I’ve run a social media marketing agency since Autumn 2006 so Abraham Harrison is almost five years old. In that time, we’ve learned quite a lot. One of my biggest learnings is that you can’t always get a direct bead on your demographic target–and that’s OK. We’ve worked for a broad spectrum in these five years, from health care and pharma to huge radio astronomy projects; from global non-profits to very specific public affairs campaigns. Social media marketing and blogger outreach and activation can be effective for everything, though it isn’t always clear how. B2B seems to be the least confident that social can help them but I believe we have really sorted it out: What I’ve learned is that if you cannot target your dream customer directly, you can target everyone around him.

I call this “fire for effect,” which is a term taken from artillery for when you don’t quite know where your target is or your target is well-guarded or sheltered. So, what you do instead is you fire downrange, doing your best to either step your shells closer and closer to the true target or to just use the shock and awe of incoming high explosive shrapnel shells going off everywhere else, distracting and engaging powerfully but indirectly.  (In artillery, you generally try to have someone down range, a forward observer, who can help you drop your mortars closer and closer, called adjusting your indirect fire, which I will discuss further along.)

Let me bring this analogy back to social media marketing. In two instances, I have seen indirect social media marketing work wonders. 80% of what we at Abraham Harrison do is long-tail blogger outreach. Instead of “sniping” at just the top-25 most influential bloggers in any one vertical, we dig deep and often come up with between 2,000-10,000 relevant blogs.  Most client projects make it easy for their general appeal; however, in a couple notable cases, firing for effect was the only thing we could really do: targeting health care providers for a client that sells health care devices and targeting astronomers for a global radio telescope project.

What we quickly realized is that not only were the doctors and scientists that my clients most desired generally not blogging, they were also very busy and quite invulnerable to the sort of blogger PR pitches we were wont to do, but they were also unpredictable and often volatile.

Doctors were almost impossible to access directly and scientists tended to be impolite whenever they received a plea via email from someone they didn’t know — typical A-lister behavior.

What we needed to do was to brainstorm and expand our campaigns to include everyone around the doctors.  Since the campaign was a public affairs campaign on hospital acquired infection-prevention, we brainstormed on who else is in the space–targeting the “ground” immediately around the docs, expanding as far out as we had budget and time.

Who did we come up with? Well, nurses, orderlies, caregivers, parents of elderly parents, partners of the elderly, people with immunosuppressive diseases, parents of sickly children, pregnant women, nursing students, medical students, public policy bloggers–the list was thousands of blogs and bloggers long. All the earth around the OR, an impenetrable fortress, was razed and we super-saturated the blogosphere, the twittersphere, and the Facebookosphere with discussion, mentions, messaging, excerpting, and commentary about the very real issue of healthcare associated infections in today’s hospitals and clinics: ventilator-associated pneumonia, surgical site infections, cross contamination, etc.

The same thing with the scientists who are associated with the radio telescope campaign. The scientists were there, they were just snippy, so instead of risking too much negative feedback, we instead isolated them and instead reached out to everyone around them: science nerds, space geeks, techies, amateur astronomers, sky watchers, backyard astronomers, and stargazers.

When it comes to blogger outreach and engagement, the goal is never to convert the blogger into a customer, I must remind you, but is always to message through the blogger onto his or her blog as a post, tweet, retweet, or wall post.  If the blogger is a gatekeeper, a blockade, to the blog and the blog’s readers (and to the spiders and bots, busily indexing links and content for Google, Bing, and Yahoo!), then you must abandon them and move on to the more accessible publications–generally the hobbyists, the amateurs, and the aspirants of the social media and blogosphere.

Amateur hobbyist bloggers are generally hungrier, more available, more grateful, and don’t have the hundreds of “date offers” that journalists, professionals, or A-listers generally have–they’re interested in making a name and are generally pretty amazed when a brand or an agency is sensitive and generous around to notice a blog that’s not solidly in the A-list and are generally really appreciative and open to building an authentic relationship.

Why do all of this? Why expend all this energy and munitions on indirect fire? The obvious answer is to smoke them out.  Since we’re often able to start a wildfire of blog posts, tweets, likes, retweets, and Facebook shares, there’s really nowhere for these well-fortified A-listers, scientists, professionals, and surgeons to hide.

And since all of the messaging, all the wildfire, is no longer coming from up range, from our battery, then it is no longer associated with us or our clients. Now, the wildfire is owned by the blogosphere instead of the client or my agency.

This means that the public affairs messaging, the content from our social media news releases, and the emailing back and forth between my crack team of online analysts and the hundreds of bloggers who take up the flag of our outreach, become detached from the final end-product: the rash of intense conversation, posting, tweeting, and retweeting that has all of a sudden lit up the social mediasphere like day actually comes from an impressive number of bloggers and readers from the space and not, at the end of the day, directly from us–so, it is much more likely that these unassailable influencers will end up, at the end of the day, be influenced anyway, without ever being pitched directly by us.

We have seen this happen time and time again, so much so that we have cliches for these things: priming the pump, setting the stage, tenderizing the steak, fertilizing the field–and, of course, carpet bombing (I like that last one the best, but my management team wants me to stop using military analogies, so please forgive me for all the above).

Because nobody believes me that this all works, I like to collect “thank you blogger” posts (from the clients who allow) wherein we “thank” the people who blog and tweet for us, through earned media (we don’t pay anyone–all of this isn’t payola-based) and the numbers speak for themselves: Thank You Habitat for Humanity World Habitat Day Bloggers, Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!, Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers, Thank You Snuggle Crème Bloggers, Thank You To All Of The Olympic Bloggers, Thank you Alzheimer’s Bloggers, Thank You Habitat For Humanity World Habitat Day 2010 Bloggers, Thank You HAI Watch Bloggers, Thank You MLK Memorial Bloggers, Thank You Motionbox Bloggers, Thank You To All US Winter Olympic Bloggers–so, the proof is in the pudding.

At the end of the day, the results outlive the campaign on organic search. When hundreds of blogs and tweets are published online–public, archived, and indexed–most of which link to your client’s social media news release, Web site, issue page, or landing page–hundreds of posts from a diversity of blogs and sources, almost always focused on a very impassioned three-week span. While I don’t condone link-farming or any black hat or even grey hat tactics, earned media mentions–where “earned media” means that you make the offer–the pitch–to the blogger and the blogger decides if and when he or she will post and how he or she will post.

Some bloggers post the our pitch email directly to their blog and that’s cool. A majority mention that they received a pitch from us and our client as well as excerpting and blockquoting a sizable amount of our very own copy from our social media news release. A minority actually spend the time to go in and write up a brand new piece, researched and contextualized, and we love those, too. We’re realistic: we’re reaching out to someone, asking for their help, not paying them anything at all except attention, and then expect them to do us a solid and actually post about our clients for free? Well, we’re always darned grateful for just about any mention–even, believe it or not, the spiny ones. It’s all good.

And, at the end of the day, as they say, any publicity is good publicity as long as they link our client’s name, product, services, and keywords as close to right as possible.

Via Mike Moran’s Biznology Blog

You direct traffic to your website to attract users that are possible consumers. There are some ways to make users come and visit your site and browse around. Inviting them to look at your site is one thing but making them stay is another. Let’s say that your site is full of eye-candy and publicized carefully and widely. You have everything rolled out for them to look at. Now, how will you make them stay a little longer to really digest what you showcase and maybe make them visit more often if not regularly? Here are some ways enumerated by Gabriella Sannino in her article “How to Bring Visitors to Your Site – And 6 Ways to Keep Them There”:

6 Ways to Keep Visitors on Your Site

1. Remember every page is a landing page.

Your services page can be a landing page, but so can your home, about or terms of service pages. You can’t assume that anyone seeing your about page came from somewhere else on your site. Build each page as if it’s the first page your visitor will see.

2. Less link bait more truth.

Many people use link bait as a way to get people to their site. However, if your content doesn’t somehow match the link bait, it’s going to upset some visitors. A few sites have actually lost a lot of visitors due to a high amount of link bait articles. You can link bait, but use it cautiously, carefully.

3. Fulfill your promise.

You promised them something that made them click on your link. You have to make good on that promise. If you have a “how to”, give them “how to”. If you promise a free report, don’t try to sell it to them. If you promise them they can learn how to play poker by reading your article, teach them to play poker (or at least give them pointers).

In other words, never, NEVER lie in your headline. They’ll never trust you again if you do. You can give misleading headlines (“Why You Don’t Need SEO”) to tweak their curiosity, but immediately correct it in the beginning of the content on the page.

4. Repeat yourself.

The headline of a page should repeat the headline of the ad or search result. If it doesn’t, the visitor may lose interest, be confused or feel cheated.

5. Don’t tease.

This isn’t flirtatious fun; this is business. Don’t tease the visitor in the first couple of paragraphs. Immediately step into the goods. Now, with articles/blogs, you can lead them in with a series of questions to show them you understand their pain, but don’t make it a long lead in.

6. Use your friends and family.

Here’s the biggest problem with you writing for your visitors: you’re a professional and they’re laypeople. They may not understand the terms you use. Before putting any content out on the Net, run it by friends and/or family. Given they are going to be honest with you of course. If they stop and say, “what’s this mean”, you need to use a different word or give an explanation. Example: This will help you increase your ROI (Return on Investment). Basically, understanding what is going to convert and what is dead in the water.

It is really good that you have people visiting your website, but it’s great that you have frequent visitors that can probably be your loyal consumers. Invite them over and make them stay.

The first thing you need to understand in marketing is that, you are giving what the customers like and not what you want to give them. It should always be about your target, which is in this case, your prospect consumers. Brendan cooper stated on his article “Social Media Marketing:it’s not about you”:

Marketing isn’t about you. It’s about your audiences. But it’s surprising how often people get this the wrong way around.

These phrases crop up fairly often:

• ” No one will be talking about us online”
• “I really like sites with lots of animation on them”
• “I don’t see why anyone would want to follow X”

The important words to notice here are “I” and “us” – because it really doesn’t matter what you think.

First, your individual preferences. OK, so you might like websites with lots of animation on them but you’re just one person. You have a gender (presumably), an age, a demographic. And it’s highly unlikely that your preferences match those of your audience. So if you’re running a structural engineering consultancy and you’re saying you like animations then that’s fine – but not if you’re a 20-something woman who thinks a polished brand is everything, while your audience is overwhelmingly 40-something males who just want facts.

Second, your expectations. Look, the web is really really big, and diverse, and weird, and getting bigger, more diverse and weirder all the time. I’ve totally given up predicting what I might find when I go online for a client. I’ve found entire Facebook pages dedicated to absolute all-c0nsuming hate for clients, and I’ve come across endearingly amateur videos singing their praises. You just cannot make any assumptions until you go out there and look.

The real goal of social media marketing is to attract consumers, and show them what they need that you could offer, not to show them what you wanted them to see. You should take every opportunity to advertise in any way possible not confiding in what you just wanted to do in the first place.

I’m in the process of pitching a potential client. From what I see, if this works out, it will be an excellent opportunity. They’re a marketing service provider that offers the traditional services to their client base. The methods they use are still very much needed, they aren’t out of date, and they won’t be out of date any time soon. But in this era of digital marketing, those methodologies clearly aren’t enough. Not when the users of their clients products are more likely to look online for those very products.

That being said, there were several aspects of conversations I’ve had with potential clients that have showed me why online marketing has yet to receive the respect that it deserves. Budget allotments, questions about handling things internally, executive level buy-in, a determined need to find specific, immediate ROI.   While I realize that the whole concept of online is still emerging, I nevertheless find this somewhat amazing. Most people today have integrated the internet into their lives, and have done so for many years. In fact, most of us use it for communication, or entertainment for research. But, still, there’s that initial resistance in many people in business.  It’s not only a reluctance to not only endeavor into this no longer new arena, but to also to take the very steps to learn about it.

So I’ve put together a few reasons why I think this is the case. Each may serve as an “objection” that will need to be overcome. Whether on a one-to-one level upon pitching a potential client. Or on an industry-wide basis.

Lack of Vision

When companies can’t see beyond their basic core services, when they don’t understand – or worse, when they don’t take the time to understand industry trends, they show an alarming lack of vision. And it’s a lack of vision that could kill their business. It goes back to that “where should we be in five years?” question. They don’t understand that they have to answer it constantly.

I’ve seen decision makers in some fields effectively make choices to not learn anything new. And it’s not just because they lack an understanding that they need to change, but they never display the curiosity to learn. The very curiosity that acts as the impetus in creating a vision that will create change.

I’ve noticed this in the political arena. In between elections, I’d be attending conferences that would discuss the use of the internet in political campaigns. They’d be attended by mostly relatively young people, all of whom were politically sharp and internet savvy. Come election time, they wouldn’t get a seat at the table.  The more seasoned members would praise them as being “upcomers” and they’d describe themselves to being “out of the loop” when it comes to “all this technology stuff”, but they’d always make sure that these young people they’re supposedly impressed with be kept in the back room with a microscopic budget and no say in any formulation of strategy.

The Disconnect 

The mentality seems to be, at best, that the upcoming changes (if they’re aware of them) don’t apply to them. Somehow they feel as if they’re separate from the rest of the business world.

The mentality is “Sure I do the majority of my business correspondence via email, and I just bought a book on Amazon for my brother-in-law, and my co-worker’s now engaged to a guy she met on Match.com, and I’m planning a vacation by looking at Hotels.com, and I have to check my bank account status today online, and I’m gonna read that story in the Post that my friend forwarded to me, and I should donate online today to Obama/McCain, and ooh, here’s an Evite to go to thank event by the river, and I’ve got to update and add some photos to my Facebook page, and I should read that restaurant review online, and I’ll just go to the client website to get information, and that was an inspirations quote I was emailed today, and then there was that hilarious video on YouTube, and here at work, I need to place an order through that online catalog, and I want to check out the site for that vet that I need to take Scruffy to, and I should order a film from Netflix.”

Then they think, “But I don’t see how the internet affects my business.  It’s not tangible to what I do.”
Lack of Priority

If one thinks in terms of traditional methods, then one is going to make traditional decisions.  If online is the constant afterthought, the add-on at the end, the low priority, then it’s never going to move up.  Again, if decision makers don’t take a step back to learn and see the entire picture, then it will never happen.  Or when it finally does happen, we get…

We Can Do It Ourselves

There’s a trend in business to day to bring in every aspect of markeing communications in house. That’s quite common here in the DC area with all of the associations and tech companies. Many of these organizations turn to the “folks in IT” to create the new site that to replace the old one sorely needs an update. This is the extension of the trend of having one’s nephew create something on his spare time and then put it up on the web. The result is often marginal improvements that add nothing to the brand or user experience. And by not examining beyond the confines of the offiice walls, they never see “what’s out there”.

An extra degree of separation

I don’t know if that’s the right term for all of what I’ll explain, but I see a lot of the traditional ad agencies and PR firms – the ones that are the first ones many potential clients go to – know so little about the fundamentals of online marketing – let alone the specialty of social media – that they muck up many marketing efforts.  Flash on homepages of websites, making them slow to download and invisible to search engines.  Things like that.  Blogs that post puff pieces and reworked press releases.

The problem is that those ad agencies and PR firms have the ear of the client, first and foremost. The marketing company hasn’t taken the time to learn new strategies, technologies, and methodologie while the client doesn’t know enough about to tell the difference.  The marketing company blocks new concepts from being brought up out of their own ignorance and territorialism.  The client says, fine, you guys are the experts.

The online folks are often then one degree of separation beyond this.  All too often the ear we have is that of the marketing company who may see us as a threat.

Soon, I’ll talk about what many in the online arena do wrong.

Guess, I’m just frustrated.  In a bad mood.

I just witnessed the most disgusting ad presentation I’ve ever seen on the internet.  The ad itself wasn’t intentionally meant to offend, but it’s format did something that was inexcusable.

Being a native New Englander, I often  got to  Boston.com to check out sports stories.  That’s what I just did a few minutes ago.  Right there, in front of me, was a story “Northboro Native Killed in Washington DC Accident”.  A photo of her shows a pretty, young fresh faced young woman, with a beaming smile.  Now that I live in the DC area, I was especially intrigued by this.  I was once 22 and lived in DC.  Young.  Idealistic.

So I went to click through to read the story.  In the corner of my eye, I began to notice  a ‘growing’ ad coming across the page.  One of those ads that form images across a web page.  In this case they were images of the walking footprints of what looked to be that of a hiker.  The footprints continued across the woman’s face and would not let me click through to read the story.  That’s because just as I pressed down on my mouse, the ad crossed over the exact spot where it was pointing to.  Suddenly, I was transported to another site, the landing page of the ad.  Tourism in New Brunswick.

When I finally got back to the site I wanted to be at and clicked through the story I wanted, I began reading:

A Northborough woman and Amherst College graduate beginning her career in Washington, D.C., was killed in the nation’s capital yesterday morning when she was run over by a garbage truck while riding her bicycle to work.

…beginning her career…killed in the nation’s capital…run over by a garbage truck”…riding her bicycle to work”…

Her young life snuffed out just like that.  Full of promise, full of life, now gone.

But we want to show you this ad first – the ad is more important.

This is definitely not the way to do things, folks.  These ad formats, while enticing, should not be used by news outlets.  At least on their front pages.  News outlets cover news and news is more often bad, or in some cases, tragic.  It isn’t worth the ad dollars.

Advertisers shouldn’t necessarily shy away from using these formats, but they should be very judicious in where they buy them.  They should look for sites that viewers come to be entertained.  I don’t care how effective they are.  Use another formats on front pages of news sites.

A slowing economy usually means that companies cut back on their advertising dollars.  The wisdom of this is debatable, but the inevitability of it is almost assured.

But times are changing somewhat.  In a survey conducted by Advertising Perceptions, we find that the long term traditional advertising outlets are the ones that ad execs – be they in house decision makers or agency professionals – see as being the ones that are likely to experience a decrease in ad spending over the next six months.  Meanwhile, online and mobile are not likely to take any substantial hits.

This is pleasant news for those of us in the online arena.

The survey asked 1811 marketers – 40% from the marketing side, 60% from the agency side – if the share of spend per advertising would increase, stay the same, or decrease.  National newspapaers and local newspapers took the biggest hit by far, with 44% and 40% of responders saying that they expected a decrease in spend, respectively.  Only 10% and 14% expected an increase for those categories.

This somewhat surprises me.  I would have thought the upcoming elections would mean more news media usage, regardless of the medium.  And while, yes, most of the growth in usage would be online, local coverage, in print, will still matter.

Guess not.  Newspapers are worse off than I thought.

The same can be said for broadcast 30% expecting a drop-off while only 14% expecting an increase; and radio, which is doing even worse.  Thirty three per cent expect less spend with seventeen per cent expecting an increase.

The real story here are the increases in online.  Seventy-two percent of those interviewed said they felt that online would see an increase in the next six months.  Only 4% saw a decrease.  That an 18 to 1 ratio.

In many industry verticals, online is not yet the automatic buy.  But it’s becoming the best buy.  The following numbers prove it.

Jupiter Research is reporting that online ad spending should grow about 20% this year from $19.9 billion in 2007 to $23.8 billion for 2008.

By 2013, it will increase to $43.4 billion, for an annual rate of 13%.  Offline advertising is expected to grow only 4% per year for the same period.

I never know how they come up with these numbers.  But they may well be right.

It’s my guess that search, video, and sponsored communities will see the greatest growth.  Search and video are what everyone says, but my guess is that with social media growing the way it is, we’ll see sponsored, semi-private networks emerged, composed of fans or product users.

This, of course, is happening now.  It will catch on as many of us transfer more and more of our lifestyle online.

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.”

The following excerpt is from Be Generous, Not Stingy, When Engaging Bloggers (via Chris Abraham):

“Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.”

Andy Sernovitz’s blog’s name says it all, and definitely reflects my response to reading this: Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!, especially in his post Instant Word of Mouth for Restaurants. From our experience doing blogger outreach and blogger gift-giving, this is on-the-money advice you should all consider (Via Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message):

Give every lunch customer 6 desserts to take back to the office.

Give them one desert and they will eat it.

Give them 6 and they will to announce to everyone that they just ate at your restaurant and you gave them snacks to share.

Lesson: One free sample is interesting. Lots of samples turn customers into evangelists.

Firstly, while we at Abraham Harrison do online publicity and blogger outreach exclusively, this advice rings true. First, let me define what we mean by “free samples” and “gifts” in our context.

Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.

For example, with Survivor Corps, not only did we make lots of full-chapters available for download and sharing, but we are making paper hardcover copies available to anyone and everyone who wants one — and the offer is transferable.

While the wide selection of chapters may be generous, offering only a partial book would easily be considered to be stingy and cheap if we were not willing and able to drop-ship complete copies of the book at a moment’s notice without ever demanding a quid pro quo.

Most of the bloggers might very readily blog about I Will Not Be Broken were I to only send a smattering of chapters; even so, the risk associated with not making copies freely available would be intense and is not worth it.

The cost of a hundred books sent to important niche online influencers who have promised to blog about Survivor Corps, whether they ever do is negligible compared to being pegged as cheap and ungrateful.

Even a blogger who has an advertising rate sheet and who would never consider doing a review without being sponsored or paid are often willing to blog on behalf of our clients – when we get the right balance between influencer-targeting, message-modeling, gift-giving, blogger activation, and following-up.

It works because this is relationship and conversation marketing. There are real people behind those blogs who are sick and tired of not being treated like people and if you can get the mixture right, magic happens.

When we do blogger public relations (often called blogger relations or BR), blogger messaging, or online outreach, it is essential to do everything possible to make sure that the blogger’s free spirit is appreciated and also realize that the blogger is under zero responsibility to blog about your client at all; and, for the same reason that bloggers are pursued by us PR and marketing professionals — their influence, platform, and voice — bloggers are fully capable of turning against you and your client.

Luckily, bloggers are people, marketers are people, even PR professionals are people; therefore, even if something goes wrong during an aggressive messaging and PR compaign, which they often do if you’re being aggressive and passionate, a human touch and human engagement usually does the trick to smooth feathers, clear the air, and make things nice.

Even when clearing the air isn’t possible, it is important to be brave and a little shameless: when you’re in this sort of business, 1% or more of all recipients will have a cow and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much attention, love, adoration, and mea culpas you’re willing or able to invest.

For the Survivor Corps campaign, we have been pretty aggressive. Even before we have delivered our first copy of I Will Not Be Broken to a single blogger, we have received almost 50 blog mentions and posts. Even if we had suffered a couple negative posts as a tithe for the 50 positive mentions, I believe it would still have been worth it.

If you need more proof you can read the mentions that bloggers have written so far about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, collected well before any actual books arrived via Fedex to the bloggers’ door, you will see that Blogger PR is well worth all of the time and trouble required to make it work right.

Let me know if you have any questions about what we do or how we do it. I would be very happy to tell you more if you contact me at Abraham Harrison.

The Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Reseearch are pointing out the 62% of marketers now believe that TV advertising has become less effective over the past two years.  That’s an amazing number.  Hopefully it will serve as a clarion call to those same marketers and to the ad agencies that serve them  Sometimes I think that many marketers see the changes that are happening but choose to not adapt because they assume no one else will.  But when statistics showing more than 60% of marketers showing doubt on th most well known medium for advertising, it means that they can’t delay changes in methods and mediums.

This is a major reason why the same survey had 87% of marketers planning to spend more on web advertising this year.  Or that eMarketer is saying that ad spend should reach $28.5 billion, up 23% over last year.  That includes an 74% increase in spending on online video.

The odd thing is that the models for online video advertising are not even close to being set.  Pre-roll is a mess.  Net shows aren’t necessarily a huge success.  And we keep on hearing that people are looking to interact with their friends on social networks and not with brands.

Yesterday, on Twitter, new follower Mike Keliher (@mjkeliher) pointed out how he wouldn’t tolerate being forced to see an pre-roll ad in order to view a 15 second story. When I asked him why he felt so strongly, his answer was:

@jptrenn 99.9% of the time: entirely irrelevant. More importantly, disrespectful of my time.

I’m no where nearly as absolute on that. I realize that these media properties need to make money and I see pre-roll as a legitimate concept in theory. Still, I don’t blame him for feeling that way. Media properties apply pre-roll entirely wrong, with no concern for the viewer. So here’s a few suggestions. Strong suggestions.

1) Above all, don’t put pre-roll on tragic stories

The last thing I want to see when I click on a story about that tragic accident that killed 68 people, including 23 children, is a frigging commercial for indigestion. While other times pre roll ads are inconvenient, at times like this, it is completely offensive.

2) Don’t put pre-roll on breaking stories

Sorry, but while these stories are the ones most likely to be clicked on, when people click on them, they often so so with as sense of urgency. To the viewer, the content is compelling and they don’t want an interruption. It could hurt the advertiser as it hurts the viewer experience.

3) Make the ads relevant

If I go to view an add about baseball spring training, give me a travel ad to Florida or Arizona. Or one about sports. Don’t just something up there. As Mike says, 99.9% irrelevant.

4) One pre roll per user session please

Otherwise, it begins to ruin the experience.

5) If more than one…

…then make sure there’s about 4-6 news stories viewed between ads. And don’t show the same one twice.

I write all of this because I understand a believe that most news sites thankfully don’t come with subscription fees. They make their money by advertising. So I’m trying to find a reasonable balance.

What are your thoughts?

In my last post, I talked of the coming disruption of the three way relationship between marketer, agency, and media property. Essentially it centers on the idea that marketers (who are often behind themselves) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of digital savvy of their agencies and are now turning to media properties for strategic ideas and creative capabiliites. And these media properties are making themselves all the more ready, willing, and able to carry out the needs and wishes of the marketers.

I believe that that’s happening. But there’s still a big problem with that model. Consistent brand messaging

On a micro-level, this new way of doing things makes perfect sense. Crafting an marketing campaign tailored to the offerings of an online property could maximize the effectiveness of the campaign itself. For that media property.

But last I looked, most advertisers don’t use all their spend on one property. They’ll pick many properties in many channels. They’ll test here and there. They’ll sometimes concentrate on branding, sometimes concentrate on direct , sometimes (and the web makes this more possible, concentrate on both.

If the marketer – the company that is the end client – has to tailor each of its marketing messages to that of the publisher, chaos could result.

Publishers will need to realize this and further expand their services, sort of becoming almost full service for their advertisers. But still, this still could run into brand confusion as each publisher will owe it to their paying client to create the most effective campaign for their specific property or properties, leaving potentially different and confusing brand messages across several media properties.

Wise agencies should see this as the window of opportunity and work with publishers before they even get clients to formulate the framework for effective marketing campaigns that can perform very effectively over a cross section of properties and platforms.

In showing a sharp contrast that reflects the different mindsets of the campaigns of the two remaining Democratic candidates, Kate Kay of MediaPost writes:

Senator Barack Obama wants voters in Texas and Ohio to vote early, and his campaign is running huge video-enabled billboard ads to promote the convenient option. Yet, despite a desperate need to beat her Democratic opponent in the two states in Tuesday’s primaries, Senator Hillary Clinton’s camp doesn’t seem to be running Web display ads at all.

Not for anything, but one of the complaints about the Clinton campaign is that hit has been too top down. To me, this is another reflection of that. Now, it seems she is running negative ads versus Obama, a somewhat necessary tactic but hardly inspirational.

Web ads don’t necessarily show dispersed control. But the lack of them shows me that a campaign is run by traditioanlists who see TV and direct mail as the only way to go. TV and direct mail are vital, but not as vital as they used to be.

Obama’s team is smartly placing ads on newspaper sites. Like here. And here. Truth be told, they’re not great ads. They show reconstituted TV ads – a bad idea. But at least they’re doing something.

I decided to put together a list of reasons why I think many marketing agencies “don’t get” social media. Some are legitimate reasons, most aren’t. Feel free to add some of your own.

1- Elitism

The marketing industries – advertising, PR – are considered to be ‘cool’ or chic. These industries (including social media by the way) are filled with people who are self-consciously aware of this. For years I’ve been on online forums filled with ad people trashing the industry, talking about the lack of creative talent the whole time positioning themselves as being above it all.

Enter social media and its marketing aspects and these self-important types have something else to look down upon. If that attitude is prevelant in an agency, then it means you’ve got an agency that’s closed off to innovation.

2- Lack of Vision

An agency gets an RFP for a major client. They have meetings to brainstorm. How to position the brand. What creative they should use. Where they should make placements. Do we look to bring in a spokesperson? What strategies, what tactics?

And the whole time, social media didn’t enter their mindset.

That may be because they’re too rushed to give their response to the RFP and, because they haven’t had the time to learn much about social media. When it comes crunch time, it never occurs to them to do something with social media.

3- Lack of Interest

A couple of years ago I contacted a mid-size ad agency to see if they were going to incorporate any type of online marketing capabiliites. They had no interest in it. It was more than a lack of vision. It was simply put, a fundamental lack of interest of what was happening around them

4- Unable to figure out the revenue model

This is an underrated and compelling reason. I don’t believe as some doom sayers do that advertising is on its way out. But it is changing and some of these new business models involve little revenue. If you’ve to a lot of overhead and a project comes in that could mean little revenue, you’re going to be flummoxed and scared shitless of this.

5- Terrified of Technology

Often, people in agencies play the “he’s a tech guy” routine. Cordoning off those who do online stuff as a whole as tech people. And tech people usually aren’t marketing types. So by placing that label on it, ad types both partially remove internet marketers from the decision making pro and set up a situation where they don’t have to deal with technology – and the unknown.

6- They undervalue what it takes to establish a capability

Other times I’ve talked to agencies that it seems they want to hire someone “young” and not pay them much and “teach” them about online marketing, even though those that teach no little of what they speak. Developing an online capability is viewed as a cost, not an opportunity and the idea then is to go as cheaply as possible.

7- Methodologies are still being developed

Yes, this is true. The field is very new and, while there have been many successes, the constantly changing nature of social media – blogs, social networks, microblogs, online video, is often in a flux. Methodologies have to play catch up.

8- Social media is largely unproven

No, this is not heresy. It’s the truth, plain and simple. It’s an emerging field and, while social media usage is growing phenomenally, it’s growing in many different directions. Each time it grow, new lessons have to be applied to new strategies.

9- Too much hype from social media strategists

“Engage or die”. “The customer is in control of the brand”. Overblown statements by ‘visionaries’ that usually aren’t true and turn off traditional marketers. Statements like that seem to be directed at other social media strategists where it becomes part of the echo chamber. Not everyone had to ‘engage’ and not everyone will die if they fail to do so.

Back in December, I made put forth my predictions for 2008, with #11 being “Conversion attribution will be a big bone of contention”. That’s about to happen. Only now, thanks to Microsoft, it’s called “Engagement Mapping”.

Conversion attribution and/or engagement mapping is basically this. When we buy something, it is often because we’ve been inluenced by several marketing messages from different channels. The online arena offers little measurable sense of exactly what made someone buy, but an (almost) exact sense of where someone came from (a search? a banner?). So, conversion attribution and/or engagement mapping is basically is the call for the revenue from an ecommerce transaction to be dispersed amongst the marketing channels according to some sort of formulaic attribution system of that tries to weigh the influence of each channel. In Microsoft’s version – I’ll stick with engagement mapping – only online channels are mentioned.

This seems to address a issue of real concern, but it fails to address the whole picture. As a result, we’re likely to see an upcoming battle of Titans.

The problem I have with it is that Microsoft will be trying to implement industry wide measurement metrics – more than likely specifically designed in its favor – to get inside our heads and measure the amount of influence all of these marketing channels had when we buy something. I’d rather see something like this worked out by a consortium of companies in the online advertising space.

In all honesty, the current system is a skewed. In the pay-for performance world, which is heavily slanted toward search, we never really know what factors led to that click. I’ve long believed in search, but have had a hard time thinking a small text ad worked wonders all by itself.

Controversy will rise up big time if this becomes standard because Micorsoft’s rival, Google, will stand to lose the most. And that loss could be huge. That’s because EM will be taking into account online display advertising such as banners and boxes and skyscrapers. They have been much derided with their low click thru rates, something that I’ve always have felt was unfair. To me, it’s never taken into account any branding aspects or simple enhancement of name recognition. While Microsoft obviously has a foothold in the search arena, they are players in display advertisng as well. This will be even more true if their attempts to buy Yahoo prove to be successful.

Now it will be Microsoft’s challenge to convince the ad industry to play along. Advertisers – angencies and internal marketing managers may go for EM because it could allegedly give them a more quantifiable measure of marketing ROI spend.

But this cuts right into Google’s business model. They’ll be losing money because yesterday, someone saw a banner ad for a product and today they’re on Google because they put in a industry related keyword and came up with a text ad. But there really is no telling how much weight each played in the purchase. At best, I don’t think we’re there yet.

Microsoft’s plan is short on detail. Look for a lot of headed discussion on this issue. I’ll be following it intensely.

Me too.

You want to get back to the show, the game, the newscast. See the bad guy get his ass nailed, the final two minutes of the tight game, or news on the latest scoop on the election cycle. The last thing you want to see is a series of presentations about pills that can make you pee better, a car that supposedly makes you cool, and a law firm that chases ambulances.

Me too.

But every once and a while, you’ll watch something that will catch your eye. It will make you laugh. Chuckle inside. You’ll be able to relate to it. Or you’ll be impressed because it’s impressive, not because the commercial is trying to pretend that it’s impressive with itself. Or you’ll think, shit, how did they do that?

Me too.

If that’s what happens, then that’s a commercial that will likely end up on Firebrand.

Firebrand is a client of ours. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. They’re on the web at ‘re on the web at http://www.firebrand.com and on the ION network on cable in 95 million homes. They seek out and get the world’s best commercials and play them, MTV style. From the States, Britain, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, India.

Now, let’s talk football. Let’s talk the Super Bowl. I could go off on a tangent and first talk about the great commercials, but I’m a lifelong fanatical New England Patriots fan so to me, this Sunday means football. I had to get that in.Allright, so lets’s talk about those about great commercials that the Super Bowl is known for. They get plenty of press beforehand. People do stop and watch them and they then talk about them the next day. They remember them. And they wish that all TV ads were that good.

We’ll, this week Firebrand will be celebrating ads of Super Bowls past all week long. Then on Monday, February 4th, they’ll be hosting “Firebrand Monday”, showing all the ads from the previous day’s Big Game. Viewers will be treated to the likes of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker and Carmen Electra

Here’s the lineup for the week.

Monday January 28th: “BIG TIME ATHLETES” in classic Big Game commercials

Tuesday January 29th: “BIG BUDGET PRODUCTIONS” for classic Big Game commercials

Wed January 30th: “CHICKS IN CHARGE” in classic Big Game commercials

Thursday January 31st: “BIG TIME CELEBRITIES” in classic Big Game commercials

Friday February 1st: “BIG TIME BRANDS” in classic Big Game commercials

Monday February 4th: IT’S FIREBRAND MONDAY, THE DAY AFTER THE BIG GAME – CELEBRATE THE HOLIEST DAY IN ADVERTISING WITH THE OFFICE LINEBACKER, CARMEN ELEKTRA AND CLASSIC BIG GAME COMMERCIALS!

Two articles caught my eye earlier this week.

One was an AdAge article entitled “So Much for Engagement; Buys Are Still Based on Eyes”. It talked about a recent study by Advertiser Perceptions. Marketers and media buyers are looking to spend more and more dollars online. That’s because their first and foremost metric is reach – and that’s were people are going today. Online. But they see it more as a results oriented medium and are not doing it for engagement purposes as they don’t perceive that the online is good for engagement. This study was based on a survey of 2047 marketers and their media buyers.

The second one was a press release of a report put out by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. It described how measurable ROI is becoming an increasingly important factor for marketers as they transform dollars online. Accountabilty is of prime importance as marketers look to measure the value of the programs they’ve created and the investments they’ve made. A result of this trend in 2007 was the relative high turnover of the agencies used – ad, web design, and PR – to carry out these programs. The reasons for the severing of relationships was often tied into “lack of innovation” and “no value-added thinking”. Hmm…

ROI is often hard to prove in social media marketing. While most forms of marketing involve some sort of relationship building, social media marketing is almost completely based upon it. It’s effectiveness is not measured in short term or fixed period metrics – the heart of ROI, but long-term difficult-to-measure attributes related to brand affinity and customer lifetime value. It’s all qualitative analysis and not quantitative analysis.

If it’s true that companies are going to be spending more and more online with a greater focus on sustaining measurable ROI, then it doesn’t bode well for social media types if we have a recession that many are predicting.

Francois Gossieaux, in Emergence Marketing, makes an excellent point in refuting the heavy emphasis on ROI in marketing, period.

“by measuring ROI on discreet processes (i.e., a specific lead generation campaign), which most companies who measure ROI do, companies are reducing marketing to a collection of simple linear processes, when in reality it is a complex multi-variable and non-linear system. So by oversimplifying marketing to make it measurable, many companies will actually break marketing more so than it already is.”

Marketers have often complained – justifiably so in my opinion – of how marketing is often devalued within their organization. It can be viewed as a cost as opposed to an investment. The push for ROI to justify spend means that they could choose strategies and tactics that 1) they are most familiar with and 2) are the most measurable.

An amazing paragraph from the AdAge article reads:

So which medium is the most engaging? Survey respondents said it’s print — yet ranked print lowest for delivering results. Online was ranked lowest for engagement but highest for results, while TV was ranked in the middle for both results and engagement.

Let’s check this out…marketers are increasing their online spend because that’s where the people are. Online is the most interactive medium and by extension of that should be the best for engagement but marketers (and probably ad agencies) see it as the worst. Marketers now see it as being the best for results (the “R” in ROI) along with perhaps reach. This would seemingly say that they don’t yet value the various aspects of social media marketing.

And not only that, but print, the medium that’s both losing its share of ad spend and is considered to be the worst for results is considered to be the best for engagement by these very same marketers. WTF?

It’s no secret that many traditional marketers and media buyers see the online arena through their traditionalist eyes. We see evidence of that all the time. Facebook’s Beacon and Social Ads are recent examples of that. Fake attempts to tie into word of mouth. Facebook is hot. Lots of eyeballs lets do it. We’ll be hip and it’s “pushing the envelope”. It’s likely traditional types are trying to please whomever they answer to.

Mack Collier pointed out how in a conversation we had from his post “Companies Remain in the Shadow of the Blogosphere”:

“but I think many companies and their PR firms still see most blogs as having an audience of about 4 people, all family members of the author. I think that’s why you are seeing them treat the highly-trafficked blogs, the Tech Crunchs, as media sources. But for 99% of blogs, they don’t care and don’t understand why they should.”

He’s right. And that’s unfortunate. But the odd thing is that the key decision makers – marketing executives – are likely in their eternal search for ROI are hurting their efforsts for long term success by view the online arena as ineffective for engagement. And then by either choosing traditional minded ad agencies (and then complaining that they lack innovation) or by stifling the creativity of less traditional and more innovative agencies (by an unnecessary focus on immediate ROI) they are shooting themselves in BOTH feet.

Apparently we digital marketing types have a good future. At least that’s what Accenture tells us via their recent survey of 70 advertising, technology, and media industry leaders. But more telling is their view of who is the most likely to suffer because of the evolution and integration of digital technologies into our lives: traditional ad agencies. Via Adverganza, ClickZ, Five Blogs Before Lunch, Pushing Envelope, Think Multicultural.

That’s right. Traditional ad agencies. Forty three percent of the respondents said that these entities would suffer as opposed to 33 for broadcasters.

This shouldn’t be, but it easily could end up being the case. I’ve seen many a mid-size agency here in the DC area treat anything related to the internet – besides building an occasional website – as something from another planet. It may be radioactive so we don’t want to touch it. If we ignore it, it will probably go away.

It isn’t.

You’d figure these agencies would get the drift and evolve. You’d figure that they’d be learning new media inside and out. But apparently, many of them aren’t.

The number one reason that traditioanl agencies are set to struggle is related to media usage. We’re no longer a mass audience. We use media differently. More personal. So the marketing is more personal. And sometimes creating it ourselves.

The two industries most likely to gain? Search marketers and digital ad specialists. Half of the respondents say this will happen within 5 years, 80 percent within ten.

The November 8^th edition of The Economist has an article that asks us “Will Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites transform advertising?”

In truth, the article is poorly written. It asks the wrong question, it’s lazily researched, and it provides little actual theory or empirical evidence to justify the premise they are trying to suppose. Perhaps the reason for this is that The Economist is a general news publication – one that I respect – and that the article was intended for a mainstream readership that’s likely mostly interested in reading about general trends and not deeper analysis. But nevertheless…

The question as to whether Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites will transform advertising is off. It I was asked this, I’d have to say no. Not really. (First of all, it’s more marketing than the subset of advertising.) To be sure, they’ll play a major role. But it isn’t the setting so much as it is the relationships that individuals will have with these very sites, with brands, and with one another. Facebook and MySpace may be great places to launch a brand or product page in an attempt to develop what many call a ‘community’. But then again, it may not. Perhaps a product oriented website equipped with social media tools will do.

The article rightfully calls this the fourth in a line of three proven online marketing categories. The first was banner and ad unit advertising. The second was online classifieds, and the third was search.

Yes, the advantage social networks have is that they’ve got millions of registered users, all of whom can tap into the social tools that the sites make available. And those tools include notification systems and the viral capabilities that are so essential to the expansion of a marketing message.

But the essence of all of this will be the interaction of the brand with individuals and the individuals with others of what the brand is hoping that it is creating…a burgeoning community. And that’s where it gets tough. That’s because many, if not most brands, don’t lend themselves to be naturally community building entities on social media sites.

It’s going to take real talent for brand managers, ad agencies, and social media strategist to create successful online marketing campaigns using the strategies we all talk and blog about. Too often I read the typical “you must engage your community’ talk, talk that presupposes that a community already exists. And no – a customer base, by itself, is not a community.

Take for instance a group on Facebook that I joined this morning as a result of reading the article. SpriteSips. Truth be told, I’m a Sprite lover. Always have been. But I joined not because of a lifelong affinity for the soft drink, but because I wanted to see how this online experiment will go. Seems I’m not alone…about half of the hundred or so ‘friends’ of SpriteSips were either from the Coca-Cola company, or from the interactive industry, or worked for Facebook. To be fair, SpriteSips has been up for only a little over a week (thus showing some laziness in research for the article – a more in-depth analysis of the MySpace effort for the movie “300”) and it’s too soon to make any judgments as to the effectiveness of the campaign. But Sprite really isn’t a lifestyle brand like Gatorade or Red Bull or Snapple. It’s going to be a challenge to get people to be continually pumped to come back to and “engage” with a soft drink that tastes good, but one that’s common enough that you can get at McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway. My guess is that it will be moderately successful and cost effective, but it isn’t something that will show how social media shines.

Tangerine Toad has a great series on this. He calls it “Your Brand is Not My Friend”, with the hypothesis being that I may like or even love your product, but don’t assume my affinity with it goes beyond simply using it for purpose that it’s made for.

To me, the article likely will make some social media marketing types all the more enthusiastic while making skeptics all the more skeptic.

I say all of this out of respect for all of us in the social media marketing field. As I mentioned, it’s going to take real talent to harness this new type of market and make it work. It’s going to take keen minds that know what makes different types of individuals out there want to be part of and then how to properly engage with them. It’s going to be a challenge – one that I love and I’m sure you do too.

Here’s a series of figures that blew me away. It showed me how immature the online ad industry really is. And how far it has to grow. It’s a breakdown of how many visitors went to Style.com in September.

421,000 as measured by ComScore
497,000 as measured by Neilsen/Net Ratings
1,800,000 as measured by publisher Conde Nast’s internal measurements

They’re miles apart and that’s a big problem. When I first saw the 76,000 visit discrepancy between the two metering services I thought that was bad. But the 1.8 million figure that Conde Nast holds is more that 3.5 times that of Neilsen/Net Ratings and around 4.5 times that of ComScore.

For a long time publishers and rating companies have bickered over the different sets of stats they have for site visits and other web based traffic measurements. But differences such as these will only serve to slow down ad dollars going to the web. And that hurts us all.

Online advertising networks and all the associated support systems — metrics, tracking, conversions, promotion, marketing, and virals — are garnering lots of VC attention. Collective Media is a case in point.

“Collective Media, a leading online advertising network, today announced it has closed a Series A round of funding led by Greycroft Partners, in conjunction with iNovia Capital.” Via Forbes

This morning I read two important posts written by Greg Sterling on his blog Screenwerk. One is Nielsen – WebVisible Data on Local Search. The other is New Findings on SMBs and User Reviews. It left me more and more convinced how local businesses must view the internet as a marketing and business development source, and as a customer relations and reputation management tool.

Now I’m combining the results of two surveys both taken on line, so bear with me but Greg teamed with Opus Research and AllBusiness.com to put forward a survey that netted them 1200 respondents. AllBusiness.com’s users and members are SMBs (small & medium businesses). Of those 1200, 55% said that they had a website. That figure is smaller that I would expect – which is a good sign. That’s because it means that it probably wasn’t heavily populated by web savvy or tech oriented companies.

Now the Nielsen-WebVisible survey found that 86% said that they had used the Internet to find a local business to actually shop at. And as far as usage, 78% responded that they use the internet more today to find a local business than they had done two years previously and that an additional 20% use it the same amount. Combined, that’s 98%. Wow.

What we’re seeing is that a significantly large (and getting larger) percentage of people – people who are looking to conduct some sort of business- use the internet to locate businesses within the category of the product and/or service of what they need…on a local basis.

This obviously underscores the tremendous need today for SMBs to have websites. Not having one is ludicrous. But it also points to the fact that, in today’s arena, it PAYS to develop an online marketing plan for one’s SMB. It should include SEO and SEM for most. Banners at times. Email marketing to current customers. Each business will have different needs and all of these methods may not apply, but we also find out from the Nielsen-WebVisible survey that 52% use telephone directories less now than they did two years ago. Disclosure: I still use mine and have no plans to use it less.

Now there’s going to be a gap here. And the gap is that many smaller businesses mistakenly view advertising as an expense. And they’ll go for the tried and true. Yellow pages and flyers. Or they’ll rely on something that is very effective, but may not be enough: word of mouth.

To be sure, in Greg’s survey, 60% of the repondents said that more than 50% of their business comes from referrals. And 30% said that more than 75% come from that same source. You won’t find me dissing WOM…

…so I’ll say this. I think a lot of business owners put too much stock in their product and/or service and rely on word-of-mouth…which while being very effective can be very slow. Which is why I think they’ll need to invest in some online strategies.

But going back to WOM, we see the internet is increasingly playing a major role. Greg also found out that 64% or respondents knew of online review sites and that 30% regularly check these reviews. About one-quarter of them said that these reviews led to new business.

So people are searching for and finding local business via the internet. They are then reading (or writing) online reviews. More evidence that developing an online strategy is becoming ever more important.

Close to 60% of respondents felt that customer reviews are “a good thing and help us improve our business”. Improve means that a business sort of has a free focus group online. And then it adds their favorite marketing tool…word-of-mouth.

Now a lot of Greg’s respondents not only recognize the importance of these reviews, they apparently understand that it’s important to address – no, wait, I’ll say that word – ENGAGE – their customers/reviewers because over 50% had contacted unhappy customers to address complaints. That’s a very smart thing to do.

This brings me to a final point. Online reputation management. Still today, with 45% of the respondents here without website, it shows that many SMBs are very much behind the eight ball. Because a company doesn’t have a website, or they have one that one of the officer’s nephews built four years ago, doens’t mean that they’re not being talked about online. And, if you are a business owner, you want to be the most prominent, the most central web presence out there.

I see a tremendous opportunity for not only local search, but local marketing, bizdev, and customer/business relation management that’s going on RIGHT NOW.

Chris Cunningham of Freewebs has put forward a suggested metric for measuring the effectiveness of widgets as an advertising vehicle. In a MediaPost article, Widget Marketing Metrics That Matter, he outlines the three metrics that matter most: views, usage, and uploads/installs.

Uploads/installs are obviously the most important as it shows how many people have gone out of their way and chosen to bring a particular brand (or at least the brand’s widget) into their online presence for others to see and potentially interact with.

Usages play a key role because is involves a visitor who has chosen to embark on that interaction. To experience what the widge has to offer, so to speak.

And views are important because they likely go beyond spreading brand recognition. That’s because the view implicity knows that the person that downloaded the widget is giving that widget an endorsement of sorts. A de facto word of mouth.

So Chris came up with following formula to measure the effectiveness of widgets.

X Uploads = YX Usage = ZX Views = Z’X Banner Ad Impressions

OK. I’m trying to figure out what we’ve got here. This seems to be strictly a qualitative equation. It doesn’t seem to establish a relationship between Z and Y. I would think that would be key because it would draw a relationship between how often a widget was notice and how often someone chose to interact with it. And is YX the total amount of usages/ZX the total amount of views? Or are the measurements of the effectiveness of the usages and the views?

I’ve emailed Chris to learn more because I think that this is an interesting concept. And I agree with what Chris wrote around all of this equation.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had by butt in a math class. :)

McKinsey posted a report on the results of a survey they recently took of marketing executives. It’s called How Companies are Marketing Online. The report may not have earth shattering findings, but it does offer some key insights into the future if you read between the lines.Three things stood out in my opinion.

One is that current levels of spending and implementation are quite low as compared to how marketers and other decision makers perceive the overall effectiveness of online marketing.  This will mean that future investment in online marketing is bright as the level of investment will catch up with this perception.

The second was the lack of understanding of various facets of online marketing and how these facets should be integrated, implemented, and measured.

Many marketers also felt that, while they themselves and their internal folks weren’t up to speed quite yet when it came to online marketing, the marketing agencies that they used weren’t as well.

And this was a contributing factor in the delay of implementing strategies.The third was that the majority of respondents felt that online marketing was more efficient than traditional marketing. This underscores the expectation of the growth in online spend.

And fortifying this was that marketing online was roughly equally as good for brand building and direct response.Early in the report, it mentions that respondents expect that the majority of their customers will discover new products or services while they are online. A full one third of them will purchase them there.

Also, 10 percent of sales will come from online channels, an increase of 100% of what it is today. These expectations are going to be the impetus behind the increased spending that we’ll see.I can’t help but see this as a continued strategy of seeking to get immediate ROI, a factor that may have limited growth at this point.

And I’ve always viewed that as a mistake. The reason I see it as a mistake is that companies need to invest in knowledge and experience to develop and implement the right strategies as opposed to wait a while and finally invest money in what they may view as only tactics. Indeed, the report mentions that 42% of the respondents felt a greater investment in the overall capabilities would have made their initial investments more effective.

That’s because the online arena is not going to be a place where you toss out a conglomeration of tactics and hope they stick. Together they formulate a strategy and a very important one at that.Significantly, many of the companies that advertise online see it as both a brand building and direct response vehicle.

And that includes search advertising. I see this making sense for several reasons. People, as a whole, whether they are acting as a consumer or a business purchaser, have taken in the internet deeper into their lives. It is no longer relatively new.

It is a necessary part of one’s life. With this, online experiences become richer. So people go online to learn and to get information. Ergo, effective online advertising helps build brands and increases direct sales.Finally, companies that have been making significant online investments are including collaborative tools for customer retention and brand building.

This is important because we in the so-called echo chamber have been saying that companies must ‘engage’ their customers online. Get in conversations. You know, a Marketing Conversation.

ZenithOptimedia is predicting that the percentage share of online advertising to advertising on a whole will increase from 7.5% in 2007 to 9.5% in 2009. I’m betting it’s going to be higher. And in part for the similar reasons they do.

Online video is improving and it’s becoming more and more common as a marketing communications vehicle. Broadband expansion is slowing down, but expansion, while important, isn’t the only factor. It’s also how we use and will use video that will cause a continued increase. Broadcast and cable will increase their understanding as to how to make online video more profitable with hopefully, little sacrifice in popularity.

Zenith also says that local search will fuel this increase. Once again, I agree. But I’d expand this. As more and more mid-size and larger companies realize the important of search – and search optimization – they’ll invest more in better sites, further increasing the importance of search. And, yes, those local companies will realize that their customer base is going online for local info. They can’t rely on tradtional methods they once did.

But I’d also add that the growth of social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube will fuel even greater online ad share growth. Right now, they’re in the process of figuring it all out. Once they do, more dollars will be transfered online.

To me, the increase will come from the greater use of improving online applications. My guess is that it will push it up closer to 12%.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Newspapers	29.7	29.0	27.8	26.9	26.2
Magazines	13.2	12.8	12.5	12.2	12.1
Television	37.8	37.9	37.9	38.2	38.1
Radio	8.6	8.3	8.1	7.9	7.8
Cinema	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.5
Outdoor	5.5	5.6	5.7	5.8	5.9
Internet	4.8	6.1	7.5	8.7	9.5

Source: ZenithOptimedia

I have noticed that some of the best Facebook applications are doing an excellent job of pushing ads through their little bit of real estate, some are quite amazing and beautiful. My fave app is the unholy trinity of Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves. I love biting me some chumps. While I am biting chumps I am also being fed ads. Interesting. Is Facebook cool with that?

“In the latest internet land grab, at least eight companies have launched advertising networks for Facebook widgets. The players include Lookery, fbExchange, Cubics, Social Media and the latest addition, Appfuel. Several content distributors, including RockYou and Slide, as well as video-solution provider VideoEgg, have also gotten into the ad game. But the specter looms: Facebook giveth, Facebook can taketh away.” Via Wired News

Will Facebook share this generously with its 3rd-party apps in the long-run? If they are smart, they will share, otherwise, the best will go elsewhere. I am already seeing the rats flee the ship over at iTunes Music Store.

Mediaweek reported last week that MSN is going to limit it’s veiwers pre-roll exposure to what it had currently been. I don’t think it goes far enough but it sure is a step in the right direction.

Until now, their system had been set up to feed you an ad that depended on the amount of seperate videos you had watched. That often resulted in seeing a :30 repurposed TV ad for a :18 news story. The new method will deliver those intrusive ads after a viewer has viewed three minutes of video.

The time proportion of new-to-commerical will surely be better. But what it is missing is context. At times, one most defiinitley doesn’t want their user experience to be conintually interrupted by and ad for some sort of headache pill or car. They’re clicking on to read about a natural disaster, a plane crash, or someting else vital.

MSN and others are going to have to come up with models that are more contextual, less intrusive, and frankly, less frequent. User experience online is different. And getting a new commercial every three minutes is still mind numbing.

I asked Kevin to write a blog post (which rocked) based on my assumption that the US is headed towards a recession based on the devaluation of the dollar, the housing market slump, and the war in Iraq. I believe that marketing and advertising online is recession-proof, especially as attention profiling and behavioral targeting strategies improve and ads become customized to each the unique hopes, dreams, needs, wants, and context of users online.

My premise, in short, is that folks will hunker down during this recession with only the “Internet” to keep them company, in the form of VOIP, IPTV, social media, MMORPGs, and networked video games.

Essentially, folks will spend all of their attention online so there will be more ad and marketing dollars spent online in order to reach them. During the upcoming recession, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), new marketing, online outreach, online engagement, online advocacy, viral and word-of-mouth marketing, targeted direct marketing, and laser-targets online ad buys will thrive because they’re relatively cheap, focused, and where the people are, while print ads, commercials, and radio spots will plummet: too much buck for the bang.

We’re going to have a recession. let’s just make that assumption.

Usually, during a recession, ad revenues drop. My argument is that during a recession, people stay home more. Web surfing is cheap, amusing, plentiful, and also most amusing with broadband. While people may cut down cable, they will keep their Internet connection — and will hunker-down on the Internet while they’re low on personal spending money, on discretionary income.

My dad was an photographer and ad man in Hawaii during a recession in Japan that totally gutted the the Hawaiian economy. Traditionally, the first thing companies do when the shit hits the fan is pull ad dollars.

In that scenario, my dad’s company almost shuttered. What this shakedown did, however, was created stock photography and video, killing the bespoke day-rate on-site corporate photographer. Something always comes out in the end.

Downturns result in a need to make systems more efficient and more effective. It just wasn’t affordable for agencies to hire shooters to do shoots, bespoke. There were too many variables and all the risk was on the shoulders of the client. Stock photography changed all of that: cheaper and oftentimes better, since the shooter incurs the risk and the stock is “all the best of all time” and not the best that a particular day, week, or season had to offer.

How effective is plastering walls with bills or standing on a soap box when people are at home and online? How effective are commercials on cable channels people drop as a “luxury?” How worthwhile are those magazine ads when people drop their subscriptions to GQ and O?

The Internet is a commodity. Broadband is no longer a luxury — people are not willing to either go back to “rabbit ears” or to dial up. Folks will keep their basic cable, I am sure — it is a commodity — and they will keep their Internet, another commodity.

Is it very interesting time. I guess this is sort of a prediction. We’ll see if it all comes true. Check out that Canadian Loonie, eh?

Well, at the end of the day, I will always quote Kevin Donlan quoting someone else:

“When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.”

Is the economy heading into a recession? Some will say yes, some will say no, and others are playing it safe with a “maybe” answer. However, what is plain for the eye to see is that advertising spending has definitely taken a plunge. In a study done earlier this month, newspapers suffered the most, losing 5.8% in ad revenue, while TV ad sales also dragged down the market, down 2.4%. However, there was a bright spot– the Internet, with display ad spending up 17.7%. The losses in ad revenue for both newspapers and TV may not seem that significant in the grand scheme of things, but the gains that occurred in Internet ad spending are something to focus on.

In a study of U.S. recessions, McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 600 companies from 1980-1985. The results showed that business-to-business firms that maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and for the following three years, than those that eliminated or decreased advertising. With internet advertising becoming a cheap (cheaper) and easy option for companies (SEM, SEO, New Marketing, OO, OE, Outreach…), it is no wonder that during tough economic times these options are being exercised more frequently. The general public is shifting towards obtaining their information exclusively from the World Wide Web. With this in mind, companies are willing to focus the majority of their ad campaign on the internet, which correlates to the drop in ad revenue for the likes of newspaper and television companies.

One major business-to-business advertiser summed it up best. “When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.” With this holding true, companies are realizing that the internet is a more cost effective and efficient way to make their dollar work on the advertising front. Even if the economy takes a turn for the best, it can be predicted that the gains made in internet ad spending are going to continue to overshadow the ones from traditional media sources.

In today’s New York Times an interesting article graced the front page of the Business Day section. It seems that MySpace (more specifically Fox Interactive Media who owns the social network) is looking to boost revenues by tailoring its advertisements to particular users. As of now the “monetization technology group” at Fox Interactive Media has developed a program that scans for certain keywords/interests/likes in a users profile and targets the ads they will see directly to them.

This does not seem inherently wrong to me. Good for them trying to boost monthly revenue up to $70 million from the $40 million a month MySpace is currently generating. As far as I see there is not much difference in this and the way Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft chart my daily internet traipses to try to figure out what ad to bombard me with next. I sometimes even appreciate an occasional hot tip on a new travel agency or what not (by sometimes I really mean almost never).

The problem with this new MySpace venture is that users are for the most part unaware of the tactics being used to target them for a certain advertisement. (Did I know what cookies were when they first started being used against me? Only that they were delicious.) In this world of consumerism though, I think even the tweens using MySpace to connect with other tweens around the nation can smell something fishy when after mentioning Brad Pitt three times they start seeing a lot more ads for his next movie. So hell, in that case, go get ‘em MySpace… buyer beware and what not.

However, I do have to stand on the side of the privacy advocates on one point. Arnie Gullov-Singh speaking on behalf of MySpace said, “We want them [advertisers] to leave knowing more about their audience then when they came into the door”(NYT and yes I see the typo they left in, it should read than not then). I understand that MySpace could really use advertisers’ attention what with Facebook becoming so hip these days – and experimenting with similar advertising services, but this is where I see a problem. Users of MySpace are already going to be attacked by these oh-so-enticing advertisements geared directly towards them and in addition to this MySpace is going to help the advertisers know MORE about their target audience. Social network users would surely not like to know that not only are they being monitored but that their “private” information is being sent out to corporations for the purpose of being able to sell them more things. I place “private” in quotation marks here since clearly everyone who is using a social network must be aware at this point that not only people they want to see their profiles are able to access them.

I guess in some ways it can’t be helped. A service that provides some good or entertainment will eventually be used to sell you something. Those price saving cards at the grocery stores sell your information to all kinds of interested corporations. When you pop on your favorite TV show “the man” has made sure he knows who will most likely be watching before deciding what ads to air.

There does seem to be some upside to this in that eventually MySpace is hoping to open up the service to smaller organizations, groups, corporations looking to draw audiences/clients with specific interests and or locations. I guess they won me over using the idea of a Seattle punk band that would be able to look for an audience for their upcoming show through this service. I have a soft spot for punk bands that lack audience members. (A nice idea, but I have a feeling like the big guns will be using this service for much more profit and for much longer than the little guns.)

You tell me. – Is it fair that MySpace accumulate information about its users and systematically sell it for profit? Is that a fair question since it seems almost everyone is doing this already?