What Are CMOs Thinking?

MARCH 17, 2009

“How the heck can we…”

There are a lot of tough jobs in the current downturn, but high on the list must be chief marketing officer (CMO). A CMO’s job is to keep products moving—even in an economy where practically nothing is moving.

To find out how top marketing officers around the country are dealing with adverse economic conditions, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA) conducted the “CMO Survey” in February, a poll of nearly 600 US marketing executives.

What they found out could help you in your business.

To begin with, of course, none of them were very happy.

The survey found that 59% of marketers were less optimistic about the economy than they had been one quarter before. Amazingly, though, that is better than when the survey was conducted in August 2008. Then, 77% of respondents were less optimistic.

“While marketers in general remain unexcited about the economic situation, it is encouraging to at least see that pessimism is not increasing among the marketing community,” said Christine Moorman of Fuqua. “This could either indicate that marketers think the worst times are behind us, or they have simply adjusted to operating in an adverse environment.”

When the CMOs were asked about the first customer priority for the next 12 months, price dominated.

The marketers expect marketing spending to remain almost flat this year, growing by only 0.5% over the next 12 months. But where they are spending their limited marketing dollars is changing.

They anticipate a more than 7% decrease in traditional advertising and increases of about 10% in both Internet marketing and new product introductions.

CMOs are turning to new and often unproven strategies that focus on the Internet, partnerships, new markets, and new products and services to keep their companies moving forward.

Business-to-consumer marketers are making even more significant shifts to the Internet, for both product and service advertising.

“The shift is part of a broader movement to the Web and social media as key ways to reach customers,” said Ms. Moorman. “However, it also reflects marketers’ hopes for improving return on marketing investment with a cheaper and more effective set of tools.”

When the CMOs were asked to identify firms across all business sectors that excelled at marketing, Apple, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola topped the list. Some things don’t change.

Related research, released late last year, from the Verse Group and JupiterResearch (now folded into Forrester Research), found that 87% of US CMOs believed branding initiatives needed to be more flexible.

Not only that, 63% of them believed traditional brand positioning and advertising were losing their effectiveness. In fact, many felt traditional advertising was “broken.”

Looking ahead to this year’s marketing priorities, the CMOs ranked greater marketing accountability as most important, followed by finding a better way to manage brands across multiple platforms.

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Book Review: Neuromarketing THE FUTURE

Book Review: Neuromarketing

September 10th, 2008 by Karlyn Morissette

I breezed through a bunch of marketing books this weekend, but the one that really stood out as useful was Neuromarketing by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin. If you do marketing in any way, shape or form this book should be on your “to read” list. It describes how the brain makes decisions and how you can hone your designs and messages to give your organization a competitive advantage.

Neuromarketing discusses the three parts of the brain and their function:

• New Brain: Processes rational data. This part of the brain may not be fully formed until you are 24-years-old.
• Middle Brain: Processes emotions and gut feelings.
• Old Brain: The real decision maker. This is the first part of the brain to develop and makes all decisions. It’s sole concern is the physical survival of the body. The old brain is 45,000 times older than the written word, which means that written words don’t impact it.

When the old brain makes decisions, it consults with the new and middle brain. This leads to emotionally-led decisions, which are then justified rationally.

So how do you reach the old brain, since it doesn’t understand words? The authors offer several suggestions to appeal to the old brain in terms that it recognizes:

1. An Audience-Focused message: The old brain is not concerned with anything not related to its own well-being. Therefore your messages must be 100% audience focused. They don’t care about your organization. They care how your organization can help THEM.
2. Contrast: Use contrasting examples, such as before/after, risky/safe, with/without, fast/slow, etc.
3. Tangible Input: Ideas should be simple and easy to grasp. Make sure your audience can easily recognize and process your terms (such as dollar value).
4. Focus on the Beginning and the End: Put the most important points at the beginning of a message (this can also apply in a presentation). The once the old brain has assessed that there is no immediate danger, it will try to conserve energy by paying less attention to the middle of the message.
5. Visual Stimuli: The old brain responds to visuals before the new brain has time to process what they mean.
6. Emotion: We remember events better when we’ve experienced them with strong emotion. If customers can’t remember your message, why would they choose your product?

Now that we know what the old brain will pay attention to, the authors offer a four-point plain for integrating these strategies into our marketing plan:

Diagnose the Pain: You have to figure out what “pain” your audience is experiencing - what do they really want/need? What benefits do you have that relieve that pain? For example, when Dominoes found out that the real reason customers weren’t utilizing delivery was that they were worried about the time it would take for the pizza to get to their house, they implemented a 30-minute guarantee. The pain of your audience falls into three categories: financial, strategic or personal. Marketing efforts should focus on the things that cause the MOST pain, rather than things that your audience doesn’t really care about. Finally, your audience must acknowledge that they have a certain pain in order for your offer of relief to appeal to them.

Differentiate Your Claims: The old brain responds to clear, solid contrast. How are you different than your competitors? How are you different than doing nothing? What’s UNIQUE about what you’re selling? Don’t just say that you’re one of many companies that offer basically the same thing. You may have to be creative about your claim of differentiation but if you aren’t different, you’re basically selling your competitors products for them.

Demonstrate the Gain: Now that you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors, you have to demonstrate through a tangible message that your audience will benefit from your product. You can do this through stories, an actual demo, data that relates back to tangible value or a vision statement (though this tactic is the least affective because it requires faith.

Deliver to the Old Brain: It’s critical to deliver this message in the way that the old brain will understand, which you can do by grabbing the user’s attention right off the bat, using big picture analogies, making sure your claims are clearly articulated and using phrases that appeal to our self-centered nature by using key words like “you”.

Overall, this book is definitely worth the $22 I paid for it. It’s full of practical and applicable information that can be incorporated into any marketing campaign.

Media Revenue to Hit $2.2 Trillion By 2012: PwC

Filed at 6:17 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global entertainment and media revenue is forecast rising by an average of 6.6 percent a year to $2.2 trillion by 2012, boosted by advertising-supported digital and mobile media and an explosion in the adoption of broadband.

According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) annual forecast released on Wednesday, advertising tied to the burgeoning interest in watching videos on the Internet and on devices, such as Apple Inc's iPod, will account for 24 percent of growth in the sector and is projected to grow fastest at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 percent to 2012.

Total entertainment and media revenue growth is seen outpacing global gross domestic product, which will increase 5.7 percent, according to the report.

Despite the acceleration of digital businesses, revenue from traditional media venues such as television will still dominate global market share, if not growth. Digital and mobile revenue will account for only 11 percent of total spending, or $234 billion, in the next five years.

PwC's report presents a more stable view of large media and entertainment companies. Those shares have sunk more than 13 percent since the beginning of the year -- at a steeper rate than the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> -- on fears that the weak economic climate could curtail consumer spending and spark an advertising recession.

Last week, Lehman Brothers argued that with entertainment company valuations near 10-year lows, it might be a good time for investors to shop for deals, such as News Corp .

One surprise: Advertising on over-the-air television globally -- the sector viewed by Wall Street as one of the most vulnerable in a weakened economy -- is expected to rise 5 percent on a compounded annual growth basis to 2012, making it the most resilient to threats posed by digital growth.

"The oft-reported death of traditional media remains greatly exaggerated," according to the report.

The weakest area in the next five years will be the music industry. Ravaged by online piracy, recorded music sales are expect to fall by 0.6 percent to 2012, but is seen growing again by 2011, when digital sales will overtake CD sales.

What's unlikely to be solved in the next five years? "While companies are making bold moves to follow consumers into the digital/mobile future, they continue to wrestle with the challenge of creating business models that adequately monetize their efforts," the report said.

PwC's report, which surveys 15 major industry segments in 59 countries, underscored a trend over the past few years. The United States will continue to account for the biggest share of revenue by country, or $759 billion by 2012, but will grow the slowest at about 4.8 percent, outpaced by the Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Cutting Costs with Online Coupon Sites

Web sites that offer money-saving discounts are enjoying a resurgence in the current economy, as consumers surf for bargains

by Catherine Holahan

• View Slide Show

Coupons are making a comeback. In the face of rising food prices and a slowing economy, consumers are clipping coupons once again. Only, they don't need scissors and a local newspaper so much as a computer, printer, and maybe a mobile phone.

The number of page views on Web sites that feature money-off coupons for all manner of consumer products surged 38%, to 281 million, in March from a year earlier, compared with 5% for the Internet as a whole, according to comScore (SCOR). Those visitors spent a total of 145 million minutes on the sites, a 37% increase. While the number of new users to coupon sites isn't growing faster than the larger Internet audience, existing coupon site users are certainly becoming more active. "User engagement by deal-seekers appears to be ramping up," says comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman. "As a general rule, something like online coupon site activity would increase as a result of macroeconomic trends."

Traffic Growth

Individual sites say they're detecting increased use. Coupons.com and RetailMeNot.com say they have seen large traffic spikes in the past three months. Visitors to Coupons.com, a decade-old site that lets users print coupons that can be redeemed in stores, grew 35% in the first three months of 2008, compared with the prior quarter, says the site's CEO, Steven Boal. Typically, quarterly growth averages 22% to 23%, he says. Similarly, RetailMeNot says its growth for February, which typically slows after the holiday shopping season, is already back at December levels. "There is definitely an increased use of coupons across the board," says RetailMeNot co-founder Guy King.

Fueling the traffic growth are rapid increases in food prices (BusinessWeek, 5/1/08) and signs of economic slowdown that are damping consumer sentiment and prompting consumers to hunt for bargains. Costs of staples such as rice have surged in recent months, reflecting rising fuel prices and in some cases, limits on exports. Some analysts also blame government policies that provide incentives for farmers to devote more crops to biofuel production (BusinessWeek, 5/1/08).

Bargains Via Computer or Cell Phone

In recognition of the rising demand for bargains and in hopes of luring cash-strapped consumers, retailers are making coupons more readily available online. In April, Coupons.com featured more than 120 coupon offers from the retailers that distribute coupons on its site or use its technology to offer discounts on their own sites, Boal says. Typically, the number is about 100. "Coupons move products off the shelf," he says. "That is their No. 1 job."

Digital coupons typically work in two ways. On Coupons.com, store owners create coupons, with unique serial numbers, that can be printed and redeemed in stores. Coupons can also have unique promotional codes that shoppers can use on e-commerce Web sites to receive discounts on online purchases. RetailMeNot lets users post and share such digital coupons on its site.

Retailers are also relying on wireless technology to capitalize on consumers' bargain-hunting tendencies. According to a recent report by Juniper Research, retailers will send as many as 3 billion mobile coupons to wireless phone users by 2011, resulting in $7 billion in discounts redeemed.

Consumer Pain, Coupon Gain

It hasn't always been a given that consumers would warm to online coupons. After the circulars tucked between newspaper sections began disappearing, coupons began surfacing online. But the time involved in finding coupons and the cost of the ink to print them seemed to negate much of the cents in savings. Coupon sites have taken off as more consumers have become motivated to look for even small discounts to reduce ever-increasing grocery bills.

The commodities price hike has caused everyone from boxed cereal giants General Mills (GIS) and Kellogg (K) to meat producers such as Tyson Foods (TSN) to hike prices. More price increases are to come. After reporting a $5 million loss in its second quarter on Apr. 29, Tyson CEO Richard Bond said prices will continue to rise.

Consumer pain is turning out to be coupon sites' gain. Coupons.com provides retailers with coupon-marketing and -serving technology. The more consumers printing and using their coupons, the more retailers are likely to work with the site. RetailMeNot sells ads on its site through Google (GOOG) and collects commission from the coupon-driven traffic to retailers' Web sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN). "The net effect is that people are trying to get the most of their shopping through coupons," says King.

For a look at the sorts of coupons that are particularly popular right now, check out the BusinessWeek.com slide show.

The dating game: can marketers play?

By Michael Estrin

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Members may sign up for a chance at love, but marketers shouldn't dismiss dating sites for their campaigns. Dating gurus from two of the space's top sites share their advice.

With millions of registered members returning with regularity to access mountains of in-depth data, dating sites can look like a promising platform for marketers eager to connect with users. But a cookie-cutter marketing plan won't fly with online daters. Here are some things to keep in mind as you adjust your campaign to meet some of the unique characteristics of the dating space.

Reach isn't everything
Sparks Networks has about 38 million registered members and 5 million monthly visitors. Similarly, eHarmony reports 17 million registered users, with nearly 3 million monthly visitors.

While those numbers may look similar to a lot of other sites and ad networks, it's important to look beyond raw reach, according to Jon Ward, VP, eHarmony Ad Solutions.

"These are audiences that have a high propensity to pay, often a premium, for great services like eHarmony where the lowest-cost plan is $59.95 per month," Ward says.

At Sparks Networks, which operates an array of sites that include JDate and AmericanSingles, each with its own fee structure, there's a similar play that goes beyond reach.

"Users rely upon us to connect them to the people and products that best fulfill their wants and needs," says Gail Laguna, VP Communications, Sparks Networks. "To do this, our members tell us a lot about themselves, including birth date, gender, ethnicity, religion, hobbies, profession and income, plus dozens of other self-identified interests. Our robust user profiles amount to an incredible volume of consumer data, which enables us to match businesses with the right consumers."

Community matters -- a lot
As with any community, the community sets the rules. While the dating space is no different, marketers need to be able to size up each of the diverse group of communities that make up the space.

"For marketers, we think a more conservative, large brand, general message is effective on our site," Ward explains, adding that no two sites are created equally in terms of community.

But dating sites, with their rich streams of member data, give marketers vital clues when it comes to crafting a campaign that will connect.

Next page >>

Platforms, Applications and the Future of Digital Marketing

REST APIs, Rules and Relevance
In the user controlled medium that is digital advertising success is predicated on delivering relevance. Nowhere is this exemplified better than the success of search where there is a data input (rule 1) and multiple additional rules (geo and behavioral) that results in the delivery of content believed to be most relevant to the goals of the user. There is no question that the race to gain access to more implicit and explicit input data from users and from publishers to create rules will continue to increase the ability for marketers to deliver relevance in the coming years.

There are three components of this that marketers need to understand.

1. The tools for gathering and structuring content into a marketing corpus (ads, articles, products, whatever)
2. The tools for creating rules based delivery (testing, targeting)
3. The methodologies for executing and presenting optimized creative

In the next 12-24 months online marketing success will continue to be less and less about banners and websites and more and more about the dynamic experience everywhere. We need to look “under the hood” at content as being a database platform that improves our ability to present and deliver content. The changes this effects with the strategic and creative use of data through APIs and algorithms is profound.

Pull it Forward
Once content is free from the restrictions and limitations of site architecture and reliance on traffic sources marketers are empowered to create more compelling and relevant digital solutions. This can take the form of advertising unit widgets, dynamic landing pages, microsites, search interfaces and a host of new and useful applications.

Increased relevance will be delivered in the what (messages) but more impact and success for advertisers and publishers will be felt in the where -- bringing tools to deliver relevance closer to users creates better experiences. The same basic principles that apply for search should be your guide and inspiration to create an API that you can use to deliver relevance anywhere, especially in display (where successful ad units are increasingly more dynamic and interactive) or the emerging use of widgets/gadgets.

Distributing user controlled functionality into your business at multiple touch-points is the core idea behind the distributed web or web as a platform. Though this is not new for search engines or publishers (think toolbars or syndication) we are just beginning to scratch the surface of it as a highly optimized advertising solution. Just today Union Square Ventures announced funding of a platform based company that doesn’t even have a website!

Relevance Breeds Emotion
The net result of all this is that deeper and more engaged user interactions are taking place and breeding higher levels of emotional connection to digital -- as the web becomes more intelligent it becomes more relevant. This connection with intelligence leads to higher returns both in transactional measurements and brand value. It’s how Google has built one of the strongest brands in the world while at its core it is the greatest direct marketing platform the world has known. Platform marketing allows you to apply these same principles to achieve success with your online business.

There is one important last piece that can’t be overlooked to ensure success. Marketers and creative folks must begin to understand technology and learn how to use it creatively. This will be the biggest hurdle to success. The days of siloed IT and Marketing, of Creative Directors that don’t know their clients Content Management Systems will end in a fiery furnace filled with ashen businesses and agencies.

In the first decade of the commercial net access to data smote a number of verticals like travel and music. In the next decade far greater access to data will continue to destroy a number of now successful businesses and advertising models. It will also create many revolutionary opportunities and digital success stories. Which will you be? The answer probably rests in if you have or will create a plan in the next 6-12 months for creating the platform, rules and delivery of your marketing content.

NOTE 1/16: Paid Content has an interview today with Google's Andy Berndt where he touches on creating marketing platforms.

"all new platforms give an early advantage to those who can best manipulate the technology itself, the best technicians. After the platform becomes user friendly, when it is opened up to the best storytellers and designers and communicators, they tend to add another level to it. The rare time when you find people who really appreciate both sides of that coin (innovation and storytelling) is where truly amazing things happen."

It's a good read. More here

VIP READ : JC Penney Feels the Marketing Power of Link Love

JC Penney Feels the Marketing Power of Link Love

Retailer Aggregates Content From Blogs and Lets Readers Talk Among Themselves; Google Results Soar

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: January 21, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Classically trained digital marketers know what to look for when it comes to measuring the impact of a campaign: number of impressions, click-through rate, cost per acquisition and maybe a study from Dynamic Logic or Insight Express to gauge lift in consumer perceptions. But sometimes there is another, unexpected outcomes to content-focused campaigns: organic search equity.

It's not the JC Penney blog, but the company's aggregation of content led readers to start referring to it that way.

Yes, search equity is all about link love. Creating -- or aggregating -- compelling content online and letting readers use social-media tools to share the content can goose Google results for brand or related terms. It's something bloggers have known for years, but marketers are really just beginning to employ.

One case study: Federated Media and JC Penney teamed up to launch the Fall Shopping Guide, a collection of content from popular woman-focused blogs prominently sponsored by the retailer's Chris Madden Collection.

Earning subscribers
The site aggregated content from blogs such as Heather Armstrong's Dooce, The Mommy Blog and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. JC Penney didn't have rights to review or influence content. The site launched mid-September; a few of the contributing bloggers mentioned it on their blogs, some did not. But traffic started to grow. Federated execs started to notice traffic coming from places such as StumbleUpon, a social-bookmarking site, and RSS readers, which meant people were beginning to subscribe to the content.

"Once people start engaging in that, they feel part of the experience. And when they feel part of the experience, they share it with friends and upload it to social-bookmark sites," said Chas Edwards, publisher and chief revenue officer at Federated Media. "And then Google starts to take notice of this. ... A month after the campaign, this site was showing up."

Today, it shows up as No. 5 of 13 million results for the search term "fall shopping" and second out of more than 4 million results for "fall shopping guide."

Licensing the chatter
At time when many marketers are looking to become content creators themselves, JC Penney instead partnered with several existing bloggers who already had significant user bases. Mr. Edwards talked a lot about the conversation going on among the bloggers in his company's network. "We said, 'Let's build a site that licenses the conversation.'"

In the end, the campaign so closely linked JC Penney to the content that many of the site's comments referred to it as JC Penney's blog or content. Yet in this case, the marketer was the content aggregator -- something brands are increasingly exploring. For example: As part of its HDNA campaign, Sony partnered with Digg to launch a site devoted to news about high definition.

"From a marketer's perspective, it's hard to write good stuff all the time and have a diversity of voices. When you can find like-minded folks who create a rich conversation, you get a much more appealing product," said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of Blog Council, a coalition of Fortune 500 bloggers.

JC Penney's interactive agency, Avenue A/Razorfish, didn't address the Federated Media campaign, but talked generally about research it had done that documented an authority shift among media sources.

'Trusted sources'
"Bloggers, even if they have small audiences, are seen as trusted sources," said Jeff Lanctot, senior VP-global media. "They can pique our interest about products."

Mr. Lanctot said marketers are becoming more comfortable with campaigns that involve things such as blogs, even if that means giving up some control.

"What we've seen to date online is this explosion of content because everyone can be author or writer or producer -- and now we're getting a need to filter that content," he said. "The question is, who will be that filter? You will see brands that have authority and trust to act as a filter."

Top 10 challenges interactive marketers face

By Aaron Kahlow

Conversations with thousands of marketing folks revealed their greatest challenges going forward. Here are some tips for tackling them.

The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as the top 10 challenges facing the entire marketing community in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium.

Having spent the last two years traveling across the country for the Online Marketing Summit events, educating marketers on the best practices of online marketing, I've had a chance to interact with thousands from all areas of marketing, and when asked about top challenges many say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" or "integrating online and offline." But I think the real issues are much more basic, much more fundamental to the day-to-day functioning of the individual and organization.

Here's my list of the top challenges, and my recommendations for dealing with them:

#10: Time
"I have to get this e-newsletter out tomorrow; can we talk about our landing page strategy next week?"

As marketers, especially online marketers, we are all stretched way too thin. So, I put time at the bottom of the list because it's never really about a lack of time; it's about prioritizing time, right? We can do whatever we want; it just depends on what we decide to do first. As it applies to online marketing, we get so caught up in the day-to-day execution of existing campaigns, that we never take the right amount of time each week, month or year to say, "What can I do, which will have the largest impact on my marketing goals?" I'd argue taking the time to properly research what your customers do online and where they spend their time would be paramount, but rarely do we do our homework.

Recommendation: Familiarize yourself with "website usability" and start testing or learning from others who have already done so.

#9: Saying no (to client, agency or boss)
"I just read about a blog that Starbucks' CEO does… we need to do that!"

This ties in with #10 on time factors, but moreover, saying no to the 1,000s of ideas that are out there today is really needed, regardless of whether it's a request from your boss, client or agency. Have the courage to ask for the research, the case studies and the plan for execution first, before taking on activities that are hot or sound cool, but, in the final analysis, have very low utility.

An example of such would be saying no to building a blog until you have mapped out the audience, the time it takes to maintain such and what the desired outcome would be.

Recommendation: Write down your list of priorities for the year, and if this new idea does not help one of these, then put it in the idea box for next year.

#8: Getting involved
"Facebook is for kids. I don't really see why I'd want to join, plus who has the time for that?!"

One of my favorite conversations focuses on social media and social networking. Most marketing professionals over the age of 30 are skeptical when it comes to social networks like Facebook, reason being, they've never taken the time to explore the medium. The psychological elements inherent here cannot be explained; they must be experienced, and then, and only then, can you be the judge.

Recommendation: Join Facebook. It's not going to be of huge utility at first, but put in some time and poke around; you'll then see. To encourage you further, I'd be happy to be your first friend and connect you to hundreds of marketing leaders across the United States.

#7: Unifying stakeholders
"IT doesn't think we need it; boss-man/woman is too busy for it and marketing department has all sorts of opinions."

So many people these days have opinions on what's best as it relates to online marketing. IT professionals feel they can create everything; your executives are not willing to spend time thinking about it because they are too busy, and your peers have certain opinions based on what they read and see. Your annual budget and strategy meetings seem to default to whoever has the loudest voice and/or the biggest ego.

Recommendation: Spend a day learning best practices together as a team. Have an executive debriefing (a consultant or advisor who will share what's happening in the marketplace and why companies are successful).

#6: Budgeting
"Got shot down again on getting budget for a new analytics tool; not going there again."

Most companies still have the same formula for allocation of marketing budget they've had for years. In fact, I'd say the majority of marketing departments take a look at last year's budget and tweak it, taking some dollars here, and placing some there, etc. I bet if you were able to find your company's marketing budget from 20 years ago, you'd see the same layout.

Recommendation: Take out a blank sheet of paper, write down top 10 things your target customers do with their time on a daily basis and the top three places they will search for your offerings, and then start talking about where to spend your money.

Next page >>

#5: Evaluating communication channels
"If 92 percent of people use the web to evaluate purchase options, why do we only spend 20 percent of our budget on our website?"

Most people don't realize that all of our marketing efforts flow through our website at one time or another. Whether it is a search campaign, which obviously starts the buying cycle by linking to the website, or whether it's a print ad that has the URL, no one today will pick up the phone and ask your sales people to explain the product or service; they will find that information on your website. So getting that right is critical!

Recommendation: Build some real world user personas and use cases observing how easy it is to find your product/services (as if you are that customer); or better yet have five random people go to your website and watch them (no guiding).

#4: Removing ROI
"What will be the new ROI?"

ROI is absolute, but if a company bases all decisions on guaranteed ROI, that company would not have started in the first place. Much of marketing is testing, research and learning how to effectively communicate with our customers. So our budget must reflect this, or our company will never see incrementally better results.

Recommendation: Fight for R&D in your budget so you will have the latitude to discover the one killer campaign or marketing idea.

#3: Willingness to take risk
"We never really did much for SEO, because there are no guarantees and we know nothing about it."

Today's technology is intertwined with marketing (CRM software, web analytics and important elements like search engine optimization). As premiere marketing executives, we are not so comfortable with the technology side of the equation, so we shy away from what we don't know because it poses a big risk for us. So, we must go out there and talk to those who do know. We must educate ourselves and get over the fear (as President Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"); otherwise, we risk a massive opportunity lost.

Recommendation: Find your most feared technology element and search for a consultant or educational material to just educate you first; THEN, decide on what your next step will be.

#2: Education
"We really need help on how to proceed with next year's planning… we don't really know where to start."

This one ties nicely into #3 as we need to first seek the education before we make decisions. Online marketing is so new and constantly changing that if we don't take the time to educate ourselves (team, boss and agency), then we will be stuck with half-baked opinions vs. hard and true factually based best practices with which to drive our efforts.

Recommendation: Find an educational event on the online marketing areas of greatest interest and treat your key stakeholders -- go to this event and learn from the experts.

#1: Understanding human behavior
"Why would anyone want to go to a website and read the user reviews or ratings on our product/service when they can just call us?"

It may seem strange, but human behavior is what drives all marketing. It's the understanding of how your customers behave that drives which communication channel (TV/radio/print/online) you choose to spend money in. It is the behavior of your customers that drives your messaging to resonate with them. And now, human behavior has changed forever. The preferred method of communicating is electronic (email); the preferred information source is online (RSS); the preferred pre-purchase research channel is Google. So, we must go back to human behavior again -- as was witnessed in the 1950s with TV -- and understand what it takes today to get the message out, loudly and clearly, forever embedded in the memory of our customers/clients.

Recommendation: Watch and observe your customers' behaviors.

When Less is More: Consensual Targeting

by Phil Leggiere, Wednesday, Sep 19, 2007 1:47 PM ET

In their quest for data, marketers often lock in on browsing and surfing behavior (gathered non-consensually) as the royal road to unlocking consumer value. Understandably -- but short-sightedly, as Chase Norlin, CEO of image and video search firm Pixsy, explains below. Browsing data may give an interesting snapshot of what consumers are sampling online, Norlin says, but real understanding of what consumers want requires a consensual opt-in model of consumer cooperation and participation in behavioral targeting.

Behavioral Insider: How did Pixsy get involved in image and video search?

Chase Norlin: Image and video search are the fastest growing consumer search verticals, and of the two, image search is actually the more popular, even though people are more obsessed with video. So our premise all along has been: if these search verticals are so wildly popular, why doesn't every site have it?

The idea we started with was to make image and video search easily accessible to any site, from a huge commercial site like Travelocity to a small blog site or MySpace user. We did this by creating a media platform that aggregates content from across the Web, slices and dices it into an organized database, and then enables any site to get access to that material via image or video search. Publishers benefit from new search activity, content, and monetization for their sites; content owners benefit from traffic being driven to their material.

BI: What are the challenges of using behavioral data to target this kind of search activity?

Norlin: One unique thing about search, the reason it's the best targeting mechanism ever known, is that there's a real window into consumer intent from keywords used. Monetization is the next challenge and big opportunity. Monetization of image and video search is in its infancy. The reason is, you don't have the same volumes of commercial keyword content as you do in algorithmic text search. People don't search for ‘mortgage videos,' for example. On the display side, graphical networks are reluctant to run branded ads on images and video search due to the potential for ‘mixed' results. This is why Pixsy is building a new advertising system to address the opportunity for monetization of image and video search results across our large network of publishers.

BI: What will that entail? Could you describe the road map?

Norlin: The road map to using behavioral targeting is for advertisers to understand that that's where their users are going. There are really two ways, fundamentally different ways, of looking at how to optimize the behavioral potential in multimedia, and they pivot around whether there's consent by users or not. On the one hand, there's a non-consent model, which is what behavioral targeting has been for the most part thus far. That's entailed collecting as much browsing data as possible from cookies and predicting interests based on that. I think as consumers and marketers become more savvy about what they want out of the Web, there's a new paradigm emerging, which is consent-based.

BI: Could you elaborate on that?

Norlin: The reason is that over time consumers have moved from having their Web experience being primarily about surfing to being about utility, about actually being able to find what's important to them personally in a short period of time. As this happens, the Web experience becomes about doing less, not more. For Web site publishers looking to keep visitors engaged, and for advertisers, that implies a fundamental shift from a model based on non-consent to a consent model, where you provide consumers with specific value in exchange for information they provide about their interests and the type of content they want to see. One example might be a frequent visitor to travel sites [who] could opt in to see ads for special discounted fares in flight lanes they're particularly interested in.

BI: So in a way this involves a rejection of the cookie or pull model of web targeting that's been predominate?

Norlin: The irony is that we may well find that the next phase of behavioral targeting will actually revive the long-discarded Pointcast model from the earliest days of the Web. In this model, instead of having to go out and surf the Web for what they wanted, consumers could define what kinds of information they were most interested in and have that information ‘pushed' to them. We've gotten to a point where there's so much information out there, so much extraneous noise, that finding what we want, when we want it, is becoming increasingly more difficult. As the Web gets deeper and more complex, its intrinsic value becomes derived from simplicity and immediate gratification.

BI: So, similarly to how email has evolved, you see opt-in as the lynchpin of next-generation behavioral targeting?

Norlin: Another irony I think we may be looking at in the next year or two is the resurgence of consent-based adware style technologies. While they've received a bad reputation in the past for deceptive practices and consumer privacy issues, ultimately their consent-based model represents some of the most innovative thinking in the ad targeting world. Opting in is going to become even more important to the Web of tomorrow. For example, Google giving away cell phones in exchange for targeting and monetization. Not much different than the value exchange between opt-in ad providers and consumers.

As the Web becomes more and more fraught with issues like identify theft, credit card fraud, etc.... consumers will end up trying to protect their personal information and behaviors even more. The way for marketers to get at that is not through deception, but by having consumers willingly share that information because of the value being offered in exchange.

India Internet is BOOMING

The Indian Internet

SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

It may be only a sub-continent, but it is a mega-country.

India is booming.

The South Asian country has acquired de facto membership in the elite club of acknowledged nuclear powers, created more billionaires than any other country in Asia and become one of the world's most dynamic and fastest-growing economies.

India's economic boom is forecast to moderate in the next two years, with GDP growth slowing to 8.4% in 2007 and 2008 and to 7.9% in 2008 and 2009, from a record 9.4% in 2006 and 2007.

Online, the Indian government declared 2007 the "Year of Broadband," setting a goal of 20 million broadband users in 2010.

However, according to the new India Online Overview report, eMarketer expects India to reach 10.5 million broadband households, or just over one-half the target, by 2011.

eMarketer also estimates that 25.5 million Indians used the Internet at least once a month in 2006 and expects India's online population to reach 33.2 million in 2007 and 71.6 million by 2011.

With just 2.3% of its citizens online in 2006 and 2.9% projected for 2007, India's Internet penetration is the lowest in the Asia-Pacific region.

India is often compared to China, but the number of Indians online is more comparable to Australia, a country with just 2% of India's population.

Nevertheless, according to comScore, India is the world's eighth-largest Internet population and its potential for growth is practically limitless.

To get the whole picture, read the new eMarketer India Online Overview report today.

B2B Online Advertising Up

SEPTEMBER 17, 2007

Businesses spread the message.

US business-to-business ad spending totaled $14.39 billion in 2006, up 1.4% from $14.19 billion in 2005, according to a BtoB Magazine analysis of ad spending data from TNS Media Intelligence.

Online display ads made up nearly 10% of B2B ad spending, or $1.4 billion, according to TNS. That figure is 17% up from 2005 levels, BtoB said. The firm does not track paid search or online video.

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The top 100 B2B advertisers spent an estimated $6.76 billion on B2B advertising in 2006, up 3% from $6.56 billion in 2005. Telecom giant AT&T led the pack with ads about its merger with Cingular.

"Right away, we had to communicate that these two companies had come together and formed one company, and that the name of the company is AT&T," said Wendy Clark, senior vice president of advertising at AT&T, in a statement. "We had some work to do repositioning the company."

eMarketer last year estimated that overall B2B media spending for 2006 would hit $23.7 billion. That figure included trade shows, exhibitions and other marketing expenditures.

B2B online ad spending data released at the same time by Veronis Suhler Stevenson (based on TNS data) put online ad spending at nearly $2 billion for the year. Although it did not disclose its complete methodology, Veronis Suhler's figure likely included an estimate of B2B paid search spending.

Former Apple Marketing Exec Publishes eBook on Marketing, Apple-Style

Marketing (like) Apple

Former Apple Marketing Executive Steve Chazin has released an ebook called Marketing Apple, which concisely describes how companies can market the way Apple does.

The ebook covers five secrets to Apple's success, spanning the company's ability to harvest an in-crowd ("the iPod generation"); early adopters, such as iPhone users; and fringe users who do not want to be associated with either group but consume Apple products anyway.

Marketing Apple is available as a free download (pdf).

Chazin currently works with Tubes Now, a file-syncing application that was released in mid-August.

Traditional marketing failing on social networks

Get interactive or get out, says analyst

Traditional marketing campaigns are proving unsuccessful on social networking sites, according to a recently published report.

The Forrester Research study suggests that most marketers still use traditional tactics like run-of-site advertising and static microsites to push messages into these networks.

However, the return on investment in these campaigns is very low, and marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value.

Promotions are good in this context, according to Forrester, but information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends are even better.

"It is clear that successful social networking site campaigns do not follow traditional marketing rules," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester and co-author of the report.

"Social networking sites cannot be treated as channels because their members are not passive web pages."

The report suggests that marketers should mimic how music acts promote themselves on sites like MySpace by engaging their fans with frequent backstage gossip and answering their questions.

"During the past 10 years, the evolution of the internet has dramatically changed how organisations interact with customers," said Gurval Caer, president and chief executive at marketing agency Blast Radius.

"Companies are recognising that traditional marketing approaches like advertising are less effective today, and marketers are struggling to deliver value.

"People no longer want 'interruptive' brand communications; they want interactions with their peers and true value from companies through Facebook applications or communities for sharing ideas and experiences."

Caer added that marketing needs to "turn itself on its head" with a much greater focus on building relationships that will make people's lives "easier, better and richer".

The report concluded that companies that want to advertise on social networks should embrace the interactive aspect of the sites in order to gain the full benefit of these campaigns.

• Forrester Report: Marketing on Social Networking Sites
  

Measurement is easier for direct marketers.

Direct mail and e-mail had the highest return on investment of any target marketing method in 2006, according to Harte-Hanks' "Target Marketing Priorities Analysis: 2007 Key Trends" study.

The survey, conducted by CSO Insights, questioned marketers about their tactics. More than 70% of B2C marketers said direct mail brought them a high ROI, while more than 45% said e-mail did (respondents were allowed multiple responses).

Do direct mail and e-mail truly bring the best ROI? Was direct mail judged as having a high ROI only because it's relatively easy to track?

Bill Goldberg of Harte-Hanks pointed out, "As companies invest more in multiple channels in a bid to acquire customers, and to retain their loyalty, it appears businesses continue to grapple with data management and data insight — and just what the metrics are saying."

With other methods, such as consumer-generated media, ROI is openly questioned.

eMarketer has also noted that lack of data can make measuring ad ROI tough. But with the Harte-Hanks study, even having the data doesn't mean the case is closed.

A Pitney-Bowes study cited in an April 2007 press release also found mail and e-mail effective for communicating new product information, which could be construed as an indicator of high ROI.

eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman said, "Trackable direct response marketing methods typically have a higher ROI just because of that direct step, when it works, from marketing to conversion."

"On the other hand, newspaper/print ads and TV ads show much lower ROI, not only because they're more difficult to track but also because the primary intent is typically different... the brand's mindshare, not the direct conversion."

eMarketer Senior Analyst Lisa E. Phillips added, "It depends on the product being marketed. Direct mail works very well for financial services, especially credit cards, investments and insurance. CPG companies do well if they send coupons."

Learn how search marketers measure results. Read the eMarketer Search Marketing: Counting Dollars and Clicks report.

The Viral Marketing Effect

JULY 10, 2007

Getting the word out.

Of all word-of-mouth (WOM) tactics, viral marketing has probably drawn the most attention from marketers. And they have lofty goals for it. According to a 2006 study by JupiterResearch, cited in Internet Retailer, the biggest goal of viral marketers was to increase brand awareness (71%). Half also expected to drive online sales, and 44% hoped to drive offline sales.

B2B and B2C marketers diverge on what they consider successful viral tactics. B2C companies were more likely to consider blog mentions and posting to sites such as MySpace or YouTube to be something that would generate attention for their viral campaigns. B2B marketers were more interested in getting their viral campaigns mentioned in an online publication or business print publication, according to MarketingSherpa.

More than 60% of viral ads initiated by advertisers are video, according to a study by Competitrack.

Consumers often learn about videos from their friends. According to a 2007 survey by the Online Publishers Association, 43% of US online video viewers get videos by clicking links in e-mail messages from people they know.

Effective targeting is especially important with viral video.

A UK study released in July by Agency.com, Brand Genetics and Hall & Partners found 83% of uploaders recommended things they liked.

The study defined uploaders as Internet users who actively posted content and reviews to social networking sites. Only 8% of UK Internet users fell into this category.

The theory works the same in the US: Get your video to the right people, and they'll spread the word.

eMarketer Senior Analyst Debra Aho Williamson says, "Word-of-mouth is bigger than it used to be, and it is also becoming even more effective. The number of people who have influence — because of their expertise, their passion and their connections — is likely to grow, as the Web offers more user-generated content opportunities and as more companies make word-of-mouth a priority."

Learn more about popular viral tactics. Read the eMarketer Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Winning Friends and Influencing Customers report.

Dawn of The Social Shopper

Solo Hunters, Social Gatherers and the Online Marketplace

By John P. Mello Jr.
E-Commerce Times
05/25/07 4:00 AM PT

"Online vendors of goods and services that ignore the social dimension, as exemplified by the 'social gatherer' archetype, are ignoring a potentially large revenue component," noted a recent Gartner report. "These vendors are, in a substantial sense, 'leaving money on the table,'" the report stated.

Social networking is popular on the Web. So is shopping. Imagine, then, the potential of Net shops that combine the two into a package called "social shopping."

Until recently, most designers of e-commerce sites have concentrated on catering to individual shoppers -- what the research firm Gartner (NYSE: IT) calls the "solo hunter."

Now, however, a new breed of online shopper -- the "social gatherer" -- is emerging who is looking for more interaction with people when they shop, Gartner revealed in a report released Tuesday.

Money Left on Table

"Online vendors of goods and services that ignore the social dimension, as exemplified by the 'social gatherer' archetype, are ignoring a potentially large revenue component," said the report.

"These vendors are, in a substantial sense, 'leaving money on the table,'" the report added.

It noted that for social shoppers, the journey can be more important than the destination. "Social shoppers seek not just artifacts or information for future use but also an enhanced emotional connection to other participants in the shopping experience," it explained.

Tale of Two Shoe Shoppers

"Despite a seeming lack of preoccupation with purchasing a particular item," the report continued, "it is possible that the total transaction amount in a social-shopping journey will exceed that of a solo foray; therefore, e-commerce vendors that ignore this dimension are leaving money on the table."

A solo hunter shopping for a pair of shoes just buys a pair of shoes, explained the author of the report, analyst Ray Valdes. A social gatherer shopping for shoes, on the other hand, may never buy them, but they'll spend two or three times the amount the solo shoppers spend on items they had no initial intention of buying.

"There's a large opportunity here for e-commerce vendors who can address that style of shopping," he told the E-Commerce Times.

One reason for the success of powerhouses like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) , he said, is that they incorporated elements of social shopping early in their development -- elements like user ratings and reviews.

The trend is hampered by current technology, Valdes asserted. "The limitations of technology on the Web today allow only indirect support for social shopping," he maintained. "The technology platform needs to evolve for more direct support in a more integrated manner."

Immersive Environments

What's that technology platform likely to look like? It will very likely look like the immersive virtual environment in Second Life.

"Immersive virtual environments have an advantage in supporting peer-to-peer interaction across multiple vendor locations and in enabling spontaneous human social engagement at varying levels of intimacy, allowing collaborative purchases to occur," the Gartner report explained.

An online virtual environment can both mirror and augment shopping in the real world, observed Alyssa LaRoche, president of Aimee Weber Studios, a design firm.

"You can both be sitting there shopping, but you don't have to ever leave your house," she said. "You can still have all the benefits of socializing with someone throughout that experience."

Explosive Growth

The word about social shopping has begun to resonate among online consumers, according to Manish Chandra, CEO of Kaboodle, a social shopping site.

In the last six months, he said, Kaboodle has seen a tenfold growth in unique visitors, from 100,000 in October 2006 to more than one million in March 2007.

"The shopping season last year really triggered our growth, and we've seen that explosive growth continuing," he told the E-Commerce Times.

The fastest growing sales on the Web, he noted, were in categories where taste and style -- the mother's milk of social shopping -- are just as important as price in determining a shopper's behavior.

"The shopping experience is quite primitive in those categories, and that's what's leading to the adoption of social shopping," he opined.

Doesn't Have a Future?

Social shopping could prove to be a disruptive technology for e-commerce, the Gartner report cautioned, a view not shared by David Galbraith, founder of the social shopping site Wist.com.

"In its current iteration, social shopping doesn't have a future," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Social shopping's appeal, as he sees it, is limited to niche markets and small-time vendors.

"Social shopping has a future for smaller vendors, but not for established brands," he said

Online B2C Lead Gen Bests Offline

Almost half of marketers - some 47 percent - say their businesses are not effectively exploiting online lead generation as a way of growing their B2C business, according to a survey of internet marketers by E-consultancy and Clash-Media.
Four out of five online marketers (82 percent) see online lead generation as a growth area, and 64 percent of online marketers see it as its own distinct area of online marketing. But only 44 percent of B2C marketers say that their organizations are effectively exploiting online lead generation as a way of increasing revenue.
The study also found that three-quarters of respondents working for multi-channel organizations (74 percent) say their companies are generating leads online with the intention of converting them offline.
The report is based on the findings of a survey of more than 400 marketers carried out in January and February 2007.
"The research found that online methods are deemed to be more effective than offline methods when it comes to generating leads in the B2C context," said Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancy's head of research. "There are huge opportunities… irrespective of whether these are eventually converted online or offline, for example in stores or by telephone."
Key findings of the research include the following:
Press (newspapers and magazines) is the method of offline lead generation most commonly used to generate consumer leads (61% of respondents), followed by direct mail/postal data (51%).
The online methods most likely to be used by company respondents to generate leads are natural search (78% of respondents), paid search (72%) and email marketing via in-house lists (72%).
The most effective methods of generating leads are all online. More than half of company respondents (52%) said that paid search was "very effective" while almost as many (48%) said that natural search was very effective.
Email Marketing via in house lists, affiliate marketing, shopping comparison sites, viral marketing and acquiring leads from online aggregators are deemed very effective by 38%, 34%, 26%, 25%, and 25% of company respondents, respectively.
Paid search gets the biggest share of online lead generation budget allocation (28%).
60% of company respondents say they are either "excellent" (11%), "good" (22%) or "quite good" (27%) at measuring the effectiveness of their online lead generation activity. However, 27% say they are "average" and a further 8% saying they are "poor."
The difficulties associated with measuring the effectiveness of online lead generation activity generally fall into three categories: (1) difficulty of tracking leads through to conversion in a multi-channel environment;(2) lack of technology or poor technology for online tracking; and (3) lack of resources.
Only 16% of company respondents say they buy lists of targeted prospects from online aggregators; 77% of company respondents say they are not using online lead aggregators. Moreover, one-fifth of respondents either "haven't come across this" (12%) or "don't understand how it works" (8%), suggesting that there is an opportunity for aggregators to educate prospective clients about this type of activity. A further 8% said they lacked the time to research this activity.

New Online Advertising Company Adify Debuts

Flycast founders reunite, recruit powerful, diverse management team to tackle new problems faced by today's more sophisticated online publishers.

San Bruno, Calif., August 8, 2006 - Adify Corporation today unveiled an Internet advertising platform that brings new levels of visibility, control and economic benefits to both online advertisers and publishers. Adify offers publishers new ways to grow their business by increasing their share of self-service advertising, and by participating in tightly-focused vertical networks, while delivering marketers an easy way to find and buy highly-targeted advertising online.

Adify is the latest advertising solutions company from co-founders Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson. In 1996, they formed Flycast Communications, which revolutionized online marketing by creating the first blind advertising network to service the "long tail” of Internet websites. By optimizing campaigns across thousands of websites, Flycast created a new category that continues to dominate Internet advertising today.
Despite the popularity and growth of online ad networks, and their utility as a means to monetize publishers' unsold ad space, they offer advertisers very limited control over the placement of their ads. Publishers, in turn, have minimal control over the ads appearing on their sites, and no direct relationship with their customers – the advertisers. These blind networks fail to meet the needs of advertisers that are selective about the sites on which their ads run, and inhibit the ability of publishers to create unique value around their content, audience and brand.

To overcome these drawbacks, Adify was created to enable and optimize direct, open transactions between advertisers and publishers in a context where the power, control and choice is placed in their hands, rather than in the hands of a network gatekeeper.
Adify provides a hosted, publisher-branded advertising storefront, which can be leveraged to sell text, image and rich media advertising inventory. The publisher sets the pricing and terms (CPM, CPC, sponsorship) of the ad space, and controls the display and placement of the ads. Adify provides all of the backend functionality required to execute the transaction, including ad management, tracking, reporting, billing and payment.
"Since we founded Flycast 10 years ago, online marketers and publishers have grown much more sophisticated, and are demanding greater direct control over their key advertising relationships,” said Adify co-founder and CEO Larry Braitman. "Adify addresses these emerging needs by enabling publishers to package, price and merchandize their online advertising space in a manner that enhances their unique brand and content."
Creating New Vertical Networks

In addition to enabling publishers to sell their ad space directly to advertisers, Adify has developed several vertically-oriented niche networks that address growing demand from advertisers who want to reach highly-targeted online communities.
In early July, Adify introduced Clip-Ins, a first-of-its-kind online advertising network specifically dedicated to the needs of advertisers and publishers in the cycling community. Powered by the Adify platform, Clip-Ins creates a new media option for the cycling industry, offers advertisers access to cycling publishers of all sizes, and delivers the broadest segment of cycling enthusiasts online. Adify also recently launched the Top Dog Network, an advertising community that brings together dog enthusiasts for both publishers and marketers.
"My mission is to provide the Internet's most comprehensive and useful source of information on Portland's dynamic bike scene, and as owner and operator, I'm always looking for ways to get more done in less time while improving the quality and viability of the site,” said Jonathan Maus, owner of BikePortland.org, an Adify publisher and member of the Clip-Ins Network. "Through Clip-Ins, I was able to set up a self-service storefront which included all the administrative tools required to accept advertising. In a matter of days, I was generating revenue from advertisers of all shapes and sizes without hiring an advertising sales force. Now, I can continue to focus on creating great content for the Portland cycling community knowing that I have a sustainable, long-term advertising solution in place."

Adify helps publishers maximize the long-term value of their sites. By selling directly to advertisers, publishers create stronger brands while taking more control over advertising relationships. Other ways that Adify helps publishers improve their businesses include:

• 
  Publisher-friendly commission structure increases income potential over comparable online advertising solutions;
• 
  Branded, self-service storefront enables relationships with new advertisers who prefer to buy online using self-service tools, and automates the ad sales process;
• 
  Hosted billing, ad serving, tracking, reporting, collecting and payment allows publishers to focus on developing and promoting great content;
• 
  Ability to set the price and terms of ad space sold through the storefront increases flexibility and control;
• 
  Customized storefront puts merchandising, ad space creation, advertiser approval and payment options in the publisher's hands; and
• 
  Ability to sell text, image and rich media advertising; on a sponsorship, CPM or CPC basis, improves flexibility.

Adify solutions also deliver new benefits to online marketers, including:

• 
  Easy access to highly targeted advertising opportunities;
• 
  Access new publishers of all sizes that are already connected to key target markets;
• 
  Streamlined advertising options directly on smaller sites, blogs and newsletters;
• 
  Increased control of the price and type of media buy;
• 
  Ability to purchase advertising on multiple sites in a single buy or directly on individual sites; and Unmatched visibility and control over online ad placements.

Social media only effective marketing channel if users trust: SES

Social media only effective marketing channel if users trust: SES
Reprints By Giselle Abramovich
April 13th, 2007
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NEW YORK – With the recent surge in popularity in social networking sites, marketers are presented with the challenge of reaching out to these communities and gaining their trust when it comes to their brands.

Panelists at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo’s “SMO: Social Media Optimization” session yesterday highlighted the importance of tapping into social media.

“Show the community that you are a participant,” said Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, Seattle. “Build traffic from alternate sources and influence traditional media.”

He also said marketers can control their brand and rule the search engine ranking pages.

“Gain link love,” Mr. Fishkin said.

Social communities view search engine optimization as spam, when in reality it helps the communities grow and spread by creating content and contributing it.

SEO must be mindful of the community and must respect the establishment, Mr. Fishkin said.

He also stressed the importance of creating a successful profile.

Neil Patel, co-founder of Advantage Consulting Services, said marketers should not self-promote, add biased information, pay for votes, break community rules or spam.

“Marketers need to add tons of friends, participate, use great titles and descriptions, become a top user and submit their content at the right time,” Mr. Patel said.

He told session attendees to “massage” their content.

Andy Hagans, strategist at Text Link Ads, uses social media to get trusted links for his clients.

“First it is important to know your client’s weaknesses and strengths,” Mr. Hagans said.

He said that titling is half the battle because most people vote or “bury” on dig, for example, without even reading the story.

“Just pretend they all have short attention spans,” Mr. Hagans joked.