Internet Marketing--Third Edition!

Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies, 3rd edition has been published by Cengage and is now available in multiple formats and channels.

The third edition of the text boasts an accomplished new co-author, Debra Zahay of Northern Illinois University. Debra is a skilled database marketer who also has special strengths in search marketing and website design. Her input to the third edition provided a welcome new perspective and I look forward to her increasing influence in future editions.

The text was completely rewritten in accordance with the ever-changing nature of the Internet. It has new and updated examples and case histories in all the chapters. The impact of social networks is made clear throughout as is the increasing importance of mobile marketing. In addition to a new chapter on social media marketing and a completely rewritten one on mobile marketing, there is a new chapter on lead generation and management in B2B markets. There is also a completely new section on video marketing.

The book is available in a number of different formats at Cengage Brain.  It is also available on Amazon  and on Barnes & Noble.

Adopters receive access to the instructor site which contains a complete set of Power Points, chapter by chapter teaching notes, and a test bank for each chapter.

Everyone--adopter or not, academic or not--is invited to join us on our Google+ site. We are focusing the posts there on material that specifically relates to material in the text and can be used to update classroom presentations. The G+ site is searchable, and a list of chapter hashtags (Google doc) is linked to the About page. We hope the ability to search for relevant updates is sufficient reason to have the G+ site, but we hope to try some other functions as we attempt to support adopters of the text. We'd welcome your suggestions as to what you need, what you would find useful.

Happy reading!

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?

Marketers Must Do "Content Marketing"

It’s hard to work around the Internet without recognizing its endless appetite for content of all kinds. I’ve long told marketers that they have to “repurpose” content. Grammatical correctness aside, marketers cannot create entirely new content for each occasion, each channel. They need to repurpose the good content they have in one channel for use in other channels. Some of that is very simple—posting a TV ad on YouTube, for example. Others require more effort—creating a B2B webinar, for example. Both have one thing in common. There is already a great deal of content in almost all companies—on or off the web. The requirement is to identify it and repurpose it for other significant channels.

Joe Chernov’s Content Grid gives an indication of the complex possibilities of content channels today. It suggests several strategic issues. There are some types of content that are best used in the early (awareness) stages of the buying decision process and some better used later when the subject is moving closer to making a decision (consideration). There is also some content which is going to have single author/small group authorship (centralization). Some content is inherently multi-authored (decentralized). Some content should be under the careful control of corporate staff; some is open for comment or co-creation by external readers.

That still begs the question of what content marketing is. Here’s a definition from Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action. . . content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.

In another blog post, he describes content marketing as editorial-based, marketing-backed, behavior-driven, multi-platform and targeted.

It’s not about fluffy advertising messages; it is about content that adds value to the use of your product and therefore to your customer’s life.

There’s a final important issue related to content marketing—it’s not “one size fits all.” As Chernov’s grid indicates, potential customers at different stages in the buying process need different information. Early in the process a potential customer who is unfamiliar with your company and your products needs content that builds trust. When the prospect is getting close to making a decision she needs more specific information, perhaps a video demo of how the product can be used. Making a strategic assessment of how much content, to whom and when is the purpose of a content map. This map is stated in B2B terms, but it can easily be adapted to B2C.

A interesting example is Best Buy’s On network that went live in selected retail stores last week. The Best Buy On website has been up for awhile. It has a lot of product content that looks as if it might come from manufacturers, but it also produces its own exclusive content and takes advertising. The content, complete with ads, is now appearing in Best Buy stores. According to a Best Buy spokesperson speaking to BrandWeek :

The objective isn’t promotional, it’s around engagement with the product category or entertainment,” Bryan said. “Our quid pro quo with advertisers isn’t about [point-of-sale] lift. It’s a media placement.” Taking that approach, Best Buy On has managed to draw advertisers who don’t sell any products in stores, such as Procter & Gamble’s Swiffer mop and Tide’s energy-efficient detergents. Other advertisers, however, are the type you’d expect, including Panasonic, LG and Bose.

That’s interesting, but I think Stephen Shepard, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York summed it up best in a recent Ad Age article (subscription required). He said, "If they do a good job of it, it's welcome. I don't mind reading something from Best Buy, if it's fair and informative and honest."

That sums up the promise of content marketing; it will attract people who are looking for products you offer—or who will be someday! The degree to which it is persuasive will be determined by how informative and balanced it is and by the marketer’s ability to produce an ongoing stream of relevant content.

Happy Holidays to All!

I haven't taken time to do a JibJab card this year. Too bad for those of you who were looking for a laugh at my expense!

I was noticing this morning how many holiday cards I had received from non-profit organizations and marketing service firms with whom I've done business. That's nice, but I especially noted that one non-profit sent 2 cards USPS. I'd rather have had one and save the postage on the other for good works.

Then this card from Overdrive Interactive came along. They don't miss a beat, and they didn't with this one. Not only did they not spend $$$ on postage, if you play the card you'll notice that it's posted on YouTube--with an opportunity to subscribe to their YouTube channel prominently displayed!

Happy Holidays and a productive year in social media to all of you!!!

Want To Go To Mardi Gras?

Earlier in the week I saw Tom Martin’s column in Ad Age. He invited everyone to join his Tweet stream from New Orleans over the last great Mardi Gras weekend leading up to Fat Tuesday. Too good to ignore, right?
I read through the comments where people were asking him if he was up to something besides a boozy weekend. The answer is obviously that he is, but he won’t say what until it’s over. According to the profile on his blog Tom is currently the president of Zender Communications in New Orleans, so I think we can safely assume it’s something advertising related.
He started Twittering early this morning and he’s busy already. You can follow along if you like.

And therein is the point, for now at least. I’ve resisted setting up a Twitter account, thinking “do I really need this?” Well, if I wanted to follow Tom and see what he’s up to I had to 1) establish a Twitter account and 2) find Tom and follow him. Right now he has about 1,400 followers, over 700 of whom are following at the moment. I didn’t start soon enough to see how many followers he’s added since his Ad Age article on Tuesday, but I’ll bet it’s substantial and that he’ll add more over the weekend. I did find out that my daughter was online while I was doing this; nice to know what she’s up to!

If you’re a teenager or young adult who just wants to keep up with friends, you’re probably not reading this anyway. If you are a marketing professional who, like me, is trying to figure out this stuff, why don’t you get a Twitter account and follow along? Once you set up a Twitter page and follow Tom, you’ll get his Tweets. If you want his pics of the big event, follow him here.

You won’t really learn any other way—and if you aren’t already on Twitter, like me, you can’t learn any sooner than if you start now!

Great Big Interactive Billboard

I was looking for things other than Super Bowl reviews ad nauseum when I found this video on Ad Age Digital. It’s a new twist on old themes; interactivity and media integration.

When you watch the video you’ll see this quick screen that says you can play it on Facebook. That also caught my attention, so I looked for the game itself. What I found is the Jumbli site, which appears to be a Clear Channel microsite. Ok, the point is to text as fast as possible?!? If you look at the site live, you’ll see current updates on who’s winning. I’m underwhelmed, but others are playing the game.
I also checked out the, or probably one of the, Facebook pages. This one describes AT&T as the exclusive sponsor. There are a lot of phone ads, so someone is placing ads on Facebook. More to my point, there is a listing of Jumbli Events and lots of writing on the wall and other Facebook messages. AT&T seems to be replying to its customers on the page. Good for them!

The game itself seems to me to be silly, but it would be a great time waster on the subway, for example, if you are so inclined. Silly or not, marketers need to take note of the fact that people are playing a mobile game like this. Even more, marketers need to note that this type of interactivity brings people to other media and stimulates other kinds of interactions.

Media integration, in a way that’s engaging to consumers—that’s the key message!

A Cautionary Note About Widgets

I often tell my students that we could learn a lot from marketing programs that don’t work, but marketers—understandably—don’t want to talk about them. Quite by accident I ran across one that had unintended effects.

My intent was to write a post about widget distribution networks, since we are all looking for cost-effective customer acquisition tools. In the process, I ran across the Kimberly-Clark Room-a-Day Giveaway and the widget it used in the promotion. Ok, looked like a good example because the widget was successfully distributed across a network.

Kept on looking, and what I found was that the web is littered with broken links to the widget. That is as it should be, because the 2008 contest ended. But I thought there ought to be a working archive somewhere so I could see the dancing Huggies and other Kimberly-Clark brands. Static captures like this one were all I could find. That piqued my curiosity, especially when I realized that KC is running the sweeps again. The highly successful sweeps was launched again on The View on January 14 with, according to Ad Age, lots of promotional support but not a widget in sight.

According to the Ad Age article, they are using Twitter this year, but I don’t see any evidence of it on the sweeps home page or on the Connect with our Brands page, although I didn’t register for any of the brand messages. I kept looking, and there is Twitter listed on Very Recent. The Twitter messages I found link to the sweeps home page, but I couldn’t find where they come from.
The 2009 sweeps has a new spokesperson—Thom Filicia. He was the designer on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy if that places him for you. The Ad Age article describes him as the blogger for the campaign. I searched his name and found all sorts of blog activity (try it; it is an exercise in creating visibility). I finally found his blog for the sweeps under Kimberly-Clark Brands. It’s interesting, but I still haven’t found the source of the Twitter for the campaign. Mommy blogs, perhaps.

But I digress. Why no widget this year? I found the complaint about the autoplay (wish we’d just delete that command from the programming lexicon) on several blogs. Here’s what Donna DeClemente said about the pros and cons of the widget on her promotions blog (links removed):

. . .they're really engaging audiences with an interactive promotional component that features a dynamic new website along with cutting edge digital technology that's enabled the first sweepstakes enabled widget.

(Please Note: I originally had the widget embedded right here in this post, but moved it to this new page instead. The reason being is that the widget automatically plays and the audio would come on immediately each time you visit my blog.)

Anyhow, I think this widget is amazing. Not only does it offers the user the interactive fun of being able to choose both a specific dance along with where the packages dance (I like the Abby Road location), but it also represents the very first time a widget has built-in functionality allowing viewers to directly enter a sweepstakes. This is truly innovative and a application that should help take sweepstakes to the next level (Sweeps 3.0?)

Now once the user is registered it remembers their name and lets them know how much time is left till they can enter the sweepstakes again with a digital clock countdown . . .

There’s more, and her evaluation is interesting. But her problem was that of other bloggers I found—the autoplay that really annoys people who are trying to read other blog entries. I have to admit that I also wonder about dancing Huggies, etc. Was it cute, or was it silly? And does it matter? A lot of promotional material is silly but if it attracts attention and is reasonably entertaining it works.

My guess is that this widget was more annoying than entertaining and that Kimberly-Clark was smart enough to recognize that and come up with another promotional tool. They haven’t given up on social media, they are just learning from a lot of what has worked very well for them and one thing that didn’t. I just hope they don't disregard what looks like great interactivity in the widget in the annoyance factor.

Learning from what does and doesn't work is what social media in 2009 should be all about!

DIY Webcasting

Outreach to bloggers continues! Last week I received an email from the PR firm for webcasting firm BrightTalk. It just launched a Web 2.0 platform that makes webcasting a more interactive activity with continuity that is missing from the typical webcasting activity. According to their website, “brighttalk.com is our simple to use live audio webcast platform, built using web 2.0 principles, where business professionals can create and view webcasts through BrightTALK™ Channels.” This platform adds to their existing Conferences and Webcasting product lines.

In my experience, webcasts are essentially stand-alone entities. You do a webcast, publicize it in many ways, and essentially use it as lead generation, for your products, and for future webcasts. I think most B2B marketers who’ve used them regard them as a valuable lead generation and customer support tool. That said, they can get pretty expensive.

The BrightTALK platform offers a couple of interesting alternatives to the traditional webcasting platform. First is the free starter channel. There are other free offerings; for example webcasts can be hosted on YouTube. However, the BrightTALK platform offers a more comprehensive marketing solution. You can make your webcasts as simply as developing and narrating slides, which you can do on other platforms also. BrightTalk promotes your webcasts in addition to your own advertising and promotion. The webcast is hosted and archived and participants who come directly from the presenter’s own website or by direct link from presenter promotion are identified to the presenter.


There are three levels of channels, with the paid channels obviously giving more bandwidth and more detailed reporting. There is also a content management service that enterprises with multiple webcasting programs would find useful.

The webcast channel can be embedded on the firm’s website, blog or whatever. The value of having informational video promotions on one’s site seems pretty obvious. In fact, you might want to watch BrightTalk’s own how-to video.

One of the things Web 2.0 does is to bring interactive tools within the reach of smaller businesses and non-profits. Wouldn’t it be interesting if local and state governmental agencies used tools like this to make life easier for all of us and perhaps to discuss policy questions? There seem to be a lot of options, all of which would lead to better informed—and presumably happier—customers and citizens.

More leveling of the business playing field! The good news is that the platform is free, at least for small volume users. The bad news is that it takes good content and considerable effort to develop a meaningful webcast that will hold users to its conclusion. It is effort worth taking for businesses of all kinds!

Online Content Sharing - The New WOM

The company responsible for the ubiquitous ShareThis icon (see the bottom of this post) has just released a study called “The Ins and Outs of Online Sharing.” The study, conducted by Forrester, provides some fascinating insights into content sharing on the web. Let me give you some of the study highlights.


Who Shares?

A majority of Internet users do share. Interestingly, more adults share email. Not surprisingly, youth (13 to 17) do more sharing of other media types. Are you using videos, wikis (that one surprises me; are there wikis that reach young people, or is it just Wikipedia?), and walls/discussion boards to reach young people?


What Do They Share?
Just read down the list. They share a lot of things! And the only content area where there’s a large difference between adults and young people is the entertainment category. That’s not surprising; how similar adults and youth are in the sharing of other types of content is. Are you providing the kinds of content that your audience most desires?

How Do They Share? Adults mostly use email. Young people share through IM, mobile, and their social networks. That’s hardly a revelation. But marketers need to think about their audience and how they want to share information. Are you making it easy for your audience to share content?


Why Do They Share? Read this one carefully—people share because they want to help others. (I’ve seen/heard that before, especially in discussions of travel sites where you can share experiences.) It’s an overriding motivation, and it doesn’t differ much between adults and youth. Users also share because they’ve found shared information useful, to share information about product quality, and just simply to show their enthusiasm. Wow—the top 4 reasons are positive. Dissatisfaction is number 5 and the incidence is much lower. Are you making it easy for customers to share their experiences with your product?

Is It Easy to Share? The good news is that it’s generally pretty easy. The number is well under 50% for most types of sharing. Youth experience more problems. That’s not surprising; they are sharing various types of media and that makes them more likely to run into problems. Are you removing obstacles that inhibit your audience from sharing?

The study also identified an intriguing segment—the Power Sharers. Power sharers use technology other than email to share content at least once a week. They also:

• Share with more people, regardless of the channel they are using
• Share different types of content more frequently
• Share for additional reasons. They are more likely to be motivated by community and by what the report characterizes as “self-expression.”
• Face more obstacles to sharing, especially lack of relevant contact information.

Pure and simple, these are opinion leaders. They’ve always existed and they’ve always been powerful. The Internet lets them exercise their particular expertise and passions in ways never before possible. It gives them the potential to reach more people than ever before.

Are you trying to identify opinion leaders and harness their enthusiasm in the service of your community?

Take another look at the Pickens Plan. I got an email from two individuals as soon as I joined; one was the regional coordinator. He’s being very quiet about how this now-sizeable community is being run, but I assume these people are volunteers. If I’m right, it’s an impressive harnessing of the enthusiasm and outreach of opinion leaders.

The report is lengthy and well interpreted. You can request a copy from Jeremy Bock at ShareThis.

These data remind me that Web 2.0 isn’t about technology. While Web 1.0 was about communication, Web 2.0 is coalescing around the concept of community. This study goes one step further in suggesting that we have to build those communities around (multi-media) content that is relevant to people’s lives (B2C) or work (B2B) and make it easy for people to interact around that content. People are voting with their Send, Forward, and ShareThis commands.

Are you letting them vote for your brand?

Wither Digital Marketing?

Every so often I like to stop for a moment and look at the stats for online marketing, broadly defined. I’m such a believer, that I need an occasional reality check, positive or otherwise. Today’s eMarketer newsletter asking “How Much Marketing is Digital?” suggested this was a good time. And the news in terms of continuing spending and future estimates is positive. eMarketer forecasts (newsletter, March 31, 2008) online to be 10% of all media spend in 2009. Will growth in online slow as a result of poor economic conditions? At least some analysts don’t think so. According to Karsten Weide, of IDC, “A bad economy forces advertisers to save money by eliminating the least-effective forms, thus speeding up the adoption of new media advertising.”

Nielsen data for May (the most recent I could find) shows the Internet share at just under 7%. That’s a bit different from the eMarketer data, but there are lots of data sources, lots of definitions. There doesn’t seem to be any argument about the trend; it’s upward and the best argument seems to be the effectiveness one.

Today’s eMarketer article refers to the same Sapient study reported on by Marketing Charts on September 5. They quoted survey data that showed CMOs planning to spend more on digital with some of them inching up toward 50%. The main focus in this popular article was on agency relationships and the ability of agencies to meet digital needs. The CMOs surveyed weren’t confident they have that ability. According to the article: “More than one-third of marketers surveyed said they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising.”

What are the CMOs looking for from agencies? The article has a top 10 list, all worth considering. I’ll list just the top 4:

1. Greater knowledge of the digital space
2. More use of “pull interactions”
3. Leverage virtual communities
4. Agency executives who use the technology they are recommending

All this makes perfect sense, and agencies clearly have a major role to play in helping their clients navigate the choppy waters of new media, made even more difficult by economic conditions. Agencies have been struggling to service their clients in newest media and technologies (think direct and database marketing, for example) for as long as I can remember. And that will undoubtedly continue.

But it’s not enough to place the entire burden on agencies. Marketers have to understand the issues; they have to ask the right questions; they have to demand objectives and metrics that encompass the new media environment. Look at item #4 above; they want executives of their agencies to be users of the technology.

Marketers have to follow their own advice. I keep saying there is simply no substitute for using the media, trying out the technology for yourself. But marketing managers can go a step further.

I wonder how many marketing departments have any kind of a coordinated approach to who needs to follow which disciplines, newsletters, webcasts; who needs to spend some time on Facebook or MySpace or in relevant virtual worlds. None of us are going to learn to deal with the new media environment by staying in our comfortable traditional media cocoons.

More on that tomorrow.

Social Landing Pages?

I noticed this term a few days ago in Ion Interactive’s newsletter and thought it was interesting. Landing pages are an important—and too often ignored—part of the conversion process. Improving them is a subject that should always be of interest. So, as usual, I set out to explore.

The first thing I found out is that the term doesn’t seem to be in use on sites like Grokdot.com, which specializes in conversion issues, or Omniture, which touts optimization of various aspects of emarketing. What I did find was a number of services that help marketers test their landing pages. Testing is always good, whether the pages are social or not.

So I went back to Ion to find their definition. Content from their newsletter (July 08) answered that:

Subscriber question: What is a social landing page?
Answer: Social landing pages are landing pages that include social networking features. They bring together marketer-managed marketing and social interactivity.

In the news release for their LiveBall product, Ion’s president Scott Brinker adds, “A landing page can serve as a ‘connector’, bringing together people with a specialized, shared interest.” The press release goes on to describe 7 benefits of adding social features to a landing page that include recipient interaction, brand development and lower bounce rate.

These are interesting, but I wanted some examples. Their LiveBall product demo is interesting, although it stopped working about half way through the second step. It makes it clear, though, that the Ion product is marketer-controlled, and I’m always a fan of DYI.

But I’m still looking for examples, so I did something I don’t usually do. I clicked on some PPC ads. (I’m such a considerate customer that I always use the free search listing link if it’s available.) I’ve used the Vertical Response product and like the company, so I looked to see what they had and found a good landing page. After clicking on several banners on several portal sites I found an HSBC ad on the NYT site that had a good landing page.

The search alone is instructive. A lot of companies are paying for advertising and not using landing pages associated with their ads. Some of the ads took me to product pages, which were at least relevant. Others just took me to a home page. Shameful!

Take a look at what I did find. I’m showing the landing page and the home page. Both landing pages have URLs that prove my point, but I’m showing the home page anyway to make the point that the landing pages take visitors more directly into relevant product information than do home pages.

The Vertical Response page is long, so I cut in in half and put it back together so you could see it all. It’s not particularly creative, but it gets their Create > Send > Track message across, has some promotional content, presents a compelling offer (500 free emails), and lets the viewer sign up directly on the landing page. Maybe not “creative,” but it really does the job. You could get to sign up from the home page, but you’d have to click through to the email page, where you’d find much of the same information, but an offer for only your first 25 emails (small list!). Vertical Response clearly has a landing page that’s meant to maximize the conversions from its PPC advertising.

HSBC’s term life insurance landing page (if you could see the URL, you’d see they call it the “simplestart” page) is even more interactive. It allows you to select profile characteristics and request a quote, again, right from the landing page. HSBC is a more complex enterprise and it’s home page represents that. It’s insurance main page is remarkably unattractive, but it allows you to get quotes for a variety of insurance, including term, which was featured when I wrote this post, presumably to integrate with the current banner advertising campaign.

Neither of these had “social” components in the social networking sense, although other components are possible. Ion’s blogs, for example, cover issues like use of widgets in online advertising and news feeds on landing pages.

So, while I’d call these landing pages “interactive,” instead of “social,” and there’s a large frontier to be explored either way. As you explore, don’t forget to test every step of the way. There’s so much a marketer can do; the question should always be “what should I do in order to be successful?” Test and find out!

Ask Users to Help Design Site?

From the mid-nineties, when many of us became active on the web and interested in its marketing uses, the question of successful website user experience has been front and center. It’s hard to do, but a lot of people—think Dr. Jakob Nielsen as well as others—preach website usability. Web marketers make extensive use of metrics to understand what content is most popular on their site.

Both are good things. Designing a site for usability should involve a substantial amount of user research prior to and during the construction of the site. That includes asking people what they expect the content to be on various proposed pages of the site. Note, however, that even the research suggests a pre-conceived idea of site structure. Metrics require a site that is in operation with content available. Baynote provides an interesting example of mining user data to better understand content needs, but it’s still after the fact.

What about asking users for suggestions in the early states—perhaps before you even develop the concept statements and concept pages for your site? When I found the DoubleClick ad in the eMarketer newsletter yesterday, I thought “what an interesting idea. Aren’t there other people doing similar things?”

Not as far as I can see. There was a lot of buzz about the “Chrysler Listens” program earlier in the year, and it’s still on the site. According to the Auburn Hills (Michigan) Globe and Mail they have recruited about 5,000 members to their advisory board and are instituting other “listening” programs. This program appears to be mostly focused on product satisfaction, for obvious reasons. VW has a program called “What the People Want” that focuses on popular culture. To me the whole thing seems a bit lame, but it’s drawing traffic, and I have to admit that I’m probably not in the target audience demographic.

So DoubleClick’s program seems pretty unique. The advertising campaign is based around “Three Questions”—answered by a DoubleClick staffer or an outside expert. The viewer can even volunteer to be the outside expert—interesting touch.
Notice the Help Shape our Site box on the main (landing?) page. When you click through, you get 3 serious questions about what you’d like to find in the new “Nerve Center.” I’m always looking for data about our industry, so I answered the questions and submitted my thoughts. They thanked me politely, but didn’t promise anything specific, which probably makes sense in this situation.

How will they analyze the suggestions they are getting? Some type of content analysis, I imagine. That could be a very interesting foundation for site design—content categories suggested by users.

This will be interesting to watch. It’s also interesting to speculate on the impact of Google’s recent acquisition of DoubleClick on this program. But the key point is that DoubleClick is asking users to help frame their new site, apparently well in advance of actual site development. A really provocative use of the interactivity of the Internet!

Harrah's Adopts Surface Computing

I’ve written about Microsoft’s surface computer before. It offers lots of opportunities for entertainment and interaction but it’s still pricey at $10,000 per unit. Also, I’ve long been fascinated by Harrah’s and their incredibly comprehensive and successful loyalty card program.

When I saw the article in CNET about Harrah’s installation of six surface computers in a bar in one of its Las Vegas casinos I read it with interest. The computers offer bar patrons a variety of applications—they can develop their own mixed drinks and send them to other patrons, watch YouTube videos, play games, and use an app called Flirt. You can see the uses on this seriously lame promotional video from Microsoft. I’m having trouble deciding whether the women or the men are most insulted by the content, but it does show the tables in action. View the video here.

The implications are broader than just empty-headed beautiful people flirting in a bar. Harrah’s has long been famous for its Total Rewards program and the way they use the resulting database to market their individual casino locations. If you know this story, your first thought is, “Data; I wonder what use they are going to make of it?” A lot of their marketing is based on knowing what individual customers do in specific casinos and marketing to their interests and needs. The surface computers are meant to fit into their databased marketing program in some way. I can’t see anything very profound from the features they currently offer, but it may be only a first step.

If you don’t know the Harrah’s story, it’s an excellent example of disciplined database marketing. If you have access to the Harvard Business Review there have been several articles by and interviews with CEO Gary Loveman since he took over in January 2003. There is a recent interview on The CEO Show with Robert Reiss. The 18-minute audio interview focuses on customer service but the importance of data about customers and how they use it at Harrah’s is frequently emphasized in the discussion. To listen, follow this link and scroll down to the March 9, 2008 interview. It’s worth it.

The Total Rewards program is deservedly famous. Take a look at its tiered strategy, which has emerged from segmentation analyses over the years. Harrah’s SVP of Relationship Marketing, David Norton, says it’s more than just a rewards program. Another way of saying that is that Harrah’s captures, mines and develops and executes marketing programs based on the customer data they capture from the program. That applies to individual customers and individual casino locations. In 2005 Norton said that 50% of Harrah’s revenue was driven by [targeted] marketing. That’s a major achievement, especially in an industry where glamorous properties, big-name entertainment and marquee chefs are the essence of strategy.

It’s about both data that drives programs and people who execute them. Gary Loveman has understood that from the beginning. It doesn’t happen overnight, but once a company puts a disciplined databased marketing program into place, it just gets better over time.

The Internet is now a chief source of data about our customers. How many of us capture and use transaction and activity data well? How many develop customer-effective programs that provide more of the kind of data we need to serve those customers better and win their undying loyalty? Very few!

Visiting NASA in Second Life

One of my summer resolutions was to learn to get around in Second Life so I can see what’s going on. So when I saw that NASA had developed a cybertwin for its Phoenix rover, I gritted my teach and took a shot at it.

Fair warning; when you register you have to complete a four-step tutorial in order to get the bare basics of how to function in Second Life. It’s a bit annoying, especially if you’re too impatient to read the directions and have to keep going back. But once you complete four basic steps you have the key to Second Life and you can move around.

Still ignoring the directions as much as possible I searched for the NASA island and after a couple of failed tries (maybe I should have taken some of the advanced tutorials!) I teleported to the Nasa Explorer Island.




Here I am—or at least here my avatar is. There’s nice music playing; sounds like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I walked around the island and saw the main Jet Propulsion Laboratory Building and the Media amphitheatre. I wasn’t there when there was an event going on, but there’s stuff to do. I was going to try to launch Mars airbag, but I never found the mountain. There are also scheduled events—launches and demonstrations.









For those of you who don’t want to spend several hours figuring out how it all works, there’s a video on the site of MyCyberTwin, the developer of the “twin” (avatar?) of the Phoenix rover. It’s fun, but since it works off a knowledge base, it doesn’t seem to have a large repertoire. (View video here.)

It’s interesting and sort of fun. I plan to continue my explorations and report on them. But it also highlights the problem for most marketers. Do they have several hours to learn how to use something like Second Life, just because they want to see something in particular that’s going on?

Probably that’s not high on their priority list. Many of them could ask their teenage (or younger!) children who will be able to give them a tour, maybe not of Second Life, but of a virtual world that’s more age-appropriate. But some are just going to have to invest the time to understand what their target audiences are doing and how they can participate and create engaging events/activities/locations. Maybe a worthwhile summer activity for a lot of us!

Have You Been Pingged?

I’ve been evited, but I’ve never been pingged. Presumably the name of this new site is a play on the technical term ping—clever!

Pingg came to my attention as the result of a story from DM News’ Sara Holoubek. It’s a good story that has an important marketing point. I was initially intrigued by the complete “party management” service she described, so I looked at the two sites and found a lot going on.


Evite has been around for awhile and according to the site has 18 million registered users. Evite has recently added the ability to send and receive invitations from your cell phone (assuming that you want to. . .). It also has a photo page to which you can upload pics of your parties, so they are clearly adding social networking apps.

Pingg is new, having been launched in March of this year. It is obviously designed with social networking in mind. It’s surroundSend functionality lets you get your invitation to the recipient, wherever he or she may be. The event management function provides all the basics and some cool Internet apps. The gift and charity registry allows you to embed your Amazon Wish List or to ask your guests to contribute to a charity instead. If you’re selling tickets to your event like Sara was, invitees can purchase their tickets with PayPal. If you are doing this for a worthy cause, you can show the fund-raising target on your personalized event page. Not only cool, but useful!

Back to Sara’s point. If your goal is to draw an audience, just putting something out there, even to your handpicked guest list may not be enough. “Searches and online transactions all originate within the physical world.” Right! And with all the clutter in both physical and cyber worlds, it usually takes more than one communications channel to get your marketing message to its target audience!

Are Interactive Promotions the Next Big Thing?

A recent report from Borrell Associates, a firm that specializes in local interactive advertising, predicts an interesting shift in the expenditure of online marketing dollars. They assert that display advertising will lose ground to other types of expenditures, especially to promotions. “We believe it will peak this year at $12.6 billion, and then begin a precipitous decline to less than half that amount over the next four years.” The growth will come in online promotions, including public relations activity.

Click-through rates (CTR) for display ads have been getting a bad rap lately (and yes, there’s also been controversy over CTR for paid search ads, but that’s another story). The eMarketer chart (newsletter, February 28, 2008) from the “heavy clickers” study earlier this year got a lot of attention. According to comScore the study found “no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked." Ouch!

When Chris Autry asked in iMediaConnection, “Is Display Advertising Dead?” he pointed to low CTR and permission-based content including what he calls narrow networks for special applications and my favorite, widgets. He describes advertising as an application and recommends that, “Consumers will not be bombarded with relatively useless adverts but will instead interact and be able to use a range of applications to perform relevant tasks.”

It is also possible that the movement of traditional mass media advertising dollars onto the web has propped up online display advertising. Will these advertisers accept for long the miserable click-through rates that are the norm today?

What is the growth in online promotions going to represent? According to Borrell contests, coupons and promotional gift certificates are working well at the local level. We’ve seen a lot of evidence of the popularity of video contests in national media, from the SuperBowl to Heinz ketchup.

Are contests reaching the saturation point, though? Ok, I’ll admit I’m not an American Idol fan either, but it seems to me there is a lot of room for creative promotional strategies. If promotion is going to in large part replace display advertising, we need some creative ideas for interacting with our target audience, whether it’s local or national. Any good ideas?
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Avatar Wrap Party

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Cathy Taylor’s experiment with the Burn Alter Ego campaign in Europe. She wrapped it up on Friday and I wanted to close the loop. Her participants identified three major problems; probably some of you—like me—just took a look at the Facebook page and said either, “Not me,” or “Too much trouble,” so the reactions of the people who played along are instructive. However, most of us aren’t part of the target market, and we’ve got to be careful about that. According to Stanford Green of Coke Europe, Burn is a drink for people who haven’t yet launched their professional careers. He says that, “Burn is a nightlife drink.” Yep, that’s not me.

The three problems identified were:
•Technical—the slow loading interface. Apparently anything faster would have seriously pixilated the image.
•Interactivity—some of the participants didn’t like the fact that the night life experiences were “prepackaged,” not of their own choosing.
•Blatant Salesmanship—avatars explicitly promote Burn in various ways.

One young professional—Ellen Kelly of Peculiar Productions—gave it high marks:

"I loved that you could completely customize the avatar, environment, and so on. And the random stories people came up with… hilarious! I think there are a few tweaks that need to be ironed out, but overall it's an interesting application. My coworkers loved it too, especially the designers."

One of the comments on the Social Media Insider blog gave a link to a post “10 Facebook Applications that Don’t Suck.” It’s well worth looking at to see the kinds of fairly practical, “useful-in-my-daily-life” sort of applications referenced. It’s also instructive that most of them don’t have a huge number of daily users. But that’s probably not the right issue. Presumably it should not be just the number, but how well users reflect the target audience for the sponsoring brand, how often they use the app, whether there is any brand conversion, and whether use of the app affects brand image. We probably have to get past sheer numbers to understand the usefulness of Facebook apps and other widgets and that’s going to take continuing thoughtful development of metrics.

But it was a great experiment! More of us ought to take part in some of these things, even if we feel a bit out of place, and try to develop a deeper understanding of what’s going on in social media space.
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Auto Marketing Takes Sharp Web Turn

Auto makers all now have interactive websites that let prospective users examine and experience their models to some degree or another. Advertising also continues to move to the web. Just a few weeks ago GM let it be known that within three years fully half its advertising budget would be spend on the web (AdAge, March 17, 2008). Yesterday Chrysler announced that 29% of its budget for the new Journey would be spent on the web, with strong visitation numbers at the beginning of the launch.

It’s less of a surprise that BMW is spending half their budget for the US launch of their 1 Series on the Internet. BMW has been a leader in creative use of the web from the beginning with their BMW films series early in this decade followed by BMW comics. Their 1 Series is a lower-priced version aimed at a younger target market, so the emphasis makes sense. They cut their teeth on this type of strategy when they used the films to attract a younger, hipper audience. Now it’s an introductory video on YouTube. Take a look—it’s definitely not your father’s auto advertising!

Among other things, BMW is offering a Facebook app that will let users build their own BMW and send it to friends. Presumably that’s a repurposing of the functionality they have on the website. Makes sense to move it out onto the web where they can make it more visible, presumably by attaching it to advertising on Facebook and elsewhere on the web.

Another thing that isn’t new news is that young people spend most of their media time on the web, so that’s where you have to engage them. It takes integrated programs there, just like it’s always done in mass media. The difference is that we’re integrating a different set of tools; targeted online display ads, search advertising, microsites, videos, widgets and other specialized apps to name some of the main ones. Basic marketing principles still apply, but the execution is very different!
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More Virtual Worlds for Children

The annual virtual worlds conference is taking place in NYC today and tomorrow. Just a list of the speakers is instructive; there are a lot of major brands that are becoming players in the virtual worlds space.


The announcement that caught my eye was from Nickelodeon. They’re planning more virtual worlds to join Nicktropolis, now about a year old. They include the popular SpongeBob SquarePants, which will delight my grandson! More to the point, if you look at the comparative site statistics for the Disney Virtual Kingdom and Nicktropolis (both of which are relatively generic), versus the Barbie World, the wisdom of building a virtual world around a more targeted brand seems evident.

Virtual worlds have taken a lot of hits lately, but they seem to be here to stay, especially for the young crowd that likes to spend time playing games and communicating with a network of friends.

A couple of questions. First, is there a strong first mover advantage here? Even for kids there are a limited number of sites that they are going to patronize at any given time. The real question is, “Will they be loyal?” Kids? I think not. If their friends are suddenly all over a new site with cooler stuff, they’ll leave for the new one.

Second, when is a brand franchise strong enough to warrant this type of investment? Barbie seems obvious. SpongeBob may be also. But again, how many, how strong? And how do you keep the virtual worlds vibrant?

These are truly brave new worlds--watch for further bulletins from this space!
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Customer Acquisition--How the Internet Has Changed It

As I wrote on March 4, the Internet has changed the core marketing communications processes fundamentally and forever. Marketers are still trying to come to grips with that fact and to learn how to leverage and optimize the power of the Internet in integrated marketing communications programs.

We all know what the Hierarchy of Effects looks like. We were weaned on it as marketers. Unfortunately, it’s still the mental model that many of us use. I argue that it is simply not the way marketing works today. It probably was never entirely hierarchical. Today it’s more like a maze with many ways of getting to the end goal—a trusted brand. That makes it hard to specify a process that fits all situations, much less make it one that is hierarchical. Earlier I described it as circular and I think that’s an improvement, but that still doesn’t express the complexity of the decisions marketers face.

In the mass media era we spent time and money to reach our target segment and create brand awareness. In the Internet era the more direct approach is to attract the target’s attention with relevant content. The Internet supports the acquisition process in two significant ways:

•Marketers can target an audience for acquisition with little of the wasted reach of mass media. Targeting by display advertising on carefully-selected web vehicles (sites, blogs, social networks) is similar to mass media and we know that it accomplishes brand development as well as generating action. PPC advertising based on contextual keywords targets to an individual’s current behavior. Behavioral advertising, based on actions already taken by anonymous visitors, offers more precise targeting and is consequently growing in favor with marketers.

•Marketers can incite to action, which usually requires driving people to their website. They must carefully consider the actions they want target customers to take on the website, how they will encourage them to take desired action, and the experience visitors will have while they are there and afterward—in the fulfillment and service process. They must also make decisions about how to measure success and how to capture data from newly-acquired targets.

The set of possible actions represents basic objectives that marketers may choose for their campaigns. They include, not in any order of priority:

•Drive first-time visitors to a retail location to make a purchase.
oThat may be as simple as offering store location information, often with maps and other ancillary information. It can include sales promotions like coupons.

•Encourage an immediate purchase on the site. This can rely on compelling content—from product descriptions to customer reviews—and a well-designed and maintained site that leads visitors through a planned, step-by-step process.
•Provide incentives to make an immediate purchase on the site.
oThe incentives can be part of the advertising—a free shipping offer, for example. They can be presented on a landing page as part of a formal conversion process. They can be presented on the site—an offer to “buy two and get a third for half price” shown, at a minimum, on the home/main product page and on the order page.

•Invite visitors to register by offering relevant content:
oAdditional product information—brochures or demos
oSite functionality—build your own product
oA newsletter or alerts with offers of interest
oCoupon downloads
oParticipate in brand community activities

•Encourage visitors to stay on the site longer
oContent like videos
oActivities like games and contests

•Give visitors a reason to return
oCompelling content, excellent experience, ongoing events

These generic objective types have an element that is familiar to B2B marketers but less so to most consumer packaged goods marketers. They imply a multi-step process, except in the minority of cases in which the first-time visitor makes an immediate purchase. If not, the visitor must be enticed to return. Successful retailers have been good at doing that; producers of mass-marketed products (and some services, insurance sold through agents, for example) have not.

The multitude of possible actions and the fact that not all culminate in an immediate sale pose two additional questions. First, how do we measure success? It is not enough to simply attract visitors to the website. We have to get them to make a purchase. Even though that may take several visits, the process is relatively easy to track on the web. Once it leaves the web for a retailer or a dealer, it becomes much more difficult

Second—and necessary for developing the correct metrics—is what is our working definition of acquisition? Is it merely getting an anonymous visitor to the site? Probably not; that’s the click-through dispute. Is it capturing an email address so you can begin to develop a dialog? If you are marketing a genuinely multi-step product—cars or real estate, for example—registration may be an acceptable definition of acquisition. In those two cases, conversion occurs off the site, so that argues for a more limited definition of acquisition. You may hold out for an initial sale as the only acceptable measure of acquisition. That depends on many things including the product itself and your ability to track through to the sale.

Acquisition is a complex task. The Internet hasn’t really made it simpler. It has, however, made it possible to target--even at the acquisition stage. It has made it possible to measure, not only success in ROI terms, but the path of getting there. Finally, it allows marketers to plan campaigns based on data, both consumer behavior data and programs results data.

The change in approach to acquisition is not an option. Marketers cannot afford to ignore the potential of interactive marketing in their total mix, both for reasons of cost efficiency and because consumers are demanding the relationships.

The changes in acquisition lead to a greater role for conversion. More about that in a forthcoming post.
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