The Secrets of Online Video: REVEALED!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Doug Dimon

I've decided to break with the tradition of mystical subterfuge that we creative types like to use to keep our methods secret.  I’m going to come clean about the three easy steps to create successful online video marketing. I know this will likely get me scratched off the list at all the best industry events, but I can no longer hold my tongue in good conscience.

Step1: come up with an engaging concept.
Step2: produce a well-made, compelling video.
Step 3: post the engaging and compelling video.

Yea, I know… not much of a secret. The truth is people seem to view online videos as some sort of crazy alternative marketing.  It’s as if there is some secret ingredient that gets sprinkled over the computer while posting that makes it different than something you would see on television. The truth is that it is not the content that is different, but rather how it is consumed. Television is a fairly passive medium and people are more likely to watch something simply because it is in front of them. This is changing thanks to the DVR culture, but it is still largely true. Viewing a video online, however, is a much more deliberate act. People have to want to watch it. And, hopefully, they will pass it on to others so they can watch it. For this to happen it needs to really be engaging. Clearly the intent of all brand marketing is to engage the consumer, but online video needs to be or you won’t have an audience.

This fact makes it all the more absurd that many people believe that successful online videos can be created by anyone with a webcam. Certainly, there have been many such “successful” videos (witness the most viewed Youtube video ever), but this is the exception not the rule, and is rarely true when it comes to brand marketing.  I’m not saying that you need to have a million dollar budget, or hire the top Hollywood director, but you do have to approach it with clear creative intent, even if the end result is unscripted, or “low tech”. The principles that hold true for any successful film or video still apply: good narrative (whether plot or visual) and solid construction. Brands would never air some poorly produced piece with half-baked creative on television, yet they all too often treat their online video offerings as amateur hour.

Your video has to connect with your audience on some level, through humor, compassion, awe, outrage, etc. It has to offer the viewer some intrinsic value that will create an attachment and drive them to become a brand advocate. Once again, this is not a new marketing concept. What is new, is the tremendous advantage online video offers in this endeavor. At its core, a viral video is a social media tool. People love to share things with their friends and online video gives them the tools to go beyond the water cooler chat (did you see that spot on TV last night with the blue thing… hilarious!) to actually presenting your video to a person that trusts them. This is why an online viewing number that is a fraction of the viewers of a spot during a primetime show represents a much bigger win for the brand: the online viewers are active participants. Do it right and those participants become advocates.

There are specific factors that do distinguish online video from a televised spot: no length requirements, resolution and audio playback quality, trafficking to specific market, ease of deployment, etc. But do not let those differences cloud the fact that at it still needs to be approached with the same level of detail and planning as any on-air piece. Just because it is simple and inexpensive to get your video on the web, don’t treat like a second class marketing strategy. It has massive potential to influence your customers.

Integrated Marketing Strategy: Tying It All Together

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Chris Thornton
I recently had an opportunity to participate in a webinar about the current trends and thinking around integrated marketing strategy, particularly in the areas of interative marketing.

The digital evolution has completely changed the way companies interact with their customers.  Companies can longer push their agenda to drive business, but must find ways to add value at every single touch point.  How can companies effectively create a unified message across so many disciplines to evolve the way consumers think of their brand?

A good part of my strategic discussion revolved around reinvention of the idea of brand, and what it means to be a marketer for a company in the 21st century. Some specific takeways I think I cover in this presentation include:
  1. How to organize and integrate your marketing operation to create a cohesive message
  2. How to identify early in the process if you are achieving your goals
  3. How to optimize your branding efforts and align them with your sales organization

If you're thinking about integrating your marketing programs, or just looking to improve the performance of your existing integrated marketing programs, perhaps you'll find the presentation relevant to your current discussions.

To view my presentation from the webinar, please click on the presentation below:
Questions or comments about the proposal? Please feel free to reach out to me through Twitter.

 
 
 
 
 

Choose Your Agency Wisely

Monday, January 11, 2010 by Sherman Distin
Far too often agencies lose sight of what's really important. They become entrenched in the many details of just running a successful Paid Search campaign. That usually translates into weekly meetings where metrics like Impressions, Clicks and Average Cost-per-Click are heavily discussed. Don't get me wrong, these metrics indirectly indicate how your paid search campaign is tracking against your business goals but who has time to try and put those pieces together? When you have multiple stakeholders breathing down your back for various reports and executive summaries on those reports, do you really want to be bothered with figuring out how to make a 20% increase in clicks week over week sound important to those stakeholders?

Let me offer a little story to help drive the point home -

A bright recent college grad is considering investing. He calls on three highly recommended investors to have a meeting. In the meeting he reaches into his pocket and puts the change he finds on the table. He asks the first investor, “What do you see?”

The investor replies, “I see thirty-six cents.”

“You are very good with math, thank you.” says the college grad. He turns to the second investor and asks, “What do you see?” The investor thinking he has certainly outwitted the first investor replies, “I see a 2007 Quarter with George Washington’s portrait, a 1996 Dime with a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt and a 1943 Penny with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.”

The college grad replies, “You are extremely observant and detail oriented. Thank you.” The college grad then turns to the third investor and asks the same question, “What do you see?”

The third investor replies without hesitation, “I see you paying off your college loans and buying a sports car.”
“You’re hired. Let’s meet again on Monday,” said the college grad.

After walking out of the room the two befuddled investors turn to the smiling investor and ask in unison, “What the hell was that?”

The smiling investor replied, “You see, in 1943 pennies were struck in silver. The pennies struck in copper were rare errors and are highly valuable. Being that he is a recent college graduate, he should put that money towards paying off his loans. I also noticed he was reading a sports car magazine when we entered. After a few investments, He will be able to use the left over money to invest in a little fun. That’s really the big picture.”


Most agencies are like the first investor. They get the math right. They understand tracking, reporting and all the intricacies of tactical execution but those agencies really have no clue what the larger corporate initiatives are of their client because they are too narrowly focused on making sure the campaigns they are running have excellent performance when judged by Paid Search KPI's.

Agencies that are like the second investor take pride in surface level knowledge and cool reporting gimmicks. They all too often skip over the actual math and performance. They are usually guilty of having flashy sales people in place of strategy driven Account Service team members.

The third investor is the agency you want to partner with. They won't bog you down with details of pay per click performance metrics that get in the way of you understanding what that performance means to your business objectives. They understand all of the tedious details in paid search marketing but provide summaries in a way that is meaningful to your business. Do you want to talk to your VP or CEO in terms of Click-Through-Rates or in terms of increases on efficiency in customer acquisition? The third investor also picked up on an interest the college grad did not mention. A good agency should note the goals you mention as well as ask for confirmation on the ones that may be implied.

When choosing your agency make sure they are asking the questions that show they are interested in not only displaying their paid search expertise but also helping your business grow.

Drinking From The Fire Hose

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 by Tom Kirszenstein

I've been hearing the phrase "Drinking from the fire hose" more often than usual lately. The curious thing is that it's coming from Interactive Media Professionals (including myself), as much as from end users. With the exponential growth of the Internet and its related technologies, we now have access to more information, in more places, in more ways than ever before. Web 2.0, Social Media, Application Software Development, Mobile and related technologies are having a profound impact on Interactive Marketing Strategies. Many agencies are capable at traditional & online media marketing, or they may have strong technical capabilities--but, it is rare to find an agency that has all of these abilities and deep technical resources such as Definition 6.

To follow the fire hose analogy--anyone faced with that situation would get out of the way. The high volume and velocity of incoming data require some type of control and direction to be useful to ourselves, our clients, and our business.  Developers, interactive designers, and marketers are faced with the same questions as consumers--how to manage the onslaught of incoming information. Interactive Ad Agencies are faced with the additional responsibility of creating new tools to distribute information in a clear and meaningful way. These interactive professionals are the firemen holding the hose. 

At the height of the dotcom boom, an old colleague used to remind me that technology is simply a way of doing things. As the old broadcast model of advertising becomes obsolete, and user discovery & social interaction drive engagement, the function of marketing itself must now change to meet these communication challenges. This new model now poses new questions about where marketers should be, how they communicate, and when that interaction will occur.  I still remember the first  7-Eleven convenience store that opened in my neighborhood, and discovering that name comes from its operating hours—--it was a big deal to be open until 11PM! Marketers didn’t create more ads to attract customers from 9-5, they simply changed to meet customers on their own terms.

Integrated interactive marketing campaigns must be open and immersed in the culture to create value and be relevant. Successful marketers are positioned alongside their target market, making use of tactics such as Branded Content and Branded Entertainment to engage the user, enabling them to discover that value on their own, and decide what truly fulfills their needs. This is not an easy task, and creating meaningful user interaction grows out of qualified analysis of users and their interactions. Those of us in Media and Advertising have been exposed to these ideas before, but never before have these been more important to interactive design. Today's consumer has become a partner in the design process, and defines how we approach our interactions with them. Social media tools such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter provide marketers with a limitless cache of information to help segment, target and engage users as never before— which only highlights the need for efficient processing of data.

Our obligation to clients is to find the relevant information, manage and organize it, and disperse it to potential customers.  To do this, we interpret client requirements and translate those requirements into a meaningful Interactive Experience. We need to collect and analyze enough user data to create strong, branded messages that reach the intended target. In addition, we must combine data with the tools and applications that make it meaningful to those target consumers.

In this new age of discovery, the true Integrated Interactive Agencies are taking the time and effort to find the tools necessary to do the job, or when needed, create them. With information coming constantly from every direction, those who are efficient at organizing, managing, and presenting it will be successful. Otherwise, we're just spraying a fire hose.  If we attempt to do that, consumers will just get out of the way.

Innovation and Cost Drivers

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Jasdeep Jaitla
Intuition can guide you to the place of innovation, and analysis guides you to the method of innovation.

Driving down costs is the goal of every business in every industry. Identifying and nailing down Cost Drivers in a Interactive Media Agency is one of the most challenging aspects of Innovation due to the service model and diversity of projects. The more diverse the services and the more capabilities an organization has, the harder the cost drivers are to innovate. This is the challenge.

Create Measurability

In order to analyze data, you need to collect data. The first step is to establish a normalized set of information, and discover commonalities that you measure over time. It's difficult in service business models to identify measurable practices since commonality between projects may not exist. In contrast, it is much easier to find measurable actvities within consistent services. For example, in the realm of public service such as law enforcement, response times can be measured which can lead to innovation in terms of communication technologies, route mapping, and routine patrolling route generation to optimize the response times and measure improvements. In the same light, commonality and metrics need to be put in place so that you can innovate. Without this baseline set of metrics, most improvements are subjective and can be hit and miss.

Measurability and Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing strategies and improved search engine optimization follow the same metaphorical principle. Because optimization is always a moving target, you have to establish a control on your marketing practices and only change a few independent variables at a time, such as keyword density, or keyword targeting in ads, in order to see their effect. In the case of organic search results, the effect of changes may take weeks or even months before they actually show results. To top it off, search algorithms and prioritization change "without notice." To discover these changes requires a scientific mindset for the search engine optimization consultants.

The cost drivers in Search Engine Marketing involve keyword market prices. Camping a commonly used keyword for PPC can cost you a fortune. Using longtail strategies and finding ways to effectively identify your product, service or company is the innovation point, and only good analysis and keyword research will get you there. Consistency is the rule of the game to establish and maintain hold of brand loyalty, market share, market segment, and also online in terms of keyword ownership, and search engine rankings.

Internet Application Development

With Internet Services, the identification of cost drivers needs to be built into the process by abstracting out parts of the process that show commonality and measurability. This should be the starting gate through which your innovation charges. Like online marketing, application development is a moving target. New technologies explode onto the marketplace on a regular basis, tempting you to change how you do business. Again by using a scientific approach, by controlling your process and making sure you change a few things at a time, you can drive changes from the right point of view rather than hype, and effectively make improvements on your cost drivers.

Visualizing Innovation

Successes in Social Media (or Please start using Social Media now)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 by Lance King
I've compiled a small list here of Social Media success stories.  One of the interesting things that I find about most people who have already started marketing and consumer communications using Social Media is that they often say "don't be afraid to try something new" and "don't be afraid of failure".  Some failures have lead to even better campaigns.  If these companies (and more) can try a few ideas, so can you.  Most people familiar with social media agree that if you really want to connect with your consumers and help establish or reinforce brand recognition, you need to get on Social Media outlets now.  For one thing, it is often very cheap to do this while being able to reach out to thousands or even millions of potential and long-standing customers.  So please review these stories to see how easy some of them got started and the great successes that they had.

1. Taco Mac on Twitter
Followers of Taco Mac can follow the individual Taco Mac location of their choice.  They get updates on Taco Mac's latest specials and reminders of special events.  Taco Mac gets a lot more people attending special events because many of them might have forgotten.  On Pint Night they are running out of free pint glasses in 1 hour instead of 3 hours like it was before Twitter.  What else could your company do if you were sending constant "reminders" to your customers?
(http://www.ajc.com/business/taco-mac-uses-twitter-102656.html)
(http://twitter.com/TMacLindbergh)


2. Masi Bicycles on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
New Masi Brand Manager, Tim Jackson, was given a very small budget and they were already spending much of that on some magazine ads.  So he had to come up with an inexpensive way to better market the Masi brand.  The easy (and cheap) way for him was to create a blog that he regularly posts to.  This actually helped him to establish good relationships with some of his vendors.  He is also actively using Twitter and Facebook and is moving toward podcasts and video.  With a new "cult" following, sales are really starting to grow.  What's really interesting is that Tim had never done any of this before.
(http://mediahunter.typepad.com/media_hunter/2008/07/social-media-su.html#more)
(http://twitter.com/MasiBicycles)


3. CNN with Facebook
CNN had a huge success when they teamed up with Facebook to present the Presidential Inaugaration and Michael Jackson's funeral.  21.3 million live video streams!  That's a lot of people.  Oh, and guess what?  CNN's first attempt failed (The Primary Debates).  But they figured it out before the inaugaration.  What can your company do that would attract watchers, even if you don't get 21.3 million?  Maybe a live fashion show for a new line of clothing?  Perhaps a live demonstration of how your product works or a new product offering? Or maybe a conversation with your CEO?
(http://vmarketingblog.com/2009/07/31/cnn-and-social-networking/)
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/21/inauguration.online.video/index.html)
(http://mashable.com/2009/01/20/cnn-facebook-inauguration-numbers/)
(http://newteevee.com/2009/01/20/facebook-cnn-is-future-of-tv/)


4. Zappos on Twitter, Blogs
Customer satisfaction and relationships.  That is what Zappos is all about.  QUALITY interactions.  Not only do the CEO and COO get online, but many of their other employees do too.  It is like they are your friends.  What would it be like for your company if people considered your brand as their friend?  Zappos has come to the realization that your brand isn't what you say it is, it is what the consumers say it is.  They proudly look for and respond to negative comments about them.  They are all about "making things right".  They want people to be comfortable not just with Zappos' products, but with Zappos' employees.  How would people respond to your employees if they were responding to and interacting with consumers online?  To quote from the article below "we may not always remember what someone tells us, but we generally remember how we felt when we were interacting with the person. And when people feel respected and engaged, whether it is in-person with a co-worker or online on a social network, they have a natural desire to tell other people about the experience."
(http://mashable.com/2009/04/26/zappos/)
(http://twitter.com/zappos)


5. Common Wealth Credit Union (CWCU) on YouTube
CWCU wanted to target a specific demographic.  People between the ages of 17 and 25.  They wanted a way to keep the buzz going while acquiring new customers for life.  They created a microsite for this campaign that is managed by someone who is 17 - 25 years old and use YouTube to upload videos that will appeal to people their age, usually videos of themselves.  People can interact with the website by answering poll questions, watching videos, sharing pictures, submitting job postings, adding information about free stuff in their communities, and of course, applying for a chequing account.  The site "spokester" also blogs about money with fun little YouTube videos.  They opened up 2400 new accounts in the first 8 months after the campaign started (Note, the article does not say how that compares to previous months, but it must be good because they are still going and have a new "spokester" with lots of new material).
(http://mediahunter.typepad.com/media_hunter/2008/08/social-media--1.html#more)
(http://www.youngfreealberta.com/)


So those are just a few examples of companies making the most with Social Media.  In many cases it involved very little cost.  In other cases there was quite a bit of time, effort and money put into it, but the results were out of this world.  Given that there are several very active social media sites, it would be a smart move to get your company out there and in touch with your current and potential customers.

If you are looking for great ideas, let Definition 6 help you.  We are an online interactive marketing agency with experience in Social Media efforts.  There are so many good online marketing techniques and we can help you find the one (or more) that are right for you.  If you go to www.definition6.com, you can check out our new game that interacts directly with Twitter called TwitterINGO.  Or you can check out how we integrated AutoExtra's campaign with MySpace.  We can also help you with mobile marketing strategies.

If any of the above stories don't convince you to get on the Social Media bandwagon, then check out Mashable.com's "10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media".

Believe The Hype: Open Source Web CMS

Friday, July 10, 2009 by Mike Reese
If you were involved in a CMS (or WCM - Web Content Management) purchase decision 5 years ago, you likely heard about the "open source" phenomenon. And, you probably cringed at the thought of supporting your revenue-producing, lead-generation website with low cost alternative to the Interwoven and Vignette giants. Cringe no more, open source solutions not only provide very similar features, the good ones are now fully supported as well.

Here's a recent article written by JT Smith on Website Magazine. (Choosing An Open Source Web Content Management System) He successfully details the differences between closed and open source systems (without bashing the Big Guys). Ultimately, every company has their own decision to make, their own contstraints, processes and budget concerns. A WCMS solution has to adhere to these points, so open source may not be for everyone. But it's certainly worth taking a look at some of JT's points:

As your business grows, your needs will change. The open source model provides a mechanism for adapting to that change without relying on proprietary software to catch up to evolving trends and new technologies.

Budget...Budget. If budget is a concern, and likely it is these days, open source makes sense. Period. Save the budget for your other interactive marketing strategies.

Fully supported. Lack of support used to be a pitfall of open source solutions. That has changed. You'll find that well established, reputable solutions offer not only support, but also a vast community of developers and end users.

Somewhere in between. Open source CMS does not necesitate custom application development. Nor does it necesitate costly professional services contracts. It really falls in the middle. The benefit of open source becomes the ability to lean in either direction.

I love JT's quote: "Using closed source CMS can be likened to buying a new car with the hood welded shut, the wheels permanently attached, and your only maintenance option is a visit to the dealership."

Give open source a look. At Definition 6, we utilize one of the "good ones", Umbraco. We've been through several (> 20), successful implementations for a variety of clients. Including websites in the travel, telecommunications and online retail industries. I'm proud to say that we're also the first certified solutions developer in North America.


Combine Social Media with Traditional Tactics: Real Campaign Example

Thursday, July 9, 2009 by Cecilia Barella

As social media channels become more and more powerful they also seem to become more and more varied, it feels like every day we learn about a new cool tool, as an interactive marketer, it can be challenging to figure out which one is the best fit for which marketing strategy. I read an article in Marketing Sherpa on how to use social media in a more effective way. The article gives specific examples from IBM on how they have combined social media strategy with traditional tactics for application development, event promotion and demand generation. I have highlighted here one of them, where social media was used to promote SOA’s events and tools. 

Social Media Marketing for Event Promotion and Lead Generation

IBM wanted to bring together the SOA community and generate leads for its SOA tools and solutions. So the Marketing team organized a road show that included 100 cities. To complement the traditional marketing methods of promotion for the event which included direct mail and one-to-one invitations, IBM used an animated 3D person on the SOA website, a Twitter campaign, blogs and a widget.

- 3D Animated Character

The animated 3D character was added to the SOA website, it walked with an invitation in its’ hand, when users clicked on the character or on the invitation they were taken to a registration page. Visits to the registration page increased by 600%.

- Twitter

Messages were sent on Twitter with a promo code, users that signed up with that promo code were allowed to talk directly with one of IBM’s CTO for 30minutes. Within 3 days, over 40 people registered in Amsterdam alone.

- Blogs

The marketing team blogged about the conference on multiple development oriented blogs. The buzz created around the event caused many developers to mention the conference in their own blogs, feeds, profiles… Customers even created Facebook and LinkedIn groups supporting the event. The buzz caused by the social media ‘add-ons’ increased their event registration by 10% at no cost to the company.

- Online Community

For connecting customers after the event the team used a third-party company to build an online community website called SOAsocial. They let the third-party host the community as the goal was to make it less company/IBM focused and let it grow on its own.

- Consumer generated content

They encouraged customers to take pictures at the events and post them on Flickr afterwards. This not only increased engagement through user-generated content, but it also helped the company save thousands of dollars on hiring a photographer.

- Widget

Since the attendees of the events were potential customers for the SOA tools. The marketing team built a widget that supplied the events’ presentations. The widget could be added to a blog, website or downloaded to a computer. The widget was driven by RSS feeds, so the company could push news and products demos to potential and existing customers. 67% of the conferences’ attendees downloaded the widget.

One of the “key lesson learned” for Interactive Ad Agencies is that social media is a channel and not a strategy in itself, it is most effective when used to complement other marketing initiatives, including offline and traditional marketing.

Ideas to Add Text Messaging to Your Business

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Jeremy Bromwell
After the recent L.G. National Texting Championship this week text messaging has been on my mind.  I came across a great article on ClickZ recently about how to begin integrating text messages with your business and mobile advertising strategy.

The author, Jack Aaronson, listed 7 ways to get started:
  • Order Status
  • Product Availability and Purchasing
  • Ratings and Reviews
  • Similar Items
  • Multimedia Messages
  • Policies and Store Hours/Locations
  • In-store Customer Service

There are many other uses for text messaging outside of the retail environment but these are just a few suggestions to help you generate ideas to help your business.  A mobile strategy, when well planned and thoughtfully implemented, can provide additional lift to other forms of media and advertising.

View the full article here or call me at Definition 6 to talk about how we can help develop your mobile marketing strategies.

Benchmark For Success

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Mike Reese
In my previous post regarding the need to include auto-generated emails within a email marketing strategy, I reflected on the lack of love given to emails automatically generated through end-user website activity. It's time to give benchmarking some love too!

The promise of a new web project or marketing initiative leaves stakeholders dreaming of online success, higher conversion rates, higher traffic volumes and positive bottom line results. Quite often, the strategy for measuring success gets lost in the shuffle.

Some of you reading this might be thinking, "Why waste the time? Higher conversion equals success." In some cases you may be right on track with that thought, but most of you probably know it's more than that. Success can be measured in many ways, I'll get into that in second. But understand that it's worth a deeper dive into the metrics that are important to you, your company or your industry, before you start on a new initiative. Ask yourself what data you'll be reviewing a week after a website launch to determine if you're on your way towards a positive ROI. It might be PPC reporting, website analytics, email marketing, CRM comparison or another set of metrics that is specific to your industry. I've seen it before, 2 months after redesign and stakeholders are trying to figure out what to measure. By that point, you're probably not going to have the baseline data needed to show a comparison. Solution? Benchmark. And do it early. The strategy and planning phase of any project is the perfect time to start thinking about it.

So what metrics should you benchmark? There is no perfect answer. Sally, who manages an online retail business will have different success factors than Frank, the owner of a property management services company. Sally cares about online sales and revenue generation, but Frank wants to see an increase in online lead generation. It can be a daunting task, so here are a few good places to start:
  1. Website analytics - If your initiative includes the enhancement or redesign of a website, start the project with an examination of your existing analytics data. If you don't have any, stop reading this and go get it. Figure out what will be important to you later. It may be as simple as traffic volume, visit duration, cost per ad spend or conversion rates. But you may find a need to collect custom data as well. Almost every analytics package out there has that capability.
  2. External data - In this context, external data is performance data obtained through your CRM package or 3rd party sources. Call center volumes or in-store data would fall into this category. You need an adequate way to access it and you need historical references.
  3. Email marketing - If your initiative includes modifications to email marketing programs, make sure your provider is collecting meaningful data on open and click-through rates. And make sure you'll have access to historical data to create a trending analysis.
There are plenty of other data sources to benchmark against to determine success. The main goal is to ensure you have the data you'll need to measure success after you've spent time and money to get there. And do it early. Your ROI calculation will depend on it.

Keys to targeting the growing Hispanic community

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Lance King

In my continuing research into marketing to the Hispanic consumer, I'm finding great articles from MediaPost that provide good information on why and how to reach this particular audience.  So here is an article by Joseph Kutchera (Why Does Google Send U.S. Hispanics To Foreign Web Sites?) that talks about what Google is doing with search results for the Spanish speaking community and how you can apply similar ideas to your marketing campaigns.

The first thing he points out is that if you search in Google using Spanish words, 50% or more of your responses are going to be for sites outside of the U.S. borders.  So why does this happen and why do marketers miss this target audience?  Kutchera provides the answer.  "Google and other search engines index sites globally while we marketers, agencies and media sellers work within the economic and political borders of the U.S."  When people search using Spanish words and terms, Google is going to return sites that have Spanish content on them.  Does your website have Spanish content?  If you do, you may still be missing out on this audience for a few different reasons.  Kutchera points out the following.  1) Your Spanish site may not be optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like your English site.  2) Many Spanish speaking Hispanics like to go to sites of their country of origin. 3) Spanish language markets are more likely to spend time on their content, making it more relevant than someone from an English language market who is updating a Spanish language website. 4) U.S. advertisers have been slow to move budgets toward online marketing and therefore not providing the resources necessary to provide the content that is necessary.

So what can you do to reach the Hispanic population:

- Purchase non-U.S. targeted inventory on your search buys along with your U.S. targeted inventory.
- Reach out to Hispanic country-of-origin web sites through ad networks.
- Apply behavioral, contextual, and language targeting to further segment and understand your Hispanic audience.

As a Senior Consultant at Definition 6, an interactive marketing agency with expertise in Web Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing Consulting, I'm seeing lots of evidence for companies to shift some marketing dollars to specifically target Hispanics in the U.S.  This growing population is getting online at a very fast pace.  There are millions and millions of them out there that could be buying your products or services if they could find you.  Are you willing to let them go to your competitors?  We can help you target them.  We can help you get ahead of the curve.
 


Why target Hispanics with mobile ads?

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 by Lance King
Here is an article I found about targeting Hispanics with mobile ads and apps.  Why you should target them specifically?  Well, it turns out that many younger generation Hispanics in the US will get their first internet experience on their cell phone, not on a computer.  And some recent surveys have shown that Hispanics are more likely to view mobile advertisements and respond to them than other groups.  One company mentioned in the article is targeting Hispanics by offering English training on their cell phones in exchange for them watching a short 2 - 3 second advertisement.  With the responses offered up by Hispanics, it can become quite easy to figure out what different demographics are doing and what they respond best to.  Given that Hispanics will be in a better spending position once the recession settles, it seems like a great opportunity now to start planning your mobile campaigns that are directed toward Hispanics.

Definition 6 is an Interactive Marketing company in Atlanta that can help you with your mobile marketing strategies and help you tie them in with application development consulting, web 2.0 applications, email marketing and search engine optimization.  Contact us and let us help you market to this growing community of consumers.

Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2009

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 by Michael Kogon

Business Development Exec, Rhonda Vincent, shares with us the 7 top online marketing trends for 2009…

For online marketers 2009 will be a challenging year, they’ll need to build the basis for future expansion, leveraging social media, emerging technologies and vendor partners who are thinking about their business and find ways to maximize their budgets.  Here are 7 online marketing trends for 2009 that I came across on a ClickZ report:

• Increase customer retention efforts by marketing to your existing customer base – it’s cheaper and more effective because you know who they are and you understand their behavior.
• Create more attractive content – it will engage your customers and will help with your search engine optimization marketing
• Develop targeted marketing campaigns across a variety of mediums…e-mail, text messages, instant messages.
• Leverage online communities such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter…
• Increase your Web Analytics efforts
• Enhance search marketing advertising to expand across social media, mobile, and local search.
• Continue to integrate distribution channels despite higher cost

Interactive Ad Agencies like Definition 6 can leverage this insight to maximize your spends with the best ROI to get you through this year and still plan for 2010 initiatives.
 

Sometimes you agree with everything someone says, and sometimes you don't

Friday, February 27, 2009 by Michael Kogon

An Interactive Media Agency has to pay a lot of attention to a lot of things. So we tend to read, digest, synthesize and retransmit a ton of information. As a result, we get pretty good at dissecting information and applying it against our own customers, lessons learned and next assignments. I found that Matt Cutt's makes some good points and I agree with everything he said with the exception of point 1 about natural search. I think SEO will be something of critical importance and in growing importance in the years to come. Aside from that, I think he is spot on with his comments.

Google's Matt Cutts cited the decreasing importance of rank for any given phrase and other implications. To be successful in 2009, marketers must strive for relevance in paid and natural search. Marketers should also keep these points in mind:

  • Natural search ranking reports will tell less of the story and become less important
  • Relevancy in PPC ads becomes more important than ever: keywords, ad copy and landing pages should match to boost quality scores and attract attention
  • Other ways to instantly boost relevance on the SERPs include:
  • Geotargeting for multichannel and local advertisers
  • Natural search landing pages, targeting specific people with specific keywords

Key recommendation: Improve relevance in PPC advertising, keyword research and other efforts to dominate SERPs.

As interactive marketing continues to grow in importance, the recommendations above will grow in impact and your interactive ad agency will need to focus on making the dollars you spend, more effective and revenue supporting. I particularly love the recommendations about " keywords, ad copy and landing pages should match to boost quality scores and attract attention" - I think this is a great point of reference for everyone to think about - what happens, before, during and after the click.

Email marketing requires dedicated resources

Thursday, February 26, 2009 by Lynn Moss

I am quoted in the book The Truth about Email Marketing in the chapter entitled Getting the ball rolling with your email marketing partner.

"As a client, be prepared to share information about how email addresses are captured, what is stored on each customer or prospect, metrics on all your email campaigns, as well as, offline marketing efforts.  The email strategy vendor may suggest a new look and feel, new language, or more ways to target users.  Continue to test recommended changes in order to optimize email campaigns.

It can be difficult to convince senior management that the email marketing strategy should be given as much thought as the marketing strategy.  There should be dedicated resources, and the strategy needs to continue to evolve.”

Definition 6 sends out almost 300 million emails a year on behalf of clients.  We know how difficult it can be to get started and to improve email campaigns.

We can help you develop an email marketing strategy, segment and target users, design templates, craft language, build HTML templates that content can be dropped into, deploy the emails, and measure the effectiveness.

Email marketing continues to be a cost efficient way to reach customers and build productive relationships.  It is easily measurable.  That's a combination you can't beat.

Geotarget Your Next PPC Campaign

Thursday, January 15, 2009 by Michael Kogon

Project Manager Lisa Seals presented an article to our Client Services group on the effectiveness of optimzing PPC campaigns through targeted email marketing -geotargeting.  The article reinforces the importance of geotargeting to deliver relevant customized keywords, ad copy and offers to searchers in specific geographic locations.

And according to MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, marketers agree that geotargeting is an effective tactic that delivers high ROI.

 

Lisa highlighted three major points from the report:

 

1.     In addition to targeting PPC campaigns to searchers in specific locations, ecommerce sites (or other national search advertisers) should also consider geotargeting to optimize their overall search strategy.

2.     Shifting resources to regions that deliver the best performing traffic, or highlight brands based on regional popularity, will deliver the highest ROI.

3.      Always remember to test.  As a geotargeted ad group demonstrates its effectiveness, you can move on to a new region or increase spending in those areas to maximize results.

 

Check out the full article on MarketingSherpa.com to learn how a national jeans company developed a comprehensive search marketing strategy that included geotargeting to advertise a popular apparel of brands in major metropolitan areas.

 

Check out our some of our blogs for information about Definition 6's search engine optimization solutions.

 

 

A New Perspective on Subject Line Design

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 by Michael Kogon

Account Coordinator, Jeremy Bromwell, recently came across new research from Epsilon Strategic Services  which reveals that character length is not the only important item to consider when you are designing your email subject line for any permission based email marketing campaign.

Marketers spend significant time developing the email creative however most do not devote enough time to subject line strategy and development.  Many would argue that the subject line is the most important factor in overall response rate -- and that the subject line extends beyone the open to click-thru rate.  With the subject line being the initial piece of information subscribers see in their inbox (verses the well developed creative) marketers should re-think the relationship between the subject line length (SLL) and email performance.

Key points from Jeremy's article:

  1. the combination of SLL and content is what drives higher open & click rates
  2. 57% of U.S. email recipience will open an email based on their relationship with the sender andn the first 38-47 characters.
  3. standards to keep in mind include front-loading your subject lines with the most important information, keep the subject line short to convey your message, use longer subject lines when there is a compelling reason to...and always test!

There are many important things to consider when developing the subject line strategy beyond length.  Split or multi-variate subject line testing should always be placed into the project schedule to maximize the ROI of the campaign.  Keep in mind personalization, especially beyond just name, is another best practice to consider when appropriate in the subject line and body of the email and increases subscriber engagement.

Definition 6 is a leading interactive agency in Atlanta serving many of our clients with the best and most effective email marketing strategies.

Why Microsoft Will Win Yahoo

Friday, October 17, 2008 by Michael Kogon

Gabe Rand, a Definition 6 Client Manager, discussed an article he recently read in Fortune Magazine's Fast Forward...

Why Microsoft needs Yahoo to be competetive. The article discusses that even though Microsoft has caught up to Google search capabilties in terms of results that they are still losing market share.  This is due to a few factors, Microsoft uses live.com, which is relatively new and unknown as a search portal.  Microsoft is also battling the perception that Google is now the Technology giant, even beyond search, which is definitely not the case. For all of these reasons as well as the profitability and associated stock price of that profitability Microsoft will continue to pursue Yahoo's search business.  Microsoft is currently in talks with AOL and Time Warner about acquiring Yahoo's non-search business.

Gabe highlighted a few eye opening points from the article:
1. Microsoft needs Yahoo search to stay competetive.
2. Google is dominating the search market and is looking to partner with Yahoo, which would give an 80%+ market share.
3. Microsoft is willing to deal and push to make this happen.  Clients win with competition, no one wants Google to be the only one out there.

Gabe's closing thoughts to the group were that Google has operated successfully in a single business, search, and done extremely well, but that competition is healthy for web search engine optimization and to help control the costs of paid seo.  The full article can be viewed at: http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/03/technology/kirkpatrick_search.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008070714