The Choice Seems Clear

Seems like a situation with easy logic: advertisers should spend their marketing dollars with the medium that offers the most audience engagement, right? Well, then someone tell me why Newspapers get 20% of the marketing dollars when they only deliver 8% of time spent between the media and their audience?

BusinessInsider.com shared 2008 research from JP Morgan via their Chart of the Day post:




The Internet tops the chart in disparity of attention vs. advertising investment by delivering 38% of time spent with the medium but receiving a mere 8% of total advertising dollars.

The other big missed opportunity is Radio, only receiving 9% share of advertising budgets, but delivering 19% of audience engagement -- a virtual mirror image of Newspaper!

Certainly something to talk to your clients and prospects about as you help them plan their strategies for 2010.

BusinessInsider.com notes the numbers are from 2008, so the ad spend on newspapers is lower today-- but go on to say "it's not low enough, considering how little we spend with them."

The Day The Media Died

Mad Avenue Blues

Did You Know 4.0

This is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com/ and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/.

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE, http://www.xplane.com/.

Marketing to Inactive List Members

Some marketers feel that if a member of their email list has been inactive for a great length of time, that the list might be better served by deleting the name -- even if the list member themself has not requested to be unsubscribed. This has to do with the ego and expectations of the list owner more than the preference of the list member.

They say:

• Inactive list members create lower percentages of open rates
• Inactive list members lower the ratio of clicks
• Inactive members lower the percentage of return on investment

You know what else inactive list members can do?
Account for 10% of your total annual sales, or even generate over $115,000 in a single campaign!

The DMA Email Marketing Blog has an interesting post up redefining "inactives" as "emotionally unsubscribed." They cite several instances where a significant number inactive list members have been triggered to take action based on their personal 'itch cycle.'

In one case, over $115,000 dollars was generated by making a special offer (a really great offer) to those list members who'd not click on the previous 25-40 past offers. Another statistic showed that over 10% of the revenue generated in 2008 had been contributed to the bottom line by list members who had not opened or clicked a single message in the previous year.

The lesson is to not over-obsess about inactive members on your list. Just because not everyone feels compelled to read every single missive you send, doesn't mean they won't remember you when their needs match your offers.

How Does Your Marketing Measure Up?

Read a great article in the latest MarketingProfs "Get To The Point" newsletter on Marketing Analytics. They recap a post from the Email Experience Blog on measuring the success of email marketing campaigns. This specifically addresses email, but the principle applies to ALL marketing efforts and the importance of pre-establishing metrics for success.

The blog post says data gathered on email marketing campaigns might not be as useful as you think. "Real danger lurks in not measuring the right factors or not measuring accurately. You could suffer lost revenue. You might not know which messages are working. And your sales team won't know what to focus on."

There are just SO many different things you can measure in marketing (especially online marketing), that it's extremely difficult to agree upon industry benchmarks in order to make effective comparisons. People are focusing on impressions or clicks or only those clicks that lead to a single sale.

The purpose of any marketing is to trigger an ACTION. Actions could include:

• Forward to a friend
• Signing up for a mailing list or additional informaiton
• Visit to a physical store location
• Attend an event
• Buy a product

It's vital to have a clear view of your client's specific goal for the campaign's marketing message and for the results on which the campaign will be judged. In order to meet those goals, tools must be in effect to capture the correct data by which effectiveness can be judged. As they say in the article... "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."

Who's Yer GoDaddy?

Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com is doing a great job of providing entertaining, yet informative, video content for his customers. What sort of content, advice, and expertise are you providing to YOUR clients?

Meaningful Online Engagement

Heard of a new book today called "Dot Boom" about how to created meaningful online messages that engage the Boomer generation. I visited the book's website (http://www.dotboombook.com/) and watched a 45-minute presentation by co-author David Weigelt. Definitely worthwhile...

My favorite bit was a quote he used from Albert Einstein:
"Not all that can be counted counts and not all that counts can be counted."
~Albert Einstein

What a great seque line to use the next time someone wants to focus on CPM pricing instead of achieving results!

Social network ads are tough sell to Gen-Y

Seeking to grab the attention of Gen Y's on social networks? Better put away the old online display ads if you're seeking to grab the attention of Gen Y's on social networks. A new study by the Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University shows traditional banner ads to be ineffective to young adults aged 18-24.

Researchers asked a group of Gen Y's if they notice ads at all when navigating through a social community, and if they approve of them. While 84% said they notice ads on social networks, only 19% said they find them "relevant."

Researchers also found that 74% of the young consumers in the study click on social network ads "infrequently," and 36% don't click on the ads at all.

There were a few signs of hope in the results --
62% of the respondents said they have "visited a brand or fan page on a social network" and 48% said they have "become a fan or friend of the company or organization" showcased on a brand or fan page.

The top three reasons respondents cited for joining a brand or fan group were: get product updates ( 67%), view promotions (64%) and view or download music videos (41%).

Read full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=29703

Are You Helping Your Clients 'Work the Room?'

...or are you just selling them advertising?

Nationwide Is All A Twitter

Meet Shawn Morton.
He's the Senior Consultant for Social Media at Nationwide Insurance.

Nationwide Insurance hired a full-time guy to oversee their social media. That's huuuuge. Shawn's job (according to his linkedin.com profile) is "establishing the enterprise social media strategy and advocating social media within the organization." (Watch your back Shawn. I want that job.)

Shawn recently held a Twitter 101 seminar for his Nationwide associates and was kind enough to post his slides on a (what else?) social website dedicated to sharing presentations.

Twitter 101

View more presentations from Shawn Morton. (tags: socialmedia twitter)

Slide 12 should be of special interest to any of you with 'boring old insurance accounts who cut all their advertising budgets this year...' It's a screen filled with some logos of corporate entities who are using Twitter. Among them: State Farm Insurance, Allstate, and of course Nationwide.

For any of you who've wondered why I send links to companies and articles and examples of businesses who are embracing new media as an option to traditional advertising -- THIS is the reason. Because, although they've reduced their spending on traditional media advertising, they are embracing and investing time AND MONEY into developing their social media efforts.

Become an expert in social media and apply the concepts of effective marketing principles to this new way of communicating to your audience and YOU will be the expert to whom they turn when they decide to reallocate advertising dollars to social media dollars. YOU can be the social media expert who gets rewarded for helping these companies strike up a dialogue with the audience that already loves YOUR brand and communicates through YOUR traditional media and social media tools.

Dismantling Trusted Marketing Strategies

Great post from Brian Massey at the Society for Word of Mouth Marketing.

Your Wake-Up Call...

• TV is not an effective way to communicate, video is.
• Radio is not an effective way to communicate, the human voice is.
• Print is not an effective way to communicate, words and images are.
• Web sites are not an effective way to communicate, solving problems is.

Do Ads Work?

A great post to kick-off the new year for anyone buying (or selling!) advertising. Forward this post to your favorite media salesperson or buyer.

Do ads work?
by Seth Godin

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?
Most rational people would say, "I'll take them all please." Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?
If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don't work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you're not sure, that ads are risky, that you can't tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you'll get no argument from me.

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

When Amazon was at its key growth peak, the mantra there was $33. They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each. There was a risk that $33 was too high a number for the business to sustain, but the ads were no risk at all. As long as they came in under that number, there was unlimited money to buy them.
How often do year the marketing person say, "that's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"?

Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...

$1 Billion in Sales. No Advertising Required.

Good article from AdWeek covering some of the reasons why Zappo's didn't need traditional advertising to create a company with $1 Billion (with a "B") dollars a year in sales.

Some insight from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh...
"One of our core values is being open and honest. It ends up creating more trust with our customers... It's the opposite of what most businesses do."

"One disgruntled or happy employee can write something on a blog and have that read by millions. It's the same thing with a customer. Our belief is a company's culture and brand are two sides of the same coin. You can't control every touch point like you could 50 years ago."

"About 75 percent of our orders are from repeat customers. We've grown from zero to $1 billion in gross sales in 9.5 years. The No. 1 driver has been from repeat customers and word of mouth. It lets us to spend less on customer acquisition."

"There will be less reliance on advertising for a long-term, enduring brand. Word of mouth is so effective right now."

"If you go to twitter.zappos.com, you'll see all the employee Tweets. We have lots of stories of employees meeting up with each other outside of work because of Twitter. With customers we find it's good for building a more personal, emotional connection with them."

"With most Web sites, it's hard to find any contact information. We put our 1-800 number at the top of every Web page because we want to talk to our customers. It's our best branding opportunity. We have 5-10 minutes of our customer's attention where we can let our true personality shine and develop that personal connection."

The scary part?
Zappos just started a consulting group specifically created to teach other companies their method of growing business using their (proven!) non-traditional means.

The takeaway?
It's more important than ever to be perceived as a marketing and promotions expert/consultant/resource rather than a plain old media salesperson.

Facebook is free.
Twitter is free.
Domain names are less than $10 each.
Site hosting can be had for $5/month.
YouTube hosts videos for free and a myriad of sites offer podcasting and blogging options at no cost. (And we all know traditional media costs are falling like a rock.)

Your value comes from having a sound strategy to grow profits and build business for your client.

Everyone has access to the same tools.
It's what you do with them that counts.

Traditional Media Drives Interactive Usage

Survey Uncovers Drivers of Digital Influence and Reveals How Information is Shared Online
A new research study gleaned from a field of nearly 1,000 digital influencers demonstrates traditional and online media are both important sources when it comes to sharing news. The study by IM MS&L finds that traditional media play a vital role in igniting the process that leads influencers to share information online and via word of mouth.

Eight in ten influencers often go online to find out more after:

• Reading something in a magazine or newspaper (84%)
• Hearing something on TV or the Radio (84%)

"This research supports the need for influencer marketing campaigns to leverage both traditional and online tools to connect with consumers."
~ Renee Wilson
Deputy MD of MS&L New York
Director of the agency's IM MS&L practice.


Source: MSL News Release, 11/16/08.
Full release:
http://www.mslworldwide.com/in-the-news/press-releases/traditional-media-sparks-word-of-mouth

Godin Delivers the Goods

Video recording of a live seminar with Seth Godin.
Well worth the investment of an hour to view.
Pass this opportunity up at your own risk!

If You MUST Use Banners...

...at least try and use them more effectively.

In his article "The X Factor: Why banners fail" Sean X. Cummings shares some valid theories on why our sidebar 160x600 ads get better click-through rates than the 728x90 located at the top of the page.

From the article:

One of the greatest failings of the banner format is that it is peripheral to the content and not interruptive.

We all evolved as predators. Why is that relevant? Predators evolved with peripheral vision that picks up movement better than what's right in front of you. Their peripheral vision picks up ticks in movement and changes in speed better than smooth, clean movement.

Ah, now you're starting to get it --
Have.
The.
Banner…….[pause]
React.
[pause]
[pause]
[pause] Move. [pounce] Like it's stalking prey.

The consumer's eye will instinctively glance to see what it is. Don't be impressed with your smooth, animated banner approved in isolation of the consumer. It looks nicer but will not achieve your main objective: the attention of the consumer.

The technique won't work for every business or every campaign. Sean adds "It's a very effective strategy depending on your business model. An impression does not mean that the consumer ever saw the ad, it just means that the ad server delivered the 'opportunity' to see an ad. Aim for peripheral focus in your ad creation and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns."

He ends the article with line -- which is valuable advise no matter which media you're using. "Don't create ads that annoy us."

How/Why Consumers Share Info

ShareThis.com has just completed an extensive study on sharing with Forrester Research. Forrester and ShareThis, teamed up to find out what and how people are sharing information online with one another. The study, which will be released next week, provides some interesting statistics around how people share online information --

• 69% of adults cite email as the primary source of sharing information
• Less than 1/3 of online adults said they learned about the new content from shared content sources such as YouTube, a wiki, or social networking sites
• 84% of people still use the traditional cut and paste method to share a URL or information
• 81% of adults claim that they share to help others -- believing a person will benefit from the information they share
• Sharing increases site traffic 2x, thus increasing ad dollars or revenue for publishers
• Men are more likely to share recommendations and videos than women; 77% of adult males and 74% of younger males shared news and web links
• Women are more likely to share products or ideas they like via easy or direct sharing methods (ie texting.)

You can read the full press release here.

Brilliant Billboards Could Be Leaderboards

Here's a great example of an outdoor campaign that could easily be translated into an online campaign using our 728x90 Leaderboard banners.

Click here for the full campaign series of billboards.

Even more interesting than the campaign itself is the backstory of how it all came together and was actually executed. Click here for the full story.

Which of your clients might benefit from the creation of a compelling storyline...
Missed romance at a traffic light with that cute guy driving a TOYOTA?
A long-lost friend spotted in the aisles at KROGER?
What other variations can you create?

Got Opt-Ins? ..Now What??

So, your client ran a promotion with you that contained some sort of sign-up form which offered an "opt-in" -- a mechanism used to allow our audience to signal their interest in receiving additional information from the Advertiser. The individuals who choose to opt-in can then be used to develop permission-based marketing programs by our clients.

The very WORST thing an Advertiser can do is to let these most-qualified and most-interested leads (they responded to the Advertiser's message AND gave them permission to be contacted!) is to let them fade away unused. You wouldn't hang up the phone on someone who called your office and said they wanted to buy something, would you? The more time that passes between a person opting-in to a list and actually being contacted increases the likelyhood they will have forgotten theay actually signed up for the list in the first place and will either immediately opt-out of the first message they receive -- or worse yet -- report the message as SPAM, which can get the Advertiser immediately blacklisted by many email services (like gmail, yahoo, and aol.)

Here is some excellent advice from Kevin Sinclair at How-To B2B Articles on what your client can do to effectively build relationships with their new opt-in audience.

Tip of the Week
Want to cut word count and boost readership in one step? Showcase a Tip of the Week. You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters (you need to come up with 24 tips, which you will present weekly.)

Checklists
A good checklist is like a step-by-step how-to. Turn a lengthy advice column into one. Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one.

Before-and-After
Who doesn't like makeovers? This is a great way to interact with clients. Invite them to send in details of whatever needs a makeover: an article, a website page, their wardrobe, then present brief solutions -- or ask for examples of their own in-house makeovers.

Source: How-To B2Barticles. Read the full article here.

Goodbye Yellow Pages?

Borrell Research predicts 39% of yellow page revenues will vanish as local advertisers shift spending to the internet.

This doesn't mean one less competitor for your Radio dollars!

Other Borrell findings report there are now more than 34,000 local sales reps peddling online products -- more than for any other medium. The chart at right shows that 84% of these reps are being fielded by newspaper and yellow pages companies, all cross-training sales reps to rush toward their most-promising growth opportunity. To date, and in the foreseeable future, directory companies have fared better than any other legacy media at this strategy, garnering about 14% of their total gross revenues from online sales.

Their report also details how online video commercials have emerged as the fastest-growing online ad format for small businesses. By 2012, they expect streaming video advertising to surpass all other formats, including banners and paid search. The report includes local online spending estimates for search advertising and streaming video for 210 markets.

Download a free executive summary of the report by clicking here.

My advice is to continue focusing on the task of finding a real customer need -- the one that goes beyond driving traffic, selling more ('whatevers'), and branding/awareness. Find the customer's pain and create a custom marketing strategy that integrates Radio and Web to provide both audience reach and message trackability in order to take their pain away. Solve the real problem and you'll have a customer for life.