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A lot of buzz has been flying around about Web 2.0 and
Social Media. However, when it comes to where ads are shown statistics released
by Nielsen Online AdRelevance for September 2008 reveal that many B to B
marketers are not keeping a close eye on where their ads are being shown. Five
of the Twenty sites in particular really jump off the list at me and make me
wonder what people are thinking?
#2 MySpace 153.7 million impressions. MySpace is cheap as far
as both CPM and CPC goes. So most marketers don’t want to pass up on the
possibility of cheap clicks. I have never seen a conversion from a MySpace
based click in AdWords.
#8 YouTube 82.2 million impressions. YouTube is another Google AdWords
accessible site, and unless excluded it will quickly generate a large number of
impressions. YouTube clicks are even rarer than MySpace clicks, and conversions
are just as sparse to non-existent.
#15 Photobucket 39.2 million impressions. Photobucket is a
photo and video sharing site and much like YouTube it seems to generate a lot
of impressions and very few clicks.
#16 NeoPets 37.8 million impressions. Yes you read that
correctly, NeoPets. I don’t know about you, but my ten-year old daughter isn’t
going to be making any B2B buying decisions any time soon.
#17 Facebook 34.5 million impressions. Facebook, along with
MySpace, are the leaders in social networking, the only real reason MySpace has
more impressions is they are served by Google and Facebook is served by MSN.
What do all five of these sites have in common? It's Social
Media. And why are they such bad places for B2B advertisers online? Social
Networks may include your business audience but they aren’t there to do
business. Even small business people who are using these social networks as a
primary form of marketing ignore the ads.
When choosing where ads will be placed online it is
important not to only consider if your target audience is there but also why
they are there. A person networking with friends or catching up with long
distance pals just isn’t in the frame of mind to pay attention to the ads, and
if they do it is often a negative reaction. Let people’s social time be social.
Unless you are promoting a party at an upcoming convention or a sponsorship of
a not-for-profit event keeping business and pleasure separate in online
advertising increases click-through-rates by decreasing impressions that have
no positive effect.
I have even tried using these sites as part of a brand exposure strategy. There were a few clicks but with a click through rate of less than one tenth of a percent and no increase in organic traffic discernible it made no sense to keep showing ads on social networks. If you want to dabble in Web 2.0 advertising on the social networks is not the way to do it. Put up one profile for a key employee and have them contribute to the community and answer people's questions in the forums or groups.
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It was a very good summer for comic book superhero movies: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight all garnered solid, if not spectacular, reviews and made a collective $980 million (and counting) at the box office. The Dark Knight will be the #1 grossing movie of 2008, and last year’s leader was Spider Man 3.
This wasn’t always the case with movies sourced from popular comic book series. The long line of recent failures includes The Punisher, Ghost Rider, Catwoman and Daredevil. Even Batman & Robin, starring George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman and Chris O'Donnell was derided by both fans and critics alike.
So why did movies like the Spiderman series or The Dark Knight succeed where others had failed? One way to look at it is that they stayed true to their source material – or brand essence. Moviegoers who grew up reading and collecting comic books are these movies’ core audience. This group had certain expectations about the characters, narrative, tone and even visuals of the movie – all set by what they knew from the comic book versions. All of these aspects add up the brand essence of the hero franchise.
In the comic books, Batman was indeed “dark” – he walked the moral line between doing what was necessary and doing what was right or fair. This walking – or blurring – of that line was what made The Dark Knight tense and a great moviegoing experience. The movie delivered on true Batman brand essence, something that the star-laden Batman & Robin failed to do, and spectacularly so.
The Spiderman series has won both critical and box office success – as well as fanboy adoration – because it, too, stayed true to its brand essence: the burdens of being a superhero while also trying to live life as a normal human being. The Spiderman movies work as films because they spend a significant amount of time on Peter Parker’s issues, not just the heroic exploits of Spiderman. This was also the essence of the comic book version of Spiderman, and the thing that is at the center of the Spiderman brand.
There are lessons here for the business world. What is it about your products or services that endear themselves to customers? Is that being reflected in your corporate culture? In new products or services under development? What is the brand essence that you should be working to deliver on?
Mark Shevitz, Sr. Brand Manager
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Anyone currently working as a creative or designer has at their disposal a remarkable range of software that provide amazing tools for generating graphics. Over time, we’ve seen the Adobe family of products ascend through sequential numbers (e.g. Adobe® Photoshop® 6.0; Adobe Illustrator® 9.0) to finally reach the Suite spot (see CS1, 2, 3 or 4). I’ve used Adobe products for years. I still marvel at the ease, precision and immediacy in which creative tasks are achieved. One such task is spinning type in an arc or along a path.
Back when dinosaurs roamed, type was ordered from a typesetter in the size that you determined you needed. Within a day, or maybe overnight for those special “rush” jobs, you’d get back your galley of proofed b/w type. Then the fun began. With a brush of rubber cement or a pass of hot wax, your type galley was prepared with adhesive on its back side. This was necessary for securing it to the production board of your created art work (ad, brochure, package label, etc.).
However, before you could position your type in an arced or spun fashion, you’d use your X-Acto® blade and cut out the line of type from the galley. Then, your steady hand would cut between words, even individual characters if necessary, without cutting completely through the piece of set type. The purpose of this was so you could take your “straight” section of type and be able to bend it to fit the desired arc. Usually, as a guide, you’d have the arc drawn on a piece of tracing tissue that was affixed to the production board.
Using this guide, and tweezers, you’d position the cut type under the tissue and “spin” it into the desired arc shape. Piece of cake. And don’t forget to burnish it securely to the board, so you don’t need to go through the whole process again. Lose type off a final production board and you’d learn the true meaning of the word “anguish.”
Today, with mouse in hand, we simply reach within the InDesign® or Illustrator toolbox and create a path or shape. Then, within a nanosecond, we place text along it with little thought given to how beautifully easy this function was done. Certainly this serves as an example of how the good ol’ days truly aren’t as gratifying as the present.
Jim Malik
Art Director
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With the web continuing to be a necessary marketing tool, more and more companies and businesses are jumping on the blog bandwagon to share information and expertise. Being semi-new to the blog practice, I can only speak on what I know so far about what works and what doesn’t.
Here are a few tips I’ve picked up in my short time in the blogosphere.
1. Keep things short. Most people crave useful information, but dislike reading. Make your point, and make it quickly.
2. Watch your grammar. Your blog entry can be laid back and casual, but don’t leave it riddled with misspellings and awkward sentence construction. Your reader could get confused –– or worse, annoyed –– and lose interest.
3. Get a little spunky. A fun blog post is one that people will want to read. Add in wit that’s appropriate for your audience and you’re sure to please the reader.
4. Know your audience. The Movéo blog caters to readers from the advertising and marketing worlds, which includes many of our clients. With extensive experience in the industries, Movéo knows what our clients want and what makes them tick. Keeping that in mind, we aim to keep our blogs relevant to the needs of our readers.
These aren’t hard and fast rules, but they’re a good start. I’ve learned them through writing my own and also reading entries from various other writers. In the end, it’s really just about finding your voice and putting it out there in a format that others will want to read. Good luck.
Vicki Treptow, Copywriter
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How many times have you been stuck in traffic frustrated and all of sudden a good song comes up on the radio and you forget about the traffic. Or during the holiday season, you walk into a mall and Christmas music is playing. Suddenly, it puts you in that “holiday-season-mood.” Not to mention that it motivates you to SHOP!
I am a true believer that music sets the tone for pretty much everything. Music has that “Invisible Power” to control emotions. A great example is movies. In a horror movie, the music pretty much dictates the pace of your emotions. When you hear a certain tune, you know that something is going to happen.
As a graphic designer, listening to music while working gives me that boost I need for the day. It sets a nice working pace where ideas flow smoother and keeps me in a positive state of mind. A great song puts you in a good mood and that translates into positive energy. It seems like music and creativity join forces to enhance your soul.
One morning on your way to work, try turning off your favorite morning talk show and instead play some Sade, Barry White, Mariah Carey, Journey, Smashing Pumpkins, Rhianna, Tiësto, Nirvana, Kanye West, Bob Marley or any of your favorite artists. Let the “invisible power” of music be your therapy.
Brian Ortega, Designer
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Contrary to what many may think, a laid-back work environment can actually be motivating. A BusinessWeek article explains how Best Buy has switched to ROWE or a "results-only work environment". The whole idea of ROWE is to break out of the cookie cutter office. Best Buy employees, “take conference calls while [they] hunt, collaborate from [their] lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so [they] can spend the afternoon with [their] kid”. As a result productivity is up an average of 35%, so it looks like there is method to this madness.
Best Buy is not the only company to adapt this new kind of office. According to the article at IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office and at AT&T, a third of managers are unconfined.
Added perks save time from being wasted dreading the workplace or daydreaming of what else you could be spending your time doing. Companies offer employees simple escapes from an ordinary office environment by replacing the stereotypical neutral office color palette with warm, welcoming splashes of color. or giving them a conference room equipped with couches, a TV, a chalkboard wall, and a wine/beer refrigerator. Some simple changes can ensure that time is actually spent working. I mean, who wouldn’t mind spending an extra hour or two in that kind of atmosphere?
Amy Mengel, Engagement Coordinator
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If you are an avid user of Google Analytics, you’ve probably noticed the beta version of Google’s Custom Reporting:
This is a great addition to Google Analytics, especially for marketers who work with clients. In a perfect world, every client would display interest in the same metrics – but it’s not a perfect world. Clients have different needs and different focus areas and with Google Analytics’ Custom Reporting, you can create detailed reports tailored to each of your partners.
I won’t drag you through the inticracies of how it works because there is no shortage of tutorials and it’s actually quite simple to get the hang of. Basically, you choose your metrics and define those metrics by selecting “dimensions.” The toughest part is picking up on the jargon.
I believe I can speak for all Google Analytics users who work with clients when I say: Thanks Google!
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As someone who manages a large number of PPC campaigns, across a variety of search engines, I must say that I’ve noticed an important difference in the customer experience between Yahoo! SM and Google.
The Google experience has been designed to make things very user-friendly, including the AdWords
interface, which makes campaign setup a breeze. But with Yahoo! SM, the setup process is far more complex and time-consuming, due in large part to the way they’ve organized their
account settings. In fact, to get around some of the limitations in the Yahoo! SM interface I began uploading campaigns as spreadsheets, instead of building them myself in the interface. And, even though Yahoo! SM handles the upload for me (a benefit of achieving Gold status) it remains a difficult process, because the communication I receive from Yahoo! SM during the upload
is sporadic…at best.
What really confuses me is how Yahoo! SM can lag so far behind Google in the development of its user interface. After all, they own the Overture patent that PPC is run on.
Obviously, I cannot recommend against advertising with Yahoo! SM on the basis of the limitations I experience in their user interface. Instead, I need to make my recommendations based on where my clients’ dollars are best spent (oftentimes, this involves using both Google and Yahoo!
SM). However, when it takes three times as long to setup an account in Yahoo! SM versus Google, I begin to ask questions about cost/benefit.
That being said, there are a few key improvements I’d recommend for Yahoo! SM, which I think would make the experience comparable to what Google offers its advertisers currently.
1. Make the Excluded Words feature more accessible. At
the account level the excluded words are hidden away in the administration tab
inside the tactic settings. To make things easier, they could be accessible as
a link directly to the right of the search link.
At the ad group, it would be helpful if this were accessible as a tab in the bar below the tabs. This way, the campaign manager could simply check the ad groups where they want to add excluded words, and then be directed to a page with a field for each ad group, all ready to be filled in.
2. Provide transparency for Geo-targeting setup. If you ever look deep into web analytics and try to figure out where visitors are located, it all boils down to the IP address. Yahoo! SM could start with the first layer of the IP and give users the option of targeting down level by level. This type of targeting would provide local businesses an alternative to AdWords, which allows very specific targeting, but really isn’t transparent with how it works.
3. Improve communication. Yahoo! SM should understand that their customer service department is THE most important department for PPC managers. Get them on Twitter, on Skype, on Social networks. Yahoo’s customer service people should be everywhere, and they should be willing to communicate in
whichever method the client requests.
4. Establish agency relationships. Even though the formal Ambassador
program has ended, Yahoo should still reach out to advertising agencies
that have dabbled in Yahoo! Search Marketing, to provide support. Yahoo! SM is a good deal as far as clicks go, but from an agency standpoint, the additional time needed to setup the campaign can quickly erode the PPC cost benefit. Better yet, a good editor program could alleviate many of the current problems inherent with manually uploading spreadsheets.
I admit that Yahoo has some tough choices ahead of them. But, if they remain focused on fixing some of these issues, they can better leverage the advantages they do have over Google.
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Traditional thinking of how to construct an AdWords typically falls into two schools of thought. The first school, championed by Perry Marshall and other Guru’s, is to use dynamic keyword insertion to ensure your headline matches the search query of the user. The second school, promoted by many experts such as David Bullock, is to instead to very finely group keywords so you can write a headline that will always be very specific to what the user searched for. I have always agreed with David.
However, I never shy away from split-testing something new. There are several new styles of headlines I have split-tested that have proven effective.
1. Tag Lines as Headlines. Ex. For
NES Rentals we used “Get it in Gear”
3. Event Based. Ex. For
Thermosafe we used “See Us at PackExpo”
By giving each of these different approaches a chance
Movéo’s clients’ ads stood out from the competition, who were set in one of the two typical schools of thought. In B2B and Healthcare copywriting for Paid Search Marketing one cannot be afraid to try something new. Metrics are so easy to track and analyze that finding the best conversion sources is often just one creative test away. Headlines do not all need to be the same style.
The online universe has no geographic boundaries when it comes to networking and search engine marketing. If you offer a service that you can provide from coast to coast, there is nothing stopping you from marketing your company to anyone and everyone.
However, there will always be companies that thrive locally. As an example, let’s look at our company – Moveo Integrated Branding. Moveo is a health care marketing company located just west of Chicago. While we offer healthcare marketing services on a national scale, most of our clients are in local or regional proximity. So, it makes sense that at least some of our search engine marketing efforts should go toward local marketing.
There are a number of tactics one can implement to position themselves locally, including creating landing pages for each region your are marketing to. Here, we’ll go over a few of the more basic ways to market yourself locally.
An obvious way to start your campaign is by researching long-tail keywords that fit your campaign. For instance, instead of us (Moveo) putting all of our efforts into ranking for “health care advertising company,” we might focus on a local and less competitive term, such as “health care advertising company in chicago.” It’s important to make sure that the keywords you use to optimize your site are generating traffic and that the page you are ranking for is relevant to the term.
Another way to market your site locally or regionally is to include yourself in local directories like Dex, Business.com and your local Better Business Bureau. Some directories offer free inclusion, while others can be very pricey. What lengths you go to should depend on your budget and if the traffic your receive is actually worth the amount you pay for the listing.
Remember to always try to think from the perspective of the user and to scout out where your competition is marketing their site online. Placing emphasis on long-tail, geographic keywords and adding your site to local directories is a great start to coming out on top in your local market.
Jeff Swanson, Search Specialist
