by Paul Jahn

Last week, I had lunch with Mike Rynchek, President of Spyder Trap
Online Marketing. We wound up talking quite a bit about social media
and managing-per-objectives and impressions rather than the
cost-per-conversions avenue many of us are used to. Mike was gracious
enough to be interviewed on measuring results of different
objectives.

Speaking of social media, 95% of this interview took place through Facebook IM.

Paul: First of all, thanks Mike for your time. In a nutshell, can you tell us about your company?

Mike: First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity. It is always a blast to get together with smart online marketers. Spyder Trap Online Marketing is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based full service online marketing agency specializing in online strategy, search engine marketing, social media, web analytics, email marketing and web development.

Paul: You brought up managing for impressions and objectives as different sorts of analytics measurement. I suppose it’s not new, but you have a different spin on it. Can you explain?

Mike: What makes online marketing unique is our ability to target qualified leads, control spend and track/test results on a real time/near real time basis. Marketers don’t often consider online marketing channels as a brand building tool but I would argue it is! Whether talking about orgainic/paid search, Social Media or Email marketing, these mediums are an extension of the brand. Tracking for impressions not only provides you with another metric in your analytics arsenal, it allows you the variability to test and modify individual campaigns, but also measures the total number of eyeballs who viewed your brand.

Anytime we work with a client we always start with defining their pain points and marketing objectives for not only specific initiatives or campaigns but the overall company as a whole. This allows us to work backwards in our strategy and implementation of the physical tactics. Whether this includes increasing brand awareness through impressions, increasing site traffic or increasing overall leads/conversions, defining and managing based on objectives is an essential methodology for any firm.

Paul: You had a recent client who used measuring per impressions as a non-partisan political measure. Can you explain their amendment?

Mike: Along with our partner Wingnut Advertising, Spyder Trap was charged with providing awareness of a Minnesota based clean land, air and water amendment to help restore and preserve natural resources. If passed, the amendment was funded by a small statewide sales tax.

Paul: Please briefly discuss the marketing situation and what you used in terms of online marketing tactics.

Mike: Our target demographic was the 18-30 drop off and swing voters. Wingnut and Spyder Trap was charged with not only driving awareness of the campaign but making sure voters didn’t just vote for President then exit the ballot. Our goal was to simply inform and educate.

Since the only conversion occurred in the voting booth on Nov. 4th we decided to measure and market for impressions vs. clicks or even conversions. The end result was close to 70 million impressions over a three month time period leading up to the election. Impressions included deploying, online paid and non paid tactics including banner ads, social media (ex. Facbook/apps, twitter, MySpace, YouTube etc.)

Paul: The Vote Yes Minnesota measure passed too! I suppose you could say that the objective was met.

Mike: It certainly did! Even in a difficult economy Minnesota voters approved the amendment. Anytime we solve a marketing pain point or have a satisfied client we feel we did our job. This was a highly debated an passionate amendment our job was to foster that passion and to get our message in front of as many potential voters as possible. It worked, and we’re more than happy to say that it passed at a 59% vote! This is a historic event, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

Paul: You mentioned “real estate dominance” in that amendment. Can you explain more?

Mike: When working on projects with clients, our main objective is of course for them to own the number 1 position in Google for targeted keyword phrases. In most cases our work doesn’t stop there as we generally deploy specific tactics using social media and online media (i.e. Blogging, databases, press releases) any keyword optimized searchable content that can be picked up by the search engines. This not only works as a link building initiative but also allows our clients to own the entire first page within search engine results page.

As I mentioned, our goal was not only to provide direct and targeted content but a high volume of content as well. We quickly owned page one of Google by optimizing press releases, creating and submitting articles to databases and reaching out to local bloggers. These bloggers created a high volume of content, which showed up in search engine results while also providing us with precious links. Finally we also took advantage of social media sites such as YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. As I mentioned not only is this another great way to receive additional links but they all show up within search results. (AKA Google Universal Search)

Tags: analytics, brand-building, guide, internet, keywords, local-search, localmn, marketing, paper-shredders, paul-jahn, puppy-picks, search, search-engine, search-engine-guide, seo, small-business, social-media, vertical-search, viral-marketing