The Lonely Marketer

It’s October, my phone is ringing off the hook, and sales pitches are starting to roll in which means it’s time for 2008 media planning and buying. This is sort of becoming a Fall ritual for me as we work on our media plan and figure out what mix of print ads, paid search, banner ads, white paper postings, webcasts etc. we want for the upcoming year.

As a small business media planner the art of media planning and buying can be a bit intimidating at first, but as you learn the ropes you find ways to put yourself in a good position to make the right decisions and stretch your dollar as far as it will go. Here are some guidelines I’m following for this year:

• Treat Reps With Respect: Admittedly, the cold calls I receive get a bit old after awhile, but I believe the caller should be treated with respect - and get a call back when they get my voicemail. I’ve developed some great relationships with ad reps and I like to continue doing that. Many times the better relationships make for better business deals.

• Have a Basic Media Plan in Mind: I like to have a basic idea in my mind come October what I want in my media plan for next year. What verticals will I hit with print, what types of online ads will I be buying, will I be trying video are just a couple of the answers I like to have ready. This way you can give eager sales reps some guidelines for what they can include in their proposals. Which, in turn, saves you time wading through endless options.

• Get The Stats: If you’re purchasing banner ads or any kind of online ad placement, ask for basic statistics from the rep. Try to get such stats as visitors, impressions, average click-through-rates, and site page views. I’ve purchased ads in the past from reputable companies only to find that their web traffic was very low.

• Know Your Budget: I always assume that my budget will be the same as the previous year (but make sure you ask for more!). Knowing a basic budget figure for media planning and buying will keep your sites set on a goal of getting the most out of what money you do have to spend.

• Keep Track of Contacts: I’m dealing with many different media types and vendors so there are quite a few contacts to remember. Start a spreadsheet or database with contact info from everyone with whom you speak - even if you don’t think you’ll do business with them. This saves time when you’re ready to go back and finalize contracts.

• Negotiate Value-Ads: Let’s face it, print advertising is declining but not dead. Many of us still need to place print ads for branding purposes. One trend I’m seeing though is many magazines are cutting back issues or decreasing in size. Use this trend to your advantage by asking for value-ads to be thrown in with print ad purchases. I like to ask for banner placements on websites (more links for SEO!!), subscriber lists for sales campaigns, or free white paper postings. You’d be surprised what you can get thrown in.

• Try Something New: It’s easy to get stuck in a rut from year to year, but every small business marketer should be looking at trying new mediums each year. We may take a stab at video this year! Remember Universal Search is playing a much bigger role these days.

• Leave Some Padding: Don’t commit every last penny of your 2008 media plan. Leave some wriggle room for events or ads that you might want to run mid-year. Remember, things change!

Does this seem daunting? Don’t let it. Have a plan, stick to that plan, and don’t get tempted to stretch the budget. There has never been a better time to be working on media planning and buying - the options for positive results are endless!

Sadly, I read my last issue of Business 2.0 magazine this weekend. Why on earth is that magazine being canceled? One reason I’ve so enjoyed the magazine is because it always finds new marketing trends that amaze me. Their article about exchanging privacy for free phone calling was no exception. Check out the description from the article:

“A San Jose startup called Pudding has developed technology that can pick up on tens of thousands of keywords uttered during calls (everything from “vacation” to “PlayStation” to “doughnut”). Use your laptop to call a buddy and talk about dinner plans, for example, and within a few seconds you’ll see a Pizza Hut banner or promotional video on your screen. In exchange for the eavesdropping, your calls come free of charge.”

Described as the “Adsense of voice”, I’ll be curious to see if people take Pudding up on their offer. Given the adversity people typically have to behaviorally targeted advertising and someone (or something in this case) listening in to their conversations, I’m betting Pudding might have an uphill battle. Yes, their calling is free, but there are other low-priced options for that. My feeling is that they’ll need to provide a value-ad and by that I mean their advertising better be near perfect based on what customers say on the calls.

But, their Privacy Notice and FAQ page answered two main questions right off the bat - would I be recorded and would my identity be revealed and information sold. The answer is no to both.

Side note - very impressive that they’re the third result on Google for the keyword “Pudding”. Pudding, the food, has been around for much longer and I’m sure there are a ton of indexed sites discussing recipes and other food related items. There were also no paid search ads on that keyword. Maybe there is not as much competition for that term as I thought there would be.

What are your thoughts? Good business idea or risky venture?

Have you considered the fact that your next job interview could be in the virtual offices of your future employer in Second Life? No? Well, you’re not alone - I’ve never considered it either. But, an article last month in Kiplinger’s magazine about virtual interviews by companies such as Verizon, Microsoft, and HP leads me to believe that the possibility isn’t so remote.

More importantly to small business marketing is how far we are away from actually having to consider adding virtual world marketing to our plans and budgets. Admittedly, my mind was pretty closed off to the possibility. I couldn’t imagine myself, buying real estate in Second Life and flying my avatar around to meetings. But, a few recent news stories have me thinking other virtual world technologies may become more mainstream for small businesses.

Cisco recently announced a Second Life-like site for resellers and developers - sort of a virtual trade show. From the article:

The new Cisco site will be accessible through Cisco’s Web site, but it is not open to the public. The ISPN was designed and housed on servers owned by Unisfair Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., Sage said. Visitors to ISPN will be able to click on buttons to navigate as they move through trade show halls and booths, a meeting hall and a lounge, along with various “shadow people,” without the need to pick attire or facial characteristics as in Second Life. However, they will be able to chat with one another in ISPN to compare technologies. In coming weeks, Cisco plans to allow voice communication between ISPN participants through WebEx and Skype, he said.

Hitting closer to home, a major distributor of ours is hosting virtual trade shows for the manufacturers of products they carry and the resellers and end users who buy those products. You wouldn’t believe how life-like the interface is! I can actually see our company participating in an event like that - or at least trying it to see what kind of quality leads we’re able to obtain.

So, it looks like we have another avenue to consider for future marketing efforts or at least keep an eye on. If your interested, I found a webinar being hosted by BtoB about how marketers can achieve ROI in Second Life. The webinar is this Wednesday, September 26th (tomorrow). I won’t be able to attend, but would love a recap if anyone decides to check it out.

What are your thoughts on virtual world marketing? Fad or viable marketing effort?

Continuing my session recaps from Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007, I want to discuss a little of what we learned from the Post Search Ads session.

As a marketer, I know that the first interaction with my company’s brand does not always lead to a sale. It takes multiple ad impressions to grab the attention of a prospect. That is why online (and offline) ad buying has to be strategic - we need to make sure we’re interacting with the prospect at many steps in the buying process. Well, there are services now that help you follow your prospects, but how does the prospect feel about being followed?

Say for instance you come to a website and search for information. After looking through the results you don’t feel that website gave you what you need so you exit the site and move on. Well, that website put a “cookie” in your browser that will stay for 14 days. During that time, the website you exited will be displaying ads for you on other sites you visit in an attempt to win you back. In a spy movie, this is the equivelant of putting one of those tracking devices on the bottom of someone’s car and following them.

As Kevin Lee from DidIt.com points out in his presentation, buyers are in the market longer then their first search.

They have a whole buying funnel to go through before they make their purchase. Behavioral targeting and retargeting allows you to learn from what the searcher does and interact with them in different ways as they travel down that funnel.

Michael Benedek of Almond.net threw out an interesting fact. He pointed out that buyers spend 5% of their time showing interest in products on search engines and 95% of their time doing research on other sites.

That’s a pretty big statistic. As an advertiser, I want a piece of that 95% of time spent on other sites. Plus, if I can get a chance to learn more about the buyer as they browse, I can focus more on targeting my ads as they get closer to the check out line. Statistics show that click-through-rates on retargeting ads are the same as non-targeted ads, but conversion rates for advertisers are 5-10 times better with retargeting.

Is behavioral targeting and retargeting an exact science? No way. 15-20% of people clear their cookies so those people cannot be tracked. Also, what happens if you’re looking for grills on your home computer and your kids gets on the same computer and look for ringtones for their cell phones? What is the advertiser going to show you? A grill that makes music?

But, Dave Carberry of Advertising.com pointed out that by 2011 $3.8 billion will be spent on behavioral targeting and retargeting. So, the technology will get better and advertisers will be more in tune with buyers on the web.

As a searcher and buyer, how do you feel about companies retargeting their ads to you based on your browsing behavior tracked from a cookie in your browser? My first reaction from the buying perspective is that I don’t like it. But, as the presentations went along, I opened up a bit because there is the chance I might be able to find what I’m looking for quicker because advertisers are more aware of what I want. Less garbage ads being thrown at me as I browse.

Your thoughts from a buyer and advertiser perspective?

I’m starting to come around to the idea. You’ve most likely seen one of those banner ads that all of sudden starts playing a video advertisement right next to you as you’re trying to read something. Admittedly, I can’t help but take notice and I’m pretty sure you’re also taking notice. This means small business marketers might need to get familiar with this trend and plan for the day their static banner ads are extinct.

eMarketer recently reported that half of the US population will watch online video by next year. Additionally, they also reported that video ad spending will increase 89% over last year to reach $775 million this year.

“One is the uncertainty about what the audience will accept, with questions about where in the content the ad will run and how long it will run for,” said David Hallerman, a senior analyst and author of the report. “The other is the difficulty gathering together enough video ad inventory, with questions about ad placement and how to monetize the billions of user-generated video streams.”

I did a quick search to see what other bloggers had to say about this and I found some interesting opinions. Howard Owens questions what “professionally produced” means in a study he reference while Andy Beal questions if online video advertising can really have this type of growth when mediums such as search marketing are easier to implement and are more accountable. In another article, Michael Pick has a great outline of a new online video advertising service from LiveRail.

I’m at the information gathering phase right now for video advertising. Here are some of my questions:

• How feasible is it to produce a set of videos for online video advertising?
• What are the costs associated with the production?
• How long or short should they be?
• In what formats should they be produced and how do you optimize for online delivery?
• How do you get across branding, messaging, etc. in the short video?

I could go on and on. But, the good news for you is that I’ll eventually find the answers I need and report back. In the meantime, have you experimented with video advertising and if so, can you share your experience and give the rest of us some tips?

I’ve touted Google Analytics on this site before and it seems the free tool just keeps getting better. If you’re fully dependent on eCommerce and your analytics are helping you run your business, you’re probably looking at more sophisticated tools, but for many small businesses Google Analytics provides plenty of useful data and reports.

They recently upgraded their interface and have released a couple of feature enhancements based on user response. From the first batch of upgrades I’m a huge fan of the Clickable URLs. It seems Danny Sullivan was a voice in favor of this and I couldn’t agree more. How nice is it to be able to click a link, launch a site and check out a referring source?

The second batch of enhancements included content reports that now have a Segment menu so you can cross-segment pages and sets of pages by referral source, keyword, visitor type, and other visitor segments. I have alot of pages that are unique to certain keywords or types of visitors so this really helps me organize and manage data for specific parts of my website.

Hats off to the Analytics team for listening to users and reacting quickly with upgrades!

I read a fairly compelling article recently about Marketers Seeking a Banner-Blindness Cure. What does that mean? It means us marketers are having a hard time getting people to pay attention to our banner ads. It was just a few years ago that banner ads were hip and cool…now a static, ordinary banner placement is considered “old school” and out of style.

Today streaming video and mini, micro websites are being embedded into banner placements. I’m sure you’ll see a few streaming video ads for the new Harry Potter movie. These are new, fresh, and getting clicks. Accompanied with a solid landing pages, bounce rates will also decrease.
Even on this site, I’ve written and raved about innovative and eye catching online ad campaigns by Marvin Windows and Tellabs. I’ve even touted companies like Revcube who are putting out analytics to drastically improve an integrated online marketing program.

But, what happens when your budget doesn’t allow for high-end video productions that can be embedded into your banner? Should you throw in the towel on banner advertising completely? Absolutely not - you just need to be more strategic. Here are some tips:

• Be Selective on Placement: I’d rather go for quality rather than quantity. For instance, if there is site on which I’m interested in placing a banner, I’ll pass on the more expensive front page placement. Visitors are looking for content here - not ads. I typically will opt for something one or two clicks into the site where the visitor has reached their content (subject specific portals, for instance). I find people’s minds are more open to clicks after they’ve reached their destination. Plus, ad buys are cheaper the deeper you go.

• Have a Call to Action: Know your audience on the page you place the banner. What would they want from this page? I like to offer white papers or other relevant content. I think people have become numb to the “free giveaway” and “big rebates” messages.

• Blend in: There is a case to made for ads that stick out, but the other side of that debate is blending your banner in to the design of the page. The visitor might be more apt to click when the ad looks like more content from the same site.

• Follow-up: Make sure your landing page imitates whatever you’ve put in the ad. The person who clicks will be looking for instant confirmation that you’re following-up on your promise in the ad.

Most importantly…experiment! Try new messages, new designs and new placements. Not every recipe tastes good on the first try.

Any other thoughts for getting clicks for display ads?

As an avid search engine marketer, seeing announcements like this has me very excited for the future of this medium. Yahoo announced the new SmartAds platform that allows marketers to show very targeted banner ad content that will match user interests.

Text ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN already allow you to show targeted ads to a specific searcher. Now, banner ads on search related sites will also be custom made for the expressed interests of the user. Awesome!

From the press release:

Yahoo! SmartAds is powered by Yahoo!’s leading behavioral, demographic and geographic targeting capabilities and aim to connect users with what they are looking for based on their distinctive, expressed interests. For example, if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo! Autos and has selected San Francisco as their default location in Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo!’s SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time that showcases a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates. This provides a relevant experience to the user and allows the marketer to reach a user who is likely to become a customer.

In addition, Yahoo!’s patent-pending SmartAds platform allows advertisers and agencies to design a single set of individual creative components, provide Yahoo! with that artwork and a feed to their entire database of offers, then allow Yahoo!’s SmartAds technology to automatically generate the hundreds - if not thousands - of unique ad combinations based on those components. This helps advertisers and agencies scale to take full advantage of all of Yahoo!’s audience targeting capabilities while maintaining control over how their brand is presented.

One important note is that Yahoo is rolling this out only to its travel vertical to start. More industry verticals will follow in the coming months.

Banner ads as a method of advertising needs a boost and technology like this will give it just that. Imagine showing customized video content in a banner ad!

An article from iMedia Connection this morning fit in nicely with a post I’ve been meaning to write regarding gaining valuable customer insight from your web analytics. The article, 3 Steps to Measuring Blog Buzz, talks about metrics for following the conversation on your blog - but I think customer insight can come from multiple pieces of web analytics.

Why is this important? Learning about how your target audience interacts with your web presence can help determine your next marketing move. Small businesses, who have closer ties to their web results, can consider this free market research.

iMedia’s article focused on following the conversation on a company blog and their 3 points are worth checking out. They talk about gathering information, rating postings, and applying metrics. I actually may give their method a try.

Now, what else can be found lurking around in your web analytics program and why might it be important? Let’s take a look:

• Keywords: No-brainer! Your analytics program will tell you what keywords people searched on before they clicked on the your link in their search engine results. I follow these religiously. What a great way to gauge what is of interest to your target audience - and practically in real-time. Plus, over time you can see what keywords should be used in your SEO/SEM efforts and other marketing copy.

• Top Content: This handy tool tells you which pages were most viewed on your site. You can also see how long people spent on those pages and what percentage exited from that page. This gives you a pretty clear idea of what content resonates with your audience and what does not. Learn from the pages with a low bounce rate - they’re driving people farther into your site!

• Geographical Map Overlay: Aren’t you interested to know where your visitors are located? I use this to help determine where best to place valuable budget dollars. Take a six month snapshot and you may uncover areas of the city, country or world that might hold new customers.

• Referring Sites: Where were your visitors before they came to your site? They clicked on another site and came to your site. Now, go to school on that referring site. Why was your visitor there, how does it relate to your site, and how can you better tailor your content to interact with visitors from that site?

• Click Paths: Where do your visitors click and how far do they go? What I like best about this metric is finding pages with a high exit percentage - or more simply put - dead ends. A six month snapshot will show you popular paths your visitors take. Learn from those paths and apply those elements to your “dead ends”.

• Visitor Network Location: Okay, this one might not be as important, but I’m nosy when it comes to my target audience. Network location will sometimes yield company names where your visitors are located. I’ve written previously about this being a method to find out if competitors are clicking on my paid search ads. You can take steps to block their IP address if they are indeed wasting your money!

These are just a handful of useful metrics you can use to gather information on your audience. Do you need to look everyday? No! I take brief glances weekly, detailed looks monthly and plan-altering looks every six months.

Here are some other quality posts I came across that focus on using information from web analytics:

• How do you calculate engagement? Part II
• Top 5 Performance Boosting Techniques For Your Website Using Web Analytics
• Using Web Site Analytics Data
• Is Web Analytics Hurting Paid Search?

Occasionally, I’ll come across a company that I can’t wait to learn more about. This happened recently while reading Business 2.0 magazine. I’d love to provide you a link to the article, but after too many searches I couldn’t find it on the magazine’s website (big no-no for a magazine publisher).

But, I’m not going to let that stop me in introducing Revcube. Their technology, in my opinion, is exactly what marketers need and I think it will change online marketing. Here’s a snapshot from their website:

Revcube is a complete customer acquisition solution. Our proprietary platform captures and processes all useful data in the customer acquisition cycle across every online media channel.

Proprietary algorithms then use this response data to generate optimization rules which are applied to campaigns in real-time. Optimization of placement, creative and budget occurs both within a single channel as well as across multiple channels including paid search, contextual search, display and email. This complete solution provides real-time attribute level reporting giving the advertiser unprecedented insight and control of their marketing efforts.

This revolutionary, holistic approach improves and automates:

* Paid Search Advertising
* Banner and Email advertising
* Landing Page optimization
* Manual media allocation
* Campaign management

Why does this have me gushing? Having inside knowledge as to what type of ad will appeal to what user in what medium is invaluable to small businesses. The dreaded outcome in small business marketing is money spent and no ROI - or more simply put, money thrown away. Technology such as this changes the game and allows for a more strategic approach to online marketing. Plus, the ability to manage this knowledge across multiple platforms gives you additional control over your campaigns.

Check out their website to learn more about how they do this. If you’re into online marketing, this is the technology to watch out for.

And no, this is not a paid review! I’m just a big technology advocate and enjoy letting small businesses know of tools that can make their marketing better.