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

Over the weekend, I learned that I was accepted into the Microsoft Pivot technical preview program.  It was totally unexpected given that this is a super secret and coveted preview program, but I guess they found my application worthy.

Microsoft also allowed me to share my license with 9 of my closest friends, so if you are interested, you should download Pivot too!  (Note, that since this is a Microsoft product, it only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7 – so many of you might be out of luck).  Here are the download/license instructions:

Continue Reading Data Visualization: We Are Giving Away 9 Microsoft Pivot Licenses! →

Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place

December 17th, 2009 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

You read it correctly, we are Google’s favorite place!  After years of hoping, prodding, sweat and tears, I can finally announce to that Three Deep Marketing is Google’s favorite place in the United States, and presumably the world.

I would like to thank my family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and people who I might meet in the future; we couldn’t have done it without you!

In the mail today, Three Deep received a package from Google containing a large window sticker with a bar code, like the image shown to the right.  I have been anticipating this package for the past 10 days; ever since reading this announcement from Google.  I knew it was only a matter of time before Google would send us an affirmation of how much they truly like our organization.

What does it take to be Google’s favorite place?  A strong presence for your local business listing.  Those fortunate enough to receive this designation and a package in the mail (about 100,000 exclusive businesses)  have worked hard to optimize their local business listing on Google so that they often show up in local business oriented search results.

Continue Reading Three Deep is Google’s Favorite Place →

Why Amazon is More Relevant than Zappos

December 11th, 2009 | Posted by Jeff Sauer

Before reading too much into the title, please make note that this article pertains to the paid search engine marketing practices of Amazon and Zappos.

While getting dressed this past Monday, I found that through general laziness toward laundry and a hectic travel schedule, I was left with one pair of dress socks.  These socks were getting old, and had sprouted a few holes in them through everyday wear and tear.

For most normal people, there is a clear solution; go to the store and buy new socks.   I wish it were that easy for me. The truth is that I live in the frigid state of Minnesota, and the cold weather conditions have lead me to despise shopping in “brick and mortar” anytime during our cold season, which generally runs from October to May.

Continue Reading Why Amazon is More Relevant than Zappos →