Brandthread Insights

Key Facebook Changes Marketers Need to Know

2011-06-20T08:35:00.003-04:00

As Facebook continues to innovate at a rapid pace, it is the marketer's job to translate those innovations into an enhanced experience for their current and potential fans and customers. In the last few months, there have been several changes that affect the looks of Facebook Pages, how they can be promoted, how brands can communicate on Facebook, the impact of sharing, and much, much more. But don't worry. We know that there is a lot to keep up with, so we wanted to lay out all of the recent changes in one spot to serve as a helpful guide.

What's new with the Facebook platform?

Updated Pages
Some of Facebook's changes are minor, but the recent Facebook Pages update is one of the biggest recent changes Facebook's community has seen. The main difference? Pages now look and feel more like user profiles. Page administrators can "Login as Page" and interact with Facebook as they would from their personal profile -- with brands and fans alike. Page admins will even see a specialized news feed and will be able to comment and "like" things from the brand's perspective, making for a more cohesive experience.

The appearance of Facebook Page tabs has also changed.

Iframes are here...
...and they have forever changed the way brands interact with their fans. We can now build even more robust user experiences inside of a Facebook Page, and best of all, we can more effectively track each user interaction.

Basically, many of the things brands have been used to doing with their creative agencies or analytics providers for the last 10 to 15 years was not possible (or at least, very difficult) to do in a Facebook Page tab. For those looking for a deep dive, read more here.

FBML might be gone, but iframes appear to be here to stay.
Sharing is caring (Sponsored Stories)Sponsored Stories marked Facebook's first attempt to let marketers amplify the actions their customers, potential customers, and fans are taking on Facebook.There are now four types of sponsored stories (all of which can only be seen by Facebook friends). The four types are:
Likes: When people "like" something on a Page, brands can employ that "like" in their Facebook advertisements.
Wall posts: The same goes for wall posts. Anything posted on a wall is open to be sponsored by a brand and included in their Facebook ads.
Check-ins: When people use Facebook Places (don't worry, we'll get to Places soon) to check in to a location, that information can be displayed in an advertisement.
Custom apps: Interactions taken on custom applications -- for example, taking a quiz or poll -- can be sponsored.

The launch of Sponsored Stories confirms Facebook's commitment to its Page product, as three of the four initial triggers for Sponsored Stories are tied to Facebook Pages.

Targeting ads to updates
Facebook has started testing ads based on status updates. For example, if a user says something like, "I'm having a baby," or asks, "Hey, what's your favorite hotel in Turks and Caicos?" the ads on the right-hand column will reflect their immediate updates. Instead of saying "Sponsored" above an advertisement, it will say "Related adverts," which makes the presence of the ad seem more natural.

This is essentially the next evolution of "Sponsored Stories." It's still in its infancy and has only been rolled out to about 1-2 percent of Facebook's users for testing. But, if Facebook can combine people -- who they are, how old they are, where they live -- with intent, it essentially becomes the most massive ad platform ever…so stay tuned.

Facebook Places
At the time of the launch of Facebook Places, only 4 percent of Americans had even tried location-based services, let alone used them regularly. Foursquare and Gowalla combined have just a few million users. So when Facebook decided to get into the check-in market, location-based services finally reached the masses. Brands follow consumer habits, and with the implementation of Places, Facebook's huge scale - 700 million accounts - turns an increasing number of consumers into geo-social users. And with the launch of Sponsored Stories, Facebook is reinventing the impact of check-ins by turning them in to targeted advertisements.

Brand tagging (aka, Facebook's biggest minor update)
According to Facebook, 3 billion images are uploaded to Facebook each month -- which is 10 times more than the entire Library of Congress. That's a lot of photos -- and a lot of opportunities for marketers to be featured in real-life product placements.

Not surprisingly, photos represent the most popular Facebook application. Fast Company even believes that the popularity of photos will help "brand tagging" surpass the "like" button. If you think about it, tagging a photo with a brand that's actually represented in the photo is a natural behavior. And it's the embodiment of brand advocacy.

Facebook Deals and social commerce
For those that have been waiting for "the year of social commerce" (we've all been hearing about it since 2008 or so), it's finally here. The launch of Facebook Deals marks Facebook's biggest -- and most notable -- social commerce endeavor. As of now, Deals is only being offered in limited markets, and while the nationwide rollout will be gradual, so was the rollout of Facebook itself (and now we're at 700 million users.

As of now, commerce on Facebook is growing, but limited. Right now, most people are not on Facebook to shop. However, people are shopping in massive numbers on the internet, and sharing the purchases and purchase decision-making process with their social graph. According to Wired magazine, 90 percent of all purchases are subject to social influence.

Right now, we see the value of bringing Facebook to your commerce, rather than (or in addition to) bringing your commerce to Facebook. For example, many brands have sharing buttons on their websites, but they don't know how much revenue is being driven directly via social sharing. Buddy Media recently acquired social commerce company Spinback, which enables brands to answer that question.

There's no such thing as "wasting time" on Facebook
We can't stress this one enough. Understanding the user experience is the most important element to any successful marketing campaign. And with Facebook changes rolling out regularly (there are a few more that have been announced recently), it's the only way to understand the complex and wonderful world that is Facebook.

Consumer Trends to Watch in 2011

2011-01-27T10:07:00.000-05:00

Eleven key consumer trends to watch in 2011 include acts of kindness from brands, the developed world launching products for emerging economies, and online status symbols, according to consumer insights firm trendwatching.com.

Following is a brief overview of each of the 11 consumer trends which trendwatching.com predicts will have a global impact on marketers in 2011.

1.Random acts of kindness: Consumers’ cravings for realness, for the human touch, ensure that everything from brands randomly picking up the tab to sending a surprise gift will be one of the most effective ways to connect with (potential) customers in 2011, especially beleaguered consumers in North America, Europe and Japan.

trendwatching.com advises that the rapid spread of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook among consumers gives brands previously unavailable insight into their moods, wants and locations, and also provides a new direct channel to deliver acts of kindness.

2.Urbanization: Urbanization remains one of the absolute mega trends for the coming decade, with about the global population currently living in urban areas. Urban consumers tend to be more daring, more liberal, more tolerant, more experienced, more prone to trying out new products and services. In emerging markets, these effects tend to be even more pronounced, with new arrivals finding themselves distanced from traditional social and familial structures, while constantly exposed to a wider range of alternatives.

3.Pricing Pandemonium: Mobile devices and social networks allow consumers to constantly receive targeted offers and discounts, even at the point of sale from a rival brand, as well as join interest groups. Brands should target consumers with offers and features such as instant mobile coupons and discounts, online group discounts, flash sales, and dynamic pricing based on real-time supply and demand.

4.Made for China/Emerging Economies: In 2011, expect an increasing number of ‘Western’ brands to launch new products or even new brands dedicated to consumers in emerging markets. Growth in consumer spending in emerging markets far outpaces consumer spending in developed markets, and Western brands are favored more than local brands in emerging markets. Western brands including Levi-Strauss, Apple and BMW have already capitalized on this trend.

5.Online Status Symbols: In 2011, trendwatching.com recommends that brands supply customers with any kind of symbol, virtual or ‘real world,’ that helps them display to peers their online contributions, interestingness, creations or popularity. This includes personalized social networking memorabilia as well as location-based games and contests which award virtual or real-world prizes.

6.’Wellthy:’ Growing numbers of consumers will expect health products and services in 2011 to prevent misery if not improve their quality of life, rather than merely treating illnesses and ailments. Products such as mobile health monitoring devices, as well as online health apps and health-dedicated social networks, will serve the multichannel wellness needs of consumers.

7.‘Twin-sumers’ and ‘Social-lites:’ Both of these types of online consumers identified by trendwatching.com are critical to spreading positive word-of-mouth recommendations. Twin-sumers are consumers with similar consumer patterns, likes and dislikes, and who are hence valuable sources for recommendations on what to buy and experience, while social-lites are consumers who consistently broadcast information to a wide range of associates online.

8.Emerging Generosity: This trend is about brands and wealthy individuals from emerging markets (especially China) who will increasingly be expected to give, donate, care and sympathize, as opposed to just sell and take. And not just in their home countries, but on a global scale. It’s a profound cultural change and a consumer demand that their counterparts in mature markets have had a few years to getting used to.

9.Planned Spontaneity: With lifestyles having become fragmented, with dense urban environments offering consumers any number of instantly available options, and with cell /smartphones having created a generation who have little experience of making (or sticking to) rigid plans, 2011 will see what trendwatching.com calls full-on “planned spontaneity.”

Brands can expect to see consumers in 2011 rushing to sign up to services (the planned part) that allow for endless and almost effortless mass mingling with friends, family, colleagues or strangers (the spontaneity part). A developing segment of this trend is consumers signing up for mobile services that passively and constantly broadcast their location.

10.Eco-Superior: When it comes to ‘green consumption’, brands should expect a rise in “eco-superior” products; products that are not only eco-friendly, but superior to polluting incumbents in every possible way. Trendwatching.com says brands should think of a combination of eco-friendly yet superior functionality, superior design, and/or superior savings.

11:Owner-less: Fractional ownership and lifestyle leasing business models have re-emerged, with services such as car-sharing and public bike programs enjoying success around the globe. For many consumers, access is better than ownership.

Emerging Economies Provide Consumer Innovations

Emerging economies are an increasingly important source of consumer innovations, according to earlier findings from trendwatching.com. The company cites a number of statistics to support its premise that emerging economies are becoming a major source of consumer innovations that will have a global impact. For example, these economies have accounted for nearly 70% of world growth during the last five years, accounted for 34% of global GDP in 2010 and will account for 39% in 2015, and will account for two-thirds of world trade in 2050.

In addition, trendwatching.com says emerging economies contain a growing middle class of 2 billion people who spend $6.9 trillion USD annually. That figure is expected to rise to $20 trillion by 2050.

2011 Marketing Trends to Watch

2010-12-21T10:39:00.004-05:00

Trends to key an eye on in the coming year...

Leveraging the power of social media: to drive commerce Groupon is setting the bar and we're watching for how its success may fundamentally change distribution, effectiveness, and efficiency of promotional value offers to consumers. For example, Groupon recently launched “Grouponicus,” a holiday dedicated to “filling your loved ones’ gift buckets with experiences, not gift cards.” The daily deal shopping Web site also recently entered into a partnership with eBay to offer incentives to eBay loyalty members who participate in Groupon deals.

Integration of mobile(handheld): into shopper marketing programming As marketers and retailers look for new touch-points along the path-to-purchase we're seeing the use of more digital applications such as QR codes. Interestingly, marketers are trying to get on the leading edge of the trend and capture the early influencers while driving greater awareness and usage for the majority vs. waiting for overall adoption rates to hit critical mass. Canon was one such brand, testing QR codes in September on its printers in a number of retail stores, including Best Buy.

Marginalization of "brand.com:" promotional websites Virtually all clients are looking to platform their promotions on social networking sites (Facebook), sharing sites (You Tube) or partner with existing content/audience relevant sites (e.g. WebMD) vs. building their own stand alone sites.

Localization of promotion: We're having a lot more discussions about driving promotion down to the local grass roots level. The Web is certainly enabling this but also indicative of a trend toward greater personalization/customization and a backlash against big high-profile events as the economy continues to teeter. We’re seeing this realized often in cause marketing and at retail.

Continued blurring of the line between content and promotion: we're looking at, and our clients are asking for, more content integration opportunities across all platforms (TV, print, digital, social, gaming). Marketers want the promotional message to be almost indistinguishable from the content because of the ability to deliver promotional messages in high-value brand environments. We're working on a host of videogame integration opportunities right now and traditional CPG marketers are seeing that as a new frontier to reach their audience.

Successful Holiday Marketing - What Works...

2010-12-16T17:28:00.006-05:00

Every marketer knows there are certain selling seasons that cannot be ignored -- Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Hanukah, Valentine's Day. However, they may not be aware that today's digital marketing should go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, regardless of consumers' natural inclination to shop more at certain times of year. Marketers need to start going above and beyond offering deep discounts or clinging to catchy marketing messages.

With consumers spending more time and money online, marketers must prepare their digital marketing strategy to proactively target today's savvy shopper -- or risk losing prime revenue to the competition. This year, Channel Advisor's 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits survey found that more than 58 percent of consumers are very likely to purchase gifts online, as opposed to the 41 percent who choose to shop at brick-and-mortar stores.

According to comScore, consumers spent $29.1 billion online alone during the 2009 holiday shopping season, and eMarketer predicts that e-commerce spending will reach $51.4 billion by the fourth quarter of 2010. With numbers like these, the online opportunity -- both during holidays and off-season -- has nowhere to go but up. That said, driving online retail traffic is only the beginning: Marketers must step up their game and begin to truly engage customers by personalizing and tailoring the seasonal shopping experience.

What works
Improving web traffic via analytics and SEO methods has been digital marketers' focus for so long that most have pretty much mastered it. And while landing page optimization strategies are often given careful attention, content and design decisions are typically based on subjectivity. It's time to stop guessing and concentrate on what happens after visitors arrive. By neglecting the real tactics that convert browsers into buyers, marketers continue to miss out on tremendous revenue growth.

As consumers evolve, marketers attempt to improve website complexity and messaging -keeping it fresh and up-to-date. But sites that do not employ methods to truly remain dynamic are not equipped to optimally perform during seasonal holiday spending surges. Changing your content and adding new product offers isn't enough to drive double-digit revenue growth...

You'll need to go a few steps further:
1. Cater to your customers' mood. Create a seasonal site design to demonstrate your brand's holiday spirit. Display items most likely to sell during a particular season on your most popular website pages.
2.Target and recommend. Prominently display product offers, discounts and promotions targeted to match customers' needs. Make sure everything they may want to buy is easily located in a single virtual aisle.
3.Make it easy to buy. Thoroughly A/B test and improve important forms. If the registration, login, or checkout processes are too cumbersome, shoppers will simply give up at the point-of-purchase.
4.Use live multivariate testing and iterative tweaking to drive higher conversion rates. Subtle changes such as font size, color, and copy can have a huge impact on revenues. Test different variations to see what yields the best results based on your live visitors' interactions.
5.Monitor and learn from customer behavior. A one-size-fits-all website doesn't deliver the best brand experience. Improve behavioral targeting to deliver a better online experience by offering page layouts, product recommendations, sequences, content, and offers that have been dynamically selected based on users' demonstrated preferences.
6.Make navigation effortless. Shoppers won't fill their shopping carts or click anywhere near the checkout line if they are bounced around a poorly designed website. Go back to the basics: Make it easy for customers to find their way around by including a search facility; make the checkout page prominent; and avoid zeroing out filled-in forms every time they change pages.
7.Make it personal. Go beyond the standard "people who bought this, also bought this" suggestions by using website personalization. Product suggestions and wish list options that are relevant based on the individual shopper's site activity will vastly improve revenues.

Make every season a success
All the time and money spent on search, SEO, advertising, and landing page optimization will be wasted if true optimization strategies aren't put into place. Solutions such as multivariate testing, website personalization, and behavioral targeting make marketers' job easier every day -- they also automatically improve the digital experience with fluctuations and changes in seasonal spending and customers' shopping moods. Ensure every seasonal shopping experience with your website is a happy one, for each and every individual user, and never miss your revenue mark again.

Creating Lifelong Subscribers Through Email Marketing

2010-06-08T08:12:00.008-04:00

You Guys Met Online. It started with a visit to your site, and there was an immediate attraction. Maybe-Maybe not. Are you making it easy to be “introduced” to potential subscribers? It’s essential to make it “easy” to sign up. Whether it’s through your corporate website or promoted through your social media outlets, keep the following rules in mind when considering your introduction tactics:

Think Sex Appeal
Okay, not really, but do think about appealing to your subscriber. How does the term “Subscribe” compare to the term “Sign up”. It may be a small component of your registration process, but it’s an important one because it’s the first call to action. Consider all of the elements of your subscriber process and identify elements that may be less than appealing and may cause fallout. Don’t Be Afraid of a Little Self Promotion.

Reinforcing the benefits of your email marketing program is critical to increasing opt-ins. It also serves a great purpose of setting expectations. Regardless of whether it’s content or frequency that you are promoting, it helps give the subscriber a clear description of what to expect and helps them make an informed decision.

The reality is that your subscriber relationship is very similar to any relationship. It starts with a date, doubts can occur, breakups may happen, or lifelong partnerships are made. As a marketer, these steps are all part of the lifecycle so it’s important to be able to identify the phases and read the cues of your subscriber relationship. This paper will outline the elements of a strategic email marketing program that takes the subscriber from introduction to a lifelong relationship.

Be Careful of Coming Off Too Eager
Many subscribers are willing to subscribe in return for something that is valuable to them. You can consider different offers for signing up. The offer may include free shipping, dollars off, content offer, “exclusive” opportunity, or a percentage discount. Be careful, though. Often times a contact that has been incentivized through an offer is less likely to be retained. You will have to work that much harder at making it a lifelong relationship.

Think About How You Make Connections
It’s critical to be where your possible subscribers are. Just like when you are in your twenties trying out the various social scenes looking to make a long lasting connection , so should you try out the various channels that your “would be subscribers” are hanging out. If you haven’t leveraged social media to promote your opt-in you should consider it. Including a permanent spot on your Facebook page is a good start, or tweeting about it every so often will spread your reach. Don’t forget the more traditional paths such as SEO/SEM as well.

These are just a few ways that you can raise your game in facilitating matchups. The challenge as well as the opportunity lies in finding ways to be creative, get yourself out there, and get those opt-ins.

The First Date
Oh, the nervousness of the first date. You guys are introduced, you feel a connection, there’s a “how do we get to know one another better?” moment, and then there’s magic…or there’s a disconnect. This can also be true of your subscriber’s first experience with your email campaign. If expectations weren’t set or there wasn’t reinforcement of those expectations, it may end in your subscriber feeling as though you aren’t really in tune with their needs. Subscribers should receive a welcome message immediately following their opt-in to your email marketing program.

This welcome message is the first date. It tells whether or not you guys are going to last or if this relationship will fizzle fast. A well-crafted welcome message not only reinforces the benefits of subscribing, but it also puts content and frequency in the hands of the subscriber. If you aren’t allowing your subscribers the opportunity to choose what content is relevant to them, how often they would like to receive it, or what types of campaigns they would like to receive, then you are doing your email marketing program a disservice. If you want to create compelling campaigns that speak to your subscriber and drive relevancy, start with letting them do some of the talking. Let them tell you what piques their interest and use that data to create customized experiences unique to them. It will definitely get them intrigued to see what’s next.

The Blind Date
A blind date is awkward at best. You have friends that match you up because they think you would be PERFECT for each other, just to find out that you have nothing in common. You stumble through the evening and both hope that it will end sooner rather than later. Now let’s talk about buying a contact list. The reason we use “subscriber” throughout this whitepaper is because the fact remains that someone who subscribes or opts-in to your email marketing program is much more likely to:

Achieve Higher Subscriber Retention Rates
According to a report by Forrester Research titled “Email Marketing Needs Permission”, opt-in lists retained 49% of their subscribers while those that didn’t utilize opt-in lists only retained 28% of their subscribers.

Engage More Valuable Prospects and Customers
Those that are willing to opt-in to receive your messages are also going to be more willing to provide additional data, such as preferences, allowing you to create more relevant campaigns.

More Profitable (higher conversion rates)
It’s inevitable; someone who requested to receive content from you is much more likely to open, read, and convert. Remember to use the data that you have collected to ensure that the message is timely and meets the needs of the customer. In other words, deliver what you promised at registration.

Reinforce Reputation
The worst mistake we as marketers can make is to assume that what we have to offer is what the subscriber really wants. Making the assumption that a person wants to receive your message without their explicit opt-in can hurt your campaign performance as well as your brand reputation. Put the choice in the hands of the contact and you build a relationship that will last from opt-in to win-back.

“We’re Dating”
You’ve announced it to everyone, you guys are officially dating, which also means you’re “off the market” for others. Now if this were only true for our marketing programs. Once you get through the “get to know you” stage and start relating to your audience with relevant content that converts, you can create a real brand advocate. How do you do this? We’d love to say it’s easy, but as in any relationship, it takes work.

Don’t Treat Every Date the Same
A “one size fits all” message approach will not retain your subscriber. You need to segment and craft campaigns that are compelling. The possibilities are endless as to how you segment: purchase behavior, website history, demographic data, and preferences are just a few ways to target your audience. Ultimately the key is to begin to think of each subscriber as unique, instead of thinking of them as one whole sum. Your subscribers will thank you and the return will be well worth it.

Be Responsive
Nothing can be more relevant than an email campaign that responds to the lifecycle of your subscriber. Whether it’s a transactional message triggered from a purchase, or a win-back message triggered after 60 days of inactivity, creating campaigns that respond to activity or inactivity are highly targeted and keep the subscriber engaged. Allow Communication to Happen. It’s easy to get into a push mode. Push campaign after campaign without eliciting a response from your subscriber. In today’s social environment, you must be willing to give your subscriber a voice. Whether it’s through user reviews, polls, or video, giving your subscriber a voice builds trust and brand loyalty, not to mention it adds credibility to your product or services.

Stop Smothering Me
It happens to the best of us. We get over-eager. We stop thinking about the needs of our subscriber, and begin only thinking of our needs. There are warning signs, but we always seem surprised when we are faced with our subscriber saying “no more” or even less appealing, marking our campaigns as SPAM. Why does this happen? Easy. We aren’t relevant to our subscriber any longer. This action can happen from one event or a series of events. Regardless, it’s important to keep in mind not to over-do it. Just like your constant texts can annoy your significant other, so can over-sending annoy your subscriber. Set frequency caps. Also make certain that every message that you are sending out is truly relevant to your subscriber.

Don’t send for the sake of sending.

Marital Bliss
Creating a lifelong subscriber is hard, but the payoff is huge if you are willing to make the commitment. As in any long-term relationship, there will be bumps in the road. Win-back campaigns are a must, just as flowers are after a big fight. Here are just a few ways to keep the dialogue fresh and the relationship alive. The Power of Exclusive.

Exclusive can go a long way in your subscriber relationship. Exclusive offers, content, and previews are just a few ways that you can make your subscriber feel special and distinguish them from the rest of the crowd.Keep it Fresh.

The key to a lasting relationship is to not let the romance fizzle. This too can be said of your email marketing program. Prevent your campaigns from running on auto-pilot and always consider ways to optimize. Testing is a viable component of email marketing that other marketing channels don’t have the advantage of incorporating. Consider subject lines, offers, time of send, or call-to-actions as a start. It’s just good practice to not ever feel like your relationship is good as is. There’s always room for improvement.

Build Loyalty
A brand advocate can do more for your business than you realize. Create a subscriber loyalty program that allows them to reap the incentives of tweeting out your email promotion or making purchases. Showing appreciation for the subscriber relationship is an underutilized tactic in many email marketing programs.

Win-Back Their Love
Before they hit that unsubscribe button, be cognizant of how the subscriber is engaging with your email marketing program. Make every effort to win them back before they disengage completely. Create a trigger-based campaign with an “I must stay committed to this brand” offer that sends to your inactive contacts after 30-60 days. Try to win them back before they have already said goodbye. At the end of the day, creating a lifelong subscriber should be a priority for your email marketing program. Reducing churn and increasing loyalty positively impacts your bottom line. Not to mention, it can create real brand advocates. Deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time and reap the benefits of a lifelong subscriber.

Customer Loyalty - How to improve close rates and average deal size with the right CRM solution and features

2010-05-28T08:38:00.004-04:00

Hosted CRM solutions are not all created equal. Some cater to a company’s sales force automation needs, while others focus on marketing campaigns and forecasting. There are vendors that offer both hosted and on-premise CRM tools, and those whose bread and butter is strictly delivering on-demand offerings. But regardless of a solution provider’s area of expertise, all of today’s CRM solutions should include the following features:

Lead Management: Lost revenue is often a result of allowing prospects to fall through the cracks. With lead management, however, every lead is promptly routed to the right salesperson. What’s more, leads can be tracked and managed through the entire sales cycle, from initial identification to final sale.

Feedback Management: By capturing customer feedback across all channels of communication, salespeople can capture a better understanding of the needs, wants and buying patterns of their customers. Furthermore, armed with feedback from countless touch points, a company can establish the processes required to deliver an optimum customer experience.

Order Management: When more than one department plays a part in processing an order, the margin for human error grows, as does the mound of paperwork. With order management, however, quotes are easily converted to orders, modified and saved in a single system.

Territory Management: Keep your sales reps from stepping on each others’ toes with territory management, which easily creates sales territories and manages territory-based processes with workflow rules and reports.

Email Management: One surefire way to anger your customers is by failing to respond to their emails. These days, email correspondence is used to log complaints, issue requests and offer feedback. Fortunately, email management can chronicle customer-related communications with automated tracking of customer emails. As a result, emails can be responded to in a timely fashion, and end users can establish alerts if a message has not been handled within a predetermined time frame.

Contact Management: When it comes to staying on top of your customers, Microsoft Outlook is simply not enough. That’s why most CRM solutions include a contact-management component to provide employees with a complete, 360-degree view of their customers. Sales reps can view all contact and account information, as well as a customer’s purchasing history, from a central location. And reps can better manage their to-do lists by establishing alerts notifying them of upcoming tasks and events so that each customer is treated in an individual manner.

Reporting: From standard templates to heavily customized documents, CRM tools can generate detailed reports featuring contact information, opportunity pipeline information, lead-status analyses and specific customer case studies. In the end, these reports are an ideal way to organize a company’s collection of customer information and insights.

Opportunity Management and Forecasting: Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Opportunity management and forecasting provides a complete view of the sales and production pipeline so that businesses can accurately and quickly handle the orders they’re generating.

Marketing Campaign Analysis: How do you know if you’re getting the bang for the buck you’ve invested in a marketing campaign? CRM solutions can help monitor and analyze your advertising efforts, from trade shows to direct mail, so that every marketing dollar spent is spent wisely.

Marketing Revenue Tracking: So positive customer feedback isn’t enough to convince upper-management that a costly marketing campaign produced results? With marketing revenue tracking, a company can identify the marketing activities that generate the most sales revenue by directly linking every sales dollar back to its related campaign.

2010 Search Engine Optimization

2010-04-22T14:48:00.003-04:00

Anyone with half a decent website gets bombarded with phone calls and e-mails everyday from people claiming that they can get you to the top of Google. The notion that someone can make that claim without understanding your business thoroughly, your target clients, and the competition you face to reach those clients is completely baseless. Choosing the right partner for Search Engine Optimization work can be very tricky. Regardless of who you decide to work with, do your homework before making a decision.

Discovery and what you should expect
The first step to creating a successful search engine optimization strategy is to understand the business that wants to be found in the search engines. Through discussions with you or your marketing team, the chosen agency can develop a thorough list of keywords and phrases which describe the products and services offered by your company. From this list, the agency will then expand it to include keywords and phrases which will ensure that your business is found when customers are searching for your competitors. The next logical step is then fine tune the list by reducing the amount of keywords and phrases, by eliminating those that are too competitive for the search engine optimization budget which has been allocated to the project. It is also important to include keywords and phrases which your customers will search for, and not necessarily the ones you might use to describe your own business.

Setting the Budget
Most businesses that are shopping for a search engine optimization partner get easily frustrated when trying to determine the expected cost of the project. This is mostly because you cannot pinpoint an exact cost for an exact result as you normally can with paid online advertising. As explained above, the agency should work closely with you to determine a list of keywords and phrases for which you can achieve measurable results given the budget allocated. In other words, it does not make sense to promise you a top spot in Google for a very competitive keyword if your budget does not allow your company to achieve those results. If you have a set budget in mind, you should be given a realistic expectations level about the results you can expect with that budget. If you have a certain goal in mind in terms of search engine rankings, your agency can tell you what budget will be required to achieve those goals.

A tried and proven Process
There are many facets to search engine optimization and it is too cumbersome to get into all of them here, but the essential elements are to ensure that your website is built in a way that is friendly to the search engines, modifying your website content to attract the consumers that you are interested in attracting, and building links from other websites to yours. Achieving higher organic rankings will have a tremendous impact on your business as a whole, and should be measured accordingly.

Timeline
If anybody has told you that search engine optimization can take months to show results, they were right. Unfortunately this has allowed many scam artists to make false promises and charge their clients for months without doing anything until the client realizes that there are no results. This is another reason why it is important to choose your search engine optimization partner carefully, and work with an established reputable firm rather than someone who calls you randomly. It is also important to understand that Search Engine Optimization is not something that you purchase… it is an ongoing process. While you usually can expect to see results within 3 to 4 months, it is also common to see companies drop off the search engines because they decided that they were no longer interested in investing into SEO since they had already achieved the high rankings they had hoped for.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools
With the implementation of specialty SEO plug-ins for the websites we build, you will have access to a comprehensive set of reports from Google Analytics. These analytics will give you insight on how your website is performing, and where people are looking when visiting your site.

Ongoing Support
Don’t have the time to update your site? Busy doing the things that company owners have to do to be successful in managing and building a small business? Some agencies will update your site and keep your blog, news and/or press sections full of current and relevant information about your company. Finding the right agency to facilitate your search engine optimization and related interactive needs, will allow you to concentrate on your clients.

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Europe: New Decade Heralds The Age Of Digital Mobility

2010-03-09T07:42:00.006-05:00

Europeans are more mobile and engaged with online than ever

Key European Findings

· Europeans are spending more time on 'internet-on-the-move’ (6.4 hours a week) compared to reading newspapers (4.8 hours) or magazines (4.1 hours)
· A rise in laptop ownership is driving greater media convergence – 36% of Europeans use the internet whilst watching TV
· There are now 121 million wireless broadband users in Europe allowing a greater mobility for internet users
· 71 million Europeans use the internet on their mobile each week – for an average of almost one hour every day
· Eastern European markets demonstrate opportunity for marketers to engage users via mobile internet

The European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) reveals the findings of new research that shows digital mobility making its way into the mainstream. Technological innovation coupled with a diverse range of access points for consumers is driving deeper usage online, presenting marketers with a vastly mobile pan-European audience to target and engage with in 2010 and beyond.

The EIAA’s Mediascope Europe study across 15 European markets highlights how consumers are extending the ways in which they enjoy and engage with the internet and its growing influence on everyday lives. With a majority of people now aware they can use the internet via their mobile phone (48% vs. 47%), and a growth in wireless broadband and laptop use, the findings demonstrate how the increased diversity of internet-enabled devices is allowing consumers to go online at any time of day and in more locations than ever before.

Increase in internet-on-the-move

Overall, 71 million Europeans browse the mobile internet in a typical week and, with almost an hour a day actively spent going online via their mobile (6.4 hours per week), 'internet-on-the-move’ is proving a more frequent pastime than reading newspapers (4.8 hours) or magazines (4.1 hours).

It is the younger generation of early adopters that is largely driving this increase with almost a quarter (24%) of 16-24 year olds and 21% of 25-34 year olds already using the mobile internet, spending 7.2 and 6.6 hours on it respectively each week. This trend of increased consumer reach and time spent online looks set to continue with improving internet coverage, speeds and services. Marketers would therefore be well advised to recognise how consumers are increasingly engaging with the internet, at more times throughout their day and across a myriad of interactive touch points, and ultimately use this insight to develop effective multi-media marketing strategies.

The internet as an entertainer and enabler

The internet continues to prove a popular source of entertainment with one quarter of Europeans (25%) gaming or listening to the radio online (25%), and one third watching films, TV or video clips online (32%) at least once a month. With over one quarter (29%) of Europeans following brands more as a result of the internet, the medium is being used for fun and for function signifying that users have high levels of both emotional and rational connection with the medium. Amongst those with an internet enabled phone, half (49%) claim to receive video clips, websites or images on their mobile and four in five (80%) say that they pass on the content they receive. This suggests that those online via their mobile are both technologically sophisticated and deeply engaged - highlighting a prime opportunity for marketers to build brand awareness and peer recommendations.

Additionally, 'Word of Web[1]’ continues to play a central role in communications with almost three quarters (71%) of European internet users admitting that they stay in touch with friends and relatives more as a result of the internet. Again, mobile seems to be a big driver with almost half (48%[2]) of Europeans using their internet enabled phones for more than verbal conversation. 16% state they communicate using social media via their mobile, with 16% also using mobile instant messenger. Advertisers can therefore benefit from the growing consumer appitite for constant updates and entertainment on the go and use this insight to plan for multi-media campaigns that engage with consumers across a number of platforms.

Converging media experiences

Media convergence is on the rise with the research revealing that one third (36%) of European use the internet whilst watching TV. With recent technological advancements such as the iPad, and given almost half (46%) of European households already own at least one laptop and 121 million Europeans (52%) now use wireless broadband, increased mobility and convergence seems inevitable. Marketers should no longer look at media in isolation but rather embrace the media-meshing trend and the wealth and diversity of advertising opportunity it affords.

Extending scope: changing the status quo

This year the Mediascope Europe study has been extended to incorporate a further five European markets in addition to the original ten. The research now includes Poland, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey to capture the different ways in which consumer media habits and behaviours are developing across Europe.

While these markets all display very different characteristics and are at varying stages of internet development, one trend that stands out is the speed of mobile internet growth. This is particularly apparent amongst the larger Eastern European countries, all of which show no signs of the time-lag observed in larger Western countries when dial-up internet and broadband connections were first adopted. Poland tops the chart of markets that spend the most time on mobile internet, with Russia also appearing in the top five. Interestingly, there are more mobile internet users in Turkey compared to those that access internet via their PC (21% vs. 20%) demonstrating that consumers will engage with new platforms if it makes the internet more accessible for their everyday lives.

These 'newer’ markets such as Russia, Turkey, Poland and Portugal are regarded as rising stars, with a rapid increase in weekly internet use expected in coming years. With an average growth in European internet use of 11% every 2 years, we can predict how internet penetration in these markets might grow in coming years - a useful indication for media planners as they as they increase the scope of their pan-European campaigns:

* Actual % internet use taken from EIAA Mediascope Europe 2010
** EIAA predictions (created using findings from Mediascope Europe 2004-2010 and externally sourced local market data)

Alison Fennah, Executive Director of the EIAA said: “Better devices and connectivity as well as enhanced consumer motivation all started coming together in 2009 to improve and extend the overall online experience. As a result, the internet is now being consumed across PC, laptop, mobile and gaming devices, providing 24-7 access to digital information and entertainment. This presents a compelling case for brands to explore and incorporate a growing number of complementary interactive platforms into the marketing mix.

“Indeed, new age patterns of media consumption indicate that marketers should be looking to develop multi-platform strategies that reach and connect with consumers more effectively and increase ROI. This is opposed to making media decisions based on an 'either or’ basis if they want to reach all demographics.”

Michael Kleindl, Chairman of the EIAA and Managing Partner of Valkiria Network said: “Technological innovation coupled with consumers’ continued desire to merge their media presents a huge opportunity for advertisers as we move into 2010. It is important for brands to adapt to this shift in internet mobility and use this insight to shape their marketing strategies.”
[1] The developing trend of 'word of mouth’ to 'word of web’ or communicating online
[2] This is an aggregate of: communicating via social networking sites and sending / receiving emails and instant messenger

The Power of Marketing Friends in Social Media

2010-01-29T16:10:00.004-05:00

If you knew five of my friends have tweeted or posted on Facebook rave reviews about their Audi, Q5, wouldn't you push that listing higher? Sure you would, but it's impossible to ask me questions about every topic I'm searching for. Of course, there is a better way to get to the same result, and it takes us back to the "Wisdom of Crowds" -- in this case, my crowd.

My friends and I happen to share similar geography and circumstances for the most part, which causes some amazing similarities. Moreover, I am much more likely to trust my friends' opinions than those of strangers. Anyone that's recently been on the search for a good doctor or dentist or accountant knows intimately how important it is to get recommendations from those you trust. This is "friendsourcing" -- the concept that people I know give better and more reliable answers for me than the world can as a whole.

To say this means we're on the edge of something big is a catastrophic understatement, but marketers have only started to scratch the surface of what this means for them and their clients. At very least, we've got three fundamental paradigm shifts to deal with:
1. What brands say and do in social media has an increasingly direct effect on how they will appear in search engines, both in search results position and in description.
2. The more friends in my social circle (aka my "social graph") talk about your brand, the more likely I am to see your brand, click on your brand's listing and become another voice talking about your brand.
3. Many brands have recognized that their impact in social media is both powerful and tangible, but now that impact will easily spill over into other channels. "Social" isn't just a silo in your channel mix anymore, and the lines will be increasingly blurred with mass media, CRM, SEO/SEM or other channels.

The good news is that it's never too late to stake a new claim in social media for your brand. So to get your team or your clients started, here are some quick first steps: Listen, record, observe and compare

There are a million tools on the market for searching or filtering social media conversations, and many of them are free -- Chris Brogan has an excellent list of the ones he uses here. Most organizations are doing this already, but it's usually in a vacuum from other marketing efforts. Instead of just looking through your "ego feeds" (conversations about your company), start checking on the conversations around your search engine marketing portfolio of keywords, or use Google's keyword tool to analyze your site and start your own list. It's often interesting to see the gap between what people say about you and what they say about your product or service -- this can lead to ideas for new content on your site or places for your social media team to try to change conversations. For extra credit, start comparing the trends on these terms to your offline media: are my mass communications moving this needle? Did my latest direct-mail piece with the killer offer spark some new conversation?

Start holding everyone responsible, but make someone accountable. Your organization's social "footprint" can't be managed as a hobby. Large or small, it's time to take this seriously, because the impact will be felt from cyberspace to the cash register. Almost all marketing units are affected by (and will probably have an opinion on) social media, so it's often good to start with some kind of a "task force" comprised of representatives from each. However, the business needs to make a decision of exactly which person will own its social presence. This person doesn't need to be the one running it day-to-day, but they need to be able to speak to it fluently and have the power to make a difference.

Create a social media "lodestone" within each of your marketing efforts. Even with a cross-functional team or steering committee, it's hard to keep the social media conversation from gravitating to just a couple of marketing functions. To be truly effective, each discipline needs to know how they intersect with social media, and needs to define that in a way that attracts and excites new projects. PR, for example, can own reaching out to specific voices and generating influential conversations. CRM, however, has the opportunity to focus on longer dialogues with individual customers.

Online Newspaper Advertising - Latin America

2010-01-19T11:27:00.006-05:00

Online newspapers are the essential link for people to stay connected to information, news and their home countries.

When they read the news directly from online newspapers such as La Prensa from Panama or La Republica from Costa Rica, they are receiving un-biased news and information directly from their country. Readers review their local news covering subjects from politics to the latest gossip from their countries' entertainment. Now the technological enhancements of the internet makes reading online newspapers easier than ever!

I stumbled upon an article by Mort Goldstrom about the reasons why to advertise in online newspapers. I think this very much applies to Latin America and reinforces why it is so important for advertisers to include this in their online marketing mix. I hope sharing this with you increases your knowledge and helps you understand more in depth how the online newspaper opportunities can really work for your clients.

10 Reasons to Advertise on a Newspaper Website
Frequency- The online newspaper Web site user spends more than twice as many hours online than the general user. Online newspaper users are three times as likely as general 'Net users to be online during the workday when out of reach of other media - 8-11 a.m. is a new "primetime" for media consumption (Source: "Power Users," 2006, MORI Research)

Credibility- Branded content brings a higher quality audience. A study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) showed that OPA audiences were more likely to buy products and services in a number of key categories, including automotive, entertainment, financial, home, travel and business to business.

Targeted- If you want to focus on a particular backyard, advertising in an online newspaper is more personal and more relevant because it is local. Newspapers also publish a plethora of niche sites (youth, women, movie fans, Hispanics, are illustrative) for virtually any demographic advertisers could possibly hope to reach. - "Newspapers know more than ever about their web audience because of online registration programs and audience segmentation software"]

Purchasing Power- Eighty-nine percent of newspaper Web site users purchase online compared with 56 percent of general users. Forty percent of online newspaper users have incomes higher than $75,000; 69 percent own their homes. Eighteen percent of online newspaper users have spent more than $2,000 online in the last six months.

Content- Excluding e-mail the most popular online activities and content categories include national and local news, sports, financial information and entertainment news and things to do. [Shopping, cited in the original, is lower on the list.] Fifty-four percent of general Internet users visit online newspapers for local news, compared with 40 percent for the local TV station Web site and 20 percent for the local radio station site. ["Power Users," 2006, MORI Research]

Advertisers Believe in Newspaper Sites- Online newspapers have enjoyed eleven consecutive quarters of double digit increases for advertising since NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004.

High Profile- Online newspapers generate very large gains in Online Ad Awareness among C-level and other higher management job holders: C-level managers showed a 23 percent increase in Aided Brand Awareness, VP/director-level managers showed a 38 percent increase and other management showed a 37 percent increase following their exposure to an ad campaign in online newspapers (across all industries.) When the brand metric shifts to Message Association, C-level execs showed the largest increase in lift after exposure to campaigns on online newspapers, at 88 percent. No management category showed less than a 51 percent increase. (Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms database, 2006)

Reinforcement- Fifty-six percent of online newspaper users also read the newspaper in the past five days, and repetition increases awareness.

Cutting Edge- Newspaper Web site users are more likely (by almost twenty percent to own some kind of portable electronic device. They are also more interested in receiving advertising and product offers through those devices. Forty percent of online newspaper users are aged 18 to 34. [Source: "Power Users," 2006, MORI Research]

Mix- A variety of recent studies have demonstrated the power of online, when included in a mix with traditional media, to elaborate the brand message. Newspaper, print, and online products combined have the highest penetration and most desirable audience of any other local medium.

Time Management in Marketing & PR

2010-01-14T08:12:00.003-05:00

“I need more time”. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to get this done”. “I’ll be burning the midnight oil”. How many times have you heard any of these from a co-worker or said them yourself? Marketing and PR projects can be just as much of a time crunch as in any other industry. With that said, it’s important for clients to understand project timelines/deadlines so the work can be completed on time and efficiently.

1. Make a plan
You have a project, now make a plan as to how it will be implemented. Who will be working on the project? What information is needed to get it done? When is it due? Who is in charge of putting the project together for delivery?

2. Implementation
Now that you have your plan together, with tasks assigned, it’s time to implement. Have regular meetings with team members to make sure everyone is on track and there are no problems. Handle any problems that arise immediately. If someone is unable to obtain a key piece of information, brainstorm, reach out to others, if necessary.

When working on the project timelines, build in time for reviewing and making changes to the project (brochures, scripts, ads, etc).

3. Delivery
When delivering the project, have someone with fresh eyes review the project. Make changes where necessary to ensure a valuable product is delivered.

4. Thank the team
Don’t forget to always thank your team members for their important contributions. If something went awry, consider it a learning experience and don’t make the same mistake next time.

5. Review
Review what went right and wrong on the project. Take team members’ input seriously. If necessary, do a case study and distribute it throughout the company. Everyone will appreciate knowing how to do things more efficiently.

These are just some of the things that can be done to ensure your project stays on task and on time. Any other suggestions?

Hiring a Digital Agency

2009-09-25T10:00:00.004-04:00

Hiring (and firing) an agency goes with the territory for brand marketers. But what was once a multi-year (or longer) relationship between the brand client and their agency has become much more fluid. Whether you're talking about bringing in a new agency of record or adding another player to your agency mix, brand-side clients are always evaluating agency talent, and the fast pace of digital means that brands will likely have to sign on the dotted line with greater frequency.

There are a number of places to start when hiring a new agency, start by asking, "Why do we need a new agency?" Maybe you've inherited them and you just can't work together -- you've tried, but it's a chemistry thing.

Why do we need a new agency? -- will always lead to some rather profound insights, if the brand can be honest about its own corporate culture as well as what's gone right (and wrong) with the relationship at hand. While that may sound like simple advice, it's a pill not easily swallowed by many clients.

Broadly speaking, ask yourself if your company culture supports the changes the agency is trying to make? Examine your relationship to see if it allows for shared risk. Is the agency forced to stay inside a box or are they given some freedom?

Those answers may not always be available because in some cases, the relationship may have become so bad that it's nearly impossible to see the forest through the trees. Take the time to reflect on your own corporate culture and how it interplayed with their previous agency stand a much better chance of getting it right with their next hire.

Beware of the specialist search
Scan the tech blogs and you'll quickly see that digital creates new communication channels faster than advertisers can figure out how to use them. But CMOs who want to integrate their media strategy face a difficult dilemma: Do you opt for a "specialist" agency -- a social media shop, for example -- to work in a highly technical area, or do you hire one agency that can bring it all together at the risk of sacrificing some key knowledge in an emerging area?

The answer depends more on your own organization's strength and weaknesses than anything else. It's all about orchestration, if you have the time and staff to orchestrate across multiple specialists, then you have the option to spread the love. If you're like most organizations, however, and you're short-staffed and time-crunched, then you should find and assign a lead agency and have them sub-contract for the specialists.

If you have a lead agency responsible for bringing holistic thinking, then they will have the responsibility to be constantly searching for specialists and providing you with thought leadership and success.

Restless can be a winner
No matter how exhaustive your hiring process is, you will always face the same problem: All agencies look great before you hire them.

They always put their best foot forward when you're looking at a new agency. A lot of times you're looking at their work, and maybe it wasn't all their original idea, but they executed on it. Or maybe they had the big idea, but some other agency put it in action -- no agency is ever going to tell you exactly what they did. So, there's always some mystery there.

It's not about what the agency did to get in the room with him -- that's all prelude. In a nutshell, he says, he's always on the lookout for a "restless" agency. It's really about doing great work, but having that mindset to say, okay we hit all of our goals, but how could we have done it better? That's the kind of restlessness you want from your agency.

Find an agency that experiment
It is important that the agency is adding expertise. There's always something new, something that's experimental, and it is important that the agency is keeping up with the times. That's critical, and experimentation is a sign of a good agency.

Look for existing partnerships
For better or worse, most brands use a mix of agencies these days. But whether those agencies work together or fight each other tooth and nail for a larger share of the client's business often depends on two factors.

First, it's up to the client to set the tone for cooperation, and while some brands prefer in-fighting among their agencies, most at least say that they want team work.
My experience on both the client and agency sides shows that regardless of whether the agencies work together; there will always be a level of competition going on.

You need to communicate the ground rules before, during, and after the contracts are signed -- what the rules of engagement will be. If you don't want to see or hear the campaigning, then you need to let them know that and chastise their senior management when they do.

But ground rules will only take you so far, and if you haven't hired an agency that knows how to play well with others, you're going to be in for bumpy ride, which means that even before you set the ground rules, you have to seek out the right kind of agency partner.

If a firm already has existing strategic partnerships, this bodes well for them being willing to share the sandbox with others. A smart agency realizes they can't be the best in every area, and a focused agency will usually want to work on that which they know they can produce superior results.

Chemistry counts, but chemists aren't needed
Nearly all great teams have some level of chemistry. But whether you're talking about the chemistry between your staff and your agency, or the relationship between your various agencies, it is possible to go overboard. And in fact, some CMOs tend to focus too much on chemistry.

Chemistry is probably [the] No. 1 [thing a CMO should look for in an agency. You've got to be able to work together. But don't let a personality glitch blind you to the attributes of an agency if you'll never have to work with that person.

When Agencies Should Defend In a Review

2009-09-16T08:32:00.002-04:00

Understand the average: Your agency has a 95% chance of losing a review.

When to participate?

• Mandated reviews (e.g. government contracts; rules set by procurement or purchasing departments).
• Roster reviews.
• Agency consolidation reviews.
• When you have very strong, deep relationships and the results to back them up (and there's been no change in management).

When not to participate?

• When there are serious concerns (from either side) about the agency relationship or business performance.
• Management changes, particularly when you know that the incoming leadership has successfully worked with other agencies.
• Announcement of an unscheduled review.
• Announcement of a non-roster review.

Like the emotion of wanting to get even, defend yourself, or inflict equivalent harm that you might feel when thinking about sueing someone, it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of wanting to fight and "spend whatever it takes" to keep your hard-won or long-tenured client. However, the smart new business decision may well be to spend the money winning a new piece of business.

Optimizing Your Facebook Initiatives

2009-09-11T07:45:00.006-04:00

Traditional search marketing holds that there are two ways to get search engine traffic. The first is to pay for it via pay-per-click advertising, and the second is to earn the traffic with optimal search engine placement. In the earned search marketing business of search engine optimization (SEO), a Facebook fan page is merely a web page, just like any other, except that it has the built-in benefit of residing on a very powerful domain. The same goes for YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Smart optimization, combined with the strong domains that house them, can propel your social media pages to the top of search engine results for relevant searches.

With that in mind, here are tips for optimizing your Facebook initiatives, as well as some brands that are getting it right.

Facebook
Quick tips for optimization:

Provide regular updates. Like most social media, a Facebook page is only as good as the content available for fans to interact with. Generally speaking, the more digital assets (videos, photos, etc.) the better. Provide regular updates (at least daily and preferably more, though this will depend on your niche) that encourage user participation. Respond to user feedback. To keep from falling behind, consider creating a calendar of updates at the beginning of each week or month.

Choose a good name for the page. The name of your Facebook page is arguably the most important early decision you will make because this is the very first thing the search engines will see when they visit your page. At the very least, you should include the name of the business. You might also include targeted keywords if appropriate.

Choose a good username. A username allows you to have a "clean" URL. For example, if you choose "dwaynejohnsonrocks" as your username, your page URL will be "www.facebook.com/dwaynejohnsonrocks." These URLs look nicer on business cards and letterhead, and they are easier to remember.

Vanity URLs, as they are called, also provide an opportunity for further optimization with your business name or a selected keyword. Given the choice between the two, the business name will be more appropriate in most cases.

Take advantage of the "about" box. The "about" box is a great place to include relevant content and keyword-rich descriptions. This is one of the only places on a page's "wall" that allows for fully customized copy to be written. Many pages use this space to simply provide a link back to the corporate website or place their tagline, but it is an ideal place to help the search engines understand more about your page.

Customize your page. Facebook allows for a moderate amount of customization. You can't change backgrounds or otherwise skin the page, but you can completely customize other things. For example, you have a large degree of control over how your tabs appear. In addition to adding unique content inside "boxes," you can frame a page hosted elsewhere, which allows for full control over the look and feel of that particular tab (within the confines of the Facebook page that surrounds it, of course).

A customized page immediately communicates credibility to the user and also shows a commitment to your brand's involvement with not only Facebook but also social media as a whole.

Who did it great
Threadless
The online T-shirt company Threadless has been active in social media since its inception. Its business model of printing user-submitted and user-voted designs requires an environment that encourages feedback and user interaction.

The Importance of an “Agency of Record"

2009-08-26T10:15:00.007-04:00

If getting the most of your agencies means harnessing the power of collaboration to bring about an environment where the big idea can come from anyone, it would seem that a brand has two clear choices. On the one hand, it can use one agency (perhaps calling it an agency of record) to lead all other agencies. On the other hand, the brand can choose to forgo the agency of record and instead manage its agency teams directly.

While either approach may lead to a collaborative environment (since the dawn of digital, agencies have come a long way toward working together) brands that opt to go without an agency of record run the risk of forfeiting the strength of a knowledgeable partner capable of thinking about the client's strategic interests.

The concept of an agency of record remains vitally important for major advertisers and marketers, agencies of record provide continuity, stability, and efficiencies that one-off, ad hoc, or project partners simply can't meet.

The notion of an agency of record that drives the strategy and the brand is more vital now than ever. But traditional agency revenue models where money is made on production and media commission is waning. And that means that someone ultimately must take responsibility for the brand's strategic vision.

A brand also needs people on the inside who understand what marketing is and how it works, and who live, eat, and sleep your brand. These are the nuts-and-bolts people who will move your business forward. They're the CMOs of tomorrow, but today they're trying to prove themselves and (hopefully) trying to learn as much as they can about marketing.

Why agencies lose clients...

2009-05-28T14:01:00.004-04:00

When you ask seasoned agency executives why they lose clients, you hear a multitude of reasons. The agency's client changed and the new client came in and cleaned house; the agency paid poor attention to budgets and timelines, or their strategic ideas, creative, and execution fell below client standards; the client feels they have "outgrown" the agency and they need a new agency with fresh ideas. Alternately, the client left because of the agency's arrogance and intransigence. And so on...

Though all these are potential reasons, the overarching foundational reason agencies lose clients is that they do not adequately satisfy the clients' basic human needs. Their basic human needs for food, safety and love -- yes, you read it right -- and their basic needs for esteem and self-fulfillment.

Understanding that all clients' needs at their core are basic human needs and passionately fulfilling those needs is the key to keeping most clients an agency would have lost. You must repurpose your agency's strategy, people, operation and processes to meet those basic needs to enjoy increased client retention.

In our client-agency relationship and process improvement work with interactive, direct marketing, branding, promotions, advertising and PR companies we have identified what clients need from agencies [see list in figure below]. If you compare those needs to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you find that "excellent ideas and delivery," "value for money," and "meet my goals," map to the clients physiological need for food. The "responsiveness" and "develop fast solutions" requirements map to the client's safety needs. Continuing, the "good to work with" and "understand my business" requirements map to the client's desire to fulfill their need to belong.

You may not agree with the specifics in this example, and may want to build a Clients Need Map that best reflects your clients' specific requirements. The key insight is that your clients, at a deep psychological level, want to satisfy their basic human needs.

We have found in our client-agency relationship and process improvement work that agencies with a laser-beam focus on delivering those needs well tend to keep their clients a lot longer than those that do not. The secret reason your agency is losing clients unnecessarily is that there is not enough leadership focus and emphasis on this concept and its execution, and that your agency's strategy, personal, operation, and processes are not yet geared towards achieving this goal. Let's take a look at how to remedy the problem.

Building a solid foundation
First, you must understand your client's lower and higher order needs. For example, think back and remember your favorite pizza or ice cream place. You always go back there because of the taste of the product. You may even drive past several of their competitors to get to your preferred vendor. They are meeting your lower order needs. For some people, the key need could be taste, good service, ambience, or belongingness (a key attractor for Starbucks customers). For others it could be "value for money."

In the ad/marketing services world, a key lower order need might be "fast execution" or "be very responsive." Therefore, you must start by identifying the client's priorities for these most basic needs, and put a plan in place to meet them in a consistent manner, right from the start. No matter how well a company is doing in delivering the clients higher order needs, if they fail to meet consistently the lower order needs, they will lose the client.

In the same vein, if the agency wins all sorts of industry awards that the client is genuinely proud of (higher order "esteem' need met) but fails to drive volume or awareness (lower order needs not met) will the client keep using them?

Finding the lower order needs
The clients lower order needs are those that fundamentally must be met. They are the results that the client wants from you and why they hired your agency in the first place. If the agency continues to perform poorly in meeting those lower order needs, the client will definitely fire the agency.

There are two types of lower order needs. The first are the types of needs that are no big deal when you meet them, which I call the "no big deal if met" client needs. The second are the types of needs that the client is happier the more of them they get, which I call the "get more the better" client needs.

The "no big deal if met" client needs. The "no big deal if met" client needs are those that the client expects you to meet without them necessarily requesting that they be met. They are customary and normal needs that must be met in a relationship. For example, the client expects you to give them a bill or invoice for the services you provided, or a statement of account telling them how their budget was spent.

Just like when you stay in a hotel or go out to dinner, you get a bill. It should not be a big deal for the business to give you a bill, an invoice, or a statement of account. It is an expected, customary, and normal part of the day-to-day engagement.

You get no kudos for meeting the "no big deal if met" client needs. However, you will get a lot of grief if they are poorly met. Have you ever stayed in a hotel and while checking out you found that your bill was wrong? Did you feel they were doing you a favor when they corrected it? No. They just wasted your time for something that should have been correct in the first place. They won't get any kudos for billing you correctly, but chances are you'll remember if they messed up on something as simple as this. Similarly, no matter how creative or strategic an agency might be, a client will eventually fire an agency if they continue to perform poorly on meeting these basic expectations.

The "get more the better" client needs. The "get more the better" is another form of basic client needs normally agreed upon in the day-to-day working relationship with an agency. For example, in a client agency briefing, if an agency committed to providing three concepts and not only delivered these on time but shared two additional ideas for looking at the marketing challenge, they are meeting a "get more the better" need. The more of it the client gets, the more satisfied they become -- to a reasonable limit, of course.

For the same budget, by giving the clients more concepts than they expected, you are leveraging the "get more the better" concept. Delivering what was promised earlier than promised or for much less than the agreed upon budget are other examples of "get more the better" client needs. By understanding your client's "get more the better" needs and strategically giving them more than expected, where appropriate, you can significantly deepen your relationship with the client.

Just as with the "no big deal if met" client needs, you get no kudos for just meeting the "get more the better" client needs. However, by going beyond what is expected, the client will likely appreciate your thoughtfulness, your creativity, and see you as a proactive partner who is working harder to make them more successful. It does not necessarily cost you more to deliver additional "get more the better" needs.

Determining higher order needs
Determining the higher order needs -- esteem and self-actualization -- may be a little more complicated. For example, a client that relies on your agency for "strategic counsel" and for "creative that makes their brand famous" is looking to meet a higher order needs with your services.

Please note that a lower order need for a client working with an agency may be a higher order need with another agency. For example, the "strategic counsel" need may be a lower order when the client works with a large, top-of-the-line ad agency. However, the same client working with a promotions company may classify this as a higher order need since they already have a primary agency to do the strategic counseling.

Mapping client needs
To determine your clients' lower and higher order needs, try building your own Client Needs Map for each one. When doing this, remember that higher order needs contain numerous esteem and self-fulfillment needs and, in some cases, they can become very personal. It may be helpful to split the higher order needs to "formal" and "informal" needs. A "formal" higher order need is mostly a client's company need; while an "informal" higher order need is very personal to the client you work with directly.

An esteem need, such as, "drives my volumes and brand awareness while winning agency awards," or "creative that makes our brand famous," which can be shared with appropriate persons within the client's organization, is an example of a "formal" need.

On the other hand, an "informal" higher order self-fulfillment need, could be something like, "the agency's work must help me get promoted." I hope you would agree that it is best to keep such very personal needs confidential. For example, one of my clients, a director of a large consumer packaged goods company, was promoted to VP because of the high-impact improvement work we completed. We recognized that the self-fulfillment need of "to be promoted as a result of the improvement work" is an informal client need.

Meeting higher order needs to reinforce your relationship
Naturally, you should focus on meeting the lower order needs first, and use meeting the higher order needs as "icing on the cake." No matter how well a company is doing in meeting the higher order needs, if they fail in delivering the lower order needs well, they will, over time, be fired by the client.

The process:
Losing a client is particularly painful at this time of economic hardship, so ad/marketing services companies and interactive agency leaders can use this model to plug those avoidable client losses, now.

In a nutshell, start the process by auditing your current joint client-agency relationship and processes to identify what is working well and what is not. Next, map what your clients need from your agency, and the hierarchy of those needs. Then identify the gaps in meeting those needs and develop solutions and strategies to close the gaps. After that, roll out agreed solutions after proper testing. Finally, use performance tracking and effective client-agency change management to sustain the client retention strategies you implemented.

Now, take a look at how to execute those steps in more detail.

Step 1: Conduct relationship and process audit
Determine your clients' lower and higher order needs and how they map to the hierarchy of needs.

Is your company's operation set up primarily for business "hunting" or "farming"? It is best to balance the two; for example, a business model geared towards farming that spends significant agency resources on acquisition may not have the bandwidth and good supportive processes for keeping clients they acquire for a very long time.

- How strong is the chemistry between the agency teams and the client teams? How can you tell the chemistry is working?
- Are your work practices and processes geared to delivering the client's basic needs, and doing them very well, such that the client never entertains leaving the agency? What are the sources and causes of client dissatisfaction in your work processes and practices?
- Are your practices good at meeting the clients' budget and timeline requirements?
- Are they good for executing flawlessly?
- How would your clients score you on caring and being very responsive to their needs? How well would you score on whether they would recommend you to a colleague?

Step 2: Prepare a client needs map
Through the relationship and process audits, you discovered the low and higher order needs of each of your clients, which could vary significantly among them. However, most clients will expect you to meet their goals, provide excellent ideas and delivery, understand their business, be responsive to their needs, develop solutions fast, and give them value for their money.

With this information in mind, prepare the lower and higher order maps for each of your clients.

Step 3: Close gaps in lower order needs
To be effective, you must focus on the most important lower order needs first. A transformative understanding and appreciation of basic human needs, and how to meet those needs effectively, is critical to retaining your clients.

When an agency fundamentally understands the client's basic needs, from the top down, the whole agency operation, strategy and processes become repurposed around understanding, identifying, delivering and tracking how well those basic needs are met. This type of agency is equipped to consistently meet these needs, and will likely start enjoying significant increases in client retention and win-backs.

Step 4: Uncover and deliver higher order needs
The very first step in meeting the higher order needs is to be sure the agency is already meeting the clients' lower order needs consistently.

Next, develop a strategy for delighting the client through meeting their higher order needs. Revisit the higher order needs you previously identified in the relationship and process audit, and then develop strategies for delivering them.

Step 5: Test solutions and strategies
Though cast in a hierarchical form, all client requirements must be delivered simultaneously to keep the client happy. To test solutions and strategies, start with the lower order needs and make sure they are being met. Then progress to higher order needs.

Key questions to ask as you do your testing:
- How often does the agency fail to meet the timelines promised?
- How well expected campaigns results are achieved (increased brand awareness, increased sales, etc)?
- Does the client feel they are spending all this money with the agency but not executing enough campaigns or driving required results, no matter the reasons?
- To what degree does the client see value in their working with your agency?

Step 6: Training and rollout
Train key employees and account leaders on the solutions and strategies you have developed. Then, train key stakeholders on how to manage the client relationship so they can progressively improve the economic performance of the agency and the client.

The training should cover:
- How your account teams can turn problems into opportunities
- How to understand and fulfill all basic client requirements (lower and higher order needs, formal and informal needs)
- How to execute your client work fast and flawlessly
- How to measure performance and drive changes in behaviors, with client and agency organizations, required to improve results
- Ultimately, how to focus on giving the client more with less

Step 7: Track and take corrective action
Track and take corrective action on how well the agency is meeting all identified needs. As you do this, recognize that your agency must be passionate about being strategically aligned with the client. Be clear about what this entails and how to live it credibly by passing decisions through that screen.

In addition, the agency must be an enthusiastic brand steward for the client. Know the brand so well that you become the source of knowledge about the brand for any of your clients' new and transferred marketing managers.

Making A Brand Relevant In Social Media

2009-05-14T08:28:00.003-04:00

There are two components to advertising in the broader sense. One is the content that you manufacture, and the second is the channel and method you use to distribute that content. My sense is that the issue here is one of distribution and manufacture. So from a manufacturing point of view, the messaging that sums up the message of brands and even creates them is in a state of very, very rapid evolution. It's in a state of evolution in a number of dimensions -- in terms of the duration of messages, the formats of messages, and everything that goes with that. The world is not doing badly in terms of involving that manufacture. So that's a good thing. And the good thing for the agency business and the creative community, if you like, is that there has never been a bigger demand for more granular messaging to go in different formats.

The purpose of brand communication -- pretty much above everything else -- is to create social relevance for brands. What social relevance means is having a substantial cohort of the population, or certainly a big enough cohort of the population that justifies the cost of whatever it is you were planning to do in the first place -- that knows what the brand is, like it, feel it's relevant, and that is suitably exposed to it. That's what social relevance is. You still need to do that. So the question is: Has the bar for social relevance gone up? Yes, it has, and so the way you do that is to create a platform of some description, and you build social relevance around that platform.

Where can digital fill in the holes that traditional often leaves behind or completely ignores?
Digital fills holes in a couple of ways. The first thing it does is it helps by replacing the reach that's lost by the somewhat diminished use of other channels. But what digital really does is break the relationship between cost and duration. One of the reasons why the structure of the market was positioned the way it was in the old world is because it was limited either by the number of pages the magazine publisher could use to print and distribute and carry around on trucks, or the amount of spectrum that was owned by a broadcaster, and so forth. So the industry was capped before. When you think about advertising, think about it in two ways. Part of it simply pushes visibility into the market, and another part is much more directional. And what that direction is doing is taking people from a fairly superficial form of contact into the opportunity to engage much more deeply with that content.

U.S. Hispanics Repesent 10% of the Online Market

2009-04-21T08:22:00.002-04:00

True to its reputation as a "melting pot," the U.S. boasts an increasingly large Hispanic population -- the implications of which, when it comes to advertising, go far beyond a language barrier. A recent report from Pew Hispanic Center stated that U.S. Hispanics have represented more than half of U.S. population growth since 2000.

Marketers may have been tempted in the past to ignore this group -- or, at the least, did little to tailor messaging to it -- but it is no longer financially wise to do so. According to a 2008 comScore survey on U.S Hispanics online, 5 percent of U.S. born and 17 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they pay more attention to online video ads than TV spots, and 17 percent and 26 percent, respectively, find them more engaging than TV ads. The same survey also states that 13 percent of U.S. born and 22 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they are more likely to respond to ads targeted to Hispanics.

The comparison of TV and online advertising as it relates to response rates should be viewed in context of the language barrier. In the U.S., there are television networks such as Univision, which are broadcast in Spanish and include direct cultural relevance to Hispanic audiences. These types of channels are certainly not the only ones that Spanish-speaking audiences may view, but they are a specific destination on television where they know they can see programming in their language. Similarly, the internet is a much vaster marketplace, but those same types of destinations exist, even though Spanish-language sites are not the only ones viewed by Hispanic audiences.

As more ad dollars shift to this growing segment of the U.S. population, those destinations will become in-demand (i.e., expensive) online inventory for marketers. So how do you reach out to other cultures in an effective and cost-efficient way?

Behavioral targeting can help marketers reach across the cultural divide, helping to identify Hispanic online audiences, or any other ethnic group for that matter, and deliver messaging that is relevant to not only their language, but also their overall culture. It can also expand the inventory marketers use to reach Hispanic audiences.

Behavioral targeting is used to create Hispanic audience segments first based on users who have visited Spanish-language sites or any sites with Hispanic-relevant content. You can then create sub-segments based on not only ethnicity, culture, or language, but also interests and purchase intent behaviors observed on those or other sites. You can even identify "purchase influencers" among U.S. Hispanic populations, based on browsing and buying behaviors plus geographic location. You may then serve culturally relevant marketing messages to these segments when they travel to any other site online.

You will also find re-targeting useful, once you have begun to build these behavioral segments. As you serve ads to your Hispanic audiences and sub-segments, you can then re-target them across whichever network or sites you choose, with upsell, cross-sell, or discount offers. As a marketer, make sure you're making the most out of these types of programs by using bilingual creative, or messages in Spanish, with themes and designs that will resonate with a Hispanic audience.

Finally, ensure that you are integrating your marketing into these segments with your other media programs. With your search program, you can strengthen your segments by layering your behavioral data with your search data. Behavioral profiles that have been tagged as part of a Hispanic audience or sub-segment can be given a boost by search data including Spanish-language or Hispanic content keywords or search engines that have been set to Spanish.

Consumer education is a challenge no matter what language you're speaking or audience you're trying to reach. If you decide to embark on a Hispanic-focused BT campaign, ensure that your privacy policies are clearly communicated in both languages on your site, as well as any type of opt-out or opt-in functions you provide.

According to SMG Multicultural CEO Monica Gadsby, 19.5 million U.S. Hispanics are online, 70 percent of Hispanic women are online, and Hispanics make up 10 percent of all online users. This might be a significant portion of your potential customer pool, and reaching out to them can be just as easy as reaching out to any audience segments, with a few process and creative changes. Based on its ability to accurately segment audiences, behavioral targeting is by far the most efficient way to market to the Hispanic population. And remember, these same principles can be applied to any cultural group that you want to reach out to in the country.

Beginners Guide to Twitter

2009-04-09T08:00:00.006-04:00

Having a profile for your brand on the popular microblogging site isn't enough. You have to create a real presence. Our expert shows you how.

It is important to recognize and understand the nuances of Twitter as a communications channel. The genius is in its simplicity, but it's still a tool that consumers and businesses can leverage many ways.

My team conducted an exhaustive and extensive survey of the Twitterverse and how consumers use the platform for their needs. Check out some of the ways people use Twitter.

It is significant to note that 56 percent use it in some professional, marketing, or work-related capacity.

Conversations on Twitter happen quickly, and there are many benefits to your brand. Below is a tweet from Scott Monty from Ford on the value of Twitter as Ford sees it.

So how can and should your brand use Twitter? And more importantly, what are the most common mistakes and pitfalls on Twitter that could have a negative impact on your business or brand?

Let's take a look.

You need to have a unified experience consistent with your brand so as not to confuse consumers. Your Twitter profile is where people go to quickly discover how you are using Twitter and learn more about your business. Make sure that you get your brand or business messaging across using the 140-character descriptor field.

It is acceptable to tell them how you are going to use this Twitter channel and set expectations. For example, if your account is strictly for distribution of an RSS feed and there will be no human interaction, tell them so. Companies like SUN and Dell have multiple Twitter channels -- each specifically geared to deliver niche content to a target audience.

Tip: Update your Twitter page background with an image that conveys the positioning of the brand. A good example is Dunkin Donuts.

Notice how the company uses a visually branded background, page font, color, and an icon that are all consistent with its brand. Also note that the bio is descriptive, concise, and links to the Dunkin Donuts' homepage.

"Bio: Dunkin' Dave here, tweeting on the behalf of the DD mothership. I'm an American and I'm certifiably running on Dunkin."

Twitter effectively allows you to be the "fly on the wall" at a cocktail party. When an opportunity presents itself to join a conversation and interact, you should be ready. But you have to listen in order to do this efficiently.

Listening is a critical part of using Twitter if you want to be relevant and add value for the people who matter the most to your business. You can search Twitter as a lightweight form of brand and reputation management. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ to set up a number of persistent searches for your brand, as well as keywords that your users might be tweeting, and monitor them so you have the relevant knowledge of what is being said. This will allow you to respond and react accordingly in a timely fashion. You can also set up these searches as an RSS feed to monitor with something like Google Reader.

When users tweet @yourcompany, they are specifically reaching out to you and expecting some sort of response. User expectations are that if a brand or company is on Twitter, then it is there to interact. Failure to respond can have negative ramifications and is most commonly looked upon from a consumer's perspective as a sign that you don't care enough to respond. This is not what you want to have happen.

Responding in a timely manner and in a public fashion can have a very positive impact, as your followers and the followers of the person that you are interacting with will see that your company is engaging.

The bar has been raised, and the expectation for response from your brand has been increased dramatically. Now is the time to take this opportunity to increase your brand's engagement levels.

Most marketing people create a "message" and push it to multiple distribution points. That tactic does not work well in the Twitter ecosystem. While using Twitter to push press releases or automatic distribution of an RSS feed from your company blog might be appealing, the consumption model is minimal. Only linking to your website in your tweets will quickly become boring to your followers.

When you have people follow you, they follow for a reason. They have effectively "opted in" to hear what you are publishing and sharing. Focus on adding value and giving them what they want. Use this channel as a way to communicate industry news and trends -- insights that are valuable to your target audience.

Interaction is the key to building influence on Twitter. Share openly and don't only talk about your services. Find a way to mix it up and be interesting and human in your interactions.

Tip: Focus on adding value to the people who matter most and you can't go wrong.

There are several ways to measure the ROI of your efforts on Twitter. You need to choose clearly defined metrics for how you will measure and rank key criteria. The easiest -- but least valuable -- metric is how many people follow you. While this is a general indication of "popularity," it is not a good metric of influence, customer interaction, or customer satisfaction.

You will want to measure the number of interactions, the number of people you touch, and the net outcome of those interactions and conversations. For example, did you take an initial negative brand detractor and move that person to a higher satisfaction level, or to the point where they have become a brand evangelist?

You might also want to consider looking at the number of mentions of your brand as a general way to measure buzz or velocity as a topic of conversation in the ecosystem.

Also, consider the number of times your content is re-tweeted (noted on Twitter as "RT @yourbrand") and pushed through the network by multiple people. What is the effective "reach and influence" of the people that re-tweeted your content? This is actually an important metric when you look at how often people find your content interesting and "sharable." Interesting and valuable content is more likely to get re-tweeted by your followers.

You should also track the landing page of your site and how many people come from Twitter and what they do once they are on your site. This will help you to determine the behavior of the people that come from Twitter and what they are interested in.

It is important that, somewhere on your main site, you have a "directory" of people from your business that tweet on behalf of the company. It is also important that these people's bios are descriptive.

Companies like Dell use the word "Dell" in the user name (richardatdell, lionelatdell, etc.).

Kodak employees clearly identify themselves on Twitter via a visual branding profile image. Note the brand logo on the lower portion.

Many marketers make the rookie mistake of setting up an account on Twitter and not clearly defining how it will be used. Just because you are "on Twitter" does not mean you are using it in the most valuable way.

In fact, your company might need several different Twitter accounts that align with the target market and desired communication/business outcome. The low-hanging fruit that most companies are using it for is customer support or brand and reputation management. This is far from the only way that Twitter can be used.

As an example, Ford has six different Twitter accounts. Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments:
• FordTrucks
• FordDriveOne
• FordDriveGreen
• FordCustService
• FordMustang
• FordRacing

Here are just a few examples of how you might want to use Twitter:
• Customer support and service
• Brand reputation management
• Polling and product feedback mechanism
• Lead generation
• News distribution
• Brand awareness and establishment
• Product promotion and launch
• Humanizing of a brand
• Public relations

What Are The Right Social Media Networks For You?

2009-04-07T13:57:00.002-04:00

More than 30 million baby boomers now connect on LinkedIn, and even more are on Twitter. And it doesn’t stop there. According to recent data from Inside Facebook, the number of U.S. Facebook users over age 35 doubled in 60 days–and is still on the rise.

No longer dominated by tweens, social media is a viable channel to market to business and family decision makers. And that means long gone are the days when you could just optimize your Website content and create meta tags and expect serious results from the Internet.

You need to get involved in social media and optimize your entire online presence. Before you begin, though, you must understand where your target audience resides online.

With the many options available to companies in the social media realm, it’s important to first learn about your audience. Where are they most likely to be engaging in social media?

Today it’s no longer enough, or even smart, to post a profile to MySpace and Facebook just because those are popular, and call that good. Your audience may be on Facebook or MySpace, or maybe it’s LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter or something else entirely. Do a search to see where your brand is being talked about.

How? You can do this directly from a major search engine or by using the search capabilities the social media outlets provide. For example, you can search twitter using http://www.search.twitter.com. And a great way to view your brand’s social media presence is to use http://www.prmetrics.com.

Is your company being discussed on any of the social media sites? If it is, you need to be there engaging in the conversation.
Coca-Cola is a great example of this. Did you know the Coca-Cola business page wasn’t actually set up or controlled by Coca-Cola? Two of its fans actually got there first.

But instead of getting angry about it, Coke used this to its advantage. It embraced its fans, inviting them to talk to them personally.

Think of the insight Coca-Cola gleamed from this meeting! And today, Coke has the second highest number of fans on Facebook for its corporate page–topped only by Barack Obama (http://www.allfacebook.com/statistics/pages/).

Can’t find any mentions of your company? Don’t panic. That means you have the unique ability to start the conversation—the way you want to start it.

But don’t wait. Get involved now and start talking about your company positively in social media channels.

Social Web Crisis Communications

2009-04-06T09:50:00.002-04:00

Businesses, individuals, and organizations will, from time to time, make honest mistakes or in some unfortunate cases, intentionally support unethical decisions to dissuade or conceal something significant from its public.

Whether it's an oversight or a matter of deception, savvy companies usually employ and deploy a crises response team to prepare for, manage and attempt to positively spin the potential backlash from customers, partners, and employees related to almost anything.

Crisis communications is a branch of PR that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization, usually from a reactive response, facing a swelling public challenge to its reputation, brand, and community.

Throughout the course of history, we've learned that all that's required to ignite a negative firestorm is a spark from a single voice or an organized congregation.

If a conversation takes place on the Web and you're not there to hear or see it, did it really happen?

More often than not, we miss the very things that provide insight into a future response simply because we're not conditioned or trained to proactively discover and diffuse threats or negative experiences.

Our weakness, however, is also our opportunity to manage and also respond to any potentially damaging or menacing public groundswell.

Conversations related to your brand, company, executives, products, and competitors take place each and every day, without our knowledge and perhaps worse, without our participation.

In the era of the Social Web, a story, and the ensuing public recruitment, rallying, and support, can rapidly spread unlike any crisis wildfire witnessed or experienced in previous generations.

Social Media is pervasive. At the very least, it is transforming how we communicate with each other and also how we discover and share information. As the adoption of Social Tools and applications progresses from the left to the right of the bell curve, Social Media will simply coalesce back to "the Web." But, its migration, exploration, experimentation, and education will only contribute to its significance and resilience and ultimately change behavior and expand the infrastructure for corporate communications in the process. Regardless of genre, the sum of all social channels today equate to a powerful, influential, and revolutionary archetype for exposing and diffusing public opinion.

Perception is formed through the unique, individually-filtered experiences we each bring to the table. In that regard, our brand, and more specifically, our actions are open to public interpretation, support, and dissection. It’s what you say about you, what they hear, how they share that story, and how you weave that insight into future product and service iterations, communications, corporate infrastructure, and public conversations.

The tools and platforms available today are sophisticated, evolved, and designed for social distribution and redistribution. The Social Web forces a new level of understanding and participation in order for all communications professionals, in addition to crises response and reputation management teams, to understand its dynamics and the prevalence of information, positive, neutral, and especially negative.

To date, crisis communications and reputation management were relegated as a reactive response, while the groundwork for a potential predicament and the development of strategic communiqué is among the best practices for proactive crisis planning.

The traditional crisis communications planning and response workflow:
• Crisis Planning
• Negative Groundswell
• Crisis Response
• Public Relations
• Assessment/Monitoring

In the Social Web, I propose that many, if not a majority of potential crises are now avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation, humbleness, and transparency (repeat).

I'd like to introduce you to an old, but new again, dynamic process to integrate into the existing corporate communications and marketing workflow. Today's social tools and communities that can work against us can also work with us, when proactively managed and embraced with an open mind, sincere intent, and genuine participation.
• Active
• Listening
• Observation
• Conversation
• Learning
• Planning
• Continued Adaptation and Engagement

The art and science of proactive listening, observation, and participation will not only inspire the creation of in touch, relevant, and poignant PR and marketing strategies, but will also dramatically reduce the potential for reactive response and crisis communications programs. Crisis communications teams can also partner with those responsible for monitoring online brand reputations (ORM - online reputation management) or vice versa, to jointly listen, respond, and incite change from within. This creates a more effective "public relations" organization.

The point is that this is about proactively diffusing visible, but not yet large-scale predicaments before they're full-blown public crises. And, also through direct listening, engagement, and actively addressing concerns both inside and out of the organization, we're diverting the momentum from tropical storms before they have an opportunity to form unforeseen and unanticipated hurricanes. It's the ability to avoid a storm without knowing a storm was brewing by identifying weaknesses and opportunities as they emerge.

This is community-driven communications in its purest form which begets a community-focused and customer-centric organization.

Everything starts with openness and the ability to learn and adapt. It's the acceptance that it doesn't matter if the customer is always right. After all, a happy customer will share their good fortune with a group of friends and peers, but an unhappy customer will tell everybody.

Perception is everything.

For communicators, it's our role to actively listen and translate conversations into actionable next steps. It's not an automated process. It requires dedication and empowerment. Much of this responsibility is falling upon community managers and the new role of research librarians who are quickly acclimating to online conversations and how and where they apply to the internal decision makers, traffic coordinators, and metrics analysts. By partnering with these new, socially adept resources, Public Relations can…can more accurately and genuinely participate with influencers, whether they're media, analysts, bloggers, or tastemakers. When we step back and assess our markets, we just may find that they're collectively one in the same.

What if you don't yet have these roles or resources to help you listen and follow meaningful conversations? It's not impossible for you to proactively monitor conversations and the cultures and behavior associated within each digital society in order to identify and prioritize opportunities for engagement, reform, and evolution.

Start with using free search blog search tools such as:
• blogsearch.google.com (set up Google Alerts via RSS or email)
• Technorati
• Blogpulse

As we all know, or should know, the social web extends far beyond blogs, relevant online conversations are pervasive and rampant in social networks and microforums as well. In that regard, be sure that your initial waves of search include:

• search.twitter.com
• Ning
• Facebook
• Google and Yahoo Groups
• Uservoice
• Getsatisfaction

For those with a moderate budget to evaluate dedicated SRM (social media relationship management) or ORM tools, consider:
• Trackur
• BuzzGain
• Radian6
• BuzzLogic
• BrandsEye

Search for keywords related to your business, such as the company and product name, key executives, as well as scouting discussions for the "suck" or "die" factor. This includes adding a combination of the following criteria in your search process:
• "product+sucks"
• "company+sucks"
• "die+company"
• "i+hate+company"

As the Web itself grew in pervasiveness, it also paved the way for customers to easily launch sites to vent publicly. Examples already number in the thousands, with some capturing significant public attention including starbucked.com, ihatestarbucks.com, boycottwalmart.org and againstthewal.com.

Fairwinds recently released a study that documents the power of Internet gripe sites. The Wall Street Journal explored the topic with an in-depth article, "How to Handle 'IHateYourCompany.com,'" which explored what some companies are doing, or not doing, to protect their brands online.

In its study, FairWinds researched the Web to identify gripe sites specifically containing "sucks.com." The study uncovered over 20,000 domains with only 2,000 ending in the phrase "stinks.com." Of the major consumer-facing companies surveyed, only 35% own the domain name for their brand followed by the word "sucks."

But domain names are only one of the many opportunities for customers to share their discontent, and in the new era of the two-way web, communications, customer service, and brand and reputation management teams must all work together to actively survey the landscape to detect and diagnose negative experiences.

The Social Media and conversation landscape is a diverse universe. In order to identify a potentially dangerous asteroid on a glancing or full-blown collision course with your brand, you'll also need a powerful telescope, or, a "Conversation Prism."

The Conversation Prism was designed to provide a snapshot view of dialogue within mainstream and vertical social networks and communities that may be consequential to your brand. Every network provides a search box to unearth threads of discussions tied to connected keywords and inherent developments, negative or positive that may affect the company brand and reputation.

Conversations and developing crises are probable across a multitude of online channels, including:
• Blogs and Comments
• Microcommunities aka Microforums
• Social Networks
• Lifestreams
• Customer Networks
• Groups

The ensuing conversations tied to your brand can quickly and easily amass, across multiple networks simultaneously. Don’t let those conversations fall upon deaf ears.

For the first time, we have the ability to identify and address potential crises as they surface. And not only do we have the ability to engage with people to address their grievances or discontent, we can also learn from each engagement and feed the corresponding lessons, experiences, and criticisms back into the sales, service, and product development departments to change everything for the better.

It's the difference between simply placating customers and improving our business and products to satisfy many others who would have been potentially exposed to a potential deficiency.

Customers are among the new influencers and have the tools and platforms readily available to them in order to share their experiences and potentially incite the masses.

It's not just about the gripes we've identified, it's about the dialogue and actively and publicly addressing each issue to minimize the unforeseen eruptions from those who have yet to publish or rally others against us.

While our control has been crowd-sourced, perception management and crisis communications are ours to lead. Perception is reality and it's our responsibility to invest in the relationships and the correlated activities that will help us cultivate and manage an industry leading, market relevant, and in-tune brand.

Listen, learn, and adapt. In the Social Web, and in the real world of business, companies will earn the relationships, and the crowd-sourced brand, they deserve.

Twenty (20) Success Elements When Translating Your Web-site

2009-03-25T15:43:00.008-04:00

Over the past 20 years of building successful Spanish language websites our team has put together key design and language elements to help you be success in building a Spanish language website.

1. Clear headlines giving a substantial reason to continue reading
2. Shorter paragraphs and clear bullet points
3. Use a quote to pique interest for videos
4. Maintain a minimum column design with more emphasis on the left side
5. Use influencer logo/name to increase credibility and interest (i.e., Univision, Shakira)
6. Use a more active tone in the copy and simplify terms
7. Accurate translation is not only about language – focus on clearly expressing a value proposition and offers that appeal to your ideal segment prospect
8. Increase relevance by having all pages, configurators and shopping cart in Spanish
9. Increase time spent on page by adding Spanish-language content summaries to the links
10. Have search box functionality in Spanish to simplify the browsing experience
11. Consolidate themes and categories to reduce the navigation bar size
12. Call to actions must be specific and translation must be clear
13. Remove any English frames so visitors can focus on the page objective
14. Translate logo tag line when possible
15. Inform users about the product characteristics
16. Test different calls to action (improve semantics)
17. Don’t use an online translation service (i.e.; Google, Prompt) use a professional agency or advertising translator
18. Clearly state the company’s value proposition in the welcome message
19. Simplify navigation structure
20. Quantify value or cost savings

2009 Online ECPM Planning Costs - U.S. General Market/Hispanic Market

2009-03-19T09:10:00.006-04:00

Designing the Modern Agency

2009-03-16T18:13:00.007-04:00

Once upon a time, the phrase "advertising agency" conjured up a very definite image -- one of smoked-filled rooms and mile-long conference tables, across which creative geniuses would rapid-fire pitches at one another in hopes of hitting on that one "big idea." It's the nostalgic scotch-soaked notion of the ad agency famously portrayed on the hit show "Mad Men."

But that's not the modern agency. In fact, most industry participants today would be hard-pressed to define what exactly the phrase "the modern agency" means. However, few would argue that the digital revolution has forever changed the marketing game. And it's little wonder that many of today's advertising agencies are going through an identity crisis.

Large traditional creative shops are rethinking their offerings, expanding into all things digital. Agency holding companies are restructuring to better leverage their digital resources. And all the while, new digitally focused agencies continue to spring onto the scene.

What Agency Model is working?

The first model is one in which a client selects one lead entity -- at either the holding company or agency level -- and grants it the power to oversee all marketing efforts and partners.
The second model is one in which the client itself assumes that leadership role.
And the third model is one in which a client hires a slew of agencies and tells them to go collaborate.

Two of the models work, and one of them absolutely does not. The third model, is destined to fail -- and yet it's the model being used most often. And that's where the fighting comes in because there is no clear mission, it's imperative from a marketer's perspective to have one throat to choke at the end of the day.

Whether it's a specialized digital agency looking to broaden its client base or a traditional agency looking to expand its offerings into the interactive realm, few industry participants dispute that much of the future growth in marketing will come on the interactive side.

In spite of the lack of available digital talent, everyone I have talked to has an open head count and is hiring. The trick is making the agency side of the marketing business attractive to candidates with the needed digital expertise.

It's not all about recruiting new digital talent to the agency side of marketing. It's also about retraining industry veterans. We have people with 15 to 25 years in the business, and they are making a choice to change and adapt into this digital culture. Smart digital agencies are the ones that are embracing these people, involving them in the process, and training and educating them. They have a lot of intangible assets, and they bring a level of talent that some of the new digital folks just aren't going to pick up on the fly.

Agencies must also find a way to clearly convey their value in an increasingly cluttered marketplace. When it comes to agencies clients are getting tired of having to listen to so many voices.

Traditional agencies see the handwriting on the wall...that they're going to be out of business if they don't jump over to digital media and digital technology. Marketers today are less likely to simply hire a traditional agency and a digital agency and then tell them to play nice together. The lines are blurring, and so are agency distinctions.

It is about being relevant and not losing a seat at the table.

To Our Brand Manager Friends: Keeping Your Marketing Budget and Your Job

2008-07-02T12:18:00.007-04:00

Your marketing budget is an investment, not an expense…

To our marketing friends, I am writing this after a discussion with my wife. She is a marketing director and her company is looking at cutting the marketing budget. If possible, I would like a few moments with your CFO. It’s OK, I will wait while you go find him or her.

Stuck in a budget meeting? Well, maybe you could take a message:

We just want to say that something about staring at numbers all day must affect your vision, because we're hearing from our marketing brethren about shortsighted attempts to reduce company expenses by cutting the marketing budget.

Far be it from us to explain to those in offices that marketing spend is slightly different from the costs associated with the office coffee service, but let's just say your hell bent to put a dent in these "outrageous" costs for promoting your company's products and services.

We can only assume that to this belief means you'll lay off all those "money-grubbing" employees, shut down those retail outlets and then put all those savings into a nice bank CD where it can earn a staggering 5.4 percent.

Or maybe, just maybe, you don't want to do that. Maybe running a company can generate a return slightly higher than that stellar 5.4 percent and you see the value in keeping the doors open, the offices staffed.

Super, then why, do you refuse to see that what you spend on marketing is not an expense of doing business, but an investment in your business. Done properly, your marketing has an effective ROI yes, that's return on investment that generates additional revenue.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with altering your marketing mix to get the most efficient use of your dollars…that makes sense. Recent numbers show that every dollar spent on direct marketing generates $16 in revenue - three times higher than general advertising.

Cutting your marketing budget may save you $1, but it's costing you $16, on average, in revenue. So be sure to lower your revenue targets for the coming year.

Or better yet, regard this as the way you would any business investment - something you need to do for the good of your company. Oh, and while you're at it, give the members of your marketing team a bonus.

How Brands Become Part of People's Lives'

2008-06-23T08:56:00.006-04:00

All brands can gain consumer respect. But how do you identify which elements you need to put in place to become a part of the brandthread of people’s lives’? A brand doesn't just get respect, it depends on three criteria:

Performance
Does the brand offer better quality in comparison with its competitors?
Does the brand strive constantly for innovation, improvement and flawless service?
Do you have the feeling you're getting value for money?

Trust
How trustworthy is the brand?
Can you always count on the brand?
Does the brand always meet your expectations?

Reputation
What is the brand's reputation like? Is it a leader in its category?
Is the brand honest and does it own up to any mistakes?
Does the brand operate as a “good citizen” and does it work for a better world?

For brands to become part of peoples’ lives' they need to use these life pillars (Language, Music, Fashion, Sports, Food, Family, Activities) to diffuse their message. Brands must associate with these pillars, each of which can influence one another:

Creating Interest
Are there any brand myths?
Does it have a rich tradition and history?
Does the brand make you dream?
Does the brand have a recognizable logo, symbol or icon?
How much does the brand play on the senses?

Thread of People’s Lives'
How close to its consumers can the brand get?
Is there two-way communication between the brand and the consumer?
Does the brand exhibit interest in its consumers and their individual needs?

When Targeting Multicultural Audiences

2008-01-12T08:53:00.001-05:00

Doing It Wrong Is Worse Than Not Doing It at All
When it comes to making ads relevant for multicultural audiences, doing it wrong is worse than not doing it all.

A new study from OMD Worldwide found that ethnic groups are turned off by ads that rely on stereotypes and caricatures rather than meaningful cultural cues. "The respondents were saying, 'We want to see ourselves represented in ads, but not in a stereotypical matter,'" said Pamela Marsh, group director-primary research and insights at the Omnicom media agency.

Multicultural Consumer behavior
The OMD study, a telephone survey of 1,453 respondents 18 and older, sought to understand how ethnicity affects consumer behavior and advertising receptivity. Four different groups were represented: blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and the general market (which was about 76% Caucasian in the study).

The ethnic groups agreed that messages should be culturally relevant, but they responded more positively to ads with multicultural cues, such as ethnic characters, phrases, expressions and values, than ads that were simply translations of general-market ads. "Ad relevancy is more about communicating in kind than speaking in a language," Ms. Marsh said. Cultural relevance is also important for media placement, the study said, noting that ad models created on the basis of general population statistics, such as channel planning, are likely to fall short if they do not take relevant ethnic differences into account.

How to Reach Multicultural Segments
Though all segments in the survey gravitated toward the same top four media -- TV, radio, internet and mobile -- different ethnic groups spent different amounts of time with each of them. Blacks, for instance, spent the most time with TV; Hispanics spent more time with radio; and Asians used the internet at significantly higher rates.

The study also found that black consumers place a higher premium on word-of-mouth information before making buying decisions -- particularly when seeking feedback about a product. Asian-Americans also rely heavily on word-of-mouth because they are less receptive to ads than other segments of the population, according to the study.

Marketers have a significant opportunity to influence the purchases of blacks and Hispanics, the study said, because they are more open to advertising than other groups but feel as though most marketing messages are not relevant to them.

Win Back Inactive Subscribers

2008-01-12T08:30:00.001-05:00

A reactivation campaign can help you revitalize your list
How many email messages did you send out in your last campaign? Really? That many? Wow! Now, how many of your recipients actually opened or clicked on your email?Yeah, that's a different story. Remember that with email, size doesn't really matter. Performance is what counts, not just for your email program and its bottom line but also for your sender reputation.

A reactivation campaign is the answer here, and it's just as important as any acquisition campaign. It will help you clean out the dead wood, re-energize your list and reclaim some of the money you spent acquiring and engaging those addresses in the first place.

Why reactivation works: Your email service provider might be thrilled that you ship out millions of messages in each campaign, but you could actually hurt yourself and your sender reputation and spend money you don't have to when you send to people who never bother to open or act on your messages.

Sure, maybe they did sign up with you once upon a time. Since then, though, they abandoned those mailboxes, and you never noticed. The ISPs are noticing, and they'll treat your email accordingly.

Many use these long-dead email addresses as spam traps to monitor your list hygiene and measure your sender reputation. The dirtier your list, the more likely they'll route your email messages to the junk folder or block you.

Just by looking at your database, you can't tell which subscribers actually abandoned their mailboxes, who deletes your messages without opening them or who still is sort of interested in you but hasn't seen any reason to open.

A reactivation campaign will identify which addresses you can safely drop from your list without killing off live ones and re-establish connections with past customers. Think of it as going on a second honeymoon. Just like a tired marriage needs a spark to keep it going, your subscribers who take you for granted need a fresh, new reason to keep opening your messages.

You know you get the most action from your newest subscribers. Apply the tactics you use on them to rejuvenate the inactives on your list instead of spending more money to replace them.
Ready with the virtual flowers and candy?

First, identify your inactives. This takes a little database work. Create a separate mailing list, and add anyone who hasn't opened or clicked on a message in, say, six months or longer, to it. Send a message with a pleading subject line, such as "We miss you! Please come back!" Go ahead, grovel a little. Include a special offer or invitation to fill out a new profile or encourage them to unsubscribe once and for all.

Move any responding addresses back to your active list. Send the message again, this time saying you'll take them off your list if they don't respond in, say, a week. Then, scratch them from your list if they don't respond. It might kill you to do that, but a smaller, more vital list will do you more good than one where nobody's home anymore.

Keep everybody interested...
These tactics will keep your whole list engaged and energized:

1. Ask them what they want to get. It could be you have lots to offer, but your subscribers aren't getting what they really want. For example, if you're a book seller it may be that someone subscribed to your general list is really only interested in mysteries. Ask recipients to take control of what they want to get, and you may see renewed interest.

2. Make them an offer they can't refuse. Discounts, new products, samples and free shipping can work wonders for retailers. B2B marketers can renew interest with a special white paper or discount on a conference or webinar.

3. Incentivize! Ask users to update their profile, and give them a chance to win a big-screen TV. (iPods are, well, kind of over unless it's a really upscale one.) Be careful to keep the focus on the email, though. If the prize is too good, people will re-engage, only to click the spam button when your email actually arrives.

4. Threaten to break up. Tell subscribers if they don't click, you're going away. It's possible that your heavily texted message is in fact being read, but you can't know it because recipients don't enable the images. It's fair to say that if recipients don't let you know somehow that they're still there, still breathing, that you'll drop them from the list.

5. See what's on their minds. Simple surveys, sweetened with a little incentive (see No. 2), can help you find out what's going on. Maybe you're sending too often and they turn a deaf ear. Or, you're not coming around enough and they drift away.

6. Change your format. Are you sending long, chatty emails to people who read them on their phones and don't get down to your offer? Or, do you stuff all your content into a single large image that won't show up? Offer a text format to people who read email on alternative platforms and make it short and sweet.

The effort you spend now to wake up your list and re-engage with them will pay off in better deliverability and a higher ROI.

Breaking Through Online Clutter - Roadblocking

2007-12-05T18:51:00.002-05:00

Expanding the online advertising market is the goal for advertisers and agencies...

What does this all mean?
Budgets – $60b-$80b by the end of the decade indicates a paradigm shift from traditional media to digital.
DR Vs. Branding – At least ½ will be spent on DR… but now a sizeable amount is dedicated to branding.
Clutter, Lots of Clutter – Bigger budgets means more competition. It’s going to be difficult to stand out and differentiate one brand from another.

So how do we break through the clutter?
Creative Creative – Good creative will always prevail
Creative Media – Put your creative in front of the correct audience
Premium media – Get greater reach with premium media spots
Roadblocking – Eliminate all distractions; own the page!

Breaking Through the Clutter - The ingredients of a Good Roadblock:

Product Release Proximity - High Impact
Short and Precise Time Window – Surgical strikes
Cross Media Buy – Own a page, section or site
Synchronized Creative Execution – 1 + 1 = 3; the sum is greater than its parts
Smooth Production Process – Seek a solution where both units can be proofed together
Real Time Monitoring – Time is the essence, Roadblocks often run only a day, making real time reporting critical

No Competition = No Clutter

Examples of good Roadblocks:

U.S. Evolving Buying Power Markets

2007-12-04T12:27:00.001-05:00

In prior decades, researchers primarily defined the population by age group. This worked well because of our rather homogeneous society. Today, America is evolving into a more balanced melting pot of people from different backgrounds with varied lifestyles and preferences.

How does this change affect how we define and examine our population? We have to view it through different filters called buying power markets. A buying power market is a homogeneous group of people who have increasingly defined needs and demands along with broadening purchasing power. To qualify, a group must be large enough to attract the attention of marketers, retailers and advertisers. This type of market does not stand alone; it often has influence over or within other markets. This overlap becomes apparent in the following descriptions.

Women
Women (females over age 18), the largest of today’s buying power markets, spans every generation from the matures to the echo boomers. It also crosses ethnic and sexual preference groups. Why pay so much attention to women as a whole? Because, although this group makes less than one-half of all household income, it influences over 80 percent of dollars spent. This adds up to a hefty $3.4 trillion per year. Women make more decisions than men do about cars, tires, financial services and personal computers. As buyers, they pay more than men and are less likely to haggle over price.

What future changes do we see for this market? Over the next 10 years, the percentage of women who work is expected to increase by 16 percent, while the number of working men will increase only eight percent. Women currently make up 45 percent of the total workforce; 62 percent work at least part time.

Ethnic Markets
We have three major buying power markets – black, Asian, Hispanic – emerging within our ethnic population. Today, one in four Americans is considered a minority, up from one in five during 1980. At current growth levels, 47 percent of our population will be what has traditionally been termed a minority by the year 2050.

America’s black population, currently at 34 million (12.6 percent of Americans), wields $500 billion of purchasing power. This market grew by 13 percent in the last decade. While the average household income is $14,000, households with annual incomes above $60,000 are the fastest growing income segment.

Hispanics’ purchasing power stands at $350 billion. There are currently 30 million Hispanics, 11 percent of our population. Their presence in the workforce is expected to increase 36 percent in the next 10 years compared to an increase in the national workforce of only 12 percent.

The Asian population, currently less than four percent of Americans, has doubled since 1980. These 10 million people have $150 billion purchasing power and are the fastest growing, most diverse and most affluent minority group. Their median household income is $36,000.

To attract the attention of these ethnic groups, throw out the traditional five P’s of marketing (product, price, promotion, placement and profit) and concentrate on passion, preparation, perseverance, recognition, relevance, respect and relationships.

Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transsexual (GLBT) Market
America also has an emerging GLBT market that currently comprises seven percent of our population. This market is geographically concentrated with lesbians choosing to live in the suburbs and males favoring the inner-city life. These well-educated individuals boast high levels of disposable income ($200 - $400 billion) and travel frequently, both domestically and abroad.

People in this market tend to support and elect each other. While afraid of being called different, this market is proud of its uniqueness in signs, symbols and fashion. In fact, this market is often a trend setter in terms of fashion, visual arts, literature, home style, healthcare access and entertainment.

An increasing propensity for Americans to accept these individuals into the mainstream has made it easier to identify and reach this affluent and influential market.

Effects on Research
How is the emergence and evolution of these buying power markets affecting market research? Several ways—since mainstream research now considers and researches these markets as a valuable piece of the big puzzle.

The segmentation process is more complex because research results are stratified in more ways than before. You no longer rely on gender or household income delineations alone. Now, a typical stratification looks more like “women in upscale families with teenagers” or “economically challenged Asian urban families.” It is critical that we explore statistical correlations according to complex clusters.

Research tools must have more demographic categories today. For example, a person may be several races; people living in a household may not be related. Therefore, questionnaires should be designed to handle these cases.

We must explore larger samples. This is especially true in larger metropolitan markets where you must complete enough surveys (often through oversampling procedures) to permit statistical analysis of smaller or more complex subgroups. For example, your sample must be large enough to collect and compare information on wealthy women who are white, Hispanic or black all living within one geographic area.

Recognizing and reacting to change is essential for success. As the American population changes, so must our emphasis on and evaluation of key buying power markets.

Ad Strategy in Social Media

2007-08-09T18:07:00.001-04:00

If you use traditional media assessment formulas to plan an ad strategy in the new world of social media, you're making a big mistake. Here's why. If you knew of a way to drive lower cost-per-conversion rates for your online advertising campaigns, while super-charging ad performance, wouldn't you tell your media buyers to adopt that method, pronto?

Advertising against social media (on blog sites or within social networks) promises far better returns than traditional online content, but many advertisers are struggling when it comes to tapping into the power of these user-generated content (UGC) networks.

Social media -- in which word-of-mouth communication reigns -- is unparalleled at building passionate networks of like-minded people, particularly in the blogosphere. Of course, the nebulous world of social media is also a thorn in advertisers' collective sides due to a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the unpredictable content it generates and the difficulty in accurately measuring its impact.

Why is social media so hard to corral and measure? One reason is that the people creating the kind of influential content that impacts consumer behavior aren't necessarily the people who claim the most eyeballs. An "influencer" may have a small audience from a numbers' standpoint but can also have a massive impact on your target customers' buying habits.

The recent Nielsen//NetRatings announcement about the new "time spent" metric underscores this issue. The industry shift away from the page view as the unrivaled metric king demonstrates that the number of hits on a website doesn't necessarily equal the most value for your advertising dollar.

Since the most influential blogs don't always have the biggest audiences, traditional online advertising models can be far off the mark when it comes to reaching the most qualified leads.

For example, an ad buy targeted to a search result is unlikely to place you in front of networks of people with a passion for the product or service you're offering. However, a blog that draws together a community of like-minded readers -- who engage in discussions and share ideas and opinions -- has the loyal audience that can significantly drive up conversion rates.

Initial research bears this out: A recent study from BlueLithium Labs compared ads on sites with UGC, and sites without such content. The ads on non-UGC sites had a 32 percent higher conversion rate; however, due to the lower cost of advertising on UGC sites, the cost-per-conversion for non-UGC sites was 58 percent higher.
Advertisers are sensing this promise. The latest research from eMarketer shows that ad spending on websites that feature UGC (like photo and video sharing) is expected to rise to $4.3 billion by 2011.

The key is for advertisers to define the kind of social media (blogs, for example) that best fits their overall brands and specific campaigns, then design an effective way to surface the content that will truly deliver from an ad perspective.

Finding the people who influence consumer behavior
Locating influencers is a tough online challenge, especially in an internet landscape characterized by traditional media, UGC, social networks and 12 million blogs in the United States alone. Popularity ranking and subjective authority evaluations of a particular website or blog fall short when you take a closer look. A blogger who is considered an authority on a given topic might hold great influence when it comes to that subject but could have less or zero influence if a new topic is introduced. Likewise, a specific web page may be "popular" but ranks very low on the influence scale on a specific topic within a certain context.

A year or so ago, online marketers were advised to listen to online conversations in order to gauge what was being said about their products. Listening will always be critical, but as social media matures as a marketing channel, zeroing in on the content to actually engage with it is becoming increasingly important for brands.
Fortunately, new technologies are making it easier to find the influencers who matter more quickly. And some marketers are finding that, when it comes to social media, simply building relationships with online opinion leaders can create marketing events that deliver measurable business impact.

Screenlife Games, a Seattle-based maker of DVD games, recently used influence-targeting technology to build awareness of the 2007 edition of its "American Idol" game, based on the TV series of the same name.

Screenlife was able to hone in on blogs most likely to attract potential buyers of the game. This was accomplished by searching for conversational phrases specific to the 2007 season, such as "Melinda is the best," that would indicate the presence of a dedicated crowd of "American Idol" fans, or fans of Screenlife games, and not just a blog that mentioned the "Idol" show once or twice.

"We're able to catch general fans of the show and focus in on specific conversations about our game," explains Tony Roscelli, Screenlife's director of consumer research. "We can find out what they like and parlay it into marketing programs."
By monitoring conversations, and understanding who is interacting with the most passionate customers and to what effect, advertisers can generate lists of niche blogs and websites they may not have been aware of, and integrate this data into their online advertising strategy.

Another example of maximizing the power of social media can be seen with Protuo.com, a provider of web-based career portfolio management services. Protuo was in search of the elusive "influencer" audience when it decided to leverage social media technology to help uncover blogs focusing on career and human resources issues.
By monitoring online conversations about recruiting and hiring strategies, the company was able to identify the bloggers most likely to draw an audience that would use Protuo's services. Protuo then invited key bloggers to review its offerings, which spurred discussion and ultimately increased traffic and Protuo.com registrations. During its influence campaign, overall traffic to Protuo.com has risen 27 percent. What's more, Protuo found that traffic from influential websites converted to registration 40 percent better than online leads generated from other sites.

Before you set out to identify the online influencers that are most important to your advertising strategy, make sure you and your team understand how social media requires a different plan of action.

1. Know your marketing goals: Be careful not to get roped into helming a social media marketing or advertising effort simply because it's trendy. Before embarking on these initiatives, take the time to understand what you want from your ad spend. How do you want creators and consumers of social media to respond to your ad efforts? What is their ideal experience? Clicking on a text link off of a blog post, or reading blog coverage of your company from a source they trust and traveling to your site via an embedded link? Figure out the answers to these questions before jumping into a social media advertising program.

2. Rethink the definition of marketing communications: If you use traditional media assessment formulas to plan an ad strategy in the new world of social media, you're making a big mistake. Social media is much more than another way to communicate with your target market; it's a way for your customers to trade information that helps them make better decisions, given that they've become somewhat hardened about marketing spin. These days, they prefer to take their cues from other consumers whom they trust. For a social media-based ad campaign to be successful, it needs to be based on authentic interactions at every stage of the customer lifecycle, not just when you're pushing messages out to them.

3. Find the influencers: You can't plan an online advertising strategy until you know how to reach an audience that's primed to hear your messages. You need to identify where the conversations that connect to your marketing goals are taking place, and who is shaping those conversations. Since influence in the social media world isn't always determined by audience size, this can lead to some interesting surprises. The process of finding influencers turns some conventional ideas about marketing upside down. Rather than first searching for advertising targets and then deciding where and when to advertise, the process begins by determining what's being said, and figuring out who is saying it.

4. See beyond the assumed customer base: Marketers need to recognize that influencers are not always the current customers for their company's products and services. They can be former customers who have become dissatisfied, they may be fans of your competitors, or they may simply have strong opinions about your market. The ability to see beyond your own customer base is an important skill for social media engagement.

5. Redefine what "advertising" means: It's not just about placing an ad anymore. For instance, companies like Protuo can use a social media engagement strategy to generate online leads (which is the objective of many paid search ad campaigns). As a result, the company was able to generate traffic that converted to action better than incoming leads from typical online advertising methods. Marketers don't necessarily associate "influencer marketing" with hard metrics, but the dense network of links that power social media conversations enables consumers reading their favorite blogs to quickly jump to the kind of content that will trigger a purchase.

6. Take a multi-pronged approach: In social media, traditional online ad placement isn't enough to engage your potential customers. Participation is a key step. Comment on the blogs of key influencers. Write your own posts in order to challenge them on important topics. Join in the conversation instead of waiting for the conversation to come to you.

Finally, a key piece of advice for any marketer who wants to stick a toe in the social media waters: If this is your first foray into a social media advertising effort, don't invest too much in the first campaign. Do it quickly, do it cheaply and change strategies if needed. The good news is that social media -- with its low cost of entry and speed of access -- lends itself well to this kind of marketing journey.

Why Good Design Matters!

2007-05-30T09:34:00.001-04:00

One of the first design and advertising books that really spoke to me was Pentagram’s - Living by Design. Its basic premise was that design extended to more than graphics, architecture, advertising - but was the entire consumer/brand experience- long before people were talking about experiential marketing.

So, when I stumbled onto Pentagram’s blog - and saw this logo - I was instantly reminded of why design does make a difference.

Take a look at this elegant logo - then read their description:

Pentagram's: One Laptop Per Child
Pentagram has designed the identity and website for One Laptop per Child, the non-profit organization with the goal of providing laptop computers to all children in developing nations.

The identity is a hieroglyph, designed to be universally understood, that utilizes the icons of the OLPC laptop interface, also developed by Pentagram. The website design employs these symbols as the basis for navigation. Each icon leads to a corresponding section of information: the laptop to a section about hardware and software, the arrow to a section about participation, and so on. The site launched in English but is currently being translated into many languages.

For all the companies that don’t think they can afford to do a proper logo on start-up, just remember, you can pay now, or pay later. A well-designed brand mark can make the difference between having a corporate identity- and becoming a lifestyle brand, ala Nike, Apple, BMW, Mini etc.

And, by the way, if you aren’t familiar with the One Laptop Per Child initiative, you need to read more about it - it’s truly something that could change the world. http://www.laptop.org

Shopper vs. Retail Research

2007-04-30T08:23:00.001-04:00

Retail marketing has grown from its humble roots as a secondary function to brand marketing, to its position today as a marketing trendsetter. Stores such as Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, Target, and Whole Foods, have done an excellent job of defining their brand and driving it through everything they do. A 2005 Harris Interactive poll shows the’ corporate reputation of many retail brands rank in the top 30 of 60 leading companies. These retailers include Target (25th), Starbucks (23rd), Wal-Mart (29th), Home Depot (12th), Costco (18th) and Best Buy (30th). This puts them in the same league as brand icons such as Pepsi (17th), Apple (27th), and Nike (24th). Little wonder top brand marketers are increasingly making the leap to retail organizations.

Retail research is not just a matter of translating standard brand marketing techniques to retail brands. The differences are based on what is different about retail marketing, and they are important to understand if you are doing retail research.

What’s Different About Retail Marketing?
Retail marketing differs from brand marketing in several important ways. Here are just a few:
Store brands have more dimensions than product or even service brands such as location, merchandise selection, store design, return policies, etc. Retail marketing objectives and metrics are different (traffic and basket size vs. repeat purchase and loyalty) which translates to different research measures.

The Reputation Quotient study, developed jointly by Harris and the Reputation Institute in New York, was conducted in two parts. Between March and June, 6,977 respondents were asked to name the two companies with the best reputations and the two with the worst. The 60 companies named most often were then rated by 19,564 people in a separate survey between Aug. 30 and Sept. 26. Results were reported in the Wall Street Journal, December 2005.

Retailers often have greater access to consumer behavior data, which makes self-reported behavior information less relevant. The dynamic nature of the retail environment means that retailers have a shorter-term outlook and a greater need for timely information (how are we doing today? What will consumers want tomorrow?).

Retailers have a broader array of direct and indirect competitors. With the Internet approaching 5% of retail spending, a retail store competes not just with other stores in its vicinity, but also with the entire Internet for consumers’ shopping dollars. This makes understanding consumer motivations and decision-making more complex.

What’s Different About Retail Research?
With all these differences, it is little wonder retailers have different research objectives and needs. First, brand marketers study consumers, as defined by their relationship to a particular category and relatively finite set of brands. In contrast, retailers study shoppers, as defined by their extremely dynamic behavior relative to an often very large set of competitive stores. This explains why retail research requires larger samples and more frequent measures.

Second, while brand research is focused on product development and promotion, retailers, (who generally enjoy strong awareness and whose store locations and designs are relatively fixed), are more focused on how to drive people to their store more frequently and convert traffic to sales once they are there. This difference explains why mystery shopping, customer shop-alongs, and smart carts that observe customers while they aren’t looking are growing rapidly. It also has implications for sample design. For instance, we have learned it doesn’t make sense to do research with shoppers who are outside a reasonable driving distance from a store, 30 miles for a warehouse club, less for a grocery or convenience store.

Finally, while brand research is focused on questions of how to influence attitudes and perceptions that in turn drive loyalty, and willingness to pay a premium price, retailers are more focused on how to be perceived as the place to shop first for a variety of merchandise types and shopping occasions. This explains why retail research often focuses on issues of merchandising and selection and competitive benchmarking.

Shopper Research
Our retail market research experience has lead us to adapt traditional research tools to fit these differences. For instance, we generally recruit larger samples for quantitative research and have more stringent participation criteria for qualitative research. We stress national samples over a few cities. And to avoid lengthy questionnaires, we work with clients’ customer panels or national panels that already have extensive profile information when appropriate.

We also make extensive use of ‘hybrid’ quantitative and qualitative studies. This technique involves fielding a 5-7 minute online screening survey among a very large sample to identify consumers that exhibit the behavior of interest. This allows us to determine the incidence of this group in the larger population and assess their ‘value’ relative to other shoppers. In a second phase of research, pinpointed groups of shoppers selected on the basis of their survey responses are brought together for a real-time, online discussion. This forum is similar to a focus group, but composed of people from all over the country and with the advantages of anonymity for the respondents and reduced interviewer bias.

Multi-channel shoppers
We have used the hybrid approach successfully to study many shopping behaviors and shopper types for a major department store retailer that has a significant online business. In one study, the purchasing behavior of frequent multi-channel shoppers were compared to those of less frequent multi-channel shoppers and frequent single channel shoppers.

The study revealed that multi-channel shopping is more pervasive than was originally thought; among the retailer’s core demographic target (women 25-54, household income $75,000+) nearly two-thirds make an online purchase at least once a month and one third make two or more Internet purchases a month. We also learned that heavy Internet shoppers are twice as likely to purchase from catalogs and 60% more likely to be a heavy store shopper.

While this information was useful on its own, the real insights came from talking to heavy multi-channel shoppers. We learned they defy easy categorization, crossing all age, income, ethnic and lifestyle groups; the one unifying theme is their dedication to shopping; they are skilled, efficient bargain hunters who love to shop for the sheer ‘thrill of the hunt’. Heavy multi-channel shoppers move fluidly between online and offline shopping; the shopping process can start anywhere and end anywhere, with circulars, catalogs, store shopping and web shopping each informing and supporting the other channels.

These insights have helped our client to understand how to improve web site navigation and design, how and when to communicate online availability and the importance of reducing barriers to Internet shopping such as shipping charges.

Club Store Shoppers
Club stores have an unusually complex mix of shoppers. While anyone can shop at a club, the greatest value is for professionals and small business owners who, according to ACNielsen, account for 38% of warehouse club sales, but account for 51% of sales.

Business owners and professionals are a diverse bunch! They cut across a spectrum of business types from offices to ‘ma and pa’ retailers to schools to church and concession stand volunteers. In order to develop relevant communications for each of these audiences, an online panel to understand and profile the relationship between business type and purchases.

Unfortunately, the analysis raised as many questions as it answered. Why would oranges be among the top items purchased by medical office personnel? Why do schools purchase so little paper? Clearly more in-depth approaches were needed. Using the hybrid methodology described above, individuals were selected to participate in qualitative online group discussions based on their profile. After conducting dozens of groups, patterns began to emerge to explain what drives shopping frequency, basket size and the mix of personal and business items in the basket. These patterns suggested many ideas for more sharply targeted messages and new services.

Summary
Shopping research is fundamentally different from standard product or brand research. In many cases, panels can offer an efficient alternative to scanner data alone or traditional methods. They enable more frequent studies, among broader samples and more precise sample selection. Online focus groups can offer dispersed samples and an in-depth approach that provides insights not easily gleaned from analysis of scanner data and surveys. Hybrid designs allow the best of both worlds by putting the shopper group of interest in a larger context without trading off the insights afforded by qualitative research. In general, we’ve learned that it is important to remain flexible and not be bound by traditional brand research techniques and questions. Retail research is unique!

Answers To The Top Ten Questions We have Been Asked On ROI…

2007-04-20T08:23:00.001-04:00

Survey after survey has shown that Marketing ROI is at the top of everyone’s list of the most important issues facing marketers today. In this paper, we explore why ROI is so topical and what marketers need to know about measuring the financial impact of marketing.

1. Why is Marketing ROI such a hot topic right now? Is ROI just another fad or a step in marketing’s evolution as a discipline?

ROMI is hot right now because marketing itself is hot. Companies that have ridden the cost cutting train to the end of the line, have no other strategy to turn to other than improving revenue. Marketing is the only function capable of improving the top line. This usually means more marketing spending. Since marketing is already the single largest expense for most companies, simply adding more marketing cost without showing how it translates into bottom line improvements is unrealistic. It also puts marketing at a disadvantage to other functions that can make those translations.

Even absent the pressure to increase spending, it is becoming more critical to improve the performance of existing marketing investments. “Softer Investments” such as advertising, PR, events and sponsorships that traditionally have proven more resistant to rigorous measurement, are particularly under pressure to prove their efficiency and effectiveness. Media costs have grown at nearly four times the rate of inflation during the last 10 years. CRM, Direct mail, and interactive marketing are all growing, largely at the expense of traditional media approaches due to a perception that they are more cost effective and accountable for bottom line results.

Traditional media formats are, naturally, fighting back by finding ways to put less accountable marketing efforts on a par with those that are more accountable such as direct marketing and interactive. The ARF, ANA and AAAA all have Marketing ROI at the top or near the top of their agendas of issues.

An additional sign that marketers are under pressure to demonstrate ROI is the increasing churn experienced at the CMO level. A recent Spencer Stuart study average tenure for CMOs at the top 100 branded companies in North America is just 23.6 months. Compare this to CEOs, who are in their positions, on average, for 50.6 months. Based on our data, only 14 percent of CMOs for the world’s top brands have been with their companies for more than three years — and nearly half are new to the job over the last 12 months.

April 20, 2007 (AdAge.com) -- Marc LeFar, who shepherded the $1 billion-plus marketing budget of the former Cingular Wireless for the past four years, has resigned from AT&T.

It is a safe bet that these pressures are not going to diminish in the foreseeable future; consequently, the desire to adopt rigorous ROMI methodologies is not likely to be just a fad, but rather a genuine shift in the evolution and practice of marketing. In fact, a recent study sponsored by the ANA where 70% of 222 marketing executives said, “ROI represents a long-term change in how they do business’.

2. Why has it proven so difficult to measure marketing ROI? What makes it different from other disciplines like quality, cycle time, supply chain management or R&D?

Unlike investments in quality, distribution efficiency, improved cycle time, etc. that have direct links to the bottom line, the relationship between marketing investments and financial performance is more elusive. First, there are many factors that influence sales revenue and profitability, many of which have little to do with marketing. Even when it is clear that marketing is that variable that has made the difference, that knowledge alone is nearly useless without an understanding of what worked and what to do differently. Unless the contribution of each part of the marketing effort can be related to the overall impact, it is difficult to make adjustments.

A further complication is that Marketing’s impact tends to lag the investment. For example, the impact of advertising, PR and loyalty programs are expected to be evident over time as well as in the short-term. This is especially true of long purchase cycle categories such as durables and high technology. Because this lag is not well understood, marketing continues to be considered an “expense” for accounting purposes, despite common sense and evidence to the contrary. (An MSI study using cross sectional time series regression analysis over 8 years for 2,552 firms showed that advertising acts as an asset by contributing to a firm’s financial performance for up to three years.)

A final complication lies in the difficulty of applying learning about the impact of marketing on results to predict the financial impact of future marketing investments. Unlike other investments that tend to have finite price tags, marketing investments are infinitely scalable. It is far easier to calculate the return on investment for a piece of machinery, an R&D project, and a new distribution channel where the costs are relatively fixed. In contrast, the same marketing program can cost $1.0 million or $10.0 million or $100.0 million depending on how aggressively it is pursued. The ROI at each of these levels and all the points in between would need to be calculated, a much more complex undertaking.

In a recent Reveries survey of more than 200 marketing executives, 19% said that the financial services category is the most difficult to measure, followed by entertainment (18%), packaged goods (14%), pharmaceuticals and apparel (9% each) and consumer electronics. In other words, all of them!

3. Given these problems, is it even possible to prove the benefit of brand building activities through financial analysis?

If it’s not, there isn’t much of a future for brand building activities! The purpose of marketing is to create competitive advantage by creating value in the mind of the customer. For most companies, this can and has been measured through market share, operating margins and sales as well as more direct customer-based measures of “brand equity”. If they know what was spent to create that advantage, then in theory a return can be calculated, at least at a relatively high level.

Fortunately marketing’s value is not the issue. The purpose of ROI analysis is less about proving whether brand building activities are worthwhile and more about ensuring that marketing investments are being made as prudently as possible to maximize customer loyalty and profitability. The difficulty is that at least so far no one has found the magic bullet for relating changes in brand equity to changes in revenue for the brand.

For many companies, Lord Leverhulme’s lament “Half the money I spend on advertising wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half” is as true today as it was in 100 years ago, but not for lack of trying. The problem has been lack of clarity around what constitutes marketing’s impact. With no real consensus on this point, each company has had decide for itself what are the relevant outcomes, proxies and hard measures.

Tim Ambler, in his book “Marketing and the Bottom Line” demonstrated that even within companies there is often a contradiction between what is measured and what is considered important to measure.

Indeed, until recently, it wasn’t thought that there could even be universal standards that worked across companies. Leading brand strategy and IMC thinkers such as David Aaker, Kevin Keller and Don Schultz have all advocated unique approaches to measuring brand equity tailored to each company’s needs. Individual ad agencies have contributed to the fray by advocating their own proprietary solutions and approaches such as Y&R’s Brand Asset Valuator.

Another significant obstacle is that marketing budget recommendations and allocation decisions are often driven by marcom managers who have not traditionally been expected to have rigorous financial or statistical training. These managers also tend to be less well-versed in strategic processes that have permeated other areas of the organization such as Six Sigma, Strategy Maps, Balanced Scorecards and the like. So while concepts of net present value, risk hurdle rates and ROI have always been available to marketers, few have had the skills or patience to adapt them for marketing. This too, is changing.

4. What are the emerging industry standards for measurement of ROI? Are we beginning to see agreement?

The dialog around ROI has only begun to solidify into a body of knowledge in the past two to three years. A handful of marketers such as working at the most sophisticated marketing companies such as James Lenskold, Guy Powell and Tim Ambler have led the way in putting forward what may eventually become a common understanding for discussing the purposes of marketing and the language of ROMI in the same way that Kaplan & Norton’s Balanced Scorecard has provided a common language for strategic planning.

While there are differences between what these thought leaders are saying, there are several principles upon which they all agree. For starters, they agree that ROMI should be approached using the same formula as ROI for other investments, namely,

ROI = (Gross Margin – Marketing Investment)/ Marketing Investment.

Guy Powell in his book, “Return on Marketing Investment”, defines ROMI as “the revenue (or margin) generated by a marketing program divided by the cost of that program at a given risk level. If a relatively low risk-marketing program costs $1M and generates $5M in new revenue, that program has a ROMI of 5.0.

Other points of agreement beyond this basic definition include:

• Gross margin should be discounted to reflect the NPV of the profit.
• Gross margin should reflect only the incremental profit associated with the program.
• ROMI projections should be used not just after the fact but prior to making investment decisions. This also requires factoring in a “threshold” or hurdle rate to reflect the risk associated with the investment.
• ROI measures should be applied both at the individual program level and at more aggregated levels.

Beyond these basics, it gets complicated very quickly. Decisions must be made about what is included and not included in the gross margin, how to measure incremental profit (immediate profit? customer lifetime value?), what cash discount factors to apply, how to allocate expenses, and more. Most of the answers to these questions will vary by company.

Then there is the whole issue of the reliability of future projections of profits. Unless a company has accurate historical data from modeling or controlled experimentation, knowing the likely impact of a program on customer acquisition, retention, sales and profits can be a real sticking point to development of a comprehensive ROI driven approach to making marketing decisions

5. Given its complexity, how many companies are really committed to full implementation of state of the art concepts of ROI?

We are still in the very earliest stages of ROI measurement and practice. The most basic ROMI approaches start at a more ad hoc program level and advance to a fully integrated picture of how various marketing programs and activities work together to influence profitability. Most companies are just starting to get a grip on it. In a recent Reveries study (2003), 72% of the 200 marketing executives surveyed indicated that they lack the necessary data to assess the return on their marketing investments. Sixteen percent said that they rely on sales data alone, while another 22% said they use some form of research such as focus groups, syndicated sales data analysis, brand awareness studies or competitive benchmarking.

A handful of companies are operating at the highest level of sophistication. Although AT&T, P&G, Kraft, Nestle, J&J and others claim to have made extraordinary strides in understanding the financial impact of their marketing programs. According to an Ad Age article, P&G changed how it spent more than one tenth of its $4.3 billion global marketing budget based on marketing mix modeling. Yet even these corporate pioneers believe there is still more work ahead.

An excellent article by Patrick LaPointe at www.marketingnpv.com called The Ladder of Insights suggests that there are five levels, beginning with sales tracking, test markets and market research (1), progressing to program level ROI (2) and resource allocation optimization (3). As the previous quote suggests, quite a few companies have made progress to level 3. At this level, application is focused on getting the mix right, determining how much of the budget should be allocated to ethnic programs vs. more mainstream marketing, interactive and direct mail vs. “softer” marketing approaches designed to build emotional bridges to customers.

Marketing mix modeling and optimization are becoming more widespread at both agencies and clients. For instance, Mullen, an Interpublic Agency in Massachusetts has developed a proprietary tool for predicting the individual and combined impact of various traditional and nontraditional media mix alternatives.

Beyond this point, the air gets a bit rarer. While the first three levels are still somewhat “granular” in that the goal is to evaluate the relative ROI performance of different marketing elements. In contrast, Levels 4 and 5 are more focused on the Total ROI efficiency of the marketing budget as a whole.

Level 4 is characterized by “a consistent approach that provides reliable correlations between market metrics and financial value” with careful attention to the reliability of those projections and consequent risk-adjustments when assessing past and potential projects. Level 5 goes even beyond this high standard by planning and measuring all marketing activities in an integrated framework that incorporates short run and long term return. This approach links into other corporate strategy effectiveness metrics such as the Balanced Scorecard or the more financially driven Economic Value Added measures (EVA). At this level, management compensation is tied to the delivery of goals.

6. What kind of data, personnel, software and skills are required to implement a comprehensive ROI driven approach to improving marketing efficiency? What is the “ROI” on that kind of investment?

Even this preliminary and basic discussion should make clear that development of ROI measures is not something that can be developed lightly or in one’s spare time. It requires substantial commitment to data gathering and analysis. Most practitioners of sophisticated ROMI business practices employ consultants or internal staff familiar with modeling techniques and finance. Unless a company has extensive data gathering and analytics capability, getting started will require a substantial upfront investment and some new skill sets. It requires top management commitment, and a long horizon.

The data suggests that the results are well-worth the effort.

• In his book, The Loyalty Effect, Frederick Reichheld famously sparked the growth of the entire CRM industry with the observation that “companies can boost profits by almost 100% by retaining just 5% more of their customers”.
• The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) in conjunction with the ARF published a best practices report, Maximizing Marketing ROI, which showed that companies gain a competitive advantage and increased profitability through the application of marketing ROI measurements and modeling.
• As noted above, P&G used marketing mix modeling last year to change how it spent more than 10% of its reported global outlay.
• Clorox used marketing mix modeling to justify shifting funds from advertising to promotion for Kingsford charcoal and Clorox bleach, moves that reportedly saved Clorox an estimated $65 million on wasteful trade promotions.

Aside from quantifiable results, having a language, a process and scorecard of metrics for managing ROMI can have a strong pay off in elevating the dialog and aligning decisions about what investments will have the greatest impact on revenue and financial performance over time. Using an ROI based approach to marketing decisions can help bridge the disconnect that often exists between marketer and other business professionals. While marketing professionals have tended to speak in terms of brand equity, impressions, clicks, GRP’S and CPM’s, everyone can now share a language of revenue, customer employee loyalty, shareholder value and profitability.

More important, solid metrics and processes allow businesses to confidently make fact based decisions on what are the right levels of investment and how those investments should be allocated across marketing programs to achieve their objectives. After all it has been famously observed, “what is measured is managed”. With ROI based approaches to marketing, the focus is on measuring and managing what is strategically important to the company.

7. How do I determine what are the right measures and approach for my company? Where should I concentrate, at the campaign, customer or corporate level?

The first step is to determine the appropriate unit to measure. In the past this was defined as the “product brand”, but increasingly, this has become the company because few “products” are marketed as stand alone brands anymore. In fact, it can be argued that today, all brands are “service brands” because the economies endorser brands have led to families of products and services all built upon a common brand experience platform.

The second step is to categorize measures according to the degree to which they are describe marketing activity, an impact or an end result of marketing. This is not always easy, as some end results contribute to higher levels of results. For example, is brand awareness a contributor or a result of marketing effectiveness?

In fact there are roughly 3 tiers of activity, activities, impacts and value. James Lenskold describes the hierarchy this way, (from James Lenskold, Marketing ROI: Playing to Win,” Marketing Management, Vol II, Number 3, May/June 2002)

While this model is especially useful in thinking about the lower tiers, it may not go far enough in elaborating the value of marketing at the top levels. The focus on profitability is important but should not be used exclusively. Also important are such measures as the impact the value of the corporate franchise, stock market performance and other more “latent” brand strength indicators.

8. What types of analyses are required to understand the relationships between different metrics?

Just gathering the information is a worthwhile first step, but the data is most useful when relationships between the tiers can be identified and even quantified. This step will require development of models or even controlled experiments.

Marketing mix analytics is use for for relating marketing activities to impact. These analytic techniques have been around for decades, but their use has only recently become more widespread. According to Ad Age (3/29/04), P&G used marketing mix modeling last year to change how it spent more than $00 million of its marketing budget or nearly a tenth of its $4.3 Billion reported global outlaw. Clorox this year used modeling to justify shifting millions from advertising to promotion. Controlled market experimentation has also gained more of a foothold with the advent of new tools and technologies for micromarketing and in-store experimentation.

Likewise the relationship between marketing programs and customer equity can also be explored over time through modeling. CVA measurement, longitudinal tracking other measures can be related to consumer satisfaction and loyalty. The key to the success of these efforts is to use the attitudinal data to predict changes in behavior rather than simply treat them as ends in themselves.

Lastly, the relationship between the cumulative impact of marketing programs over time and franchise value has been successfully explored by such brand valuation techniques as Y&R’s BAM, Interbrands Brand Valuator, CoreBrand’s and Equitrends.

Note that as one moves up the hierarchy, the time frame for understanding the relationships between levels lengthens. The time frame for understanding causality between elements of a marketing program and its overall impact may be as short as a few months while that of understanding the relationship between customer equity and franchise value may require the perspective of several years or even decades. It is important to understand the relevant time frames for estimating impacts as many programs can be expected to have lagged effects.

In developing measures, it is important to recognize that it is better to have a few meaningful measures than a lot of less meaningful ones. Proliferation of new measures rarely leads to better insights. Kaplan and Norton, note that companies rarely suffer by having too few measures; more commonly they keep adding measures whenever an employee or a consultant makes a worthwhile suggestion.

In getting started, focus on a few of what are believed to be some of the main marketing drivers of your business that you have ready data to measure. These may be sales staffing, conversion rates, customer service indices, or communications measures such as web site hits. Make a distinction between what are the inputs or predictors and the outcomes. Over time, track the relationships between these factors. To determine the relationships between them. Then use those relationships to drive future programs.

We have a deep commitment to a brand strategy and an integrated approach to marketing communications. What is the relation between brand strategy and ROI? Brand strategy is an expression of how the company will create value for the customers. Brand strategies manifest themselves in product innovations, graphic design, store layout, customer service policies, and many other components of the “brand experience”. By aligning customer-facing activity around this idea, a company can prioritize its efforts and make more effective decisions across all of its business functions, including but not limited to marketing.

By definition, having a brand strategy in place is fundamental to realizing marketing ROI. However, a brand strategy does not necessarily imply specific measures or programs. Its efficacy can only be inferred by the efficacy of its implementation across a variety of programs and efforts.

Integrated Marketing Communications is the way that companies coordinate the communications aspects of a brand strategy for greater efficiency. IMC is also a strategy, an idea around which decisions can be prioritized and aligned. A plan for an IMC program outlines the specific methods by which this idea or strategy will be implemented. Once specific plans are articulated, it is appropriate and even imperative to develop corresponding metrics for measuring their impact, at the activity level if possible, and certainly at the program level.

Unfortunately, the concept of ROI has become intertwined with IMC to such an extent that it is difficult to separate the two the extent that discussing the ROI of IMC has become nearly synonymous with discussing ROMI. In fact, the responsibility for measuring ROI should be separate from IMC, and considered from the brand level.

9. Who should be responsible for making Marketing more accountable within the organization? Is there an optimal organizational structure?

As with most strategic initiatives, support for building and sustaining the culture of “analysis” required to implement a comprehensive ROI program starts at the top. At the beginning, immediate responsibility for gathering and analyzing the numbers should start with a specially designated person or committee within the Marketing department itself. Over time responsibility should extend beyond marketing to include business managers in other customer facing functions such as customer service, IT and sales. The more participation from Finance, the more likely that the system will be embraced and have an impact on strategic business decision-making.

10.What is the relationship of ROI to the Balanced Scorecard or other corporate strategy planning tools?

Integrating ROI measures with other Balanced Scorecard measures is essential to ensuring that marketing is aligned with other functions in furthering corporate goals. The Balanced Scorecard with its emphasis on financial as well as non-financial measures, ensures that a broad measurement system is put in place that ties directly to corporate strategy.

If a company already has a balanced scorecard or other planning system in place, including ROI measures is not difficult to accomplish. If not, the implementation of an ROMI measurement system affords an ideal opportunity to articulate corporate goals in terms of key metrics.

Word of Mouth "Viral" Marketing – Understanding Social Pillars - Moribund of Traditional Research

2007-04-18T09:10:00.001-04:00

Word of mouth influence is older than the apostles, but the advent of the Internet has taken it to new levels. Of the 24% of adult consumers who say they ‘regularly’ make online purchases, twice as many say they ‘regularly’ seek advice from others before buying than adults who never or occasionally purchase online.

Peer-to-peer communication is most influential to consumers’ decisions across the seven product categories (Car/Truck, Electronics, Apparel/Clothing, Groceries, Medicine, Telecom and Eating Out) that were measured in nearly every age group, but it was especially true of younger people, many of whom belong to one or more social networks such as Facebook, Blackbook2, Myspace or Xanga. Research shows that 18-34 consumers are especially influenced by the opinions of their friends in the categories of ‘electronics’ and ‘eating out’. Friends or social networks for those 18-24 are even more pronounced with over 50% of purchases influence the figures.

The Viral Bandwagon:
With figures like these, it is little wonder that online and offline marketers are racing to build a marketing infrastructure and measurement systems to enable more effective word of mouth marketing campaigns. Everyone from Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp to Carnival Cruises is building – or buying -- a social network. According to Emarketer, 43% of marketers are planning to use a word of mouth marketing campaign within the next 6 months.

But What Do Consumers Want To Talk About?
According to Blogpulse (Nielsen Buzzmetrics), only a fraction of the online conversations concern brands and products. This raises the question, ‘how can marketers consistently give consumers the tools for initiating dialogs that influence brand standing and sales?’ Do we, as marketers really know how to translate brand strategies into ‘viral’ messages?

Traditional market research is not a lot of help in this new “Viral" world. Consider for a moment that the basic tools of market research are about as foreign to social marketing as corporate procurement is to EBay.
- Recruit random samples of strangers
- Put them in an artificial environments
- Ask them to reacte to marketer devised creative ideas or worse, ‘concept statements’
- Control the dialog with little ability to capture consumer language or emotion
- Allow little respondent interaction

Identifying "Viral" Potential:
Social marketing (influence Pillars) is about understanding what consumers find worthy of talking to others about in the environment where those conversations take place – social networks. Social Pillars include music, clothing, sports, culture, etc.

Working in partnership with an existing networks, identifying respondents by their interests and viewing conversations so you can identify which ideas have the greatest ‘viral’ potential.

It Starts With A Community:
Brands that already have an online community are natural candidates for using the Social Marketing to gain insights about how consumers interact – or would like to interact – to spread the word about the brands they love.

We have identified thousands of brand communities within its network covering a wide range of brands and topics, everything from Apple to Kraft Easy Mac to soap operas. For instance, with no marketing effort at all, 650 communities have sprung up to share experiences about Jeep alone! There are nearly 20,000 people who initiated or joined a group with the word ‘soap opera’ in the name.

There are numbers of Urban boards that have been responsible for the start of "Viral" communications for brands. Starbury Sneakers success is due to these boards. Understand - Brand (sales) success starts in Urban communities and spreads to suburban communities. Hush Puppies is another great example of the power of Urban "Trend Setters" and "Influencers".

Companies that have started a customer or consumer panel are in an especially good position to explore opportunities for viral marketing. For example, Sam’s Club has built a panel of small business members who are eager to connect with similar like-minded business people. However, any online community can provide a starting point.

Blurring The Line Between Research And Marketing:
Researchers have always known that the mere act of asking a question influences the response. Social Network Marketing takes this basic insight and leverages it to not only gain insights, but to influence the network. By studying which ideas stimulate brand conversations, marketers will be better able to consistently identify the most powerful viral ideas. Consumers want to talk about brands and products. Now marketers have a way of learning how to influence the process.

Speed of Sales Success In "Urban" Viral Marketing

2007-04-04T22:36:00.001-04:00

Building Street Credibility...

There is a recent case study that demonstrates the speed of Urban viral marketing without the use of mass marketing. General Market agencies will hide this case study because it demonstrates dramatic sales succes without spending a large advertising budget. The case study is Starbury Sneakers:

Early 06: Stephon Marbury cuts deal with Steve and Barry’s to help market high quality $15 basketball sneakers.

July/Early Aug 06: Marbury does one-on-one marketing at key inner city street courts in New York area (Bronx, Harlem, 4th Street, Coney Island, Queens, etc.)

Early August 8/3-8/17, 06: Starbury sneakers start getting posted up on Topix, Slam, Yard Barker, VBulliten and a variety of Urban Youth boards.

August 17, 06: Starbury Sneakers start to hit stores (with no advertising) only viral PR. (See story below about the lines at the stores. NPR reported people leaving their homes at 5AM to wait on lines.

August 17, 06: Starbury Sneakers are up on EBAY

August 16-30, 06: General market communications vehicles finally “Open their Eyes” and see what they have missed. The Starbury Sneakers story runs on NPR, Slate, ESPN, NY Times, Christian Science Monitor, etc.

August 29, 06: My son gets a viral email from friends on his phone about Starbury sneakers

September 1, 06: My son, a 13 year old Anglo male in Florida (who does not play basketball) asks me for a pair of Starbury sneakers. I ask: What are they? and did some research.

April 5, 07: General market TV (NBC) does a story on Stephon Marbury and the success of Starbury Sneakers. NBA star sells $15 sneakers - New York Knicks star Stephon Marbury makes sneakers affordable.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17962620/from/ET/

Starbury sneakers took about 45 days to reach my son…that is how fast Urban Mindset Viral marketing is (without traditional media vehicles). The success vehicles for Starbury sneakers were one-on-one marketing, urban bulletins and viral PR driving $7 million in sales the first week. I had to drive to Orlando from Ft. Lauderdale to purchase Starbury sneakers for my son.

Who developed and executed this initiative? The Mastermind Group (New York) - http://www.themastermindgroup.com

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Here is what was posted on the message boards:
Stephon Marbury to release $15 Starbury Sneakers

Saw the interview he had n he was sayin how they are the same quality as other basketball sneakers but affordable.

1st off ..... if thats true than the sneaker industry is is fuckin us over

2nd ..... i think its a great idea for him to do this cause he's looked up to in NY especially n thatll save parents and kids money ...... i know i always wanted jordans n whatnot n never fuckin got em

with that said tho i just cant see them bein nice n for some reason idk if i could rock sneakers for 14.99 ..

drop ya thoughts ....

PRESS and Background:

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Starbury’s Sale

in Uncategorized, kicks, The Links by Lang Whitaker, NBA

by Lang Whitaker

Last night I wrote a post about the launch party for Stephon Marbury’s new line of budget sportswear and shoes. You guys did a lot of talking about it, too, and while we all agreed that it was great that Stephon was trying to do something different, I was curious how well the shoes would sell. Because to be honest, sometimes the only reason people buy shoes is because they are expensive. While what Stephon is trying to do — making shoes and clothes that have quality but are actually affordable — is fantastic. But would anyone actually buy the stuff?

Well, I just got word that when the Steve and Barry’s store in Manhattan Mall opened this morning, there were about 500 people in line outside the store. The people came charging in when the doors opened, and the store completely sold out of Steph’s shoes. Really. They were bringing in shoes from the back, people kept coming in to get their kicks, and even the actual Steve and Barry were having to work the registers to help get people through there.

The only downside is that because of the low price-point, the store only made $7 profit. Kidding!!

For real, that scene wasn’t only in Manhattan. Stores in Kansas and Michigan had similar runs on the Starbury shoes, and I was told that nobody’s exactly sure how well they did at the other Steve and Barry’s stores because all of their stores were so much busier than they thought they would be that by this afternoon they hadn’t had a chance to tally things up and see where they stood just yet.

I know it’s been less than one day, but if this stuff I’m hearing is true (and I have no reason not to believe it), then I wonder what all this means in the longer run? Is there a real, hungry market there for low-priced shoes? Shaq’s the only current player (respect to Hakeem for trying it years ago) who’s tried something similar, but his went for $40. For that price, you could buy two pairs of Starbury shoes.

Knicks' Marbury Launches Cheap Sneaker Line
by Anne Hawke

Stephon Marbury unveils his new $15 sneakers in New York City, Aug. 16, 2006. AP

Morning Edition, August 31, 2006 · Prickly. Self-centered. Overpaid. These are some adjectives that have been used to describe New York Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury over the years.

But Marbury's latest off-court mission -- to share the love, as he says -- might just earn him comparisons to philanthropists and civil rights pioneers.

In a world of multi-million dollar shoe endorsements by NBA players, Marbury is sponsoring low-cost athletic wear and a $15 basketball shoe.

NEW YORK -- Want to be like Steph? Well, it won't cost you much.

Stephon Marbury now is endorsing a sneaker that costs just $14.98, a pittance when compared with the often daunting prices that companies such as Nike and Reebok charge for their footwear.

Marbury makes sure ballers don't have to be 'ballers' to rock his footwear. (AP)
The "Starbury One," a sneaker designed by Steve & Barry's University Sportswear, will go on sale Thursday.

The New York Knicks guard hooked up with the low-priced apparel company after Marbury's marketing representatives spoke with Steve & Barry's about other marketing opportunities. When Marbury heard about the company's sneakers, he quickly agreed to endorse them.

He is expected to wear the sneakers during games next season.

"We got to know Stephon the man vs. Stephon the basketball player that we read about and saw on television, and we immediately saw how passionate he was about this vision," said Howard Schacter, Steve & Barry's chief partnership officer. "We also came to quickly learn he has a credibility, a street credibility."

Resolving Cultural Contradictions

2007-04-04T22:18:00.001-04:00

Claude Lévi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist who described the purpose of myth as 'provid[ing] a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.' Contradictions stem from opposing structural relations, made up of universal binaries, which Lévi-Strauss considered to be universal concerns of all cultures.

One of the first people to apply Lévi-Strauss' thinking to the branding world (commercially at least) were the UK marketing semioticians Ginny Valentine and Monty Alexander, who started using the myth quadrant around the early nineties. This is basically where two binaries - that have high structural relevance to the category - are paired off against each other to generate two 'cultural norms' and two 'cultural contradictions'. The two cultural contradictions provide an opportunity for brands to engineer a resolution that has the potential to transform the category. Here's the model brought to life based on the fundamental structure of female beauty, featuring the ever-popular blog case study, Dove ...

Various explanations have been offered for the success of Dove, but I'd argue that this is one of the more powerful ones given that Dove is ultimately resolving the modern day contradiction of female beauty - attractiveness with 'real' curves, in larger sizes etc. The irony of course, is that Dove's images are still not a 'real' depiction of female beauty as such, since they remain an aspirational ideal for many 'everyday women'. On browsing through a selection of ads for this example generally, it was quite disturbing just how few ads use 'everyday women', other than insurance, anti-smoking and other government-led campaigns.

That said, it's certainly a more motivating and realistic goal for most women compared with all other cosmetic and beauty communications, which only draw on 'unreal(istic) beauty'. Dove broke the mould, and the rest, as they say, is history. I can't say that I know how the insight really emerged, possibly from a stream of insecure, fed-up women in focus groups and interviews. Be that as it may, this insight turns out to be a glaring opportunity once we turn our attention to locating modern female beauty within culture.

I would also like to turn briefly to another case study favourite, Persil's 'Dirt is Good'. I don't wish to debate whether the campaign's really working for Unilever in financial terms here (this has already been discussed at length elsewhere), only to show that it's really a simple semiotic inversion strategy at heart ...

Admittedly the examples that I've used here are a little crude to serve the model's structuralist ends, so please, no hate mail or spam for suggesting that everyday women are unattractive - hopefully you get the point! It's also worth noting a number of theoretical limitations. To start, it offers a snapshot of a reality at a fixed moment in time; it does not account for the instability and historical specificity of cultural meanings over time e.g. during the Victorian period in England appreciation of 'real beauty' was the dominant norm by far. Nor are the contradictions necessarily applicable cross-culturally. Beyond this, it is also fair to challenge the very notion that universal binaries structure culture, as not only does the model account for a limited set of structural relations at any one time, but it strips away, and is unable to cope with, the sheer cultural complexity of everday life. Although I subscribe to these (poststructuralist) criticisms theoretically speaking, when it comes to the 'practical crunch' these limitations are less problematic, and it still remains one of the more powerful semiotic-type tools around.

A more nuanced cultural reading of female beauty ideals in the West might reveal how they are changing over time, broadly inline with global and local fashion, film, music, and other significant culture/media industries. The cultural resonance and success of Dove's campaign for 'real beauty' for example, is also due in part to the broader naturalness tsunami that is sweeping across everything from food and healthcare to holidays and architecture. The root cause of which is a backlash against the philosophy of scientific progress to a large extent, and the detrimental environmental and societal effects it’s being blamed for. This also includes a cultural backlash against cosmetic surgery (despite its increasing popularity), airbrushed pictures, perfect models, celebrities and the like (think Getty Images vs Flickr). But it's important to keep in mind a sense of cultural relativism at this point. Dove is only 'real' because the rest of the beauty industry is so 'unreal'. And with the exposure and influence of people generated content rapidly increasing, I suspect the real 'real beauty' resolution has only just stepped off the catwalk.

Online Marketing in Your Hispanic Communications Mix

2007-04-04T18:36:00.001-04:00

Online activity among emerging majorities consumers continues to grow at a rapid pace. The percentage of Latino Americans, with access to the Internet, (whether from home, school, job, or other access point), increased from 43% in January 2002 to 69% in January 2006. More than 20 million U.S. Latinos are online. Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass., found Latinos are active in online banking, and a Roslow Research Group study reported that 70% of U.S. Latinos said that they would use the web to research a car purchase.

Research can be used to find those influential Web users and what they want to see. The web can also be effective on younger ethnic consumers by simply entertaining and engaging them with authentic and organic aspects of their culture, primarily the latest trends in music, fashion, and technology.

A study by AOL/Roper ASW shows that almost 20 million Hispanics in the US are online. While this is already an impressive number, the growth rate is even more impressive. About 20% of online Hispanics had connected their households to the Internet less than six months earlier. More than half who were not yet online expected to connect within the next two years.

In addition, the detailed survey found that Hispanic online consumers have quickly made the Internet part of their everyday lives. They go online at home an average of 9.2 hours a week, for example, compared with 8.5 hours for the general online population and they now heavily rely on the Internet to learn more about products, to share opinions, and to improve their lives. In fact, 70% now view the Internet as the best source for comparing prices, making it the most powerful information medium for influencing online Hispanics throughout the purchase decision process.

The Hispanic community is online in large numbers, and it's happening right now. So far, Hispanics feel there is a lack of online content and advertising available in Spanish. Although it is true that many Hispanics speak English fluently, at least half prefer to read content in their native language, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Big Advertisers Say Goodbye to Big Agencies

2007-04-04T18:34:00.001-04:00

A lot of big clients are hiring smaller agencies to handle their business because of the speed and lack of red tape they offer. Large agencies that are owned by holding companies are surely feeling the effects of this shift of perspective. MMB in Boston picked up Subway when they fired Omnicom Group agency Goodby Silverstein. How did MMB land Subway? They were already working for Subway on a project basis. This is not a trend it is the way things will be working from now on. Even large advertisers are beginning to avoid the monster that has been created in our industry by the conglomerate holding companies. Advertising just doesn’t work well when fashioned like its GM. Come to think of it, GM doesn’t work so well that way either.

The fact that clients are recognizing that smaller is better will probably overhaul the way large agencies do things. Clients today are looking for nimble, focused service. They expect the senior management of their agency to work on their business. They are willing to walk away the perceived security of the behemoth agency to get it.

Small agencies are thinking smarter and more strategically than the larger agencies. As a result, big agencies are slipping into playing the role of the ‘middle man’ and some forward thinking clients are skipping them all together and going straight to the source for new ideas.

Corporately held agencies are being seen as an older model these days that are not as effective as it was believed size could make it. From a creative point of view they haven’t helped our industry do better work either. The trend of clients moving to smaller agencies can be a very good thing for advertising’s creativity. The large agencies are not going to sit still and let significant pieces of business walk away for long. One day they will become more focused on the work and less on their corporate approval process and meeting revenue demands of the mother ship.