Archive for the 'Marketing' Category

Go Mobile, Young Man

Published by
Don
2 months, 3 weeks ago in Advertising, General and Marketing. 0 Comments

Okay, enough of the negativity. Yes, the pendulum has swung back on social media: it’s not the be-all, end-all, uber-cheap way to find new customers that everyone was hoping for. But it is useful. There will be successes that aren’t bought at the cost of superbowl ads or sweepstakes.

And there’s a much bigger opportunity floating out there. These guys get it:

“So, what the heck can I do with this in the B2B world, or, hell, even in the B2C world?” you ask. “This is just another way to reach a niche market of iPhone users.”

And iPod Touch users.

And iPad users (in a bigger case, yeah.)

It’s a way to reach 50MM+ self-selected, technology-forward, affluent consumers. And a growing number of people who use iPhones in their business.

What will you do with it?

Typos may earn Google $500m a year

Published by
Don
6 months, 2 weeks 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.

Website Packaged Solutions—What You Should Ask

Published by
Don
7 months ago in Internet and Marketing. 0 Comments

The pitch sounds good: “As a web development firm, we specialize in ONLY (insert industry here.) We’ve developed sites for dozens, or even hundreds, of companies just like yours. And we have a complete, pre-packaged solution that is absolutely perfect for your (industry.)”

TV-dinerAnd the demo looks good! It’s slick. It’s easy to use. It looks like everything you need—and it’s already up and running!

And who wouldn’t want the security of choosing a vendor that dozens, or hundreds, of other companies in your same industry have chosen? They know your unique industry challenges. They know the buzzwords and gotta-haves. They won’t have a big learning curve. It’s a decision that’s easy to back up in front of the board.

But before you dive in and sign that contract, there are some questions you should ask yourself:

If dozens or hundreds of my competitors are using this system, does it provide the competitive advantage I need to stand apart from them?

How “like yours” are all those other companies, anyway—don’t you have unique processes, procedures, sales support, or other needs that may not fit into a one-size-fits-all approach?

Will we stand out enough among all the other companies they’re working with—will we matter, or are we just a number to them?

And, even if those questions don’t give you pause, here are some you should ask your vendor:

What happens if we want to make changes to a standard module, or create a new module to serve a unique need we have, during the development process? What happens if we want to do this after development is complete?

What does your system training look like, and can you go through a quick demo with myself and a non-technical person now?

What’s the bottom-line one-time cost—a single number, not a range, not a smorgasbord of options. Do you guarantee zero variance?

What’s the bottom-line ongoing cost—again, a single, easy to understand number? If there’s ongoing “maintenance,” what does it cover? If there’s ongoing software licensing costs, what does this cover and why is it necessary?

Can I put the site on the host of my choice, or does it have to reside at your datacenter? If I put it on a host outside your datacenter, does it cost more?

Do I own the code you developed for me?

How will the search engines find me? Do you offer SEO services?

What if I want to move away from your platform in the future? How hard is it to get the data out of your system? What are the costs associated with getting data into a standard, portable format? Has anyone done this? Please provide references of clients who have done this.

Now, just to be clear: there are good pre-packaged solutions out there. And there are bad ones. This is just a guide that might help you steer around the gotchas.

Because, if you don’t do your homework, and look deeper than the simple answers and shiny, scripted demos, you can end up with a system you’re locked into, a system that doesn’t serve all your needs, a system that ends up costing far more than you expected—and has ongoing fees which never end.

The Whys of Social Media: Twitter

Published by
Don
7 months, 2 weeks ago in Marketing and Social Networking. 1 Comment

Hopefully you’ve noticed that Evolve Media is counseling common sense when it comes to marketing – and has been especially pointed about getting your house in order before engaging in any emerging or nontraditional media.

But let’s assume your house is in order. Or let’s assume that your CMO is directing you to “take advantage” of social media, or else.

In this case, let’s look at why you’d want to get into social media, why you’d use it, and why it could be a very good thing for your brand.

It’s easiest to look at this if I break it down by tactic. I’m going to assume you already know the basics, so this isn’t intended to be a tutorial or how-to. There’s plenty of those online – and I’ll link to them if relevant.

I’ll start with Twitter.

Twitter

twitter300Why would you want to use Twitter, especially given its extremely small message size and lack of internal integration with any media other than text?

Actually, there are a lot of reasons:

SMS Campaign Integration. Want people to be able to enter a contest or giveaway via SMS? Twitter’s a great way to add this functionality without spending a lot of money.

SEO. Twitter gets a lot of attention from Google. Want to be top-ranked within minutes when posting with specific keywords (such as a winery name and vintage)? Twitter helps put you at the top of the charts.

Immediate information. Do you have repeated, time-sensitive alerts that people want to know about? We’re talking things like “registration has opened for our 55th super-popular monthly webinar” or “our server is going to be down for X” or other announcements like that. Useful stuff. Repeated stuff. Twitter is great for communicating this kind of information. But if it’s not useful (be honest), exclusive (be honest), or important (be very honest), you may be disappointed in your Twitter results.

Lots of specials. Have lots of sales? Special one-day offers? Do them a lot? Woot was one of the first Twitter successes. If you have the sustained volume of truly special offers, you can build one heck of a Twitter list off of this. If your offers are lackluster or only occur occasionally, Twitter probably isn’t for you.

Celeb status. If you are a celebrity, or if a person allied with your company is a celebrity, Twitter can help you connect with your fans, and even enhance your celebrity profile. Fair warning, though: Twitter isn’t about creating celebrities. If you expect to become the next Oprah through Twitter, you may be expecting too much.

Making a character real. Have a company mascot? Have time to create an imaginary life for them? This could make a very entertaining Twitter feed. Of course, it can also eat up a whole lot of marketing time.

“But wait,” you might be saying. “You didn’t say that Twitter is a perfect place for us to reflect all the headlines of our company blog, post anecdotes from company picnics, and to link to news articles that Ernie in Engineering think are funny.”

And, you know what? You’re right. I didn’t.

10 Things Changing Marketing In 2010

Published by
Don
8 months 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!

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