A Must Read--Mobile Internet Trends

I missed this when it came out last month. I appreciate Dave Morin's blog for bringing it to my attention!

Mary Meeker was well known for her insight, especially into the impact of technology on business and lifestyles, as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. She recently joined the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the sponsors of this report.

Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends (Feb 2011)

View more presentations from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

The entire report is good and highly relevant. The speed with which new technologies are being adopted in the marketplace is absolutely scary! The ten or so slides toward the end are of most interest to me. The integration slide that shows the impact of technologies other than computers on computing itself is though-provoking. So are the summaries of trends for 2011 and beyond.

Indeed a must read!

Social Media Lines Up for Super Bowl 2011

For those of us who live our lives in the world of social media, this Super Bowl stat is astonishing: E-Trade was the only advertiser among the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl rosters to even add a tease to its Facebook or Twitter presence at the close of the ad, according to a study by Professors Chuck Tomkovick and Rama Yelkur quoted in Ad Age. Not so this year; in that article on Monday Ad Age headlines, “From Hashtags to Newsfeeds to Online Spots, Big Game Advertisers Tap Web 2.0 to Extend Buy.” (See also the Super Bowl coverage on their sidebar.)

We all know what the marketing game is. A 30-second Super Bowl ad has hovered around $3m for the past several years. That’s a lot for even the usual suspects like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, and Intel. The companies go all out to “create buzz,” with increasing intensity during this, the week before the big game. They prolong it as much as possible with post-game critiques that rival that of the sports programming itself. Getting the most mileage out of those expensive TV ads by leveraging other media made sense in years past. It still does; it’s just that social media has been added to the mix.

See the video here

According to Ad Age and this good video on CNBC, there will be more ties to social media this year. Pepsi is running its usual Doritos “Crash the SuperBowl” contest. Pepsi Max has purchased a spot, after a year off for cause-related marketing and joined in the “Crash” contest. They are joined by Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and even the Anheuser Busch Clydesdales and the ETrade baby. In reporting on this year’s advertising (with a good link to past ads), MSNBC says, “It’s a risky proposition for companies. A social media campaign has the potential to make your loyal customers even bigger fans, or draw in new customers. But companies also have to be prepared for the fact that they can’t control what people will write or tweet about them, positive or negative.” With due respect to MSNBC— big DUH!!! Any brand marketer who doesn’t already know that—and know how to deal with it—isn’t ready for the big leagues!

Coors Light is using mobile to hype its advertising using a Snap Tag on its in-store packaging. They’ve been testing this technology since spring and find it ready for the big game. It’s all about a mobile phone, a special icon, text messaging—and, of course, the ability to enter a contest and win a big prize. This article gives a good overview of how it works.

On the other hand, some brands are using the event to their advantage without actually buying an ad.

Papa John’s, who advertised last year, is taking a different approach this year. It’s giving away pizzas on game day. Of course, you have to register on their Facebook page to be eligible! But if what they told CNBC holds true and they spend about half a million dollars to put pizzas into 100,000 homes, is that a better expenditure than $3m for a TV ad? You call that one! And very important, how many fans will they add to the 1,501,026 they have now?

Bing is running a National Tailgating Championship that will culminate in Dallas this week. The first prize is “the coveted Golden Grill.” Oh, yeh? Actually, the whole thing is great fun with lots of snarky commentary like a set of contest guidelines (linked to the main contest site) full of legalese that essentially says that the judges will decide on the winner. Good for Microsoft and the Bing marketers for not taking themselves too seriously!

And most of all that master of Internet buzz The Old Spice Guy. He’s back and he’s watching the buzz about it on the web. One Super Fan will receive an early copy of the ad to be debuted the day after the Super Bowl. Oh, wow! That’s so delightfully arrogant that I’m watching for it. Stay tuned!

And I’m sure I’ve missed some other interesting or creative—or not—approaches. What else should we look for on Sunday?

Announcing Internet Marketing, 3rd Edition

I’ve always thought the subtitle of this text says it all, “Integrating Online and Offline Strategies.” That’s what our young marketers need to understand, not only the mechanics of Internet marketing but also developing campaigns and ensuring they are integrated into the overall marketing communications mix of the organization.

I’m more than pleased to announce that work has begun on the third edition of Internet Marketing. This edition has welcome enhancements. It will be published by Cengage Learning, which specializes in innovative learning solutions like e-books. We expect the 3rd edition to be available in both print and electronic formats.

I’m especially delighted to welcome a new co-author to this edition. Debra Zahay-Blatz is the Restaurant.com Professor of Interactive Marketing at Northern Illinois University. She is a specialist in CRM and has taught many aspects of interactive marketing. Debra is a prime mover in the interactive marketing program at NIU and will bring both classroom and practitioner experience to the text.

We are also pleased to announce that we will be joined by Lauren Labrecque who will be helping with the all-important textbook supplements that are distributed to professors who adopt the text. You can see bios of both Debra and Lauren here.

The 3rd edition will incorporate major revisions that reflect the maturing of traditional digital marketing and the explosion of social media marketing initiatives. New chapters will focus on social media marketing and promotional and lead generation programs in B2B markets. Recent developments in Internet marketing will be reflected throughout the new edition.

College instructors who are current or potential adopters of the text should contact their campus sales representative or visit the listing on the Cengage site.

Social Media Marketers Prep for the Holiday Season

Have you already walked into a retail store and thought, “Christmas decorations and gifts already—and it’s not even Thanksgiving!!!” If you haven’t, my guess is that you haven’t been shopping for the last couple of weeks. It appears to me that as soon as Halloween decorations went out, Christmas merchandise came in. Whether you like that or not, it is time for retailers, large and small, to get serious about planning holiday promotions if they are not already in high gear. See a good article from Ad Age Digital (free registration required).

I recently ran into a good post on how to prepare your social media channels for the holiday season. Here are the recommendations:

1. Give your social media profiles a makeover. That includes making sure your profiles and maps are complete and correct on Google Places and Yahoo! Local Search.
2. Build your followers and connections. They are valuable themselves; they also offer connections to their networks.
3. Get more reviews. Product reviews are incredibly important, whether on your site or on third-part review sites. Encourage your followers to review your products or services and to share them.

4. Special offers for your followers. What can I say? The Target site already has offers up. Many of these are appropriate to both large and small retailers. It’s interesting that they seem to be focusing on Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday.
5. Engage in the conversation. Do you have a Facebook page? Are you responding to customers when they complain or ask for information? Take a look at some of the recent traffic on the Hanes Wall on Facebook. They answer information requests, apologize for things like out of stock items and thank people for compliments. All good!
6. Integrate social media with other marketing. That’s essential, whether it’s your website or broadcast or print advertising, or some combination. Integration is key to getting the message out and experiencing positive results.
7. Commit to creating some quality holiday content. I was in a local retail store over the weekend and heard a video featuring Ming Tsai, one of my gurus. I think he was promoting a line of cookware. The one-unit local retailer has a good website, but I didn’t see any evidence of product videos. My guess is that Ming would have been glad to have them link to or upload his promotional video. Make use of whatever good content is available and create your own when necessary. This store also has some acceptable local TV advertising; no ad videos seen on the site. Opportunities missed!

Also be sure to inventory your search marketing, whether optimized pages or PPC. According to a recent report:
• More than three-quarters of respondents search to learn more about a product or service after seeing an ad elsewhere. • Before moving on to a different information source, searchers will modify their search and try again (89%), try a different search engine (89%), and go through multiple search results pages if necessary (79%)

Is this all worth the effort? According to Ad Age:

Nearly 80% of consumers plan to do at least some of their shopping online this season, according to the National Retail Federation and BigResearch. One-sixth will do more than half of their holiday shopping online.

That’s a target audience worth cultivating!

Still looking for advice? Here’s a helpful report on holiday email marketing and two more good recent articles.
• Retail Email Holiday Guide
• Holiday Hit List
• Get Prepared for Q4 2010

What Is Your Social Media Hub?

Sergio Balegno, Research Director for Marketing Sherpa, is a recognized thought leader in Internet marketing best practices. He gave a superb guest lecture in my social media marketing class last week. There was one thing in particular that he articulated much better than I’ve been able to do. It has to do with organizing your ‘traditional’ Internet and social media marketing around well-defined hubs.

It’s clear that any Internet marketing effort needs to have an activity hub. In the early days—before social media—it was equally clear that the hub was the website. All marketing efforts, PPC and display advertising—pointed there and Internet marketing objectives were achieved there. Objectives might have been driving traffic to retail stores, providing content for customer acquisition and retention, conducting ecommerce, or others as appropriate for the enterprise marketing strategy. Whatever the Internet marketing objective, the website was needed to achieve it.

Enter social media and our efforts to understand how to integrate these networks effectively into our marketing strategy. What is the correct centerpiece of for this marketing element? Social media efforts can point back to the website, and sometimes that may make sense. But often the efforts on public networks are best pointed back to the corporate blog. Sergio used as an example the Cisco Collaboration program that I wrote about last week.

Why should social media point to the blog and not to the website? The main reason is that blog content can—and should be—updated frequently with content that supports the social media efforts with precision. By its very nature, website content is updated less frequently and often is less precisely targeted to particular user segments and/or interests.

That led me to a second ‘ah-ha’ moment--the importance of recency in achieving prominence in search engine results. I hadn’t updated my thinking from the era (a couple of years ago) when things like keywords, number of incoming links, and number of clicks were only determinants of rankings in organic search. Here’s a summary of rank determinants; click through for a mind-numbing list from seo experts. With the addition of things like news, images, and videos search results pages provide the most current as well as the most relevant content. Search any current event and see for yourself!

The take-away is this: Your website is the hub of your ‘traditional’ Internet marketing. To be direct, it’s where you can sell things or acquire sales leads. An increasing number of the people who become leads or customers are going to find you, learn more about you, and develop trust in you through social media. The blog provides timely content and connects to activities like your YouTube channel and other social networks. It points readers to your website for conversion when their time is right. Their time, not yours! That makes your blog the hub of your social media marketing.

There’s still a lot of work to do in integrating all this activity. But a clear understanding of this key principle is necessary to an efficient strategy with marketing effectiveness!

How to Make Your Inbound Marketing Work

Ed Note: We've had many great speakers in this spring's Social Media Marketing course. I've blogged about some of their messages. Jeff Dunn, who in his other life is the Web Coordinator at Harvard Law School, did such a good job with this one I asked permission to post a shortened version. You can see the full post on his blog.

Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh, VentureBeat, LinkedIn, Amazon) is a whirlwind speaker with an obvious love for what he does. Despite Dharmesh’s claim that he is not a gifted speaker or marketer, his presentation in our social media marketing class was fantastic. His body language may have shown that he was a bit uncomfortable (holding an arm behind his back while staring at the ground) but his language and presentation zoomed along at a frenetic pace. I found myself scribbling keywords and shorthand notes just to keep up with the great wisdom that was being imparted upon me and the rest of the class. A self-proclaimed “hackpreneur,” Dharmesh (I use his first name because I feel comfortable doing so after his friendly presentation) says he has earned this title because he stays up late at night (often until 2am or so) writing code and wearing his Chief Technology Officer hat for HubSpot. He is also the co-founder of HubSpot, thus the entrepreneur part of his “hackpreneur” title.



“Everyone and every business should blog.”

Dharmesh had some great nuggets of information that rang true as I thought about them after the presentation. I was far too busy trying to scribble down these gems and didn’t have enough time to digest them. When discussing who should blog, it was clear who Dharmesh thinks should take part. I agree with the caveat that everyone should be willing to put in the effort to have a relatively steady stream of useful content. Thanks to the latest web technologies, you can start a blog and have it filled with gossip and pictures in under a few minutes. (Visit wordpress.com to see how!)

“Talk about the industry’s issues, not your solution.”

I really love this one. There are too many websites out there devoted to their own personal fix for their specific industry’s problems. If you want to really have a site that gets traction by engaging your audience in something they can also participate in. You’re not going to get a very engaged audience if you offer your solution for something without giving others a chance to offer their solution as well.

“Non-profits should be benefiting from causes, not for-profits!”

This is a sad-but-true quote we really enjoyed. It’s hard to deny that companies like Starbucks have really had a bigger impact on raising funds for charities and causes. I understand that this is because companies typically have more infrastructure (financial and personnel) to make these types of campaigns actually work, but the Internet is supposedly leveling the playing field for everyone. Let’s hope causes and charities can come up with some more interactive and viral (we hate that term viral but it applies here) campaigns that generate some real interest.

“Measure what works, what doesn’t, then double down.”

This one’s pretty self-explanatory and deserves to be put in super duper bold letters here. Being successful in marketing, especially social media marketing, is all about taking risks and figuring out what works. When you don’t do both of these things, you’re destined for failure. While it’s very hard to measure what works, there are ways. In fact, HubSpot has so many Graders like TwitterGrader and WebsiteGrader, they’re already on the bleeding edge of figuring out how to measure what works and what does not.

“Remove the friction in marketing.”

Making it easy for someone to actually purchase stuff, sign up for something, or just take part in any way is something that would seem like a no brainer. Sadly, it’s not. Many places spend all their time and effort raising interest in their website…only to find users get confused and leave the site, never to return.

“Kittens always work.”

Dharmesh’s presentation featured slides with interesting images and very little text on the screen. This is my favorite style of creating presentations since it allows the audience to focus on what you’re saying, not reading tiny print on a screen. No one remembers the fine print anyway. Dharmesh’s presentation had a picture of a kitten and it got a bit of laughter…to which Dharmesh replied that kittens always work. Everyone seems to love them and have the same reaction to them.

“Even normal people use Twitter now.”

In its infancy (just a couple years ago), Twitter was a way for a small number of people to micro-blog. It has slowly been able to begin shedding this reputation after it got embraced by celebrities and Facebook users. Facebook went through a similar reputation issue but has now actually been embraced by middle-aged women (another point brought up by Dharmesh). So when asked if its worth using Twitter, you can simply reply using Dharmesh’s words: even normal people use Twitter. He even has the proof over at HubSpot. Dharmesh says that Twitter has been delivering “real dollars into the door.”

“It’s not about the number of followers. It’s about having people who listen. I’d rather have 50 active people than 5,000 deaf followers.”

I absolutely agree. A couple years ago, I started the @Harvard_Law Twitter account (it has a 99.8 Twitter Grader ranking) with a very small but attentive audience. The non-academic world seemed to be clamoring for any news about what’s happening inside the walls of Harvard. The follower count for the account was not enormous, still isn’t, but it’s obtained a very attentive and vocal following who are happy to @mention, DM, or retweet any question or update posted on the account. Dharmesh has a great point and it’s not an easy task to cultivate a high quality following. It happens over time. It took nearly a year and a half to develop a devoted fan base for me.

“Tweet and retweet from 1pm to 5pm”

HubSpot is all about data. They have examined the best times to tweet something and have it noticed. That time period is any weekday from 1pm to 5pm. That’s why this post was published around 2pm on a Monday, one of the busiest times on the Internet. People seem to be bored at work or just back from lunch, not ready to embrace the week.

“The more you tweet about yourself, the less others will.”

If Ashton Kutcher weren’t a celebrity, would anyone be following him? Dharmesh makes a great point that, from a marketing perspective, it’s all about engaging the audience. It’s hard to feel engaged when someone is tweeting about something you can’t relate to. If, instead, that person were writing about their passion for a broader subject, it’s more likely to engage followers. I personally think people need to stick with their preferred style of tweeting since followers will notice if your style has changed. Just ask @ComcastCares, the account who people revolted against when the main administrator went on vacation and put someone else in charge!

“When you’re getting star talent, you’re renting not buying.”

Dharmesh understands the world of obtaining the best and brightest for his business. There are so many options in the world of technology that it is very hard to make someone’s job everything they could ever want. Dharmesh elaborated on this point, saying that “nothing is forever” and that it’s important to keep in mind who owns what when it comes to employees. For example, does HubSpot own an employee’s personal Twitter account? Of course not. Was it used to promote HubSpot? Probably. It’s a tricky situation and not something to ignore.

“Google Buzz was a data play to head off Facebook.”

It really doesn’t matter if Google Buzz overtakes Facebook. It will probably never happen. The reason Google introduced Buzz was so they could get at the tremendous amount of data currently hidden behind Facebook’s server walls. This way, Google can get a taste of what their users are doing socially and not just on GMail, Docs, etc.
Conclusion

I enjoyed Dharmesh’s presentation and was so amped afterwards that I posted a job listing I would have loved to apply to. I am happily employed and doing this blog in my spare time (not much these days!). If you’re interested in working for someone like Dharmesh, check out the posting. In the meantime, there is a lot of info out there about Dharmesh, HubSpot, and social media. Happy surfing!

Don't Let Your Brand be Martha Coakley

It’s been clear for a week or two how the senate election in Massachusetts was going to end. But that doesn’t make it easier for people in and out of the state to accept. For the record, I’m a registered independent, on the email lists of both John Kerry and Barak Obama. If you mined both databases you’d find that I contribute early--important in politics. Not large amounts generally, but I did come close to maxing out in support of Obama. Ok, now you know more about me that I’m comfortable revealing, but it’s important to the story of why Martha Coakley lost when she was 30 points ahead for most of the campaign. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will say that it’s a textbook lesson in missed opportunities, but I’d like to give a marketing perspective.

1. Bad candidate. Snippy comments like ‘am I supposed to stand on a cold street corner and shake hands’ (not a direct quote, but you get the idea). That on a (cold) weekend when Scott Brown was all over the airwaves standing on a street corner shaking hands.
2. Bad messaging. Generic, appeals like ‘I’ll go to Washington and support health care for all’ (again not a direct quote). It’s typical of how I interpreted all of her ads: I’ll go to Washington and vote the straight party line. I don’t think that fits the mood of the electorate.
BTW; Massachusetts has universal health care with an individual mandate. It actually works pretty well. You either submit proof of insurance with your state tax form or pay a fine. It took a while for them to get systems in place to help people get insurance, but it seems to be working ok now.
This election wasn’t about health care per se. As I read it the main issue was government and government spending out of control.


3. Really bad campaign management.
• She announced her candidacy last summer and essentially disappeared for about 3 months, until a week or so before the primary election. She was 30 points ahead, and it made sense to save money, but no foundation was being built.
• The foundation needed was donors and an email list. Both Kerry and Obama have retained control of their lists but they make them available for acquisition on a limited basis from what I see. I never received a donor solicitation or anything else directly from the Coakley campaign. When they began to panic, senators and democratic campaign committees began forwarding her emails. Small Coakley list? I think so.
The email sign up is under the Get Involved tab on her site. Feels like kind of an afterthought. And when you go there, just a page asking for email and zip code. Nothing about what you’ll get, no privacy statement. Not best practices for any brand.
• When things started to turn about the first of the year the campaign had nothing to fall back on except fund-raise out of state (not a good image, given the nature of the campaign) and robo calls. Toward the end, I was getting maybe a dozen a day. I have ANI, so I didn’t answer them. Some did record, including one from the candidate on election day saying; “I know you’re getting a lot of these calls, but. . .” Is that going to affect behavior? Not unless maybe you forgot that yesterday was election day and that was pretty hard to do!
• Both candidates used direct mail and rental lists. I got two from Scott Brown the same day last week, obviously different lists. The same day I got one from Martha Coakley, also a rental list—thanks for knowing that I’m a loyalist!
• I saw Scott Brown ads all over the Internet during the last week. They were on sites like TechCrunch that would get traffic from Gen X and Gen Y techies, a large population in Massachusetts and likely to be independent voters. I saw no Coakley ads.
• Both had active Facebook and Twitter programs. I didn’t follow either—once again I was never asked—but the Boston Phoenix did. Another clear edge for Brown, apparently. I didn't see much PPC advertising for either, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

Neither campaign got below the surface of issues and that seemed to suit both of them for different reasons. I’ll leave it to political pundits to dissect the issues; just don’t believe all the nattering about health care as an issue; that’s also superficial.The impact, however, may be large; the media is not good at separating the two.

One comment last night did strike me. I think it was David Gergen who pointed out that the polls began to turn on the news of the sweetheart deals with Senators Nelson and Landrieu to win their health care votes. That was late November, and the turn makes sense from what I was seeing in terms of voter issues.

So this may have been a flawed brand from the beginning. But there is no doubt that the campaign did not speak to voter concerns—they could have been doing some serious listening last fall and some crafting of messages. In the end, when the crunch came, they had no way to reach a critical mass of supporters with a message that resonated.

I was told not long ago that this online media stuff was easy and it didn’t take much time. So wrong! Unless you have the strategy and the tools in place, you cannot react to either the good or the bad events that affect your brand! That’s the marketing message from this election. I wish I thought it was the only message.

Threadless--Marketing Success through Community

Isn’t it what we’d all like to achieve—having our customers do the work for us? We all know it’s not that easy, but t-shirt site Threadless has built a community that powers both product development and sales. Read about it in Chief Marketer’s new e-magazine.

It’s another of those edgy sites that got started almost by accident. They made a lot of mistakes in the early days, when it was described as a “crowdsourcing” model. Today they are careful to describe it as a “community” model, pointing out that crowdsourcing implies a random group of individuals while a community has to be carefully nurtured.

Threadless does that on its own site








on Facebook; this is the New Tees! page












on Twitter.


There are two things you notice immediately.

Ecommerce. Threadless is selling t-shirts on both Facebook and Twitter. Did you know you could do that? Facebook has a Marketplace although you pretty much have to know it exists in order to be able to find it. (Why doesn’t Facebook work on its navigation structure???), Steven Walling of ReadWriteWeb tried the Twitter version and he has issues with it—worth reading!

Privacy. Once again, there is none! I didn’t go as far as Steve Walling did on Twitter, but I did click on the box to find out what was required to sign in on Twitter. What I found was a box requesting permission for Twitter Tees to access my Twitter account. I don’t do that (at least I thought I didn’t). The permission box says you can revoke the permission by going to your Settings page. I looked at my Settings page; there are two apps there that I apparently have given permission to, neither of which I remembered—scary!

On Facebook I found two interesting issues. The more perplexing one is that I was on the New Tees! page yesterday. Today, when I went on again, I found a comment box with my account picture beside it beside every product; and no, I didn’t give either Facebook or Threadless any permissions. When I went to the Marketplace page I found a row of pictures across the bottom—Facebook friends of mine from around the world who are using Facebook Marketplace. They are all connected to me, so I guess that’s ok. I do have a bit of a problem with the fact that they captured my visit and, in effect, reported it publicly. However, I choose not to be upset; it’s what you should expect on Facebook.

So we are left with two questions; does Twitter offer the opportunity to create a stable e-commerce platform. You’ll have to stay tuned on that one. Second, are you comfortable—more important, will your customers be comfortable—with Facebook’s stated policy of linking everyone to everyone and everything? It goes back to my oft-repeated warning to be careful what you do and what you expect your customers to do.

Threadless has made a great business with their community-based model. I’d be willing to bet that their Facebook and Twitter sales account for only a small part of their total revenue. Customer engagement and customer acquisition are fundamental on the network platforms and sales are a by-product. That seems to describe the scene at present; it could change over time.

What should clearly grow, however, is the importance and value of a vibrant customer community. Cam Balzer said in Forbes recently:

The secret isn't growing a huge fan base. We have 100,000 Facebook fans, but those fans have all come to us organically. We believe the more organic the growth, the more loyal the fans, the more likely they will be repeat customers.

Amen to that—whichever platform you are talking about!

Email on Steriods

Email marketing isn’t going away any time soon. Can it be made more effective—even viral—by including social networking options in email? Silverpop thinks so and has a product to do just that. Their Share-to-Social product was introduced in early October, so it’s a bit hard to find examples of use, but the prospects are fascinating.

Basically the product allows Silverpop clients to embed links in their emails that allow recipients to easily post messages—social emails?—to their social network pages. It’s new, and there are no detailed case studies. Two users identified in the Silverpop white paper are Diapers.com and GodTube. According to the white paper:

• One of Diapers.com’s emails was posted on 50 different social network profile pages. That kind of customer endorsement turns email “push” marketing into a powerful “pull” campaign. (page 2)
• GodTube, a global technology company that creates social networking tools for the faith-based and family marketplace, achieved significant viral activity from its social email marketing campaign. An email sent with Silverpop’s Share-to-Social links had an open-to-click rate of 31 percent, and nearly 15 percent of those who clicked in the email posted the message to Facebook or MySpace. Astoundingly, 25 percent of the posted emails generated additional clicks, compared to MarketingSherpa’s estimated average clickthrough rate of just 2.5 percent for BtoC marketers using third-party lists. (page 4)

The potential communications impact is obvious. Beyond that the product allows the marketer to track the resulting messages, something that can’t be done on the social network sites themselves. According to the Getting Email Delivered blog:

The SilverPop service also offers tracking “which social network the recipient posted the message on, telling marketers which one achieved the best results. Silverpop creates a unique tracking code for every shared message, so marketers can tell, for example, that an email posted by a recipient on Facebook was opened 1,000 times while one posted on MySpace was only opened 100 times.”
Their tracking system even measures the number of click-throughs generated by the posting at a given Facebook or MySpace page, so you can know which of your user’s posts to Facebook or Myspace generated the most clicks. SilverPop suggests that you can use such tracking to spot and target influencers, saying that “Such sought-after influencers are easily identified and targeted. Lists of social influencers can be created in Silverpop’s solution with one click by simply viewing the “recipients who forwarded” list.”

Again, under ordinary circumstances you can’t track what’s happening to messages on social networking sites. Once they move from your own page, where you get limited stats, you don’t know what’s happening to them.

Here’s more on how it works for Diapers.com from Internet Retailer:

The widget, plugged into e-mails, allows Diapers.com to embed in the e-mail a set of links that allow recipients of the e-mail to easily share content of that e-mail on their Facebook or MySpace page, by automatically creating a thumbnail image and a blurb of the featured item the e-mail recipient wants to share. The e-mail recipient can then add this summarized content to her own social network site page, e-mail list or blog for distribution—and that content includes links that allow viewers to see the full, original e-mail which contains links back to Diapers.com to view and buy the product.

Silverpop says that in order to make this work the marketer must identify the “hot buttons” to which her audience responds and align messages closely to recipient interests. This capture from the white paper (page 3) is probably the best example of how the service works short of getting an email from a user. They also point out that once the content is posted on the social network page it’s under the control of the user, no longer the marketer.

It’s interesting to consider the two sites that are in the news as having successfully used this service. Diapers.com serves a target market—young mothers—that is notoriously communicative. Consider GodTube’s own stats on its audience. For different reasons both these target audience are responsive to particular messages and are eager to share with other people like themselves, including through their social networks.

If you have a good product—one that people will like to talk about and to share with their friends and families—then this type of email sharing is going to be of interest. For the right targets it's a great way to get your customers to share your messages with their own contacts--improving not only their reach, but also their credibility!

Testing To Make IM Fast and Simple

I’ve pointed out that testing is a time-honored direct marketing technique that has taken on greater capabilities on the Internet. Several important items have drifted into my inbox over the past couple of weeks and I’d like to bring them together. Marketers need to be testing and there are an increasing number of services to help them deal with the complexities of doing reliable tests.

Many of you are familiar with the work of Avinash Kaushik, his blog and his book on Internet metrics. Recently he was interviewed by Brian Eisenberg of FutureNow and Grok.com, who has just written a book on testing. It’s a 30-minute interview (access from this page) but worth playing in the background while you read your mail.

Let me give you a brief overview. Kaushik emphasizes how fast the web moves and how flexible marketers have to be to keep up with it. The weeks and months it took to read the old direct mail tests just don’t cut it on the web. What the marketer needs to be able to do is:

• Encourage a flow of ideas and validate the good ones
• Lower the risk of making marketing decisions
• Do it in a way that’s fast and simple.

Testing is the key first step. Success comes from superb execution.

My last post on testing generated two comments that contribute to the discussion. They are from two marketing services firms that appear to serve different market segments with testing products. Both commenters basically agree that Google Website Optimizer may be a good way to get started in testing, but it doesn’t produce results that have a high level of statistical confidence.

Widemile is a service that targets agencies needing testing services for their clients. A lot of firms/a lot of agencies don’t have the in-house expertise. They need services and Widemile concentrates on the optimization of landing pages. They have a brief demo; check it out. Billy Shih has an informative blog that focuses on testing.


SiteSpec appears to serve clients directly with testing services that include A/B splits and multivariate tests. It has an interesting platform, well explained in a demo. There’s also a video on their home page.

Testing is important, but most of us need help. That includes knowing the right questions to ask and the kind of results to demand. Here are some good resources to help you upgrade your own knowledge about this key avenue to Internet marketing success.

Next Step in Behavioral Targeting?

Marketers know that segmentation is key to targeting which, in turn, leads to increased marketing ROI. From the beginning of the Internet savvy marketers have seen the potential for improved targeting that comes from tracking customer activities on the web, as indicated in the chart from eMarketer (newsletter, June 19, 2008). Behavioral targeting is well established, although not without issues from the consumer perspective. Remember the controversy over Facebook’s Beacon advertising program?

Consumers are wary that their privacy is being invaded by ad targeting efforts. eMarketer’s July 29 newsletter quotes a study from Harris Interactive that shows 55% of respondents “very” or “somewhat comfortable” with the privacy and security policies of sites that allow targeted advertising. That leaves 45% who are “not very” or “not at all comfortable” with those same policies. That’s an interesting split! In the same newsletter they quote a TNS study in which a large majority of respondents describe themselves as knowledgeable about both privacy threats and tools to deal with them. With due respect to our customers, I absolutely don’t believe they are knowledgeable. I know how much trouble behavioral marketers have in trying to explain behavioral analysis and targeting to potential customers. I also know how unaware my own graduate marketing students are of the basics of behavioral targeting on the web. Consumers think they are aware, but it’s highly unlikely that they understand the intricacies. If they knew, would they be more or less concerned? My guess is more, not less.

That’s not going to stop the unrelenting advance of technology though. In this iMediaConnection video Jim Calhoun of PopularMedia describes what his firm is doing to add data from the social graph to targeting models. Direct marketers have long known that people gravitate to others like themselves and have used that kind of affinity in segmentation and targeting. The next step may well be mapping out the social graph and using those connections to better understand consumers. The first 2 minutes of the video talk about the behavioral marketing developments; the second half is a bit of background on the social graph. Watch either or both segments—it will either fascinate you or creep you out—depending on your personal perspective!
View the video here.

Then think about your customers, and how they’re likely to feel. Then consider the following quote from Fran Maier, executive director of TRUSTe, the privacy organization.

“Education once again appears to be the key to finding a constructive balance between behavioral targeting and consumer privacy, because no matter how much we assure anonymity, there is still significant discomfort with the idea of tracking . . .We have a solid indication that consumers want us to find a way to get them the advertising that is relevant to them. In order to do this, behavioral targeting is one of the most promising methods, but at the very least, it has to be made more transparent, provide choices, and deliver real value.”

While I agree with that statement, I still have a question. Is “education” best done by a single enterprise or would it be better received from an objective third party? Third parties like TRUSTe have a major role to play, but so far it’s not clear to me that they are reaching the great mass of Internet users with any impact. I think businesses should worry about that. They should also make a herculean effort to let their customers know what they are doing and to explain the value that targeted advertising does bring. They have to do that in a way that’s comprehensible and not too self serving. That’s a tall order, but it’s necessary to build and maintain consumer trust!

Add Amazon to the List of "Going Green"

I’m an Amazon affiliate (“associate” in their terminology) and every so often I get an email from the program. My use of the associates program is limited to a direct sales channel for my textbook, so the emails usually are read and discarded. This one interested me—both because of the subject matter and because Amazon generally does these things so well. That seems to be true of Amazon Green.

The email is encouraging me to download a banner that promotes the program. If I download it using my associates ID number, I can add it to the items that generate referral fees. They seem to have two basic banner messages Go Green and Green Lighting as well as the various formats illustrated in the email. That probably reflects product issues, and I’d expect the number of product-specific banners to increase over time to better reflect the affiliate’s website and increase the probability of click-throughs.

When you investigate the Green 3™ program, you see it’s customer oriented. The customer can select products for the program. A purchase is required to “vote” on products—fair enough. They have over 1,500 products on the list and over 6,000 “votes” (unique customers or total of votes cast; they don’t say), so people are participating. Most of the items on the page are typical Amazon promotion, “Green Three™ Frontrunners” for example. But there are also links to resources like the federal government’s Energy Star page.
There is also a blog—of course. The description of the program on the blog is interesting. Wonder how they chose the “team of Amazonians” to participate in the Green Scene program? The blog is active and informative and you can put it on your Amazon daily page if you wish. Each blog entry has a feedback opportunity: “Interesting? Yes or No” Nice touch. On another page I found a link to a FAQs page detailing what Amazon itself is doing to be more green—they don’t miss a beat.

This doesn’t seem to be “greenwashing.” I wrote a post for eBrandMarketing not long ago in which I trashed Target for one of the most blatant examples of greenwashing that I’ve seen. Amazon’s program is promotional, it’s intended to sell more products, but the information seems legitimate. And it is set up to engage employees, customers and affiliates.

I’d suggest that a project like this—if it’s really “walking the walk” not just “talking the talk” can be highly engaging to three key groups--your employees, your customers and your affiliates. How do you describe “triple win?” That’s what it looks like!

Product Reviews = Online WOM

There’s not much doubt that word of mouth in general and product ratings in particular affect online buyers/researchers. I’ve noticed two developments in this space in recent days—a product called Bazaarvoice Stories™ from the services firm Bazaarvoice and a notice that another ratings services provider, PowerReviews is testing review services for small retailers. Both seemed worth investigating.

Customer reviews are a powerful engine of ecommerce, and I’ve written about their impact several times (1,2). I checked out Marketing Charts for what's new on the subject, and this is what I found:

• The importance of online reviews to offline purchases
• The impact of online WOM
• Both UK and US consumers find product reviews helpful in their purchasing process.

At a micro level it’s worth asking what some firms are doing to encourage reviews and product stories and what impact are they having. This headline from the WSJ’s MarketWatch site caught my attention—for obvious reasons!

Leading Retailer Encourages Customers to Tell Other People About the L.L.Bean Products They Own; More Than 13,000 Reviews Submitted to www.llbean.com Within One Week

Wow!

You’ll find interesting case studies at both Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews. A study at PowerReviews led me to an in-depth academic study with food for thought. IT professors Alanah Davis and Deepak Khazanchi from the University of Nebraska Omaha analyzed purchase data in a study published in Electronic Markets and available online. They started out with a fairly complex concept of how online WOM affects purchasing behavior. They performed a causal analysis using number of reasonable variables like the volume of reviews and the degree to which they are positive on actual purchases in a number of product categories. A number of independent variables were not significant in influencing purchases, leaving them with a simpler and provocative concept.

It’s not surprising that the number of product ratings and the number of product views influenced product awareness. It’s also not surprising that visual cues (including ones that are user-submitted) influenced product expectations while the product category itself affected both awareness and expectations. What’s most challenging to marketers you cannot see in this graphic (see page 135 in the pdf). Marketer promotion dropped out of the model as it had no statistically significant impact on purchases. Ouch!
The paper is worth reading for a good literature review as well as the authors’ reasoning process and statistical analysis, which are accessible to the lay reader. Actually, it’s worth reading alone for Sebastian’s review (he looks like a wonderful Basset Hound) of his big doggie bed! Your customers have creativity—and a sense of humor—that ought to be tapped!

It’s always a bit dangerous to take a short quote from a complex academic study, but this one is worth it:

One of the most important implications for practice is the idea that e-commerce companies need to have a strategy of combining efforts to increase product views and the volume of comments on specific product pages. This research also points out the value in allowing reviewers to upload product images, probably boosting the cognitive consequence of expectations about a product. (page 140)

That’s pretty straightforward. We need to be bringing more visitors to our product pages and, once they are there, encourage them to write reviews and upload their own product images. Think Sebastian.

And think how much cheaper this strategy is than all the marketer promotion that had no significant impact on purchases in this study. Note, however, that I said that carefully (I hope). Something has to be done to bring visitors to your pages. Once they get there, however, don’t just talk to them; engage them in the process. At this stage of the purchase process, user content is more powerful than marketer content.

Testing Critical to Internet Marketing Success

Last week I wrote about diy display advertising and pointed out that all interactive advertising and promotion offers marketers a splendid opportunity to test various approaches. That can include many marketing issues from competing email subject lines to competing messages or creative in a display ad to alternative landing pages and more.

Testing is a fundamental technique of direct marketing, but mass media marketers rarely had the opportunity to test. They have been slow to acquire the skill as some of their marketing has moved onto the web. Marketing programs can be much improved by skilled testing; it’s a skill that needs to be acquired.

In fact, many marketers are foggy about the difference between marketing research and testing. Both have their place in a well-run marketing program. However, in an interactive environment, I argue strongly that testing should come first. There are several reasons:
•Testing answers the question, “what works?” and gives a strong basis for good marketing decisions.
•Testing is faster.
•Testing is cheaper.

Testing, however, cannot answer the “why” questions--why customers think and do what they do. That’s where marketing research comes in. It’s also the reason that I argue to test first and find out what works, then ask “why” if and only if you need the answer to improve decision making.

Testing also requires a certain degree of technical skill to ensure the test is run properly and read correctly. In the earlier post I recommended Paul Berger’s chapter on testing in our direct marketing book. Paul is a superb statistician and his approach is based on classical hypothesis testing. You may find the outline familiar from your own statistics course. I developed a companion concept for my Internet marketing text that emphasis the managerial aspects of testing. The truth is that both perspectives are key to conducting valid tests.

Let me give just one example—the free membership trial from the Marketing Sherpa site. The test was conducted by Marketing Experiments, and you can access commentary and the full presentation via their blog. This test is a simple A/B split in which existing sign-up page A is tested against new sign-up page B. In this case A is the sign-up page currently in use, so it becomes the control (baseline) and the question is, “Does B work better than A?” A control (no treatment in experimentation parlance) is not strictly required in an A/B split. Then the question is, “Does A or B work better?”

In this case the control included a fairly generic paragraph about the benefits of membership and requested a minimal amount of information for signup. The treatment page included a feature matrix that detailed the content available free to newsletter subscribers and additional content available to members of Marketing Sherpa. The information required was the same; the difference was in the amount of information given to the potential registrant.

The test was run over a 30-day period and the metric used was conversion rate. More information did work, in spite of the fact that it led to a longer, more complex page. It improved conversion by more than half a percent, which—given generally low conversion rates—is huge.

What Marketing Sherpa has done with it is interesting. Instead of simply using the features listing, it has a page for each feature as part of the process. That would be deadly if you had to go all the way through in order to sign up for the free trial membership. The sign-up box is on each page, so the minute the visitor is convinced, she can enter her information. If not yet convinced, she goes on to the next page. Clever!

I’d encourage you to view you can access Dr. McGlaughlin’s entire presentation. It gives two other good examples. You can also find testing articles on GrokDotCom and examples of various types of testing on Omniture’s Offermatica site.

Whether the marketer uses marketing support services or chooses to develop testing expertise in house, it is an essential skill for the Internet age.

Demographics and Internet Behavior

If you missed Peter Francese’s analysis of 2007 Census data yesterday in AdAge, you should read it in its entirety. His focus is on the impact on brands with little specific about Internet behavior. I recently reported on a survey by AARP that shed light on the Internet behavior of older Americans, and Marketing Charts followed a few days later with some good graphics. Today they have material from a Stores study of Boomers. Boomers are generally considered to have been born between 1946 and 1964. That means they are now 44 to 63 years of age.

Let’s mash some of the data together. Quoting Francese:

“The average U.S. head of household is now nearly 50 years old (49.5, to be precise). But here's the bigger story: More than 80% of the growth in the number of households in the next five years will be among those headed by people 55 and older.” In other words, the average head of household is a Boomer.

What does their media behavior look like, according to the Stores study and report in Marketing Charts:
Television:
•95% watch TV, with 77% of their viewing occurring between 7:30 pm and 11 pm.
•Two-thirds subscribe to cable TV and are most likely to watch Discovery Channel, A&E, the Food Network, ESPN and Fox News.
•They don’t like reality shows.
Radio:
•76% listen to the radio - more than any other demographic.
•49% listen to the radio during morning-drive time.
•Radio programming preference varies, from oldies to country to talk formats.
•6% subscribe to satellite radio.
Newspaper:
•57% read their local daily newspaper regularly.
•68% read their weekly community paper.
Internet:
•87% surf the internet, spending an average of 123 minutes online daily.
•93% regularly or occasionally use the internet to research products before they buy them.
•46% say online searches are triggered by traditional advertising or an article they’ve read; 45% are prompted by television or other broadcast media.

Add in the fact that Boomers have the highest discretionary income of any age cohort and that they are willing to buy online (eMarketer, April 10, 2008). The Internet is clearly a channel for reaching the ready-to-spend Boomer group.

Francese has a wonderful quote on their spending behavior relative to their children: “Households headed by people under 35 [born before 1973] account for only a little more than a fifth of consumer spending by themselves, but they cause vast spending by others on their weddings and babies. There really should be a separate category in the national GDP figures for competitive grandparenting by baby boomers.” Ouch! But it’s a natural; affluent Boomers spend on many things; spending on their grandchildren is one of the most enjoyable.

Marketers need to confront the fact that Boomers and Seniors are active on the Internet. They both acquire information and make purchases there. It seems to me there may be a difference when it comes to entertainment, though. It may be a reason for the non-linear behavior I pointed to a few days ago.

Most Boomers are still working. Their Internet behavior may be more instrumental—whether content on e-commerce is their intent. They need to accomplish things. Seniors are more likely not to be working, more likely to have time to browse the Internet. So their behavior may have more expressive components that that of Boomers. Think about it!

Google Gadgets and White-Label Widgets

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of widgits. They offer useful content and functions. Even more important, they are completely controlled by the user and improve the web experience instead of interrupting and degrading it.

So last week when this video floated into my inbox, I took the time to watch it. It was filmed at the Google Developers conference and the quality reflects that. The content is well worth the 4.5 minutes it takes; it ranges from the new Gmail widget (available only for iGoogle pages at the moment), to a Google Maps applications that lets you follow a soapbox derby down city streets, to an app that lets you control the way you embed videos into blogs and web pages.

Most of these are entirely DIY; the YouTube video embed may require some knowledge of JavaScript. That means, for most of us marketers, that it may require a developer to install. That’s doable; the question we should ask is will we be able to maintain it without undue difficulty once the developer is finished? The answer is “probably yes,” but it’s a question that needs asking. If the freebies don’t work, you can get rid of them as easily as you acquired them; most of us want to exercise care when we actually spend money on these things. Do you have an iGoogle page—or any other personalized page (if you have Gmail, I think you automatically have an iGoogle page; you just may never have used it)? I’m surprised how many people don’t. It’s a useful experience to see how some of their widget collection works. Some is useful content—notice that weather is the first listed. Others provide an often-used function—I saw both a calendar and a calculator. Some are just plain fun—I loved the Yoda-speak gadget. Note the comments and that the developer is responding to his users. Don’t find one you like? Create your own from easy-to-use templates! The downside is that these are only for iGoogle pages, at least at this point.

There are alternatives—the so-called white label widget (or, more generally, marketing services) providers. TechCrunch defines the concept in terms of a social network; it applies equally to the creation and deployment of widgets. “The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social network’s users and to brand the network with the builder’s identity or intent.” According to today’s Media Post one of the white-label widget makers, KickApps, is partnering with Clearspring Technologies to allow marketers to distribute their widgets through its network and track their use.

Whether you want a Google Gadget or you want to create your own branded widget from scratch (note the National Geographic widget in the Google list), there are platforms and services to meet your needs. Become an avid user of widgets and use your experience to think about how you can use them to provide branded content to your target audience. It’s content they have chosen and are likely to pay attention to. Can we say that about most advertising?

Social Media Data--Free?

Social metrics service Sometrics launched in beta last fall and was opened to developers in March. The stated purpose was to allow developers to track the performance of their apps on selected social networks. The new firm received venture funding in May amid questions about the viability of their business model. This is what they said in an early press release:

The Sometrics analytics solution will always be free and we'll never share or make your data public without consent. As FB developers ourselves, we understand that privacy is a major concern. Therefore, Sometrics doesn't collect any personal data such as names, contact info, etc. and all aggregate metric data (gender, age, etc.) cannot be linked back to an individual.

The question about how they intend to monetize the service became clear today. They’ve launched an ad-serving network and say they hope to raise the CPMs from ads placed on social media sites. CPMs overall have been going down. PubMatic, another relatively new firm, provides free data—do we see a trend here?

The downward trend is pretty obvious. They add:

•On average, Web site monetization dropped by 23 percent from 49 cents in March to 38 cents in April.
•Among the verticals, Social Networking led the plunge with monetization dropping 47 percent, from 37 cents in March to 19 cents in April, below January lows of 22 cents. Entertainment monetization dropped 17 percent from 40 cents in March to 33 cents in April. Gaming and Sports were down marginally (4 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Technology remained relatively flat at 83 cents in April vs. 82 cents in March, but is still off January highs of 92 cents.
•In April 2008, 77 percent of Small Web sites garnered net publisher eCPMs from ad networks of under $1.00, compared with 95 percent of Medium Web sites and 100 percent of large web sites.
•Across all Web sites, the range of eCPMs was $0.002 to $18.45.

Their AdPriceIndex is free and looks as if it’s going to be worth watching. How do they do it? Their business is optimizing ads for publishers and they collect data from those activities to construct an index of ad network pricing. It’s not representative of all advertisers (the data presently comes from 3,000 publishers), but it’s instructive—and previously hard to find.

Back to Sometrics. Media Post says:

By virtue of its social hyper-targeting, Sometrics expects to be able to deliver CPMs of $1 to $2 for application-based ads, which typically command rates of 10 cents to 80 cents today. The company's system could also be used to serve premium and remnant display advertising on social networks.

Comparing that with the PubMatic stats, $1 to $2 would be highly attractive—if they can pull it off. Marketers have not been entirely satisfied with advertising forays on social networks (subscription required). An article in Ad Age earlier in the week says some high-profile campaigns on social network have total media spend approaching $25,000 per viewer film submission. That’s not advertising per se, but it’s a really high acquisition cost! In terms of CPM itself, a post on the Inside Facebook blog quotes reader/advertiser CPMs from over $4 (grain of salt) to 4 cents. The post drew interesting comments with more reader submitted CPMs. But you get the idea.

Several things are going on here:

Business models: New marketing services firms in this space are providing paid services and generating free data about the space, presumably with the full knowledge of their customers. Is that good for the growth of social media as a marketer communications channel? Assuming the data is valid, absolutely! Reliable data is one of the missing components in this space.

Cheap inventory on social networks: We’ve probably all read statements to that effect. These data appear to confirm that. They may also support the assertion that cheap inventory on social media sites is driving down CPMs across the web.

Ad targeting and tracking: Advertisers have been looking for opportunities that really work in social media and it seems evident that careful targeting is part of that equation. Tracking is essential to know what is working. What strikes me on several of these sites/posts is that they are talking about developers tracking the success of the apps they write for social sites. Where are marketers? These are our emerging channels; are marketers deeply involved in these programs? I hope so!

The beat goes on, with no end in sight to developments in the social media space. Data that helps us understand trends is welcome—especially when it’s free!