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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Biggest brands: Top 100 online advertisers 2010

Posted Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Marketing, May 2010

While the recession cut a swathe through above-the-line media channels, digital marketing grasped the opportunity to prove itself, writes Adam Woods.

As many advertisers were forced to cut back last year, so media owners probably comforted themselves with the thought that no part of the industry was immune to the effects of the UK‘s deepest recession since the 30s.

However, the latest research shows that digital media have, to some degree, managed to ride the storm. According to Nielsen, overall internet adspend rose from £461.4bn in 2008 to £506.3bn in 2009 – a 9.7% year-on-year increase. While half of the UK’s top 100 online advertisers cut their media spend in 2009, more than 80% of them increased their internet investment; many of them attracted by the prospect of solid ROI at a time when they were striving to cut marketing costs.

Advertising budgets overall have been slashed, but nonetheless advertisers want measurable returns,’ says Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). ‘They have had to use the budgets they do have really wisely and have learned more in the process.’

Whether the downturn has acted as a catalyst in this process is a moot point, but many industry figures believe that internet advertising has started to come of age in the past two years.

‘There’s obviously a macroeconomic picture of a move to digital from traditional channels over the last few years, and I think the recession has only sharpened that,’ says Chris Clarke, chief creative officer at digital agency LBi.

Ironically, the increasing refinement of brands‘ online marketing abilities, allied to a general trend of online price deflation, has helped to take some of the edge off the growth of spending on digital (here excluding search, but including social media, affiliate marketing, mobile and online display in general).

Overall, financial services was the biggest-spending sector on internet advertising, though many of the biggest individual online advertisers were in the telecoms and media/entertainment sectors.

O2, Hutchison 3G, which owns 3, and merger candidates T-Mobile and Orange all increased their investment in web- based marketing. In the number-one spot, O2 remained by far the country’s biggest single online advertiser, allocating £15.2m, or almost 27% of its total media spend, to this platform.

O2 senior marketing manager Neill Garfield identifies social networking and the mobile internet as key emerging channels. Nonetheless, he refutes the suggestion that spend has been shifted wholesale out of traditional media and into online.

‘Often, it’s the reverse,’ he says. ‘Online channels are now at relative saturation, so we are investing in offline channels that stimulate online demand.’

The COI, the UK’s biggest advertiser last year, was also the second-biggest internet advertiser, boosting its internet spend by 45% to £10.4m. Nonetheless, its digital budget still accounted for less than 5% of its £218.3m overall media bill.

Some of the more dramatic changes at the top of the list include the doubling of internet spend at Virgin Media, Hutchison 3G and Moneysupermarket.com. However, Capital One provides the most notable example of a strategic shift among the top 20 advertisers.

The US credit card company was in the headlines in March when it scrapped its UK offline direct marketing programme and moved a proportion of the money saved into online communications. This was reflected in a 53.6% increase in Capital One’s internet spend to £2.9m, meaning this channel accounted for 99.98% of all its media spend, which fell as a whole by more than 65%.

More for less

Regardless of the effects of the recession, there appears to be a growing belief among brands that increasing adspend does not guarantee marketing success. By its own reckoning, Moneysupermarket.com, the 10th-placed online advertiser in the list, spent 22% less on its marketing last year, including search, but was still able to attract 14% more customers.

‘For us, it has become less about how much you spend and more about what you say and how you say it,’ says Ian Williams, the brand’s director of communications.

In a handful of sectors there was a sharp reduction in internet adspend. While they continue to make extensive use of the channel, media/entertainment brands collectively cut their budgets for online marketing by almost 16%.

Other sectors where big falls occurred include retail, which spent 42.3% less, and the property and pharmaceutical sectors, which made reductions of 45.5% and 55.2% respectively. However, while property and pharmaceuticals cut their marketing across the board last year, retailers raised their budgets overall; this suggests that online price deflation has enabled advertisers in this sector to make significant savings.

The figures compiled by Nielsen do not include a breakdown of information on the separate online advertising platforms. Nonetheless, some upward trends across digital marketing can be easily identified.

For example, mobile internet use is growing rapidly, as smartphone handsets offer users a greatly enhanced online experience on the move. The mobile advertising market is still relatively small, but is beginning to generate fresh revenues and helping to cannibalise those of other sectors.

‘Mobile internet is here to stay,’ says Garfield. ‘Inevitably, that will eat into media consumption in other channels, mostly from print. As transactional capabilities improve in mobile, this may even affect consumer retail and internet retailing.’

Big advertisers whose internet commitment remained relatively small in 2009 included Procter & Gamble and Unilever, each of which assigned 1.4% of their overall media budgets online.

However, they also committed more than in the previous year, and the expected ongoing rise of social media and mobile look set to extend major FMCG players’

‘The growth of mobile and maturing of the social web as an advertising opportunity have underpinned a growth in digital spend from the more reticent sectors,’ says Rhys Williams, managing partner at digital agency Agenda21.

As relatively recent additions to the online advertising portfolio, mobile, pre-roll video and social media are still in their initial growth phases, and are therefore likely to make an even bigger contribution in 2010, particularly as their interplay with offline media is explored.

According to IAB figures, online was the only media channel to grow during the first half of last year. TV and press adspend may have been squeezed, but the notion that digital and traditional forms of advertising operate in isolation from one another has been questioned recently.

Advertisers understand the combination of opportunities online and how they fit with traditional media,’ says the IAB’s Phillipson. ‘They are thinking of digital as the platform that runs through that entire media schedule.’

Sir Martin Sorrell has suggested that the picture presented by next year’s equivalent figures could be very different from this one. The growth in digital marketing is unlikely to stop as the economy continues to recover. Smart marketers will continue to invest their budgets where they can achieve the biggest returns and if innovation in digital continues, the industry will continue to thrive.

Price deflation: the ups and downs

While most of the brand-owners in the list spent more online in 2009 than they did in 2008, price deflation means this is not simply a case of online up, offline down.

Mainstream print and broadcast channels are turning over less than recently, but falling rates may mean brands are using them as much as, or more than they were.

‘A lot of our clients want to move away from broadcast and narrowcast, but they still spend healthily on TV – it is just that it has got cheaper in the last couple of years,’ says Chris Clarke, chief creative officer at digital agency LBi.

Similarly, a surplus of inventory means online rates have fallen, explaining apparent cutbacks made by the 19 advertisers in the top 100 that reduced their digital budgets. Most of these made cuts across the board, but Tesco, Hewlett Packard and Thomson spent less on digital while growing their wider media budgets.

‘Everyone is getting more bang for their buck,’ says Rhys Williams, managing partner at digital agency Agenda21. ‘The average cost per thousand online has gone down and I can’t see it going back up. It means advertisers don’t have to spend as much to get the same sort of impact.’

Coming up

Sainsbury’s just failed to enter the UK’s Top 100 online advertisers table despite increasing its internet marketing spend by 297% to £771,000. Fiat also bolstered its online advertising budget in spite of the recession with a 230% year-on-year increase to £702,000. Kraft grew its spend by 120% putting it in 104th position.

Going down

American Express slashed its online marketing spend by 43% year on year to £1.2m. British Airways also slashed its budget by 8.9% year on year placing the airline at 59th in the table. Holiday operator Thomson slashed its budget by 66% year on year to £992,000.

Methodology

Nielsen has improved the methodology used to work out the top 100 online advertisers for 2009. The new data is based on a Netview panel. Each panellist is given a meter and every time they view an ad online, it counts as one impression which is projected nationally. Previous surveys used a combination of figures from ABCe and declared information from the sites themselves. This tended to lead to inflated spend data. The new system creates a more robust methodology and removes the inflation factor. However, it means there is as yet limited comparative data with the previous year.

The figures are for display advertising and all figures are estimated costs based on a number of factors including rate card and industry discount factors. Details of the full methodology are available from Nielsen.


Tories lead rivals in ad effectiveness stakes

Posted Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

BrandRepublic, 27-Apr-10, 08:52

The Conservative Party has achieved a higher level of consumer awareness of its marketing efforts than any of its political rivals, according to an exclusive Marketing poll.

When asked which party’s marketing they had seen most, 48% of the 2000 people surveyed identified the Tories. The party’s success in this area may be related to its £18m advertising war chest – the maximum allowed under election expenditure rules. It is a figure the other main parties have been unable to match.

The survey, carried out for Marketing in partnership with online market-research firm Toluna, found that 26% of respondents cited Labour‘s marketing as the most-seen. The  figure for the Liberal Democrats was just 18%.

Since the start of the year the Conservatives have run a series of high-profile outdoor ads, although one execution relating to the NHS was widely lampooned online amid speculation that the picture of party leader David Cameron had been airbrushed.

Almost a third of respondents (31%) said the marketing they had seen had inf­luenced the way they intended to vote, while more than seven out of 10 (72%) said they had seen general-election marketing over the past month.

The survey also found that marketing held more sway than the leaders’ debates. When asked whether the debates had a greater influence on their voting intentions than marketing, 47% of people said they did not, compared with 35% who said they did.


10 Branding and Marketing Trends for 2010

Posted Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Niels Bohr once noted that “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future,” but then he didn’t have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.

BrandingStrategy, October 01 2009

Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success – or failure – of next year’s branding and marketing efforts.

1) Value is the new black

Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This spells trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

2) Brands increasingly a surrogate for “value”

What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what’s wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for. Why J Crew instead of The Gap? J Crew stands for a new era in careful chic –being smart and stylish. The first family’s support of the brand doesn’t hurt either.

3) Brand differentiation is Brand Value

The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to plague the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, and differentiation will be critical for success –meaning sales and profitability.

4) “Because I Said So” is so over

Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can’t just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.

5) Consumer expectations are growing

Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations now. Every day consumers adopt and devour the latest technologies and innovations, and hunger for more. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive – and prosper.

6) Old tricks don’t work/won’t work anymore

In case your brand didn’t get the memo here it is -consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim “we’re all in this together” when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies. The same is true for insincere celebrity pairings: think Seinfeld & Microsoft or Tiger Woods & Buick. Celebrity values and brand values need to be in concert, like Tiger Woods & Accenture. That’s authenticity.

7) They won’t need to know you to love you

As the buying space becomes even more online-driven and international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right street cred can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation. After all, everybody knows GM, but nobody’s buying their cars.

8) It’s not just buzz

Conversation and community is all; ebay thrives based on consumer feedback. If consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. Not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care.

9) They’re talking to each other before talking to the brand

Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook Connect to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money on the Internet than those who don’t tweet.

10) Engagement is not a fad; It’s the way today’s consumers do business

Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods including Platform (TV; online), Context (Program; webpage), Message (Ad or Communication), and Experience (Store/Event). But there is only one objective for the future: Brand Engagement. Marketers will continue to realize that attaining real brand engagement is impossible using out-dated attitudinal models.

Accommodating these trends will require a paradigm change on the parts of some companies. But whether a brand does something about it or not, the future is where it’s going to spend the rest of its life. How long that life lasts is up to the brand, determined by how it responds to today’s reality.


How Startups are Using Social Media for Real Results

Posted Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

For startups, the amount of money you have to burn before you either need to break even or raise more capital is your runway. Extending the length of that runway is an art form that requires startup founders to learn how to squeeze maximum value out of every dollar they spend. Social media is one important way that startups are saving money while still delivering value.

Whether being used for customer service, community building, product marketing, or internally for staying organized and communicating as a team, one common thread can be found through the social media use of every startup we talked to: Cost savings.

“We have no outside investment. That means we’re bootstrapping right now,” said Jack Benoff, Director of Marketing at Zugara, which last year went back into “startup mode” to create their own augmented reality software. “Social media has given startups the ability to market themselves in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. Sure, it takes a commitment (in time), but the hard costs are minimal. It allows us to focus our financial resources on production, research and development, and sales, which is huge for us.”

Here are four ways that startups are using social media for real results.

1. Customer Service

One of the most useful ways that startups are employing social media is for customer service. “On the customer service side, beamME gets tremendous value out of social media. These days, people expect to be able to post issues with companies directly to Twitter and obtain a real-time response. This instantaneous access to our customers is invaluable,” said Gabe Zichermann, CEO of beamME, a maker of mobile networking tools.

According to Zichermann, one of the most useful tools they’ve used to manage their customer-focused social media efforts is Hootsuite, which has cut the amount of time necessary to look after their Twitter and Facebook accounts tremendously by allowing them to be used at the same time. “HootSuite is particularly effective and cuts down our time/cost requirements,” said Zichermann, who still advises getting someone, at least part-time, to help manage the flow of social media use and plan things out as far into the future as possible. “[That] will reduce the repetitive workload and make campaigns run faster.”

Phonebooth.com, which sells PBX services to small businesses, has had a similar experience using Twitter for customer relations. Said Todd Barr, Vice President of Marketing at Phonebooth:

Twitter has become the launching point for many of our internal processes. We have multiple examples of responding to an issue on Twitter within a couple of minutes and being on the phone with them within ten minutes. A tweet actually starts an internal process where we pull in the appropriate parties, get our information together, and reach out to the customer.

All of our other social media usages are extremely important, but Twitter is actually helping to create a culture change. We’re able to quickly assemble the correct folks to improve life for the customer. Internally, this begins to shed light on the power of social media and the team of folks who want to be involved is gradually expanding.”

Barr told us that Phonebooth has solved over 20 customer support issues using Twitter and has also created a “vibrant product feedback loop, with good user participation.”

2. Building Community

Barr and Phonebooth also utilize social media for building a community of customer evangelists. “With the launch of Phonebooth Free, we heavily relied on our social media efforts to rapidly build a community and are providing support, invites, encouragement and general engagement through Twitter. Social media also impacted our decision to launch Phonebooth Free at SXSW,” said Barr. “We believe that it is important to focus on where our customers are and not where our industry is. This is a very important distinction in our minds.”

Zugara also uses social media to create community and build awareness. Both the company’s Twitter account and Facebook page are used to actively engage people, Benoff told us. “We also use Twitter to attempt to organicly build relationships with our industry’s key influencers,” said Benoff, who reached out to Mashable over Twitter for this post.

Building relationship and fostering community are commonly talked about uses for social media, but one of the most often overlooked aspects of social media is building relationship offline. It is important for startups to take online networking to the next level and go out and talk to customers in person at tweetups and conferences.

“There were at least ten social media people that were critical to our success at SXSW that we had met in person before or planned to meet in Austin. Many of those connections even helped funnel people to our booth and evangelize Phonebooth,” said Barr.

3. Product Marketing

Using social media for marketing is another cost-saving no-brainer for startups. Social media tools like YouTube, SlideShare, and Ustream have helped Zugara save money and increase new business opportunities, said Benoff. Much of Zugara’s social media use is centered around thought leadership and allowing journalists and potential customers to have immediate and easy access to information about their products and industry.

Social media marketing tactics also figured into the launch plans for Phonebooth Free. “Social media levels the playing field. It has never been easier to be more in touch with your customers or market than it is now,” said Phonebooth’s Barr, who used social media to lay the groundwork for the Phonebooth Free product. “Traditional marketing promotes messages to unwitting audiences –- our marketing seeks to draw in interested people who want to hear from us with compelling content, products and conversations.”

As a result, Phonebooth Free “blew away” launch goals, according to Barr, in large part because “our [social media] messages were amplified by a strong group of followers.”

However, startups using social media for marketing need to be in it for the long haul, cautioned Benoff. “If you are going to use social media to market yourself think of it as a commitment, or strategy, not a campaign. You can’t start a conversation with someone (in the real world) and then walk away. The same applies here.”

Every startup we talked to counseled on the value of being authentic. “Be honest. Be respectful. Be responsive. Be transparent. Sell infrequently,” said Benoff.

“Keep it real: Don’t try to be someone you’re not; don’t cover up issues/problems –- instead, address them head-on and transparently; follow-up with people (do what you say you are going to do),” was Barr’s advice.

“Concentrate on the value you’re providing for others through these tools,” said Dmitry Dragilev, Marketing Lead at ZURB. “The tools are just another communication medium. What value are you providing for them through SM? Try to imagine yourself in their shoes –- would you be interested? Imagine you’re standing with strangers in an airport -– what would you say to them to get their attention and get them excited about what you’re doing?”

4. Staying Organized

Finally, startups are also using social media with great success internally as a way for employees to stay organized and more connected with each other. At interaction design firm ZURB, they’ve actually built two social media tools, Notable and Verify (in invite-only beta), to help streamline their internal workflow. Though they now sell it as a “software as a service app,” their flagship product Notable, an application that organizes and manages design feedback, is actually used internally at ZURB.

“The homepage of Notable was actually designed with the help of Notable,” said Dragilev. “We took the capture of it, iterated through feedback with the team, then closed it down and implemented it.”

The team also uses Harvest (time tracking) and Highrise (CRM) to keep track of complex consulting hours and people at the more than 75 companies they have worked with. “Social media has provided another channel for teams to streamline their internal workflows,” according to Dragilev.

Online gadget community gdgtuses a number of social media and web-based applications to create a virtual office environment for its employees that increases communication and collaboration. Company founder Peter Rojas explained how gdgt uses social media tools internally:

“We don’t have an office (at least not yet!), so being able to collaborate together online is essential. We use Campfire as our primary chat room, Skype when we’re rolling out new features and need really close collaboration or have a conference call, Google Docs for documenting anything and everything, Dropbox for sharing files, and Yammer as sort of a looser way to chat and share links.”

By relying on web-based tools and not needing to have an office, said Rojas, the company is able to save a significant amount of money and been able to better communicate with each other. “I think it’s made it easier to be decentralized and run very horizontal organizations with a minimum of micromanagement,” said Rojas.

One thing to remember when putting social media in place internally, according to Rojas, is to test applications and find the ones that work for your startup. “I’d recommend trying out different [apps] until you find one that’s the right fit for your organization. The tools need to fit with the team rather than the other way around,” he said.


How Ford Got Social Marketing Right

Posted Friday, March 12th, 2010

The automaker successfully re-entered the subcompact car market via the Fiesta Movement and YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter

Businessweek, 7 January 2010

Ford recently wrapped the first chapter of its Fiesta Movement, leaving us distinctly wiser about marketing in the digital space.

Ford gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. And away they went. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, “agents” used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

The campaign was an important moment for Ford. It wanted in to the small car market, and it hadn’t sold a subcompact car in the United States since it discontinued the Aspire in 1997. And it was an important moment for marketing. The Fiesta Movement promised to be the most visible, formative social media experiment for the automotive world. Get this right and Detroit marketing would never be the same.

I had the good fortune to interview Bud Caddell the other day and he helped me see the inner workings of the Fiesta Movement. Bud works at Undercurrent, the digital strategy firm responsible for the campaign.

Under the direction of Jim Farly, Group VP at Ford and Connie Fontaine, manager of brand content there, Undercurrent decided to depart from the viral marketing rule book. Bud told me they were not interested in the classic early adopters, the people who act as influencers for the rest of us. Undercurrent wanted to make contact with a very specific group of people, a passionate group of culture creators.

Bud said, The idea was: let’s go find twenty-something YouTube storytellers who’ve learned how to earn a fan community of their own. [People] who can craft a true narrative inside video, and let’s go talk to them. And let’s put them inside situations that they don’t get to normally experience/document. Let’s add value back to their life.

They’re always looking, they’re always hungry, they’re always looking for more content to create. I think this gets things exactly right. Undercurrent grasped the underlying motive (and the real economy) at work in the digital space. People are not just telling stories for the sake of telling stories, though certainly, these stories have their own rewards. They were making narratives that would create economic value. The digital space is an economy after all. People are creating, exchanging and capturing value, as they would in any marketplace. But this is a gift economy, where the transactions are shot through with cultural content and creation. In a gift economy, value tends to move not in little “tit for tat” transactions, but in long loops, moving between consumers before returning, augmented, to the corporation. In this case, adventures inspired by Undercurrent and Ford return as meaning for the brand and value for the corporation. Undercurrent was reaching out to consumers not just to pitch them, but to ask them to help pitch the product. And the pitch was not merely a matter of “buzz.” Undercurrent wanted consumers to help charge the Fiesta with glamor, excitement, and oddity — to complete the “meaning manufacture” normally conducted only by the agency.

This would be the usual “viral marketing” if all the consumer was called upon to do was to talk up Fiesta. But Undercurrent was proposing a richer bargain, enabling and incenting “agents” to create content for their own sakes, to feed their own networks, to build their own profiles…and in the process to contribute to the project of augmenting Fiesta‘s brand.

Fiesta‘s campaign worked because it was founded on fair trade. Both the brand and the agent were giving and getting. And this shows us a way out of the accusations that now preoccupy some discussions of social media marketing. With their gift economy approach, Ford and Undercurrent found a way to transcend all the fretting about “what bright, shining object can we invent to get the kids involved?” and, from the other side, all that “oh, there he goes again, it’s the Man ripping off digital innocents.” It’s a happier, more productive, more symmetrical, relationship than these anxieties imply. Hat’s off to Farley and Fontaine.

The effects of the campaign were sensational. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign. There is an awful lot of aimless experiment in the digital space these days. A lot of people who appear not to have a clue are selling digital marketing advice. I think the Fiesta Movement gives us new clarity. It’s a three-step process.

• Engage culturally creative consumers to create content.
• Encourage them to distribute this content on social networks and digital markets in the form of a digital currency.
• Craft this is a way that it rebounds to the credit of the brand, turning digital currency (and narrative meaning) into a value for the brand.

In effect, outsource some of our marketing work. And in the process, turn the brand itself into an “agent” and an enabler of cultural production that is interesting and fun. Now the marketer is working with contemporary culture instead of against it. And everyone is well-served.


5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010

Posted Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes.

online marketing, Jan 8 2010

1. SEO:
I resolve to focus more on maximizing visits and conversions from organic searches. With SEO efforts, it’s easy to get caught up in one goal: getting found via the search engines. But ranking in the search results is only half the story. If potential customers aren’t clicking through to your web page – or other piece of digital content – the ranking doesn’t mean much. Plus, due to variances in what each of us sees in the search results for the same query, rankings as metric are no longer as useful. Personalized search results according to location and web history means your site might rank high for one person, but not another.

Maximize the success of your online marketing efforts by analyzing your metrics report to determine which pieces of digital content are highly visible but producing less than ideal traffic results. Then take some time to ask yourself these questions:

What competitive search results are your potential customers seeing? Assess the title tags and meta descriptions of competitive search results. Are competitors offering customers a free case study or a complimentary product sample? Then consider ways to make your own title tags and meta descriptions out-entice the competition.
Does your content live up to the promise put forth in your title tags and meta descriptions? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: When you first visit your web page or other digital content from an organic search, is the content you find relevant? Potential customers don’t want surprises; they want a solution to the problem that caused them to search in the first place. And they want it as promised.
Not only will searchers respond more favorably to customer optimized titles and meta descriptions, but the increase in clickthroughs will, no doubt, be noticed by search engines and may influence subsequent rankings.

2. Social Media:
I resolve to set goals and track the results of my social media efforts.
There’s no denying that social media is more difficult to justify in terms of ROI compared to other online marketing strategies.  But that’s not to say it’s impossible – or that tracking results should be placed on the back burner. And without goals, it’s pretty difficult to measure success. In 2010, put forth even more effort to set goals for social media participation and tie results back to specific tactics.

There are a host of free or near-free tools available to gauge brand mentions and traffic from social media channels.

Tracking results via social media monitoring tools is just a start. Those results must be tied back to business goals. Potential goals might be:

Develop better customer relationships
Reputation management
Identify and energize brand evangelists
Increase brand awareness
Increase relevant visitor traffic
Improve standard and social search engine visibility
Build up a list for email marketing
Increase leads or sales
Without setting specific goals upfront, social media efforts can’t be definitively quantified so be sure to implement a Social Media Roadmap and all or social bases will be covered.

3. Email Marketing:
I resolve to integrate my email marketing with other online marketing channels. Regardless of what the naysayers may say, email marketing isn’t going to disappear as a result of social media in 2010. In fact, email will continue to play a significant role in most online marketing mixes this year. A study from Silverpop found nearly half of marketers surveyed plan to increase email marketing budgets in 2010.

That’s not to say email marketing efforts shouldn’t evolve with the times. Integrating email with social media is on par to be a popular resolution for 2010: A recent eMarketer report found 40% of executives surveyed willmake integrating the two tactics their top marketing initiative this year. Another 25% of respondents have already implemented an integrated strategy.

Pledge to take email marketing to the next level by encouraging email subscribers to not only forward content via email, but also to get social with email and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other sites. Conversely, conduct a poll on Twitter or your blog, and encourage followers and readers to subscribe to your e-newsletter for the results.

4. PPC:
I resolve to maximize conversion rates by testing different versions of my ads and landing pages. Most companies using self-serve pay per click programs fall victim to “set it and forget it” habits. They’re busy with numerous other marketing activities or don’t have the time to really get to know the native bid management platforms and test/refine campaigns. Even if PPC efforts are reaching set goals in terms of conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. You’ll never know until you try.

Consider these three ideas for testing different elements of your PPC campaigns:

Test multiple ad versions that highlight different benefits of your product, service or company. For example, one could tout cost-savings benefits, while another emphasizes a convenience aspect.
Use A/B testing to try out two different headlines on your landing page. Again, each could speak to a different benefit (i.e., cost savings vs. convenience). Google Optimizer is a great tool for this.
If you’re targeting a competitive search term with many competing ads, consider launching two different campaigns simultaneously. Each could offer a distinct piece of fulfillment – a free case study and a product coupon, for example.
A few tools for testing include:

A/B Testing resources: (Google Website Optimizer, 7 Free Resources)
Multivariate Testing service: (Omniture)
Heatmap & User Testing tools: (CrazyEgg, Clickdensity, Clicktale, userfly andEyetools)

5. Mobile:
I resolve to rethink my website design for mobile users.
If your site isn’t already optimized for handheld devices such as cell phones, now is the perfect time to re-assess your site design and how users find your site through mobile search – particularly for B2C companies.

In October, ABI Research forecast that mobile sales of physical goods in North America would reach $750 million by the end of 2009, a 117% annual growth rate. Consumers are doing a lot more than purchasing downloadable cell phone ringtones and games from their mobile devices. These days, clothing, electronics, books and a host of other items are being purchased through mobile commerce. Additionally, social network participation through services like foursquare, Facebook and Twitter are growing dramatically, creating additional opportunities for promotion and traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.

When optimizing web pages for the mobile web, consider a few tips:

Keep fonts in their most basic format
Eliminate advertising to conserve screen space
Take out images unless they are absolutely necessary
Remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary


Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right

Posted Friday, January 29th, 2010

Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.

Mashable, January 20th 2010

The company’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign.

Jay Baer, founder of the social media strategy company Convince & Convert, said brands are realizing they need to market for the long haul. “I do think it’s a good move for Pepsi. I don’t know if every brand can pull it off,” he said.

The Pepsi Refresh Project and the DEWmocracy campaigns are part of a crowdsourcing effort that’s part of the larger PepsiCo plan to more closely integrate consumers with the brand. “Driving consumer interest and engagement takes imagination and often a certain amount of reinvention, so it’s fair to say we’re rethinking everything we do from product development to marketing campaigns across our entire portfolio,” said Bart Casabona, a Mountain Dew spokesman.
A Closer Look at Mountain Dew’s Social Media Campaign

The first DEWmocracy campaign launched in 2007. This inaugural DEWmocracy effort let consumers choose Dew’s new flavor, color, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site. The winning new flavor, Voltage, hit store shelves in January 2009.

Brett O’Brien, Mountain Dew’s marketing director, said that for the first campaign a site was built for people to interact with, which made sense at that time.

Fast forward to July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign launched. The multi-stage effort tasks die-hard Mountain Dew fans to narrow seven sodas down to one final new flavor that will become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms 12seconds.tv, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in the process.

O’Brien said that with the explosion of social networking, they felt it was best to interact with people where they are.

 Flavor Nations Play a Large Role

The second iteration of the Mountain Dew campaign is fueled by the 4,000-strong DEW Labs crew, an online community of die-hard fans. The DEW Labs are divided up into three Flavor Nations for the three Mountain Dew soda finalists: Typhoon, WhiteOut and Distortion. Once the three flavors debut in April, the Flavor Nations must talk up their flavor and get people to vote for it to become the permanent new Mountain Dew soda. That one winning new permanent soda flavor will debut on Labor Day, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site.

O’Brien said the several stages involved are really part of the normal product innovation process. He said if they were going to be totally transparent the whole time in launching a new Mountain Dew flavor, they needed their customers to be there the whole time.

Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavor names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign.

Collaboration With Consumers

“What we’re calling it [is] collective intelligence,” O’Brien said. “It’s less about crowdsourcing, but more about collaboration.” PepsiCo looks at DEWmocracy, which has literally been driven by word of mouth, as a way of doing business rather than an ad campaign, he said, and the most important thing to recognize is the passion consumers feel for Mountain Dew is like nothing that’s out there.

According to O’Brien, PepsiCo looks at social media as the best way to get direct dialog with their fans and for the company to hear from those fans without filters. “It’s been great for us to have this really unique dialogue that we normally wouldn’t have,” he said. “It really has opened our eyes up.”

Convince & Convert’s Baer said the DEWmocracy campaign fits with Mountain Dew’s brand and customer profile. He said giving customers ownership of the brand is a fantastic idea.

“What they’re trading off is reach for depth and they’re trading short-term impact for long-term impact,” he said. Baer sees the process of brands asking customers to craft better products or services as a trend. He pointed out that companies aren’t just soliciting customer input, but they’re putting it into practice. And some business decisions are now based solely on customer feedback.

“To me, that’s tremendously exciting,” he said. “To me, that’s the social media story.”


How Social Media Has Changed Us

Posted Monday, January 11th, 2010

Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen social media galvanize thousands over politics, create as many industries as it has destroyed, and offer an abundance of visual and audio entertainment. But has all this incredible change actually changed us, or just the world we live in?

Mashable, 6th January 2010

Child Literacy

It stands to reason that children who read and write more are better at reading and writing. And writing blog posts, status updates, text messages, instant messages, and the like all motivate children to read and write. Last month, The National Literacy Trust released the results of a survey of over 3000 children. They observed a correlation between children’s engagement with social media and their literacy. Simply put, social media has helped children become more literate. Indeed, Eurostat recently published a report drawing a correlation between education and online activity, which found that online activity increased with the level of formal activity (socio-economic factors are, of course, potentially at play here as well).

Ambient Intimacy

Lisa Reichelt, a user experience consultant in London coined the very pleasant term “ambient intimacy.” It describes the way in which social media allows you to “… keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”

Consider the many communications technologies through history — the telephone, Morse code, semaphore, carrier pigeons, smoke signals — they are all fairly inconvenient and labor intensive. Lisa has hit on the idea that communication has become so convenient that it’s actually become ambient around us. It surrounds us wherever we want it, not necessarily when it wants us. We dip into it whenever we like.

Knowledge Was Power

From his Meditationes Sacrae, published in 1597, Francis Bacon was paraphrased as saying “knowledge is power.” Fundamentally, the more you understand about life, the more chance you have at success. But these days, Wikipedia (Wikipedia) and Google (Google) have democratized information to the point where anyone is able to acquire the knowledge they may want.

As a case in point, I had never even heard of Meditationes Sacrae until I looked up the term “knowledge is power” on Wikipedia. In Bacon’s time, the only people that had access to books and the literacy to unlock the wisdom within were the wealthy with the time and inclination to learn.

Of course, books weren’t the only source of knowledge. Consider blacksmiths, dressmakers, cobblers or sailors who passed their skills and techniques from mother to daughter, from father to son. Back then, the friction that held people back from learning was low literacy, a lack of access to books and very little time. Now, that friction is almost non-existent. That is because of both the ability of computers to replicate information for distribution, and the the way that Google, Wikipedia and blogs have empowered people to share what they know. Now, the only real friction that exists is our own desire for knowledge. It’s there for you — if you want it.

The Reinvention of Politics

A recent report by PEW found signs that social networks may be encouraging younger people to get involved in politics. You only need look at Twitter’s (Twitter) recent impact on the Iran elections, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and even the election of Barack Obama to see that more and more people are getting involved in politics and are feeling they can make a difference.

One of the most popular blogs on the web, The Huffington Post, is mainly political. Politics has a fast pace, and that lends itself well to social media. UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said in June last year that because of the Internet, “foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.” Twitter even postponed an upgrade because of the important role it was playing in the Iran (Iran ) elections.

These are all signs of both social media’s growing influence in politics, and the growing interest in politics from users of social media.

Marketing Flux

Marketing and advertising is transforming itself from an industry reliant on mass market channels to one which must embrace the power of the consumer and (attempt to) engage in conversations. The traditional approach of wide reach and repetitive messaging is now being replaced by many much smaller, niche and people-centric activities. Advertising isn’t dying, it’s merely changing form. We now have more power and more choice.

News as Cultural Currency

We’re no longer lazy consumers of passive messages. Instead we’re active participants. We now get news through the network we’ve created, and the news we pass to one another says something about us. It tells others what we’re interested in and what’s important to us. We used to call this gossip — and to a certain extent it still is — but unless you were a journalist at a local daily, the amplification that’s now possible through the likes of Twitter, Digg (Digg) or StumbledUpon hasn’t been experienced before.

Conclusion

Clearly there are skeptics. Susan Greenfield thinks that social networking is turning us into babies, shrinking our attention spans, our ability to empathize, and eroding our identity. She even suggests a correlation between the rise in prescriptions for drugs used to treat ADHD with an increase of time spent at computers. Similarly, Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster recently suggested that social networking causes increasingly “transient relationships,” is “dehumanising” community life and, as a consequence, we are “losing social skills.”

I think they couldn’t be further from the truth. Anyone with the slightest experience of using social media knows that it’s about being more social. We are more engaged with friends, we are more literate, more connected, more open to creating new relationships, and generally more interested in the world around us.


Coca-Cola Lays Out Its Vision for the Future at 2010 Meeting

Posted Friday, November 27th, 2009

AdAge.com, November 22 2009

Amid some 200 analysts, investors and media last week, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent made a confession.

“There was a period when our company did lose its way,” he said. “We were too internally focused and not focused enough on the changes taking place with our consumers and customers. In essence, we were too busy looking at the dashboard and were not sufficiently paying attention to the world outside of our windshield.”

We live in an ‘ADD economy,’ said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing and commercial officer, Coca-Cola, at a 2020Vision meeting last week. While Coca-Cola remains the dominant beverage company in the world, and controls nearly 51% of the global carbonated soft-drink business compared to Pepsi‘s 22%, according to Beverage Digest figures, it had, perhaps, been too focused on soft drinks at a time when other beverage categories were on the rise, said Bill Pecoriello, CEO at ConsumerEdge Research. “They were too inward thinking and missed a lot of trends that were happening,” he said. “There was a shift away from certain beverages and needs being filled by alternative beverages.”

Certainly, soft drinks remain a key focus for the company, but now it has also established dairy beverages as a global platform, with brands such as Vio and Minute Maid Pulpy Super Milky, and has set juice as its top priority after sparkling beverages. It’s also put more emphasis on innovation, with its venturing and emerging brands group, of which brands such as Zico, Honest Tea and Illy are a part.

Globally, Coca-Cola says it leads in sparkling, juice and juice drinks, ready-to-drink coffee, tea and active lifestyle, or enhanced waters. It is No. 2 in sports drinks and No. 3 in packaged water, which includes plain bottled water and bulk water, categories where there is stiff competition from the likes of Gatorade and Nestle Waters.

John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, also points out that between 2000 and 2004, when former CEO Neville Isdell arrived, the company struggled with management changes and simply wasn’t functioning well. “Today, in my view, Coke is really back to functioning at a high level again,” he said. “Relations with bottlers are good. There’s good morale inside the company. They’re recruiting good people and not losing people anymore. They’re really now focusing on the business and the brands.”

Multicultural plans
But the most significant changes appear to be in the multicultural space, which Ms. Bayne said will be a core focus for the company in the U.S. by 2020. Already, multicultural consumers account for 33% of all of Coca-Cola‘s U.S. volume, and given the population growth occurring in this country, by 2020, those consumers will make up 40% of U.S. volume.

“Our multicultural plans are now 12-month plans. It is no longer Hispanic heritage month followed by Cinco de Mayo,” Ms. Bayne said. “We have a deep connection through the World Cup with Hispanic males and through the novelas with Hispanic females.”

The company is also embracing a 12-month strategy for African-American consumers. “We’re really focusing on moms. Moms lead the decisions in this segment of the population, even more than others, so we’re really focusing on her,” Ms. Bayne said. “Also, [we’re] celebrating the historically black colleges and universities, Black History Month and connecting over music.”

The brand is also recognizing the power of consumer-generated content and social media. “Among Coca-Cola‘s most powerful differentiators are the stories only our brand can tell,” said Ms. Clark. “But we’re not the only ones that can tell our story. Much of our content comes from our consumers. It’s the phenomenon of social media. Consumers remind us daily that Coca-Cola is actually their brand, not our brand.” To that end, the company is launching Expedition 206, an ambitious global social-media push.

While it’s not entirely clear what the return on the program will be, Adam Brown, director-digital communications and social media, said the company will be monitoring fan participation and online share of voice, as well as increases in friends or followers. “One of the great things about digital and social-media programs is the ability to measure just about everything. This is critical for us to demonstrate ROI on an exciting and, in a way, experimental project like this,” he said. “I also think content sharing is a critical metric to watch. … That third-party credibility is magic.”


The Rise and Fall of Online Advertising in 2009

Posted Thursday, November 5th, 2009

It will be the best of times and the worst of times.

cmswire.com, Dec 18 2008

Amidst the 2009 predictions for e-new year, there is a consensus that it will bring both financial ruin and success. Chances are that both will come true.

eMarketer released insights of the Internet‘s plight into the aught nines — and well, they’re kind of what you’d expect. Their senior analysts offered up their best guesses. Let’s take a look.

Online Advertising
David Hallerman opines that online spending will remain steady. Not only will video ad spending run “counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach US$ 850 million,” but search marketing spending will grow by 14.9% in 2009, to US$ 12.3 billion also. He bases his speculation upon a sharp escalation of professional video content on the Web as a way for brand marketers to build their base and that search marketing is a measurable tool “so it will maintain its place in many budgets and increase in some others, as advertisers look for secure and effective methods to combat fear in an economic meltdown.”

Yet, despite all the online advertising, Jeffrey Grau predicts that online retail sales will start to feel the impact of the economic crisis and will only see minor increases in online sales. It’s not such a dramatic prediction given the current economic climate. Any e-commerce sales growth will be a result of “increased spending by consumers who have long been online buyers.”

While the increased revenue of online advertising is questionable, Lisa E. Phillips is confident that we’ll see an increase in multicultural marketing. With more and more African-American and Hispanic users out there, marketers will begin to cater to a wider market of consumers via “language- and culture-specific messages that evolve from their general market campaigns.”

Social Media
E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Debra Aho Williamson says to “expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.” The general online advertising decline will be social networking‘s gain, as smaller and niche social networks will go looking for bailouts and mergers from the bigger ones. Mergers and acquisitions are no longer for Wall Street only.

Traditional Media
Unfortunately, while traditional media will still linger into 2009, it will remain on the decline. Carol Krol maintains that “newspaper advertising will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium.” With eMarketer estimating that US TV ad spending will decline 4.2% to US$ 66.9 billion in 2009, the economy’s impact will be at its greatest.

So there it is. Will 2009 be the year of a miraculous economic comeback or will it be a Darwinian model of survival of the fittest?


 
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