It's been a while since I last took a look at the search query volume, and it appears that not much has really changed. After taking a look at Google Insights for search for these two major brands, it appears that Lowe's still has not captured the attention of it's customers. Back in 2011, it appears that Lowe's gained some serious traction, but that traction has since waned.

Without knowing any inside information, it easy to see that the Lowe's brand isn't driving consumers online. Typically, this can be attributed to a lack of brand advertising. You know, the part of the budget which is usually one of the first to be slashed when profits begin to dip. It's easy for people in finance to make the suggestion because of the poor ROI when traditionally compared to other channels. What the finance department doesn't understand is the waterfall effect of building a brand and the amount of influence that this channel plays in the overall health of a successful business. When you take a moment to think about it, it really does make sense. Every day we as consumers are marketed to all day long. These brand impressions, whether they are delivered in an audio or visual form get lodged into your brain. Granted, if you visit a website that is covered in banners, more than likely you won't remember anything about a majority of them. However, when one particular advertisement becomes the center of your undivided attention, value is gained.

Offline survey data. How many times a year to you look at these reports before pulling the plug on the campaign? Three months after pulling the plug, do you ever go back to the surveys and perform a comparison against the previous time period? There's a good chance that the surveys will provide a lot more insight than a roundtable discussion with stakeholders voicing their opinions. You may be surprised to find out that tv, radio, billboards, and yes, even web banners drive consumer interest in your brand. It's the old adage, out of sight out of mind. If your competitor is constantly in the minds of the consumer and you're not, where do you think people will go? Of course, you may win the battle due to outside factors such as location, quality of service, etc., but more than likely the competition will win over the consumer. A major problem that brands face is the idea of customer loyalty. You know, the customer for life mentality. A quick reality check would be a visit to your customer service department and spending some time reading emails, checking Facebook, and fielding a few phone calls. One bad experience can send that loyal customer running to your competitor.

Are you checking your social signals? If not, don't be surprised to see your business fail. Like it or not, today's shopper researches on the internet and takes advice from friends and family. A good practice is to not only stay on top of what people are saying, but also taking the time to respond. If the comment is negative, take the time to offer assistance in correcting the situation. If the comment is good, take the time to thank the person. It shouldn't be a difficult concept to grasp, but for many it is simply overlooked. Once again, bean counters want to attach a dollar figure to anything that anybody does. Customers are not expecting to walk away from every purchase being mesmerized by the over the top service, they just expect a pleasant transaction. Employees that are willing to ask if you need assistance goes a long way. In fact, just having employees visible on the floor goes a long way. Not every business can run like Costco in a warehouse type atmosphere.

Why Should Facebook Acquire Quantcast?

This could happen sooner than you think. Let's face it, we all know that Facebook advertising is in some serious need of help. The performance results are dismal and Facebook's strategy is on par with most content publishers. Basically, they are shouting to the world, "Hey we're Facebook. We gets lots of traffic. Buy ads on our site." What Facebook lacks is a long term vision in regards to advertising and monetization. Facebook has more personal information than any other social website on the planet. What they lack is an understanding of what they can do with this data. So far, it's been a few sub-par efforts with advertising networks. In order to take things to the next level, Facebook needs to own the relationship between advertisers and the Facebook data. Simply get rid of the middle-man.

Quantcast technology offers a perfect solution. Combining Facebook's data with Quantcast's ad serving technology can accomplish the perfect winning combination. After all, that's why Adobe purchased Efficient Frontier. It wasn't the client base that Adobe was after, it was their proprietery technology. To be more specific, their algorithms. As Google has proven over time, algorithms are the key to success. Either you have it or you don't. No matter how hard you try, sometimes you can't get the secret sauce right and it's easier to buy a company that has.

Currently, Quantcast relies upon customer behavior in order to perform lookalike modeling. So far, this has been very successful in the display advertising world. If your cookie pool is large enough, you have a pretty good chance at serving relevant ads to the right person. What the system lacks is the next layer of detail. That detail being actual customer information. Through clickstream analysis we are able to make some pretty reliable assumptions that if a large group of people perform a set of given actions, then the same must be true of the next group of people that perform similar actions. Playing the simple percentages game, we know that we will have a decent success rate. Wouldn't it be nice to fine tune your advertising based upon (lookalike modeling + persona data + geo-location)? Imagine the results that could be achieved. Personalized targeted ads, served at the right time, in the right location. Imagine this banner ad:

How wonderful would the world be if all the ads that we saw were actually relevant to the individual? No more ads about stuff that I don't care about, but only stuff that matters to me. We certainly aim to achieve this level of personalization on websites, why not the rest of the internet. Ads being delivered that knew if I was sad or happy and knowing exactly the cure. Something that read," Hey Rich, feeling blue? Come get the frozen yogurt that you love!". Or what about, "Hey Rich, Buy that AMD Processor Locally and Save 10% Today at Fry's." After all, Fry's knows my name, that I frequently shop there, and I keep checking the prices on the latest AMD FX processors.

Google purchased DoubleClick. Yahoo purchased Right Media.

Facebook buys Quantcast. Quantcast plays in all exchanges, thus easily adapting to changes over time. Facebook now generates billions annually from online advertising sales and creates a stable future. Shareholders and employees rejoice!

SEM Segmentation & Analysis Tool powered by Excel

Have you ever wondered what your peers in the SEM world are up to? How is the data being analyzed and what actionable insight are they able to gain from the tools that they use? How does this differ from your approach? Today, I thought I would offer a glimpse into one of the recent tools that I constructed with Excel. The data powering this example is a standard Adobe SearchCenter data extract. Even if you are not using SearchCenter, with a little tweaking and mid-level experience with Excel, it can be customized to suit your needs.

There are two worksheets in this workbook. The first sheet contains the dashboard as seen above (Report), and the second sheet contains all of the data which powers the dashboard (dBlock). The upper portion contains information about all of the keywords within the dBlock worksheet (basically an account overview). There are four pre-built segments that I have created: High Potential, Need Attention, CTR Issues, and Budget Bleeders. Cell references can be found on the dBlock sheet in order to customize to suit your needs. These segments are also macro enabled in order to quickly see the results on the dBlock sheet.

The lower portion contains an Advanced Filter option in order to build custom data segments in order to better understand keyword performance at a deeper level. After a filter is applied, the lower graph springs into actions and delivers the results. The "Metric 1" and Metric 2" fields are designed to work together as an "And" statement. You have the option to leave Metric 2 blank and only filter on one metric. After the values have been entered, click the "Apply" button. Here's an example of a keyword segment containing "Avg. Pos >=3" & "Revenue >=$100"

The practical use does not stop here. Along with the dashboard results, your keywords are being autofiltered on the dBlock sheet that contains your data. Instantly, you can move into the data sheet and see the results.

The "Campaign", "Ad Group", and "Keyword" fields are set to a "Contains" clause. Only one field can be used at a time. After the value has been entered, click the arrow to the right of the field to run the macro.

Obviously, the "Clear" button will clear any Advanced Filter fields that have been entered.

Download your copy for Excel 2007+ (be sure to enable macros)