pTypically, when you are running a direct response (DR) online b advertising/b campaign, you have a very limited time to prove the effectiveness of your b advertising/b b strategy/b and the capability of your network. If the client does not see a clear progression of performance in the right direction, they would terminate the campaign. Clients usually have 24-48 hour out clauses in their insertion order (IO). When running an online display campaign, there are lots of variables at play. nbsp;Choosing the right ones could be the difference between a successful campaign and a prematurely terminated campaign with an unhappy client./ppHere are the key ingredients to a successful DR campaign:/pp1.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; bContent/b: nbsp;Content is very crucial component of any successful campaign. The content decides how long the user is going to be on a site, what would be the location of the ad on the page and how much will the user engage with the ad./ppConsider a user on a photo sharing site. Each page on the site will have some ads. The user will most likely be skimming through pages looking at pictures spending barely seconds before moving on to the next page. If such is the case, you can imagine that the user will not even look at the ads. Contrast this with an article that is of editorial nature, a user is more likely to be on this type of page for minutes. An ad on such a page will be in front of the user for a longer time and is more likely to register and invoke a response from him or her./ppThe more relevant the content to the b advertising/b campaign, the more likely it is that the user will engage with the ad. If you are selling Verizon FiOS service, for example, you are more likely to find the user on cnet.com rather than babycentral.com. Which bring me to the next item on my list namely the audience. nbsp;/pp2.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; bAudience/b: nbsp;When planning your campaign, it is imperative that you chose to run it in front of the right audience. As simple and as obvious as it may sound, it is often an overlooked feature of a campaign. Very often I come across campaigns that failed because they were running on mismatched audience. You can get sophisticated by employing a third party audience measuring company like Quantcast or Comscore, or you can use common sense while picking which sites to run the campaign on. Like I said above, Verizon FiOS will perform better on CNet than on babycentral. If you can get the right ad in front of the right audience you would have done the trick, unless of course you missed out on recency and frequency aspect of targeting the user. nbsp;/pp3.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; bRecency and Frequency/b: While deciding who to show the ad and who not to, a key decision parameter that I always use is how recently the ad was shown to the user in question and how many times has the user already seen the ad. After having run a lot of campaigns, I can tell you that you have a better chance of succeeding if you show an ad to a user who has recently seen the same ad. There is also a limit on the number of times you should show an ad to a user before deciding that the user will not engage in the future. From my experience, this number is between 3 to 5 times per day. nbsp;If the user does not engage with your ad after you have shown it to them 3 to 5 times, your chances of succeeding with this user drop significantly as you show more ads to this same user. So once you have shown the ad to as many users as you can what else can you do? You can find other relevant audience using re-targeting./pp4.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; bRe-targeting/b: nbsp;Re-targeting allows you to target users who have been on the advertiser’s site either browsing or looking for more information. If you can identify such users within your network, you can be assured that these users will engage much better than other users. Whenever possible, I utilize re-targeting as a key component while building my campaigns. Performance of this audience is always superior to the others. The only issue is to find enough such users to run your entire campaign in front of them. Once you have applied all the above mentioned four techniques, you can utilize the final technique of standard targeting to fine tune your campaign and make it more efficient.nbsp;/pp5.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; bStandard Targeting/b: Sometimes basic targeting can save media dollars for your advertisers which could result in an efficient successful campaign. If you are showing an ad which is relevant to a certain state, there is absolutely no advantage in showing that ad to users who are outside that region. Whenever possible identify if the product is a nationally advertiser or more regional in nature. If it is regional then you should definitely geo-target the campaign to that region only.nbsp;/ppI have often notices that the performance of most of my campaigns usually drop off between 12 AM to 4 AM. These are the times when users are less engages, tired, trying to wrap up their work and go to bed. It is very unlikely that you will get them to engage. If you are selling a business product like FedEx Kinko’s office services, you are better off running that campaign from 7 AM to 7 PM. Also, remember you can target off of user’s time zone rather than yours. I have seen this error being made where campaign managers forget to target to user’s time zone and end up either running the campaign longer during the day or ending it prematurely for users on either side of the coast. This is an important distinction that is often overlooked./ppThese were, in my opinion, the most crucial components that can lead you to running a successful DR campaign. Again, not all campaigns respond positively with the same degree to all of these components. Some factors are more determinant for one campaign then others. You will have to play around with these to find out which one or ones make the most impact on your campaign. Once you identify which factors make your campaigns work, pour more traffic in those factors and reduce the traffic from others. I also recommend monitoring the campaign’s performance on a weekly basis. Sometimes factors that work initially for a campaign may stop performing as well and other non-performing factors might become dominant performers. If and when this happens you should be able to monitor it and adapt to the change./p p a href=http://htmlnewsletter.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Html NewsletterHtml Newsletter/a a href=http://marketing-automation.onblogme.com/ rel=dofollow title=Marketing AutomationMarketing Automation/a /p
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 6th, 2010 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.sâmbătă, 4 decembrie 2010
vineri, 3 decembrie 2010
Blog: Facebook Gets Serious about Location with Deals
When Facebook launched Places, the social network’s long-awaited location-sharing feature, in August, it was accompanied by a couple of key assumptions. One was that 800-pound gorilla of the social networking space, with its 500 million total users and 100+ million mobile users, would take the check-in mainstream. As my colleague Debra Aho Williamson sagely put it in an eMarketer blog post:
Right now, checking in is a fairly niche activity. Places will introduce a lot more people to the concept. Facebook has already shown that it can drive big changes in people’s behavior—just look at the popularity of status updates. Checking in is another one of those behaviors that Facebook can easily push toward mass acceptance.
Another was that the launch of Places signaled the death knell for foursquare and other location-sharing services. But as it happens, the reports of foursquare’s death have been premature. In fact, since the launch of Places, foursquare’s user base has continued to surge, growing from 2.6 million on August 12th (according to a tweet by CEO Dennis Crowley) to 4 million on October 21st. If it continues at its current pace, foursquare is projected to top 5 million registered users by the end of November.
In addition, while Places has built-in scale, it doesn’t necessarily top foursquare in engagement. According to some recent (and admittedly rough) calculations by Silicon Alley Insider (SAI), a large number of people (a reported 30 million) have tried Places, but more people check in on foursquare on a more regular basis. Blame a lack of compelling features, such as game dynamics, that give foursquare a lot of its appeal. On the other hand, engagement and usage metrics, even the somewhat speculative data assembled by SAI, that disproportionately favor the smaller foursquare over the much larger Facebook, serve as further evidence that two can peacefully coexist.
The big question is: what would make Places more compelling? With yesterday’s launch of its Deals program, Facebook is betting the answer is commerce.
Why Places + Deals is important to Facebook:
First, the opportunity to save money will give Facebook’s base of mobile users, now 200 million-strong, a reason to use Places to check in. The success of group-buying services such as Groupon and flash sale sites like Gilt has demonstrated that consumers will jump at the chance of a good deal. The fact that Deals is launching with a roster of 22 national brands, including the Gap, H&M, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters, JCPenney and Chipotle, proves that Facebook is serious about driving adhesion. In many cases, the inaugural deals mean discounts, but Starbucks and McDonald’s, for example, are offering donations to charities in return for checking in, reminiscent of a successful program non-profit Earthjustice has run with foursquare.
Facebook also recognized the need to include a mechanism to drive ongoing usage. In short, Deals is not about the one-shot deal. Rather, merchants have the option of using the platform as a virtual loyalty program or punch card to reward repeat buyers. This is a smart move that could counter some of the criticism leveled at services such as Groupon and one that will make Deals more compelling for users and businesses alike.
Why location-specific deals make sense for marketers:
Location information, which provides insight into not only place but also context, enables marketers to deliver a compelling offer or reward when consumers are at the point of decision. In yesterday’s geo-location sessions at the ad:tech New York conference (coincidentally scheduled at the time same time as Facebook’s Deals announcement), WHERE CEO Walt Doyle noted that reach, relevancy and redemption are the key factors in the location game.
Cracking all of those nuts simultaneously and with the same degree of success is challenging. Facebook can do its part by offering scale and ease-of-use for the business owner, whether a national brand or single proprietorship. But platform and scale alone are not sufficient. Ultimately, the success of Deals depends on, well, the deals that merchants offer. Unless they’re consistently attractive, consumers will lose interest or not sign on at all.
Will Deals alter the dynamics of the marketplace?
The answer is yes, but the impact of Deals will be felt differently throughout the geo-location ecosystem. Although foursquare was absent at yesterday’s launch, Groupon and Loopt, two companies that are farther along than Facebook in marrying location and offers, were present. The single-click sign-on feature that Facebook announced as part of the enhancements to Places will enable deeper integration between Facebook and other location services, which, in theory, at least, will give Facebook more appeal as an aggregator, a value proposition that will likely extend to commerce as well.
Could Facebook, with its reach and resources simply blow its erstwhile competitors out of the water? Given the inclination, the answer is probably yes. But Facebook understands a) the value of the ecosystem (a lesson perhaps learned from Google, now Facebook’s primary competitor in the digital space); and b) its limitations in being all things to all people and all companies. Fast Company described the post-Places opportunity for services such as foursquare and Groupon in the following terms:
Their long-term sustainability will probably rest on the same thing that enabled the Mac to survive in a PC world: A decision to eschew the urge to be everything to everybody and instead to focus on a customer segment they will always be able to serve better than the big boy.
Deals may not be perfect, it may be “cruder,” in Fast Company’s estimation, than similar offerings, but assuming that Facebook is on to something here, Deals could have a significant impact in the marketplace. It could also offer a big boost to mobile-assisted commerce and make mobile not only a more viable but also more necessary channel for reaching consumers.
Blog: Gaming Dollars Flowing to Social, Mobile Spaces
A rave review in The New York Times of the motion capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect system for the Xbox 360 game console got me thinking about the ups and downs of the video game industry, and how social and mobile gaming fit into the overall picture.
Despite the Times’ enthusiasm about the Kinect box, most of the news from the traditional gaming industry has been bleak. According to NPD Group, in the first three quarters of this year US video game software, hardware and accessories revenues were down 8% compared with the same period in 2009 – and last year revenues were down 8% from 2008.
Nintendo posted its first half-year loss in seven years. And Viacom announced it’s selling the once-hot Harmonix unit, developer of Rock Band and creator of Guitar Hero. Harmonix had been pulling down Viacom’s earnings for several quarters, including a $260 million write-off in the most recent quarter.
Against this backdrop, social and mobile gaming look especially promising.
eMarketer’s short-term forecast of ad spending on social gaming is pretty aggressive. In the US, we’re expecting ad spending to hit $192 million in 2011, up 33% over 2010. And the non-US growth curve is significantly steeper at 160%—though the dollar amounts are lower.
Keep in mind that estimates of advertising on social games don’t include so-called “offers.” These are lead-generation pitches from marketers such as Netflix and Blockbuster, or surveys that reward participants with virtual cash for social games. According to ThinkEquity, these offers accounted for 47% of US social gaming revenues in 2009. Direct revenues from virtual goods made up some 44% and the remainder came from pure advertising.
On the mobile front, eMarketer expects US revenues to reach $1.5 billion in 2014, from $850 in 2010. Most of the revenue will come from paid downloads, but advertising’s share of the total will grow to 12.3% in 2014, from 6.5% in 2010. Dollar-wise, ad-supported gaming will bring in $186 million in the US in 2014.
It’s no wonder game developers, entertainment conglomerates and Internet giants are diving into social and mobile gaming. Electronic Arts acquired Playfish for $300 million, plus another $100 million if Playfish meets pre-established performance criteria. EA also bought Chillingo, the maker of the popular game app Angry Birds. Disney purchased Playdom for $563 million plus a $199 million earnout. And Google acquired social game maker Slide for $179 million and mobile gaming specialist Social Deck for an undisclosed sum.
Consider also that the granddaddy of social gaming companies, Zynga, was just valued at $5.51 billion, topping EA’s valuation of $5.16 billion. This makes Zynga the second largest video game company, behind Activision Blizzard, which is estimated to be worth $13.9 billion.
Zynga has some 210 million active users, including 62 million on FarmVille alone. Its 2010 revenues are projected at $525 million, and it’s raised $350 million in private capital so far. Most of its action happens on Facebook.
What’s in it for marketers? Quite a bit. There are many ways in which companies can tap into revenue streams associated with social games:
Branded virtual goods. These are rampant in the virtual gaming ecosystem, but to give one example, 7 Eleven partnered with Zynga to create a YoVille Big Gulp, a Mafia Wars Slurpee and FarmVille vanilla ice cream. 7 Eleven gets a cut of the revenue that consumers spend on these virtual goods
In-game billboards. Many companies are inserting their brands into the gaming space. For instance, Honda advertised its CR-Z in Cie Games’ Car Town.
Sponsorship banners. In one of the more clever examples of this kind of brand advertising, National Geographic overlaid its logo on the pitch of the soccer-themed game Bola.
Branded games. Companies are also creating their own games, following the advergaming model in the traditional video game world. One example: a Hello Kitty game.
I’m not ruling out a resurgence in console gaming. After all, this industry has had an impressive track record of reinventing itself. It did it in 2006, when the Wii led a new generation of hardware consoles. And it did it again a couple of years later, when music-themed games were all the rage.
But if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on social and mobile gaming. That’s where all the gaming action seems to be these days.
joi, 2 decembrie 2010
Online Promotional Strategies For Start Up Entrepreneurs
pAs a small business owner are you looking at promotional b strategies/b that could, while giving you a steady stream of prospects can also save costs?/ppDo you know that thousands of website owners use few simple techniques to generate targeted visitors to their websites without spending a penny on b advertising/b? Yes. It is the webs most well kept marketing secret./ppThese are the b strategies/b used by fortune 500 companies as well as some of the most successful internet marketing wizards. The principle behind this incredible internet marketing b strategy/b is first GIVE and then GET. When used effectively, the results could be mind boggling./ppHow Does This b Strategy/b Work?/ppImagine for a moment that you are selling insurance. It is just an illustration. It could be a healthcare product, credit cards, housing or innumerable other loans or anything under the bright blue skies. The moment you talk of insurance to any prospect who is already hunted (pardon my term hunted. that is what a prospect feels about sales approaches) day in and day out by insurance sales persons, immediately erects a barrier and comes up with innumerable excuses for not wanting insurance./ppNow there is another way. You offer people valuable information about choosing the right insurance in the form of a free report, an article, or a book. Would people take it? They definitely would. Because they are under no obligation or pressure to buy anything in the first place. They are also getting a benefit which is valuable information about choosing the right kind insurance./ppNow this free information product that you offer has subtle messages or links to your website with your address and phone no’s as the sponsor of the book. The person reading the book has already started to build a good image about you because you have offered him valuable information which is going to benefit him. He is obliged to you for the free service that you have rendered him. So he is more likely to call you if he needs your product than any other competing product./ppLet’s assume for a moment he does not require insurance. But just because he appreciates the valuable information contained in your info product he forwards it to five more of his friends or relatives. Your information with your ads has now been exposed to 6 persons whereas you gave it to only one with no involvement of time, money, or effort. These five people again find the information valuable and each person shares it with 5 more of their friends. Now you have reached 31 more people. This way it continues on may be not in the same arithmetical progression mentioned here. It could be more or less. But be rest assured you have created a viral b advertising/b tool that keeps moving and replicating and spreads across./ppWe have taken an example of an ebook, e-report, or white paper. In the case of an article it works slightly differently. An article is published in ezines like this one with a huge readership. Whoever likes the article can of course forward it to their friends. But a content syndication site also has thousands of other ezine owners visiting it for content. So an article which is preapproved by the author gets published and in turn they keep being republished in hundreds of sites with the authors link in the article./ppNow do you see what an exciting promotional b strategy/b this could be that has very little cost implications while reaching a wide national or global audience making your cash registers ring./p p a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a /p
This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Facebook Paid Advertising – Things to Look Out For
pBecause it has become a staple in almost every internet user in the planet, Facebook decided to take a bite out of the large apple that is marketing and b advertising/b. Today, Facebook is offering b advertising/b to all of its users – but the question is, do you truly know how to create successful Facebook ads?/ppIf you are planning to use Facebook as a part of your marketing and b advertising/b b strategy/b, then you need to know a few things before you start making your ads. The internet is about competition nowadays, and if you do not know what things to look out for, you might just end up losing money instead of gaining some./ppIn order to have a really effective Facebook ad, you have to know what to expect – you need not be a creative genius to make a simple, yet very sharp advertisement. Creating an ad does not necessary mean that you have to be an artistic genius or that you need to hire one./ppIn creating your ad, there are several things that you should look out for. Things like the length of you’re ad copy, the most common types of (effective) b advertising/b, the different forms of b advertising/b, as well as the placement of the ad, and its benefits./ppTo help get you started, here are some of the things that you should keep in mind to make sure that you make effective ads./ppYour ad should be as long or as short as it needs, as long as it is able to hook your customers to buy the product. In order to help you determine how long your ad copy should be, you have to know the type of product you are b advertising/b, what you want your ad to accomplish, the price of your product, where it will be placed, and how tough you should sell.
You have to understand the three common types of b advertising/b and evaluate which type will suit your business best. There is consumer b advertising/b (b advertising/b products to the general public), business to business (advertise from one business to another), or direct response (b advertising/b that compels the reader to do something – clip and use a coupon, call a sales representative, etc.).
You also have to know what form of advertisement to use and you need to know which b advertising/b vehicle will be better for your product.
Most importantly, you have to know exactly where you should put your advertisement – on top, on the side, or at the bottom of the page./p p a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a /p
miercuri, 1 decembrie 2010
Article: Men Care About Causes Too
Cause marketing has a special appeal to some demographic groups, like moms and millennials. But guys can get on board with a good cause too, and are willing to open their wallets.
An August 2010 survey by PRWeek and Barkley found that this year three-quarters of companies engage in some form of cause marketing, up from 58% in 2009. Marketers agreed that women were overall the most receptive target to such campaigns, but 88% of men said it was important for brands to support a cause.
Further, 55% of male internet users surveyed said they would pay more for a brand or product that supported a cause they cared about. Two-thirds said they would try a new brand because of a cause.
“The Boomer generation has carved out the path toward looking at cause marketing as an important way to connect with consumers,” said Mike Swenson, President, Barkley Public Relations, in a statement. “But even more so do Gen X and Gen Y Millennials, who view it as something that must be done. That’s why we’re seeing the numbers we do with men. It’s no longer a gender issue.”
Child-related causes were most important to men, followed by those dealing with health.
Marketers have an opportunity to target men with cause campaigns that they are already conducting, and to optimize those campaigns to appeal to the male demographic. But the study found that despite widespread brand activity in the cause marketing arena, 68% of marketers said they had no plans to target men because of their perceived indifference and the greater importance of causes to women.
Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.
Check out today’s other article, “What Are the Benefits of Email-Social Media Integration?.”
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Exploring The Benefits Of Advertising On MySpace
pMySpace is an extremely powerful social networking website. There are millions of internet users actively surfing the MySpace website on a daily basis, and nearly as many joining this community. There are many different aspects to the MySpace community that makes it a very appealing resource for the active internet marketer. Here, you will be introduced to the many benefits associated with MySpace b advertising/b. If you have a product, service, blog, or even just a simple article that you wish to advertise, this social networking community is the place to be!/ppWhen you elect to advertise on MySpace, you are able to target a number of different audiences from around the world. While this particular website is often noted in a popular online community for teenagers, individuals of all ages are active members of this community. In addition to attracting potential customers of a particular age group, internet marketers can also attract potential customers from many different places around the globe! It is one of the most popular international social networking websites in existence today!/ppThere are a number of popular methods in which an individual can profit by b advertising/b on MySpace. One of the ways that seems to be increasing in popularity is by b advertising/b in the form of a video. Many individuals create videos in which other users can view, share, and use on their websites. This is a great way to link back to your website if it is done correctly. In addition to actually creating videos to share on this popular social networking website, you can also pay to advertise in the form of small banner advertisements and more./ppYou can advertise on MySpace by creating a profile that accurately displays the goods and services that you are interested in promoting. There are absolutely no fees associated with this type of service. Members can place an assortment of different advertisements on their profile page, promote the goods and services in any way that they wish, and network with other individuals around the globe that share the same type of marketing interests when it comes to the use of social networking websites and internet marketing b strategies/b. This can be very beneficial to your b advertising/b b strategies/b!/ppThere is a blog area on the website that you can use in order to advertise the goods and services that you offer. Many individuals may elect to use the blog as an area where they can communicate with their customers. This can be extremely promising when it comes to building website traffic and more. Many advertisers implement the use of the blog system on this popular social networking website to increase the profits associated with their website. You can create a blog group that can be used to attract individuals who may be interested in your goods and services./ppThe MySpace community has a number of other options that can be used in order to maximize the potential of b advertising/b. These items include groups, classifieds, active forums, and more. If you are in the b advertising/b business and you wish to grasp the pure potential and power of social bookmarking websites, you should consider using the MySpace online community website in order to do so. You will not be disappointed in the results. This is a true power b strategy/b when it comes to online b advertising/b marketing campaigns. Why not harness it for yourself?/p p a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a /p
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2010 at 8:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.marți, 30 noiembrie 2010
Strengthening Your Persuasion Strategy Through Repetition
pOnce is enough for the wise man, they say. But in the world of sales and trade, there is no such thing as an arrangement being confirmed just once. In order for you to finally close that deal, you will have to exercise a number of persuasion b strategies/b, and one of the most popular is repetition./ppThe more you repeat the merits of the product or service you are selling, the more it becomes natural to you and your prospect. It is this feeling of naturalness that you want to achieve, because when an idea becomes as if second nature, it won’t appear as if you’re trying to sell but, instead, just highlighting the obvious./ppNotice how after seeing a certain advertisement on TV we find ourselves humming the ad’s catchy jingle even while we’re washing dishes? That’s repetition in action. In fact, it operates on several levels./ppRepetition is necessary to keep a certain piece of information to memory. For example, if we need to learn a certain poem, we keep repeating it to ourselves, even in our sleep, so we could memorize it. This method is also needed to promote a better understanding of a certain idea or issue. Thus, if you want to convince your prospect that your product is the best in its industry, then you will have to keep repeating its merits and the awards (if ever) it received to persuade him./ppRepetition also breeds familiarity. The more often you reiterate the benefits of your product, the more likely your target buyer will feel and think that what you’re saying is the one and only truth. There might be other brands in the industry, but if your prospect is most familiar with yours because of your b advertising/b b strategies/b, then he is likely to buy what you are offering./ppOf course, repetition should not be overdone as familiarity can also breed contempt, as the saying goes. If you bombard the buyer too much, you will appear desperate, your campaign will look stiff and forced, and your approach will seem nagging. You want to win your client over to your side, not drive him away by being too pushy./ppThere is a method to successful repetition, and that is moderation. As with anything else in this world, too much is too much. If you start annoying your client with your aggressiveness you’re not likely to get any positive response from him or his network (who he will most probably tell) now or any time in the future./p p a href=http://htmlnewsletter.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Html NewsletterHtml Newsletter/a /p
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 10:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Article: What Are the Benefits of Email-Social Media Integration?
Several studies have shown that a majority of email marketers are making use of social media tactics, both to boost their social media efforts as well as to improve email campaigns.
A June 2010 survey of North American email and online marketers by email marketing firm Lyris found that most of them were seeing positive results. Just 6% said their marketing results were no better after integrating social and email, compared with 54% who said results were at least somewhat better.
Moreover, respondents rated social media as the online marketing channel with the greatest positive effect when integrated with email, selected by 34%, compared with 29% who said web analytics and just 3% who said mobile marketing.
Facebook and Twitter were the most commonly used sites in integrated email-social campaigns, and Facebook integration produced the best results.
A majority of respondents were also using social media marketing to help build their opt-in email lists, and 21% said social media drove the greatest opt-in rates, after website registration forms and email marketing itself.
“Though a less fundamental and more unproven email marketing tool or practice, social media marketing is used by 63% of those surveyed, only 1 percentage point less than the proportion that measures email marketing ROI,” said the report. It also cautioned that, despite marketers’ enthusiasm, “claims about the benefits of social media marketing cannot be validated because the effects of social media marketing cannot yet be readily measured with consistency.”
Regardless, social media-email integration is a reality, and next steps for email marketers will include making that integration more sophisticated and streamlined and including further integration with mobile. For more information, please join us for the free webinar, “Email Best Practices in the Age of Mobile/Social,” on Thursday, November 18.
Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.
Check out today’s other article, “Men Care About Causes Too.”
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Blog: eMarketer Webinar Playback: Email Best Practices in the Age of Social and Mobile
To listen and watch playback of the webinar, Email Best Practices in the Age of Social and Mobile with Principal Analyst David Hallerman, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.
Join Principal Analyst David Hallerman to find out:
About email’s integral place among digital messaging channels, such as social networks and mobileWhy deliverability challenges increase with multichannel communications, and how to overcome themHow to address customer preferences for communications on multiple devicesWays to optimize email for pass-along via email or social networksHow the right email service provider can smooth out the processAbout David Hallerman
As eMarketer’s expert in online advertising and marketing, David Hallerman covers email marketing, online video and display advertising, search engine marketing, internet ad targeting, brand marketing, and ad spending across media.
David is quoted and interviewed frequently. He has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg’s Businessweek, Forbes and Advertising Age and on several television and radio shows.
David has been a speaker at key events such as ad:tech, the IAB/MIXX conference, IAB Leadership Forum, the OMMA Video conference, OPA Breakfast Forums and DM Days.
Sponsored by Return Path.
All comments are moderated (during business hours) and are generally published if they are on-topic and not considered spam.
luni, 29 noiembrie 2010
Benefits of Dental Advertising
pOnline dental b advertising/b is very helpful for your practice. A good majority of people tend to go online for services and products they want. This explains the success of sites like eBay, Craiglist and Amazon. Often, people also log on to the internet to exchange information, opinions and comments. Considering the huge exposure you can gain from online b advertising/b, online dental b advertising/b is a must for any flourishing dental practice./ppbBenefits of online dental b advertising/b:/b/pp1. Large numbers of people are going online for their needs. So, creating a website for your dental business increases web traffic and expands the number of clients to your practice./pp2. Online dental b advertising/b is one of the easiest ways to generate new patients on a consistent basis./pp3. While bad dental b advertising/b sucks, effective, focused b advertising/b b strategies/b offer one of the best ways of letting people know you care. To achieve this, it is important to communicate with your customers and connect with them on a one-to-one basis. Once your clients feel that you care about them, you can count on retaining their business for a very long time./pp4. Word of mouth is no doubt one of the most powerful methods of offline b advertising/b. Online, social media does the same job as word of mouth. Imagine you are an active member on Facebook, where you give free advice regarding modern dental procedures. There are thousands of people listening to you. At least a few of them may be from your vicinity or may have friends, relatives or colleagues in the same vicinity. These people pass the word around and before you know it, you have new clients beating a path to your door. Why does this happen? Because you have established yourself as an authority in your niche and people like to do business with the people they know and trust./pp5. Since the internet allows the use of streaming audio and video, you can make use of your website to put up videos of client testimonials featuring previous clients. Potential clients can’t help but be impressed by testimonials from patients who have used your services in the past. What your customers say about you and your staff is a very powerful tool in b advertising/b./pp6. If you can put up before and after pictures of patients you have worked on, you can create a great impact on prospective clients. This helps cement their faith in your skills. Since most patients are quite sure about the treatments they want or at least about the effect they want to create, seeing images of real people who have undergone the same is a very strong call to action. In this way, you can excite viewers enough to make them take action./p p a href=http://marketing-automation.onblogme.com/ rel=dofollow title=Marketing AutomationMarketing Automation/a a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a /p
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Blog: What Multichannel Retailers Can Learn From Flash-Sale Sites
At Optaros, a global consulting and systems integration firm that creates online shopping solutions, Adam Michelson helps retailers integrate next-generation digital technologies and commerce platforms. He also helped set up members’ sites Rue La La and 36 Boutiques. Here, he discusses what multichannel retailers can learn from flash-sale sites and how ecommerce will evolve.
eMarketer: What are the key underpinnings of the flash-sale concept?
Adam Michelson:
Flash sales represent what I call retail 2.0 where there’s much less reliance on search engine-based marketing and much more on viral marketing which helps, from an ROI perspective, to drive down the cost of customer acquisition. There’s also a sense of exclusivity in belonging to a special group. From the consumer standpoint, impulse buying factors into it.
There are more than 50 flash sales sites now. The big four—HauteLook, ideeli, Rue La La and Gilt—are primarily apparel-driven. They offer a highly edited assortment of merchandise, mostly late-run merchandise in which consumers are getting a good deal. The goods purchased from them can be considered impulse buys. One Kings Lane is a leader in home goods but the problem with home goods is that a lot of those items aren’t impulse buys. Recognized brands and seasonal merchandise do well on flash sales sites overall.
eMarketer: How can multichannel retailers leverage the opportunities presented by online flash sales, members-only and private sales events?
Michelson:
If you’re a big-box retailer and you already have a large customer file or database with email, log-in and other customer information, you can leverage knowledge of your customers to drive store online shopping and in-store traffic.
You have to decide whether you’ll offer a deal of the day where at a given time of day, customers can get a deal or more of a private event that you’re invited to. The problem is you already have a file. So how do you invite somebody to something ‘exclusive’ when you already have millions of customers who are shoppers on your site? The issue for retailers is how to extend the customer profile and create a sense of exclusivity around it when you already have their profile. Retailers have to tackle that perhaps by drawing on loyalty rewards.
Flash sites are ‘private’ to keep the comparison shopping engines from looking at the deals. That’s the reason customers need to log in and help generate viral marketing rather than AdWords and AdSense-based marketing. Incentivizing customers to invite each other to be members also drives down customer acquisition costs. That’s all well and good if you’re starting a new website, but if you’re a big-box retail site, there’s no reward for the invitation to join. Because they have a large customer database, it’s not financially savvy to reward existing customers with a $10 coupon.
eMarketer: How would you characterize the challenge for big-box retailers?
Michelson:
The challenge for retailers is that private sales events are private because consumers have to join or be invited to them. Big-box retailers already have a customer database of online and offline shoppers so there’s no sense of exclusivity. They can try to leverage their existing customer base to create ‘private’ sales events but must come up with special incentives. They could incentivize customers based on whether they buy a certain item during a sale, maybe offer free shipping. But this is more of an incentive to convert to a sale, than an incentive to join something.
eMarketer: It would seem that big-box retailers would be in a good position to try limited-time sale events because they have so much customer loyalty data.
Michelson:
Yes, most of these retailers have an enormous capability to understand who’s loyal, how many times a year they’re shopping and what their average ticket price is. They have a lot of loyalty information and the ability to home in on it. I recommend that retailers use this information or an extension of loyalty as an incentive. So if you are being invited in, you know why, and if you invite somebody else, then I’ll give you ‘x’ number of loyalty points, or if you invite someone who converts, you’ll both get free shipping. It’s an extension of a loyalty program and a means of incentivizing customers.
eMarketer: Is there a way multichannel retailers can leverage the fact that they have physical store locations?
Michelson:
It’s a question of how they want to use their physical stores. Retailers could stage an in-store event along with an online simulcast event. For example, they could host an in-store fashion show and maybe it’s simulcast on the web 15 minutes early before the event starts. Then if you’re in the store, maybe you can shop 5 minutes early through your mobile device. If you’re online at home or in the office, you shop that way.
Post-purchase, retailers could plan, for example, a Calphalon sales event or a cooking demonstration. Customers go into the store and maybe Wolfgang Puck shows up to demonstrate how to use his product line. Or, perhaps a week before an event goes live online, customers can visit an in-store showcase to see and interact with a product. But, the big-box retailers can’t just look at this as a way of getting rid of merchandise or as a clearance channel. The customers won’t feel special.
eMarketer: Is the flash-sale market getting oversaturated?
Michelson:
The apparel segment still has a lot more room for growth, same with kids, moms, babies, teenagers and college. A lot of flash sites run the same brands over and over again. But if you find a new demographic, for example, new moms or GenZ (ages 18 to 24), there’s more room to grow. Lockerz is a flash site for Generation Z. There are sites dedicated to jewelry, handbags, shoes and travel. We’re also seeing more experiences being offered such as SniqueAway, a private-sale travel experience site.
There’s more niche capacity by demographic or by product line. And within the online group buying sales sites, big-box retailers will eventually host private events that are tied in with a local deal of the day via Groupon or similar provider. Internationally, the market’s definitely not oversaturated.
eMarketer: What are some best practices for retailers looking to leverage flash sales or limited-time sales?
Michelson:
Create a sense of exclusivity. That’s probably the biggest hurdle—defining what exclusive means. There is also the technical side—how do retailers handle sales spikes? If they’re lucky enough to be successful, then they’re selling out of 50% of their merchandise or more in the first hour. Retailers have to create a technical infrastructure because they might have 10 orders or more per second—that’s unheard of in ecommerce. Real-time inventory is required and that’s not easy. Having the ability to reserve items in a shopping cart is something that most stores don’t offer, but private event sites do. And what do they do with the items that didn’t sell?
You may get higher returns on a private sale site than a regular site because there are so many more impulse buys. Offering a return for store credit only helps ensure people don’t just buy and return.
eMarketer: What are the challenges for the big four flash-sale sites?
Michelson:
How do they sustain growth? Once a customer is invited to the site and they shop, they’ll never be invited to it again. A Groupon or LivingSocial customer returns and is invited back again more frequently than any of the private events sites because of the viral nature of the model itself. Another challenge is how to re-energize existing customers. Also, how do they take into account more than a single demographic? Gilt has created vertical categories—travel, cities, men, etc.
Gilt’s deal with Starbucks is a partnership to use the Gilt platform as an extension of Starbucks’ loyalty. That’s a different way of using the Gilt platform that monetizes it. But that’s a different question than re-energizing the two or three million members these sites already have. And that’s assuming less than 50% of the existing user base of all these sites is active. Maybe 10% to 20% of the user base is active. How do you invite or incent people to return?
The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access clients only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.
Click here to learn more about how becoming an eMarketer Total Access client can strengthen your business.
duminică, 28 noiembrie 2010
Blog: Retail Ecommerce Spending to Grow 13.7% in Q4 2010
Ecommerce spending is expected to grow 13.7% to $51.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, topping last year’s Q4 sales of $45.2 billion, according to a new forecast published by eMarketer.
Strong online holiday sales will push annual ecommerce sales to $162.4 billion for full-year 2010, up 12.7% over 2009. Online holiday sales will represent an estimated 23.7% of online retail sales in 2010, underlining the importance that November and December have on retailers’ annual ecommerce sales.
One reason for the uptick is shoppers continue to shift a greater share of their holiday spending from stores to the Internet. As principal analyst Jeffrey Grau writes in his upcoming holiday ecommerce report:
[Consumers] do so to avoid crowded malls, find bargains and locate unusual or popular items that are unavailable in stores. Cost-conscious consumers also see online shopping as a way to spend wisely. They can go to coupon sites and shopping blogs and communities to learn about bargains. They can also research purchases to find cheaper alternatives.
Another positive for ecommerce is online shoppers are more affluent than consumers in general, and affluents have returned to shopping, as evident by the postive sales numbers reported by upscale department stores like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus.
Mobile commerce and social commerce are also much more mature than last year. Far more retailers are expecting customers to use smartphones to read customer reviews, compare prices and locate items that may be out of stock. Meanwhile, digitally literate shoppers will continue to follow retailers on Facebook and Twitter to learn about special promotions and in-store events as well as partake in contests intended to stir positive buzz.
Posted: October 27, 2010. Filed under: Consumers & E-Commerce, RetailAll comments are moderated (during business hours) and are generally published if they are on-topic and not considered spam.
Blog: How Important is Your Facebook Brand Page to Your Social Media Strategy?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been interviewing marketing executives for an eMarketer report looking at budgeting for social media in 2011. It’s been a fascinating exercise; the businesses I’ve spoken to are quickly leaving behind the experimental stage and moving toward full integration of social media.
One of the key questions confronting marketers as they develop their 2011 budgets is how much emphasis they should place on their branded Facebook page, and how much action (and interaction) they should logically expect. Last week, Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo Americas Beverages, asked this question of his Twitter followers:
How many Facebook users are active on pages versus the newsfeed and profiles? What percentage of users visit pages often. Wish I knewless than a minute ago via web
Shiv Singh
shivsingh
It’s an important thing to ask. There’s been a long-held belief that consumers are too busy interacting with friends to pay attention to brands in social media. But Facebook’s Like button has changed that. In a study of the ways US Internet users interact with brands online, ExactTarget found that 38% have followed at least one brand by clicking on a “Like” button, while 5% followed at least one brand on Twitter.
According to a survey by DDB Worldwide, 27% of people who have liked a brand on Facebook say they often click that little thumbs-up button, and an additional 49% do it occasionally.
These brand interactions are growing, but by no means are they taking the place of interacting with friends. ROI Research and Performics found in a survey conducted this past spring that 25% of US Facebook users visit company or product pages, but 54% make comments about other people’s posts.
What does this mean when it comes to budgeting for social media next year? A few things:
Consumers are more willing to interact with branded pages. It’s time to banish the idea that brands are ignored in social media. Brian Solis predicts in his blog that because of Facebook’s position as the center of social interaction on the web, by this time next year, marketers will spend “more time and resources on Facebook than you will on Twitter.”Interactions with branded pages will be a key metric to watch in 2011. As Singh’s question indicates, it’s one thing to know how many Likes you have, but how often do those fans actually interact with your page? The top brands on Facebook may have millions of followers, but the more important metric will be their actual interactions with the brand (and, of course, the effect of those interactions on product sales).The Like button isn’t just for social media. Jennifer Van Grove, writing on Mashable, described how the Golden State Warriors basketball team increased its Facebook “like” base by 20% by sending e-mail marketing messages asking fans to like the team in exchange for an opportunity to win tickets to preseason games.All comments are moderated (during business hours) and are generally published if they are on-topic and not considered spam.
sâmbătă, 27 noiembrie 2010
Best Choices For Advertising Products
pAll people loves having things for zero; this is what makes b advertising/b items one of the most advantageous b strategies/b to market that there is. A large number of organizations waste time and money by having fancy leaflets printed up to hand out at trade shows. Probabilities are most of those leaflets are going to go straight into the garbage without just about anyone examining them through. The leaflets should be saved until someone is hooked and needing the data in them./ppSome of the best promotional products are those products that are cheap and everyone uses. These are pens, sticky pads, note pads and calendars. These are cheap to hand out and everyone uses them. The purpose of promotional products is to make sure that if someone needs either the services or products provided by the company, they will a reminder close at hand with contact information, as well. Pens are the most common promotional product and they are still the best choice for most companies. When a pen is given out, the company can be sure that it is an gadget that will see lots of employ. That is why they should make sure that the pens are quality products and not something that is not going to work or worse yet one that will leak all over someone’s pocket./ppAnother promotional product is the T shirt. The company may decide is too expensive to give out to every customer, however, T- shirts for employees is sure to win them some free b advertising/b when the employees wear them and they can also be a free bonus for customers who spend are a certain amount of money. Water bottles are another choice. More and more people are becoming health conscious. They are also becoming more eco friendly. Reusable water battles fit into both categories. Coffee cups for the office are a good idea, too. Giving repeat customers a coffee cup with the company name and emblem on it will ensure that they remember who supplied them either the product or service they needed./ppNote pads with the company trademark and website address are a good choice, as well. A note pad will see lots of implement. The sticky pads are usually popular; they make it easy for someone to leave a note either to themselves or someone else. Refrigerator magnets are another popular item. These magnets hold up a wide range of goods. From shopping lists to bill reminders and the children’s art work. That blank space of the refrigerator door makes for a perfect memo board when magnets are put to use./p p a href=http://htmlnewsletter.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Html NewsletterHtml Newsletter/a a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a a href=http://marketing-automation.onblogme.com/ rel=dofollow title=Marketing AutomationMarketing Automation/a /p
This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 9:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Approaching New Business Strategies
pMany people talk about business b strategies/b but have a great failure to realise precisely what this is – is it surprising that a fair deal of businessmen have a giant problem discussing this when they do not exactly know what this is!/ppQuestions that should get asked may include the resolution of the undoubted fact that’s there even a b strategy/b in existence or if this is the case is this the right one? Additionally, how can we work out what a technique is and how does one go about developing one? It’s extremely crucial when developing b strategy/b to take a quick look at some of the issues and why a selected trail can go wrong-if one keeps doing a corresponding thing, one will get the same result. Most way of research are above 35 years old but there is a total absence of appreciation of them among businessmen and lots of them do not understand the simplest way to utilize them. So how can we correct this anomaly? Initially, the ground rules must be set so participators need to arrive with open, clear minds./ppMethod might be matched against seeing everything around, from each angle available and even into the future and the following necessities must be met to be successful: Buyers are ultimate and form the roots of market understanding, practicability must take preference over concept, the business wants of now and the future need to be thought about and the method should be quantifiable. It is worth at roughly that point to touch on the philosophy behind a method. The best spot to start is to take the old saying of begin with where you’d like to be and work backwards to where you are now./ppTop Five web business Systems to achieve success in Web Based Opportunities:/pp• Paid Surveys – there’s basically a massive list of valid firms that help home-based roles through paid surveys and poser shopping. A number of these internet sites are hypes and some scams, these corporations might bombard you with offers and guarantees with loads of undesired b advertising/b. Nevertheless Maximum Paid Surveys is among the most authoritative web site which hosts a catalogue of legitimized paid surveys company, puzzle shopping and focus groups on the web. A notable aspect about the paid surveys is that it’s a really nominal one- time investment and you can start with your web based small business with no experience and precise skill base. It can supply you the first fiscal success until you are sufficiently mature to put your hands in other more concerned marketing systems./pp• Internet marketing – According to Wikipedia, affiliate marketing is a Net based selling practice in which a business rewards a few business partners or associates for each visitor or client created by the affiliate’s promoting efforts./pp• Own an internet site – To run a successful web based small business you have to have an internet site, identify a smart idea or product that sells and is comparatively straightforward to market. Knowing the way to build or change a webpage is also a critical ability, or you will probably finish up spending substantial amount of cash in hiring a talented person who has to maintain and make easy changes to your website for you./pp• Niche Promoting – the prime ingredient of Niche b advertising/b b strategy/b is the dedication and focus of the efforts towards a tiny niche segment of a market rather than the whole world.Usually this tiny fragment of the market is overlooked or ignored by large firms and the less competition makes it valuable to explore it for profits. The idea is to target a targeted sector, concentrated area – geographically or demographically./pp• Multi-level-marketing – ( MLM ) is also called internet promotion, direct selling, referral promoting or pyramid selling. Lots of the Net firms use it by describing a selling structure by building a structure of affiliates for their general promoting system./p p a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a a href=http://htmlnewsletter.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Html NewsletterHtml Newsletter/a /p
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 at 9:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.vineri, 26 noiembrie 2010
Article: To Ramp Up Marketing Efforts, GM Puts Social in Front Seat
For the past few years, General Motors has managed its efforts on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online video and other social media activities from within its communications group. In 2011, GM will be moving social media marketing into its brand groups. Christopher Barger, global director of social media, spoke with eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson about the challenges of this transition, how GM allots budget for social media within digital marketing, and what measurements the company needs to have in place to increase spending on social media marketing.
eMarketer: How are you budgeting for social media marketing in 2011?
Christopher Barger: Until now, social media has been led and budgeted out of communications rather than marketing. We are in the middle of social becoming part of marketing. That means there will be a bucket [of funds] for Chevrolet for the year. There’ll be a certain bucket for Volt; there’ll be a certain bucket for Cadillac. And so on.
The brand communication teams and the brand marketing teams have never budgeted their own line items [for social media marketing]. It’s all come out of [my budget]. What’s happening is that marketing rightfully is becoming more involved in the planning and the budgeting piece, and also the strategic side of it.
“The brands are now baking social into their overall marketing budget. It’s incorporated into all the programs.”That means the brands are now baking social into their overall marketing budget. It’s incorporated into all the programs. So, if you’re launching a vehicle, you just increase the amount of money that goes into the vehicle launch program in order to accommodate social tactics as well.
eMarketer: That’s going to happen with other marketers, and GM may be ahead of the curve in getting the social integrated into the marketing budget.
Barger: It’s been a long time in coming, so I know we finally have the right structure in place, and the right mix of skill sets and the disciplines that are involved.
But frankly, one of the things that I wish I could do over, if we were starting over again, is that we’ve been picking off [social media marketing] opportunities as they occurred to us. You know, South by Southwest is coming up, or ComiCon is going on, and gosh, wouldn’t it be great if we could get a Camaro down there? We’ve been ticking those off one by one as we see them. “We can start thinking about a social strategy that is more in line with the rest of the strategy for marketing, rather than picking off opportunities piecemeal and hoping that they fit.”
Now, by getting the marketing teams more involved, we can say, these are the vehicles that are specifically being launched. These are the specific things that we’re trying to accomplish with our audiences that we’re trying to reach. Now, we can start thinking about a social strategy that is more in line with the rest of the strategy for marketing, rather than picking off opportunities piecemeal and hoping that they fit.
eMarketer: How much of a marketer’s online marketing budget do you think should go toward social media?
Barger: Companies have begun to grasp the need to move a significant portion of their marketing budget to digital. But I don’t think that nuance between digital and social is fully comprehended by everyone yet.
It’s impossible to do one well without the other. I would argue that online advertising and online marketing have their place but can very well be supplemented by campaigns of engagement with social networks. If you’re doing nothing but talking within the social networks, and it’s not tying back to your other online marketing, it’s probably not as effective as it could be.
There are other people in the GM organization who will probably have different opinions than me, but I’d probably want to try to go as evenly split as possible: Half of the effort you put in, both from a financial resource and a time resource standpoint, ought to be spent engaging in the networks and then trying to figure out how to physically get people into your product or experiencing your product. The other half ought to be making them aware of your product, and continuing to go where the audience goes, to do standard digital marketing.
[But] up until this point, my standalone budget for social has been the only budget that’s been allotted. So, I’m sure the percentage is in the single digits.
eMarketer: And as companies really start integrating social into the rest of their marketing, as you’re doing, it might be even harder and harder to figure out what percentage is going toward social media.
“Whether you’re doing social, whether you’re doing marketing, whether you’re doing digital, whether you’re doing communication, at some point that all kind of blends.”Barger: At some point, it’s all indistinguishable. Whether you’re doing social, whether you’re doing marketing, whether you’re doing digital, whether you’re doing communication, at some point that all kind of blends.
So, as social gets further integrated and just becomes part of how you do standard marketing, I think it’s going to be a lot harder to define where those lines are and which percentage of budgets are going where.
eMarketer: Are you at the point where you’re able to measure and track that influence? And then say, yes, this is working; we need to shift more budget toward social.
Barger: Not as well as I would like. I can definitely measure levels of engagement, how often something is tracked, or how often a particular message or particular thing goes out into the social networks and carries through. We can measure tone and analysis of sentiment. What I wish we could do is say that because we did something in social we moved more vehicles than we would have, had we used traditional routes.
The measurement, frankly, for traditional forms of marketing, in advertising, even PR, is far better established, because they have had a longer chance to get it right. We’re not quite able, yet, to definitively prove our [results via social media].
eMarketer: What metrics, if you had them, would 100% make the case that GM needs to invest even more heavily in social media marketing?
Barger: There are two different angles to approach that. First is trying to determine the correlation between how often something is mentioned in Twitter or Facebook or on blogs, with intent to purchase, or purchase consideration. If something was put up on Twitter this many times, or we have this many followers, or we had 21 comments on our Facebook page, how does that translate? Does it mean anything or is it just online chatter?
Then, I’d love to be able to track that back to actual sales. How often does what you’re doing online translate to offline? For example, if we’re doing a tweet-up, and we’re scheduling something around a particular vehicle, we get 53 people to get in the car. And then as a result, six of those went to a dealership and actually bought one. If I could track that, that’d be fabulous.
Look, we’re selling cars here. Being able to demonstrably prove that social media actually sells cars would be great.
The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access clients only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.
Check out today’s other article, “Does Social Media Marketing Make Sense for the Smallest Businesses?”
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Article: Could Brands Improve Their Outreach to Bloggers?
Blogs are not the hottest social media trend of the moment, but they remain a powerful platform for self-expression—and for brand and product recommendations. eMarketer estimates that 51% of US internet users will read blogs at least monthly this year, and according to October 2010 research from blog portal Technorati many will find them influential.
Nearly half of internet users surveyed worldwide said they trusted blogs as an information source, and slightly more said they were likely to recommend a brand, product or service they heard about on a blog. But are bloggers ready to make recommendations themselves?
Among all bloggers, 55% said they review products or brands rarely or never, up slightly from the 53% who said the same in Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere 2009” report. Among “hobbyist” bloggers—the most common kind—the drop was similar.
In addition, 42% of all bloggers and 40% of hobbyists said they sometimes blogged about brands they loved or hated, down from 46% and 44%, respectively, last year.
Following a brand on social media may keep it closer to the top of blogger’s mind, encouraging more frequent posting on the subject.
But bloggers are dissatisfied with how brands are treating them. Nearly two-thirds of all blogger respondents said they felt bloggers were treated less professionally by brand representatives than were members of the traditional media, and hobbyist bloggers were most likely to hold that view.
Brand representatives must remember that even bloggers who write only for fun expect to be treated with respect. Earlier research from IZEA noted the high value bloggers and other social media personalities place on their endorsements, and if bloggers are credible and have the reach a marketer is looking for they deserve to be treated like the media outlets they are.
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Check out today’s other article, “UK Consumers Are Doing More Online, More Often, With More Devices.”
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joi, 25 noiembrie 2010
What? The number one question from the NT character, Don Draper
I help small business owners...mostly main street people, the brick and mortar types with their marketing.
I'm also a 2-star Nebraska Admiral in case that means anything to you.
TweetRecent PostsWhat? The number one question from the NT character, Don Draper3 Ways to Make the Caller's Experience Reflect Your CustomersDing Dong SEO Gone BadAvery's run at 3M: Differentiate. Demonstrate. Directed Humor.On Your Market: Open for BusinessCustomer Engagement: A Kinetic Word of Mouth TechniqueMarketing Beyond Advertising: Save enough to pay for airfare and hotel!Tom Wanek's Ad-Speak CalculatorContextual Linking: Your web site is NOT a strip mallThe Fabulous Price of Free...Square offers free credit card reader
Follow this blog « 3 Ways to Make the Caller's Experience Reflect Your Customers |MainWhat? The number one question from the NT character, Don DraperAnyone who studies Myers-Briggs, would label Don Draper as an NT, the iNtuitive Thinker. He is a quick decision maker, following his intuition.
When he needs information, clarification, explanation, he falls back on his favorite question: What?
This is the question that cuts to the chase. He's not asking why. He doesn't care how. Who is immaterial.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Can you name any other characters that want to get right to the point?
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Comments What? The number one question from the NT character, Don DraperAnyone who studies Myers-Briggs, would label Don Draper as an NT, the iNtuitive Thinker. He is a quick decision maker, following his intuition.
When he needs information, clarification, explanation, he falls back on his favorite question: What?
This is the question that cuts to the chase. He's not asking why. He doesn't care how. Who is immaterial.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Can you name any other characters that want to get right to the point?
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Article: UK Consumers Are Doing More Online, More Often, With More Devices
UK internet users have embraced the web and its possibilities like never before, although some demographic groups remain offline.
eMarketer estimates more than 44 million people are online in the UK in 2010 and nearly 70% of all households have broadband access.
“The cultural divide between web users and non-users is widening,” said Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “UK Internet Users and Usage: Top 2010 Trends.” “For the majority of marketers, though, this is not a problem; their audiences are online in ever-greater numbers. Moreover, internet users of all ages are increasingly adept at multitasking, connecting with brands on multiple platforms and responding directly to campaigns, promotions and other offers online or via mobile.”
Mobile web use is up sharply in the UK. About 31% of internet users said they went online via mobile phone in 2010, compared to 23% in 2009, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported. A further 26% said they accessed the web through a laptop’s wireless connection away from home or work. Men were more likely than women to take advantage of mobile access options.
“Growing numbers of people are using mobile phones, tablets or netbooks to access the internet,” said von Abrams. “Much of this activity still takes place at home, but web users are quickly discovering the entertainment and utility value of being able to network, watch video, read, search, shop and transact on the go.
“E-tailers and brands may struggle to keep up with the demands of this audience as mobile takes a central role.”
The full report, “UK Internet Users and Usage: Top 2010 Trends,” also answers these key questions: How did the UK’s online population change in 2010? Which online activities are most popular? What can we learn from UK consumers’ responses to tablets such as the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle? How is the UK’s mobile internet marketplace developing?
To purchase the report, click here. Total Access clients, log in and view the report now.
Check out today’s other article, “Could Brands Improve Their Outreach to Bloggers?”
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miercuri, 24 noiembrie 2010
Article: How to Influence Teen Girls Online
Teen girls spend a significant amount of their media time online. While texting and listening to music take up a bit more time each day, according to July 2010 research from Varsity, nearly a quarter of girls ages 13 to 18 spend at least 3 hours a day online, and another 37% are on the web for an hour or two daily.
And what teen girls are doing online is no surprise: 61% reported going to Facebook multiple times a day. About a third of respondents said they socialized with friends online for at least an hour every day.
Friends and peers are an important part of teen girls’ experience, and the study found they were the first place respondents turned for advice about buying apparel. Friends were the top source of new trend information and also the most influential when it came to making purchase decisions, making the social aspect of shopping key for this demographic.
Teen girls also reported they gave advice about a variety of products to friends and family members, with at least two-thirds recommending they buy apparel, books, entertainment items and makeup.
With teen girls getting and giving advice at high rates, and wielding large influence over their peer groups, marketers must gain the trust of young people to act as brand advocates on their behalf—especially on social sites, where girls are spending so much of their time.
This could mean finding girls who already have a strong online presence, such as those who post “haul” videos to YouTube (the second-biggest social site among teen girls, according to the survey) and developing a relationship, or creating offerings to help teen girls shop together online by sharing the outfits they put together socially.
And it will also mean avoiding the hot buttons that annoy teens: push marketing and, above all, treating them like children.
Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.
Check out today’s other article, “Bright Picture for US Online Holiday Sales.”
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Blog: Will Yahoo!’s New Partnerships Help Rebuild Its Brand?
The same week Google introduced its local recommendation service Hotpot and Facebook announced its new messaging platform, Yahoo! said it formed partnerships with online gaming company Zynga and several coupon sites and local deal networks. But will these moves help make Yahoo! more significant again among users and advertisers?
Yahoo! is still the leading email property in the US, despite all the hoopla surrounding Google’s Gmail vs. Facebook’s “mail.” At the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz said, “We serve 6 million different front pages a day”—her way of saying, “Yes, we’re still relevant.”
But is it? Much of Yahoo!’s business now relies on other companies. Its search business is outsourced to Microsoft. And rather than acquire or organically grow a “deals” platform, as Facebook and Google have done, Yahoo! has gone the outsourcing route. Its new “Local Offers” and “Daily Deals” are based on partnerships with four of the top five group-buying websites in the US—Groupon, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe and Tippr—as well as other local and deal sites, including Lifebooker and Coupons.com.
On one hand, these deals could put Yahoo! a step ahead of Google and Facebook, which are still building user bases for their own social commerce platforms. On the other hand, Facebook and Google are so hot right now that it’s tough to imagine consumers (or marketers) straying too far away.
Then there’s the partnership with Zynga. Ad spending on social games and applications is already on the rise. eMarketer forecasts spending to increase 33% in the US between 2009 and 2011, as my colleague Paul Verna wrote about earlier this week, and Zynga is a leader in the space. The partnership will boost traffic to Yahoo! Games and increase awareness—and, Yahoo! hopes, ad dollars—for other properties and games on the site.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! has a chance to build its popularity among gamers and users by partnering with Zynga. Teenagers surveyed by Roiworld and OTX in April 2010 said they spend 2.6 hours a week on Yahoo! Games, far less than the 4.8 hours per week they spent on Zynga, or the 7 hours they played games on Facebook. By aligning with a more popular brand, Yahoo! has the potential to increase time spent on its games site, which makes it more valuable for marketers who want to advertise, do in-game promotions or develop more innovative ways to interact with users.
The lingering question now is, “Will consumers use these new features?” Zynga, Groupon and several of the other local deal sites already have established user bases, so that helps.
But Yahoo! can’t continue to rely on the power of Zynga and others to improve its ad business. Now is the time to be innovative with its advertising and marketing platforms, building upon these partnerships with new ways for marketers to reach Yahoo! users. Both Google and Facebook have made mobile a major part of their new initiatives, so where is Yahoo!’s mobile element? How is Yahoo! improving its measurement and metrics for marketers? If Yahoo! can innovate, as well as continue to strike new partnerships, marketers will pay attention to the brand, even as it continues to face off with Facebook and Google.
marți, 23 noiembrie 2010
Importance of Marketing and Advertising
pThe person who is involved in any kind of business knows it very well that marketing is the most important part of the business. Possibly you are offering a very good product or service through your business but not getting enough revenue and your competitor is not having good quality product or service but getting good revenue. This is because of the marketing that your competitor is applying good marketing b strategy/b for his business and you did not. You can get great profit even if your product is not very good and if your product is good then the marketing will help you to get boost of profit./ppIf you are running a business or going to start any business then you must take the help of marketing. Before marketing you will have to decide the area which going to be covered by your business and then start marketing for the above. It will be more difficult and costly if you will cover big area. For marketing you can hire any good a marketing company which will suggest you ideas and will do marketing for your business./ppThe most beneficial and modern trend of marketing is internet marketing. If you are running a business or going to start a business then you should launch it on the web. Web is the vast area of business because through this you can get global visits and clients for your business. This will be the reason of great profit. For launching your business on the web you should start a website through which you can sell your product or service. First you should know about the free advertise./ppYour website also needed marketing so that people will visit here. For marketing of your website you can hire a SEO service or can make your links on other websites. This will not only attract others and increase traffic but will also make benefit for search engine results. You can find sites for submit website. There are many websites on the web which are providing the facility of b advertising/b marketing. The facility of submitting websites is just similar to bookmarking./ppSearch engine is the best way for getting traffic on the website. If your website is coming on first page list in a search engine result for related keyword then you definitely will get traffic on your website. For that you should try to increase the page rank of your website provided by the Google. If your will submit website on good sites then you can improve page rank. There are some websites which are providing facility of free advertise and these are having good page ranks and heavy traffic./p p a href=http://advertisingandpromotion.ndesignsblog.com/ rel=dofollow title=Advertising And PromotionAdvertising And Promotion/a a href=http://marketing-automation.onblogme.com/ rel=dofollow title=Marketing AutomationMarketing Automation/a /p
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 at 10:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Article: Have Click Rates Finally Stopped Declining?
One of online marketers’ simplest metrics to keep track of, the clickthrough rate, has been in decline for years. As many recognize the importance of other measures in determining the success of online campaigns in attempts to capture the branding as well as the direct-response effects of advertisements, fewer and fewer web users were clicking on fewer and fewer ads.
Based on longitudinal data from digital ad solutions provider MediaMind, however, that decline appears to have stopped. The company’s analysis of data from July 2006 through July 2010 shows that annual average click rates have plateaued, at 0.09%.
According to “Standard Banners—Non-Standard Results,” it was the success of online display ads that caused the drop in clicks to begin with. As users saw more and more ads across the internet, many continued clicking, but not fast enough to keep up with the expanding inventory. Clickthrough rates fell steadily until reaching an equilibrium.
“The new findings are an encouraging sign for advertisers,” said Gal Trifon, CEO and co-founder at MediaMind, in a statement. “Although CTR is only a partial measure of online success, the leveling of CTR shows that online advertising has reached a level of maturity and that advertisers have become more sophisticated in luring users’ interest.”
The study also provides further evidence to back up brand marketers who want to measure more than just clicks to determine the effects of their campaigns. Just 20.4% of conversions came after clicking on a banner ad. Instead, the vast majority happened among web users who had seen the ad but not clicked on it, and who converted at a later date.
The report advises advertisers to look to sophisticated ads, such as ones with automatic creative optimization, pay attention to placements and take advantage of retargeting for successful display campaigns.
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luni, 22 noiembrie 2010
Blog: Scale is the Next Big Step for Mobile Advertising
What a difference a year makes. eMarketer’s September 2009 mobile advertising report carried the optimistic subtitle “Change Is in the Air.” Well, it’s safe to say that in 2010, change happened, and mobile advertising ramped up at a quicker pace than predicted.
eMarketer now predicts $743.1 million in total mobile ad spending in 2010, a more than 25% increase over last year’s forecast. Our projections are up on the order of 25% to 35% per year through 2014.
In my new report, “Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Past the Tipping Point” (full version available here to Total Access clients only), I explore in detail the key factors behind this increase in spending. They include:
Major acquisitions of mobile ad networks by Google and AppleRising adoption of super-capable multimedia smartphonesThe launch of the iPad and the rapid revitalization of the tablet marketCautious optimism about economic recovery can take some credit as well, but it is really the injection of a new dynamic in the mobile space that is prompting marketers to overcome their reluctance to embrace mobile as a channel to connect with consumers.
Much of this new dynamic is attributable to the high-profile (and high-dollar) acquisitions by Google and Apple and the ways both companies have sought to redefine the mobile device and advertising markets. Google’s promotion of Android has made it a powerful alternative to Apple’s popular iOS platform. And Apple, in turn, has countered with the launch of the iPad, a new iPhone and iAd, the company’s own advertising platform exclusive to Apple devices.
As I noted in a previous blog post, iAd has generated its share of controversy. But in a recent address at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit, I shared the results of nearly a dozen interviews I conducted with industry executives over the past two months. Everyone I spoke with, including some of Apple’s competitors, agreed that iAd has been hugely beneficial to mobile advertising.
Google’s acquisition of AdMob is no less significant, because it will help bring scale to mobile advertising. In the report I write:
Part of what has made Google so successful is the degree to which it has helped demystify and simplify the media buying process. If it can achieve a comparable result with mobile and provide an equivalent level of tools, reporting and accountability, the effect will be significant in both the number of advertisers it will be able to attract to mobile and the amount they spend.
The importance of scale should not be underestimated; it is vital for the long-term viability of mobile advertising.
There is more detail in the report, but the bottom line is this: with consumers spending an ever-increasing amount of time in front of their mobile devices, marketers can scarcely afford not to pay closer attention to mobile. To the contrary, brands need mobile more than ever to stay relevant. And with more capable devices, faster carrier networks, ubiquitous wireless broadband and the availability of richer ad units, marketers have more possibilities than ever to deliver immersive experiences.
This shift is already well under way on the desktop. Starting with the rich media ads proliferating today, the next five years will see more interactivity, higher-powered creative and yes, perhaps even more emotion in mobile advertising.
Article: Bright Picture for US Online Holiday Sales
eMarketer predicts US online holiday season sales, defined as all online sales in November and December, will build on a strong 2009 showing and rise a further 14.3% over the same period last year.
“Holiday shopping is ideally suited to the internet,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Online Holiday Sales Forecast: Optimism Is in the Air.” “Consumers appreciate the convenience and product selection online, as well as the abundance of resources available for finding good deals, especially for cost-conscious shoppers trying to weather the tough economy.”
This season’s growth of 14.3% will bring retail ecommerce holiday season sales to $38.5 billion, up from $33.7 billion last year.
Strong online holiday sales will push annual ecommerce sales to $162.4 billion for full-year 2010, up 12.7% over 2009. Online holiday sales will represent 23.7% of online retail sales in 2010, underlining the importance that November and December have on retailers’ annual ecommerce sales.
“This holiday season consumers will open their wallets more than they have the past two years, even though they will remain extremely price-focused,” said Grau. “Online consumers have become savvy at finding coupons, comparing prices, locating cheaper product alternatives, and exchanging shopping tactics and information about bargains with peers through social media.”
Retailers have the opportunity not just to generate sales but also to gain new customers and solidify relationships with existing ones. Holiday shoppers often have to visit retailers that are new to them, giving merchants a chance to turn first-time visitors into repeat customers. Rich product information can be key to this at a time when shoppers are buying products that may be less familiar to them.
“Online retailers with product-selection guides, easy return policies, and friendly and accessible customer service representatives put shoppers at ease and turn them into lifelong customers,” said Grau.
The full report, “Online Holiday Sales Forecast: Optimism Is in the Air,” also answers these key questions: What is the outlook for online holiday sales this year compared with recent years? What is the mind-set of consumers and retailers this holiday season? Why do ecommerce sales grow at a higher rate than total retail sales?
To purchase the report, click here. Total Access clients, log in and view the report now.
Check out today’s other article, “How to Influence Teen Girls Online.”
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