Media 2010
Companies with end to end solutions that have a high degree of digital presence are expected to fare the best in 2010. No-where is this more apparent than with established brands that fit well with Voice of the Customer and community engagement models. Scaling does not have to be enterprise level in order to be highly cost effective, as long as the correct amount of attention is placed on identifying markets and customer placements on various web platforms, and penetrating them with invitational rather than broadcast messaging.
While moving marketing allocations and spends online has proven out to be cost effective, don’t rely simply on banner ads – rather look for creative value ad opportunities and vehicles to provide information or edutainment messages to customers of interest. By providing something with value and substance, engagement becomes a partnership instead of the historic one way street. By allowing and encouraging your customers to help craft messages and help determine what needs and interests that a company can service, you are ingratiating yourself in their domain of choice, and key customers and influencers will by definition opt into accepting advertising and value proposals put forth.
Fail to meet the partnership bar however, and you can expect to fall into the “ignore” category. If you are not addressing online markets in terms of customer engagement, retention, and analytics –good luck.
For some reason the requirement for active participation with mutual value has yet to be embraced by many marketers and agencies. If you are working with an agency that is still trying to penetrate markets with a % advertising allocation approach across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google etc. without the foundational understanding of required people to people involvement, you should look for a different agency. Push is out, Pull is in. High touch does not have to be high cost, but it does have to be transparent.
eMarketer predicts that online advertising spending will increase by 5.5 percent to $23.6 billion in 2010, reversing a 4.6 percent decline last year.
Search engine spending should be around 15%-20%, an increase from around 6% in 2009. Search engines are THE gateway for discoverability, and will be so for some time to come. Companies will continue to need a solid SEM and SEO strategy, and more sophisicated anagement and maintenence. There is no slowing of the Google, Bing juggernauts – so you’d best assume a fair portion of your online budgets will be necessary. That doesn’t mean you can’t be smart however, and move the balance of PayPerClick and Organic activities to be highly cost effective.
“The difference between the Internet and traditional media like TV is that there are infinite possibilities” online, says Scott Schiller, svp of ad sales, Comcast Interactive Media. “Why would that change in 2010?”
If you want to be successful, hire a company to do comprehensive research into the infinite possibilities so that you can create a best fit roadmap and tactical plan. There is no one size fits all, and there are no magic bullets. Dominating your space takes diligence, homework and frequent adjustments – as well as direct participation by the corporate clients.
Just how does social networking fit into the digital media mix? Many contend that while nearly every major advertiser is interested in social media in some fashion, the true value for brands on sites like MySpace and Facebook lies in customer retention and analytics, rather than as vehicles for display ads. Know where your customers are and how to engage with them. Forget hype, there are plenty of tools available (Call us with questions) to assess when and where your targets are online for positioning and timing of your message. This sure beats the ol Nielsen “rating” system where a dog in front of a TV was counted as an impression. Digital really does have infinite possibilities – are you on board? Are you working with experts?
Of course, no digital forecast is complete without someone extolling mobile’s potential for the coming year, and someone else tempering that prediction. 2010 is no different. Per eMarketer, mobile ad spending should jump by 42 percent this year; yet the medium represents just 3 percent of digital spending.
But at the very least, “in certain categories, mobile will have a definite seat at the table,” says Schiller. “Media buyers like to buy what they know and understand. And everyone has a Blackberry and iPhone.”
Thanks to ubiquitous wireless broadband networks and a variety of portable Internet access platforms, the solution, increasingly, must be anywhere and anytime.
And what about TV? What about local opportunities?
Stations are cultivating online and mobile revenue in the effort to build new business models. According to BIA/Kelsey, TV stations can expect to ring up about $600 million in online ad revenue in 2010, versus $463 million in ‘09. As part of those initiatives, stations are partnering with other local stations to create video news pools and going hyperlocal both online and on-air, trying to find solutions to expensive syndicated programming. This plays hand in glove with an astute local online search effort, and ROI can be delivered in a matter of months. Companies with sponsorship agendas, such as those with athletics, sports, or celebrities should take note. Regional and local scaling is affordable and beneficial.
“We’re all going to be focused on those other revenue streams,” says Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith Broadcasting. “You’ll see a lot more emphasis on local programming. In an environment where ratings are scarce, if you can create a format that has sponsorship, product integration elements, that becomes attractive.” In total, all of TV’s additional revenue, including Internet, mobile, digital subchannels and retransmission could account for as much as 13 percent of TV stations’ revenue, with online and retrans representing more than 5 percent each, according to TVB. This is a BUYERS MARKET. Companies with a strong marketing mix that is both traditional and digital, and with a solid understanding of new market dynamics – can literally call the shots.
Astonishingly, no-one is sure why the concept of digital re-mixing has taken so long for marketers and advertisers to understand. For the agencies and corporations alike, the current environment is a marketers dream – and prices and barriers to entry are low. Do your homework, and come out swinging!
Winds of Change? Adjust the sails, make course adjustments or be shipwrecked.
Winds of Change? Adjust the sails, make course adjustments or be shipwrecked. Analytics matter.
by Stu Wiley December 14, 2009
Does your online intelligence empower you in new directions, or do you feelstuck in the doldrums? Are you using crowdsourcing effectively and measuring online community feedback to derive your ROI metrics?
Engagement with online communities can replace ad hoc qual and quant, and a lot of clients are cutting their ad hoc qual and quant because they just haven’t got the budgets for it, or activities simply aren’t working.
Online communities are exactly the kind of things that clients love talking about, but when it comes to actually investing they might think the approach is not tried and tested. That’s a mistake. The issue is that they have not been in the online space long enough or are not working with a high end firm whose focus has been decades of online participation.
The potential for online to generate insight and demand gen/lead gen is enormous, if you are in a business that needs to justify the expenditure (who isn’t), you may be struggling to cut through the hype and find solid techniques. Costs are reduced online, and you can monitor activities from anywhere in the world.
The tangibility of participating in word of mouth discussions about your brand and product is a measureable opportunity, however companies destined for obsolescence will refuse to be involved – if only from lack of understanding about the new paradigm and insistence on doing things “the way they have in the past”.
We all know the “not applicable to me” trajectory. Ignoring the signs of nature has resulted in numerous casualties, and we are not just talking about ships or boats here. Corporations who either refuse to adapt, or are too slow to adapt are finished. Some of you may already be consigned to this fate.
For example – If you do not have a comprehensive cross functional appreciation for, a coordinated strategy to embrace, and a complete set of corporate policies rules and procedures with regard to Social Media – you are way behind. Web 3.0 is well under way and you missed it. No amount of applied accelerant can bring you to parity – so you’ll have to grind out one precious inch at a time to get back on a survival course. Winning may not be possible, unless your competition is facing the same situation.
Do you know where you are? Do you know where they are? EXACTLY?
Have you done your competitive intelligence benchmarking? Do your analytics bear up to scrutiny? Do you use multiple methods to validate data?
We are at the confluence of two distinct changes: the current economy and the social change in how people deal with each other. Faceless companies who expect markets to come to them are in jeopardy, the rules have changed and corporations are no longer in power over the consumer.
Customers have a voice in the new world, and will not relinquish the role.
A lot of the time creativity in digital strategies comes from seeing new opportunities, the evolution of previous opportunities and making the effort to recombine the factors into something different. This works much in the way that application mashups meld two concepts in order to produce a value. The key is to retain expertise that can deconstruct previous methods, find new accelerators and redesign a new offering our of the newly combined assets. This is a science and fact based art, and begins with qual and quant research. Once you have the numbers – you can design both the offering and the metrics calculations around the new model to produce ROI. It’s simple – the new world requires new math. If your agencies aren’t telling you this and can’t demonstrate it, walk away.
Parts of your portfolio aren’t as successful as they might have been, this creates opportunities to question strategic decisions that have been made in the past, and their relevance when the winds change. Your company can evolve, and adapt quickly to take advantage of the new world. If you do so faster than your competitors you may have clear sailing to the horizon – but if not, you may struggle just to stay afloat – getting mercilessly pounded by the elements. Your current vessel may not be designed for the new environment – so change it to one that is.
The new paradigm creates a requirement for a more rapid cycling of decision making and adjustment – perhaps even wholesale corporate re-design. Given the winds of change, what business decisions are you going to make as a result of online data gathering and market movement, and who is going to help you with understanding data implications relevance in order to make those decisions?
Companies are certainly more risk adverse in this current climate. What they used to guess at, they are not willing to guess at any more, yet they don’t yet know how to drive clarity into the process, challenge assumptions and quantify variables. Boards are asking more questions about what is working and what’s not, but because there are so many silos within organizations, nobody is fully tasked with understanding what’s going on. That’s just not good enough anymore.
The first fact to get hardwired into your brain is that Digital and Social Media impacts EVERY aspect of your business.
Every touch point should be known, and managed appropriately. There are undoubtedly cross channel behaviors that your firm isn’t tracking. Comprehensive policies need to be established and enforced, and measured risks rewarded instead of feared. Forget focusing on minute to minute stock market valuations, lest the myopia create an inability to evolve effectively.
You have to be credible. You can’t go to market without having tested what you are doing – you need to prove the concept, that it has high probability or working, and that tangible benefits can be gained and measured. Rather than splatter random and disconnected tactical “efforts”, hire an expert to design a digital strategy – then hold your online strategy management accountable.
Expect frequent change, and require monitoring on a more frequent basis than before. It is critical to understand where your budget is going with regard to online touch points, and your project portfolio management should tell you daily how much each effort is contributing to the bottom line – increased revenues/margins, decreased costs, increased brand awareness, decreased risk. Set your budgets to focus on opportunities and measurements of growth.
The mathematical techniques aren’t exactly new, it’s how they are being used that’s changed, and in what mix. The geometric nature of online networks requires geometric thinking, and you need to understand that the calculation complexity exponentially grows as a result. Don’t get me wrong however, this is not quantum physics or theoretic. It is tangible and real, but needs to have an adjusted cultural and business mindset in order to function. Knowing what to matrix is equally as important and knowing how. Knowing what data is useful, and which is misleading is also critical.
Think of it this way – you need to build a multi-dimensional representation that represents a multi-dimensional set of interactions and influences with weighted variables. For optimum results, you need to assess both static and dynamic views. Then you need to do the what if modeling. For those who think in CAD this will make immediate sense, if not – don’t despair.
Complex relationship modeling is both an art and a science, where trend and pattern spotting and even intuition have a role.
Decisions that are based on this data need to be faster and more accurate, and more frequent readings taken. There has been long standing pressure for speed but it’s more significant now because the environment your company is dealing with is highly fluid, moves at the speed of computer processors, and only can be responded to – rather than planned out.
If your agency tells you that they can produce a “viral” brand awareness explosion for example – fire them. They can certainly put elements in place that duplicate past viral spreads – and still fail. This is because the customers are in charge, not the company. We are past the time when incumbent control can be achieved. In fact, the more controlling a company is, the quicker they are ostracized in the new economy. PUSH of agendas does not work in the online world that values participation, relationships, trust, and contribution. Corporate cultures that do not understand this paradigm change and power shift are doomed to waste millions of dollars on unsuccessful campaigns, and face extinction.
You are facing numerous environmental pressures and forces in combinations you have never before encountered so start paying attention. If you fight the power of nature (this new phenomena), you will lose. Better to adapt to the variables and empower your company with forward momentum in a different direction than to be the proud recipient of a Darwin Award.
Adjust your sails to the direction of the wind, and don’t simply and stubbornly hold to the same bearing. Listen to the environment and the consumers, whether B2C or B2B. ASK questions and participate in discussions – don’t just broadcast your agenda. Your business credibility is at stake. In fact – trust and credibility are CORE to a successful online presence.
Case in point –
Currently Microsoft runs Windows 7 operating system ads that claim Windows 7 is the result of corporate listening, with messaging that implied that creative “grass roots” ideas <could these be in the form of bug reports?> from consumers resulted in the product. The Apple Mac team is running a presupposition counter campaign that begs the questions – did it really take 7 iterations for Microsoft to hear the customers, or is this merely the same corporate behavior as has come to be expected from a “monopoly”, so how can you trust them when they have let you down’ so many times in the past?
While the campaigns are clearly targeting product adoption and customer acceptance, Microsoft also faces a huge credibility hurdle online and offline with both Mac users and current users of past versions of Windows – who finally have them working the way they want after years of investment and effort. As a result of this – many online debates are being held, with openly skeptical and cynical parties on all fronts.
Which company is doing a better job of harnessing the online energy of debate, antagonism and community loyalty? How is Apple feeding the fire of discontent and mistrust? How is Microsoft neutralizing the efforts? Are they gathering evangelists and influencers? How do you know? Do you think these online public conversations can be measured?
With billions of dollars at stake and possibly the future of personal computing, you can bet that data is being gathered and monitored frequently. Is this really an equal fight or does Apple represent such a significantly smaller marketshare that it’s a red herring? Are their corporate egos involved? Could this be just another generation of Steve vs. Bill? What peripheral companies and messages stand to gain or win as a result? If you are in a technology business, can you leverage this surge of energy and massive marketing spends for your own benefit? Can these factors be measured so that business decisions can be made?
Is this what you and your team do?
*(“ideas and feedback came in both positive and negative forms – bug reports as well as functionality and use case ideas. If you or your company does not understand the uses of social media for product development please call us.)
Adjust your course, adjust your sails (means of propulsion) and manage your data flow more frequently. Time to respond to the consumer driven marketplace is your enemy, not the consumer. You may have to create several legs to get to the same goal, which requires responsive action on a moment to moment basis. Of course you always have the option to choose to run aground rather than harness the wind and go around obstacles, but you risk loss of your entire vessel and the hard earned treasure of corporate assets in the process.
How do you think your investors will feel about that?
Can “in flight” advertising be local?
A jet charter company has to generate more sales leads, at lowest cost of customer acquisition. Squeezing profit out of each flight is critical, and cost effective sales and marketing means the difference between surviving or closing the hanger.
Competing in today’s jet charter space through online channels is more than just showing up first on the search engines.
Many searches result in over a million options. Obviously the sites past the few pages rarely get visited. The perfect website offering the perfect product or service will go unvisited if it hasn’t been optimized for search engines. SEO (search engine optimization) is important and only the beginning to push a website to the first pages.
The buzz surrounding Social Networking sites may cause media buyers to shy away from allocating budget to the social networking platforms. Those who are just now getting on board may be “showing up late to the party”, while the current advertisers are experiencing disappointing click-through rates.
Despite the mixed reviews, there is still plenty of opportunity to become profitable through media buys involving social networks. The opportunity especially exists for local advertisers, and when it comes to advertising on social networks, local advertisers have the home field advantage.
When purchasing media, it is important to ask partners “what are your users’ demographics?” Every media buy should contain a clear and concise definition of the target audience.
Let’s face it, reaching your target audience is the most crucial factor in any internet marketing endeavor, and targeting the right users based on their specific interest or behavior is critical in media buying.
We advocate a surgical approach to mapping audience to advertising and marketing messages. By performing the correct due diligence, advertising and marketing spends can be allocated very efficiently and produce maximum returns using online media.
Cocoa Krispies will help your child’s “IMMUNITY.” Really Kelloggs?
So now I’ve heard everything.
Kellogg’s product box copy and the timing of the release implies that eating Cocoa Krispies makes children immune to swine flu*.
No wonder businesses are cringing when it comes to social media and online business strategies. If an institution like Kelloggs feels they can stretch the truth this far…
What about blatant Social Media impostering? How do you find the real performers in the Social Media game? Is “too good to be true” keeping you on the sidelines? Don’t let it.
Inflated claims can be countered with common sense and validation of substance.
Last weekend was Halloween trick or treating, where a residence had re-wrapped generic giveaway treats with “exotic brand” foil. The anticipation and expectation was high, the stuff tasted terrible.
What are your expectations and are they being met?
What is the level of your businesses common sense?
Do you have the expertise and the capacity to tell the posers in costumes from the proven performers in Social Media?
Given all the layoffs in the world, we shouldn’t be surprised that there is a layer of work-from-home-out-of -job sector that has decided to become web experts. The ethic of “make outrageous claims and they will become real” seems to be standard practice for many hopeful participants.
People hawking tools and gadgets are all over the place. No work required, get rich quick with Twitter claims aren’t helping.
You don’ t have to subject your company to this churn or risk.
You can conduct your due diligence and find a reputable and proven results resource to help you navigate the new world paradigm of social media.
Look for proven history. Depth and breadth results. Consistency.
Social media is simply the new environment in which to use these age old survival tools. The Social Media Environment is geometric and very fast – however it CAN be successfully navigated with a bit of training.
No one hit wonders. No snake oil texture or fishy smells.
Is this Karma for centuries of dubious marketing claims? Last week Kellogg’s got called on the carpet for their ludicrous product box statement that ”Cocoa Krispies will help your child’s “IMMUNITY.”
My household instantly became immune to purchasing anything from Kelloggs, if only for ethical reasons. Would you really trust ingesting a product from that kind of food company? Perhaps Kellogg marketing really would try and coattail a pandemic, or perhaps they created the situation to get negative PR .
I’m actually very surprised that POST or General Mills didn’t jump all over this online. Kellogg just handed over market share to the astute competitor. The fact that this story is all over the web is proof that Social Media impacts all aspects of a corporation. CEO’s – can you hear us now?
Social Media is about transparency and TRUST.
How many of you are familiar with the name Victor Lustig? He’s known as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower back in 1925 to an unwitting scrap metal dealer who believed the story that the city could no longer afford upkeep on the tower and was dismantling it. Lustig simply posed as an authority figure claiming expertise and inside knowledge.
Sound familiar? Is this how you feel about your agency and the expectations when compared with dubious ROI schemes and glowing performance reports? You are not alone.
Defend yourself. In fact, we frequently are hired for online business audits – reviewing digital strategies and touchpoints across all executive and functional diciplines. Much of our time is spent using factual data to build legitimate cases for business use of digital strategies and social media. We go to great lengths to validate, and counter validate the numbers before presenting them. We understand the new math of social media and how it’s applied. Our team is part geometric forensics, and part new paradigm creatives. We help companies navigate the social media frontier.
Do your “experts use up to 200 analytic tools and sources to justify where you should spend your hard earned money and measure results? Don’t you deserve this level of confidence?
Accuracy is much more important than an inflated “pronouncement” – whether good or bad. Or are you happy with your GPS reporting with 100% confidence that you are on the planet “somewhere” so therefore “not lost” is a grand success? How about if you actually paid for the satellites too? Yeah, we though so. Yet this is what many of you are experiencing today at the hands of Billy the amusement park greeter.
What you really need and deserve is a guide team of Bear Grylls, Magellan, and McGyver. Someone to get you where you want to go despite the unknowns, while both maximizing both your experience and the protection of your interests.
Back to the scalliwag Lustig.
Lustig’s first con involved a “money-printing machine”. He would demonstrate the capability of the small box to clients, all the while lamenting that it took the device six hours to copy a $100 bill. The client, convinced of huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price, usually over $30,000 <1925 valuation>. Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce two more $100 bills. After that, it produced only blank paper, as its supply of $100 bills became exhausted. By the time the clients realized that they had been scammed, Lustig was long gone.
Does the business model sound familiar?
The agencies who “have it covered” or the “expert” web team who promised you first page Google results for your brand produced success for the first month or two… Then what happened?
Did you actually get what you thought you paid for?
How are you doing as of right now? Do you ewven know? Were your vendors and staff able to produce the same levels of validation data despite the economic downturn? WHY NOT?
Unfortunately there are charlatans claiming to be experts, or worse yet – simply wrapping free tools like Google analytics as if they were proprietary intelligence platforms. Thankfully, as they say – the cream always rises to the top.
So, how do you weed out those who claim from those who produce?
First, do your homework. If someone claims social media expertise, their persona and profile should be all over the web, on multiple platforms and in a variety of formats. There should be plenty of public documentation over a significant period of time to back up their claims. Either that – or they need to be under mentorship by someone who can meet this criteria.
We are not talking about Joe Intern who has 6 months experience using a web browser either. We are talking about senior people with 10-20 years of relevent skillsets, and deep backgrounds in the technologies and the uses of online mediums for generating business success. Senior consultants are available in this market- demand they be used on your account.
Client relations are about setting expectations and then exceeding the expectations. Look for teams with a history of delivering performance levels “Beyond the Brief”. Review their blogs, and ask if they are contributing to online dialogues under a pseudonym or secondary identity.
Ask them to explain the methodology behind the analytics and listen for multiple layering and many validation passes. They won’t give away secret sauce – but you should be able to tell whether they are repackaging and misrepresenting a generic solution. Ask them, ask numerous times and note inconsistencies. (We have a service to help you do screening and vetting, an outgrowth of our work for venture capitalists and investors. Call us to arrange a private webinar.)
Forget titles and labels like “Chief Blogger”. Even an agency intern can publish. Look closely at the numbers – if the claims don’t map up to the results – walk away. Even if there is a large brand name attached. Most agencies haven’t figured out how to re-invent themselves in order to avoid becoming obsolete. BTW- the more an incumbent fights, the deeper the audit should be. They may have been milking a cash cow (yours) for years.
For every claim, there should be supportive data. Use common sense. While the explanation might be a bit out of the ordinary, in this economy teams are created from all sorts of previously unavailable talents – ours all have substantial pedigrees. We know what we are doing with regard to online and digital strategies - our analysts use NSA level training and data methods. (The joke here is that they not only know what they are doing but probably what everyone else is doing as well…and no, it’s just a joke.)
Because we go to great lengths to understand the opportunities and risks of our clients, we are uniquely qualified to assist you with your social media success. We will deliver results. A few hints:
Create a scorecard using prioritized criteria. We can help.
Find an expert to generate objective, deep data and insights.
Always validate data using multiple methods and sources.
Make your vendors and agencies accountable.
Google is not enough – and has it’s own bias.
Do a social media audit quarterly.
Use performance incentives.
Ask the hard questions.
Question motivations.
Call the agency’s bluff.
Use our calculations.
Review insights.
Trust quality.
Celebrate.
Repeat.
* Kellogg Cocoa Krispies do not cure swine flu, and Cap’n Crunch is not a real captain – no matter what their marketing people claim. Common sense. citation is USA TODAY – Oct 1, 2009
