Herding Virtual Sheep

Last Friday I noticed an article on MediaPost about a new product to allow the creation of branded virtual worlds. I imagine a lot of marketers would have the same two questions I did:

1.Why?
2.Who cares?

So I spend some time over the weekend exploring The Electric Sheep Company and some of their applications. The exploration turned up some interesting information.
The company is over 3 years old and has built virtual worlds for various clients on existing platforms like SecondLife. The WebFlock product, according to founder Sibley Verbeck, is “a tool set for embedding flash-based virtual spaces within Web sites and integrating those into any existing Web applications. . . Primarily we see it as enabling virtual spaces for casual audiences who are already coming to a given Web site.” The first WebFlock project is a virtual world for Showtime’s The L Word series, which I’d guess has an audience that would enjoy the interaction a virtual world will offer.

But that doesn’t answer the broader “why” question. I looked farther; not difficult, since Electric Sheep has a robust Flickr site (why don’t more companies take advantage of sites like Flickr to demonstrate product use/happy customers?). I see projects for the NBA Finals (broadening the customer experience, as I remember), the USG Division of Siemens (looks like a virtual pavilion in Second Life), Best Buy’s Geek Squad (what it’s like to be a Geek Squad member), a Starwood hotel under construction (a preview of a new “select service” concept under construction at the time), and many others. Many are targeted at a young adult audience, but companies like USG/Siemens and IBM clearly have a business audience. If you look carefully, you see that many of them are either event- or entertainment-oriented. The content also makes sense.

If there are reasonable strategic answers to “why,” that still leaves the issue of whether website visitors will use them. These are corporate applications; I’m sure the owners know but equally sure few will reveal any specifics. I did find some more general information about virtual worlds, however, that suggests there is more going on in this space than most of us probably know about.

KZero, a British research firm that specializes in virtual worlds, has a graphic of the virtual world space. It’s segmented by content type and shows whether each world is open or in private beta. There is a lot going on, even though it doesn’t appear to cover the short-lived event and other branded worlds. And, yes, I know it’s small and hard to read. The good news is that they have this data broken out by content type and also by age group. It’s interesting reading.

MediaPost notes that a company can expect to spend less than $100,000 for a branded virtual world using this platform. If you have a good reason for doing it, and an audience that is willing to participate, that’s not much in the greater universe of media expenditures. WebFlock is an interesting development that’s worth watching.

Basho EMail Promotes Community

Not long ago I wrote about Basho Technologies, a sales training firm in Cambridge, MA, that has a robust approach to building community on its website. Later I commented that B2B community makes a lot of sense—people are motivated to join communities that offer them value, and good B2B communities can offer useful job-related benefits.

A few days ago I got their e-newsletter and realized they were using it in an interesting way. Most corporate newsletters offer information and try to get you to buy things. Basho is using this edition to help build their community. There’s some selling, but it’s extremely soft.
The main feature is a contest for the best sales close; there will be a runner up. But there’s also a category for “worst.” We can learn a lot from mistakes (hopefully other people's, not ours!), so that’s a great idea. I also love the prize; it includes a free hour of consultation with one of their sales trainers. Oh, yes; it includes an iPod Nano, just like the other two categories. I’d love to know how many responses they get; something tells me that the response will be substantial.

Is their approach working? There are two workshops listed on their newsletter. Both are sold out. That should mean something.
When I clicked through, I got a landing page with a reasonably detailed case study instead of their home page, which I thought was interesting. That’s nice integration at a time when they are (were, actually) promoting workshops.

I’m enjoying following this company. They have a thoughtful approach to marketing their service. They also have a sense of humor. What more can you ask for in the enervating days of high summer? Year-round—what more can you ask for in a community of sales warriors?

Surround Marketing

I’d like to introduce a concept developed by Arun Poojari. Arun is the National Sales Head - Brand Solutions for Microsoft Advertising in India. His Surround Marketing is clearly a new media concept. The title is reminiscent of the surround session media buy offered by publishers including The New York Times, but it’s much broader.

The media model he uses is Entertain > Connect > Inform > Assist > Convert. It bears some relation to the one I wrote about several months ago, but it focuses only on acquisition. That’s find, since the purpose is to look at new media in the acquisition process.
And that’s an interesting perspective. His stages and the techniques in each are:

•Entertain. Use video, games, and/or rich media

•Connect. Banner advertising, which can be on social networks or other sites like portals. Social networks can also host marketer pages; Target is a good example. So can virtual worlds, which Arun doesn’t have on this graphic.

•Inform. Email, mobile advertising and applications of many types sit squarely on the line between Connect and Inform. They can be used for either purpose, perhaps both at the same time. Special events and other on-line promotions can be highly informative.

•Assist. Organic search is often the first step in finding out about products and services and the brands that offer them.

•Convert. He sees paid search as closer to the end of what we used to call the conversion funnel. Paid search should be coupled with campaign-specific landing pages and a clear conversion strategy and path.

This is a content ecosystem, not the conversion funnel of olden days (a decade or so ago). The conversion funnel could be controlled by a savvy marketer. No one controls the ecosystem of content, which includes but certainly is not limited to, marketer messages. Content of all kinds, much of it user created, swirls around in rather fashion. Marketers can be—must be—part of that ecosystem, but they cannot control it.

Today’s marketer wants to use the new media to reach certain target audiences. The Sears ArriveLounge campaign I wrote about yesterday is a good example. Sears is using the large social network portals as well as audience-specific networks. That’s good, but are there other places on the Internet where this target audience hangs out? Undoubtedly. I’d suggest that no media buy is going to cover them all, even for a deep-pockets marketer. If your online budget is not robust, a media buy covering all sites is unlikely.

That puts a premium on engaging the audience so they’ll share with their friends. Everyone is trying to do that—at least everyone puts a share this link or icon on their communications. That’s the facilitator, but it’s not enough to get the potential customers you do reach to help you reach others that haven’t been reached yet. That requires content that is actually worth sharing.

And that’s the challenge in a nutshell!

Sears Goes Virtual

Sears is not known for being either fashion forward or a particularly desirable destination for teen fashionistas. An article in AdAge (subscription required) yesterday points out that they are trying to change that. They have created the ArriveLounge (I don’t have a clue about the implications of that name) as the centerpiece of the campaign for fall back-to-school. Here’s the top and bottom halves of the web page so you can look at it and make your own judgment about whether this will attract the teen and tween crowd.
The AdAge article points out that Sears is partnering with sites including MySpace and Disney for custom content and sponsorships, creating games with a number of partners, and that they will have events such as fashion shows in virtual world where teens can also create their own avatars and clothe them in Sears garments.

The virtual worlds aspect intrigued me, because there was a list of sites that—not surprisingly—I had never heard of. So here’s a quick rundown:

•Zwinky is a portal of the IAC division of InterActive Corp. It is fashion-oriented and offers a variety of ways to be creative and expressive.

•Meez, a brand of Donnerwood Media, promotes the creation of avatars, which would offer opportunities for trying on Sears clothing.


•WeeMee is a WeeWorld social network that lets members interact through their WeeMees. What’s a WeeMee? “It's a cartoon that looks just like you. Think of it as your own personal avatar or icon.”

•The N is a brand of Nickelodeon Kids and Family, which is part of Viacom. Nickelodeon has experience in experience in virtual worlds and has a robust strategy for creating and monetizing virtual world that feed off their successful TV series and characters.

•Poptropica is part of Pearson’s Family Education Network. As you can see from the graphic, a “Costumizer tool” is prominently featured on their home page.

There may be more social networks in this teen/tween space, but these are the ones Sears has chosen for the Arrive Lounge campaign. Their media choices seem reasonable. The key to success will be how well they engage their target audience.

Several months ago I wrote a series of posts for eBrandMarketing about the “Mommy Ecosystem.” This strikes me as the same sort of social and marketing phenomenon. These teens and tweens are highly social creatures, so social networking is a big part of their lives. Not surprisingly, a number of networks that are more highly targeted than, say, MySpace has grown up to take advantage of the phenomenon. Marketers who target the segment clearly want to make use of these networks, as they must do to reach their target audience. However, they have to reach these young men and women on their own terms, not the marketer’s terms. That’s not easy. Sears doesn’t seem to have made any major missteps so far. It will be fun to keep an eye on this campaign and see if it does connect with this difficult-to-reach target market.

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.