To set the stage, when our agency was invited to attend the 2011 Agency Summit at Google Headquarters in Mountain View CA, I was ecstatic to meet my maker.

I would not call myself a Geek, nor a Marketer or a Sales Guy. I’m a Search Engine Marketer. The Googlers (Google Employees) call me an SEM. SEM’s represent an emerging breed of professionals constantly seeking to out-wit, out-analyze, and out-game, the most competitive algorithm in the digital age.

Now put yourself in my shoes, to make a comparison it felt like waiting in anticipation before the first coin toss at a football game, first pitch of a baseball game, or even the feeling of lights dimming at the movies before the sequel to that epic saga you had followed since you were a kid. The show was about to begin. The crowd of SEM’s looked right, left, then down at their tablets, laptops, and mobile phones. We were all frantically, checking in, tweeting, and finishing that last email as our host stood confidentially in the front of the theatre ready to introduce the delivery of the state of SEM and focus of Google and most excitingly what’s next?

Allen Thygesen delivered the “State of Search” address. He focused our attention on Small Business market penetration and the future of complete digital adoption. He noted that only 30% of companies have a website and in his opinion (and his opinion matters) Small Businesses represent the largest growth opportunity for Google. His remarks really energize SEM’s (link back to part 1 for a full description of our tribe) as GoldenCommunications serves a large community of small and medium size business here in Orange County, CA. Allen spoke about a secular shift from offline to online and a clearly demonstrated demand for local search results. Allen mentioned “there is headroom here” as we are still at an early adopter stage. I personally agree as it’s not ok, NOT to compete in the online space, not with all the tools, transparency, and direct customer intelligence we gain through online marketing.

Another great presenter, Ryan Gibson spoke about the challenges, best practices, and new strategies in search. Ryan related that “Search is hard to do well.” However, with an onslaught of new tools added to the performance analytics suite through Google Adwords and Google Analytics he shared that the people who truly understand the analytics of auction based media will be positioned well now and in the future as all digital media may adhere to these foundational principles as the media space expands.

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Now back to my personal journey inside the heart of Google. What is the heart of Google you may be asking? Well if you think it’s only an algorithm, then you made the mistake I did and forgot that there are people behind the algorithm. And as I was thinking deeper, people are really the heart of any company…

I’d like to focus this final thought on one Googler, his name is Adam Grunewald he is part of Google’s Agency Strategy team his job is helping SEM’s like myself win auctions on behalf of our clients. Over lunch Adam helped find solutions to a very complex search wall my team had not been able to overcome. He not only gave insight into the algorithm but more importantly gave insight into our online business.

Inside the heart of Google are people, these are really smart people, really helpful people, that can really help accelerate your business. Google Headquarters is a fun and fascinating place, but truly what impressed me most is the heart of Google. And for that, SEM’s like me are personally grateful to working with such a great business partner.

I coach soccer. Have done so for years.  My youngest child (Jimmy) is playing AYSO’s “U-5 Boys” (meaning Boys under 5 years old) and we had our first game last Saturday.

We only had 1.5 practices leading up to our first game.  The first practice was, “meet the coach and players” pretty much – and not a lot of moving around.  The second practice – a bit more of the same.  If you have tried to coach 4-year olds in anything, I don’t have to explain what those practices look like.

On the Friday (day before our first game) our eight bright-yellow uniforms came in – so I e-mailed the parents and told them to pick up their son’s uniform from my porch, and if they could not swing that, then I would simply bring the remaining uniforms to the first game.  Since we did not know our colors until the uniforms came, we showed up on Saturday a.m. for our first game, with all our players, but no team name.

8:30 a.m. and the whistle blew – our first soccer game was underway.  We ended the half, as to be expected – a few kicks here, a few there… but, candidly, a little sluggish on both sides of the ball.

As we broke out the oranges and water, I yelled to the group,
      “Hey – Yellow… get over here and take a knee!”

To my surprise, all the eight 4-year olds did just that.

  “OK everyone… I am going to give you your first life lesson the soccer field.  I’m going to give you some insight right now on ‘how life works’ in the real world.”

As you can imagine, that got most of the parent’s attention, as well as the kids. 
  With a bit of a pause, I could feel everyone think to themselves, what in the world is he going to tell a bunch a 4-year olds about how the real world works during halftime at a soccer game?

 So, I made the big announcement.
 “Whoever scores our next goal… gets to pick our team name!”

From that point on, it was a transformed team.  An amazing difference from the first half to the second half… in my opinion, just by adding a little strategic incentive plan for the boys.  Yes, incentive plans do work… on the field as well as in the workplace.

On the business front, good friends of mine Tom Miller and Ken Gibson from VisionLink are masters at helping companies build and execute incentive plans.  For more than 20 years, Tom and Ken have helped companies “score goals” by helping them motivate key talent through pay-for-performance compensation strategies.  You might want to give them a look if you’re looking to re-name your team, or just score more goals with your top employees.

It’s no secret that Golden State Communications relies on world-class partners to help deliver world-class websites and services to our customers.

One of these partners that consistently goes above and beyond for us is

One of my favorite Rackspace stories takes place on a late Christmas night in 2008. I got my wife a new 3G iPhone earlier that day and I was up late on the computer trying to configure it with our Exchange Server that Rackspace manages for us.

A few of our employees already had an iPhone, so I knew it worked great, but this was the first time that I had tried to configure it myself.

My wife walked by and noticed that I had the computer on, the iPhone out and my ear pinned to our home phone, talking configuration with someone on the other end. Walking by, she stops and gives me the ultimate stink-eye. The ultimate Scrooge … a boss that never lets his employees take a day off… even on Christmas day.

“Jason, hang up that phone right now!” she says.
“I am sure whoever you’re talking to has better things to do right now.”

I looked at her and pleaded,

“No, babe… this is Rackspace. They are glad I called, really. They are slow right now and it’s actually a perfect time for me to get some of these questions answered.”

In disbelief, she gave me the somewhat nod of approval.

“You mean they’re at work right now?” She said.
“In that case, make sure you tell them Merry Christmas and tell them thank you very much for helping configure my iPhone.”

Pretty good story, eh. But wait, here’s the best part. I have a few friends and colleagues (and competitors) that also use Rackspace Managed Services and I was telling them this same story, about the “Fanatical Support” from my trusted partner on a Christmas night.

Kid you not, my friend Chad (who works for a competing firm in the area) says to me,

“I know! I called them on Christmas Eve because we were having some e-mail problems and they answered the phone and solved the problem that night. They are incredible.”

We spent the next 10 minutes, two competitors in the same marketplace, sharing war stories of uptime challenges and how Rackspace in every case just flat out has your back. Kind of an amazing conversation, if you think about it.

So, what’s the moral of the story. The moral is that in a time where there’s lots of bad news and customers, family, friends and neighbors seems to pile on the state of the economy and the misfortunes of business… good news and needs to be exploited.

If you’re reading this, make it a pact this week to make sure that good news travels faster than bad news. And, if you’re a Golden State Communications customer, trust that your data is in great hands with our partner Rackspace. And if you’re not our customer, still give Rackspace hosted and managed services a real hard look… they really are everything they advertise.