Libardo Lambrano's Blog

There has been a lot of polemic around the disapproval from Apple of the Google Voice App for the iPhone, but I have to clarify several things, first at all on an answer from Apple to the FCC on July 31 2009 they clearly said that is not true that the Google Voice App has been disapproved, they said that they continue to study (which is supposedly should be different). But no matter if the application still under review I believe it will never going to make it to the iPhone, the reason is very simple, it will allow you to call for free and it will allow Google to take control of the voicemail among other intrinsic features of the iphone.

As has been said on the media Google Voice will allow you to call for free but it is not because the Google Voice uses the data plan and the call is VoIP, this is absolutely not true, what the application does is that it routes your call through a Google number before dial to your final destination, so you are actually making a call using the minutes in your phone. So the question is…

How can I call for free with the Google Voice on the IPhone?

Here it is how:

1. First at all you need to get your Google voice number from Google on this website www.google.com/voice
2. Once you have your number assigned you can access the Google voice website directly from your phone by pointing to this url in your browser www.m.google.com/voice
3. Once on this page you can login to your Google Voice account and start to dial any number as you would normally do directly with the dial pad on your iphone.
4. After dial any number, Google Voice will connect to a Google Voice number, which is different from the Google Voice number Google originally assigned to you. For instance in my case my Google Voice number is 516-690-68XX but when Google Voice is making an outgoing call from my iPhone connects the call using another number that is 518-314-94XX. In other words the number Google Voice uses for outgoing calls is different to the Google Voice number assigned (for incoming calls only).
5. The number Google Voice uses to make the out-coming call is the important number in this case, because this number is the one that will allow you to call for free; this is how: When Google Voice is connecting you through this number is actually making a real call that will be deducted from the minutes in your plan, to avoid this the only thing you need to do is to add this number to you A-List at AT&T, this is a feature that not too many people is aware of, but it is basically a list of 10 different telephone numbers that you can call for free and don’t count within the minutes on your plan. In other words if you just use Google Voice for your outgoing calls and the Google Voice connection number is on you’re a-List at AT&T all your calls will be free, you will then be able to minimize the minutes on your plan, saving several bucks a month.

The problem I have right now is that I equally love and enjoy Google and Apple products, unfortunately this time I need to side with one of them and it is Google, these are my reasons:

On January 26 Google Voice released the HTML5 version for the iPhone making most of the functionalities originally planed available to the public and under passing the questionable approval process from iPhone. I started to use the application and for its convenience and savings opportunity I just want to use it from now on (instead my AT&T number), the problem is that because of Apple’s rejection one of the most critical features originally planned is not available on Google Voice and is the integration of the application with my contacts list; Any time I want to dial somebody I need to see his/her number somewhere else and then dial it manually, off course this can be solved by exporting the contacts from my iPhone and importing them to Google Voice, the problem is they will never be up to date and there is not possibility of keeping them in sync.

What all this is causing is that for the first time I started to feel some kind of tyranny from Apple which having the ability to make my life much life has insisted in blocking the Google Voice application while approving others with the same or better functionalities such as Line2 the first dual mode cell/VoIP app for the iPhone.

Most of the reasons they expressed to delay the approval of the Google Voice app are actually present on the Line2 app by Toktumi. On response from Apple to the FCC they said that no application routing calls through the AT&T’s 3G network has been approved on the Apple Store; this is not true anymore Line2 actually can place free calls using the 3G data network of AT&T. Why if they approve this application they still denied Google Voice? On the same reply to the FCC Apple said that they have not approved Google Voice because “it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail“; this is exactly what the Line2 app does… so please Apple explain me what is the criteria behind this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple buys out Toktumi and its Line2 App and definitely blocks the possibility of Google Voice to be completely integrated with the iPhone.

I would like to see the Google Voice App approved and I know so many people is expecting the same, this double criteria, lack of transparency and confusion is just hurting Apple’s brand and will force so many users to migrate to Nexus one. If the Google Voice App gets approved I would be happy to continue using my iPhone, but blocking the app is just making the iPhone more difficult to use and less convenient. Please Apple don’t make this mistake, I used to love Palm too but where other phones are easier and more convenient to use consumers don’t think twice… please approve the Google Voice once for all, we need it, we want it.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

Bing is definitely committed to increase their market share one way or another, the latest big step is a dedicated line to advertisers (866) 272-9202, that they can use Monday through Saturday from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific time; to get help on the set up and optimization of their campaigns. Bing is offering free advice on keywords, bidding and even on ad copy. This is a major step for Bing, which doesn’t have the large number of advertisers that Google has and can finance this kind of operation. On the email they are sending out to promote the free service they also include some interesting data:

Since the launch of Bing, searches on Microsoft sites have grown nearly 52%, with 82 million users searching Bing every month.

Microsoft search query share grew to 11.3% in January.

As I said on one of my previous blogs, maybe is s good time to give Bing a second chance.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

It seems that so far Apple has succeed in regulating which applications are available for the iphone/ipad and which not, but some of the polemic decisions they have taken lately plus the tedious process of getting applications approved have forced programmers and developers to take different paths to achieve their goals.

Apple has said that they don’t allow flash to run on iphones mostly because it consumes the battery rapidly and can also encourage hackers to run unwelcome executable code that can interfere with the normal operation of the phone, even though the debate stills on, the truth is that besides battery consumption Apple is not interested at all in loosing control on its Apple Store, by allowing flash to run on the iphone, Apple will automatically allow developers to create their own flash apps and offer them directly to the public, this means that besides shared revenues from any App they will also loose the capacity to review and approve what they consider safe for the device and the public.

Apple enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it, but in this case I’ve seen more and more programmers finding their own way to get there.

The approval problem

As of January 15, 2010, there were at least 133,979 third-party applications, this means that a lot of the applications have already been invented; in some categories even different variations of the same kind of application can be found, all these translate in smaller space and opportunities for new developers, in one hand is taking longer for Apple to approve new Apps due to overwhelming number of requests and in the other hand they are turning down a lot of applications that are similar to the ones already up or just represent some kind of conflict of interest; Apple doesn’t want apps that allow you to call over the web, adult content and weird things like ispoofcard that allows you to call any number but showing different call ID number.

This absolutely understandable control have forced companies to take desperate decisions in order to get their apps approved and if they don’t they are just developing stand alone apps that can run independently from the Apple Store.

For instance Fantasy Interactive, one of the best interactive new media agencies in the world published an open letter to Apple (or specifically to Mr Steve Jobs http://dearstevejobs.com/) in behalf of SVT, the Sweeden’s largest television station in order to get approve their app for their Free TV on demand service. They even send a group of Swedish activists with iphone costumes, banners and flyers to the Cupertino headquarters in California. You can imagine the drama of getting this application approve, but what about all those companies without the pockets of SVT… just prays and patience. (Read Case Study Here)

I don’t disagree with Apple regulations, most of them benefit human principles and social respect, I’m converted Mac user and I love the company and its vision but I firmly believe they will loose this battle of controlling apps developed for the iphone; just recently in January 26 2010 Google launch a voice mobile web app for the iphone that never was approved by Apple. The application allows people to make cheaper long distance calls through Google Voice bypassing the ATT mobile network, beneficial for end user, but not so much for iphone and ATT which will make less money from their clients.

Even though the Google Voice App is probably the most famous one that has bypass the Apple approval process is not the only one, other companies are just creating apps that work with the iphone and not necessarily have to be download from the Apple store. And I have to say they work smoothly and just fine; I believe other developers will very soon take this road.

Google Pressure

The other problem Apple is facing is the enormous pressure from the Nexus One and the Android platform that Google as opposite as Apple has open to developers and doesn’t have any intention to regulate; it is true that the Nexus One doesn’t have the traction yet to became a treat for Apple but with more apps available for Nexus One and more companies carrying the phone the panorama may dramatically change on the coming years. Just few days ago Google opened officially an App Store for Businesses.

I don’t believe Apple will ever open their platform as Google did but I imagine we will start to see a lot of vertical independent directories of “non official iphone apps” that people will start to use just as they use the regular official iphone apps.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

After years of struggling on the search engine world it seems that finally Microsoft is doing the right things, first at all they decided to go with a “search engine” dedicated site instead the regular “search field” integrated to their MSN page. The approach this time is right for several reasons but two I would like to mention three that I believe are the most important…

1. Great catchy name
The name “Bing” evokes discovery; both in English and Spanish when you suddenly find something you were desperately searching for, most likely you will exclaim “BINGO!” this excellent name is similar to the strategy used by Intel, which name evokes “intelligence”, there is no doubt this strategy will work, the name is catchy short and easy to pronounce in different languages.

2. They are trying to break the paradigm
Early this year Microsoft hired Qi Lu, one of the brightest mind and gifted leaders on the search engine world, prior Microsoft Mr Qi Lu spent 10 years as a Yahoo senior executive, he holds 20 U.S patents. Mr Qi Lu is a firm believer that if Bing doesn’t change the paradigm on search they will be never able to compete there, that’s why Bing is trying to reposition as a decision engine rather than a search engine, and I have to say it is not just an statement, Bing is actually doing things different than Google to help users decide what to do; a quick example is Farecast, a company that Microsoft acquired for 115 M in 2008 and then integrated to Bing search engine under http://www.bing.com/travel/. The system basically predicts future prices on tickets so people can actually “decide” if they buy the tickets now or if they wait for them to get cheaper, the system is 75% accurate and rely of an extensive database of historical data. This is a real example of how a decision engine may work, giving you new parameters to decide other than a list of results, so far Google has not cough up on this one.

Farecast integrated to Bing Decision Engine

3. More Traffic, More Results
Currently Bing has 11% of the market share on search engines but that is going to change in about a month from now. Few days ago Microsoft made public the “Search Alliance With Yahoo” which basically home will merge the indexed pages, traffic and search results for both companies, together the two companies may get 20% of the market share and finally advertisers will start to see more traffic and conversions on their campaigns. The venture news has been well received in the marketing world, Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP Group said “This is extremely encouraging and introduces more balance into the search and display markets, It is good for our clients and our agencies and for regulators.” (Reuters; July 30, 2009)

In the past I have used Microsoft paid search platform for some of my clients, but unfortunately with disappointing results due to the low and poor qualified traffic, but things seem differently now, with a new name, a dedicated search only site, a different approach to search behavior, new team and new alliances I’m willing to give Bing a second chance… I thing the time is now, don’t you?

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

Navigating today on the Internet I found a Google advertising that I haven’t seen before. It seems it is a new campaign that started apparently couple of months ago. The campaign called “Search Stories” is a funny and minimalist sequence of searches in Google that end it up with great outcomes. The ads are being promoted through different size animated banners on the Google Ad network; On the screenshot at the right you can see an horizontal top banner promoting the videos, it is just the name of the campaign and the button “watch”.

Google dedicated a channel for the campaign where they are putting the commercials for public access. The channel is located at http://www.youtube.com/user/searchstories, below is just a sample of one of the stories that I like the most because is actually pretty much my own story. Congrats Google, the campaign is very creative, simple and fun.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

Behind search engines results there is a complex mathematical formula called “algorithm” that determine which pages should rank before others; like the formula of Coca Cola this is the best kept secret by Google and other major search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, actually the quality of the algorithm of Google was the responsible of the rapid adoption of this search engine virtually around the world.

The algorithm is in other words a combination of numbers and probabilities that analyze hundreds of ranking factors to classify the information they display, in other words the science behind search  engines is a mathematical formula. The algorithm is search engines could be perhaps the most complex formula to understand in online marketing, but it is not the only one, I have found other useful formulas that can help people understand the complexity of the online marketing world and help them understand the concept from a scientific perspective. These are some of the formulas that I have found but please if you find any other one related with online marketing share it to everyone on this post, I’ll be added them as I get it.

Conversion Rate Formula

CR = Conversions / Clicks * 100
This is the most simple and significant formula for advertisers, the conversion rate it means just how many people that click in your ad finally made a purchase. This is an example:

Let’s see 1000 people click in your online Ad, and out of those 1,000 just 25 finally made a purchased or any other action that you considered conversion (download a brochure, sign up for a newsletter or more), on this case your conversion rate is 0.01%

CR = (25/1000) * 100 =  2.5%

Website Success Formula

B = V x C x L

Where:

B = amount of business done by the site
V = unique visitors coming to the site
C = conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become customers); note that the concept of conversion applies not only to ecommerce sites, but to any site where there is something you want users to do)
L = loyalty rate (the degree to which customers return to conduct repeat business)

Jakob Nielsen

This is a formula shared by Peter Morville, Dr. Susan Weinschenk, Dr. Jakob Nielsen, and Kim Krause Berg to  www.searachengineland.com, for Jakob Nielsen the L factor is the most important variable for long-term website strategy: “It is imperative that websites liberate themselves from being overly-dependent on search engines and regain the positioning as the place users turn for the type of problem they address,” he said. “Right now, the best loyalty mechanism is the email newsletter, so it’s important to balance the site design in such a way that it encourages newsletter sign-ups at the same time as it also drives conversions.”

Landing Page Conversion Formula

C= 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) – 2a

Where:

C = Conversion
M = Motivation (what is the motivation of the user when he/she gets to your page? Do they have a level of interest?)
V = Clarity of Value Proposition (what is the valuable offer to your clients)
I = Incentive (sense of urgency, offer valuable exchange for an action)
F = Friction (elements to process, difficult forms can cause friction)
A = Anxiety (entering sensitive or personal information)

• Value Prop and Incentive are Value Contributors
• Friction and Anxiety are Value Inhibitors
• You need the Contributors to outweigh the Inhibitors

This is a heuristic algorithm for landing page conversions developed by www.marketingexperiments.com, there is a webcast available at Inbound Marketing University that speaks about this topic

The value of this formula is that it represents each factor that directly affects the conversion of a visitor on a landing page.

Potential Lost Revenues from Landing Pages

(RPV * NVL) * BR = LRPV

Where:

RPV = Revenue per visitor
LRPV = Lost Revenue Per Visitor
NVL = Number of visitors who land on landing page
BR = Bounce rate

(RPV * NVL) is also known as RETS = Revenue Estimate For The Traffic Source

This formula is presented by Tim Ash on his book “Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning For Conversions” allows website owners to calculate how much they could loose from a bad optimized landing page. Tim Ash though mention that in real life things are a little bit more complicated, sometimes a page can serve as both a landing page and as a link in the conversion path from other pages stream to it, more details about this formula and specific samples can be found on his book.

Viral Marketing Formula

Where:

Custs = Initial set of costumers
K = Invitations send by each new customer * Conversions %
ct = Viral cycle time
t = time

David Skok and Stan Reiss

This is one of the online marketing formulas I liked the most, it was developed by David Skok VC at Matrix Partners and writer of the Blog www.forentrepreneurs.com and Stan Reiss General Partner at Matrix  Partners.

This formula is great to understand how fast a viral message or product can travel over the Internet, when the “viral cycle time” of a campaign/product is short, (1 or 2 days) an initial group of 10 customers can reach almost 30.000.000 users in 20 days. It is worth to see this analysis and understand deeper this concept. The complete explanation of this formula along with spreadsheets where you can make your own calculations can be found at forenterpreneurs.

Finally here you can find some useful calculators from Bplans that you can use to when creating your next eMail marketing or PPC campaign

eMail Marketing Return of Investment Calculator

Pay Per Click Return of Investment Calculator

Conversion Rate Calculator

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

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HubSpot is probably the best online marketing company around.  It is actually not an online marketing company itself, what they really do is offer a software for other companies helping to facilitate these companies ability to “get found” and optimize  inbound marketing initiatives. The company was founded by two smart guys – Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shan. I believe Brian is more the business man and Dharmesh is more the technical, analytic thinker, (but that’s just my perception), I wish I had the good luck to already know them both.

I don’t want to spend much time describing the story of HubSpot that you can find in their recently released book called Inbound Marketing: Get found using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (which by the way is a really great book).  Instead, I want to focus on all the strategies they have used to promote their business and literally reach the masses.

These are some of the achievements of HubSpot just to name few

1. Dharmesh Shah ranks 1,231 on Twitter with 15,928 followers, and Brian Halligan ranks 9,236 with 3,552 followers. Total users on Twitter to date are 5,729,908.

2. HubSpot owns the following GRADER websites, that have become very popular within the SEO, SEM community:

• Twitter Grader – a website that helps you find high-impact Twitter users in your industry and identify how influential your tweets are.
• Press Release Grader – a press release evaluation software, all you have to do is upload your press release and receive a feedback in real time on different issues.
• Facebook Grader – a tool to help you evaluate the strength of your corporate or personal Facebook page, measuring Facebook fans over time and giving you a score based on the 49,399 pages that have been graded up to day.
• Website Grader – an evaluation tool to review your website based on different SEO topics and offer recommendations for improvements. I believe this is the most popular of these four grader sites with more than 1,000,000 pages graded so far and more than 50,000 incoming links (combined) from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
• Gobbledygook grader , which evaluates your written content and checks for use of gobbledygook, jargon, clichés and over-used, hype-filled words.  They developed this tool along with David Meerman Scott when they realized how over used some terms like “unique” are in press releases, making the terms less effective over time.
• Other grader websites include: personality grader and action grader

3. They also own www.inboundmarketing.com an educational community of 10,000 marketing professionals offering classes and inbound marketing certification. I’m currently working towards my certification and will hopefully be certified in January. The site is a great resource for professionals in the online marketing field and has become a true hub for these professionals.  One missing feature is a search capability of users by location or interest, although I am hoping and assuming that HubSpot is working on this now.

4. Currently, HubSpot has more than 2,000 clients using their software to build traffic, leads and sales and has won innumerable awards including W3 Awards and Interactive Media Awards.

5. The corporate website is www.hubspot.com which has one of the most compelling blogs in online marketing with 15,940 feedburner subscribers and many more users connected to their feeds. The site drives organic traffic for more than 1,682 keywords according to www.semrush.com including very competitive terms such as “Internet Marketing,” which alone accounts for more than 25% of all organic traffic.  Additionally, HubSpot has one of the most successful online marketing campaigns ever and they are bidding on more than 500 keywords currently.

6. HubSpot also owns www.hubspot.tv which is part of the Blog.  The website is a weekly video podcast covering all the inbound marketing news of the week including social media, blogging, SEO and more. The program is presented by Karen Rubin @karenrubin and Mike Volpe @mvolpe. Episodes can also be downloaded as podcasts on itunes. http://itunes.hubspot.tv.  There are currently more than 70 episodes available.

7. HubSpot currently has one of the largest groups in marketing on LinkedIn, their group rate #13 for the term “Marketing” with more than 40,000 members.

8. Dharmesh also owns www.onstartups.com a project he started while studying at MIT.  The website is another helpful Blog for entrepreneurs offering lots of advice and good information. The site drives organic traffic from more than 1,200 keywords including the competitive term “startup,” which provides more than 7% of the total organic traffic.

9. Dharmesh also owns the OnStartups group on LinkedIn, which ranks at the top for the keyword “startup” on LinkedIn, and has more than 117,000 members. OnStartups ranks fourth in the entire listing of LinkedIn groups…  An amazing achievement – and a great tool for HubSpot to leverage as it connects with entrepreneurs looking for help with their online marketing efforts.

10. HubSpot has also a strong presence on youtube, with 130 videos viewed more than 250.000 times.  They currently have more than 500 subscribers to their channel http://www.youtube.com/user/HubSpot

How have they achieved such amazing success? Well… HubSpot has done so many things right I’ll try to briefly describe some of their most important achievements here.

Content Generation

The Blog at HubSpot is perhaps one of the most compelling and interesting Blogs focused on online marketing.  HubSpot is one of the few online marketing companies that have several dedicated people generating exceptional content through blogs, social networks and their own content management system.  They have uncommon titles for their marketing professionals like “Blog Managers,” “Customer Success Managers” and “Lead Generation Expert.”

Active social network presence

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shan are active participants in the “socialsphere” and “blogosphere” but they are not the only ones. Virtually all employees are graded on a regular basis by their “web reach” or the number of members on the community that they can influence online. Employees at HubSpot are driven to be digital citizens of the world running.  I have found Blogs, comments, and articles from HubSpot employees virtually everywhere I look online for “Internet Marketing” or related topics.

HubSpot runs online marketing campaigns in Facebook on a regular basis, (actually that was where where I found them) targeting marketing professionals through this social community.  HubSpot does a great job of identifying prospect bio-personas and creating the text as well as the look and feel that matches their interest.

Effective conversion strategies

Believe me on this one, the people at HubSpot will do everything humanly possible to convert you on your initial visit to the website into a prospective client.  They have developed all kinds of tools, and techniques to grab relevant data from users visiting their domains.  These are just few of the strategies the people at HubSpot use to get your attention – and I have to say they are doing a really good job.

1. Free trial
   Of course HubSpot offers a free trial of their software platform. Here http://www.hubspot.com/free-trial you just leave minimal information and you can access for a limited time (7 days) the same tools and resources they use to promote their “Inbound Marketing” concept.
2. Free white papers and kits
   I don’t how many marketing kits, ebooks and white papers HubSpot has created, but I do know that the quality of these documents is outstanding.  HubSpot distributes and exposes them in strategic places and domains, especially on their own grader sites where people are already interested in getting marketing information and inside knowledge.
3. Live and archive webinars
   HubSpot presents webinars on a regular basis; focusing on a variety of topics in marketing online, which grab the attention of a large number of professionals in the industry. Some of the webinars are really good, but unfortunately not all of them are interesting. Once the webinar is over they place the webinar on their site permanently for future download so the webinar can continue to generate interest and buzz for a while.
4. Email collection on their grader sites
   When you visit their website grader for instance, HubSpot asks for your email in order to send you the final report.  HubSpot communicates on a regular basis (about two times per month) with people who have used their tools allowing HubSpot to nurturing prospective clients over time who may not be ready to buy at the moment, but are interested in what HubSpot has to offer. These grader tools are becoming very popular with a lot of online marketing professional already using them. I have used more sophisticated ones, but for a free tool, the HubSpot grader sites are excellent resources.

Great SEO practices

If any company knows about SEO, it is HubSpot.  They have mastered the techniques of “In Site” and “Off Site” optimization, from information architecture, coding to community building and link popularity building.  If you want to understand better how HubSpot thinks, buy the “inbound marketing book” today and take a look, it speaks for itself.  It took me just two days to finish it because of how interesting the material is and how easy it is to understand (not to technical) so average readers can digest it easily.

From keywords used on the URL, keyword density, information architecture, coding language, titles, metatags descriptions, and more… HubSpot has put all pieces carefully together to make organic findability easy. Between December 2008 and November 2009, HubSpot was able to rank 1,063 new keywords in Google alone.  This is an outstanding result from an SEO perspective.  “If HubSpot were paying for all the traffic they get organically, they would be paying around $80,000 dollars per month.”

Excellent Lead Management and Lead Nurturing

The people at HubSpot understand how visitors to their site are at a different stages in the buying cycle.  HubSpot has a sophisticated lead management system where they track and follow up with prospective clients they are already in contact with. They manage their leads by source, time and so on.  Most importantly, HubSpot measures their conversions per type of lead.  At HubSpot, not all leads are treated equally, a common mistake for companies that have these kind of programs in place. In the inbound marketing book they talk extensively about lead generation and lead management.  If HubSpot applies what they said in the book about creating a well optimized landing page, their “untargeted traffic” should convert at 5% and targeted campaigns should convert at 50% making their growth exponential.

Web 2.0 oriented sites

Internet 2.0 is all about sharing, distribution and collaboration. HubSpot understand that well, they have created strong participating communities such as the Inbound Marketing University.  They have also established strong relationships with prospects and existing clients through different media channels such as e-mail, twitter, and feeds. HubSpot is expert in creating spaces for conversations and incentive community participation.  All of their sites are clean, easy to read and loaded with connection and sharing tools to establish conversations with visitors and prospective clients.

Excellent PR strategy and content distribution

1. Social News
   HubSpot actively participates in social news sites such as www.digg.com just go here and see how many articles they have sent over time. Some of these articles have pretty high number of diggs such as “Now, Any Business Can Tap 53 Million Facebook Users (For Free)” with 552 diggs.
2. Social discovery sites presence
   HubSpot is present in social discovery sites such as www.stumbleupon.com.  Several of the internet properties of HubSpot appear on stumbleupon and are the favorites sites of thousands of users around the globe.
3. RSS feeds everywhere
   HubSpot has RSS feeds everywhere on their site along with direct links to share their information on the most popular social discovery sites, social news sites, social bookmark sites and community sites including twitter, facebook and linkedin.

Successful paid marketing campaign

1. Google
   HubSpot runs more than 500 ads in Google – bidding on more than 500 keywords, including “SEO tool” that generates more than 10% of HubSpot’s paid traffic.  This particular campaign leads the user to http://www.hubspot.com/trial. Other landing pages for their campaigns include http://www.hubspot.com/seo-for-lead-generation-kit/ and http://www.hubspot.com/AdWords-Internet-Marketing-ebook, very clean, straight forward and well optimized campaigns.
2. Facebook
   Aside from their group on Facebook, HubSpot also runs a great advertising campaign for professionals in marketing.  This campaign was the first one I saw about them and it immediately drew my attention, after that I’ve been intrigued with HubSpot and its products.

Absolute control on their domain properties.

The guys at HubSpot add value to the domain properties and treat their sites like real assets (they don’t even link to their social groups or store books by using third party links).  For example, HubSpot promotes the website www.inboundbook.com to promote their book on Amazon, and if you go to this page you will be forwared to https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470499311?tag=hubspot-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0470499311&adid=0KFA9WZWBF6M6Z8RYF41&.  This approach is important for several reasons:

1. If Amazon decided tomorrow to remove the book from its store, or change the URL where the book is currently located, all the link popularity built around it will be lost.  By promoting www.inboundbook.com instead, HubSpot has absolute control on where they are directing users.  If the destination URL changes tomorrow on Amazon, no problem, with one line they can update perhaps hundreds of links that otherwise would have become broken links.
2. The second advantage of doing this is that they can measure the traction and buzz the book is gaining.  By promoting www.inboundbook.com instead the direct link to Amazon allows HubSpot to track the users, information that otherwise would be available just for Amazon. This is extremely important because this kind of analysis can lead to the discovery of new potential markets, for instance if the people at HubSpot noticed a sudden increase in visitors from London to the Amazon store (through their domain), they can recognize that something is going on there and generate new strategies to target this new market.
3. By having control of the link popularity built around the book, HubSpot can extend their web reach.  If tomorrow HubSpot decided to publish the book online or amplify the content in the book on a website, they can use this domain and immediately benefit from all the backlinks created around it.  HubSpot does this with all their groups such as www.facebook.hubspot.com, which points to http://www.facebook.com/hubspot.

In this article I attempted to lay out how a real online advertising campaign and strategy should be done.  It is not just a matter of having a good website and a great idea, you need to know who and where your competitors are, what are they doing online, how much they are spending and what strategies they are using to compete with you. The main difference between the brick and mortar world and the online world is that online it is not as easy to identify your competitors and measure their size, just because you don’t see them it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  In the offline world you know starbucks is big because you see their coffee shops on every corner.  On the internet it is much more difficult to identify your competitors.  Everything is virtual and some big players don’t even have storefronts, when they realize they have a competitor it would be probably too late… if you’re not convinced yet, checkout the stories of Blockbuster/Netflix or Amazon/Barnes & Noble.

A good online presence today requires more than SEO, it involves active participation on social sites, social news sites, social groups, social discovery sites and much more. Check out what HubSpot has done and learn from them, this is a real, well planned and executed online marketing campaign.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano

Recently domain age was added to the algorithm of Google and is one of the many factors they consider now to rank websites at the top of its search engine. But what is domain age?, why is important? How can be check? And how this factor can be improved? Those are common questions that I’ll try to address on the following post regarding domain age of a website.

Domain age is a quantifiable value assigned by search engines based on these three factors:

1. Registration date
2. Expiration date
3. Frequency of changes over time.

Google’s patent “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” filed on 03/31/2005 implies that Google does look into domain registration (1), renewal dates (2) and frequency of changes over time (3).

1. Registraton Date
   Well-established sites have old domain names, so by reverse logics, an old domain should mean that the site is well established. Well-establishes companies were among the first one to luck their domain names, while new domain means companies are relatively new or can be used for spam or other purposes. The longer the domain name has been around the better for search engines.
2. Expiraion Date
   Google and other search engines like to see domains that have been registered for extended periods of time as this shows a commitment to the domain name. It also is an indicator that this website is not a temporary spam site. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.
3. Frequency of changes over time.
   Old domains that have been registered for a long time ago not necessarily mean they have better information. Domain names registered long time ago that have been parked for a while could be considered much less important than new domains with high activity and updated information; that’s why Google consider the frequency of changes over time as one of the factors to weight your domain age.

How can my domain age be improved?

As opposite as many believe the domain age factor on your website could be improved and help you rank higher on search engines. As we have seen the domain age is mainly the combination of three factors, one of them fix and two of them variable. The date when you register your domain name cannot be modified of course, is like your date of birth, you cannot just simple get older even if you try very hard, but there are two variables that can be help you get a better domain age, one is extending the expiration date of your website, so the next time you register your domain don’t choose 1 year, but at least 5 or 10 if possible, that shows Google you are really commit to your business and perhaps you can get a better grade, the other variable that can be improved is to apply regular changes to your site, the more updated information you have available the better your domain age will be. So if the registration date of your site is a disadvantage make sure the information of your site is current and is being updated on a regular basis.

How can I check my domain age?

The simplest way is to go to any Whois service and review the date when the domain was registered, I personally like Whois or Network Solutions there are also some simpler pages where just give you this information on a clean and interface, such as domainage.us or SEOmoz and if you want to check domain age but also the domain age of your competition you can use this practical domain age checker tool where you can check several domains at once,  please keep in mind that all these sites just check how long your domain has been registered but it doesn’t give you a real interpretation of your domain age as Google understands it.

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano