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According to “The CMO Survey” from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), social media marketing budgets are continuing to grow.

Marketers already planned on increasing their social media spend in August 2009, and they have continued to increase them since then. Survey respondents in February 2010 claimed they will devote nearly one-fifth of their marketing budgets to social media in the next 5 years.

B2B social media spending is nearly even with B2C spending. According to the Survey, B2C services were behind the game in August 2009, spending in that area has caught up and will remain in line with other channels for the next several years. B2B product marketers will remain behind the curve over the next 5 years.

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On February 10, 2010, Yahoo! released two new search engine marketing products.

The first search engine marketing product announced was the Y!our Ads strategy. This strategy serves ads based on the user’s past search history. Traditional pay-per-click (PPC) ads are served based on the immediate search terms of the user, so this strategy is quite different.

What does this mean for you?

It could decrease relevancy and negatively affect click-through rates for advertisers. Also, a percentage of users that do make the click will be less likely to make a conversion due to the lack of relevancy.

The second search engine marketing product that Yahoo released was the ability to serve ads via Yahoo Search Assist. This means that the words and phrases that appear just below the search box will now be paid advertisement. For example, if the user types in “home remodeling” they would instantly see search suggestions for various remodeling projects or related terms, such as “kitchen remodeling” and “bathroom remodeling.”

What does this mean for you?

Going forward, these suggested phrases will be for sale. Paid advertisers will now have to make bids for the broad keyword at the Yahoo Search Assist level, while also expanding their traditional search campaigns to include bids on long-tail phrases.

Contact KEO Marketing for more information about search engine marketing.

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If you haven’t yet heard of Google Buzz, listen up! Google Buzz is the latest addition to one of the many tools offered by Google, and this one falls right into the social media category. Google Buzz is integrated into Google’s email service, Gmail.

Like many other social media sites, Buzz combines elements of Twitter, Facebook, and some others. But there are things unique to Buzz that create opportunities you should familiarize yourself with and take advantage of as soon as possible.

1. Posting Content. Like Twitter, Buzz lets you post messages to a group of “followers” that subscribe to your updates. Messages, however, can be longer than those of Twitter (140 characters) and can include images and links.

2. Engaging with People. If you use Gmail, there’s a good chance you already have built-in followers on Google Buzz. Once you start following some people, clicking the “Buzz” link from Gmail’s main navigation will let you see their most recent updates. You can comment on them, “like” them, or follow up with an email message.

3. Collaborating. Buzz can be used both for broadcasting a message to your followers. You can Buzz anything – documents, articles, press releases – it’s instant, private collaboration.

4. Marketing. Users can “check in” at business locations, notifying their followers of their whereabouts. Thus, encouraging customers to check in on Buzz can be a way to drive free word-of-mouth marketing for local businesses.

5. Sharing. Just like Twitter and Facebook, Buzz has the potential to be a powerful medium for sharing content. You can use it to share blog posts, special deals, or interesting links related to your company.

Contact KEO Marketing for more information about Google Buzz.

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