We recently had the opportunity to interview Jim Bruene, author of the popular blog Netbanker. Netbanker is a leading online finance and banking blog which covers everything from online banking to person-to-person lending to mortgage lead generation. Jim has been providing insightful analysis and research of the online banking and finance industry for over 10 years.

We asked Jim his thoughts on innovations in the online banking world. Here is what he had to say:

How has the increased use of the Internet transformed the way banks market to them?

The online channel (including email) provides a very low cost way to get marketing messages in front of the your online banking customers who are frequent website users. So online messaging is one of the first things banks look at today before adding more expensive print and offline media to the mix. And the ability to get your advertising in front of consumers as they are doing a rate/product search on a search engine has changed the dynamics of prospecting for new accounts. So the marketing mix has definitely changed and will increasingly be weighted to online tactics, although none of the old techniques are in danger of disappearing, except perhaps telemarketing.

What is the most over-hyped new technology or strategy (in terms of bringing real value) out there today?

Historically, the most over-hyped technology/strategy by far is mobile services. It’s finally just beginning to catch on (in the U.S.), 10 years after it was first hyped. I don’t think there’s anything that is being seriously over-hyped today. Most of the new things we are looking at have real promise because of the size and sophistication of today’s users. A few things won’t live up to their press releases, but that’s always expected.

Are the market conditions (e.g. credit markets and interest rates) increasing or decreasing the importance of the online channel? In what way?

For mainstream online banking, the market conditions aren’t that relevant. No matter what Wall Street is doing you still have to watch your balance and pay your bills. It’s a bit harder for the online savings specialists to poach customers when they can only offer rates 1-2% higher instead of 3-4%. However, the genie is out of the bottle in that market and consumers will continue to seek higher rates online, they’ve learned.

One niche market benefiting from tighter credit is the loan exchanges: both the new person-to-person lenders such as Prosper and Lending Club and other types such as LendingTree and Virgin Money. We know of at least a half-dozen more that are on the drawing board and could come to market in the next year or two. The personal finance press loves these sites and you can expect plenty of coverage this year and next.

How will the consumer experience change on bank websites over the next year?

It may not be next year, but going forward online banking will require less time and energy on the part of the end-user. Instead of logging in three times per week to see what transactions have cleared, consumers will receive periodic notices on their mobile phone, Facebook account, or regular email address. This is not a new development, but the mobile phone as a receiving device for banking info will accelerate the trend towards the use of alerts to stay informed rather than logging in.

What new product offerings do you see banks rolling out to consumers?

Although not so much a new product, really just an evolution of customer communications, will be mobile alerts that are increasingly two-way (you can reply back to move money or pay a bill). In terms of web-based delivery, we’ll see more banks do what Wells Fargo has done with its MySpendingReport, that is provide simple tools for users to track and view their spending. I also think we’ll see more banks and credit unions put in more social-media inspired services such as user forums, blogs, and Facebook widgets/apps.

You were in this business in the late 90’s when the Internet bubble burst. Do you see any similarities between the market we’re in now and what was going on back then? What are the biggest differences?

In terms of online financial services, there never really was much of a bubble. Online banking was just getting started in 1999/2000 so there weren’t many casualties, other than in the mobile area and a few non-bank portals that never achieved critical mass. And I don’t see too much overinvestment now. Financial services and banking are huge markets with enormous potential both to increase revenues, reduce costs, and improve overall customer satisfaction. The bubble today is in brick and mortar. I’ve been a banker and I understand the power of the branch for sales, service and brand image, but their value has peaked. No, I don’t think branches are going away, but over the long run, like the next 50 years, their influence will decline substantially.

Thanks Jim!

We’re just 7 days away from the SES NY the next Search Engine Strategies conference. The show runs from March 17-20th in New York City, and what better way to celebrate than to interview Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media’s Interactive division? Matt is spending more and more time taking properties like ClickZ and Search Engine Watch global, so he is rapidly acquiring a great sense for how international brands are thinking about SEM and SEO. Read on to hear how search marketing differs from country to country and what kinds of challenges and opportunities this poses.

If you’re interested in meeting Matt in person, come to SES next week. As further enticement, here is a code you can use to get a discount, courtesy of Compete (20SPKRGUST – 20% off when you register online). Jeremy Crane, our head of search, and I will be speaking at the conference; come by and see us at booth 102.

Share with us the reverse chronological order of your career and how it led you to be one of the key guys at Incisive Media.

I recently gave a run down here that said let me give you a little more detail…

I have been with Incisive Media for about two years now as the VP of Marketing for the Interactive Division, responsible primarily for the 10 year old Interactive News and Search Marketing sites, ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com and their subsequent event series ClickZ Events and Search Engine Strategies.

Prior to Incisive, I was instrumental in growing the online auction house, PropertyRoom.com, to an Internet Retailer 400 company. As the VP of Sales and Marketing, I ensured that there was always enough product for sale on the site, gathered via a very unique supply chain of Government and Law Enforcement found, lost, stolen and surplus property relationships and more than enough customers bidding on it. Yes, we engaged Search Marketing techniques, in addition to e-mail, public relations and other more traditional vehicles.

Earlier on in my career I worked for Charles Schwab & Co and Pearson Plc and I have a MBA from the University of Oxford.

You’ve got a great vantage point on SEM and SEO globally. What are the big trends you see for the next few years?

With the adoption of Blended Search behind us, there are quite a few trends developing that have yet to fully play out…

1. Blended Search will continue to evolve – the only guarantee is that SERPs will continue to change as the Search Engine’s (SE) learn to include more relevant information on them.
2. Social Media will continue flourish – the majority of web surfers start their online experience at the major Search Engines, that said more and more are heading directly to the MySpace’s and Facebook’s of the world.
3. Mobile Search is a massive opportunity – there are more mobile devices than computers out there. As wireless technologies evolve people may forgo the computer. This is partly what the Cloud Computing phenomenon is all about.
4. Analytics will be key – test, test, test… decision makers will increasingly go to the data to make decisions. The era of the thumb in the air approach to decision making is on its way out.

How would you describe the growth of SES in Europe? How is it evolving?

As expected. The Search Marketing industry is growing at a faster pace in Europe than it is here in the States.

Our SES London Conference and Expo almost doubled in size last year, from about 1,200 delegates to over 2,400. Now in its 9th year, it is now firmly positioned as the premier Search Marketing Conference and Exposition in Europe.

This past January we kicked off our continental European SES Forums, now in their 3rd year, with SES Paris. With 250 people in attendance we have constructed the SES Forum events to be more about intimate learning and networking. Delegates will find each event offers a relatively equal education on Paid Search (known in Europe as SEM) and Organic Search (know as SEO) in their local language, no exposition hall and networking events around sit-down lunches and evening cocktails.

SES Paris received a large amount of local praise and support, both the quality content and the quality of the delegates exceeded expectations, and we are now planning similar forums in Hamburg and Milan for later this year.

Let’s also not forget that we also hold a SES Tokyo forum and we plan to announce addition events in other parts of the world shortly. Stay tuned!

Since SES now operates in multiple countries, what are the ways you engage the local search communities in those respective countries?

Launching a product or service in a foreign country is no easy task and over the last few years we have been operating abroad in Europe and Asia we have adapted our go to market strategy based on our experiences abroad.

One of the most important pieces to the puzzle is finding the right partners – both from a marketing and an editorial point of view.

As the events are localized, they are held in the local language and focus on case studies, strategies and best practices taken from the local market, producing the conference agenda is no easy task. Under the direction of Kevin Ryan, VP and Global Content Director for SES and SEW, we have identified credible thought leaders in each of the markets we are operating in who we can invite to speak and work with to identify new talent.

On the marketing side of the equation, we have identified the local Search Industry trades and associations than can help us spread the word. We reach out to these groups and offer up cross promotional deals to engage them. In addition to the contras, we are also leveraging our Search Engine Marketing expertise to one, launch effective paid campaigns and two, optimize our site for local SEs.

How does each country present its own unique challenges - cultural or otherwise? Any funny stories you can share here?

Each country does present it’s own unique challenges and in order to do business in these markets one must acquire quite a bit of local knowledge – customs, language, industry specifics and alike.

How have you thought about new “social media” tools when marketing SES? How are you making use of newer tools to make London SES more accessible?

All the time… for instance we have launched LinkedIn and Facebook groups, in addition to YouTube and Flickr channels. We are also quite active on Sphinn, an SEM specific forum launched by Danny Sullivan.

Back on home turf, I’ve heard that registrations for SES New York this month are currently tracking double of where it was last year. Apart from stellar marketing, any other particular reasons why?

SES New York is tracking quite well and it will be a great event. Search Marketing is still a very hot topic, one that also is becoming increasingly complex. While title tags, content and links are still very important the most successful marketers are doing much more than that – for instance the integration of Social Media, Mobile Search, Local Search and the more traditional disciplines of TV, Radio and Print.

Over the last couple year’s we have therefore seen increased integration between Search Marketing and the traditional marketing suite, that said there is still a long way to go. Many executive level decision makers, the men and women who make the final decisions on budgets are really just starting to notice the effectiveness of Search Engine Marketing. As this awareness grows so too will the need to educate these high level decision makers and their teams.

Between the increased interest vertically within large multinationals and the increased complexity in getting your pages to rank – more and more people are turning to Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch for Search Marketing education.

What’s your perspective on the evolution of search, with Google having rolled out universal and blended search? How has this changed your approach for online marketing for SES?

Blended Search, or Universal Search as Google calls it, changed everything when it was introduced last year. Basically it has given marketers such as me that opportunity to utilize multiple doorways in our efforts to get listed on the SERPs, especially within those first 10 listings – videos, blogs, images and alike are more relevant today… hence, the YouTube and Flickr channels.

Another adaptation we have made is to treat the blogger community in the search and digital industries in the same manner we treat traditional press (we are the only Conference Series I know of that does this). The press has always been able to access our event, including all the sessions, for free via the press pass, and now the bloggers can too. I do not think a day goes by in which the SES Conference Series and our content sites, ClickZ and Search Engine Watch, are not mentioned on a blog somewhere.

What hasn’t changed? Keyword discovery for one… it is still very important to carefully select the keywords you are optimizing around. E-mail marketing continues to be an extremely effective tool as well, as does select display campaigns and let’s not forget paid search.

As online marketer for an online marketing company, what are your favorite tools that you use to hone your craft? What tools would you like for someone to invent?

This is going to sounds a bit self-promotional, that said, I have been reading ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com for many years now and I truly don’t not know how any online marketers can effectively execute on their day to day and stay up-to-date on best practices without reading both sites daily.

Who should we get naked with next?

Don Shultz or Seth Godin

A few weeks ago Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz posted an interview in which Jeremy talks about Compete’s technology, the results, what’s coming up, etc. Read on!

Compete.com Metrics - An Interview with Jeremy Crane
by Rand Fishkin

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been chatting over email with the folks at Compete.com about their web popularity reporting & analytics tools. Luckily enough, Jeremy Crane, the Director of Search & Online Media for Compete, agreed to an interview. Below, you can learn a lot more about how Compete gathers data, where they struggle, where they succeed and what the future of third party visitor analysis may hold.

Read the entire article

From the Head To The Torso
By Steve Smith

AS TRAFFIC FRAGMENTS AROUND THE Web, finding a large qualified audience to target becomes an everyday challenge for media buyers. The usual suspects in a given segment, whether it is entertainment, auto or fashion, become the natural locus for ad dollars, inventory squeezes and CPM inflation. Behavior Match is an intriguing new planning tool from Compete Inc. that segments users into 150 categories and then tracks their usage and concentrations across thousands of large and small sites. As CMO Stephen DiMarco tells us this week, the approach helps media buyers discover hidden gems in the ever-expanding mediaverse fragmented audiences.

Read the entire article

In our last Get Naked post, we interviewed PR guru Larry Weber and talked about his new book, “Marketing to the Social Web.” Larry is one of the most social people we know, so when he introduced us to John Palfrey from the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, we knew we had another great Get Naked story on our hands.

The first paragraph of John’s bio says: as Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, John’s work focuses on Internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world. John is a Visiting Professor of Information Law and Policy at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland for the 2007-2008 academic year.

I’ll admit that reading this made me think of that Cracker song, Teen Angst…does the world really need another academic bringing white space ideas down from the mountaintop (literally)? Well, the short answer is “Yes,” and you’ll quickly recognize that John is the real deal. He is one of those unique people that pushes the envelope on far-reaching, abstract topics like cyberlaw and the impact of the web on society, but keeps the conversation grounded so everyone can participate.

My favorite example of this is his keynote address at the IS2K7 conference earlier this year. You’ll see why Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree calls him “one of the most dangerous guys around.”

I counted sixty team members on the Berkman Center website – not including emeritus members John Perry Barlow and Zephyr Teachout – what does everyone do?

The Berkman Center is an extremely fun, vibrant, eclectic place. I hope you guys will come by to visit some day – we’re not far from Compete’s world HQ.

Other than having you come over to see for yourself, the easiest way to answer the question is by describing a regular Tuesday at the Berkman Center. In the morning, you might see lawyers like Phil Malone, Dena Sacco, Renee Lloyd and others in conversation with HLS students about on cutting-edge legal matters. There are about 100 or so students who are involved in the Berkman Center’s work each year, roughly 30 of whom are taking part in our cyberlaw clinic.

Around lunchtime, we welcome about 30 people for a sandwich and a conversation about the latest issue in their work, whether it’s for-profit or non-profit, high-tech or low-tech. The lunch crowd includes students, people from the broader community, as well as faculty, staff, and fellows of the Center. Later in the afternoon, we might have someone present on the interesting issues related to their company, like Andrew McLaughlin of Google, Miles Gilburne of AOL fame and now building out ePals, or Chris Kelly of Facebook, each of whom came by recently. Nearer the end of the day, our fellows get together to talk about their work, and are joined by Berkman staff and faculty much of the time. Recent topics include Gene Koo and Shenja van der Graaf’s interests in virtual worlds like Second Life and gaming in education. You might hear the voice of experts on how young people use technology, like danah boyd, piping in from the ceiling (technically speaking, calling in via teleconference). You might hear Ethan Zuckerman talking about issues of interconnection affecting ISPs in Ghana or the changing media environment in Jordan.

The common cause that joins all of us at the Berkman Center is a commitment to teaching and scholarship that is relevant to the changes on the Internet and which has an impact on how we make decisions. Most of us believe in a largely “open” Internet, but we disagree on lots of points, too.

With so many smart people focused on the whitespace of the web, how do you make sure regular Joes understand what you’re up to (and not just perpetual navel-gazing)?

Perpetual navel-gazing is a real hazard. It is also among my worst nightmares.

It’s crucial to us at the Berkman Center that we’re not just another ivory-tower think-tank. It’s important that we do some work that is theoretical and even abstract. We trust also that our work is intellectually rigorous and that our methodologies are sound. But at the same time, we try hard to be certain that we are speaking to an audience online that is bigger than our immediate circle of students and colleagues and other friends.

One way we do that is through our various modes of research, teaching, and activism. We believe in building out into cyberspace as we study it, so we have terrific developers on the team who put up the first blog server at a university, supported the first podcast series, built real-time teaching tools for the classroom, and a whole lot of code for specific research projects. Pretty much everything we do we publish to the web – whether on a blog, on our website, on a podcast, or by video. We are never as successful at this as we’d like to be, but it’s a constant area of focus. We think of our work as relevant to a broad audience and strive to avoid navel-gazing wherever possible.

One project where I think we’re close to getting it right is StopBadware.org. That’s a neighborhood watch where people can tell us about computer programs and web sites around the Internet that are causing problems to their computers. We work with Google to present you with a warning if you’re about to hit a site that may be dangerous to your computer. We also promise that we’ll take web sites and applications off the list when they become clean. It’s been very effective in terms of keeping millions of people from going to compromised sites and also leading to sites and applications getting cleaned up. As with every ambitious research project, it’s still a work in progress, and we’re totally open to ideas for how we can do it better.

Continue reading “Get Naked with John Palfrey” »

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, Technorati 50 blogger, and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. He was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. His job description at Apple was “to protect and preserve the Macintosh cult by doing whatever he had to do” — how cool is that?!

Guy is also the author of eight books including The Art of the Start (a must read).

A few weeks ago, Guy asked Stephen and myself 10 questions. We discussed how Compete competes with Alexa and Comscore, how Compete does what it does, site metrics, and Search Engine Optimization practices.

Enjoy! — Ten Questions with Compete (October 29, 2007)

The Questions (responses):

• What exactly does Compete do?
• What did your investors say when you started giving away your data for free?
• Do your stats include Macintosh users and Firefox users?
• How are your results different from Alexa and Comscore?
• Then should we all remove our Alexa bookmarks and replace them with Compete?
• Is SEO black magic and bull shiitake or can one increase traffic with a few changes to headers, keywords, etc?
• There’s often a 10x difference between my server logs and Google Analytics say is my traffic. What accounts for this?
• Then when people ask, do I give the log answer or the Google Analytics answer?
• Everyone else is lying, do I lie too or look less successful?
• What are the most common mistakes that companies make that yields sub-optimal traffic?
• Then what can I do to increase traffic at Truemors?
• In two years what will be the top five social networking sites (in order from largest to smallest)?