Ask Kalena

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Job Title: Online Marketing Specialist
Job Reference #: 2464
Position Type: Permanent
Name of employer: The Body Shop
Location: Raleigh - North Carolina
Date Posted: 30 May 2009
Position description:

The Online Marketing Specialist will be a member of the E-Commerce Online Marketing team and will work on several aspects of The Body Shop’s online marketing programs in both the US and Canada. This individual will be primarily responsible for the daily management of the company’s affiliate program, Amazon store. on-site blog and social networking efforts. They will also be responsible for tactically supporting a variety of the E-Commerce group’s customer acquisition efforts. They will work with the E-Commerce management team to successfully drive marketing activity and measure results.

Primary Job Tasks/Responsibilities:

Overall

Manage all daily aspects of performance analysis and reporting for Affiliates, Amazon, on-site blog, social networking and new partnerships.
Responsible for budget management, accrual process, and spend allocation
Report performance on online media acquisition/retention efforts including spend, conversions, number of customers acquired and ROI.
Track and report on campaign results, data analysis, and hold weekly campaign status calls with partners. Develop key learnings to apply to upcoming campaigns.
Developing marketing strategies, time lines, and action plans specific to each channel.

Affiliates

Manage the extensive affiliate network working with LinkShare to drive improved performance. Work with Online Marketing Manager to develop strategy for refining program to focus on top affiliates.
Develop and execute campaigns targeting affiliates (trial offers, web site specials) to meet monthly sales goals.
Understand relationship between affiliate marketing and SEO, PPC activities
Stay up-to-date on current trends, developments in affiliate marketing and tactics of competitors.

Amazon

Drive sales in our Amazon store.
Provide creative direction to designer on banners for events and promotions.
Upload and manage creative, new products and store design.
Manage Amazon customer metrics – reviews, refunds and overall customer satisfaction.
Manage/Launch new shopping portals as necessary.

Social

Manage on-site blog and monitor online dialogues (blog posts and comments, user and professional reviews, forums, etc.).
Engage in dialogue with consumers in niche and popular social media communities.
Keep track of innovations in blogs, social networks, UGC outlets, social bookmarking sites, and other appropriate social media destinations relevant to the brand
Liaise with interactive agency on new event launches, blogger outreach, and campaigns to ensure flawless execution.

Other Responsibilities

Perform other related duties as assigned or requested.
Responsible for maintaining the ethical standards of The Body Shop including minimizing the environmental, health and safety risks in the workplace. Report potential risks, near misses and real accidents to relevant managers.

Skills

Thorough knowledge and understanding of key metrics and tracking for each assigned channel and ability to define and maintain critical reports.
Experience using Amazon to sell products within a business environment.
Experience with major social media outlets (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter), niche social media environments, popular message boards/forums, social bookmarking outlets (Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon), video portals (YouTube, MetaCafe, Vimeo), knowledge place sites (Mahalo, Yahoo! Answers, eHow), etc.
Outstanding verbal and written communication skills.
Exceptional attention to detail and ability to effectively multi-task in a deadline driven atmosphere.
Familiarity with e-commerce platforms, email marketing and standard online marketing tools, including Web analytics tools (Coremetrics experience a plus).
Motivated personality to “own” channel/segment and grow revenues.
Superior analytical skills and ability to drive results.
Great relationship –builder and adept at working with a team.
Creative free thinker who loves being social online.

Additional Technical Competencies

BA/BS in Marketing, Business, Advertising, Market Research or other related field.
3+ years in online marketing, direct marketing, brand marketing, product marketing, or marketing analysis.
2+ years in the Internet industry or at an interactive advertising agency.2+ years overseeing online performance analysis.
Successful candidate will be highly organized, have excellent analytical, quantitative and problem solving skills.
Proven ability to establish, foster, and maintain relationships with key partners.
Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment with strict adherence to deadlines and project schedules.
Excellent Microsoft Excel skills.
Undergraduate degree required.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [careers.peopleclick.com]
Contact: [careers.peopleclick.com]

For more search industry jobs, or to post a job vacancy visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

Popularity: 5%

Dear Kalena…

We are in the early stages of the SEO service development within our company and are now wanting to start getting an idea as to what the going rates for this service generally are within the industry, and what factors effect pricing.

Do you have any knowledge or information regarding this?

Are there any leads/resources you can point me in the direction of for me to gather up information regarding this? How are costs usually determined/laid out within a company offering this service, I’m assuming there are typically multiple levels of SEO one can offer, yet I do not know what the variables are that put someone in one level, and someone else in another.

If you can, please let me know anything about this topic that you can. I’m sure any help will go a long way in helping us sort things out.

Thanks

Myles

Dear Myles

There are many ways you can promote a website online ranging from paid advertising, organic optimisation, social media marketing, local business directory and search listings, article marketing/distribution, viral/linkbaiting etc. etc.

Just like there are many flavours of SEO - there are also just as many types of companies providing these services ranging from large corporate SEO agencies, freelance consultants and specialised boutique providers that focus primarily on one aspect of SEO (and then do it really well).

So as you could imagine, the pricing will differ considerably - and sadly, you don’t always get what you pay for.

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz wrote a great article on the topic which should give you some more specific information regarding costs and services: SEO Pricing & Costs - What Should You Charge / How Much Should You Pay?

SEOmoz also has a directory of well respected SEO firms in their SEO Services Marketplace. Or the Search Engine College Jobs Board will give you an idea of what price some companies are willing to pay to hire in-house SEO consultants.

At the end of the day, you have to feel comfortable with the SEO provider you decide to work with, so ask lots of questions and if you’re not satisfied with the answers move on. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is… oh, and one last thing - avoid any company that guarantees top 10 rankings.

Hope this helps!

Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Services

Popularity: 7%

Do you like problem solving? Helping people? Think you know a thing or two about search engines? We’ve been inundated lately with so many search engine questions that I simply don’t have time to answer them all.

Can you help us out of this tight spot? We’re looking for a  couple of Guest Bloggers to help us answer the search engine Q and A’s here at Ask-Kalena.com.

You’ll need to be a confident writer with a fun, readable style and excellent grammar. It would also help if you didn’t make spelling mistakes very often or at least when you did, you made them entertaining.

To get an idea of what we’re looking for, search our “Q & A” categories under the “Topics” drop down list on the left.

Ready to be a Search Engine Superhero? Give me a shout via kalena [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line “GUEST BLOGGER” by Sunday 24 May.

In your email, please include:

1) A 1-2 paragraph summary of your experience in the search industry

2) Links to one or more of your recent articles or blog posts.

Please note that the role of Guest Blogger is unpaid but authors do receive a byline as well as a link to their site/blog from each post, not to mention the enormous kudos from being syndicated on hundreds of sites.

Thanks!

Popularity: 6%

Hello Kalena

I enjoyed reading your web site and blog today. I was recently laid off and am interested in pursuing the SEM field. Where would you recommend I start?

I have 30 years of marketing, public relations, broadcast production, journalism (newspaper columnist), publishing (owner/editor of niche market magazine)… plenty of transferable skills I think. I also developed two web sites, produced several radio and TV shows and through it all I have excellent copywriting and proofreader skills.

Thanks much! Wish I could meet you in Sydney!

Susan

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Hi Susan

First up, I think your idea to start a career in Search Engine Marketing is timely and sensible given the current economy and global demand for search marketing staff. Reading my article 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing should get you fired up even more about the idea.

It sounds like you have a lot of skills that would translate nicely to a job in the Search Engine Marketing field. Journalism and copywriting especially will come in handy for writing blog posts and optimized page copy or PPC ads. But there is quite a technical side to SEO and PPC that you will need to study and gain experience in before you’re ready to take on client projects or apply for a job in the field.

There are plenty of SEM training options to get you prepared for the industry, including *cough* Search Engine College *cough*, but you should also start practising on your own sites and others as soon as possible. Hands-on experience is essential to competency in the field.

Best of luck and do pop back and let us know how you get on. If you do happen to get to SMX Sydney, make sure you say hello.

Popularity: 13%

Dear Kalena

I have just turned 40 & am looking for a new career having previously been in sales management. I am interested in finding out how I would go about getting a position within a company as a S.E.O. and what qualifications are currently internationally recognized within the industry. Any advice would be appreciated.

Second question: is a blog type website such as a WordPress site better for optimization than the typical site a web designer would build?

Mark

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Dear Mark

1) There’s no reason why you can’t start a new career as a Search Engine Optimizer, heck I’ve written an article called 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing. BUT, (and this is a big BUT), it takes more than theoretical knowledge and qualifications to be a good SEO.

There are plenty of online and offline training options for learning Search Engine Optimization, including the SEO courses we offer at Search Engine College. But they need to be paired with practical, in the trenches experience before you really understand how to optimize a web site successfully.

I attended a powerful presentation by Nat Torkington at Webstock last week about how to have successful failures and I would say that failures are a MUST for anyone in SEO. It’s only when you fail to get a page ranked highly in search engines and then tweak it to out-rank your competitors that you really grok SEO.

Regarding SEO qualifications, you should be aware that the search industry does not have an official accreditation body and therefore no standardized certification levels. At Search Engine College, we consistently check our lesson methodologies against the guidelines set down by the search engines themselves and I believe many of the other training institutions do the same.  We also set quite strict performance benchmarks for tutor-graded assignments and assessment items before allowing our students to gain certification.

As a result, we believe SEO / SEM certification has become increasingly recognized by employers in the search industry and we’ve had students tell us that having our specific certification has given them an edge over other applicants when applying for jobs.

2) In answer to your second question, any web site can be designed and optimized well enough to be search engine friendly, but yes WordPress blogs do seem to be indexed by Google very quickly and ranked well so you can feel comfortable building and optimizing a site using WordPress. It’s so much more than a blogging platform! Just make sure you download WordPress to your own domain and don’t build your site as a hosted blog on WordPress.com

Popularity: 13%