LBS marketing tips–where are you?

Tip #9:   Think of LBS as a bridge between online and offline worlds. Use location based marketing to tie digital marketing to your overarching sales promotions. LBS marketing provides the opportunity to enrich your interactions with key audiences.  An example would be eliciting product/ service feedback from consumers while they’re at various locations.

Tip #8:    Identify and reward brand supporters by creating special promotions around LBS marketing. Give product/ service reviewers discounts and coupons to encourage key users that promote your brand beyond LBS channels and outside of physical locations.  Make them evangelists.

Tip #7:    Engage with users who use location based services that sync to other communication channels like Twitter. If someone posts a tip about your business on a LBS service like Four Square, follow them on Twitter and extend the relationship and the impact of their review.

Tip #6:    Claim and manage your LBS platforms without being overpowering. It’s important to be present on LBS channels, but you don’t want to take control away from users. For example, if users create a page for your business on forums like Gowalla or Facebook, you should claim it, but do not flood existing communities with marketing and promos. Be considerate of the existing balance.

Tip #5:    Partner with content creators or distributors to encourage users to check in to your locations. For example, the WSJ badge on Four Square highlights businesses as a walking tour and users earn a badge as they check in to various locations.

Tip #4:    Make sure information presented on check-in forums is accurate (Google Maps, links, tags). Since most are user-generated or created automatically, it is important for marketers to check its accuracy. For example, to see if your business is already listed on Four Square, continue here.

Tip #3:    Use location based services as a way to manage your reputation on a granular level. Monitor reviews and feedback to gauge how brand awareness and perceptions vary from location to location. After claiming a business on some LBS forums, you will have access to tracking provided by their interfaces.

Tip #2:    LBS can serve as a social media entry point for new users. Think of these forums as a channel to interact with consumers in real time, which is a luxury not afforded by most other marketing initiatives. If someone checks in to a location and posts a positive review, you could follow up with a special promotion to encourage a repeat visit.

Tip #1:    New LBS platforms are opening a new world of hyper-targeted and geo-targeted ad serving capabilities for marketers. Employ new targeting capabilities to improve your targeted offerings. Facebook Places will increase the relevancy of ad targeting, for example, consider geo-targeting Facebook ads to key audiences for each of your venues.

AdWords Trademark Policy Update

Overview

Google recently announced that starting June 15^th, advertisers will be allowed to use trademark terms in their ads even if they do not own that trademark nor are an approved reseller/partner.  Currently, advertisers have complete control over who can place their brand name in the headline and/or description line in order to ensure competitors are not using such brand name as leverage.  Advertisers who own their brand name manually grant companies permission to use these terms in the ad copy on a case by case basis.  Google will be rolling out an automated tool to properly scan landing pages and allow use of brand terms in ad copy based off of the following advertiser criteria:

1.       Resellers or partners:  Tool will scan the landing pages to ensure branded product is sold.  An example is Best Buy selling Belkin routers on the landing page.  The tool would allow ‘Belkin’ to be displayed in the ad copy

2.       Informational sites: Sites that compare and or review products, but do not sell such products.  For example, CNET as an advertiser may have a page dedicated to comparing routers.  They will be able to run ads saying “Looking for a new router? Compare Belkin to D-Link and….”

This change has no affect on keywords: anyone can currently bid on any term in AdWords.  Google’s Quality Score will bring the most relevant ads and landing pages to the top rank.

Why?

It appears that Google is making the marketplace more accessible to all advertisers by automating this feature.  However, the technology rolled out will ensure that competitors will not be allowed to fall under the 2 categories above.  Google’s goal (and that of the search landscape) is to connect the audience with qualified ads and, in effect, connect the user to the right page as quickly as possible.

Impact

The trademark update will obviously give companies less control over who can use their brand terms in ad copy.  However, the direct effect of this change will depend on the brand.

Clients with Resellers/Partners

Companies with a large manufacturing base (i.e. several resellers) may see an increase in cost per clicks as the paid search marketplace increases on both brand and general terms.

Clients’ Products on Informational Sites

On the other hand, informational sites, in time, could be quite beneficial to all advertisers.  Although ad dollars are moving towards the lead gen aspect of search, there are still a large percentage of users researching before they buy.  These sites may take away clicks initially, but these users are becoming more educated about your product and, if it is a good fit, will be more likely to convert – and convert faster.  This means a potential increase in conversion rates and return on investment.

What to do?

Clients with Resellers/Partners

Keep track of your clients’ resellers–which keywords they are bidding on with your brand in copy.  There won’t be much you can do to change their copy, but it is best to avoid click cannibalization and increasing CPCs.  In some situations, you may be able to work with your resellers or partners to keep this from happening.

Clients’ Products on Informational Sites

See which informational sites are displaying your client’s brand in their ad copy.  This could be an upsell opportunity for some premiere display placement, especially if the information is positive for your client.

So mark June 15^th in your calendar as Duplicity Day.  You may start to see your brand more than expected!

~Daniel Romotsky

Behavioral Targeting: A Web Analytics Approach to Segmentation- Part 2

In my prior post, I discussed using segmentation as a way to better understand key metrics by removing the noise of your non-targeted site audience. For this post I would like to discuss some guidelines for identifying segments and targeting them to help improve key performance indicators.

By using Web Analytics data, you can identify different segments based on specific actions that your site visitors are taking once on your website. Trying to remain broad here as there are many different types of websites; any action a user takes with your website, through a call center, or in-store, defines an opportunity to identify a behavior. That behavior can provide some very valuable information that can benefit marketers with re-targeting strategies.

For example, let’s say that you have a content site with lots of information that is separated into different categories. You could target your returning visitors with ads that are relevant to their interests based on the different sections of the site that they visited.

 Another example would include someone who visits a commerce site repeatedly because they are in the research phase of learning about one of the products that you carry. After the second or third visit to a specific product page, you could serve them a type of incentive to persuade them to purchase at that time. I hope your competitors haven’t thought of that yet.

Here are some guidelines to help with your behavioral targeting strategy:

1.       Clearly define the goals of your website

2.       Identify key segments (Note that additional research aside from web analytics data may be necessary to define)

3.       Understand the goals for each of your segments and the increased value they will provide

4.       Select the appropriate tools that will allow you to target your site visitors

5.       After implementation, analyze your segments and identify improvement opportunities

Behavioral targeting is not a one time initiative; a continuous improvement plan should be performed as segmented behavior may change over time depending on your website goals.

Sports + Analytics = Higher Returns

Organized sports have moved from being a form of entertainment to becoming a useful marketing tool.  If used well, a sporting event or team can boost the popularity of a product, as well as a company’s revenue.  But you might be asking,”How can analytics mix in this equation?”  Simple, by using the team’s health, analytics will show you the areas where you need to improve your marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site and ultimately convert your visitors into clients.

Take the Tampa Bay Rays or the San Diego Chargers for example.  Both teams have either disappointed or were believed to make it far because of their past or current experiences, but the Rays made it as far as the World Series and the Chargers are putting every sport analyst to shame by making it to the Divisional Series.  What this means to your business is that behind these successes are fans that support the team, and you can use those emotions to drive more traffic to your site. 

One strategy is to promote your product/service on sites that cater to a team’s fan base.  As the season progress, not only monitor the team’s health but also your traffic.  My experience with clients that use this strategy is that their products trend in conjunction with the team’s health.  Look at your referring traffic to see what domains bring the most visitors to your site and focus your marketing strategies on those domains that are popular, while improving your ad placement or using other tactics to drive visitor traffic from those referring sites that bring the least traffic.

Something else to keep in mind is that the use of a team to promote a product /service needs to be done regardless of the team’s health to maintain support from the fans, while avoiding the “bandwagon effect.”  The bandwagon effect is a behavior where people adopt something that others do without consideration, which is closely related to opportunism.  This is clearly seen in sports.  As a team succeeds, it creates a greater fan base.  In order to find success in a team’s downfall is to use the hope of a better season, to drive the core fan base to your product/service.  This not only evokes loyalty from that group of fans, but the word of mouth will spread the popularity of the product/service as the team’s popularity increase.

So, what do think and who do you think will make it big in 2009 (besides the Chargers of course)?  Happy analytics!     

Marketing a Presidential Candidate Online

Here at Geary, we like to cap off each week with an Innovation Session – an informal meeting with food, drinks and a presentation from the front lines of interactive marketing.

Last Friday, we chose to explore the various ways that Barack Obama and John McCain are marketing themselves online — with a particular focus on Web 2.0 strategies.

We tried to keep the presentation non-partisan, but it was difficult because Obama has made aggressive social media efforts his trademark. He has an active presence on MySpace, Facebook, and niche social networks such as Faithbase and BlackPlanet; active accounts on Twitter and YouTube; text message updates; an active social network at my.barackobama.com; and much more. McCain also has a social network on his main domain and presences on the big social networking sites, but his presence on Twitter and niche social networks is bare-bones compared to Obama’s, and he does not have a text messaging program.

We hypothesized that Obama’s aggressive efforts are primarily a function of the citizens he’s trying to reach — young people and first-time voters, as well as independent voters who spend time on niche online communities. We’re guessing that Obama has found that online efforts are a cost-effective way to reach new, disaffected and undecided voters — and he has the deep pockets to back up these efforts.

Here are some fun facts about each candidates’ online efforts:

• My.barackobama.com, Obama’s in-house social networking platform, is run by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook.
• Obama’s various websites get about 20 million visitors a month, compared to 4 million a month for McCain-affiliated sites.McCain is much more active in paid search advertising than Obama. At one point, McCain was bidding on 226 keywords, compared to only 174 by Obama.
• Obama ran 17 negative paid search ads, while McCain ran only three – the opposite of their general strategies, where McCain’s advertising ran much more negative than Obama’s.
• At present, Obama’s infomercial has 1.6 million views on YouTube. This is significant reach, but it’s dwarfed by the 33.55 million people who watched the infomercial on TV.

To learn more about this topic, you can view the full PowerPoint presentation.

I also recommend “Obama’s Wide Web” from the Washington Post and this article from MediaPost, which gives details about the candidates’ paid search strategies.

Geary Interactive wins iMedia Financial Summit Shootout

As we recently mentioned two of Geary Interactive’s very own were sent to New York to compete against Crayon in a hotly contested agency shoot out at the iMedia Financial Summit.

Hot off the presses – Geary Interactive pulls off the win for their fantastic use of strategy and understanding of banking clients.

Check back for a video and write-up from iMedia about the event and congrats to the whole iMedia team for their hardwork.

Obama campaign utilizing alternative media to attract voters

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has added a ground-breaking medium to his bid for the White House: online gaming. The already internet-savvy Obama campaign has begun implementing banner advertisements in 18 video games for the Xbox 360 system. The ads feature a photo of Obama and encourage viewers to visit his campaign site www.voteforchange.com.

This is the first time a presidential candidate has taken advantage of the technology which allows advertising within video games that are updated through the Internet. Both candidates were approached with the opportunity, but only the Obama camp chose to utilize this medium. The campaign is targeted to only 10 states, all of which are swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin).

The ads launched on October 6^th, and will continue running up until November 3^rd.

Social Online Marketer, Web 2.0 Guru….Social Media Evangelists?

What’s in a name? Apparently a lot.                                                                          

As more and more companies begin to realize that social media is a space they can no longer avoid, they are looking to hire agencies and internal positions to help navigate the vast space.  However, these new positions (and agency needs) are causing an interesting game of semantics.

A recent 2 page AdWeek article on the subject of social media referred to the same type of position in the following ways:

• Social Media Consultant
• Social Media Expert
• Social Media Czar
• Social Media Team Member
• Social Media Marketer
• and my personal favorite Social Media Evangelist

Now coming from the SEO side of things, someone needs to get a WordTracker account pronto and a quick rundown in content optimization.  Beyond that…..what is the real difference here and does it really matter?  I would say none and no.  If the position listing  calls out a proper set of activities the company needs the position (or agency) to fill, finding the right person or group should be no problem.  Naming it or them should be even less of one.  But hey, if this name-game continues I may push for a title change to Social Media Goddess or Princess or Queen or….you get the idea

The Marketing Power of Offline and Online Integration….Or Me Just Being a Sucker

On the drive to work this morning I heard a radio spot for the new Starbucks Vivanno smoothies.  The radio spot offered a very simple message that stated that the smoothies were now available.  The spot peaked my interest, however I had more questions that I wanted answered.  I was curious about different flavors and the nutrition information.  Once I got to work, I searched Starbucks to try and find the additional details I desired.  Sure enough, when i click on the Starbucks link all of the information I was looking for was conveniently located on the homepage which was wearing a Vivanno skin.  I didn’t even have to sift through the site to find out that the smoothie came in two flavors and was a healthy option.

The radio spot could have simply offered the information and taken out the interactive piece, but if it was a billboard or a poster in a bus stop the creative would be compromised to add all of the details that someone may require.  Not to mention that driving a consumer to the Starbucks site helped to engage the customer and possible cross-sell them on something else the company had to offer.  This piece showed a great example of how a company was leveraging all of their marketing assets to reach a goal.  Utilizing offline efforts to drive people online and vise versa is an important piece to any successful marketing campaign.  And yes, the smoothie was very tasty                                                                     

San Diego’s own, Veoh, brings behavioral targeting to online videos

Veoh is known for breaking new ground in the online space, but their new advertising program could revolutionize the way advertisers purchase advertisements online and how consumers are exposed to them.  The program (being release out of beta today) will group viewers into buckets based upon their past searching, tagging, commenting, and viewing activities.

One could ask if a user watches videos online that fit into their true interests or if they primarily watch pieces that are considered viral (have you seen the water skiing chipmunk?!)?  For YouTube this may be true, but Veoh offers the largest library of online TV resulting in more interest based viewership.  Veoh is even claiming that during beta the program’s ads preformed twice as well as the non-targeted versions.

It will be very interesting to see how this technology develops and what it does to Veoh’s position in the industry.