Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

July 22, 2015 · 11:41 am

Plans Etched In Sand

So, marketing compatriots. Let me ask you: what are you plans for MySpace this year? Or Orkut? What role does Friendster play in your brand strategy? While you may be giggling about the ridiculousness of those questions, you might have taken them quite seriously a few years ago. As an aside, I remember that when I met with the MySpace folks at the height of their popularity I was surprised both by the outrageous demands they were making and by their refusal to acknowledge that nothing seems to last forever in the digital world.  Oops.

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The business planning cycle tends to begin at budget time and if you’re a media or marketing person you’re often asked for a fairly detailed plan of attack.  I always prefaced my presentation with a broad disclaimer.  “What I am presenting is accurate and true for right now but I can’t promise you that it will be the best plan of attack in a month and certainly not in six months.  I can live with the budget requests I am making but please allow me flexibility with respect to the channels and media we use.”  Most of my bosses were great about that.

There is no way a social media plan you’ve developed a year prior is accurate. As with the examples above, circumstances change.  While I don’t believe most companies can support a major presence on EVERY platform which emerges, I do believe that it’s important to be aware of all of them and to test.  It’s really OK to cross-post great content every so often! Those tests need to be done with your key performance indicators in mind, and if an emerging platform doesn’t give you the ability to measure them, it’s probably not worth your time.  What’s very important is not to dismiss anything as “a fad” or “for kids.”  Remember that Facebook began as something for college kids and once it opened up the brands that were early adopters had an advantage (well, at least they did until Facebook destroyed a brand’s ability to engage their fans easily without paying).

The message today: don’t follow the plan; let the plan follow your customers.  Those plans should be etched in sand and not in stone.  Are yours?

 

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July 20, 2015 · 10:58 am

The Broken Business Model

I’ve written before about ad blocking and all of the business questions it raises.  Those questions are most directly asked about the business model in media, but they might also involve your business as well.  After all, when the basis of your revenue model involves getting consumers to do something which they really don’t want to do, maybe it’s time for some more thinking.

The media business has been built on a business model that involves a trade: the consumer gets content in return for giving up their attention.  In the digital world, they provide data along with that attention.  The flaw right out of the box with this is that publishers tell users that their content is free, or at least they do nothing to discourage that belief.  When a consumer adds ad blocking software to their browser, they do so to create a better browsing experience.  They probably don’t realize that they’re breaking the business model; they just want pages to load faster or not to be interrupted by pop-ups, screen takeovers, or any of the other ad formats that scream at them instead of talking with them.  Some publishers have tried either a subscription or “freemium” model which eliminates the ads, but consumers haven’t responded.  Instead, many sites are seeing up to 60% of the ads they serve being blocked.  This, clearly, is broken.

What to do?  I’d be lying if I said I knew.  I’d start by using something on my site that sniffs for ad blocking and maybe redirect anyone who uses it to a page where we explain why the ads are necessary.  At least it makes the value exchange explicit.  Will consumers care?  Will they make a small donation?  Will they buy a subscription?  Some will, and that’s a step in the right direction.  I don’t think the nuclear option of refusing to serve content to anyone using an ad blocker is smart.

Maybe hard code the ads (build them into the page instead of serving them via an external call).  They can’t block something that’s part of the page and appears to be content to a blocker.  Way more work on the administrative end, but effective.  I don’t know what to do about page load times, another key annoyance caused by ads.  When an ad-free page loads in under a second and the external ad and tracking calls add up to 10 seconds to the load time, there is a problem.

Any business model has to provide something of value to the customer.  In this case, the site’s customers are advertisers and the products are consumers.  Unfortunately, the consumers are not cooperating and the product is in trouble.  Any thoughts on how we fix this?

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July 15, 2015 · 10:50 am

Getting Found

Perhaps the biggest challenge in business is “discoverability.”  That’s just a fancy term for your business getting found.  If you’re a bricks and mortar operation, it might mean an eye-catching sign.  If you’re a digital business or a business that has a digital presence (are there any businesses that don’t?), it means doing the work needed so that when customers are using the web they can find your site.

That concern is something I get asked about by clients all the time.  They hear about Search Engine Optimization but don’t understand what it is or how to do it.  I’ll preface this by saying I don’t profess to be an SEO expert.  I can, however, get clients through the rudiments, take care of the technical basics, and, if our work shows results, bring in a resource to do the advanced stuff.  So with that in mind, let’s spend a minute on how your business can be more discoverable.

You might find this odd, but the answer is simpler now than it was a few years ago.  Many of the technical parts of SEO are no longer as important as they once were.  What’s important is a recurring theme here in the screed: focus on your customers or prospects.  Making your site content useful to a shopper will have the effect, in most cases, of being great SEO.  What do I mean?

People search either to buy something, to find a place and get there, or to find information.  The latter is why you do informational content (like this blog), the former are product pages, etc.  Making every page of your site clear with respect to what question you’re answering or problem you’re solving with probably mean you’re using the words people (not robots) use to find answers.  That’s good SEO because it is focused on user experience.

Yes, there are a couple of technical things you should do (good title tags is the main one) and you need to hope that people build links to your content (they will if it’s great!).  But the most important thing you can do in order to enhance discoverability is to be useful and clear.  For those of you who are hearing from SEO experts that want to charge you a fortune, you’re welcome (mail me – I’ll tell you where to send the check).  For all of you, I hope that helped.  Did it?

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