Social media, una moda?
Según este video, es un cambio que está muy lejos de serlo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng
viernes, 29 de octubre de 2010
jueves, 28 de octubre de 2010
domingo, 24 de octubre de 2010
Virgin Media Moves To Integrate Offline Marketing With Website Promotion
Virgin Media is giving its creative, direct and website marketing agencies an overhaul in an effort to develop a more integrated approach to its communications.
Marketing Week reports that the company currently uses a list of agencies including Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, Rapier and Spike – all of whom have been invited to re-pitch.
Virgin Media says it is evaluating "the benefits of integrating its approach across advertising, direct and digital campaigns".
The review will not include media planning and buying, PR, website design and management, brand design or retail and point of sale.
Ashley Stockwell, executive director of brand and marketing at Virgin Media, says the firm is "taking a look" at how it can best communicate its products and services in 2010 and beyond.
"All of our agencies have done and continue to do some outstanding work and have helped us set Virgin Media's market-leading ultra-fast broadband, TV and mobile apart from our competitors," said Mr Stockwell.
"As we look to deliver an even more compelling and brilliantly simple consumer experience, we're keen to understand the benefits of a more integrated marketing and advertising approach."
Marketers are increasingly looking at new ways to reach their target consumers, even as they continue to operate through more conventional routes.
Fast emerging as a good medium to reach out and connect are the internet-based social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ibibo and Twitter.
What is more. research recently published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggested that organisations which combine mobile and website marketing can radically increase brand awareness.
Further, according to Matt McNeil, the founder of email and mobile marketing specialist Sign-Up.to, mobile and website marketing are becoming an inseparable combination for many brands as more people tend to access the internet away from their desktop.
"There is a very strong synergy between the two," explains Mr McNeil.
"You can make ads much more interesting if you can base them on what as well as where and when someone is doing something as that can increase engagement."
Parminder Singh, business head of Google India, notes that social media is increasingly becoming an integral part of marketing strategies.
"Social media offers advertisers micro-targeting opportunities and the means to engage the user through communities and other applications."
He added that social media networks had gained importance with big and small advertisers.
"In the last one year, it has extensively picked up with small advertisers who've ramped up their budgets," he said.
Mediarun is a full service seo company company specialising in Website Marketing,Website Promotion, Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and pay per click management (PPC). We have also pioneered Universal Search and achieved excellent results for our clients on Google Products, Maps and Images.
http://www.pr-interactive.com/web-design-resources/2010/10/virgin-media-moves-to-integrate-offline-marketing-with-website-promotion/
Marketing Week reports that the company currently uses a list of agencies including Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, Rapier and Spike – all of whom have been invited to re-pitch.
Virgin Media says it is evaluating "the benefits of integrating its approach across advertising, direct and digital campaigns".
The review will not include media planning and buying, PR, website design and management, brand design or retail and point of sale.
Ashley Stockwell, executive director of brand and marketing at Virgin Media, says the firm is "taking a look" at how it can best communicate its products and services in 2010 and beyond.
"All of our agencies have done and continue to do some outstanding work and have helped us set Virgin Media's market-leading ultra-fast broadband, TV and mobile apart from our competitors," said Mr Stockwell.
"As we look to deliver an even more compelling and brilliantly simple consumer experience, we're keen to understand the benefits of a more integrated marketing and advertising approach."
Marketers are increasingly looking at new ways to reach their target consumers, even as they continue to operate through more conventional routes.
Fast emerging as a good medium to reach out and connect are the internet-based social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ibibo and Twitter.
What is more. research recently published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggested that organisations which combine mobile and website marketing can radically increase brand awareness.
Further, according to Matt McNeil, the founder of email and mobile marketing specialist Sign-Up.to, mobile and website marketing are becoming an inseparable combination for many brands as more people tend to access the internet away from their desktop.
"There is a very strong synergy between the two," explains Mr McNeil.
"You can make ads much more interesting if you can base them on what as well as where and when someone is doing something as that can increase engagement."
Parminder Singh, business head of Google India, notes that social media is increasingly becoming an integral part of marketing strategies.
"Social media offers advertisers micro-targeting opportunities and the means to engage the user through communities and other applications."
He added that social media networks had gained importance with big and small advertisers.
"In the last one year, it has extensively picked up with small advertisers who've ramped up their budgets," he said.
Mediarun is a full service seo company company specialising in Website Marketing,Website Promotion, Social Media Optimisation (SMO) and pay per click management (PPC). We have also pioneered Universal Search and achieved excellent results for our clients on Google Products, Maps and Images.
http://www.pr-interactive.com/web-design-resources/2010/10/virgin-media-moves-to-integrate-offline-marketing-with-website-promotion/
In-context delivery is key for holiday mobile coupons
Giselle Tsirulnik - October 13, 2010
Coupons need to be part of the mobile strategy during the holidays when consumers are spending more and looking for a deal.
According to Experian, consumers are open to mobile ads that push some sort of sale or promotion, making mobile coupons a great way to target cost-conscious consumers during the holidays.
"Coupons are very well suited for the mobile channel because the mobile phone provides a personal, always-with-you device to provide relevant offers wherever you are," said Robert Drescher, CEO of Cellfire, San Francisco. "In addition, the mobile phone also allows consumers to directly redeem offers at retailers and grocers without going through the intermediate and wasteful step of printing offers."
Coupons can push holiday-themed items driving purchases because of the discount and also just acting as a means of letting the consumer know that this particular retailer offers a specific item.
While still nascent, mobile couponing is becoming an increasingly effective way to bring people into the store and increase sales, according to InsightExpress (see story).
Brands and retailers can turn to limited-time-offer mobile coupons that are good from, say, 6 to 8, to drive consumers into stores during the holidays.
Consumers are looking for a deal, especially during the holidays with so many gifts to purchase.
InsightExpress found that 10 percent of consumers have been driven in-store via a mobile coupon.
"Mobile coupons are more cost-effective than printed coupons and environmentally friendly, as there is no paper waste," said Shira Simmonds, president of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. "Since mobile coupons are on the consumers' phone, the coupons are always with them, which means there is no chance of forgetting them at home.
"In this economy consumers are looking for new ways to save, and retailers are looking for new channels to communicate with their audience," she said. "A mobile coupon is a perfect solution."
Why the need?
The mobile phone is a personal, always-with-you device. It gives consumers the ability to opt-in to offers delivered via push notification.
"This combination makes the delivery of offers feel personal and focused on you, the consumer," Cellfire's Mr. Drescher said. "And who doesn't like to feel like they have special access to exclusive offers?"
Cellfire has seen a doubling every quarter in total coupon activity over the last year and expects that trend to continue as the proliferation of smartphones continues.
Additionally, mobile couponing will increase as more applications support and provide such offers, additional redemption locations are supported and consumer behavior increasingly accepts mobile coupons.
Consumers are looking for ways to save money during the tough economy we are currently in, per Ping Mobile's Ms. Simmonds.
Receiving offers via their mobile phones is quick and simple without the need to print.
The coupons are always with them as long as they have their phones handy. They can receive a multitude of coupons from all their favorite brands right onto one device all stored in one location.
Consumers will respond positively to mobile coupons, especially when there is significant value behind the offers.
"Mobile campaigns centering around brand awareness that do not offer value to the consumer will be regarded as intrusive and bothersome," Ms. Simmonds said.
"These types of campaigns may turn away consumers from a brand where as a mobile coupon might grab new consumers who are interested in savings and develop a positive brand image," she said.
Common pitfalls
One of the most common pitfalls with mobile coupons is not having a well- though-out redemption strategy, per Mr. Drescher.
Make sure that the consumer has a very good experience from discovery to redemption.
Ensure that retail personnel are trained and systems are in place to accept the mobile offer.
"Always make consumers aware of cellular service availability, on a carrier-by-carrier basis," Ms. Simmonds said. "It's important to prominently display the expiration date of the coupon and a coupon code or tracking code.
"Always follow the MMA and carrier guidelines that stipulate certain content must be present both on the ad and in the text message, such as standard rates apply, help and opt-out options," she said.
Brands need to make sure that offers are delivered in context, Mr. Drescher said.
For example, provide a specific offer when a consumer is searching for a particular category or using a specific mobile application.
Consumers are more receptive to offers delivered in this way than as a collection of offers on a particular retailer's Web site.
Coupon creative best practices
"We have found that one of the most important creative best practices is to ensure that the offer and the presentation of the offer represent the brand well and support the underlying brand objectives," Mr. Drescher said.
Realize that mobile coupons are not just digital versions of Sunday's free-standing insert coupon.
Amount of offer inventory, targeting and offer details can all be controlled dynamically, in real-time across the network.
This allows brands to respond in real-time to changes in the market and to the performance of the offer in-channel. Creative can also be changed.
"Focus on the entire coupon process, from delivery of the offer in context all the way through the in-store purchase and redemption," Mr. Drescher said. "At every step in the process, continually measure and improve the process."
According to Ms. Simmonds, for mobile coupons to be effective and drive foot traffic to the point of sale, a clear call to action needs to be present along with a deep discount.
Offering $0.05 off a product will not entice consumers to text in and will not drive redemptions.
Many retailers have no mechanism set up for mobile coupon redemption, which should be addressed prior to the launch of a mobile coupon strategy.
Multichannel mobile coupons
A mobile coupon by itself is not a campaign, according to Mr. Drescher.
Instead, it is a mechanism to bridge the gap between the digital online space and offline world of in-store purchases.
Various mobile channels can be utilized in support of the underlying branding or merchandising campaign.
"We have seen very strong response to combining multiple channels in support of brand objective such as combining social media through Twitter and Facebook, with the delivery of offers that drive in-store purchases," Mr. Drescher said.
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/holiday-focused-mobile-coupon-pitfalls-best-practices-and-use-cases/
Coupons need to be part of the mobile strategy during the holidays when consumers are spending more and looking for a deal.
According to Experian, consumers are open to mobile ads that push some sort of sale or promotion, making mobile coupons a great way to target cost-conscious consumers during the holidays.
"Coupons are very well suited for the mobile channel because the mobile phone provides a personal, always-with-you device to provide relevant offers wherever you are," said Robert Drescher, CEO of Cellfire, San Francisco. "In addition, the mobile phone also allows consumers to directly redeem offers at retailers and grocers without going through the intermediate and wasteful step of printing offers."
Coupons can push holiday-themed items driving purchases because of the discount and also just acting as a means of letting the consumer know that this particular retailer offers a specific item.
While still nascent, mobile couponing is becoming an increasingly effective way to bring people into the store and increase sales, according to InsightExpress (see story).
Brands and retailers can turn to limited-time-offer mobile coupons that are good from, say, 6 to 8, to drive consumers into stores during the holidays.
Consumers are looking for a deal, especially during the holidays with so many gifts to purchase.
InsightExpress found that 10 percent of consumers have been driven in-store via a mobile coupon.
"Mobile coupons are more cost-effective than printed coupons and environmentally friendly, as there is no paper waste," said Shira Simmonds, president of Ping Mobile, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. "Since mobile coupons are on the consumers' phone, the coupons are always with them, which means there is no chance of forgetting them at home.
"In this economy consumers are looking for new ways to save, and retailers are looking for new channels to communicate with their audience," she said. "A mobile coupon is a perfect solution."
Why the need?
The mobile phone is a personal, always-with-you device. It gives consumers the ability to opt-in to offers delivered via push notification.
"This combination makes the delivery of offers feel personal and focused on you, the consumer," Cellfire's Mr. Drescher said. "And who doesn't like to feel like they have special access to exclusive offers?"
Cellfire has seen a doubling every quarter in total coupon activity over the last year and expects that trend to continue as the proliferation of smartphones continues.
Additionally, mobile couponing will increase as more applications support and provide such offers, additional redemption locations are supported and consumer behavior increasingly accepts mobile coupons.
Consumers are looking for ways to save money during the tough economy we are currently in, per Ping Mobile's Ms. Simmonds.
Receiving offers via their mobile phones is quick and simple without the need to print.
The coupons are always with them as long as they have their phones handy. They can receive a multitude of coupons from all their favorite brands right onto one device all stored in one location.
Consumers will respond positively to mobile coupons, especially when there is significant value behind the offers.
"Mobile campaigns centering around brand awareness that do not offer value to the consumer will be regarded as intrusive and bothersome," Ms. Simmonds said.
"These types of campaigns may turn away consumers from a brand where as a mobile coupon might grab new consumers who are interested in savings and develop a positive brand image," she said.
Common pitfalls
One of the most common pitfalls with mobile coupons is not having a well- though-out redemption strategy, per Mr. Drescher.
Make sure that the consumer has a very good experience from discovery to redemption.
Ensure that retail personnel are trained and systems are in place to accept the mobile offer.
"Always make consumers aware of cellular service availability, on a carrier-by-carrier basis," Ms. Simmonds said. "It's important to prominently display the expiration date of the coupon and a coupon code or tracking code.
"Always follow the MMA and carrier guidelines that stipulate certain content must be present both on the ad and in the text message, such as standard rates apply, help and opt-out options," she said.
Brands need to make sure that offers are delivered in context, Mr. Drescher said.
For example, provide a specific offer when a consumer is searching for a particular category or using a specific mobile application.
Consumers are more receptive to offers delivered in this way than as a collection of offers on a particular retailer's Web site.
Coupon creative best practices
"We have found that one of the most important creative best practices is to ensure that the offer and the presentation of the offer represent the brand well and support the underlying brand objectives," Mr. Drescher said.
Realize that mobile coupons are not just digital versions of Sunday's free-standing insert coupon.
Amount of offer inventory, targeting and offer details can all be controlled dynamically, in real-time across the network.
This allows brands to respond in real-time to changes in the market and to the performance of the offer in-channel. Creative can also be changed.
"Focus on the entire coupon process, from delivery of the offer in context all the way through the in-store purchase and redemption," Mr. Drescher said. "At every step in the process, continually measure and improve the process."
According to Ms. Simmonds, for mobile coupons to be effective and drive foot traffic to the point of sale, a clear call to action needs to be present along with a deep discount.
Offering $0.05 off a product will not entice consumers to text in and will not drive redemptions.
Many retailers have no mechanism set up for mobile coupon redemption, which should be addressed prior to the launch of a mobile coupon strategy.
Multichannel mobile coupons
A mobile coupon by itself is not a campaign, according to Mr. Drescher.
Instead, it is a mechanism to bridge the gap between the digital online space and offline world of in-store purchases.
Various mobile channels can be utilized in support of the underlying branding or merchandising campaign.
"We have seen very strong response to combining multiple channels in support of brand objective such as combining social media through Twitter and Facebook, with the delivery of offers that drive in-store purchases," Mr. Drescher said.
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/holiday-focused-mobile-coupon-pitfalls-best-practices-and-use-cases/
sábado, 23 de octubre de 2010
Holiday-tailored approach is critical for buying mobile media
Giselle Tsirulnik - October 20, 2010
Brands need to use mobile advertising during the holidays to influence consumers as they are out buying gifts and should buy mobile media based on shopping behavior during this time of the year.
Marketers should not be using mobile in their holiday marketing efforts just to check the box and say that they have done it. Instead, a clear, holiday-tailored strategy should be laid out before buying network mobile media.
"Make sure you have a clear objective in mind with what you do in the mobile space and put the consumer first," said Brenna Hanly, mobile catalyst at Boston-based Mullen's mediahub. "Ensure that you have done enough primary research to know what your consumer is actually interested in and then deliver something that provides a real utility.
"For instance, last year Target enabled users to find gift suggestions for friends and family based on descriptors within their app," she said. "I think Eric Litman, the CEO of Medialets, New York, said it best when he said 'the market doesn't need another shakable, snowglobe app.'"
Holiday media buying
Per Ms. Hanly, there are going to be different buying strategies to fit different objectives.
But there will be immense advertising clutter in the marketplace over the holiday season.
"If right for your brand, consider not just buying inventory from ad networks for the efficiencies, but to also complement that with the impact of mobile rich-media units," Ms. Hanly said. "Incorporating compelling rich media will be more memorable and can have a higher impact on consumers further down the purchase funnel."
According to Mark Roth, CEO of OfferMobi, New York, demographics should play a big role in how marketers plan their media buying on mobile for the holidays.
Targeting a 50-year-old male with ads for feminine hygiene products, whether during the holidays or not, is not going to lead to conversions.
"You need to make sure you've got the right demographic – parents for Halloween costumes," Mr. Roth said. "For Christmas it is a wider audience.
"But buying media during the holidays is not all that different than buying media all year round," he said. "It's a about matching the target audience to the product offering that you have.
"Be aware that in mobile we lean towards the younger demo for those who are most active on their phones."
Context is king
Use mobile advertising to influence consumers in the "now" as they are out shopping for holiday gifts, Ms. Hanly recommends.
Serve ads that are relevant to specific locations, specific times of day and related to content that the user is consuming.
Again, to become hyper-relevant and cut through the clutter, a partnership with some of the newer LBS applications makes sense.
Through a Shopkick or a SCVNGR, brands can reward and incentivize consumers to enter the store and keep coming back.
Mobile allows consumers to act at the point of impulse.
"Whereas not so long ago if you had an urge to buy a scarf that you saw someone wearing on the street, you would have to go home, look it up on the Internet and then figure out where you could go to buy it," Ms. Hanly said.
"Now, you can use your mobile device to look up the scarf and then find out locations near you and directions to get there, or just buy it right from your phone," she said.
Targeting
With mobile, take advantage of as much targeting as possible, Mr. Roth said.
He suggested that marketers find publishers that have a lot of registration data, which will allow for more precise targeting.
"There is a limited amount of targeting on mobile when compared to the Web," Mr. Roth said. "Use whatever you can use.
"Find publishers with registration data, which will give you much better targeting," he said. "Age, gender and regional data that you would not otherwise get is possible with publishers that have registration data.
"Do a lot of testing to figure out which carriers and devices make sense for your campaign. That testing will locate trends and then you can take care of the targeting."
There is definitely going to be a significant bump in mobile Web traffic during the holidays.
Therefore, it is imperative to take advantage of that and be in front of a mobile audience.
According to Mr. Roth, the bump will give more data for testing as well.
"Why is it imperative for marketers to have a mobile advertising presence during the holidays?" Mullen's Ms. Hanly said. "When was the last time you left your house to go shopping without your phone?"
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7813.html
Brands need to use mobile advertising during the holidays to influence consumers as they are out buying gifts and should buy mobile media based on shopping behavior during this time of the year.
Marketers should not be using mobile in their holiday marketing efforts just to check the box and say that they have done it. Instead, a clear, holiday-tailored strategy should be laid out before buying network mobile media.
"Make sure you have a clear objective in mind with what you do in the mobile space and put the consumer first," said Brenna Hanly, mobile catalyst at Boston-based Mullen's mediahub. "Ensure that you have done enough primary research to know what your consumer is actually interested in and then deliver something that provides a real utility.
"For instance, last year Target enabled users to find gift suggestions for friends and family based on descriptors within their app," she said. "I think Eric Litman, the CEO of Medialets, New York, said it best when he said 'the market doesn't need another shakable, snowglobe app.'"
Holiday media buying
Per Ms. Hanly, there are going to be different buying strategies to fit different objectives.
But there will be immense advertising clutter in the marketplace over the holiday season.
"If right for your brand, consider not just buying inventory from ad networks for the efficiencies, but to also complement that with the impact of mobile rich-media units," Ms. Hanly said. "Incorporating compelling rich media will be more memorable and can have a higher impact on consumers further down the purchase funnel."
According to Mark Roth, CEO of OfferMobi, New York, demographics should play a big role in how marketers plan their media buying on mobile for the holidays.
Targeting a 50-year-old male with ads for feminine hygiene products, whether during the holidays or not, is not going to lead to conversions.
"You need to make sure you've got the right demographic – parents for Halloween costumes," Mr. Roth said. "For Christmas it is a wider audience.
"But buying media during the holidays is not all that different than buying media all year round," he said. "It's a about matching the target audience to the product offering that you have.
"Be aware that in mobile we lean towards the younger demo for those who are most active on their phones."
Context is king
Use mobile advertising to influence consumers in the "now" as they are out shopping for holiday gifts, Ms. Hanly recommends.
Serve ads that are relevant to specific locations, specific times of day and related to content that the user is consuming.
Again, to become hyper-relevant and cut through the clutter, a partnership with some of the newer LBS applications makes sense.
Through a Shopkick or a SCVNGR, brands can reward and incentivize consumers to enter the store and keep coming back.
Mobile allows consumers to act at the point of impulse.
"Whereas not so long ago if you had an urge to buy a scarf that you saw someone wearing on the street, you would have to go home, look it up on the Internet and then figure out where you could go to buy it," Ms. Hanly said.
"Now, you can use your mobile device to look up the scarf and then find out locations near you and directions to get there, or just buy it right from your phone," she said.
Targeting
With mobile, take advantage of as much targeting as possible, Mr. Roth said.
He suggested that marketers find publishers that have a lot of registration data, which will allow for more precise targeting.
"There is a limited amount of targeting on mobile when compared to the Web," Mr. Roth said. "Use whatever you can use.
"Find publishers with registration data, which will give you much better targeting," he said. "Age, gender and regional data that you would not otherwise get is possible with publishers that have registration data.
"Do a lot of testing to figure out which carriers and devices make sense for your campaign. That testing will locate trends and then you can take care of the targeting."
There is definitely going to be a significant bump in mobile Web traffic during the holidays.
Therefore, it is imperative to take advantage of that and be in front of a mobile audience.
According to Mr. Roth, the bump will give more data for testing as well.
"Why is it imperative for marketers to have a mobile advertising presence during the holidays?" Mullen's Ms. Hanly said. "When was the last time you left your house to go shopping without your phone?"
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7813.html
Características y funciones del Community Manager
Publicado 09 Agosto 2010 por Jonathan Baldovino
El Community Manager es quien articula la marca en el ecosistema social de una manera compleja (contextualizando su origen en el webmaster y el moderador de foros). Mediante el profundo conocimiento de las necesidades y los planteamientos estratégicos de la organización y los intereses de los clientes, conduce la estrategia, construye, gestiona y modera comunidades en función de la marca y contribuye a fomentar el cambio al interior de la organización. Su figura ha adquirido gran relevancia al perfilarse como un vocero, articulador de la marca y reputación en el ámbito digital, con todas sus implicancias.
Hacer responsable de la administración de las comunidades online a estudiantes en práctica simplemente porque son baratos, geeks o muestran entusiasmo por las redes sociales, o prescindir de estos nuevos profesionales delegando la responsabilidad sobre miembros del mismo equipo de trabajo para minimizar costos es uno de los mayores desaciertos en los que se puede incurrir. Otro error es creer que la estrategia social se basa simplemente en contar con una persona que escriba en blogs, suba fotografías, cargue videos, actualice estados o modere comentarios. Materializar y construir identidad digital a través de la vinculación con las audiencias va más allá de la "ejecución social" como elemento de marketing. Crear comunidad, establecer vínculos y contribuir al logro de los objetivos de negocio de manera efectiva requiere de una visión de negocio integral; innovadora y altamente comprometida.
El Community Manager debe perfilarse como un estratega especializado en comunicación online, con conocimientos en marketing, publicidad y relaciones públicas, un early adopter en esencia y con experiencia para establecer relaciones de confianza con las audiencias.
# Algunas de sus características:
◦Debe poseer un profundo conocimiento de la empresa y la industria
◦Sentido común
◦Empatía
◦Inteligencia contextual (Es la habilidad de la persona para emplear sus conocimientos prácticos y su sentido común, así como para adaptarse al ambiente, llegan-do a reformar el entorno para acomodar a él sus posibilidades y minimizar sus defectos.)
◦Ser emocional
◦Ser capaz de evaluar e interpretar tendencias.
Tener habilidad para evangelizar a las distintas áreas de la empresa para que comprendan la necesidad estratégica de formar parte de la conversación en los medios sociales.
# Tareas principales:
◦Monitorear la marca e interpretar datos
◦Prever escenarios de crisis o de oportunidad
◦Establecer vínculos estratégicos (comunidades)
◦Identificar y "reclutar" líderes de opinión
◦Recopilar feedback para utilizarlos como propuestas de mejoras internas.
Para asegurar sus competencias, la selección del profesional debe responder a un proceso minucioso y exhaustivo que involucre a todas las áreas de la organización, transversalmente.
Un documento fue desarrolladoo por la consultora en Social Media Marketing Territorio Creativo y AERCO (Asociación Española de Responsables de Comunidad Online) y profundiza en 5 puntos esenciales para determinar las funciones y perfil específico del CM:
1. Escuchar:
Monitorizar constantemente la red en busca de conversaciones sobre la empresa, competidores y la industria.
2. Circular esta información internamente
Producto del monitoreo, ser capaz de extraer lo relevante de las conversaciones, crear un discurso entendible y hacérselo llegar a las personas correspondientes dentro de la organización
3. Explicar la posición de la empresa a la comunidad
El Community Manager asume la posición de vocero en el ecosistema digital, perfilándose como la persona más apropiada para plantear la posición de la empresa respecto a temas específicos ante a la comunidad online, de una manera positiva, abierta y clara.
4. Buscar líderes, tanto interna como externamente
Debe ser capaz de identificar y vincularse con líderes y públicos de alto potencial, tanto interna como externamente.
5. Encontrar vías de colaboración ente la comunidad y la empresa
Evangelizar internamente. Hacer entender a los ejecutivos clave las ventajas estratégicas de formar parte de la conversación online, de modo de impulsar el desarrollo de estrategias de colaboración coherentes y rentables.
Conclusión
La reputación se construye día día en las redes sociales. Los públicos hablan y seguirán hablando de la marca a pesar de que ella aún no forme a parte del entorno social de Internet. Contar con un responsable que maneje estratégica y eficazmente este entorno, entendiendo el valor de los diversos canales digitales para contribuir a la generación de valor de la empresa, será determinante para el éxito de la presencia social de la organización.
Fuente: socialmediablog.cl
http://jonathanbaldovino.com/caracterisitcas-y-funciones-del-community-manager/
El Community Manager es quien articula la marca en el ecosistema social de una manera compleja (contextualizando su origen en el webmaster y el moderador de foros). Mediante el profundo conocimiento de las necesidades y los planteamientos estratégicos de la organización y los intereses de los clientes, conduce la estrategia, construye, gestiona y modera comunidades en función de la marca y contribuye a fomentar el cambio al interior de la organización. Su figura ha adquirido gran relevancia al perfilarse como un vocero, articulador de la marca y reputación en el ámbito digital, con todas sus implicancias.
Hacer responsable de la administración de las comunidades online a estudiantes en práctica simplemente porque son baratos, geeks o muestran entusiasmo por las redes sociales, o prescindir de estos nuevos profesionales delegando la responsabilidad sobre miembros del mismo equipo de trabajo para minimizar costos es uno de los mayores desaciertos en los que se puede incurrir. Otro error es creer que la estrategia social se basa simplemente en contar con una persona que escriba en blogs, suba fotografías, cargue videos, actualice estados o modere comentarios. Materializar y construir identidad digital a través de la vinculación con las audiencias va más allá de la "ejecución social" como elemento de marketing. Crear comunidad, establecer vínculos y contribuir al logro de los objetivos de negocio de manera efectiva requiere de una visión de negocio integral; innovadora y altamente comprometida.
El Community Manager debe perfilarse como un estratega especializado en comunicación online, con conocimientos en marketing, publicidad y relaciones públicas, un early adopter en esencia y con experiencia para establecer relaciones de confianza con las audiencias.
# Algunas de sus características:
◦Debe poseer un profundo conocimiento de la empresa y la industria
◦Sentido común
◦Empatía
◦Inteligencia contextual (Es la habilidad de la persona para emplear sus conocimientos prácticos y su sentido común, así como para adaptarse al ambiente, llegan-do a reformar el entorno para acomodar a él sus posibilidades y minimizar sus defectos.)
◦Ser emocional
◦Ser capaz de evaluar e interpretar tendencias.
Tener habilidad para evangelizar a las distintas áreas de la empresa para que comprendan la necesidad estratégica de formar parte de la conversación en los medios sociales.
# Tareas principales:
◦Monitorear la marca e interpretar datos
◦Prever escenarios de crisis o de oportunidad
◦Establecer vínculos estratégicos (comunidades)
◦Identificar y "reclutar" líderes de opinión
◦Recopilar feedback para utilizarlos como propuestas de mejoras internas.
Para asegurar sus competencias, la selección del profesional debe responder a un proceso minucioso y exhaustivo que involucre a todas las áreas de la organización, transversalmente.
Un documento fue desarrolladoo por la consultora en Social Media Marketing Territorio Creativo y AERCO (Asociación Española de Responsables de Comunidad Online) y profundiza en 5 puntos esenciales para determinar las funciones y perfil específico del CM:
1. Escuchar:
Monitorizar constantemente la red en busca de conversaciones sobre la empresa, competidores y la industria.
2. Circular esta información internamente
Producto del monitoreo, ser capaz de extraer lo relevante de las conversaciones, crear un discurso entendible y hacérselo llegar a las personas correspondientes dentro de la organización
3. Explicar la posición de la empresa a la comunidad
El Community Manager asume la posición de vocero en el ecosistema digital, perfilándose como la persona más apropiada para plantear la posición de la empresa respecto a temas específicos ante a la comunidad online, de una manera positiva, abierta y clara.
4. Buscar líderes, tanto interna como externamente
Debe ser capaz de identificar y vincularse con líderes y públicos de alto potencial, tanto interna como externamente.
5. Encontrar vías de colaboración ente la comunidad y la empresa
Evangelizar internamente. Hacer entender a los ejecutivos clave las ventajas estratégicas de formar parte de la conversación online, de modo de impulsar el desarrollo de estrategias de colaboración coherentes y rentables.
Conclusión
La reputación se construye día día en las redes sociales. Los públicos hablan y seguirán hablando de la marca a pesar de que ella aún no forme a parte del entorno social de Internet. Contar con un responsable que maneje estratégica y eficazmente este entorno, entendiendo el valor de los diversos canales digitales para contribuir a la generación de valor de la empresa, será determinante para el éxito de la presencia social de la organización.
Fuente: socialmediablog.cl
http://jonathanbaldovino.com/caracterisitcas-y-funciones-del-community-manager/
viernes, 22 de octubre de 2010
Corona’s New Facebook Campaign Puts Your Face in Times Square
Corona is betting that young adults want to see their faces tower over New York City's Times Square; in order to make it happen though, the Mexican beer is turning to Facebook.
Grupo Modelo, the company behind the popular Mexican beer, has launched a campaign to promote Corona Light to the young adult crowd. It will contain traditional media advertising, but it's also placing Facebook() front-and-center in its efforts to become the "most liked light beer in America."
Here's how it works: you "like" the Corona Light Facebook page. Once you do that, you get access to the Times Square app, which will let you upload a photo (at least 500×500) for use in a billboard the company will be running from November 8 to December 6. There will even be pictures from the other side of the square showing what your face looks like hovering over the crowds of people that traverse Times Square every day.
This campaign, while simple, seems like an extremely smart move on Corona's part. Not only does it get the benefit of a Times Square ad, but it gets thousands of people to "like" Corona Light's Facebook page, where the company can deliver even more marketing messages and news about its beers. Not only that, but we bet there will be a lot of happy people who share their moment in Times Square with their friends, complete with Corona's advertising.
http://mashable.com/2010/10/12/corona-lite-facebook
Grupo Modelo, the company behind the popular Mexican beer, has launched a campaign to promote Corona Light to the young adult crowd. It will contain traditional media advertising, but it's also placing Facebook() front-and-center in its efforts to become the "most liked light beer in America."
Here's how it works: you "like" the Corona Light Facebook page. Once you do that, you get access to the Times Square app, which will let you upload a photo (at least 500×500) for use in a billboard the company will be running from November 8 to December 6. There will even be pictures from the other side of the square showing what your face looks like hovering over the crowds of people that traverse Times Square every day.
This campaign, while simple, seems like an extremely smart move on Corona's part. Not only does it get the benefit of a Times Square ad, but it gets thousands of people to "like" Corona Light's Facebook page, where the company can deliver even more marketing messages and news about its beers. Not only that, but we bet there will be a lot of happy people who share their moment in Times Square with their friends, complete with Corona's advertising.
http://mashable.com/2010/10/12/corona-lite-facebook
Social media no es abrir una página en Facebook y Twitter, hay detrás un concepto de diálogo
El sector del automóvil ha sido uno de los que más se ha visto afectado con la crisis económica que se está viviendo. A pesar de eso, hay fabricantes que incluso en época de vacas flacas apuestan por seguir comunicando y lo hacen a través de nuevas estrategias, entendiendo sobre todo el valor de internet. Una de ellas es Nissan. MarketingDirecto.com ha hablado en exclusiva con Javier Granados, el responsable de marketing interactivo de la compañía.
¿Cómo cree que se comportará el sector en lo que queda del año? ¿Cree que mejorará la situación en 2011?
El año 2010 no me ha dejado indiferente, ni para lo bueno, ni para lo malo. El sector de la automoción ha sufrido uno de sus peores momentos en los últimos años con bajadas en ventas espectaculares. Y a pesar de la inyección de moral que se le ha dado al mercado a través de planes de incentivo como el Plan 2000E, lo que resta del año no es muy esperanzador a causa del fin de las ayudas y de la subida del IVA. ¿Cómo se plantea el 2011? Todavía es toda una incógnita.
¿El marketing online ha sido el gran ganador de la crisis?
El hecho de trabajar en marketing online solo me ha traído satisfacciones personales. A pesar de que la inversión total en marketing pueda congelarse o incluso decrecer, el presupuesto dedicado a medios online cada vez es mayor. ¿La razón? La importancia que ha adquirido este medio durante los últimos años en el sector de la automoción.
Internet ha modificado totalmente el proceso de compra de un vehículo, y el papel que juegan los concesionarios. Anteriormente el concesionario era el lugar donde el cliente iba para informarse y tomar su decisión de compra. En cambio ahora es el lugar donde se ejecuta la decisión tomada con anterioridad, tras la información recogida principalmente en internet.
¿Qué papel ha jugado el marketing online en el sector del automóvil?
Algunos datos interesantes:
- Internet es el medio básico para informarse de un vehículo antes de su compra. Los consumidores buscan sobretodo información sobre las características del vehículo, opiniones y análisis, fotos y vídeos, así como el precio del vehículo y la existencia de ofertas.
- Internet ha acelerado el proceso de decisión de compra de un vehículo debido a la gran cantidad de información con la que cuentas los consumidores.
- Internet es la fuente de información a la que recurren un mayor número de consumidores, por encima de los concesionarios, las revistas y guías de coche, e incluso de las opiniones de familiares y amigos.
- En el pasado los consumidores visitaban varios concesionarios de distintas marcas. Gracias a internet, en la actualidad cada vez son más los compradores que visitan un solo concesionario para cerrar la venta.
Por tanto, internet resulta clave a la hora de decidir la compra de un vehículo como paso previo a formalizar la compra en un concesionario, y aún es mayor su incidencia cuando estamos hablando de vehículos de ocasión.
¿Y los social media?
Los fabricantes de vehículos estamos obligados como mínimo a tener una página web en condiciones, con información exhaustiva del vehículo, de su precio y ofertas, así como de una serie de herramientas que faciliten la decisión de compra y después dirija al consumidor al concesionario (descargas de catálogos, configurador del vehículo, localizador de concesionarios, etc.)
Pero este es el mínimo exigible. A partir de aquí, hay multitud de acciones adicionales que se pueden realizar, pero tienen que ir encaminadas a abrir un diálogo con el consumidor. Aquí es donde toma parte el social media, y donde las empresas aún tenemos mucho que trabajar. Social media no consiste en abrir una página en Facebook, otra en Twitter, y quizás un blog. Hay detrás un concepto de diálogo que debe ser entendido y puesto en práctica por la marca, y el sector de la automoción no es el mejor ejemplo. Aunque también hay que reconocer que se mejorando mucho en este aspecto durante los últimos meses.
¿Qué le espera al sector en el futuro?
Lo que algunas empresas (pero aún muy pocas) han comenzado a hacer: vender coches a través de Internet. De hecho, un 40% de los clientes potenciales estarían dispuestos a hacerlo ya si pudieran. De todas formas, yo soy de los románticos que piensa que el papel del concesionario, por muy virtual que se esté volviendo el negocio, es también fundamental. El trato personal no se puede perder, y es en el concesionario donde se puede acabar de ganar o de perder una venta. Así que hay aún hay mucho trabajo por delante, pero tanto el mundo virtual como el real debemos ir cogidos de la mano para ayudar al cliente en todo el proceso de compra, y estoy convencido que el consumidor lo agradecerá.
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/anunciantes/j-granados-nissan-social-media-no-es-abrir-una-pagina-en-facebook-y-twitter-hay-detras-un-concepto-de-dialogo
¿Cómo cree que se comportará el sector en lo que queda del año? ¿Cree que mejorará la situación en 2011?
El año 2010 no me ha dejado indiferente, ni para lo bueno, ni para lo malo. El sector de la automoción ha sufrido uno de sus peores momentos en los últimos años con bajadas en ventas espectaculares. Y a pesar de la inyección de moral que se le ha dado al mercado a través de planes de incentivo como el Plan 2000E, lo que resta del año no es muy esperanzador a causa del fin de las ayudas y de la subida del IVA. ¿Cómo se plantea el 2011? Todavía es toda una incógnita.
¿El marketing online ha sido el gran ganador de la crisis?
El hecho de trabajar en marketing online solo me ha traído satisfacciones personales. A pesar de que la inversión total en marketing pueda congelarse o incluso decrecer, el presupuesto dedicado a medios online cada vez es mayor. ¿La razón? La importancia que ha adquirido este medio durante los últimos años en el sector de la automoción.
Internet ha modificado totalmente el proceso de compra de un vehículo, y el papel que juegan los concesionarios. Anteriormente el concesionario era el lugar donde el cliente iba para informarse y tomar su decisión de compra. En cambio ahora es el lugar donde se ejecuta la decisión tomada con anterioridad, tras la información recogida principalmente en internet.
¿Qué papel ha jugado el marketing online en el sector del automóvil?
Algunos datos interesantes:
- Internet es el medio básico para informarse de un vehículo antes de su compra. Los consumidores buscan sobretodo información sobre las características del vehículo, opiniones y análisis, fotos y vídeos, así como el precio del vehículo y la existencia de ofertas.
- Internet ha acelerado el proceso de decisión de compra de un vehículo debido a la gran cantidad de información con la que cuentas los consumidores.
- Internet es la fuente de información a la que recurren un mayor número de consumidores, por encima de los concesionarios, las revistas y guías de coche, e incluso de las opiniones de familiares y amigos.
- En el pasado los consumidores visitaban varios concesionarios de distintas marcas. Gracias a internet, en la actualidad cada vez son más los compradores que visitan un solo concesionario para cerrar la venta.
Por tanto, internet resulta clave a la hora de decidir la compra de un vehículo como paso previo a formalizar la compra en un concesionario, y aún es mayor su incidencia cuando estamos hablando de vehículos de ocasión.
¿Y los social media?
Los fabricantes de vehículos estamos obligados como mínimo a tener una página web en condiciones, con información exhaustiva del vehículo, de su precio y ofertas, así como de una serie de herramientas que faciliten la decisión de compra y después dirija al consumidor al concesionario (descargas de catálogos, configurador del vehículo, localizador de concesionarios, etc.)
Pero este es el mínimo exigible. A partir de aquí, hay multitud de acciones adicionales que se pueden realizar, pero tienen que ir encaminadas a abrir un diálogo con el consumidor. Aquí es donde toma parte el social media, y donde las empresas aún tenemos mucho que trabajar. Social media no consiste en abrir una página en Facebook, otra en Twitter, y quizás un blog. Hay detrás un concepto de diálogo que debe ser entendido y puesto en práctica por la marca, y el sector de la automoción no es el mejor ejemplo. Aunque también hay que reconocer que se mejorando mucho en este aspecto durante los últimos meses.
¿Qué le espera al sector en el futuro?
Lo que algunas empresas (pero aún muy pocas) han comenzado a hacer: vender coches a través de Internet. De hecho, un 40% de los clientes potenciales estarían dispuestos a hacerlo ya si pudieran. De todas formas, yo soy de los románticos que piensa que el papel del concesionario, por muy virtual que se esté volviendo el negocio, es también fundamental. El trato personal no se puede perder, y es en el concesionario donde se puede acabar de ganar o de perder una venta. Así que hay aún hay mucho trabajo por delante, pero tanto el mundo virtual como el real debemos ir cogidos de la mano para ayudar al cliente en todo el proceso de compra, y estoy convencido que el consumidor lo agradecerá.
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/anunciantes/j-granados-nissan-social-media-no-es-abrir-una-pagina-en-facebook-y-twitter-hay-detras-un-concepto-de-dialogo
Robando marcas: NBC y All Blacks
Esta casa de deportes de Pergamino necesitaba logos para sus marcas.
Decidio ir por el camino mas facil: copiar algo exitoso. Este es el resultado.
La consolidación de los Medios Sociales: apuntes de la DMA 2010
Entre los días 11-14 de octubre participé de de la conferencia anual de la Asociación Norteamericana de Marketing Directo, realizada en San Francisco. Me fue allí para dar una clase intitulada"Gestión de Crisis en la Velocidad de la Web 2.0", dentro de un programa en español organizado por ICEMD, el Instituto de Comercio Electrónico y Marketing Directo vinculado a ESIC, donde empezaré a impartir clases sobre Gestión de la Reputación Online a partir de noviembre. Me gustaría de hacer cuatro comentarios sobre los tres días y medio del evento, en que busqué también asistir, principalmente, a las conferencias sobre Social Media:
1) La principal conclusión a la que llegué al participar fue que 2010 es el año de la consolidación de los medios sociales como herramienta de comunicación. Hay mucho que hacer y por ser descubierto en este nuevo mundo, pues vivimos todavía tiempos de brumas en este sentido. No obstante, quedó claro que su aceptación es irreversible, porque los usuarios así lo quieren y las empresas les acompañan. Nos encontramos en tiempos de "Apps, no Ads", como comentado por Rahim Fazal, CEO de Involver, con el concepto de "shareability" muy presente -algo así como la capacidad que un contenido tiene de ser compartido.
2) El tipo de atención que prestan las personas a los medios de comunicación ha cambiado mucho con Internet y con los diversos aparatos de conexión a la Red. Según el profesor Roberto Igarza, director de programas de la Universidad Austral (Argentina) y mi compañero del programa en español, las personas tienen su atención organizada en "burbujas de ocio", en las que Internet se convierte en un rol central en su sistema productivo, cultural/mediático y de comunicación interpersonal. Sobra muy poco tiempo para leer los periódicos, por ejemplo, y su lectura, cuando ocurre, no es más la misma que la de hace 20 años, es muchísimo más superficial y desatenta. Lo mismo ocurre con la publicidad. Como dijo el "infant terrible" Gary Vaynerchuk, un ponente que cree que estamos viviendo tiempos disruptivos, "la gente ya no lee más los carteles de la carretera cuando conduce. ¡La gente ahora envía textos! Hoy, la gente es el cartel."
3) Los medios sociales dejan de ser "hype" y entran, en definitiva, en el mundo del "Business". Si estamos asistiendo al nacimiento del "Homo Connectus", como preveía un estudio de 2007 del Pew Research, un fenómeno que cambia la relación de las personas con los medios tradicionales y entre ellos mismos, también estamos asistiendo, sin duda, a un cambio significativo en el marketing, que deja de ser "messaging" y avanza hacia la interacción. Un panel de ocho expertos, incluyendo a Brian Solis, con quien tuve el placer de charlar un rato, no se puso de acuerdo sobre de qué manera se sacará partido de esta interacción. Sin embargo, este "Super-Geek Panel" (el apodo divertido dado por Joost Van Niespen al grupo de expertos) indicó que la creación de un contexto favorable será una de las tareas principales de las empresas para mantener la nueva relación entre los medios sociales y las marcas. Sigue habiendo muchos retos en este nuevo mundo, porque la exigencia por la transparencia llega a niveles nunca antes conocidos - incluso éste era el enfoque de mi presentación.
4) Métricas para apoyar el conocimiento y a la decisión. Aunque las expectativas de los usuarios de los medios sociales sean distintas, los fundamentos de negocios siguen siendo los mismos; por ello, el tema de las métricas fue muy comentado también. Me llamó la atención, por ejemplo, que, en su ponencia, el representante de Nielsen asegurara que su empresa ha desarrollado métodos que van a poder cuantificar mejor el comportamiento de la audiencia de los medios sociales y el valor para los anunciantes. IBM también presentó una ponencia sobre los instrumentos que utiliza en sus proyectos para evaluar ROI.
¡Ah!, dije que serían cuatro, pero añado un último punto: Facebook fue, probablemente, el elemento de la nueva web más comentado del evento. ¿Estará el futuro de Internet social escrito por los "facenautas"? Por ahora, los números juegan en favor de Facebook, con su crecimiento exponencial y el tiempo que se lo dedica sus usuarios: 5 horas/mes, contra 1 hora/mes de Google (en los EEUU).
Cuando estuve en EEUU por invitación de IBM, a finales de los años 90, verifiqué que allí todos estaban buscando comprender Internet, el entonces "nuevo animal" de la comunicación. Creo que lo mismo ocurre ahora con la versión "en esteroides" de la Web. Nada está muy claro, pero, paradójicamente, todo está claro: la Web 2.0 es la nueva frontera de la comunicación y es muy importante saber cómo utilizarla.
http://www.comocomunicar.com/2010/10/la-consolidaci%C3%B3n-de-los-medios-sociales-apuntes-de-la-dma-2010.html
1) La principal conclusión a la que llegué al participar fue que 2010 es el año de la consolidación de los medios sociales como herramienta de comunicación. Hay mucho que hacer y por ser descubierto en este nuevo mundo, pues vivimos todavía tiempos de brumas en este sentido. No obstante, quedó claro que su aceptación es irreversible, porque los usuarios así lo quieren y las empresas les acompañan. Nos encontramos en tiempos de "Apps, no Ads", como comentado por Rahim Fazal, CEO de Involver, con el concepto de "shareability" muy presente -algo así como la capacidad que un contenido tiene de ser compartido.
2) El tipo de atención que prestan las personas a los medios de comunicación ha cambiado mucho con Internet y con los diversos aparatos de conexión a la Red. Según el profesor Roberto Igarza, director de programas de la Universidad Austral (Argentina) y mi compañero del programa en español, las personas tienen su atención organizada en "burbujas de ocio", en las que Internet se convierte en un rol central en su sistema productivo, cultural/mediático y de comunicación interpersonal. Sobra muy poco tiempo para leer los periódicos, por ejemplo, y su lectura, cuando ocurre, no es más la misma que la de hace 20 años, es muchísimo más superficial y desatenta. Lo mismo ocurre con la publicidad. Como dijo el "infant terrible" Gary Vaynerchuk, un ponente que cree que estamos viviendo tiempos disruptivos, "la gente ya no lee más los carteles de la carretera cuando conduce. ¡La gente ahora envía textos! Hoy, la gente es el cartel."
3) Los medios sociales dejan de ser "hype" y entran, en definitiva, en el mundo del "Business". Si estamos asistiendo al nacimiento del "Homo Connectus", como preveía un estudio de 2007 del Pew Research, un fenómeno que cambia la relación de las personas con los medios tradicionales y entre ellos mismos, también estamos asistiendo, sin duda, a un cambio significativo en el marketing, que deja de ser "messaging" y avanza hacia la interacción. Un panel de ocho expertos, incluyendo a Brian Solis, con quien tuve el placer de charlar un rato, no se puso de acuerdo sobre de qué manera se sacará partido de esta interacción. Sin embargo, este "Super-Geek Panel" (el apodo divertido dado por Joost Van Niespen al grupo de expertos) indicó que la creación de un contexto favorable será una de las tareas principales de las empresas para mantener la nueva relación entre los medios sociales y las marcas. Sigue habiendo muchos retos en este nuevo mundo, porque la exigencia por la transparencia llega a niveles nunca antes conocidos - incluso éste era el enfoque de mi presentación.
4) Métricas para apoyar el conocimiento y a la decisión. Aunque las expectativas de los usuarios de los medios sociales sean distintas, los fundamentos de negocios siguen siendo los mismos; por ello, el tema de las métricas fue muy comentado también. Me llamó la atención, por ejemplo, que, en su ponencia, el representante de Nielsen asegurara que su empresa ha desarrollado métodos que van a poder cuantificar mejor el comportamiento de la audiencia de los medios sociales y el valor para los anunciantes. IBM también presentó una ponencia sobre los instrumentos que utiliza en sus proyectos para evaluar ROI.
¡Ah!, dije que serían cuatro, pero añado un último punto: Facebook fue, probablemente, el elemento de la nueva web más comentado del evento. ¿Estará el futuro de Internet social escrito por los "facenautas"? Por ahora, los números juegan en favor de Facebook, con su crecimiento exponencial y el tiempo que se lo dedica sus usuarios: 5 horas/mes, contra 1 hora/mes de Google (en los EEUU).
Cuando estuve en EEUU por invitación de IBM, a finales de los años 90, verifiqué que allí todos estaban buscando comprender Internet, el entonces "nuevo animal" de la comunicación. Creo que lo mismo ocurre ahora con la versión "en esteroides" de la Web. Nada está muy claro, pero, paradójicamente, todo está claro: la Web 2.0 es la nueva frontera de la comunicación y es muy importante saber cómo utilizarla.
http://www.comocomunicar.com/2010/10/la-consolidaci%C3%B3n-de-los-medios-sociales-apuntes-de-la-dma-2010.html
jueves, 21 de octubre de 2010
The Six Stages of Social Customer
October 21, 2010 by Maria Ogneva
The Social Customer is not a figment of your imagination; she's here kicking social media butt and taking names. She wants to engage with you, the brand, but only when appropriate and convenient for her. Just because you are listening, does not mean that she wants to talk. Tools like Attensity Respond For Social Media help you understand what's relevant, what needs a follow-up and who should follow up. However, what you actually say to her is more of an art than a science. Understanding what her needs are, and where she is in her decision and consumption cycle, can help guide your conversation with her. I've identified 6 main stages that a customer goes through when communicating with brands via the social web, and what she is looking for in each cycle. Let the customer set the tone for the conversation and tell you what she needs; don't "show up and throw up".
1. Pain point identification: The first step to fixing any problem is the recognition of that problem. If the customer knows she has a problem, she becomes open to solving it, and later considers various solutions. What she is looking for: advice on what to do next, primarily from her network. This is not your place to sell your service; you must trend gently and realize that the most effective (i.e. listened to) communication will come from peers. This is where your advocacy buildig efforts will pay dividends; one word about you from a happy customer is worth 10 words from you about yourself. A tweet like "Oh no, my watch broke!" will elicit ideas from her network, such as: "Hey I know this great repair shop" or "Hey, Macy's is having a watch sale today." Listen to the context of these interactions, and only if you can add value, suggest an idea, remedy, send a link to a resource page (resource page is not your product demo page, by the way). Do not sell her to your solution; she hasn't yet decided which route she will take to solve her problem.
2. Research: After the customer decides on a course of action, she starts exploring options consistent with that course of action. Continuing our example... if she decides to buy a new watch, she will first examine independent advice on how to buy one, where to buy it, what the most important features are, as well as things to look for and avoid. Only then, will she be looking at various brands and retailers, and doing due diligence on the options available to her: via her network, consumer review sites and even brand and retailer sites at a later point. What she is looking for: advice and resources, and maybe more specific suggestions later. Again, don't send her links to a sale you are having. If she engages with you, and thinks you have been helpful, only then is it time to include: "Oh, and by the way, we are having this sale." Each situation is going to be different, and there are situations when it's not appropriate to talk about yourself at all, or at least until much later in the conversation. Consider the individual circumstances and remember that you have to earn the right to talk about yourself.
3. Validation: When a customer is in this phase, she has decided on a course of action and is evaluating options. This stage can be quick or drawn-out; length is typically dictated by engagement with the category, complexity of the product, average price (or price range) within the product category and availability of information about options (think: choosing a pen vs. an automobile). What she is looking for: her network to tell her about their experiences with a set of options, information from brands to be easily found, and brands to be available for questions and research. At this point, it's OK to share product information, but only if it makes sense. She isn't looking for a canned marketing message, but rather a customized learning experience. This is also the point where advocacy from her network can pay huge dividends for your brand. When she asks Twitter for a watch recommendation, she will listen to people she knows and trust first.
4. Selection: In a higher involvement category, she will probably select a couple of competitors to really focus on. At the end of this stage, she will select her top contender and will be ready to purchase. What she is looking for: a hands-on experience and support from the brands she is evaluating, tools to help her make a decision. If she gets a free trial of your product, make sure she is adequately supported. Here's an important point worth stressing: her customer experience during this period needs to be aligned with and indicative of her experience as a customer. If you provide phone support to paying customers, you need to provide it to potential customers. The reverse is also true: don't oversell the experience and then under-deliver. Decide how you want to support her and in which channels: social and / or traditional.
5. Post-purchase: Congratulations! You won the customer's business, and she signed up / purchased your product. You should know by now that customer retention is your number one priority. Not only is it cheaper than customer acquisition, but happy customers also make happy advocates, which in turn creates new customers, creating even more happy advocates, reinforcing the cycle. Happy customers are also good for sales: Vovici research shows that "a totally-satisfied customer contributed 2.6 times the annual revenue that a somewhat satisfied customer generated, and 14 times the revenue of a somewhat dissatisfied customer". So it follows that a tip-top customer experience is key and more than pays for the expense of providing it. What she is looking for: as your customer, she expects you to be available when she needs help, where she is, with a customized support experience, and to have her voice heard. Sending your customer to an 800 number over Twitter is not enough. Make sure your employees are empowered to give her the precise solution tailored to her problem. Taking it a step further, make sure you proactively collaborate with her and allow her to shape the future of the product. When listening to product feedback, don't get defensive; help her explain what she means, and never get so entrenched in your own vision that you can't take input or course-correct along the way.
6: Advocacy: This doesn't mean that you should kiss the hands of all people who say nice things about you. That being said, you should definitely invite your lead raving customers to share their experiences. But also understand that true advocacy comes from really listening and giving users a stake in the future of your product. Know who your advocates and influencers are, and give them the tools to tell your story. Don't force them to talk about you, but rather make it easy to rave if they have a good experience. What she needs: to be recognized as a contributor with solid ideas, have her ideas listened to and heard, and incorporated into the product. The stages of the decision cycle may and will vary by product and industry.
However, regardless of the industry and stage in the decision cycle, the social customer is always going to look for:
1.Speed of response
2.Speed of resolution
3.Honesty and transparency
4.Customization
5.Empathy, humanity and respect
http://socialmediatoday.com/themaria/208039/six-stages-social-customer
The Social Customer is not a figment of your imagination; she's here kicking social media butt and taking names. She wants to engage with you, the brand, but only when appropriate and convenient for her. Just because you are listening, does not mean that she wants to talk. Tools like Attensity Respond For Social Media help you understand what's relevant, what needs a follow-up and who should follow up. However, what you actually say to her is more of an art than a science. Understanding what her needs are, and where she is in her decision and consumption cycle, can help guide your conversation with her. I've identified 6 main stages that a customer goes through when communicating with brands via the social web, and what she is looking for in each cycle. Let the customer set the tone for the conversation and tell you what she needs; don't "show up and throw up".
1. Pain point identification: The first step to fixing any problem is the recognition of that problem. If the customer knows she has a problem, she becomes open to solving it, and later considers various solutions. What she is looking for: advice on what to do next, primarily from her network. This is not your place to sell your service; you must trend gently and realize that the most effective (i.e. listened to) communication will come from peers. This is where your advocacy buildig efforts will pay dividends; one word about you from a happy customer is worth 10 words from you about yourself. A tweet like "Oh no, my watch broke!" will elicit ideas from her network, such as: "Hey I know this great repair shop" or "Hey, Macy's is having a watch sale today." Listen to the context of these interactions, and only if you can add value, suggest an idea, remedy, send a link to a resource page (resource page is not your product demo page, by the way). Do not sell her to your solution; she hasn't yet decided which route she will take to solve her problem.
2. Research: After the customer decides on a course of action, she starts exploring options consistent with that course of action. Continuing our example... if she decides to buy a new watch, she will first examine independent advice on how to buy one, where to buy it, what the most important features are, as well as things to look for and avoid. Only then, will she be looking at various brands and retailers, and doing due diligence on the options available to her: via her network, consumer review sites and even brand and retailer sites at a later point. What she is looking for: advice and resources, and maybe more specific suggestions later. Again, don't send her links to a sale you are having. If she engages with you, and thinks you have been helpful, only then is it time to include: "Oh, and by the way, we are having this sale." Each situation is going to be different, and there are situations when it's not appropriate to talk about yourself at all, or at least until much later in the conversation. Consider the individual circumstances and remember that you have to earn the right to talk about yourself.
3. Validation: When a customer is in this phase, she has decided on a course of action and is evaluating options. This stage can be quick or drawn-out; length is typically dictated by engagement with the category, complexity of the product, average price (or price range) within the product category and availability of information about options (think: choosing a pen vs. an automobile). What she is looking for: her network to tell her about their experiences with a set of options, information from brands to be easily found, and brands to be available for questions and research. At this point, it's OK to share product information, but only if it makes sense. She isn't looking for a canned marketing message, but rather a customized learning experience. This is also the point where advocacy from her network can pay huge dividends for your brand. When she asks Twitter for a watch recommendation, she will listen to people she knows and trust first.
4. Selection: In a higher involvement category, she will probably select a couple of competitors to really focus on. At the end of this stage, she will select her top contender and will be ready to purchase. What she is looking for: a hands-on experience and support from the brands she is evaluating, tools to help her make a decision. If she gets a free trial of your product, make sure she is adequately supported. Here's an important point worth stressing: her customer experience during this period needs to be aligned with and indicative of her experience as a customer. If you provide phone support to paying customers, you need to provide it to potential customers. The reverse is also true: don't oversell the experience and then under-deliver. Decide how you want to support her and in which channels: social and / or traditional.
5. Post-purchase: Congratulations! You won the customer's business, and she signed up / purchased your product. You should know by now that customer retention is your number one priority. Not only is it cheaper than customer acquisition, but happy customers also make happy advocates, which in turn creates new customers, creating even more happy advocates, reinforcing the cycle. Happy customers are also good for sales: Vovici research shows that "a totally-satisfied customer contributed 2.6 times the annual revenue that a somewhat satisfied customer generated, and 14 times the revenue of a somewhat dissatisfied customer". So it follows that a tip-top customer experience is key and more than pays for the expense of providing it. What she is looking for: as your customer, she expects you to be available when she needs help, where she is, with a customized support experience, and to have her voice heard. Sending your customer to an 800 number over Twitter is not enough. Make sure your employees are empowered to give her the precise solution tailored to her problem. Taking it a step further, make sure you proactively collaborate with her and allow her to shape the future of the product. When listening to product feedback, don't get defensive; help her explain what she means, and never get so entrenched in your own vision that you can't take input or course-correct along the way.
6: Advocacy: This doesn't mean that you should kiss the hands of all people who say nice things about you. That being said, you should definitely invite your lead raving customers to share their experiences. But also understand that true advocacy comes from really listening and giving users a stake in the future of your product. Know who your advocates and influencers are, and give them the tools to tell your story. Don't force them to talk about you, but rather make it easy to rave if they have a good experience. What she needs: to be recognized as a contributor with solid ideas, have her ideas listened to and heard, and incorporated into the product. The stages of the decision cycle may and will vary by product and industry.
However, regardless of the industry and stage in the decision cycle, the social customer is always going to look for:
1.Speed of response
2.Speed of resolution
3.Honesty and transparency
4.Customization
5.Empathy, humanity and respect
http://socialmediatoday.com/themaria/208039/six-stages-social-customer
22 Tips to Differentiate Your Brand Presence
October 18, 2010 by Pam Moore
It's not news people are hopping online by the millions in hopes of a personal economic recovery. Budgets are tight. People are grasping for straws. They may be the best air conditioning expert, insurance sales person or event planner this side of Texas but that doesn't mean they know how to build a brand or truly survive in social media.
We teach them to follow, to listen. We teach them to learn from those on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn who have been around the block. We teach them to read blogs, comment and engage. However, I think in all the social media craziness, many are missing basic marketing 101 skills.
One key word getting lost is differentiation!
We talk about plans, objectives, content and blogs. We talk little about unique value, market segmentation, product differentiation, and standing out from the crowd. These words are exchanged for crowd sourcing, sharing and giving. Given this you can see why many newbies get confused.
Since they spend so much time "following" they forget who they are. Or worse, given the pressures of life and survival in a hurting economy they never develop their own brand to begin with.
Regardless of if it was on purpose or from a lack of knowledge there are far too many websites and businesses who look, smell and taste the same. We need to do more than assume the blog next door already did the proper research.
Several businesses I recently consulted with shared that they are being confused with one or two other local brands. Why is this? It is primarily due to the fact that their core messages are not their own. They initially thought "why reinvent the wheel when my competitor already has it figured out?" They have copied their ideas, ads, website layout and more. This is good news for their competitor as they now have a new kid on the block promoting their messages!
What newbies to marketing don't realize is when you build your content and your brand based on somebody else, in reality you are helping the business you are copying build their brand. Instead of building and differentiating a new brand for yourself you are reinforcing the brand messages for the guy or gal who was first on the block and has more brand awareness. Chances are the reason they have the higher brand awareness is because they created a real brand, not a copycat brand. They created a brand focused on their clients and the unique value they could offer them with relevant and compelling messages to support such.
This alone is reason enough to spend the time on differentiating yourself! Don't reinforce the brand of someone else. It will catch up to you in the form of lack of brand presence and differention. Or worse it will be a potential client that calls your bluff.
When you plagiarize ideas, content, brand messages and even positioning you are treading troubled waters. It goes deeper than the color or the logos. It means you are not walking the walk as it's not your talk you're talking. So when push comes to shove and if your audiences ever start to listen to you, once they hear the words come out of your mouth they will be confused when they don't line up with what you've blown out of proportion on your website or blog.
So, if this describes you, please don't throw in the towel. You simply need to step up to the plate and take responsibility for your message, your content, your brand and your business!
Dare to be different. Dare to stand out from the crowd. Dare to be you. Not the neighbor next door.
Brand Differentiation Test:
1. Is the content on your website, social platforms and marketing material yours? How much of it is "borrowed" from someone else? Be honest with yourself. Think of the "ideas" you built your messages on. Are they yours? Are the photos your ideas? Or did you look at a competitor or partner site and do a search on a photo stock site for the words that described what you saw in their photos?
2. How did you select your colors? Did you select them because they are your favorite colors? Are they the same as others in your market? If yes, is there a reason they need to be? Do the colors resonate with your audience? Just because your favorite colors are pink, yellow and light blue doesn't mean those are the colors that will best describe your unique value or resonate with your audience.
3. Do the family living room test. If you invited your competitor over for a walk-thru and a sit down dinner on your website how would they feel? If they would feel like they were at home, in familiar surroundings then you are not differentiated my friends. Sorry.
4. Do you have any messages or language in your marketing vocabulary that are unique? Is there anything you are saying that has not already been said one million times before? Do
something different. Your audience wants to be inspired and going with the flow isn't going to help you survive in the inspiration age.
5. Are your campaigns and product offerings proactive or a follow of others serving your same market? Are you launching and updating products and marketing materials based on your own go to market and product calendar or based on your competitors? The advice here is obvious. If it's not your own go back to the drawing board.
6. Generic searches for photos on Google does not equal differentiation. Not only is grabbing photos from a Google search uncool, it can also land you with copyright infringement. Just because you find it on Google doesn't mean you should copy and paste to your own blog. I about spit out my morning diet coke when I heard a local designer announce Google image searches was how she helped clients find cheap photos as she presented at a networking meeting a few weeks ago. #fail
Brand Reminders:
1. Build your own brand. If you lack skills in this area then hire an agency or consultant to help you. Pick up a book or two. Your brand should be the foundation for which you build your marketing and social platform. Do not skip or skimp this step. It is critical to success short and long term. I am launching a module on how to Zoom Your Brand in the next 30 days that I am confident will help you if you are stuck. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
2. A logo does not equal a brand. Many small business leaders think they are done with brand when they receive the logo and business card set from the local print shop designer. They think they've went all out if they have a website with two or three selected colors. Sorry folks, this is not brand. My first question to you will be why did you choose such colors? What do the colors say about you? What does your logo mean? Not just what does it look like.
3. Brand development doesn't happen in a day. If any agency tells you they can develop your brand in a couple days and after a one hour session with you, run the other direction. You get what you pay for. A good brand consultant or agency will want to spend time with you to understand your business. They will want to know what it is you do and why. What markets do you serve? How are you different? Why are you different? Do your customers think you're different? How do you want to make anyone who comes into contact with your brand feel? The list goes on but you get the point.
4. You are your brand! Your brand is the DNA of everything that encompasses your business. It is who you are, what you are, what you believe. It is how you answer the phone, what you say, how you dress at events, what your biz cards say and the list goes on. Define your brand. Develop your brand. Live your brand.
5. Be relevant. Don't just brand to brand. Brand with a focus on connection. Focus on standing out because you want your core values and offer to be remembered by your audience. By focusing on being relevant and compelling it will be easier to stay focused on your audience and not just yourself. The more you can focus externally the more relevant your brand will be.
10 Quick Tips to Differentiate:
If you have the guts to admit you need to clean up your brand act here are a few quick ways you can differentiate starting today. You can do some of these for the interim while you put your broader brand strategy together.
1. Select the top 10 words that describe you, your business and your unique value. Focus on how you want people to feel when they visit your site? What words do you want them to remember. What would you want them to tell a friend when talking about you.
2. Do the mama test. Based on the words above take a good hard look at your brand and identity. Would you be proud to show it to your mama? How about your favorite business mentor? Do your colors and logo align with the top words? Why or why not? Does your logo align with your core messages, values, and products or services? Does your website help people feel welcome? Is your overall brand experience something you are proud of? Your brand is your opportunity to exude to the market who you are and what you are. You should be proud to scream it from a mountain top. If not, make is so.
3. Create a quick message house. The longer term goal is to obviously create a comprehensive message house in coordination with your broader brand and identity development. However, for now at minimum create a one to two page document which at minimum includes your vision, mission, elevator pitch, description, value proposition, benefits, features and unique differentiators. This document will also be very useful if you hire a consultant or agency. It will provide them with something to start with and a better understanding of where your heart and head is in regard to your brand and identity.
4. Make it your own. If you know you are using deas and content that isn't your own, change this immediately. You are only supporting the brand of those you have copied. Tweak and make unique and invest in the ROI of your own business! Remove pages if you have to while you update. Go thru every single page starting at the top. Remove content and ideas not your own. If you are stuggling for ideas use your top 10 word list to search for photos on a photo site.
5. Focus on being YOU! If you know what you is but don't know how to get it from your head to paper, website and social platform, then hire someone to help. It will be the best money you spend as you are investing in yourself and your business. I see many business leaders who copy others only because they don't have technical or writing skills to put pen to paper with their thoughts in their head. Keeping the thoughts in your head will do nothing to monetize and differentiate what could be making the greatest difference in your business!
6. Select interim colors. Use the top 10 words you selected in #1 above as a foundation. If your business is about trust then don't build a red and yellow website. If it's about people then please don't only include photos of bits and bytes. Connect with your audience via color and imagery!
7. Get photo savvy. Add a unique flair with photos. Stock photos are an easy way to differentiate while adding color and depth to your site. You don't need a designer to add photos.
8. Focus on layout of your blog or website. If you copied block for block another key market player's website, change it. Add some video. Add more graphics. Do something different. If they have all photos, add text. If they have all text, add imagery. You don't have to keep it this way forever.
9. Spice up your email newsletter. If you have a regular email newsletter then change it up a little bit. Test out some colors or new graphics. Do a poll and ask readers if they notice what is different? Ask them what they like, what they would like to see more of.
10. Get social savvy. If you haven't already, customize your social media profiles. Add a custom Twitter or YouTube background. Add a custom Facebook fan page. Facebook offers numerous ways to customize your fan page. You can add a custom welcome tab, add an opt-in for your email list, add video, contests and more. Find some apps your competitors are not using.
11. Set goals to be followed vs being only a follower. A good goal would be that in a year others are wanting to follow you. This may sound crazy if your website right now consists of
copy paste ideas, colors and content from numerous sites. However, you started your business hopefully for a reason. My guess is if this is the case you have ideas in your head or you wouldn't be an entrepreneur to begin with. Get focused. Hire the help you need. Set a goal to be the standard others follow.
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/pammoore/205378/social-media-22-tips-differentiate-your-brand-presence
It's not news people are hopping online by the millions in hopes of a personal economic recovery. Budgets are tight. People are grasping for straws. They may be the best air conditioning expert, insurance sales person or event planner this side of Texas but that doesn't mean they know how to build a brand or truly survive in social media.
We teach them to follow, to listen. We teach them to learn from those on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn who have been around the block. We teach them to read blogs, comment and engage. However, I think in all the social media craziness, many are missing basic marketing 101 skills.
One key word getting lost is differentiation!
We talk about plans, objectives, content and blogs. We talk little about unique value, market segmentation, product differentiation, and standing out from the crowd. These words are exchanged for crowd sourcing, sharing and giving. Given this you can see why many newbies get confused.
Since they spend so much time "following" they forget who they are. Or worse, given the pressures of life and survival in a hurting economy they never develop their own brand to begin with.
Regardless of if it was on purpose or from a lack of knowledge there are far too many websites and businesses who look, smell and taste the same. We need to do more than assume the blog next door already did the proper research.
Several businesses I recently consulted with shared that they are being confused with one or two other local brands. Why is this? It is primarily due to the fact that their core messages are not their own. They initially thought "why reinvent the wheel when my competitor already has it figured out?" They have copied their ideas, ads, website layout and more. This is good news for their competitor as they now have a new kid on the block promoting their messages!
What newbies to marketing don't realize is when you build your content and your brand based on somebody else, in reality you are helping the business you are copying build their brand. Instead of building and differentiating a new brand for yourself you are reinforcing the brand messages for the guy or gal who was first on the block and has more brand awareness. Chances are the reason they have the higher brand awareness is because they created a real brand, not a copycat brand. They created a brand focused on their clients and the unique value they could offer them with relevant and compelling messages to support such.
This alone is reason enough to spend the time on differentiating yourself! Don't reinforce the brand of someone else. It will catch up to you in the form of lack of brand presence and differention. Or worse it will be a potential client that calls your bluff.
When you plagiarize ideas, content, brand messages and even positioning you are treading troubled waters. It goes deeper than the color or the logos. It means you are not walking the walk as it's not your talk you're talking. So when push comes to shove and if your audiences ever start to listen to you, once they hear the words come out of your mouth they will be confused when they don't line up with what you've blown out of proportion on your website or blog.
So, if this describes you, please don't throw in the towel. You simply need to step up to the plate and take responsibility for your message, your content, your brand and your business!
Dare to be different. Dare to stand out from the crowd. Dare to be you. Not the neighbor next door.
Brand Differentiation Test:
1. Is the content on your website, social platforms and marketing material yours? How much of it is "borrowed" from someone else? Be honest with yourself. Think of the "ideas" you built your messages on. Are they yours? Are the photos your ideas? Or did you look at a competitor or partner site and do a search on a photo stock site for the words that described what you saw in their photos?
2. How did you select your colors? Did you select them because they are your favorite colors? Are they the same as others in your market? If yes, is there a reason they need to be? Do the colors resonate with your audience? Just because your favorite colors are pink, yellow and light blue doesn't mean those are the colors that will best describe your unique value or resonate with your audience.
3. Do the family living room test. If you invited your competitor over for a walk-thru and a sit down dinner on your website how would they feel? If they would feel like they were at home, in familiar surroundings then you are not differentiated my friends. Sorry.
4. Do you have any messages or language in your marketing vocabulary that are unique? Is there anything you are saying that has not already been said one million times before? Do
something different. Your audience wants to be inspired and going with the flow isn't going to help you survive in the inspiration age.
5. Are your campaigns and product offerings proactive or a follow of others serving your same market? Are you launching and updating products and marketing materials based on your own go to market and product calendar or based on your competitors? The advice here is obvious. If it's not your own go back to the drawing board.
6. Generic searches for photos on Google does not equal differentiation. Not only is grabbing photos from a Google search uncool, it can also land you with copyright infringement. Just because you find it on Google doesn't mean you should copy and paste to your own blog. I about spit out my morning diet coke when I heard a local designer announce Google image searches was how she helped clients find cheap photos as she presented at a networking meeting a few weeks ago. #fail
Brand Reminders:
1. Build your own brand. If you lack skills in this area then hire an agency or consultant to help you. Pick up a book or two. Your brand should be the foundation for which you build your marketing and social platform. Do not skip or skimp this step. It is critical to success short and long term. I am launching a module on how to Zoom Your Brand in the next 30 days that I am confident will help you if you are stuck. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
2. A logo does not equal a brand. Many small business leaders think they are done with brand when they receive the logo and business card set from the local print shop designer. They think they've went all out if they have a website with two or three selected colors. Sorry folks, this is not brand. My first question to you will be why did you choose such colors? What do the colors say about you? What does your logo mean? Not just what does it look like.
3. Brand development doesn't happen in a day. If any agency tells you they can develop your brand in a couple days and after a one hour session with you, run the other direction. You get what you pay for. A good brand consultant or agency will want to spend time with you to understand your business. They will want to know what it is you do and why. What markets do you serve? How are you different? Why are you different? Do your customers think you're different? How do you want to make anyone who comes into contact with your brand feel? The list goes on but you get the point.
4. You are your brand! Your brand is the DNA of everything that encompasses your business. It is who you are, what you are, what you believe. It is how you answer the phone, what you say, how you dress at events, what your biz cards say and the list goes on. Define your brand. Develop your brand. Live your brand.
5. Be relevant. Don't just brand to brand. Brand with a focus on connection. Focus on standing out because you want your core values and offer to be remembered by your audience. By focusing on being relevant and compelling it will be easier to stay focused on your audience and not just yourself. The more you can focus externally the more relevant your brand will be.
10 Quick Tips to Differentiate:
If you have the guts to admit you need to clean up your brand act here are a few quick ways you can differentiate starting today. You can do some of these for the interim while you put your broader brand strategy together.
1. Select the top 10 words that describe you, your business and your unique value. Focus on how you want people to feel when they visit your site? What words do you want them to remember. What would you want them to tell a friend when talking about you.
2. Do the mama test. Based on the words above take a good hard look at your brand and identity. Would you be proud to show it to your mama? How about your favorite business mentor? Do your colors and logo align with the top words? Why or why not? Does your logo align with your core messages, values, and products or services? Does your website help people feel welcome? Is your overall brand experience something you are proud of? Your brand is your opportunity to exude to the market who you are and what you are. You should be proud to scream it from a mountain top. If not, make is so.
3. Create a quick message house. The longer term goal is to obviously create a comprehensive message house in coordination with your broader brand and identity development. However, for now at minimum create a one to two page document which at minimum includes your vision, mission, elevator pitch, description, value proposition, benefits, features and unique differentiators. This document will also be very useful if you hire a consultant or agency. It will provide them with something to start with and a better understanding of where your heart and head is in regard to your brand and identity.
4. Make it your own. If you know you are using deas and content that isn't your own, change this immediately. You are only supporting the brand of those you have copied. Tweak and make unique and invest in the ROI of your own business! Remove pages if you have to while you update. Go thru every single page starting at the top. Remove content and ideas not your own. If you are stuggling for ideas use your top 10 word list to search for photos on a photo site.
5. Focus on being YOU! If you know what you is but don't know how to get it from your head to paper, website and social platform, then hire someone to help. It will be the best money you spend as you are investing in yourself and your business. I see many business leaders who copy others only because they don't have technical or writing skills to put pen to paper with their thoughts in their head. Keeping the thoughts in your head will do nothing to monetize and differentiate what could be making the greatest difference in your business!
6. Select interim colors. Use the top 10 words you selected in #1 above as a foundation. If your business is about trust then don't build a red and yellow website. If it's about people then please don't only include photos of bits and bytes. Connect with your audience via color and imagery!
7. Get photo savvy. Add a unique flair with photos. Stock photos are an easy way to differentiate while adding color and depth to your site. You don't need a designer to add photos.
8. Focus on layout of your blog or website. If you copied block for block another key market player's website, change it. Add some video. Add more graphics. Do something different. If they have all photos, add text. If they have all text, add imagery. You don't have to keep it this way forever.
9. Spice up your email newsletter. If you have a regular email newsletter then change it up a little bit. Test out some colors or new graphics. Do a poll and ask readers if they notice what is different? Ask them what they like, what they would like to see more of.
10. Get social savvy. If you haven't already, customize your social media profiles. Add a custom Twitter or YouTube background. Add a custom Facebook fan page. Facebook offers numerous ways to customize your fan page. You can add a custom welcome tab, add an opt-in for your email list, add video, contests and more. Find some apps your competitors are not using.
11. Set goals to be followed vs being only a follower. A good goal would be that in a year others are wanting to follow you. This may sound crazy if your website right now consists of
copy paste ideas, colors and content from numerous sites. However, you started your business hopefully for a reason. My guess is if this is the case you have ideas in your head or you wouldn't be an entrepreneur to begin with. Get focused. Hire the help you need. Set a goal to be the standard others follow.
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/pammoore/205378/social-media-22-tips-differentiate-your-brand-presence
miércoles, 20 de octubre de 2010
First Look: Starbucks Digital Network Is Here
Beginning Wednesday, Starbucks customers who use the free Wi-Fi at more than 6,800 U.S. company-operated stores will be greeted with the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) — an exclusive content network curated by the company and designed to enhance the customer's in-store experience.
Starbucks has been teasing SDN for months, but now that the network is about to go live we have a much clearer idea about the type of content provided and the purpose behind the digital endeavor.
Starbucks's Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman sat down with Mashable in advance of the October 20 launch day for a complete tour.
"The vision," he says, "is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that's in all of our stores."
SDN Content, Channels and Partners
We've known for some time that SDN would offer unfettered access to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today, but that's just scratching the surface. Starbucks has manufactured a rich experience around each of its six channels: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business and Careers, My Neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks channel.
Here's a comprehensive breakdown of each channel:
News: This section of SDN is comprised of Starbucks media partners offering premium or exclusive content to customers. The New York Times has opened up access to its
Reader 2.0 subscription-based service for free, all content from the The Wall Street Journal is available minus the paywall and the exact replica of the USA Today newspaper is accessible to users on the network. Newly signed content partner GOOD is providing early access to its infographics, so Starbucks customers can view them before anyone else.
Entertainment: Starbucks has populated the entertainment portion of its network with music, apps and books from Apple's iTunes, full access to a selection of books picked by Starbucks and provided by the Bookish Reading Club (via an HTML5 reader), business e-books courtesy of New Word City, a kid-rich experience powered by Nick Jr. Boost and handpicked documentary films provided by SnagFilms.
Wellness: Health and fitness publisher Rodale is the primary content provider for this SDN channel. Customers have access to specialized content — not available to anyone other than Starbucks customers — from Men's Health, Women's Health, Runner's World, Bicycling, Prevention, Organic Gardening and Eat This, Not That!, along with a custom built "Map my Ride, Map my Run" application.
Business and Careers: Professional social networking site LinkedIn is making exclusive video and blog content available to Wi-Fi users in this channel. The network also provides LinkedIn job search and suggestions, and offers users a 30-day free trial for the premium account.
My Neighborhood: Starbucks is adamant about creating a localized experience to connect customers with the community around the store. The company delivers on this objective by serving up content to users based on the exact whereabouts of the store where the user is accessing the free Wi-Fi. Community fare includes local news from Patch and a look at nearby DonorsChoose.org classroom projects that could benefit from small contributions. Foursquare users can check in via the web from Starbucks stores, and Zagat makes available full ratings for restaurants in the surrounding area for free.
Starbucks: This channel provides a personalized customer experience for Starbucks account/card management and also amasses all of Starbucks social (Twitter/Facebook/MyStarbucksIdea) and digital properties under one umbrella.
We may be kicking a gift horse in the mouth, but one thing that struck us about SDN is that there's almost too much content to go around. In some aspects the experience seems saturated and overwhelming, so customer's may not know where to start and partners providing premium content may find some of it gets overlooked.
We broached the subject with Brotman who explained that Starbucks will be tracking user activity via web analytics to get a sense of what users respond to. The network is designed to feel fresh each time you come back and the three promo tiles on the home page rotate to engineer more than 40 unique experiences.
It's a priority for Starbucks to ensure that customers have easy access to content, and "that all the content partners are feeling like they have an equal shot," Brotman says.
A Premium Mobile Experience
SDN certainly packs in a variety of content that makes for interesting material to explore on a laptop, but the network was also designed with the mobile user in mind.
Users accessing the network via mobile devices and tablets will benefit from the HTML5 smartphone-optimized network. SDN for mobile is also touchscreen-friendly, offering a hands-on, swipe-able experience.
More than 50% of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi are doing so from mobile devices, so the company was motivated by usage behaviors to build a mobile web experience just as good, if not better than, the standard web experience. Content was also designed to be "snackable," so the mobile user can get value even while waiting in line, says Brotman.
Where Yahoo Fits In
While SDN is cloaked in the Starbucks brand name, Yahoo actually plays a pivotal role in the behind-the-scenes network experience. Yahoo is the coffee retailer's technology partner on the initiative, so it not only developed the site at Starbucks's behest, but it's hosting the network, powering the search experience and providing content as well.
Yahoo will also serve as a promotional partner for SDN and market SDN on its site in the form of banner ads.
The two partners hooked up after Starbucks approached Yahoo about the initiative. "They're so strong in the three areas we knew we needed help with — technology, content and search," says Brotman, "so we came to them … and they were eager."
"They seemed excited by the local and unique nature of the Starbucks Digital Network," explains Brotman on why Yahoo was eager to work with the trendy coffee retailer.
The Bottom Line is Choice
One would assume, correctly so, that Starbucks has not gone to trouble of providing free Wi-Fi and a premium digital network without thinking about how it could profit by these pricey additions. If we didn't know better, we'd presume that Starbucks was charging its partners for placement. Instead, as we've disclosed before, there's no money changing hands — unless SDN users make purchases from partners, in which case there is a revenue share.
What it comes down is a matter of choice. Coffee and tea drinkers have a myriad of options, so for Starbucks it's about motivating the customer to choose its stores and its digital network content partners by association.
SDN is designed with two key objectives in mind, says Brotman: enhancing the customer's experience and better engaging customers while they're in the store.
"Tens of millions of customers are coming in to our stores and logging in to our Wi-Fi on a monthly basis anyways. They're coming in because we provide this great experience — good music overhead, quality food and coffee and the opportunity to connect with your friends or the baristas … What we hope is that this is a nice complement to that experience."
The engagement piece is centered around what Starbucks can do with location and perhaps reveals a bit more about Yahoo's motivation to participate. "We're really excited about the fact that we can leverage the location-based nature of the site to connect our customers with the communities around the stores," he says.
http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/first-look-starbucks-digital-network-is-here
Starbucks has been teasing SDN for months, but now that the network is about to go live we have a much clearer idea about the type of content provided and the purpose behind the digital endeavor.
Starbucks's Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman sat down with Mashable in advance of the October 20 launch day for a complete tour.
"The vision," he says, "is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that's in all of our stores."
SDN Content, Channels and Partners
We've known for some time that SDN would offer unfettered access to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today, but that's just scratching the surface. Starbucks has manufactured a rich experience around each of its six channels: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business and Careers, My Neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks channel.
Here's a comprehensive breakdown of each channel:
News: This section of SDN is comprised of Starbucks media partners offering premium or exclusive content to customers. The New York Times has opened up access to its
Reader 2.0 subscription-based service for free, all content from the The Wall Street Journal is available minus the paywall and the exact replica of the USA Today newspaper is accessible to users on the network. Newly signed content partner GOOD is providing early access to its infographics, so Starbucks customers can view them before anyone else.
Entertainment: Starbucks has populated the entertainment portion of its network with music, apps and books from Apple's iTunes, full access to a selection of books picked by Starbucks and provided by the Bookish Reading Club (via an HTML5 reader), business e-books courtesy of New Word City, a kid-rich experience powered by Nick Jr. Boost and handpicked documentary films provided by SnagFilms.
Wellness: Health and fitness publisher Rodale is the primary content provider for this SDN channel. Customers have access to specialized content — not available to anyone other than Starbucks customers — from Men's Health, Women's Health, Runner's World, Bicycling, Prevention, Organic Gardening and Eat This, Not That!, along with a custom built "Map my Ride, Map my Run" application.
Business and Careers: Professional social networking site LinkedIn is making exclusive video and blog content available to Wi-Fi users in this channel. The network also provides LinkedIn job search and suggestions, and offers users a 30-day free trial for the premium account.
My Neighborhood: Starbucks is adamant about creating a localized experience to connect customers with the community around the store. The company delivers on this objective by serving up content to users based on the exact whereabouts of the store where the user is accessing the free Wi-Fi. Community fare includes local news from Patch and a look at nearby DonorsChoose.org classroom projects that could benefit from small contributions. Foursquare users can check in via the web from Starbucks stores, and Zagat makes available full ratings for restaurants in the surrounding area for free.
Starbucks: This channel provides a personalized customer experience for Starbucks account/card management and also amasses all of Starbucks social (Twitter/Facebook/MyStarbucksIdea) and digital properties under one umbrella.
We may be kicking a gift horse in the mouth, but one thing that struck us about SDN is that there's almost too much content to go around. In some aspects the experience seems saturated and overwhelming, so customer's may not know where to start and partners providing premium content may find some of it gets overlooked.
We broached the subject with Brotman who explained that Starbucks will be tracking user activity via web analytics to get a sense of what users respond to. The network is designed to feel fresh each time you come back and the three promo tiles on the home page rotate to engineer more than 40 unique experiences.
It's a priority for Starbucks to ensure that customers have easy access to content, and "that all the content partners are feeling like they have an equal shot," Brotman says.
A Premium Mobile Experience
SDN certainly packs in a variety of content that makes for interesting material to explore on a laptop, but the network was also designed with the mobile user in mind.
Users accessing the network via mobile devices and tablets will benefit from the HTML5 smartphone-optimized network. SDN for mobile is also touchscreen-friendly, offering a hands-on, swipe-able experience.
More than 50% of users logging on to the free Wi-Fi are doing so from mobile devices, so the company was motivated by usage behaviors to build a mobile web experience just as good, if not better than, the standard web experience. Content was also designed to be "snackable," so the mobile user can get value even while waiting in line, says Brotman.
Where Yahoo Fits In
While SDN is cloaked in the Starbucks brand name, Yahoo actually plays a pivotal role in the behind-the-scenes network experience. Yahoo is the coffee retailer's technology partner on the initiative, so it not only developed the site at Starbucks's behest, but it's hosting the network, powering the search experience and providing content as well.
Yahoo will also serve as a promotional partner for SDN and market SDN on its site in the form of banner ads.
The two partners hooked up after Starbucks approached Yahoo about the initiative. "They're so strong in the three areas we knew we needed help with — technology, content and search," says Brotman, "so we came to them … and they were eager."
"They seemed excited by the local and unique nature of the Starbucks Digital Network," explains Brotman on why Yahoo was eager to work with the trendy coffee retailer.
The Bottom Line is Choice
One would assume, correctly so, that Starbucks has not gone to trouble of providing free Wi-Fi and a premium digital network without thinking about how it could profit by these pricey additions. If we didn't know better, we'd presume that Starbucks was charging its partners for placement. Instead, as we've disclosed before, there's no money changing hands — unless SDN users make purchases from partners, in which case there is a revenue share.
What it comes down is a matter of choice. Coffee and tea drinkers have a myriad of options, so for Starbucks it's about motivating the customer to choose its stores and its digital network content partners by association.
SDN is designed with two key objectives in mind, says Brotman: enhancing the customer's experience and better engaging customers while they're in the store.
"Tens of millions of customers are coming in to our stores and logging in to our Wi-Fi on a monthly basis anyways. They're coming in because we provide this great experience — good music overhead, quality food and coffee and the opportunity to connect with your friends or the baristas … What we hope is that this is a nice complement to that experience."
The engagement piece is centered around what Starbucks can do with location and perhaps reveals a bit more about Yahoo's motivation to participate. "We're really excited about the fact that we can leverage the location-based nature of the site to connect our customers with the communities around the stores," he says.
http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/first-look-starbucks-digital-network-is-here
Shoppers Take a Nonlinear Path to Purchase
OCTOBER 20, 2010
A lingering recession, coupled with consumers' rapid adoption of digital tools, has inexorably altered shopping behavior in categories like groceries, home electronics, apparel and quick-service restaurants. Consumers engage with a variety of digital platforms as they research small and large purchases, when they're in physical stores and during post-shop activities such as product reviews and referrals. Further, the path to purchase is increasingly nonlinear, according to the findings of a global retail study conducted by Microsoft Advertising and Carat.
The study, conducted in March 2010, examined how the recession has changed shoppers' purchasing habits and how different media touchpoints affect consumer shopping behavior, including the way people learn about, research and discuss their purchase decisions. This shift has altered the traditional purchase funnel whereby marketers move consumers from awareness to sales to include digital media. For example, consumers may first learn about a product based on a tweet from a friend or a post on a social network, then go online via computer or smartphone to research the product, search for the product and consult product reviews. Beyond that, offline word-of-mouth and media remain influencers, making for a complex multimedia experience along the path to purchase.
Using mobile devices in-store to help make a final decision on an item is a newer and notable influence along the purchase path: The study found 38% of US shoppers said they used their mobile devices to help make a final decision to make a store purchase. And 31% of those polled purchased a new item after using their phone in-store. This finding signifies the rise of yet another media channel in the convoluted path to purchase.
Further demonstrating the need for brands and retailers to evaluate the impact of digital touchpoints, the study found that post-shop, 11% of those blogged about the purchase experience, posted a comment about the purchase on a social networking site and 11% posted a review online, respectively.
In addition, the research found that in the low-involvement grocery segment, 39% of those surveyed engaged in social network conversation about potential purchases but 47% of grocery reconnaissance occurred on the phone with friends and family. It is worth noting that not all social networking is digital.
Another study, "Engaging Consumers: The New Normal," conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, iModerate Research Technologies and SageBerry Consulting, underscores the findings. That report found that since consumers have reduced spending, the shopping process becomes all the more important. The bottom line: Entirely new shopping, research and media consumption habits are emerging—and retailers and brands need to figure out how to address them.
"We found that the way people shop has changed and that during the period where people are making and refining lists, owned media from retailers is a top source of information," said Beth Uyenco Shatto, global research director with Microsoft's ads unit.
By "owned" Shatto means media that originates from retailers online, in-store and elsewhere. Owned media created by marketers that appears on the retailer's site (e.g., banners, video and microsites), along with in-store media, are also influential.
As consumer purchasing habits change, so must retailer and marketer communications. They need to collaborate to engage consumers on every channel that has the capacity to influence purchase and result in post-purchase satisfaction
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007997
A lingering recession, coupled with consumers' rapid adoption of digital tools, has inexorably altered shopping behavior in categories like groceries, home electronics, apparel and quick-service restaurants. Consumers engage with a variety of digital platforms as they research small and large purchases, when they're in physical stores and during post-shop activities such as product reviews and referrals. Further, the path to purchase is increasingly nonlinear, according to the findings of a global retail study conducted by Microsoft Advertising and Carat.
The study, conducted in March 2010, examined how the recession has changed shoppers' purchasing habits and how different media touchpoints affect consumer shopping behavior, including the way people learn about, research and discuss their purchase decisions. This shift has altered the traditional purchase funnel whereby marketers move consumers from awareness to sales to include digital media. For example, consumers may first learn about a product based on a tweet from a friend or a post on a social network, then go online via computer or smartphone to research the product, search for the product and consult product reviews. Beyond that, offline word-of-mouth and media remain influencers, making for a complex multimedia experience along the path to purchase.
Using mobile devices in-store to help make a final decision on an item is a newer and notable influence along the purchase path: The study found 38% of US shoppers said they used their mobile devices to help make a final decision to make a store purchase. And 31% of those polled purchased a new item after using their phone in-store. This finding signifies the rise of yet another media channel in the convoluted path to purchase.
Further demonstrating the need for brands and retailers to evaluate the impact of digital touchpoints, the study found that post-shop, 11% of those blogged about the purchase experience, posted a comment about the purchase on a social networking site and 11% posted a review online, respectively.
In addition, the research found that in the low-involvement grocery segment, 39% of those surveyed engaged in social network conversation about potential purchases but 47% of grocery reconnaissance occurred on the phone with friends and family. It is worth noting that not all social networking is digital.
Another study, "Engaging Consumers: The New Normal," conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, iModerate Research Technologies and SageBerry Consulting, underscores the findings. That report found that since consumers have reduced spending, the shopping process becomes all the more important. The bottom line: Entirely new shopping, research and media consumption habits are emerging—and retailers and brands need to figure out how to address them.
"We found that the way people shop has changed and that during the period where people are making and refining lists, owned media from retailers is a top source of information," said Beth Uyenco Shatto, global research director with Microsoft's ads unit.
By "owned" Shatto means media that originates from retailers online, in-store and elsewhere. Owned media created by marketers that appears on the retailer's site (e.g., banners, video and microsites), along with in-store media, are also influential.
As consumer purchasing habits change, so must retailer and marketer communications. They need to collaborate to engage consumers on every channel that has the capacity to influence purchase and result in post-purchase satisfaction
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007997
martes, 19 de octubre de 2010
Third Screen Media founder launches hybrid loyalty-advertising platform
Mickey Alam Khan - October 19, 2010
Tom Burgess, founder of what was one of the earliest and biggest mobile ad networks, today launches Clovr Media, a new consumer loyalty and interactive advertising platform that marries cards, online and mobile.
Securing $1.5 million in seed funding from investors Kepha Partners and Common Angels, Mr. Burgess hopes to do with Clovr what he did with mobile ad network Third Screen Media – build it to a size where it is impossible to ignore. Having successfully sold Third Screen Media to AOL Time Warner in 2007 for low nine figures, the Waltham, MA-based CEO now sees opportunity for brands and retailers to turn interactive ad campaigns into card-linked offers.
"Similar to mobile advertising in 2005, the CLO marketplace is an emerging segment that will see significant growth over the next several years and is destined to become a common functionality for all online and mobile ad campaigns," Mr. Burgess said.
In this exclusive Q&A, Mr. Burgess – who went on a oceanic sailing hiatus after Third Screen's sale – explains how Clovr is being positioned as the bridge to improved digital advertising, the growth potential of card-linked offers and why it just does not make sense when skeptics doubt the potential of mobile.
"Even today I hear a lot of chatter that mobile is in its early stages," Mr. Burgess said.
"Come on guys – high-speed connectivity is commonplace, smartphones have reached significant market penetration and the consumers' go-to access device is their mobile phone," he said. "We're way beyond the early days."
Please read on:
Clovr Media – that's an unusual name for an unusual business, isn't it?
The name Clovr Media is derived from Card-Linked-Offers-Virtual-Redemption.
Card Linked Offers, or CLOs, have been used for many years in the banking industry.
The concept of linking loyalty rewards or special offers to consumers' credit/debit cards is nothing new.
At Clovr Media we've created the next generation of CLO capability, ushering in a Loyalty 2.0 solution. Clovr Media is an innovator in the emerging CLO advertising market segment.
You were one of the first to spot the mobile advertising opportunity many years ago and then took time off after selling mobile ad network ThirdScreen Media to AOL in 2007. Do you see the same opportunity now in card-linked offers?
CLOs play a critical role in Loyalty 2.0.
Similar to mobile advertising in 2005, the CLO marketplace is an emerging segment that will see significant growth over the next several years and is destined to become a common functionality for all online and mobile ad campaigns.
CLOs provide advertisers the ability to secure customers up-stream at the purchase consideration phase and realize 100 percent attribution on every campaign.
Financial institutions now have the ability to provide loyalty benefits to their consumers beyond their traditional online banking and paper statement touch points and consumers realize a frictionless path to saving money.
What's the focus of Clovr Media?
Clovr Media is ushering in Loyalty 2.0 by bridging the gap between two massive industries, consumer banking and interactive advertising.
Who are you targeting?
Our primary customers are brand advertisers.
More specifically, we are targeting retailers and the manufacturer brands sold at retail.
It is important to note that we offer the ability to create CLOs at both the merchant level and the SKU level.
How does your offering work?
Our software platform provides a gateway between financial institutions and interactive advertising.
Brands are now able to turn their mobile or online banner, text, search and video advertisements into CLO's, securing customer's up-stream at the purchase consideration phase and realizing 100 percent attribution on every campaign.
Consumers' existing credit/debit cards are enabled via our card issuing bank partners as part of their loyalty 2.0 offerings.
Consumers see CLO enabled ads offering retail and product discounts during their regular use of the Internet, mobile and online.
When clicked, these Clovr-enabled ads link special offers directly to the consumers' existing credit/debit cards.
Consumers automatically receive the credit directly on their payment card statement with no interaction required at the point of sale.
The consumer is informed via text message or email, which is their choice, to their mobile device when they successfully link an offer to their card and post purchase when the credit has been applied to their account.
Obviously your go-to-market strategy is already in play. Could you spell it out?
We have spent the past several months simultaneously securing partnerships throughout the digital media and financial marketplaces and building our gateway software platform.
Progress on those efforts led to discussions with retailers and brands, and based on successful milestones we are excited to finally go public with our offering.
As of today, interested parties can visit our Web site at http://www.clovrmedia.com.
Over the next few months we will be preparing the first-ever round of CLO-enabled mobile and online interactive advertising banner ad campaigns.
You've had the long view of mobile. Where is it today?
This is a great question.
Keep in mind that I have been in this market since 2001. Mobile operators laughed at me when I announced that mobile was the next frontier of digital media and interactive advertising.
The concept that mobile operators would become successful media companies was scoffed at.
Even today I hear a lot of chatter that mobile is in its early stages.
Come on guys – high-speed connectivity is commonplace, smartphones have reached significant market penetration and the consumers' go-to access device is their mobile phone.
We're way beyond the early days.
Just look at the outstanding consumer user experience of being able to browse the Web at high speed, access GPS-enabled turn-by-turn mapping with a couple clicks, snapping a picture or shooting a video and instantly posting it to your preferred social media. You can't do all this with second-screen devices.
These are the days of growth, innovation and achieving leadership solutions that are only possible on the mobile platform.
I could go on with many specific examples of great innovations in mobile, but there is not enough time in this interview.
So what challenge are you helping address?
Clovr Media is addressing three primary challenges.
First, we are helping financial institutions meet their demand for new, cost-effective loyalty solutions.
Next, we are delivering on the desire for advertisers to achieve consistent and reliable campaign attribution.
Finally, we are providing a new form of customer acquisition and loyalty for retailers.
Let's not forget that all of these goals are being achieved while providing you and me, consumers, with a simpler way to save money.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7800.html
Tom Burgess, founder of what was one of the earliest and biggest mobile ad networks, today launches Clovr Media, a new consumer loyalty and interactive advertising platform that marries cards, online and mobile.
Securing $1.5 million in seed funding from investors Kepha Partners and Common Angels, Mr. Burgess hopes to do with Clovr what he did with mobile ad network Third Screen Media – build it to a size where it is impossible to ignore. Having successfully sold Third Screen Media to AOL Time Warner in 2007 for low nine figures, the Waltham, MA-based CEO now sees opportunity for brands and retailers to turn interactive ad campaigns into card-linked offers.
"Similar to mobile advertising in 2005, the CLO marketplace is an emerging segment that will see significant growth over the next several years and is destined to become a common functionality for all online and mobile ad campaigns," Mr. Burgess said.
In this exclusive Q&A, Mr. Burgess – who went on a oceanic sailing hiatus after Third Screen's sale – explains how Clovr is being positioned as the bridge to improved digital advertising, the growth potential of card-linked offers and why it just does not make sense when skeptics doubt the potential of mobile.
"Even today I hear a lot of chatter that mobile is in its early stages," Mr. Burgess said.
"Come on guys – high-speed connectivity is commonplace, smartphones have reached significant market penetration and the consumers' go-to access device is their mobile phone," he said. "We're way beyond the early days."
Please read on:
Clovr Media – that's an unusual name for an unusual business, isn't it?
The name Clovr Media is derived from Card-Linked-Offers-Virtual-Redemption.
Card Linked Offers, or CLOs, have been used for many years in the banking industry.
The concept of linking loyalty rewards or special offers to consumers' credit/debit cards is nothing new.
At Clovr Media we've created the next generation of CLO capability, ushering in a Loyalty 2.0 solution. Clovr Media is an innovator in the emerging CLO advertising market segment.
You were one of the first to spot the mobile advertising opportunity many years ago and then took time off after selling mobile ad network ThirdScreen Media to AOL in 2007. Do you see the same opportunity now in card-linked offers?
CLOs play a critical role in Loyalty 2.0.
Similar to mobile advertising in 2005, the CLO marketplace is an emerging segment that will see significant growth over the next several years and is destined to become a common functionality for all online and mobile ad campaigns.
CLOs provide advertisers the ability to secure customers up-stream at the purchase consideration phase and realize 100 percent attribution on every campaign.
Financial institutions now have the ability to provide loyalty benefits to their consumers beyond their traditional online banking and paper statement touch points and consumers realize a frictionless path to saving money.
What's the focus of Clovr Media?
Clovr Media is ushering in Loyalty 2.0 by bridging the gap between two massive industries, consumer banking and interactive advertising.
Who are you targeting?
Our primary customers are brand advertisers.
More specifically, we are targeting retailers and the manufacturer brands sold at retail.
It is important to note that we offer the ability to create CLOs at both the merchant level and the SKU level.
How does your offering work?
Our software platform provides a gateway between financial institutions and interactive advertising.
Brands are now able to turn their mobile or online banner, text, search and video advertisements into CLO's, securing customer's up-stream at the purchase consideration phase and realizing 100 percent attribution on every campaign.
Consumers' existing credit/debit cards are enabled via our card issuing bank partners as part of their loyalty 2.0 offerings.
Consumers see CLO enabled ads offering retail and product discounts during their regular use of the Internet, mobile and online.
When clicked, these Clovr-enabled ads link special offers directly to the consumers' existing credit/debit cards.
Consumers automatically receive the credit directly on their payment card statement with no interaction required at the point of sale.
The consumer is informed via text message or email, which is their choice, to their mobile device when they successfully link an offer to their card and post purchase when the credit has been applied to their account.
Obviously your go-to-market strategy is already in play. Could you spell it out?
We have spent the past several months simultaneously securing partnerships throughout the digital media and financial marketplaces and building our gateway software platform.
Progress on those efforts led to discussions with retailers and brands, and based on successful milestones we are excited to finally go public with our offering.
As of today, interested parties can visit our Web site at http://www.clovrmedia.com.
Over the next few months we will be preparing the first-ever round of CLO-enabled mobile and online interactive advertising banner ad campaigns.
You've had the long view of mobile. Where is it today?
This is a great question.
Keep in mind that I have been in this market since 2001. Mobile operators laughed at me when I announced that mobile was the next frontier of digital media and interactive advertising.
The concept that mobile operators would become successful media companies was scoffed at.
Even today I hear a lot of chatter that mobile is in its early stages.
Come on guys – high-speed connectivity is commonplace, smartphones have reached significant market penetration and the consumers' go-to access device is their mobile phone.
We're way beyond the early days.
Just look at the outstanding consumer user experience of being able to browse the Web at high speed, access GPS-enabled turn-by-turn mapping with a couple clicks, snapping a picture or shooting a video and instantly posting it to your preferred social media. You can't do all this with second-screen devices.
These are the days of growth, innovation and achieving leadership solutions that are only possible on the mobile platform.
I could go on with many specific examples of great innovations in mobile, but there is not enough time in this interview.
So what challenge are you helping address?
Clovr Media is addressing three primary challenges.
First, we are helping financial institutions meet their demand for new, cost-effective loyalty solutions.
Next, we are delivering on the desire for advertisers to achieve consistent and reliable campaign attribution.
Finally, we are providing a new form of customer acquisition and loyalty for retailers.
Let's not forget that all of these goals are being achieved while providing you and me, consumers, with a simpler way to save money.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7800.html
lunes, 18 de octubre de 2010
Twitter Promoted to Ad Network
October 18, 2010 - Brian Solis
Four-and-a-half years ago, Jack Dorsey sent the Tweet that would eventually spark a social revolution. At just 24 characters long, Dorsey and the Twitter team introduced us, one by one, to a new medium for connecting and communicating with one another. It would forever change how its community shared, discovered, and learned, setting the stage for a new era of influence and relevance. And in just four short years, Twitter would emerge as something more personal than a social network, it would serve as a human seismograph for facilitating, tracking, and measuring human movement and experiences.
Here we are, 54 months and 160 million registered users later, Twitter has officially established itself as a formidable and incredibly valuable community online. Reluctant to accept advertising for the majority of its life, Twitter is now starting to introduce new programs that officially position the company as both an integrated information and ad network.
Twitter is a special network that connects the "me" in social media to a very healthy egosystem. I mean this in a good way of course. While many have pegged it as a social network or a microblog, its adoption, behavior and the culture that has evolved over the years dictates otherwise.
We're connected to individuals we know as well as those who inspire us. In turn, we also influence individuals we know and those we do not, but still follow our thoughts and experiences because they're meaningful or useful. We share experiences and events that move and each time we do, our networks transform based on the topic of the moment. On Twitter, we're communicating and responding based on context and as such, we form contextual networks that represent our interests, passions, and strong, week, and temporary ties we maintain online and offline. And, this is why Twitter's new advertising program is both an interest network as well as an ad network. It's the difference between a social graph and an interest graph.
This is not Don Draper's Madison Avenue
Recently Twitter co-founder Evan Williams stepped down from CEO and current COO, Dick Costolo assumed control. This move indicated that Twitter was officially open for "the ad" business.
Costolo officially debuted the new Twitter at Advertising Week in New York, where he told the audience, "We feel like we've cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we've got a hit on our hands."
The key words however are "new" and "form," meaning that that legacy methodologies and approaches inhibited success in this new paradigm.
Indeed, gimmicks and one-sided communication are the pillars of old school thinking. And, creativity is the minimum ante to play the game of "new" advertising in Twitter. It's a matter of real-time vs. right time. And for many unsuspecting or ill-informed brands, many are simply competing for the moment or attention rather than establishing prominence and driving meaningful action.
Let's take a look at Old Spice for a moment. When it ran the largely celebrated campaign where "The Old Spice Guy" created custom content for Twitter influencers, conversations around the brand soared.
But what goes up, must also come down. Conversations related to Old Spice soared for the few days that the unique campaign was alive, but eventually settled to everyday levels.To succeed in Twitter, whether advertising or engagement, we must think beyond competing for the moment and shift our mindset and supporting budget from that of campaign to a new world of continuum. Otherwise, all of our brilliance and spend, will blitz "the moment," but never earn the level of prominence or community that matters online and in the real world. Thus, advertisers must focus on the very people (The 5th P) they're trying to reach, and what moves them to take action, when their attention is focused everywhere but you. Give them something to talk about…
Twitter Promotes from Within
For years, Twitter focused on cultivating and protecting its community. The risk was not worth the reward, no matter how lucrative, if the community didn't embrace or support the budding advertising system. Twitter introduced its beta advertising platform in April 2010 with Promoted Tweets. Early test cases by Virgin America, Starbucks, among others, would eventually sing its praises, deeming the Promoted Tweets program immensely successful. Even without those reports, brands and advertisers were lining up for an opportunity to finally quench a voracious thirst that at times felt would never taste refreshment. Everybody wanted in and now's there's a chance.
The company's pilot program started with just six advertisers and already boasts over 40, including Ford and Microsoft. Costolo stated that he expects more than 100 by the end of the year. To support the growing network of advertisers, Twitter is introducing three avenues of advertising.
Promoted Accounts, a new program that suggests related brand profiles as a form of expedited audience building. The new vehicle kicked off with Xbox and HBO.
Twitter started to activate third-party networks to extend the reach of ads beyond Twitter.com. The first program commenced with HootSuite.
Next year, Twitter will introduce a self-serve advertising tool for local businesses and will serve each promotion based on location.
The two prevailing advertising programs will continue, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
Promoted Tweets serve ads at the top of search results and they're tied to the contextual relevance of each query. For example, if "Toronto" or "Canada" as the search term, the user might see an ad promoting Virgin America specials for flights to Toronto. While Promoted Tweets only appear in search results today, these units will eventually appear in the stream related to the context of what users usually Tweet about. If a user regularly Tweets about Starbucks, coffee or caffeine, for example, they might see a paid Tweet from Starbucks.
Promoted Trends are among the most visible and potentially viral. Twitter's population contributes to the most popular trends based on the concentration and velocity of keywords and events. Advertisers can appear among the Twitter Trends as a Promoted Trend to the tune of $100,000 per day. Twitter states that 5 percent of its userbase click on the Promoted Trend, which is 5x the activity that a typical display ad experiences. Interestingly, and perhaps demonstrative of the architecture of the advertising program, Coca-Cola claims its response rates around Promoted Trends is significantly higher than 5 percent. And, in Coca-Cola's campaign, users were required to click twice, once on the Promote Trend and second on the link contained in the Tweet.
The company has run more than 50 campaigns on Twitter and as Michael Donnelly, group director for worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola recently told the New York Times, brands must be relevant in order to earn relevance, "At the end of the day, it's a very different product than traditional online ads. People are engaged and looking for a specific topic, so it's relevant."
As brands vie for position in Twitter's fledgling ad network, relevance is now the pillar for earning attention. Once a promotion effectively disrupts attention and the flow of the stream, shareability and actionability become paramount as a critical path to what I refer to as R.R.S. (Relevance Resonance Significance). Promoted aspects of Twitter now possess the opportunity and also responsibility to activate the social web, transforming from ads to social objects. As such, earned resonance is inherently amplified and thus encourages the survival, performance, and endurance of each promotion lifespan in the stream.
http://www.briansolis.com/2010/10/twitter-promoted-to-ad-network/
Four-and-a-half years ago, Jack Dorsey sent the Tweet that would eventually spark a social revolution. At just 24 characters long, Dorsey and the Twitter team introduced us, one by one, to a new medium for connecting and communicating with one another. It would forever change how its community shared, discovered, and learned, setting the stage for a new era of influence and relevance. And in just four short years, Twitter would emerge as something more personal than a social network, it would serve as a human seismograph for facilitating, tracking, and measuring human movement and experiences.
Here we are, 54 months and 160 million registered users later, Twitter has officially established itself as a formidable and incredibly valuable community online. Reluctant to accept advertising for the majority of its life, Twitter is now starting to introduce new programs that officially position the company as both an integrated information and ad network.
Twitter is a special network that connects the "me" in social media to a very healthy egosystem. I mean this in a good way of course. While many have pegged it as a social network or a microblog, its adoption, behavior and the culture that has evolved over the years dictates otherwise.
We're connected to individuals we know as well as those who inspire us. In turn, we also influence individuals we know and those we do not, but still follow our thoughts and experiences because they're meaningful or useful. We share experiences and events that move and each time we do, our networks transform based on the topic of the moment. On Twitter, we're communicating and responding based on context and as such, we form contextual networks that represent our interests, passions, and strong, week, and temporary ties we maintain online and offline. And, this is why Twitter's new advertising program is both an interest network as well as an ad network. It's the difference between a social graph and an interest graph.
This is not Don Draper's Madison Avenue
Recently Twitter co-founder Evan Williams stepped down from CEO and current COO, Dick Costolo assumed control. This move indicated that Twitter was officially open for "the ad" business.
Costolo officially debuted the new Twitter at Advertising Week in New York, where he told the audience, "We feel like we've cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we've got a hit on our hands."
The key words however are "new" and "form," meaning that that legacy methodologies and approaches inhibited success in this new paradigm.
Indeed, gimmicks and one-sided communication are the pillars of old school thinking. And, creativity is the minimum ante to play the game of "new" advertising in Twitter. It's a matter of real-time vs. right time. And for many unsuspecting or ill-informed brands, many are simply competing for the moment or attention rather than establishing prominence and driving meaningful action.
Let's take a look at Old Spice for a moment. When it ran the largely celebrated campaign where "The Old Spice Guy" created custom content for Twitter influencers, conversations around the brand soared.
But what goes up, must also come down. Conversations related to Old Spice soared for the few days that the unique campaign was alive, but eventually settled to everyday levels.To succeed in Twitter, whether advertising or engagement, we must think beyond competing for the moment and shift our mindset and supporting budget from that of campaign to a new world of continuum. Otherwise, all of our brilliance and spend, will blitz "the moment," but never earn the level of prominence or community that matters online and in the real world. Thus, advertisers must focus on the very people (The 5th P) they're trying to reach, and what moves them to take action, when their attention is focused everywhere but you. Give them something to talk about…
Twitter Promotes from Within
For years, Twitter focused on cultivating and protecting its community. The risk was not worth the reward, no matter how lucrative, if the community didn't embrace or support the budding advertising system. Twitter introduced its beta advertising platform in April 2010 with Promoted Tweets. Early test cases by Virgin America, Starbucks, among others, would eventually sing its praises, deeming the Promoted Tweets program immensely successful. Even without those reports, brands and advertisers were lining up for an opportunity to finally quench a voracious thirst that at times felt would never taste refreshment. Everybody wanted in and now's there's a chance.
The company's pilot program started with just six advertisers and already boasts over 40, including Ford and Microsoft. Costolo stated that he expects more than 100 by the end of the year. To support the growing network of advertisers, Twitter is introducing three avenues of advertising.
Promoted Accounts, a new program that suggests related brand profiles as a form of expedited audience building. The new vehicle kicked off with Xbox and HBO.
Twitter started to activate third-party networks to extend the reach of ads beyond Twitter.com. The first program commenced with HootSuite.
Next year, Twitter will introduce a self-serve advertising tool for local businesses and will serve each promotion based on location.
The two prevailing advertising programs will continue, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
Promoted Tweets serve ads at the top of search results and they're tied to the contextual relevance of each query. For example, if "Toronto" or "Canada" as the search term, the user might see an ad promoting Virgin America specials for flights to Toronto. While Promoted Tweets only appear in search results today, these units will eventually appear in the stream related to the context of what users usually Tweet about. If a user regularly Tweets about Starbucks, coffee or caffeine, for example, they might see a paid Tweet from Starbucks.
Promoted Trends are among the most visible and potentially viral. Twitter's population contributes to the most popular trends based on the concentration and velocity of keywords and events. Advertisers can appear among the Twitter Trends as a Promoted Trend to the tune of $100,000 per day. Twitter states that 5 percent of its userbase click on the Promoted Trend, which is 5x the activity that a typical display ad experiences. Interestingly, and perhaps demonstrative of the architecture of the advertising program, Coca-Cola claims its response rates around Promoted Trends is significantly higher than 5 percent. And, in Coca-Cola's campaign, users were required to click twice, once on the Promote Trend and second on the link contained in the Tweet.
The company has run more than 50 campaigns on Twitter and as Michael Donnelly, group director for worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola recently told the New York Times, brands must be relevant in order to earn relevance, "At the end of the day, it's a very different product than traditional online ads. People are engaged and looking for a specific topic, so it's relevant."
As brands vie for position in Twitter's fledgling ad network, relevance is now the pillar for earning attention. Once a promotion effectively disrupts attention and the flow of the stream, shareability and actionability become paramount as a critical path to what I refer to as R.R.S. (Relevance Resonance Significance). Promoted aspects of Twitter now possess the opportunity and also responsibility to activate the social web, transforming from ads to social objects. As such, earned resonance is inherently amplified and thus encourages the survival, performance, and endurance of each promotion lifespan in the stream.
http://www.briansolis.com/2010/10/twitter-promoted-to-ad-network/
What if Gap chose to truly engage its customers ...
October 18, 2010 by Jonathan Baskin
Gap announced a new logo on October 4, and a week later retracted it with a promise to keep the old one. The chorus of vociferous customer disdain for the new design was topped only by the branding experts who vilified it. So the market spoke, aided in large part by social media, and Gap responded. And that's that.
No, wait...what happened? What does it mean for Gap?
Or, put more simply, who cares?
Most media reported that the Gap's "customers" had done the complaining. So did Gap's president of North America, who called it a "...passionate outpouring from customers..." Only this isn't true. There's no way of knowing.
The group of consumers who shop Gap has been shrinking steadily for years. Repeat (and very glossy and expensive) ad campaigns have failed to keep them, let alone attract new shoppers, so the company has instead tried to find profits by cutting costs...so stores have gotten more cluttered, less deep on sizes, and far leaner on qualified or motivated staff. Sales have been down every month for the past half-year, and the stock price has fallen almost 10% since 2009.
So complaints from many Gap customers would be a good thing, if not somewhat surprising, since who knew they still existed? A passionate outpouring would be particularly notable since an Ad Age poll found that 80% of consumers hadn't even heard that the logo had changed.
Gap can claim 742,000-plus "friends" on its Facebook page, but who knows how many weighed in on the logo or, more importantly, if any of them bought something at the store in recent memory. Snarky Twitter hashtags proliferated for an extended nanosecond, and people posted comments numbering in the hundreds on news web sites. "Passion" in this instance likely amounted to on-line clicks and quippy comments from a small universe of complete strangers. I'd hate to imagine what constitutes "brief passing interest" these days.
The branding and design community commentary was a bit easier to track, especially since they are in the business of speaking out on logos so they can get work designing more of them. What was notable wasn't that some of them didn't like it; all of them could have compared it to a dirty smudge for all it matters, since the logo biz is about as important to businesses as the color of the paper cups in employee lunchrooms. A tweet dissing the new design was damning like a complaint that the revolving door at corporate HQ doesn't spin fast enough.
I think the only people who really cared about the new logo were the folks at Gap and, if I'm right, it says some scary things about what's going on inside the company.
Until last week, the logo is just about the only thing that hadn't changed at Gap. For those of us who think anything at all about the brand, our memories harken back to a time of dancing khaki commercials and solid clothing basics for men and women that were stylish and durable. Those days are long gone, and with them any real differentiation for the chain, by any measure...design, manufacturing, assortment, display, staffing, pricing, services...so much that the old logo really doesn't fit the new brand.
The stores are mislabeled.
But company management wasn't trying to fix this. "We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward," hyped the company's president. Yeah, right. Of the zillions of things you need to be doing to repair your business, the logo jumped to the top of the list. If I were a stockholder I'd sell my shares.
The president continued in her statement about the retreat: "We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community." Er, no, you failed to recognize that the people who complained about your logo don't matter to you, or that you missed the chance to get them into your stores. The real insight here isn't that a small fishbowl of strangers can click and burp their opinions on anything and everything; it's that real conversation and engagement need to happen before and after the online part, not just during it.
Imagine if Gap chose to truly engage its customers in a real conversation about its business?
•Crowdsource input on the assortment, allowing people to commit to items (and prices) a la the Groupon model. Get people to tell the brand what they can't find at other stores instead of trying to sell versions of the same things to them.
•Encourage customers to vote on the quality of staff help and in-store experiences overall, and tie that feedback to substantive chunks of bonus pay and store upkeep budgets.
•Focus on its credit card community as the community of consumers who matter most, and give them real financial incentives to participate in dialogue about the brand (and, conversely, discount the POVs of folks who are too busy to actually shop at the stores or on-line site).
Who cares about the logo? Change it, leave it alone, whatever. The goal should be profitable sales and happy customers. Deliver that, and the logo will seem absolutely and utterly perfect.
http://socialmediatoday.com/jonathansalembaskin/205488/logo-you-dont
Gap announced a new logo on October 4, and a week later retracted it with a promise to keep the old one. The chorus of vociferous customer disdain for the new design was topped only by the branding experts who vilified it. So the market spoke, aided in large part by social media, and Gap responded. And that's that.
No, wait...what happened? What does it mean for Gap?
Or, put more simply, who cares?
Most media reported that the Gap's "customers" had done the complaining. So did Gap's president of North America, who called it a "...passionate outpouring from customers..." Only this isn't true. There's no way of knowing.
The group of consumers who shop Gap has been shrinking steadily for years. Repeat (and very glossy and expensive) ad campaigns have failed to keep them, let alone attract new shoppers, so the company has instead tried to find profits by cutting costs...so stores have gotten more cluttered, less deep on sizes, and far leaner on qualified or motivated staff. Sales have been down every month for the past half-year, and the stock price has fallen almost 10% since 2009.
So complaints from many Gap customers would be a good thing, if not somewhat surprising, since who knew they still existed? A passionate outpouring would be particularly notable since an Ad Age poll found that 80% of consumers hadn't even heard that the logo had changed.
Gap can claim 742,000-plus "friends" on its Facebook page, but who knows how many weighed in on the logo or, more importantly, if any of them bought something at the store in recent memory. Snarky Twitter hashtags proliferated for an extended nanosecond, and people posted comments numbering in the hundreds on news web sites. "Passion" in this instance likely amounted to on-line clicks and quippy comments from a small universe of complete strangers. I'd hate to imagine what constitutes "brief passing interest" these days.
The branding and design community commentary was a bit easier to track, especially since they are in the business of speaking out on logos so they can get work designing more of them. What was notable wasn't that some of them didn't like it; all of them could have compared it to a dirty smudge for all it matters, since the logo biz is about as important to businesses as the color of the paper cups in employee lunchrooms. A tweet dissing the new design was damning like a complaint that the revolving door at corporate HQ doesn't spin fast enough.
I think the only people who really cared about the new logo were the folks at Gap and, if I'm right, it says some scary things about what's going on inside the company.
Until last week, the logo is just about the only thing that hadn't changed at Gap. For those of us who think anything at all about the brand, our memories harken back to a time of dancing khaki commercials and solid clothing basics for men and women that were stylish and durable. Those days are long gone, and with them any real differentiation for the chain, by any measure...design, manufacturing, assortment, display, staffing, pricing, services...so much that the old logo really doesn't fit the new brand.
The stores are mislabeled.
But company management wasn't trying to fix this. "We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward," hyped the company's president. Yeah, right. Of the zillions of things you need to be doing to repair your business, the logo jumped to the top of the list. If I were a stockholder I'd sell my shares.
The president continued in her statement about the retreat: "We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community." Er, no, you failed to recognize that the people who complained about your logo don't matter to you, or that you missed the chance to get them into your stores. The real insight here isn't that a small fishbowl of strangers can click and burp their opinions on anything and everything; it's that real conversation and engagement need to happen before and after the online part, not just during it.
Imagine if Gap chose to truly engage its customers in a real conversation about its business?
•Crowdsource input on the assortment, allowing people to commit to items (and prices) a la the Groupon model. Get people to tell the brand what they can't find at other stores instead of trying to sell versions of the same things to them.
•Encourage customers to vote on the quality of staff help and in-store experiences overall, and tie that feedback to substantive chunks of bonus pay and store upkeep budgets.
•Focus on its credit card community as the community of consumers who matter most, and give them real financial incentives to participate in dialogue about the brand (and, conversely, discount the POVs of folks who are too busy to actually shop at the stores or on-line site).
Who cares about the logo? Change it, leave it alone, whatever. The goal should be profitable sales and happy customers. Deliver that, and the logo will seem absolutely and utterly perfect.
http://socialmediatoday.com/jonathansalembaskin/205488/logo-you-dont
Eight Social Media Trends for 2011
October 18, 2010 by Gini Dietrich
Following are 8 trends you should pay attention to as you plan for 2011.
1. Social commerce. Social who? In short, you can now sell on Facebook by letting your customers buy, but also letting them tell their friends. And letting their friends tell their friends. Even if you don't offer ecommerce on your website, it's now possible to provide that service through the social network. And it's overly simple to set up.
2. Group buying. You've heard of sites, such as Groupon, that sell for discounts if you get your friends to "group" together to buy a product or service? Based on the $1 billion price tag Groupon received earlier this year, expect them and like-minded sites (such as LivingSocial, YouSwoop, and ScoutMom) to continue to grow, offering you a new way to reach different audiences.
3. Q&A sites. It may seem crazy if you're not a high user of the social platforms, but people are beginning to make real decisions based on recommendations from their virtual friends. Sites such as JustAnswer will begin to pop up, allowing people to ask a question and get real answers, from real people. The marketing possibilities become endless because you'll begin to collect data from groups of people instead of one customer at a time.
4. Mobile. It's no surprise our phones are becoming like third hands for most of us or that we're eons behind Asian countries on how we use them. But we're beginning to catch on and move toward abandoning our laptops for phones. Watch for movement toward mobile payments and begin thinking about how to accept payments via an application on the phone.
5. Content, content, content. Did I mention content? A lot of people will disagree with me – some think content is dead. I don't think we've scratched the surface. All companies should become media companies, in that the content they provide is valuable, consistent, and non-salesy. This will be big for B2B companies while they figure out how to use, what they've always considered, intellectual property to attract new customers. Examples include white papers, enewsletters, podcasts, and videos.
6. FTC rulings. It may not be as early as next year, but the FTC is already looking at regulating our industry. It began with disclosure on blogs and then on paid reviews. Next will be around ethics and how we approach traditional journalists and bloggers. That's why becoming a media company will be even more important – you'll be able to reach your customers and prospects without relying solely on the influencers. But hire an attorney because you'll need to really understand what you can and cannot do and say through your content.
7. Net neutrality. It makes me crazy that no one is paying attention to net neutrality and what Google and Verizon are planning to do. If they are successful, the Internet (as early as next year) will become a paid model, just like cable television. So being able to write a blog post at 6:00 in the morning and post it two hours later and letting it reach audiences around the world FOR FREE will be gone. The playing field will no longer be level and the companies that can afford to have their content delivered more quickly will again be kings of the earth. Not because they're better; because they have more cash. Davids truly will be fighting Goliaths in an unfair, non-level playing field.
8. Customer engagement. We talked about this a little bit yesterday, in terms of customer-centric vs. customer-focused organizations. If companies do not engage their customers, I mean really engage them as human beings and not as people who you think want to be sold, it won't matter what kind of content you have, how you follow the FTC rules, or if you have more cash to get on the Internet more quickly. If you don't know how to engage your customers, start by asking them simple questions when you talk to them: What is one thing we do that you wish we did better? Having Facebook communities and Twitter followers and blog readers are great, but what about those real conversations you have with your customers every day? Begin asking them questions and I think you'll be surprised at how much you learn.
http://www.spinsucks.com/communication/communication-and-marketing-trends-for-2011/
http://socialmediatoday.com/ginidietrich/205568/eight-social-media-trends-2011
Following are 8 trends you should pay attention to as you plan for 2011.
1. Social commerce. Social who? In short, you can now sell on Facebook by letting your customers buy, but also letting them tell their friends. And letting their friends tell their friends. Even if you don't offer ecommerce on your website, it's now possible to provide that service through the social network. And it's overly simple to set up.
2. Group buying. You've heard of sites, such as Groupon, that sell for discounts if you get your friends to "group" together to buy a product or service? Based on the $1 billion price tag Groupon received earlier this year, expect them and like-minded sites (such as LivingSocial, YouSwoop, and ScoutMom) to continue to grow, offering you a new way to reach different audiences.
3. Q&A sites. It may seem crazy if you're not a high user of the social platforms, but people are beginning to make real decisions based on recommendations from their virtual friends. Sites such as JustAnswer will begin to pop up, allowing people to ask a question and get real answers, from real people. The marketing possibilities become endless because you'll begin to collect data from groups of people instead of one customer at a time.
4. Mobile. It's no surprise our phones are becoming like third hands for most of us or that we're eons behind Asian countries on how we use them. But we're beginning to catch on and move toward abandoning our laptops for phones. Watch for movement toward mobile payments and begin thinking about how to accept payments via an application on the phone.
5. Content, content, content. Did I mention content? A lot of people will disagree with me – some think content is dead. I don't think we've scratched the surface. All companies should become media companies, in that the content they provide is valuable, consistent, and non-salesy. This will be big for B2B companies while they figure out how to use, what they've always considered, intellectual property to attract new customers. Examples include white papers, enewsletters, podcasts, and videos.
6. FTC rulings. It may not be as early as next year, but the FTC is already looking at regulating our industry. It began with disclosure on blogs and then on paid reviews. Next will be around ethics and how we approach traditional journalists and bloggers. That's why becoming a media company will be even more important – you'll be able to reach your customers and prospects without relying solely on the influencers. But hire an attorney because you'll need to really understand what you can and cannot do and say through your content.
7. Net neutrality. It makes me crazy that no one is paying attention to net neutrality and what Google and Verizon are planning to do. If they are successful, the Internet (as early as next year) will become a paid model, just like cable television. So being able to write a blog post at 6:00 in the morning and post it two hours later and letting it reach audiences around the world FOR FREE will be gone. The playing field will no longer be level and the companies that can afford to have their content delivered more quickly will again be kings of the earth. Not because they're better; because they have more cash. Davids truly will be fighting Goliaths in an unfair, non-level playing field.
8. Customer engagement. We talked about this a little bit yesterday, in terms of customer-centric vs. customer-focused organizations. If companies do not engage their customers, I mean really engage them as human beings and not as people who you think want to be sold, it won't matter what kind of content you have, how you follow the FTC rules, or if you have more cash to get on the Internet more quickly. If you don't know how to engage your customers, start by asking them simple questions when you talk to them: What is one thing we do that you wish we did better? Having Facebook communities and Twitter followers and blog readers are great, but what about those real conversations you have with your customers every day? Begin asking them questions and I think you'll be surprised at how much you learn.
http://www.spinsucks.com/communication/communication-and-marketing-trends-for-2011/
http://socialmediatoday.com/ginidietrich/205568/eight-social-media-trends-2011
sábado, 16 de octubre de 2010
El 80% de las empresas cree ofrecer grandes experiencias de compra. Sólo el 8% de los consumidores cree que es así
14 octubre 2010
Esta semana se ha celebrado en San Francisco la DMA, la feria-congreso más importante del sector del marketing directo. El evento es el claro ejemplo de que esta disciplina va más allá del envío de catálogos a los buzones de los consumidores. Debido a problemas de agenda, MarketingDirecto.com no ha podido asistir a esta edición, tal y como lo hace desde hace años, pero le trae en estas líneas algunos de los datos más relevantes de lo que ahí se ha escuchado.
Emailing
- El email es el canal de marketing preferido por el 62% de los anunciantes
- Los emails enviado a las 7am son los que tienen el mejor ratio de apertura
- Los emails cuyos links dirigen a un único sitio tienen mejor ratio de conversión
- El 31% de los emails comerciales son leídos en un móvil
- Los emails que mencionan a Facebook en el asunto tienen una tasa de apertura un 32% mayor que los que no lo hacen
- El email marketing no es como el correo directo tradicional. Los estándares de permisos son más altos y de atrapar al consumidor dependerán las siguientes entregas
Social Media
- Las marcas necesitan observar a sus seguidores como una métrica del éxito en las redes sociales
- No todo es ROI en las redes sociales y no todas las marcas deben estar en ellas
- Las marcas interesadas en las redes sociales tienen que estar preparadas para la transparencia real
- ¿Tus consumidores quieren que estés en las redes sociales? ¡Pregúntales primero!
- Más del 80% de los consumidores online pertenecen a alguna red social
Online
- El 80% de las marcas utiliza alguna estrategia de vídeo online
- El 60% de las marcas piensa invertir más en marketing a través de vídeos
- El 76% de las compras online están influeciadas por el correo directo
- El 70% de los responsables de marketing ve potencial en lo digital, pero sólo el 38% se está beneficiando realmente de este soporte
Bases de datos
- Los datos deberían usarse para mejorar la experiencia de los consumidores
- Los datos son aún la columna vertebral del buen marketing
Otros
- En un día normal, una persona está expuesta a una media de 3.000 mensajes mediátcos; sólo presta atención a 52 y recuerda únicamente 4
- El 80% de las empresas cree que ofrece a sus clientes grandes experiencias. Sólo el 8% de los consumidores lo percibe así.
- Ya hay más teléfonos móviles que ordenadores
- El ROI puede incluir "ahorrar dinero", no sólo "hacer dinero"
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/eventos-y-formacion/el-80-de-las-empresas-cree-ofrecer-grandes-experiencias-de-compra-solo-el-8-de-los-consumidores-cree-que-es-asi
Esta semana se ha celebrado en San Francisco la DMA, la feria-congreso más importante del sector del marketing directo. El evento es el claro ejemplo de que esta disciplina va más allá del envío de catálogos a los buzones de los consumidores. Debido a problemas de agenda, MarketingDirecto.com no ha podido asistir a esta edición, tal y como lo hace desde hace años, pero le trae en estas líneas algunos de los datos más relevantes de lo que ahí se ha escuchado.
Emailing
- El email es el canal de marketing preferido por el 62% de los anunciantes
- Los emails enviado a las 7am son los que tienen el mejor ratio de apertura
- Los emails cuyos links dirigen a un único sitio tienen mejor ratio de conversión
- El 31% de los emails comerciales son leídos en un móvil
- Los emails que mencionan a Facebook en el asunto tienen una tasa de apertura un 32% mayor que los que no lo hacen
- El email marketing no es como el correo directo tradicional. Los estándares de permisos son más altos y de atrapar al consumidor dependerán las siguientes entregas
Social Media
- Las marcas necesitan observar a sus seguidores como una métrica del éxito en las redes sociales
- No todo es ROI en las redes sociales y no todas las marcas deben estar en ellas
- Las marcas interesadas en las redes sociales tienen que estar preparadas para la transparencia real
- ¿Tus consumidores quieren que estés en las redes sociales? ¡Pregúntales primero!
- Más del 80% de los consumidores online pertenecen a alguna red social
Online
- El 80% de las marcas utiliza alguna estrategia de vídeo online
- El 60% de las marcas piensa invertir más en marketing a través de vídeos
- El 76% de las compras online están influeciadas por el correo directo
- El 70% de los responsables de marketing ve potencial en lo digital, pero sólo el 38% se está beneficiando realmente de este soporte
Bases de datos
- Los datos deberían usarse para mejorar la experiencia de los consumidores
- Los datos son aún la columna vertebral del buen marketing
Otros
- En un día normal, una persona está expuesta a una media de 3.000 mensajes mediátcos; sólo presta atención a 52 y recuerda únicamente 4
- El 80% de las empresas cree que ofrece a sus clientes grandes experiencias. Sólo el 8% de los consumidores lo percibe así.
- Ya hay más teléfonos móviles que ordenadores
- El ROI puede incluir "ahorrar dinero", no sólo "hacer dinero"
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/eventos-y-formacion/el-80-de-las-empresas-cree-ofrecer-grandes-experiencias-de-compra-solo-el-8-de-los-consumidores-cree-que-es-asi
viernes, 15 de octubre de 2010
TV Ads Perform as Well as Made-for-Web Ads
OCTOBER 15, 2010
A new eMarketer report examines video ad metrics
Do made-for-web ads perform better than repurposed TV ads? The answer is yes—and no. Dynamic Logic research released in September found that re-used TV spots resulted in higher brand awareness metrics than made-for-web ads.
The report showed that online ad awareness got a bigger lift from repurposed video ads than made-for-web video. Purchase intent was higher for made-for-web ads among those ages 18 to 34 but flat among the older age groups.
"With brand-metric variables, the answer depends on context, audience and objective," said David Hallerman, senior analyst, in the new report "Measuring Video Ads: Metrics for Brand Marketers."
The origin of the video ad creative may be less important than other factors. Research from Dynamic Logic and TubeMogul—which looked at the percentage of viewers who watched entire ads, also known as completion rates—showed that consumers favored neither one nor the other.
The viewer survey compared made-for-web video ads with repurposed TV commercials in a variety of industries. The highest completion rates for repurposed TV ads were from retail outlets (60%), while made-for-web creative completion rates were 37%. The highest completion rates for made-for-web video were in the food and beverage industry, at 58%. Repurposed TV spots hovered around 40% completion rates.
The results indicate that more important than the origin of the ad is quality, relevance for viewers and the type of product advertised.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007990
A new eMarketer report examines video ad metrics
Do made-for-web ads perform better than repurposed TV ads? The answer is yes—and no. Dynamic Logic research released in September found that re-used TV spots resulted in higher brand awareness metrics than made-for-web ads.
The report showed that online ad awareness got a bigger lift from repurposed video ads than made-for-web video. Purchase intent was higher for made-for-web ads among those ages 18 to 34 but flat among the older age groups.
"With brand-metric variables, the answer depends on context, audience and objective," said David Hallerman, senior analyst, in the new report "Measuring Video Ads: Metrics for Brand Marketers."
The origin of the video ad creative may be less important than other factors. Research from Dynamic Logic and TubeMogul—which looked at the percentage of viewers who watched entire ads, also known as completion rates—showed that consumers favored neither one nor the other.
The viewer survey compared made-for-web video ads with repurposed TV commercials in a variety of industries. The highest completion rates for repurposed TV ads were from retail outlets (60%), while made-for-web creative completion rates were 37%. The highest completion rates for made-for-web video were in the food and beverage industry, at 58%. Repurposed TV spots hovered around 40% completion rates.
The results indicate that more important than the origin of the ad is quality, relevance for viewers and the type of product advertised.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007990
Social media games: More real than you think
October 15, 2010 by Darren Cahr
The hottest things in social media right now are so-called "social games" like Farmville (Zynga's big hit). 78 million people are "active monthly users" of Farmville on Facebook, and (according to a recent article) 235 million people purportedly use Zynga's games each month on different platforms. And no, that previous sentence was not filled with typos. Zynga was recently valued, as part of a private placement, at over $4 billion.
To give you some perspective, Zynga was founded in 2007.
There are already a number of blogs and sites devoted to in-depth discussions of the newest social gaming platforms (Inside Social Games is one of the better ones), despite the fact that the phenomena is a fairly recent one. Everyone is talking about this — it is the future of gaming. It is the future of marketing. It is the future of social connectivity. Blah, blah, blah.
Marketers have noticed this incredible new development, and it isn't easy to conclude that putting a social game on your site drives traffic, makes your site stickier, and gives consumers a reason to return. So, why not put a game on your site to build your brands? Why not interweave a gigantic, cross-platform promotion with social gaming? Actually, you should consider it — it can be, for many companies, a great idea. But if you do that, suddenly you've gone from being a widget company to a company offering games. What does that mean for the age of visitors at your site? Are you offering prizes? Coupons? How are you monetizing this new initiative — and are you thus running afoul of the tangle of promotion laws in the United States or other nations?
But forget about all of that for a moment. Wired ran a fun article earlier this year that touches on social media game obsessives. Does this story remind you of anyone?
Kira Greer was sitting in a meeting one afternoon when she suddenly remembered an urgent deadline. The San Francisco instructional designer knew there was no time to waste.
She excused herself, saying she had to go to the bathroom, then rushed back to her desk. Quickly opening Facebook, she began furiously clicking on rows of virtual vegetables, harvesting her FarmVille crops before they withered and died.
"I realized I was hooked when I was planning my day around when I knew crops needed to be harvested," says Greer, 39.
Now THAT is a sticky site. On Facebook alone more than 100 different games claim at least 1 million individual users. And who knows how many of those sites also include parents playing the game for their children while Johnny is in school. A mystery for many has been how the companies that make these games plan on profiting — after all, the games themselves are free.
But really, there's no mystery at all, as the story goes on to explain:
Companies like Playfish and Zynga say their free games are profitable "many times over." How? Through the sale of virtual goods. While the vast majority of users put in the hours to build their own little slices of nature for free, a small percentage pony up real-world cash to buy the best decorations, seeds, fertilizer and farm animals.
And this is where our little story about games starts to touch on the law yet again. Social games and other virtual platforms such as Second Life involve the sale or exchange of virtual goods or (in the case of Second Life and some large massively multi-player games) virtual money. So now virtual objects have real value — which means that all of the laws that address things of value in the "real" world begin to apply to cyberspace.
The terms and conditions for these sites are effectively creating "laws" for this type of virtual world. Suddenly, there are thefts, there are vandals, there are mischief makers breaking "real" laws through their actions as fake people on these sites. Some companies have placed restrictions on the transferability of "virtual goods" or "virtual currency" used on their systems , leading to problems with counterfeiting and black markets. Companies hosting these sites (or participating on these sites — a significant number of well-known brands have a presence on Second Life, and others embed themselves in third party games) need to consider the intersection of real laws and terms of use. When virtual commerce starts adding (or subtracting) from your bottom line, it becomes more than mere "marketing."
When cyberspace was first imagined by William Gibson in Neuromancer, it was still an abstraction. The characters were interacting inside a hallucination, but it was still presented as a kind of formless hacker world that sounded suspiciously like the world of TRON. Later, in the groundbreaking Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson took that one step further, and imagined users living a realistic existence as "avatars" within a computer network. The games and virtual worlds that exist today are still quite far from the seamless reality of those visions. You can't just shift your consciousness into a faux reality. But each new generation of technology brings us closer to that dream, and as it does it brings the framework of our legal system ever more into contact with your avatar.
So don't assume that your efforts in cyberspace are just a game — the laws (and their implications) can be very real, indeed, and your lawyer may have just as much to say about how you play this game as your customers.
http://socialmediatoday.com/darrencahr/203729/social-media-games-more-real-you-think
The hottest things in social media right now are so-called "social games" like Farmville (Zynga's big hit). 78 million people are "active monthly users" of Farmville on Facebook, and (according to a recent article) 235 million people purportedly use Zynga's games each month on different platforms. And no, that previous sentence was not filled with typos. Zynga was recently valued, as part of a private placement, at over $4 billion.
To give you some perspective, Zynga was founded in 2007.
There are already a number of blogs and sites devoted to in-depth discussions of the newest social gaming platforms (Inside Social Games is one of the better ones), despite the fact that the phenomena is a fairly recent one. Everyone is talking about this — it is the future of gaming. It is the future of marketing. It is the future of social connectivity. Blah, blah, blah.
Marketers have noticed this incredible new development, and it isn't easy to conclude that putting a social game on your site drives traffic, makes your site stickier, and gives consumers a reason to return. So, why not put a game on your site to build your brands? Why not interweave a gigantic, cross-platform promotion with social gaming? Actually, you should consider it — it can be, for many companies, a great idea. But if you do that, suddenly you've gone from being a widget company to a company offering games. What does that mean for the age of visitors at your site? Are you offering prizes? Coupons? How are you monetizing this new initiative — and are you thus running afoul of the tangle of promotion laws in the United States or other nations?
But forget about all of that for a moment. Wired ran a fun article earlier this year that touches on social media game obsessives. Does this story remind you of anyone?
Kira Greer was sitting in a meeting one afternoon when she suddenly remembered an urgent deadline. The San Francisco instructional designer knew there was no time to waste.
She excused herself, saying she had to go to the bathroom, then rushed back to her desk. Quickly opening Facebook, she began furiously clicking on rows of virtual vegetables, harvesting her FarmVille crops before they withered and died.
"I realized I was hooked when I was planning my day around when I knew crops needed to be harvested," says Greer, 39.
Now THAT is a sticky site. On Facebook alone more than 100 different games claim at least 1 million individual users. And who knows how many of those sites also include parents playing the game for their children while Johnny is in school. A mystery for many has been how the companies that make these games plan on profiting — after all, the games themselves are free.
But really, there's no mystery at all, as the story goes on to explain:
Companies like Playfish and Zynga say their free games are profitable "many times over." How? Through the sale of virtual goods. While the vast majority of users put in the hours to build their own little slices of nature for free, a small percentage pony up real-world cash to buy the best decorations, seeds, fertilizer and farm animals.
And this is where our little story about games starts to touch on the law yet again. Social games and other virtual platforms such as Second Life involve the sale or exchange of virtual goods or (in the case of Second Life and some large massively multi-player games) virtual money. So now virtual objects have real value — which means that all of the laws that address things of value in the "real" world begin to apply to cyberspace.
The terms and conditions for these sites are effectively creating "laws" for this type of virtual world. Suddenly, there are thefts, there are vandals, there are mischief makers breaking "real" laws through their actions as fake people on these sites. Some companies have placed restrictions on the transferability of "virtual goods" or "virtual currency" used on their systems , leading to problems with counterfeiting and black markets. Companies hosting these sites (or participating on these sites — a significant number of well-known brands have a presence on Second Life, and others embed themselves in third party games) need to consider the intersection of real laws and terms of use. When virtual commerce starts adding (or subtracting) from your bottom line, it becomes more than mere "marketing."
When cyberspace was first imagined by William Gibson in Neuromancer, it was still an abstraction. The characters were interacting inside a hallucination, but it was still presented as a kind of formless hacker world that sounded suspiciously like the world of TRON. Later, in the groundbreaking Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson took that one step further, and imagined users living a realistic existence as "avatars" within a computer network. The games and virtual worlds that exist today are still quite far from the seamless reality of those visions. You can't just shift your consciousness into a faux reality. But each new generation of technology brings us closer to that dream, and as it does it brings the framework of our legal system ever more into contact with your avatar.
So don't assume that your efforts in cyberspace are just a game — the laws (and their implications) can be very real, indeed, and your lawyer may have just as much to say about how you play this game as your customers.
http://socialmediatoday.com/darrencahr/203729/social-media-games-more-real-you-think
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