Tag Archives: Marketing

Mobile Marketers can fail and still succeed.

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Mobile advertising is projected to generate revenue somewhere between $1 billion and $24 billion within four years. However, at the moment they(analysts) still do not know which business model or marketing approach will be successful in tapping into that money.

So you’re saying,”Well how can they come up with those projections then?”  They can come up with those lofty projections the same way analysts said that one day the internet would be really really big. The upside and the potential are so great, that even those numbers are skewed on the side of conservatism.

To put it in perspective you have to understand that nearly everyone including your average 10 year old and up is now carrying a cell phone. If you want a hard number, think north of 2 billion users worldwide. With that device is the real estate to market and advertise to a captive audience. With that device and it’s associated burgeoning high speed browser comes the ability to search, use the internet or access email. Currently in the US, there are almost 35 million users of the mobile “net”. So what comes with search? contextual advertising. What comes with surfing the net? Advertising. Or using email? Get the idea?

But see that’s the easy side to marketing on a mobile device. The challenge for marketers and advertisers will be how to create stickiness not only for search results for instance but also to geotargeted results via a mobile device. In other words, how are you/they going to create the mobile call to action?

Some of the other questions will also be; How intrusive can you as a marketer be on a mobile device? Do the devices need to also have micro-java apps for pop-ups for instance? Can a marketer hone in on perhaps using SMS alternatives or opportunities until a more solid marketing platform is developed? When you think about it, it really is wide open.

The answer is yes to all of those questions, and the best part about it is the result can be a complete and utter failure and thats ok. So now you’re saying, “what do you mean it’s ok to fail?” Well it’s ok to fail because the user has no preconceived notion or expectation as to how it’s supposed to be. And because they don’t know what to expect, they will be willing to accept, for now, whatever comes down the pipe.

But marketers and their brethren will only be allowed to fail x amount of times before the user a) finds another solution that best meets and exceeds their intial expectation or b) becomes completely frustrated by the lack of performance. And trust us, they will find it. Either through another marketer letting them know that their is a better solution out there, or they will find it virally.

Until the bar is set, mobile marketers will have a grace period to get it right. The unknown is how long the grace period will be. The unknown is who will set the tone? Who will establish the way things are done in the mobile world? Because at the moment the canvass is blank and anything can be tried and ANYTHING can be successful. In the end the ultimate judge will be your average consumer, or your average 10 year old!

Social networks tied to every product, service and brand…Don’t laugh.

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So the logical evolution of social networking is taking hold. In todays volatile marketplace, the success of manufacturers, advertisers, marketers, and media companies in creating long-term value and stickiness depends primarily on their ability to develop great stategies wrapped around great value propositions quickly. So what better way than to use the power of social networks?

I use the terms great strategies and value props. because todays consumers are as discerning as they have ever been. Why? Because they are armed to the teeth with more information than they know what to do with. And now with social networks, the ability for consumers to talk and share and recommend virally, is as big a challenge for marketers et al. as it has ever been.  But it can also be a major home run if done right.

That strategy appears to have taken flight with Viacom for instance. You may not know Viacom as well as you do their MTV properties. Having said that, MTV has recently announced that is jumping back into the social-networking game. In 2005, News Corp. outbid Viacom for social-networking giant MySpace.com. Since then, Viacom has largely been on the sidelines in the growing market. Now the company is focusing on creating a vast array of highly targeted Web sites that are loosely connected and focus mostly on programming such as VH1 Classic, Jackass, and Sucker Free on MTV.

When we mentioned product-centric strategies earlier, this is a case in point where Viacom/MTV has a solid brand they are looking to grow and expand  into new markets and new channels using all of the resources available to it. One of them being social networks.

MTV’s highly-targeted web sites will be at the core of the company’s digital efforts. MTV sees its content as its strength, and thus they have  decided to wrap that content with the power of social networking. In the past year, the company has constructed 32 new sites. The idea is to create a type of assembly line for Web sites. Those sites that find an audience will continue to be nurtured and those that don’t will be stripped down and “reskinned,” or refitted for the next experiment. Kind of like the 10 day “look-see” contracts athletes get in professional sports. They essentially have 10 days to impress. If they don’t, away they go. 

Interestingly enough, the company  doesn’t plan to spend a lot of cash in promoting the sites. The reason being that they have the utmost confidence in their content and the viral ability of the Web to spread the word. Given that lack of faith, I’m going to give Viacom/MTV a 10 day look-see to see if this particular strategy pays off. It almost gives you the sense that they are saying,”we love your idea, we just don’t want to sink much money into it, until it works”.

While killer business processes, off-the-hook customer service, and bleeding edge technology all play vital roles in todays web 2.0 world, companies that create and buy into solid product-centric strategies and processes with the customer in mind, will be those that build valuable loyal brands and profitable businesses beyond the 21st century. It remains to be seen though if this particular strategy will pay off for Viacom/MTV.

Buzzword Compliant

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Can anyone add some scalable and yet granular social networking, web 2.0 buzzwords to this bingo card to essentially bootstrap this into a viral marketing message?

buzzword-compliant.jpg

What’s the deal with widgets?

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Ok so I’m going to go out on a limb and here and say that chances are that most of the common masses do not know what a widget is. Even if you use your computer on a daily basis, there is still the slight chance that you might not know what a widget is. No big deal. Yet…

Simply put, a widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate web page by an end user( You or I) without requiring additional work or previous knowledge on the users part.  Other terms used to describe widgets include: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake.

Widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.  A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated, though they can be home made. They add a more rich, entertainment, multi-dimensional feel to a site that might be otherwise static.

Widgets are now becoming more commonplace and are used by bloggers, social network users, marketers, advertisers, and owners of personal web sites. They exist on home page sites such as iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, SpringWidgets and yourminis, and hundredes of other sites.

Widgets are used as a distribution method by ad networks such as Google’s AdSense, by media sites such as Flickr, by video sites such as YouTube and by hundreds of other organizations.

Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. Which is now becoming a primary distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in ‘live’ content – advertisements, links, images, and video – from a third party site without the web site owner having to update.

Thus the end users can utilize widgets to enhance a number of web-based hosts, pages or drop targets. Categories of drop targets include social networks, blogs, wikis and personal homepages. Although end users primarily use widgets to enhance their personal web experiences, or the web experiences of visitors to their personal sites, corporations can potentially use widgets to improve their web sites using syndicated content and functionality from third party providers. They are also now using widgets as a carrier of their branding message or product.

So where can you find some widgets? The easiest source would be generally on the page you are currently reading, either on the left or right side of the pages. The widgets are dropped in via a widget managment system. Should you feel compelled, check out KickApps which states: The KickApps hosted, white-label platform puts social media and online video functionality directly into the hands of every web publisher who aspires to be a media mogul and turns every web designer and developer into a social media rockstar! With KickApps, it’s now easier than ever for web publishers to leverage the power of social and rich media experiences on their websites to drive audience growth and engagement.

If you are the casual reader, then hopefully this helps you. If you are a certified blogging fool, then this is nothing that you already don’t know. If you are somewhere in the middle, then now you have been enlightended.

Think you can make money on social media sites?

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Can advertisers/marketers make money in a social networking environment? That is the real question.

Forrester reports about 30 percent of social networking site users embrace a brand so that they could become eligible for  freebies,exclusive offers, events or sales or because another friend recommended it. Forrester gave this type of social consumer reaction as “friendonomics.” Granted it greatly helped the brand if they(the users) had some clue about what the brand was all about prior to befriending it, but it wasn’t a complete deal killer.

With that being said in regards to having a clue about the brand, Forrester states, Gen Y users “show the greatest interest, with 37% saying they would be interested in seeing marketer profiles on social networking sites. Gen X isn’t far behind, with 31% showing interest.”

What appears to work though and is gaining some traction, is the creation of widgets or apps on Facebook.  If you use Facebook, you no doubt have noticed the plethora of new apps that have appeared over the past few months. These apps, created by marketers for instance, give some legs and visibility to brands, new products and sites that are looking for traffic and eyeballs.

Back in August of 2007, Google filed another  patent for “user-distributed advertisements” (UDA) whereby the UDA system “facilitates insertion of manually selected ads into a document that is to be distributed (e.g., transmitted, published, and/or posted) such that the document is to be made available to other users.”

The document explains why it’s a good idea: “Although advertising systems such as AdWords and AdSense have proven to be very effective tools for advertisers to reach a receptive audience, even automated systems that use sophisticated targeting techniques often can’t match the effectiveness of manual targeting. However, manual targeting techniques don’t scale well. Therefore, it would be useful to provide a scaleable advertising system that achieves at least some of the benefits of manual targeting. It would also be useful to provide a system of charges and/or rewards to encourage useful manual targeting of ads. Further, it would also be useful to track and use performance metrics of such ads if doing so would help an advertising system serve ads that are more useful. Finally, it would be useful to provide data structures and interfaces for enabling advertisers to participate in a system for manual insertion of ads into a document for distribution.”

Long story short is that Google wants to figure out a way for its users to be worker Bees that essentially spread or carry advertising. What better way then to incentivize every possible action that someone does while online. So I send you an email and I go ahead and drop a couple of Adsense bombs in the body of the email and off you go to make us both money. All of a sudden it does pay to advetise via email again and the more viral the better!

The problem with trying to tie together advertising for instance, and social media is that to most and we’ll use direct response, is that DR advertisers, are going to look at specific measurable results which essentially will tell them if it’s a) worth it and b) should they test again. the problem with social networking sites and advertising, at least right now is that the results of advertisers are not yet quantifiable or measurable to a degree of their liking. There is too much grey area.

It’s grey because Social media is about engaging the prospect, befriending the prospect and winning the prospects trust instead of vomiting the information(makes for a great visual doesn’t it?) and the pitch, all over them. And if you don’t think is true, go ahead and try it and let us know what type of experience you have.

Essentially the whole social media experience as it pertains to direct response is more about marketing than it is about advertising. And to that end traditional  online or offline advertising will not work in this environment anyways. So don’t bother.
 

M-commerce will work…for Gen Y…for now.

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In the next 12 to 18 months analysts predict that m-commerce revenues will reach a half a billion dollars.  Pairing that with almost 300 million wireless customers, “someone” is going to be buying something through their wireless device. The question is who is that person? Is it the Baby boomer? No, they are just becoming comfortable with their computers and shopping online. Is it the Gen X’ers? No not yet, although they will follow pretty quickly as soon as the cool and the perceptive ease of use factors rises to a palatable level.

The answer my friend lies in your Gen Y users. The 15-29 users who just so happen to be your biggest social network users as well. This is, by no means coincidental. It makes complete sense on a lot of levels but here it is in its simplest terms. This generation is so technologically saavy that buying “things” using their mobile phones is nothing more than another viable option for spending money, communicating with their friends and being in the NOW.  It’s just another way to simplify their overly simplified “Me generation” entitled lives. It is a mere blip on the landscape that is their socialized technified world.

Not to sound bitter, and if I do it’s only because this generation can embrace a new technology so easily and so seamlessley that the projections for what kind of money might be generated might be underestimating the puchasing power of this group. The only way the numbers get pushed down is by overestimating the mobile purchasing power of a 15-19 year old who might not have a credit card to complete the transaction.

Gen Y users have 2 things working in their favor as well. 1) they account for almost a 100% ownership of cell phones and 2) have a purchasing power of almost $200 billion.  Add to this the fact that this group has no problem accessing the mobile web with relative ease, and couple it with their comfort level in regards to their expectation that mobile web sites meet their demands, and you have volatile mixture of a captive audience ready to buy with expendable cash.

In the next 12-24 months, marketers, consumers and advertisers will need to look to Gen Y to call the shots in regards to usage numbers, trends, and expectations. As soon as Gen X and the Boomers see how well it works for Gen Y. Look for M-commerce to explode. Look no further than Japan for a classic example, where in the last year e-tailers rang up almost $10 billion in revenue from M-commerce sales.

The growth of social networking

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By 2011 about half of U.S. online adults and 84% of online teens will be using social networks. This according to eMarketer. What this points to is an evolution or a continuing evolution of children who currently are becoming aquainted with and more comfortable with, “How social networks work”. This also points to the greater value that adults will put in their social network. “Their” being the operative word.

Furthermore, this raises a very poignant question. Though Facebook and Myspace are the darlings of the moment, can they continue the momentum that they can surely take credit for? Will they be “The” players in 3 years?

As it is right now today the evolution for most users looks something like this:

Club Penguin/Webkinz—->Myspace—->Facebook—-Linkedin.

I use Linkedin as the last one for professional reasons but really after Facebook, the usage fractures into a 100 different niche based social networks. This usage in the next 3 years will continue to evolve into hundreds of other social network sites.

My educated guess, though they (MySpace and FB) will still be viable, there will be others that will come along, if they have not already, that provide more to their niche than the current duo do. Here is the reasoning. Myspace is for teens/bands and tire-kickers and fringe users. Facebook is for college aged and older users who have more of a familiarity with the social network and all that it can provide.

So in 3 years when your current crop of Facebook users for instance, graduate and possibly outgrow the Facebook newness/coolness factor what do they do then?  What do adults who are currently using Facebook do in 3 years? The same thing I suspect that AOL users did once they found out that AOL wasn’t the only game in town. Everything will evolve. Including the knowledge and expereince of the users. Thus the reason that by 2011, social networks will be so entertwined in our daily lives that it will be assumed that you are part of some SN.

The good news, and really none of this is bad news, but worldwide Ad spending will increase at a healthy 20-39% each year between now and 2011 according to eMarketer. In the U.S. alone social network ad spending is expected to rise to $2.7 billion in 2011. Currently the pie is being divided naturally towards Facebook and MySpace, but look for that to change significantly with the growth of niche and marketer oriented sites.

Death of The Library and rise of the Kindle.

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Unless libraries can tailor everything that they do and stand for towards the digital universe, their days as a wellspring of knowledge and information are numbered. After reading an article titled, “The Impatience of the Google Generation” in wich the author and the responses essentially come to the conclusion that the current generation and younger generations for that matter, are essentially impatient when it comes to how quickly they can find and receive information, I can only assume that the last place that they would want to go is a place where their information was in a hard bound book!

OK, so yes libraries have computers that are tied not only to their volumes of hardbound books but also to search as it relates to the internet. But riddle me this: Why would I go to a library and search for a book when I could log onto a computer and find the same information? Says the 18-24 old student. I know it’s deeper than that, but lets put ourselves in the place of someone in college or younger. A) every college student, or a good portion of them now have their own laptop. So now they “walk” around with access to any and all information/research that they will ever need.  Bogus wikis notwithstanding. and B) They are so accustomed to getting information readily, that going to a library defeats the purpose of  library research per se.

 Of course, they can still go to the “quiet” library to get work done. And there are still certain things that a library provides or possesses that a student still might need or utilize, but…the thinking is,”It’s all here on the internet”!

Generation “C” (content) has no use for a library. In fact I would venture to guess that funding on local, state and federal levels for libraries is constantly slashed in favor of more digital type programs or programs that lawmakers feel have more importance.

Having said that, here is one more thing for you to chew on.  The Amazon  Kindle is an electronic book device launched in the US by Amazon.com  this past November.  It uses an electronic paper display, reads the proprietary Kindle (AZW) format, and downloads content over Amazon Whispernet, which uses the Sprint EVDO network. This means that the Kindle can be used without the need for a computer. Whispernet is accessible through Kindle without any fee. On the release day, the Kindle Store had more than 88,000 digital titles available for download. Amazon’s first offering of the Kindle sold out in five and a half hours. It retails for $399.

Think about it. People still want to read but they want it condensed and more than just portable. So does this mean that the Dust jacket will go the way of the Jewel Case and album art? If the latest advances in media, music and entertainment are any indication, it appears that that will be the case.

What’s not to like about Google?

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You know there are always going to be people out there who will despise anything and everything that Google does and stands for. Of course we all know that they secretly use Google and if they were approached to work for Google, they would pause for about a split second before they accepted. 

Further enhancing it’s reputation as a company concerned with more than just search, Google recently announced that they were going to to use their incredible power as it relates to information and technology to help people better their lives. Google is rolling out five core initiatives that will be the focus of its philanthropic efforts over the next five to ten years. Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, will collaborate with experienced partners working in each of these fields, investing its resources and tapping the strengths of Google’s employees and global operations to advance its core initiatives.  

Today’s announcement includes more than $25 million in new grants and investments to initial partners. The resources come from a commitment by Google’s founders to devote approximately 1 percent of the company’s equity plus 1 percent of annual profits to philanthropy, as well as employee time.   Below is a listing of how the money is going to be disbursed:

$5 million to InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) to improve early detection, preparedness, and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises. InSTEDD will work with the community of relief and response organizations, governments, academia and top scientists around the world to address gaps in information flow with software and other technology-based tools and services.

$2.5 million to the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI), established by the Nuclear Threat Initiative to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats.

More than $600,000 to Clark University, with equal funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for Clark Labs to develop a system to improve monitoring, analysis and prediction of the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems, food and health in Africa and the Amazon.

$2 million to Pratham, a non-governmental organization in India, to create an independent institute that will conduct the Nationwide Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) as well as large scale assessments in the education sector.

$765,000 to the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, a Bangalore-based analysis group, to create a Budget Information Service for local governments to facilitate better district- and municipal-level level planning in India

$660,000 to the Center for Policy Research, an action oriented think tank based in India, to increase the debate and discourse on issues of urban local governance and urban service delivery.

$4.7 million grant to TechnoServe to provide general support to expand Technoserve’s efforts to support enterprises, spur job creation, and strengthen poverty alleviation programs globally, and to develop and implement a business plan competition to support entrepreneurs in Ghana and Tanzania

$10 million to eSolar, a Pasadena, CA-based company specializing in solar thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from solar energy

RechargeIT is a Google.org initiative that aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. Google.org launched a $10 million request for investment proposals this Fall, and will invest amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2 million in selected for-profit companies whose innovative approach, team and technologies will enable widespread commercialization of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles and/or vehicle-to-grid solutions.

Granted that $25 million is not a lot of money initially when looking at what Google makes every day, but is certainly a step in the right direction and sets an examples for other like minded tech companies to either fall in step or raise the bar in regards to philanthropic endeavors.

The Top 20 search terms for the week

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It’s a new year and thus the searches have a “turning over a new leaf” type of feel to them. But not for long, as our beloved searchers show their age when they give us WWE and Dragonball.  But fear not, we are still a nation/ world obsessed with absolutely anything that Britney does as well as Jessica Simpson and Lindsey Lohan. mnay thanks to the Lycos 50.

1 Poker
Full House, and you thought all that SPAM was worthless?
2 Golf
Fore! and it’s still winter people! 
3 Fashion
2008 trends.
4 Britney Spears
Dating and running from the paparazzo
5 Disney
“National Treasure 2” a must see.
6 Clay Aiken
“Spamalot”, Who said AI Stars have no traction?
7 Paris Hilton
Buddy Nicole gives birth. She’s slipping.
8 YouTube
Videos, we are a nation obsessed with videos
9 South Beach Diet
Low carb. Oh and we are obsessed with losing weight as well
10 Naruto
Manga
11 Pamela Anderson
Not pregnant and still looking, er uh.. like Pam Anderson
12 Kim Kardashian
Socialite taking advantage of her 20 minutes
13 Apple
Macworld, Check out the new Air Mac or mac Air
14 WWE
SmackDown. Who said anything about roids?
15 Lindsay Lohan
Dating Adrian Grenier? and still clean?
16 Pokemon
Battle Revolution
17 Jessica Simpson
Not at Cowboys game and they still lose.
18 Weight Watchers
Weight loss. In 2008, I will lose…
19 MySpace
Profiles
20 NFL
Playoffs? Did someone say playoffs?