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Saturday, April 30, 2011
Compete with Life and Win! The Secret Truth About Prosperity Laws
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Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, and Social Media – What Online Advertisers Need to Know
Posted By Jaime on Apr 12th, 2011
B2B advertisers, according to new research from Forrester, might not believe in online display advertising’s effectiveness, but I say they might find great success in LinkedIn Ads. (Forrester’s research also points out that B2B advertisers cannot merely port over their true blue print media practices and expect them to work.)While manufacturing companies sometimes flounder to figure out how to leverage Facebook and Twitter, they forget that video demonstrations of their products are a YouTube must-do.Though many local businesses have found success with Groupon and their imitators, others claim to lose money (Rice University Graduate School of Management study) or customer loyalty (New York Times Blog). Know what to expect before you dive in.
This article by Hollis Thomases originally appeared in ClickZ on April 5, 2011.
Did I get your attention? Of course I did…and that’s my point. Today, social media topics attract advertisers’ attention like bright shiny objects to a fault. By my own observations, because they do capture so much attention, almost any headline containing the words Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, or social media gets clicked, shared, forwarded, and tweeted five times more than other digital advertising or marketing-related headlines, oftentimes without the article even ever being read. In fact, I confess to writing this headline as an experiment, just to prove my point.
Is this all so bad? Isn’t social media a way for brands to connect individually with their consumers in ways they never have before? Heck, didn’t I write a book on the subject?!
Are You Focused On Your Goals?
My concern lies in the ability for advertisers to focus on the kinds of online tactics that will help them reach their goals. When advertisers (and key decision-makers, quite frankly) get too distracted from proven tactics or develop unrealistic or untenable perceptions, it does them no lasting good. For example, last week at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference, I spoke about expanding beyond pay-per-click search advertising and into display advertising. The room was about half full. The timeslot before this session, I spoke on another panel about Twitter, and the room was almost completely full. Yet, while many companies have successfully leveraged search and display to generate direct and measurable revenue, those doing so through Twitter are fewer and farther between.
Furthermore, I found it interesting that of those audience members in my “Leap from Search to Display” session, by a show of hands, only about half had even ventured outside of Google AdWords and into the Google Display Network, let alone into other forms of online media buying. I had to ask myself how many of these people, however, were also busying themselves setting up and populating Facebook pages or Twitter accounts before they ever even leveraged their search advertising successes? And when I asked the audience how many knew of ways to serve online ads besides through the direct serving of traditional banners and buttons, scarcely a half-dozen hands went up (by my count, there are at least 13 other types of ads or ways for these ads to be served).
While I’ll be the last person to dispute that social media and its respective platforms have merit, I find myself constantly reminding marketers that social media is just another tool in the toolkit. You should take out this tool if it’s the best tool to help you build or fix something, but if a wrench can do a better/faster/less expensive job, why use a hammer? And if you’re going to venture into the sun-shiny terrain of social media marketing, don’t go in with blinders on.
Reality Check
I’m a two-sides-to-every-story kind of girl, so I don’t want to paint a completely bleak picture. I formulate my opinions and recommendations by doing a lot of reading, listening, and observation (my parents are happy I’m putting my anthropology-sociology-social psychology college degree to good use). For example:
I recently overheard an advertiser saying that Facebook Ads worked better than PPC for them to reach their more affluent audience. This made sense to me, and Merry Morud wrote a great article on this for ClickZ’s sister site, Search Engine Watch.A Harris Interactive-RightNow post-holiday 2010 report found social media could create brand advocates – two-thirds of the 85 percent of customers who posted a negative review of a shopping experience and were then contacted by the retailer wound up taking a positive action through social media that directly negated their original negative posting.B2B advertisers, according to new research from Forrester, might not believe in online display advertising’s effectiveness, but I say they might find great success in LinkedIn Ads. (Forrester’s research also points out that B2B advertisers cannot merely port over their true blue print media practices and expect them to work.)While manufacturing companies sometimes flounder to figure out how to leverage Facebook and Twitter, they forget that video demonstrations of their products are a YouTube must-do.Though many local businesses have found success with Groupon and their imitators, others claim to lose money (Rice University Graduate School of Management study) or customer loyalty (New York Times Blog). Know what to expect before you dive in.So you can see that social media definitely has its place in the overall marketing strategy. I just encourage advertisers not to fall prey to all the hype and dig a little deeper to understand the facts and what’s appropriate for their particular business, industry, and short- and long-term goals.
Comments(1)Kwikset CP Security Polo Passage Knob
A rebellious motorcycle racer in the 1930s is given a choice by the Army: spend a year in jail, or lead a motorcycle cavalry unit on a mission in Spain.
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Can Google +1 Be Gamed?
Posted By WebAdvantage.net on Apr 22nd, 2011
In response to the Facebook Like button, Facebook sharing data with Bing to incorporate Likes into Bing search results (and one could speculate, to the ongoing Google/Facebook feud), Google recently introduced the +1 site recommendation service to their search results and advertisements. If you have a Google Profile and are logged into your Google Account, you may start seeing +1s in your Google search results.
In addition, Google plans to add a +1 button for website owners to add to their pages. The plan is to display +1s from your network of friends in your Google Profile and connections on other social networking sites, with the intention to more prominently display the search results recommended by you and your connections.
So far this sounds like a useful, forward-thinking addition to Personalized Search, but there is more. Since Google plans to use signals from +1s along with other social signals to adjust site rankings in their overall site search, this would immediately seem like an obvious target for unscrupulous marketers to attempt gaming.
Techniques are already in place to click on advertisements (click fraud), which could simply be modified to “+1? certain sites. For example, an organization could set up a paid network of people who search for specified keywords and click target sites. Or a botnet controller could cause hijacked web browsers to make phantom clicks on target sites when a certain phrase is entered. Perhaps website owners would offer a discount if the visitor “+1s” their site. Or a network of friends could agree to “+1? each others’ sites. It isn’t difficult to imagine +1 trading schemes springing up alongside of link trading.
We would love to learn more about how much Google plans to integrate social search signals into the main search results, how much they will affect site owners, and how Google intends to combat fraud. Please comment below to tell us what you think!
Comments(0)Winning London
Why is it that, in such a cynical age, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen aren't more wary of a backlash against adorableness? Just when pop culture's more cantankerous hounds were harboring hopes that the preeminent pair of sugar-and-spice girls would grow into a couple of gawky teenagers, they've proved themselves more lovable than ever with Winning London. Here, they're tasked with delivering semimature subject matter--straightening out stalled romances, stifling an overactive competitive streak--but they come off as self-assured as ever. The scene is set across the pond, where Chloe and Riley (Mary-Kate and Ashley), along with other members of their high school's Model U.N. team, are strutting their strategic mock peace-bringing stuff at an international competition. While Chloe captures the heart of an upper-crust English boy, Riley sets her sights on teammate Brian, who's clueless enough to call her kiddo. After a breakdown in her budding romance, Chloe, who's accustomed to winning, learns to chill out and consider the more sporting side of competitions. This being a Mary-Kate and Ashley vehicle, shopping for schoolgirl-swanky ensembles is involved, as is boogying with the boys at hot nightspots. Sightseeing excursions to Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, among other places, feel thrown in as educational tidbits for parents' sake; better to buy this video purely for fun--Mary-Kate and Ashley may not be known as the brainiest pair, but London aside, with this movie they'll continue to win hearts. --Tammy La Gorce Price: $14.98
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How Keyword Research and Competitive Search Fuels Display Campaigns
Posted By Jaime on Mar 4th, 2011
This article by Hollis Thomases originally appeared in ClickZ on February 22, 2011.
Traditionally, the worlds of online display advertising and search marketing have mainly operated in silos. The two tactics may both be part of the bigger online strategy, but the people involved with search generally do not really work in or understand display and vice-versa. Lately however, it feels like there’s a greater interest in fusing the two worlds together, maybe fueled by the diversion of traffic away from search and into social media and/or Google’s rebranding of its Content Network into Display Network. Regardless, when the search and display professionals come together, a lot can be gained from the sharing of information. Today, let me give my media planning brethren some tips from the search side.
Keywords Tell a Lot
For the online media strategist, an existing PPC campaign can be a goldmine of information. Keyword performance can help sculpt various directions of the campaign from its creative concepts, messaging and copywriting to identifying sites to target for placements or new niche opportunities. Don’t have an existing PPC campaign to turn to? Consider a bit of keyword research in the vein of a start-up PPC campaign for all the same insights mentioned previously.
Begin by using the same keyword research tools a PPC specialist would:
Web analytics: Understanding what keywords are already driving traffic to the site and where that traffic travels throughout the site and if that traffic converts into the desired action can be quite revealing. Doing a gap analysis of the advertiser’s objectives versus what they’re actually achieving should provide the media strategist with some informative insights and direction.Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool: The “granddaddy” of free keyword research tools, this tool allows you to gauge the popularity or importance of a keyword or keyword phrase based upon its search volume, while at the same time identifying other related keyword phrases. The tool lets you manipulate your query in all sorts of ways, for example, limiting results by geography, by type device accessing the search, by product category, and more. Once served, you can also manipulate and sort the data. In the below example, limiting results to the Anti-Aging category, I queried for some skincare keywords as searched for on mobile devices within the U.S. and then sorted by the most popular U.S. searches.
You can take your favorite keywords from this list and toggle over to the Traffic Estimator to get some projections on volume and cost, both of which the media buyer might want to use for perspective if you’re trying to deliver a direct response campaign through display advertising and needs to negotiate CPMs on an eCPA basis.
Useful Information From Competitive Search
In addition to datamining existing advertiser and generic public assets, it can be useful to apply the same techniques as above to some of the free and paid competitive search tools. Google AdWords’ Analyze Competition feature, SEMRush, and SpyFu are all free or quasi-free tools. The Search Monitor, a for-fee platform, gives all kinds of juicy information about competitors as well as trademark infringements and affiliate miscreants. AdGooroo, also a for-fee platform, has some similar elements as The Search Monitor along with a “Display Insight” feature which can definitely be exploited by a media planner/buyer.
Another Thing You Can Do With Keywords
I’m a big fan of contextual advertising, much of which is based on keywords, so your campaign may only perform as well as you’ve compiled a sound list of proven keywords to provide to your vendors. Your contextual network representative can tell you not only how many impressions they estimate, but also what related keywords you might have missed and other opportunities to exploit your list.
Want to hear more on this topic? Come hear me speak on the “Crossing the Digital Divide: The Leap from Search to Display” panel at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York next month!
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