By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed that was originally published in Advertising Age.
When it was reported in early May that social advertising had overtaken search, many in the search-marketing industry reacted with disbelief. Some wished to take up a protracted battle with social-media marketers over whose turf reigns supreme.
Sadly, much of the discussion completely missed the point of what this data tell us: the age of the “walled garden” approach to search marketing is over. Let us all rejoice. The search-vs.-social debate is a worthless pursuit. Brands don’t care, nor should marketers.
The future of search marketing will demand a blend of many different digital-marketing components — traditional search, retargeting, display, etc. — that must reach audiences across a wide swath of media, as consumers use many different devices to search for content across multiple platforms and interfaces.
Marketers need to focus on how well they are integrating social within search, and vice versa. It’s not an either-or debate. There are two reasons this is true.
Social Signals. In the old days of search — that is, pre-2012 — many brands and agencies kept their search-marketing campaigns, both organic and paid, separate from social-media campaigns. They feared that mixing the two might alienate the respective audiences of what are sometimes highly distinct customer bases.
But that’s all in the past. Social signals and the rapid expansion of the digital-advertising industry are forever altering the search-marketing landscape — for the better. While still a relatively small portion of search marketing, social signals – the signals from Google +, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that Google considers in its algorithm — are already being optimized for by sophisticated search marketers. More broadly, the digital-advertising industry is poised to reach $39.5 billion in 2012, according to eMarketer, and will overtake TV advertising spend by 2016. That’s too big a pot to be arguing over.
Read the full op-ed in Advertising Age.
By Keith Trivitt | @KeithTrivitt | Director, Marketing and Communications
Courtesy of blogtipswriter.com
Facebook has been all over the news lately. Unfortunately for the company, much of that news has been of the non-positive, stock-sinking variety. But there is a silver lining: Facebook appears to be finally getting its act together when it comes to brand advertising! At least, that’s what we’re led to believe by the frenetic PR push the company has been on in recent weeks.
The reality, as Digiday’s Brian Morrissey expertly dissected in a recent post, is more nuanced and less rosy for the social network. In that blistering post, Morrissey declared what many digital marketers have long grumbled to themselves: “Facebook’s got a brand problem.”
The post details how, despite some laudatory press about its overhauled ad offerings, marketers aren’t buying the hype that Facebook is trying to portray about its value to advertisers. “More often than not, marketers proclaim to love Facebook, only not for the ads,” Morrissey says. But much of what they love about Facebook is its “earned and owned media” and brand equity-building qualities: the fact that it allows brands a free and enormous platform upon which they can distribute their messages to whomever they’d like.
Despite this apparent upside, there are many reasons why skepticism remains high among marketers over the value of advertising on Facebook. Whether it is the feeling that Facebook just doesn’t just doesn’t care about brands, or the daily grind marketers have trying get some semblance of reasonable stats and analytics about the value of the money they spend on Facebook advertising, the general perception seems to be that Facebook is putting on a show for advertisers rather than helping them deliver results. (more…)
By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
If you’re a marketing or advertising professional, then lately you’ve probably been running ads on Facebook or have heard the phrase “paid social” or “Facebook ads.”
That’s because according to eMarketer, social media is the fastest growing digital media channel. As impressive as that is, it doesn’t tell the whole story. First, let’s consider some statistics:
- “More than half of 25-to-34-year-old social network users say they can’t live without their social media sites” — eMarketer 2011.
- “9 out of 10 Internet users visited a social networking site each month in 2010” — comScore, February 2011.
- “74% of consumers are influenced to buy AFTER soliciting feedback from social media ” — comScore, February 2011.
- “67% of Twitter users who become followers of a brand are more likely to buy from that brand” — comScore, February 2011.
- “60% of Facebook users who become fans of a brand recommend that brand to a friend ” — comScore, February 2011.
With the demand for social media continuing to skyrocket, it’s critical that we, as advertising professionals, hone our craft to leverage this channel on behalf of our clients.
To help marketers create successful Facebook ad campaigns, MediaWhiz has developed the following list of “secrets.” (more…)
By Adam Riff | @AdamRiff | SVP, Digital Strategy
As digital marketing professionals, we work with a wide range of clients. Some are Fortune 500s and some are mid-tier businesses trying to compete in tough markets. The latter of these can be considered “challenger brands” for two reasons: contending with the industrial strength heavy hitters can be daunting for them; and positioning these brands to stand head to head with the top players can be difficult for marketers.
So what is the solution to effectively grow the market share of these challenger brands while improving their online positioning?
Turning a challenger brand into a market leader requires following a specific five-step process. Each step builds on the one before it resulting in a continuous cycle — a cycle of growth and efficiency.
Let’s review the steps:
- Conduct a market analysis of your client’s vertical.
- Dig into their competitors using Competitive Intelligence (CI).
- Audit your client’s program and baseline.
- Create efficiency through optimization.
- Use the room you created to test and drive growth.
Rinse and repeat.
By properly leveraging this cycle, you can take a brand that is spending significantly less than its competitors and incrementally increase its market share through growth and efficiency tactics. (more…)
By Ed Kats | President
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed that was originally published at AdExchanger.com.
Some marketers love to bash Facebook ads. We saw it in the immediate aftermath of General Motors pulling its $10 million cache of ad buys just days before Facebook’s IPO. We continue to see it as the company’s stock price stumbles.
The truth is, Facebook is finally developing new, exciting ways to deliver real value to online advertisers. It’s time for marketers to recognize that value and get serious about Facebook ads.
In recent weeks, the company has announced a number of prominent changes to its ad platform, including a real-time bidding exchange, mobile-only ads, and a rumored ”want” button that would “only work with content identified as relating to a purchasable product.”
Facebook also has increased its outreach to the advertising industry. Through various public and private campaigns, it is working to educate marketers about its multitude of ad options and addressing their concerns about the need for more precise data and analytics. At the Cannes Lions festival last month, Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vice president of global marketing solutions, made the rounds touting the social network’s various ad options.
The key to the success of all of Facebook’s new ad options is segmentation. Segmentation gives marketers the ability to analyze and make real-time media buying decisions based on data available through Facebook’s interface. For agencies, segmentation marks another opportunity to optimize, target deeper and increase conversion rates. The segmentation and retargeting opportunities now exist that will enable Facebook ads to be profitable for brands.
Read the full post at AdExchanger.com.
By Steve Goldner | @SocialSteve | Senior Director, Social Media
Editor’s note: The following post was originally published in iMedia Connection.
Web hosting company HostPapa’s new infographic comparing email marketing and social media marketing has given marketers a new lightning-rod topic to debate.
Despite no shortage of proponents in each camp, we think the conclusion is simple: it’s pointless to compare email marketing with social media marketing. Each has a unique value. More importantly, we believe that email and social media should be used in tandem, not against each other, for effective digital media and marketing campaigns.
The problem with comparing email marketing and social media marketing is apparent: one (social media marketing) is a brand strategy while the other (email) is a direct-response strategy. Each requires the other in some form to be effective, and each builds off the other for greater value and efficiency.
The infographic isn’t without merit. It offers some valuable insight marketers can use to understand how, when and where to use and integrate email marketing and social media marketing to improve their lead-gen and digital engagement efforts.
But first, it’s necessary to look at the facts.
Email Still Generates Results
Email marketing continues to produce eye-popping results. According to HostPapa, business spending on email marketing campaigns has increased 60 percent in the past year, accumulating 17.4 percent of U.S. brands’ digital marketing budgets in 2011. Email open rates continue to rise, too, improving 12.6 percent in Q1 2012, according to a report by Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association.
Those are no small feats; especially for a form of digital communications many believe is dead/has died/will die. (more…)
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed published in the July 2012 issue of Direct Marketing News. Read the full opinion piece here.
By Steve Goldner | @SocialSteve | Senior Director, Social Media
There is no shortage of debate on social media ROI. Social media sales attribution is difficult given the reality of Facebook privacy settings and the challenges of tagging media that brands don’t own. This is true for many word-of-mouth consumer behaviors.
For example, how easy is it to attribute a customer visiting a new restaurant because of a friend’s recommendation?
But that doesn’t mean brands shouldn’t measure social media and get meaningful information on the performance of their campaigns. Like an old boss once told me, “That which is not measured, does not get done.”
When utilized properly, social media generates awareness, consideration, loyalty and advocacy — all of which can be measured. Brand managers and CMOs should be concerned with seeing measurable results in each category.
The four consumer psycho demographics listed below are inherently tied to the ultimate key performance indicator: that of sales. Consider the following parameters that can be easily captured and measured:
- Awareness: Number of brand and URL mentions.
- Consideration: Website visits, page views, Facebook and Twitter click-throughs, social network page views, Twitter replies and blog views.
- Loyalty: Fans, followers and community members, RSS subscriptions, Facebook interactions, Twitter mentions, blog/community comments and return visits to site.
- Advocacy: Retweets, re-blogs, brand mentions, comments on a brand’s assets and Facebook “likes.
Read the full op-ed in Direct Marketing News.
By Sean Gelles | @SeanGelles | Director, Social Media Marketing
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of an op-ed published June 28, 2012, in EContent Magazine. Read the full opinion piece here.
Once again “Big Data” is all the rage as enterprises struggle to cope with the data deluge that is exploding across the globe. To provide an illustration of this phenomenon, consider first that, according to Google’s Eric Schmidt, there were five exabytes of data created between the dawn of civilization and 2003 (one exabyte is equivalent to one million terabytes). Now consider that, according to Cisco, by 2016 global IP traffic will reach 109.5 exabytes per month. Companies, organizations, and governments are all drowning in data and the bulk of what’s contributing to this raging flood is user-generated content.
The tsunami of user-generated content has generated an urgent demand for more sophisticated analytical tools in the social media space. This rising demand is bringing the worlds of big data solutions and social media services (i.e. CRM, marketing, and sales) closer together than ever before. In the past two months the software behemoth Oracle acquired the social media marketing platform Virtue and Salesforce acquired Buddy Media. These two will certainly not be the last of such moves. In the coming months, other vendors such as IBM, EMC, and HP will likely make similar acquisitions. As a consequence, social media specialists, especially analytics experts, will need to become much more data-technology-savvy.
The merging of big data solutions and social media marketing platforms is not the only development that will require social media analytics experts to elevate their technology competency. Increasingly the rudimentary manual analytical methodologies of the past are proving inadequate for fully harnessing the power of Big Data to provide strategic insights for social media marketing campaign planning and measurement as well as social CRM, crowd sourcing and sales. At present, the most common approach to analyzing social media data is manual and protracted. It usually starts with a listening tool, such as Radian6, to gather the data followed by dozens of hours of labor-intensive data cleaning. The resulting dataset only yields insights about the relevant conversation – the major topics, the primary channels where the conversation is taking place and the identities of the individuals engaged in the conversation. Understanding the structure of the social network constituted by the relevant conversation requires additional analysis.
Read the full op-ed in EContent Magazine.
By Steve Goldner | @SocialSteve | Senior Director, Social Media
So, you want to get social? You realize your business cannot live without it. Kudos to you for having a strategy and a plan and for not just putting up Facebook and Twitter pages. But now you realize how time-consuming it will be to drive real measurable success. So let me tell you how we determined the right tools to help us drive our social media practice.
First, think about your core operations. We determined that we had three prime objectives: disseminating content (both owned and curated media); identifying influencers (to yield earned media); and capturing performance metrics.
Content Dissemination
It makes sense to start with a communications strategy and to address content tools. Content is core to your social endeavors. It is the vehicle to get your story out and to engage with your target audience. Consider having a blog—a place to seed your owned media so that you can use other social channels to direct people to your story. I use WordPress. It is intuitive, and it starts out at no cost. I recommend this content management system for its simplicity and versatility. Another good one is Blogger.
Blogs aren’t the only platforms for disseminating content. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SlideShare, Pinterest, and Twitter are all leading platforms for content sharing. With all these free options, it’s not likely you’ll choose to pay for another option—though ONEsite, Jive, and Lithium allow you to own all functionality and data, unlike Facebook and Google+.
And once you have your content platforms determined, I suggest you use a social media publishing tool. Examples are Awareness, Shoutlet, and HootSuite, just to name a few. These publishing tools allow you to schedule posts across many social channels, manage responses, and view metrics on impressions and reach. They are extremely helpful; not only do they manage the workflow of posting and responding, but they also fine-tune your communications to optimize sharing and engagement.
Read the full post in EContent magazine. (more…)
