credit: Hamama Hareb [ DaDooDa ]

There is a major group of on the web that has very strong opinions, unrestrained passion, and the willingness to plaster the web & your company headquarters with their disapproval.Who is this powerhouse of web savvy movers? New moms.

In November Motrin put out a video implying that baby-wearing is fashionable. The worlds moms were not amused. Try searching Twitter for #motrinmoms. Twitter, YouTube, and blogs galore blasted Motrin; calling them callous for portraying a mom who wants to carry her baby but gets back pain.

In December Facebook decided that breasts are breasts, even if they have a baby attached. And the moms went to the streets. Over 78,000 breastfeeds have joined a Facebook group to petition against Facebook’s no breast rules. The moms feel that there should be an exception to the terms of service on the web to consider breastfeeding to be different than other breast-baring activities.

I think the coverage of these issues has missed something very important point of these issues: Who you are sending the message to vs. Who you are writing your message about.

Motrin’s advertising is about anyone who will buy Motrin, in this case women, and is about women who want to be fashionable. Their choice of baby carrying because it is a more noble fashion choice than stiletto heels. But, no one wants to abide implications that a baby is a self-serving decision. These moms responded by filling the Internet with #motrinmoms,  #motingate, and numorous blogs etc. that took a brand that many people have low recognition with a put it in front of millions of eyes that probably found the advertisement more funny than offensive. The moms also filled the Internet with endorsements and reviews of baby carriers. Many of you are probably unaware that the makers of Motrin (Johnson & Johnson) were sued over possible side-effects of Childrens Motrin. Search Motrin Baby now. You probably won’t find the lawsuit. Creating a huge buzz and appologizing about a far less dire issue concerning babies has greatly deflated a former reputation issue while getting their brand out to a lot of people. Even though Motrin has offended the people their ad was about they have made a major accomplishiment in the column of general brand visibility.

When it comes to breastfeeding the it is not the big brand that is pushing a message, it is the niche community. Facebook is huge on the web; there are 1000′s of searches a day, and the news search for the last week is topped by breastfeeding. While the community is sending a message about Facebook they are sending a message to moms. Every article I have seen stresses the World Health Organization findings and recommendations about breastfeeding. For at least the near future the number of people exposed to breastfeeding are multiplied many-fold. Facebook, like most social media providers, is not obligated to police their content, but are well within their terms to ban and censor in anyway they see fit. They are not sending a message by enforcing their terms; still one group has turn a rather small act of a virtual breastfeed-in into a major social media win for their cause.

I urge you to think about who you are talking about and who you are talking to — relize one may be at the expense of the other. Also, don’t make mom jokes.

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credit: Thomas Hawk

Search is growing. There is no denying that. Last year, 2007, $19.9 billion was spent advertising online, according to cnet. SEMPO projects that $1.3 billion was spent on search optimization. It is expected that 2008 numbers will be approximately 20% higher.

SEOMoz recently lamented the large discrepancy in spend between pay per click (PPC) and organic search spend, organic makes up about 11% of search marking budgets.

Concluding that:

SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.

I think that confidence in the “trackability” of PPC is largely to blame for the discrepancy. Because people are well aware of the how to measure the return on investment for dollars that create immediate action people feel safe with pay per click. But most people aren’t actually measuring the results of their traffic.

According to the Marketing Sherpa 2009 Benchmark Guide 9 in 10 search marketers employ web-analytics to track search, and 53% use Google Analytics. And the biggest complaint is that it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of organic search spend.

In most situations I recommend that web traffic be approached with a pair of metrics. If you are currently running PPC and SEO initiatives I invite you to make three comparisons.

1. New Visitors from PPC vs. New Visitors from Organic Search by Keyword
2. PPC Spend VS Branded Searches
3. Number of Visits it takes to make a conversion

This will help you tease out how much your PPC spending is affecting how your site is searched for.