THINKing

Old Media Drives New Media

The average American’s Internet use has nearly doubled in the past two years, according to a MediaPost article. This means that the Internet now accounts for 1/3 of the average US consumer’s media day. So, how are you going to get those Americans to your website, hmmm? By the way, did I tell you that your website is one of about 186 million?

Google Adwords can help, but it doesn’t drive the volume of web traffic most local businesses would like to see. If you have your own email list, superb. Nothing like email to drive current customer traffic. But what about for customer acquisition?

If you haven’t noticed, there is a fire sale going on at the old media store. Newspapers are struggling, so, too, are many radio and TV stations. Rates are down and so is competition for eyeballs. It’s a great time to increase your share of voice and take market share from weak competitors.

In my mind, a local business should be looking at these media opportunities. In particular, I’d look at my local newspaper, especially if it has a solid web presence. You can pick up packages that include both print and web options. For instance, according to the same MediaPost article:

The report further reveals that seven daily newspapers have achieved a net unduplicated reach of 80% or more when the past 30-day website visitor figure is combined with the past month print readership figure. Among these newspapers are the:

• New Orleans Times Picayune with a total unduplicated reach of 85.8%
• San Antonio Express-News (80.6%)
• Post-Standard in Syracuse (84%)
• Buffalo News (83.3%)
• Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester (80.9%)
• Peoria Journal Star (80.4%)
• Omaha World Herald (82.2%)

Says  Bob Jordan, President of The Media Audit,

“Daily newspapers were the first to embrace a multi-platform distribution strategy amidst a period when consumers were spending more and more time with the Internet. And as a result, newspapers followed the way of the consumer. By doing so, they have broadened their reach to include younger consumers. And these consumers are buying new cars and driving sales for retailers who represent a significant portion of the newspaper industry’s revenue… ”

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Email Is For Retention, Paid Search Is For Acquisition

Email – in the early days – was a great tactic for acquiring new customers. No longer. There has been too much abuse. But if you have a relationship with a customer, email is a superb tactic for customer retention.

According to a new Forrester Research report released by trade group Shop.org, paid search is the top acquisition tool, e-mail to house files is the top online marketing tactic as 92% of online retailers said they use it.

Now, some  details:

- paid search accounts for 35% of new customers on average

- 53% of online retailers’ marketing budgets are spent on customer acquisition

- 21% is spent on retention.

Online retailers report popular promotional tactics in this order of preference:

- 85% say they offer free shipping (conditions apply)

- 82% use percent-off promotions

- 69% prefer dollar-off promotions

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Super Bowl: Search Me

Reprise Media reports that 70% of Super Bowl advertisers bought paid placement in search this year, up almost 20 percent from 2007. Other preliminary findings:

• only 6 percent of advertisers included a call to action, asking viewers to visit their website. (Yikes!)
• 74 percent of landing pages also provided no direction to Super Bowl viewers who found their way to the advertisers’ sites
• Pepsi, GoDaddy, Cars.com, T-Mobile, Tide and CareerBuilder.com get kudos for integrating their campaigns

For more, get this pdf from Reprise Media.

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Wasting Money Big Time: Super Bowl Ads

Advertisers will spend $2.7 million per 30-second spot in order to reach a mass audience during the Super Bowl, on FOX. There are 63 30-second spots available. That’s around $170 million, most of which is a waste of money.

But, Harry, you are asking, where else can an advertiser reach 142 million people, 45 percent of whom are women? Well, there is no other venue. But that doesn’t change the facts. Here’s why I think most of the cash will be ill-spent.

Most spots are developed by ad agencies which convince their clients that humor is the way to go. Humor is the way to go, if it supports the brand and if it translates to sales or helps improve your distribution. Typically, spots are so off-base that no one can remember who the advertiser was after the spot airs. How does that help you? And, do you know how many beers Budweiser will have to sell to recoup its production and media expenditures? Who drinks Bud anyway?

Now, it is true that CareerBuilder.com saw a 50 percent increase in brand awareness after its 2005 Super Bowl ads. And that translated to web traffic and new business. CareerBuilder had an integrated program to support the buy. They had special landing pages on the site, as well as additional online and offline media. Most advertisers this year may make some effort to integrate their programs, but their big ad agencies won’t know how to do it.

There is a deal between Fox and MySpace (both News Corp. companies) that places commercials from in-game Super Bowl advertisers on a special Super Bowl site on MySpace. Fox will promote the MySpace site during the game. So, this will help give the ad buy more legs.

More advertisers report that this year they will support their buys with search engine programs. Again, I think this is a waste of money. This is a chance for the big brands to jump full-force into social media and social networks. I could do a hell of a lot with $2.7 million spent in PR and social media efforts.

Here are some bonus Super Bowl links:

Super Bowl Ads

Google Super Bowl Trends

Super Bowl Ads Recent News

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Write Tight

My first news editor hammered one thing into my consciousness: write tight. Leave out the frills, just present the facts and move on.

Many people who think they are writers want to commit an act of literature every time they let the creative muse out of the bottle. Write tight is good advice no matter what you are writing, but especially today when you are developing search engine keyword ads.

Here’s why. The typical Google ad headline has a 25 character count maximum. Description lines one and two cannot exceed 35 characters each. Tolstoy and Faulkner would be in trouble. Let’s review some best practices for writing text, or pay-per-click ads.

Preparation Is Paramount. As in all marketing, the prep work is crucial in writing text ads. Carefully define your audience. Who are they from a demographic, psychographic and geographic perspective? Are they 16-year-olds whose raging hormones are blocking their ability to reason, or time-stressed 50-year-old IT executives? Get inside their heads. Determine what keywords they would search out. Once you have a few keywords identified, use one of the free keyword research tools to beef up your list.

Generate Action. Major companies may have the money to place “brand” ads for the purpose of generating impressions. This is not the purpose of a text ad. Its purpose is to create clicks. Think about what call-to-action phrases would make your target audience respond. For the 16-year-old it may be “get your ringtones now.” For the IT executive it may be “download our whitepaper.” Do you have a service that will solve a problem? Then, say something like “Do the job in half the time”, or “Improve your sex life.”

Less Is More. High concepts and the complex have no place in text ads. Twenty word headlines tend to force the marketer to be simple. Plays on words and attempts at humor usually fall flat in this genre. Simply tell the consumer what your offer is and don’t play games to try to get the consumer to click. You want only those consumers who will have some interest in your offer to come to your website. Tricks for clicks is a waste of money.

Make An Offer. If you have an attractive offer, use it. Offering a lower price? Say so: “10% Off”. Free is still the most powerful word in advertising. If that’s your offer, feel free to say “Free.” Just not in all caps, OK?

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” This won’t wash in writing text ads. Take your time. Get it right. Write tight.

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Marketing By Mistake

Back in the old days of marketing (yes, I’m old enough to remember the analog days), careers were made and broken based on getting it right. If you were laying down $1 million or more on a media buy and TV production, you had to get it right the first time.

The digital world has changed that. Now, you are free to experiment, free to make mistakes and make changes mid-stream. Paid search ads not working? Change them.

Old-line companies and marketers don’t embrace this kind of change easily.

Today, you can have a conversation with your customers, learn what they want and provide it to them.  It is incumbent upon you to listen to your customers, watch what they do and respond.

That, my friend, is what marketing has always been seeking. Now that we’ve found it, let’s do something worthwhile with it.

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Search Me

A new comScore survey by Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, Yahoo! and Proctor & Gamble seems to indicate that packaged goods brands should shift much of their branding money into search engine advertising. eMarketer reports that,

Nearly 44 million visitors searched for packaged foods in the study period. Baby products attracted 15.7 million searchers, personal care products 9.8 million and household products 1.7 million. Searchers spent about 20% more than non-searchers across the four categories.

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Search Me – Top Search Engines

The big three search engines recently have rolled out upgrades. Yahoo! is the latest to come to market with what industry insiders refer to as “blended results.” This simply means that blog postings, images, video, and other rich media content are rolled up into a single search with other organic results. Yahoo! also has introduced a new Search Assist feature that allows you to refine your search from the outset instead of tweaking terms two to three times until the correct results appear.

Microsoft also recently debuted an improved Live, its search engine. In June, Google launched its updated Personalized Search. Google now commands more than a 56% share of all search traffic, with Yahoo! coming in a distant second with a 23% share in the US market.

The top three search engines can be found here: Yahoo!, Live & Google. I happen to like Dogpile and Webcrawler, which search the top search engines simultaneously.

Here is what some other bloggers are saying about recent search engine improvements.

Matt Hester about Live.com.

CNET onYahoo!

Learn about the Top 100 alternative search engines from AltSearch engines.

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Web Politics – Update

In a recent post, we discussed what’s happening on the web in terms of presidential candidate spending and site visitation. Here’s a new report from Hitwise on the topic. According to Hitwise,

…Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson’s website, www.fred08.com, was the most visited website among all presidential candidates for the week ending September 8, 2007. Fred08.com received 34 percent of US visits amongst all the presidential candidate websites for that week. Barack Obama’s website, www.barackobama.com, received 13.49 percent of US visits for last week, the second most visits among all candidates. Following Obama’s website was Republican candidate Ron Paul’s website www.ronpaul2008.com, which received 12.88 percent of visits.

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Cost-Cutting Won’t Touch Online Ad Spending

The Financial Times reports that online advertising will not be slowed by any potential downturn in the economy, citing the medium’s lower costs relative to other forms of advertising and the ease of tracking online results.

Embattled mortgage lender Countrywide has increased its media mix within the online category by 34 percent over the previous 12 months.

Does this mark the official end of the Dot Bomb as well?

According to Sanford Bernstein:

“The greater robustness of online advertising, the prevalence of paid search as the primary ad format and great geographical diversity of revenues of the large players make a repeat of the 2001-2004 bubble scenario unlikely,”

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