Archive for the 'Advertising' Category

The Whys of Social Media: Facebook

Published by
Don
2 weeks, 2 days ago in Advertising. 0 Comments

Okay, let’s continue our series of the “whys” of social media.

This series assumes the following scenario: Your website is in order. Your brand is consistent. Your offers are converting. Your conventional media is efficiently deployed. Now, you have the time to explore what social media might do for your marketing. Or you’ve been told, point blank, to find out.

Given that, why would you engage with one social media outpost over the next? About a month ago, we covered Twitter. This week, we’ll cover the 800-lb gorilla of the space: Facebook.

Facebook
facebookFacebook is the juggernaut. 300 million members strong, with an app platform that boasts some of the most successful social games on the planet, and an advertising network that is beginning to generate a profit.

Seems like a likely space to reach out and engage prospects, doesn’t it?

Well, in short: maybe. The thing to remember about Facebook is that people are there to meet, interact with, and keep up with the friends they like and the causes they believe in. It’s not a place where people are allowed to hide behind aliases. It’s not a place where a brand can pretend to be a person. In Facebook, everything is tightly controlled–and most of its users like it that way, because their news feed is one of the most important aspects of their day. And they don’t take kindly to it being overrun by overtly commercial messages.

So . . . why would you want to get into Facebook?

There are a myriad of opportunities. Here are just a few.

To connect with fans. If you already have fans–in other words, you’re an entertainment property, or a niche company with a rabid group of followers–you should set up a Facebook fan page. It’s going to be one of the best ways to aggregate your fans and give you a direct way to talk to them. But don’t think your responsibility ends at the fan page setup: fans want to hear what you’re doing, and what you’re planning, on an ongoing basis. Fans will ask questions, and they’ll expect answers. And fans sometimes get rowdy. So expect to spend some time managing your fan page.

To create a truly useful or entertaining app. Facebook’s apps platform allows you to create embeddable applications that reach out to friends through the power of the Facebook database. This has fueled some spectacular successes, most notably that of Zynga, a social game provider which has eclipsed every MMO, or “massively multiplayer online game”, in a few short months on Facebook. But beware: there are hundreds of thousands of apps. Unless yours is truly useful or entertaining, it’ll end up on the app scrapheap in short order. What can you do for people that nobody else can–and you’re comfortable with offering for free? If you have an answer to that question, it may be time to develop a Facebook app.

To simply advertise. Often overlooked is Facebook’s ad platform. Facebook ads can be micro-targeted to reach hyper-specific segments of the population. Want to reach only fans of The Family Guy? No problem. Want to target all the iPod Touch owners? Sure. This opens the opportunity for extremely specific offers that drive excellent results. Best of all, Facebook ads run at less than $1 CPM or CPC.

To run contests or sweepstakes. Social contests are great ways to build a contact base, and spread the word about your company. Facebook has a well-integrated contesting platform that makes running contests relatively simple and painless. Beware, however, of becoming a contest-only company.

To get meaningful feedback. Create a Facebook group to have greater interaction with your customers and prospects, use simple polling tools to get a read on what you’re doing, and invite a select group to preview products. Facebook’s demo is broad enough that this kind of ad hoc research is surprisingly accurate when compared to “the real thing.”

However, you may notice that we didn’t say Facebook was a great place to set up a fan page and wait for thousands of fans to simply show up. And that’s absolutely true. “Build it and they will come” hasn’t ever worked, and it doesn’t work on Facebook either.

But if you take the time, and build the base, Facebook can be a great place to launch your company into effective social media.

Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal – What Does It Mean to You?

Published by
Don
2 weeks, 2 days ago in Advertising, Google and Microsoft. 0 Comments

I reported Last week that the Yahoo and Microsoft search deal has been approved in the US and Europe. Microsoft will supply all results seen when searching Yahoo, for both paid and natural listings. Obviously there are huge technological issues to work through, but if all goes as planned, the partnership could be visible to consumers as soon as late 2010. Yahoo and Microsoft have also setup a site to explain the partnership in more detail.

So, what does this change mean for your business?

Yahoo and Microsoft currently combine for a little under 30% of the search market. Individually they don’t come close to challenging Google, but combined, they represent a sizable portion of the market. If you have been focusing your SEM and/or SEO efforts solely on Google, it may now be time to start paying attention to Yahoo/Microsoft.

It remains to be seen if this partnership will be able to steal a share of the search market from Google. Even at 30%, if you aren’t including Yahoo/Microsoft in your SEM and SEO plans, you could be missing out on a significant number of customers. This partnership makes reaching the non-Google searchers much more efficient for advertisers.

Typos may earn Google $500m a year

Published by
Don
2 weeks, 5 days ago in Advertising, Google, Internet and Marketing. 0 Comments

Google may be earning an alleged $500 million a year via companies and individuals who register deceptive website addresses.

google campus signThe claim centers on a controversial scheme known as “typosquatting“, the practice of registering a misspelled variant of a popular web domain. For example, a typosquatter might register “evolvefuels.com” in the hope of getting visits from people who meant to type “evolvefuel.com”.

If that mistake is made frequently enough, the owner of evolvefuels.com can profit by placing ads on their page. They could, in particular, use Google’s advertising network which automatically assigns ads to a page based on its content, or using keywords provided by the page’s owner.

In that case, Google could get a cut too, and Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman at Harvard University have now estimated how much money this could bring in for Google.

Spelling slips
Moore and Edelman started by using common spelling mistakes to create a list of possible typo domains for the 3264 most popular .com websites, as determined by Alexa.com rankings. They estimate that each of the 3264 top sites is targeted by around 280 typo domains.

They then used software to crawl 285,000 of these 900,000-odd sites to determine what revenue the typo domains might be generating.

If the top 100,000 websites suffer the same typosquatting rate as the sites Moore and Edelman studied, up to 68 million people a day could visit a typo site, they say. They estimate that almost 60 per cent of typo sites could have adverts supplied by Google.

If the company earns as much per visitor from ads on typo sites as it reportedly does from ads alongside search results, it could potentially earn $497 million a year in revenue from typo domains, they conclude.

Google’s total 2009 revenues were $23 billion, 97 per cent of which came from advertising.

Removing ads
A Google spokesperson pointed out that the company will remove ads from typo domains if the owner of a site with a trademarked name makes a complaint, but declined to discuss the research in more detail.

Typo domains confuse consumers and can generate unnecessary costs for the owners of the targeted web domain, say Moore and Edelman. Companies can feel compelled to advertise on typo domains targeting their own websites because they fear they might lose business to competitors if they do not.

Edelman has criticized Google’s adverts appearing on typo domains in the past. He is currently co-counsel on a lawsuit from a firm seeking damages from Google after its adverts appeared on a typo domain targeting the claimant’s website. He says that his involvement in the suit did not influence the results of his research.

Court action
“I’m not doing it for the money,” Edelman says of the court action. “I’m doing it because it’s important.”

Moore and Edelman say their analysis found that some website owners operate thousands of different typo domains. They claim that this means Google and other ad networks would also be able to identify operators of such sites.

A paper on More and Edelman’s findings was presented last month at the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in Tenerife, Spain. An online appendix provides more information about the analysis.

10 Things Changing Marketing In 2010

Published by
Don
2 months, 1 week ago in Advertising, Internet, Marketing and Social Networking. 0 Comments

With 2009 coming to a close, and this being my last post of the year, I figured a list of the hot issues facing online marketing in 2010 would make sense.

1. Rise of Mobile - Mobile is going to be huge in 2010, especially if marketers can build digital campaigns with mobile extensions. Digital provides reach, and mobile can provide increased depth of interaction.

2. Facebook Connect - It’s hard to overstate the implications of Facebook Connect for marketers. The ability to create more rewarding experiences for consumers, and simply be more creative, by using Facebook Connect will change all digital marketing efforts — and, I believe, take “social media” out of its silo.

3. Cause Marketing – I don’t know what digital rock you’ve been under if you haven’t heard that Pepsi has pulled out of the Super Bowl to focus more on marketing for the social good. The key will be, can Pepsi activate people to spread its message because of the social good they are doing? Social media makes this a very possible outcome with the right programs put in place. Put simply, Pepsi is hoping that “Corporate Social Responsibility = Profitability.”

4. Engagement Pricing – Digital media — heck, all media — needs new metrics that do a better job at measuring the value publishers deliver to marketers. These metrics should be harder to “fake” – and should be able to be standardized across media outlets for media buyers and planners. No, engagement won’t be the only metric, but I’d put my money on it being one that stands out in 2010.

5. Social Media Agencies – The skills that make a marketing firm good at executing “social media campaigns” from concept, to execution, to management, will be the skill set required by ALL digital agencies. Most likely, we will see something like what the marketing industry saw with the growth of search engine marketing: a rise of specialty agencies in the social media space, and the subsequent acquisitions of said agencies by holding companies and larger digital shops to help provide scale.

6. Local – See mobile. If you’re working on a national brand, what’s your local mobile and digital strategy extension?

7. Brand Dollars Go Digital – It can be argued very easily that we are witnessing a “direct response bubble” in digital marketing. This is because of a near obsession in closing the loop on ROI measurement. More and more marketers are expanding their definitions of digital ROI outside of direct response and looking at how digital can help achieve brand objectives. It’s just a question of scale and efficacy before digital media can be compared to more traditional forms of marketing initiatives.

8. Social Media Campaigns Grow Up – Will we stop hearing the word “viral” in 2010? I doubt it, but we can hope to hear it a whole lot less. I think the social media landscape is littered with enough failed viral efforts that most sane marketers and agencies will stop thinking that social media as “free.” There is a formula and a science to making social media efforts work. Dedicated resources, measurement of the right things, and adapting to what is learned will make social efforts more stable.

9. Real-Time Search – This is perhaps the most “bleeding edge” of any of the trends/issues facing marketers in 2010, but I do believe it is one that can have a major impact — and very quickly. The simple fact is that as real-time search improves, so does people’s ability to get real-time, unfiltered feedback from peers on products and services. It will be much harder for brands to control or manage their reputation, as with review sites. Instead, brands will need to turn to strategies that encourage positive conversations to balance out the inevitable bad.

10. Whatcha Got? I figured I’d leave the 10th open and hear what you all think. Drop me a line on Twitter at www.twitter.com/evolvemedia and/or add your thoughts to the comments and leave a reply below.

Have a great New Year’s, everyone! Thanks for checking us out in 2009, and here’s to an exciting 2010!

The Reality of Social Media Marketing

Published by
Don
6 months ago in Advertising, Business and Marketing. 0 Comments

Your company may have hundreds or even thousands of “friends” on Facebook and “followers” on Twitter, but does this really translate into real dollars and bottom-line results? A deeper dive into the realities of social media marketing may surprise you. Let’s do the numbers.

A recent study by Marketing Sherpa found that the average visitor to a site is 20 times more likely to purchase than someone coming from a social media site; and the average visitor to a site is 50 times more likely to place an order than someone coming from either social news (Twitter) or social bookmarking origins (Digg).

So if they’re not spending, what’s the value of investing in social media? The reality is consumers are very weary of brands that try and sell in a space reserved for friends and socializing. However, if done correctly, the real value of social media is building brand awareness, and creating an authentic dialogue with your customers.

For many brands, online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break their products in the marketplace. Now there are a handful of solutions that allow you to monitor blogs, news articles, online forums and social networking sites for trends and opinions about your company.

The bottom line: If you’re using or planning to use social media, put it into perspective and listen to your customers. Look for opportunities to engage in a smart dialogue with your fans and detractors and ultimately improve your brand perception. Social media outreach combined with a strong SEO (search engine optimization) strategy is the fastest path to conversion.

« Previous Entries

test