Posts tagged internet marketing

We're delighted to be celebrating our 25th anniversary… and, by
happy coincidence, the HuffPost's 5th anniversary. Ours is a silver
anniversary, I guess, but it's difficult to digitize silver, certainly
by voice, so we turned to somebody who has followed the company
virtually since its inception, since it was a wire basket
manufacturer 25 years ago, when we started out as two people in one
room in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London.

We've asked Professor Joe Bower, professor at the Harvard Business
School, who has been writing about WPP, using video digital case
studies for 15 or so years. And Joe's done a little retrospective on
the company, and we thought that the readers of the Huffington Post
would be interested in reading his thoughts on WPP.

I think WPP's halfway there; our objective is to be the best marketing
services company in the world, and by best we mean the natural choice
of both clients and people; the natural choice of clients when they
select an adviser or a partner in the area of advertising and
marketing services and of people when they select brands or companies
to go to build their careers in advertising and marketing services.

We think we're there in some parts of the world and in some functions,
but we have a long way to go, and our strategic focus remains the new
markets, the fast-growing markets of the world (the BRICs and
Next-11), the new media, the new digital opportunities (in personal
computers, the internet, mobile, video content, social networks) and
last but not least, consumer insight. By consumer insight we mean
understanding how consumers are changing their purchasing habits for
products and services, how they're changing their media consumption
habits and how we can apply that data through technology to improving
the return on investment for our clients in their industries. So I
hope you enjoy Joe's thoughts, and we're delighted to celebrate our
anniversary on May 9, 2010.

And here's the video case study on WPP by Sonja Ellingson Hout:

Michael Sinkin, D.D.S. practices dentistry near Grand Central Station in New York City. He took over his practice from a dentist who retired, and inherited many patients who were near or past retirement themselves. So Sinkin set out to add some younger patients to round out the practice.

Reaching this age group meant going online. “No one uses the phone book anymore; everyone is Googling,” he notes. But that presented a marketing problem, because other, much larger practices in midtown Manhattan were making heavy use of Google AdWords, in which advertisers bid on such search terms as “New York City dentist.” “A lot of these practices were investing $25,000 to $30,000 a month in pay-per-click advertising,” notes Betsy Kent, president of Be Visible Associates, an Internet marketing firm that works with Sinkin. “That just didn't make sense for us.”

Instead, they devised a social media-based strategy with the goal of bringing in new patients, especially those in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Sinkin was already writing short items about amusing or interesting things he encountered in the course of his work, so they began publishing these as blog entries. In addition, Kent began searching Twitter for local tweets with the words “dentist” or “dentistry” in them. When she found someone complaining of a painful trip to the dentist or dreading an upcoming visit, she would send words of comfort and commiseration.

Some of these tweeters appreciated the kind words, followed the links to Sinkin's website, and liked what they saw. “We've been doing this for about 10 weeks, and I've already gotten four new patients,” Sinkin says. In his profession, a new patient can become a lifelong customer, as well as a source of ongoing referrals, so the increase is very significant. “And I'm not even counting two patients who just came in for emergency service,” he says.

Who says you can't measure ROI for social media?

As Sinkin's experience shows, it's perfectly possible to set concrete goals for social media, beyond the vague “increasing visibility.” In fact, it's imperative, says Dallas Lawrence, chair of the social media practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “Be wary of the salesperson who says social media isn't trackable,” he says. “It's absolutely possible to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for a social media campaign.”

Here are some tips for making sure your social media efforts really do have a positive effect on your company's P&L:

Set goals, not just benchmarks. “It's critical to establish an objective in advance,” Lawrence says. “That objective has to relate to your business model, to whatever your ultimate goal is. So setting a target for, say, 10,000 Twitter followers is not a goal in itself, though it can be a good benchmark for whether the campaign is working.”

At Home Creations, a home builder in Oklahoma that caters to people building their first homes, marketing director Jan Astani recently achieved her goal of 1,000 fans on Facebook. To get there, the company offered incentives, such as a $50 Target gift card for two randomly selected Facebook members who became fans during December. But the goal serves a business-focused purpose. “For 2009, our goal was to put an emphasis on Internet marketing,” she says, noting that at least 75 percent of Americans start their search for a new home online. “We're trying to drive traffic to our website with everything we do.” It appears to be working: Website traffic was up 50 percent in 2009 over 2008, Astani reports, and there were a record number of sales that began as Internet-based sales leads.

Think long-term vs. short-term. “Decide up front if you're trying to reach a long-term goal or a short term objective, because the approach will vary dramatically,” Lawrence says. “For instance, if you've got a promotion or a new store opening coming up, you can jump-start something very effective with Twitter, but it might not have a long term effect. If you want to build sustained momentum, you might want to think about reaching out to the blogosphere with thought leadership.”

Whatever you do, he adds, don't look at your various social media efforts in isolation. “A big mistake that I often see is when customers say, 'Give me a Twitter program, give me a Facebook program, give me blog outreach, and let's do SEO.' They're not separate. In order to get the impact you want, you have to intertwine all those pieces and let them build on one another.”

Use the Internet's power to reach precisely the audience you want. “People are shocked when I tell them that, with Facebook's user applications for small businesses, I can find my key customer base right down to the block he or she might be on,” Lawrence says. “I can find the information they readily provide: age, race, single or dating status, ethnicity, parents or childless, military or civilian, based on the groups they've self-selected to follow. And you can often figure out income status from the other information.”

Be prepared for a mid-course correction. What if you fail to meet the goals for your social media campaign? “Take another look at your goals,” Lawrence advises. “Make sure that they were reasonable.” Perhaps a different goal would be more appropriate realistic. But, he says, “Make sure your overall objectives are never forgotten.”

tiger woods tiger woods

Marketing directors whose job is to promote desktop publishing software, web developing software or word processing software need to explore as many different ways as possible to communicate the benefits of their communication tools to the public. When you understand that every person on the planet learns new information via auditory, kinesthetic and visual processes, it makes sense that you will want to utilize all three in explaining your communication tools to potential clients. You can cover the visual aspects of your marketing ideas very effectively through utilizing custom Microsoft Visio programming.

While auditory learning occurs when people take in new information by hearing and kinesthetic learners gain new ideas by using a hands-on approach, visual learners hone in on your creative use of pictures and diagrams. Strategic communication tools marketing campaigns utilize MS Visio because the drawings and diagrams take hard to understand data and transform it into capsules of information that can be grasped in a single glance.

There is limited space available on packaging and a brief amount of time available to put your communication tool's best foot forward, so the flexible diagramming available with Visio makes it easy to get your message across quickly.
Visio Templates offer an instant way to get started with diagramming your
visio drawing. Using a variety of visio shapes, they are ready-to-use pictures that communicate complicated and technical information from tables and spreadsheets quickly. Use the diagrams to show how the processes in your communications tools work, because when clients understand your tools, they will see the value to be gained by their use.

When your client can visual the specific information on how your tools can help them solve an issue their company faces, they will act on that information. This aspect of visualizing is crucial to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, and any resource you can use to help your clients see why your tools will help them can only be to your benefit.

If you have specific diagramming needs that go beyond the scope of the traditional Visio program, you will be pleased to find out that there is a wide range of customizing that can take place with Visio. Your specific marketing needs unique to each product that you are placing can be met with customized Visio development.

Internet marketing of communications tools is made more cost-effective when using customized diagramming in Visio. Your diagrams and shapes can be viewed by your audience online on your web pages as well as on e-mail. You can customize the program yourself, if you wish, although Visio developers can perform this service as well. The versatility of Visio shines in connecting your important data to the unique shapes that are customized to your exact specifications.

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Intelius, a site that helps users find information about others, continues to have more bad news around its senior execs. John Arnold, a cofounder and EVP, has been indicted on a charge of lying to a grand jury about having sex with a dancer.

The company has been trying to go public despite hundreds of scam complaints, and the atrocious legal record of CEO Naveen Jain. We covered many of the issues back in 2008. Last year the U.S. Senate began an investigation into the post transaction marketing offers that drive much of Intelius’ revenue.

The new charges are somewhat ironic, since Intelius recently launched an iPhone dating application called datecheck.

Arnold, now charged with lying to a grand jury about his sexual exploits, said of datecheck:

Date Check is like having a private investigator in your purse..Letting a stranger into your life is a huge risk, and in the age of Internet anonymity, a simple online search isn’t enough to tell you everything you need to know.

Indeed. Except, datecheck isn’t so useful if you want to date an Intelius cofounder. The company has removed the legal records of its own founders from the application.

A significant factor in putting Barack Obama in the White House was the brilliant social media marketing of the Obama for America campaign. The Obama campaign realized that social media was a primary importance, not an afterthought. The number of people the campaign reached on the Web was staggering: Millions friended Obama on Facebook and joined the MyBO social organizing site. By election day, Obama had nearly 4 times more Facebook supporters than McCain and twenty times more Twitter followers.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project April 2009 report The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008 says some 55 percent of all adults–and 74 percent of all Internet users–said they went online for news and information about the election or to communicate with others about the race.

So it's fascinating to watch Martha Coakley's campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts basically ignore new media in favor of the old playbooks that elected Ted Kennedy to the seat.

Of course there is much more to the race: Politics and platforms and personal connections are important. But didn't Obama for America teach us that the Web has the power to push a candidate over the top? Obama also showed the importance of young people (whose communications of choice is digital).

Let's look at a few numbers. As I compare the morning before election day, @MarthaCoakley has 3,520 Twitter followers compared to @ScottBrownMA with 10,214 followers. Coakley counts 14,487 Facebook fans to Brown's 76,700 fans. Advantage Brown by more than three to one.

Living in safe, secure blue state Massachusetts, I always envied those from Iowa and New Hampshire who got so much candidate face time in Presidential elections. Now that I've lived through a tightening race, forget it. The robocalls are crazy! I get a half dozen a day! And the television commercials! Don't get me started.

At the same time, why is social media ignored?

The event section on the Coakley site shows a dozen or so rallies and nearly one hundred phone bank events in the three days leading up to election day. Yet there are zero Tweetups and zero virtual events listed.

Massachusetts is a hotbed of information technology. People here are plugged in. Most of my friends don't even use the phone anymore except to call the plumber. It is a college town with young people who don't have landlines.

On Saturday I learned that President Obama was to rally for Coakley in Boston and wanted to go. But there was no mention of the event on her Twitter feed at all prior to the event. Nothing. What about telling fans first? Recall that Obama announced Joe Biden as his running mate via social networking tools like SMS and Twitter before he sent a press release to the media. Coakley seems to be on Twitter and Facebook as an afterthought, an item on a checklist. The Brown social media efforts seem much more active.

I did make it to the rally yesterday. It was the first time I had seen a sitting president speak live and I enjoyed it. Hoopla was generated. Television soundbites were secured. It seemed to be a success.

But wait. Look closer.

The event was held at Northeastern University and sponsored by the Student Democrats. Quick. How do college students communicate? Facebook and SMS of course! Yet these two forms of communications played absolutely no formal part in the rally. The brochure that was handed out had no web addresses or social media sites. At the rally, Coakley fans were asked to vote. They were asked to volunteer at phone banks. They were asked to talk to neighbors and friends.

But were the many college students in the crowd told to talk up the Coakley campaign on Facebook, the college student communications tool of choice? No. Were people at the rally asked to tweet? No. Were they asked to join Coakley's fan page? No.

The Coakley campaign is underestimating the importance of social media and the new rules of marketing and PR.

John McCain relied on what worked to elect George W. Bush and he lost mainly because of social media. Now Martha Coakley is relying on the playbook that elected Ted Kennedy and she may lose because of social media too.

Bill bartmann, Bill bartmann, Bill bartmann robert shumake, robert shumake

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