Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

January 3, 2013 · 11:41 am

The Social Media Team

One of the areas that will continue to grow this year is corporate use of social media. I know – big, bold prediction on my part. In any event, it was because of this that I read the recent release of data from Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions. You can read the study called “Structuring A Social Media Team” here.  The research asked a couple of thousand respondents about how their company uses social media and how they’re structured to support those efforts.  The results are not particularly surprising.  In fact, I find them a bit alarming.  Let’s see what you think.

  • Sixty-five percent of respondents do social media on top of their other duties. For those who do social media exclusively, nearly eighty-three percent work on teams of three or fewer.
  • Sixty-nine percent are dissatisfied or only “somewhat satisfied” with how they measure social media. Only thirty-one percent are satisfied or very satisfied. And many say they lack the time to track data or aren’t even sure what to measure.
  • Only thirteen percent describe their efforts as advanced. Slightly more than half agreed with the statement, “We keep our heads above water, but not by much.”
  • “Ownership” of social media is murky, and the question may even become passé as numerous departments within organizations jump in.

So most organizations don’t have an employee who focuses exclusively on social media. It appears from the data that it’s an added responsibility for someone who is assisted by interns. While as a manager I understand the “efficiency” of this, I’m not sure I’d trust what is becoming my organizations public face to someone who is doing it as an afterthought.  Think about some of the social media disasters we’ve seen – how often is an intern involved?  The fact that marketing, PR, and other departments all lay claim to a piece of these efforts makes it a difficult task to get goals clearly defined too.

I’m not quite sure what to say about the lack of measurement   I don’t believe in doing anything in business without some method of accountability and not having any idea about what to track much less how to track it is disturbing.  Only thirty-one percent of firms report measuring sales while everyone else seems focused on “likes” and followers – a measure of quantity, not necessarily quality or response.  the lack of time and/or manpower is also cited (by nearly 2/3) as the main reasons why there isn’t more and better measurement.

It’s a pretty comprehensive study and if you use social media for business you might give it a read.  Then hit the comments to let us know what you think.

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December 12, 2012 · 11:25 am

Click Here

We’ve discussed the disconnect between marketers and consumers here on the screed more than once and I had set aside a research study a couple of weeks ago to do so again.  It’s a document from the Adobe folks called “Click Here: The State Of Online Advertising” and it makes for a brief, interesting read.  As one might expect, consumers don’t exactly rave about their love for advertising.  That said, they do seem to recognize the need for advertising and prefer professionally created ads over user-generated marketing:

Consumers and marketing professionals agree that marketing is valued, strategic to business and paramount to driving sales.  Professional advertising is the most effective form of advertising, but 27% of marketers believe that user-generated content is the most popular form of online advertising.

Of course, 53% agree that most marketing is a bunch of B.S. (the study’s term, not mine).  The key to me is, as eMarketer reported:

Marketers and the consumers they are trying to reach disagreed on the effectiveness of a wide variety of ad types, according to the survey. Though both groups thought the best ads were those created by professional marketers, nearly half of marketers said this, compared with just 36% of internet users. There was large disagreement about the effectiveness of paid search ads (touted by marketers, played down by web users) and outdoor advertising (the reverse). Internet users were also much more likely to say there were no good or effective ads—positions which marketers were extremely unlikely to hold, for obvious reasons.

Why are the senders so out of sync with the receivers?  As the study shows, people prefer to get information from people they trust.  The issue, then, is how does a brand penetrate that circle?  Does anyone believe it’s through fake “likes” on Facebook where we see friends (even dead ones!) shilling for stuff they wouldn’t ever use?  Maybe we need to be less lazy – tell better stories, do better creative – since 68% of consumers find online ads “annoying” and “distracting” and 54% say banner ads don’t work. I suspect this dichotomy has ever been so to a certain extent.  For people in the market for various products, marketing messages are important and welcome.  For everyone else, they’re an annoying fact of life.

Here’s the thing – EVERYONE is in the market for something nearly all the time.  Food and entertainment, for example, are daily “purchases”.  As the research shows, until we on the marketing side do a better job of connecting, our ability to influence those decisions will always be less than it could be.   You agree?

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November 26, 2012 · 12:12 pm

The Fine Print

Here we are again in the holiday season, which really means “primary spending time” both for consumers and retailers. The flyers bundled with my newspaper on Thursday had many more pages than did the paper itself. While they’re not as offensive as political ads, the frequency of ads for “Black Friday Deals!” on all programming was at week-before-the-election levels.  Numbing…

What bothers me about quite a few of these ads is not really restricted to this season but since everyone’s mind is on shopping I thought I’d put it out there today.  I have a huge distrust of fine print.  You know – the things about the stuff in big type that are written in tiny type and make the great deal not so great.  On radio ads it’s when the announcer starts talking very fast and unintelligibly.  As Consumer Reports pointed out, it’s getting a “free” download of antivirus software with a recent purchase. By the way,  free has a time limit — six months – and then you get billed for $49.99 after that if you don’t happen to cancel.  You might see it on a brand’s Facebook page – “like” us and get a coupon for $5.  Of course, the coupon is only good when you purchase $25 worth of stuff.  Book some hotel rooms online and you’ll probably miss the fine print about “resort charges” or “safe fees” that are positioned as optional but which are anything but.  I’ve never heard of anyone getting them removed from the bill.  My phone’s “unlimited” data plan allows me the use of unlimited amounts of data but after I get to some point the speed is throttled, making the plan limited in other ways.

I have to think that the revenues gained from these offers is offset to some degree (one hopes to a very large one) by the costs of customer service and refunds generated by the fine print.  Think for a minute about how we behave as individuals.  We don’t extend offers to our friends with fine print, at least not if we expect to keep them as friends.  “Let’s go to the movies” doesn’t come with “unless I can find a better option with someone else” or “of course, you’ll buy all the popcorn.”  Why would we behave differently as a brand?

Fine print, except as mandated by law, is a bad idea.  No fine print from me on that.  How about from you?

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