I really can’t understand all the recent hullaballoo about privacy concerns and online advertising. First, let me be clear, I’m a firm believer in protecting privacy, especially my own, and I recognize the potential for abuse which can and should be regulated, but I have no problem with my online behavior being profiled so that advertisers can target me with an ad for a product or service that is something I might actually be interested in. I resigned myself long ago to the fact that I will be subjected to countless forms of advertising on a daily basis for the rest of my life; and so should you. We need the products; the companies that most of you work for need to sell them; that’s what makes the world go ‘round. Get over it. This notion that advertising is some type of personal affront has always bothered me. Those who feel this way are free to live their lives solely on products and services provided by companies who don’t advertise.
We are a society of consumers constantly looking for products that help make our lives easier and more enjoyable. We are presented with a sometimes mind-numbing variety of choices between brands for the products we use on a daily basis. In our ever-busy lives we have grown accustomed to instant access to information in order to make quick decisions. Advertising that is personalized to individuals is a natural extension of our desire to get what we want, when we want it, without having to sift through all the garbage. Rather than resist this trend, I suggest we embrace it. A major complaint about online advertising as it stands now is the amount of garbage that we are subjected to that is of no interest to us. By allowing marketers to use targeting technology we would be creating a more enjoyable viewing/listening/browsing experience for everyone. Who knows, you might even see an ad for a product that you actually want.
After reading this article (http://tinyurl.com/yhjzluo) on CMOs intentions to hold social media accountable in 2010 after testing it in 2009, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if they just shut it down? Unfortunately, we’ve created an imbalance in the online advertising industry between metrics and brand. While online advertising is highly measurable, often times marketers throw brand awareness out the window in favor of a few more clicks that may or may not add anything to a marketer’s bottom line.
If a CMO really wants to measure the effectiveness of their social media efforts, they should just shut it off and listen. See how long it takes for those brand loyalists who have become accustomed to conversing with you through social media to revolt by way of emails, blog posts and posts to their own social media outlets. If you’ve done a good job with your social media efforts, the response will be powerful and swift. You probably won’t have the stomach to keep it turned off for very long. On the other hand, if you don’t hear so much as a whimper, you haven’t built a platform that resonates with your consumer and you need to go back to the drawing board.
Sometimes taking something away is the easiest way to measure its impact. Sort of like taking away that toy that your child hasn’t played with for months but now they can’t live without it.
It seems that in today’s world, social media is king. There are hundreds of “gurus” and “swamis” flaunting their cutting-edge social networking knowledge. However, in truth, I’d say it is a little more complex than updating Twitter and interacting with Apps on Facebook. The real beauty of social media is its ability to change on a daily basis. There are new sites popping up, new features on existing sites, and endless opportunities to connect with potential clients. This is where it really gets interesting. With no set rules and an infinite number of ways to interact with those in-tune with social media, marketers have the chance to experiment. Surprisingly, it is not just the small, quirky, online-media agencies that are testing the water. Major players like Ikea have decided to push the boundaries of new media. And they have done surprisingly well.
The advertisers for Ikea were given a challenge: create major buzz about its new store opening in Malmö, Sweden on a small budget. So they decided to utilize one of the most used sites on the web: Facebook. While thousands of companies have profiles, fan pages, and groups devoted to their products, Ikea decided to take it one step further. Forsman & Bodenfors came up with a groundbreaking digital campaign for Ikea by turning Facebook’s photo-tagging function into a promotional tool. And it all started with one profile: the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Gustavsson (& team) uploaded pictures of the new Ikea showrooms to his photo album and encouraged his Facebook friends to tag themselves as those items. The first to tag the item, won the item. Simple as that. And it worked. The promo spread like wild fire through Facebook via profiles, updates, news-feeds, and the like. People were not only sharing their interest (like when “Becoming a Fan” of a company), but they were personally promoting the products on their own profile pages. Not to mention, Gordon’s Facebook popularity skyrocketed. How brilliant is this? This promotion got people energized, interacting and sharing with their friends and all of this using only existing products and applications. I love seeing big companies taking these sorts of risks and using this innovative thinking. Ikea, a rather “cool” company to begin with, really struck this one out of the ballpark. Having Facebook-ers constantly interacting with your product and checking back for new chances to win was just plain marketing genius. A well-played social media campaign, if I have ever seen one.
One good ol’ American company you wouldn’t guess to be on the cutting edge of social media is Ford. But you’d be wrong. Ford Motor Co. will spend 25% of their marketing budget on digital and social media. That is more than twice the amount spent by other the industry bigwigs who waver somewhere around 9%. As Ford goes through the process of reinventing the company after certain newsworthy, financial stories this past year, they are using digital media to get their message across. “If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company, you can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other,” says James Farley, Ford’s chief marketing executive. Their most innovative idea? The Fiesta Movement. Ford gave 100 European Fiestas (the car is already out and about across the pond) to US social media wizzes. This marketing campaign began in 2008, 18 months before the cars will actually be available to the US market. The results have been mind-blowing. Blogging, Facebooking, Youtubing and Tweeting by lucky 100 test drivers started an unprecedented buzz. According to an article on Business Week, “The awareness level of Fiesta, a car that is not even in the U.S. yet (though it has been a fixture in Europe for years), is 37% among Generation Y, according to Ford-commissioned surveys. That is about equal to the awareness level of Fusion and Flex, models that have received, especially in the case of Fusion, hundreds of millions of dollars in traditional media spend.” Before the 100 Fiesta drivers had even been chosen, the social networking realm was abuzz with socialistas vying for the chance to be a Fiesta-tester. This has got to be consumer testimony at its best. And it happens to be free and more importantly viral and shockingly sincere. Consumers are inexplicably engaged and ready and willing to participate. According to Ford, the Fiesta Movement has made 11,000,000 social networking impressions, 5,000,000 “shares” on social networks, over 11,000 videos have been posted; 15,000 Tweets, not even including re-tweets, and 13,000 photos. That’s nearing 16 million impressions in the social media realm. And that’s impressive.
While all this is amazing progress for some of the biggest names in industry, I personally can’t wait to see how things unfold. The epic drama of social media is that it is constantly changing. These ideas are innovative and well executed, but who knows? Next week a new social media site might be all the rage. And we all know that big companies aren’t quick enough to adapt to sudden change, or are they? For now, let’s just say they are doing their part in the social experiment.
There has been quite a bit of discussion these days about the relevance of Twitter. Many find it to be nothing more than an echo chamber for online marketing gurus who love to tout Twitter’s undeniable power as a social medium that mere mortals can’t seem to grasp while others think it’s little more than the modern day equivalent of Stuart Smalley (that’s Senator Smalley thank you) sitting his celebrity clients in front of a mirror on Saturday Night Live for a healthy self-affirmation session. A recent Pear Analytics survey provided some very interesting data. So what do you think? Pointless babble or here to stay?
In today’s online marketing world, marketers and agencies need to do more than just stay on top of the latest trends and technologies. They need to have a clear understanding of how each spoke in the online marketing wheel is connected to the other. If they fail to recognize this connection, they’re bound to make mistakes that will cost the client or the agency considerable time and money.
I recently had a discussion with a fellow online marketer that demonstrates this point perfectly. My colleague’s new client had already engaged a digital agency to design and build an e-commerce website for a new over-the-counter product with national distribution. This was an e-commerce site, so the client was relying heavily on the website to sell product which means significant search engine marketing and optimization was necessary. The agency that was hired to design the website created a visually stunning site that was very easy to interact with and beautifully designed. However they made one critical error; the entire site was done in Flash. They would soon find out why this was a problem.
When the site was finished the client engaged a search firm to handle search engine optimization. The search firm quickly pointed out it is very challenging if not impossible to optimize a Flash website due to the lack of quality content that can be indexed by the search engines. So the search firm and the design agency were forced to go back to the drawing board to design an HTML based website with Flash headers. The new site combined the desired visual impact of Flash with the practical search-friendly HTML content required to optimize the site. Needless to say, this put the entire project over budget and behind schedule. All of this could have been avoided if the search firm was brought in from the start as part of the team to make sure the designers were considering search engine optimization elements.
Often times it’s easy for an agency or vendor who has been hired to handle a particular piece of a campaign to put their head down, perform their work in a vacuum, then move on to the next project. And if you’re outsourcing a particular function such as programming, you don’t necessarily need the programmer to know what your campaign goals and key performance indicators are. However, the example above demonstrates how somebody needs to be at the helm of the entire online marketing plan to make sure each component is consistent with the stated objectives and working in unison.
That person is a digital media specialist. A digital media specialist is the online marketing equivalent to the traditional agency account executive. They are responsible for defining, managing and executing the online marketing and media strategy. This individual should be well versed in all online marketing channels including online media planning and buying, email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, and affiliate marketing.
A good digital media specialist brings more than just an understanding of the various online marketing channels. Perhaps their most important role is building strong relationships with clients based on frequent and open communication. Online marketing is highly measurable but it is easy to get lost in the mountains of data. It is the job of the digital media specialist to interpret the data and present it to the client in a manner that is both useful and insightful. Anyone can produce data but the truly great agencies know how to derive valuable insights from that data, learn from it, and apply what they’ve learned going forward.
Too often I see companies taking a scattershot approach to online marketing without a cohesive plan and clear direction. They have web design here, search engine marketing there, and email marketing somewhere else, yet no one is overseeing the collective effort to make sure each component of their online marketing is working effectively towards a common goal. Hiring an online marketing agency with the ability to make sense of it all will help you avoid the pitfalls and get the most out of your online marketing efforts.