-
Author Archive
Second Screens
Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by David MorganSeventy to Eighty percent of those who watch TV, also are watching a “second screen” during the same time. That second screen is a smartphone, Ipad, or laptop. And what are we doing? We’re checking email, surfing the web, and looking up material that has to do with the show we’re watching! This weekend will be no exception. During the Super Bowl, there will be “calls to action” by many advertisers to take their commercial message one step further– to watch that second screen. Viewers will be able to see “the real story” behind the commercial, see “what happens next”, and participate in polls.
The “second screen” will be with us (at home at least…) for a long time. There are apps that “listen” to your TV, determine what episode you’re watching, and give you more information about the show. And this weekend, we can watch the Coke bears–(one bear per team) watch and react to the game!
(so, instead of watching the game, we can watch bears watching the game…hmmmm)
Marketers will have to consider second screens in the future. Are they distracting, adding, or just complicating the message?
Have a great time this weekend—whatever screen you use.
Social Media Trends for 2011
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 by David Morgan
In a May 2011 Report authored by Michael Stelzner and sponsored by Social media Examiner, the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing. More than 3300 marketers provided insight on the latest trends in Social Media.
Here’s a quick summary of the findings:
Marketers place high value on social media- A significant 90% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
Measurement and integration are top areas marketers want to master- One-third of all social media marketers want to know how to monitor and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and integrate their social media activities.
Social media marketing takes a lot of time - The majority of marketers (58%)are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and more than a third(34%) invest 11 or more hours weekly.
Video marketing on the rise- A significant 77% of marketers plan on increasingtheir use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2011.
Marketers seek to learn more about Facebook and blogging- 70% of marketers want to learn more about Facebook and 69% want to learn more about blogging.
The top benefits of social media marketing- The number-one advantage of social media marketing (by a long shot) is generating more business exposure,as indicated by 88% of marketers. Increased traffic (72%) and improved search rankings (62%) were also major advantages.
The top social media tools- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the topfour social media tools used by marketers, in that order. Facebook has eclipsed Twitter to take the top spot since the 2010 study.
Social media outsourcing underutilized- Only 28% of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing
You can find the original page for the report here.It’s a 40+ page read—probably not your “summer novel for the beach”—but important. When you can, look it over. At Force 5, we realize Social Media is a tool in the Marketing basket, and a moving target. Reports like this are important to review-Take some time and take a look.
Hey Buddy, wanna deal?
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 by David MorganHey, Want a deal? Ok, here it is….I’ll give you $2,500—1/3 now, 1/3 in 30 days, and the final 1/3 in 60. You give my customers $10,000 in retail business from your shop. How does that sound?
credit: Rocky Ayrawal
That’s a Groupon deal.
The “daily deal” industry structures their deals so that the retailer must be very careful about the deal they are getting.
Generally, a company like Groupon wants you to give a 50% deal ($10,000 worth of stuff for $5,000)—then they take 50% of the income from the sale of the coupons. Will you get customers in your door? Sure….But here are two questions you must consider.1-Will the people who take advantage of my coupon be existing customers?
2-If they are new, will they return?The problem is we don’t know the answer. If we have a lot of number 1, we lose money. We just gave away a 75% deal…to an existing customer!
If we have a lot of the second group, and they don’t return, we lose money too. Are people returning? Its too early to tell. We know that Groupon is making money, but will you?There are many more factors in the daily deal scenario that needs to be scrutenized by the savvy business person. So be careful. Usually, (and depending on your type of business) couponing isn’t a bad strategy—but how many 75% off deals can you afford?
To see the original article from Rocky Ayrawal, Tech Crunch
Friend us on Facebook!
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 by David Morgan
We see this phrase all the time. But as we dive deeper into the motivations of social network users, we see folks connect with Brands for many different reasons. I have a facebook friend that raves about a particular women’s clothing line. In my opinion, she’s a huge brand ambassador. So much so, that if I needed to purchase a woman’s clothing item for a gift, I’d check out their site. Before seeing my friend’s posts, I have never heard of this brand before. Her posts aren’t about deals or promotions, they’re about quality and style.
I thought about this from a brand perspective.
According to a Feb, 2011 Affluence Collaborative survey, wealthy internet users connect with brands on social networks for different reasons than the general population.
Among the general population, the main reason cited for connecting with brands on social networks was to receive deals and discounts. But this is a much lower priority for the wealthy. Their top reasons for following brands were due to a preexisting affinity for and a desire to be kept informed about the brand. (As a side note, the least-cited reason mentioned by all groups surveyed was to be entertained, suggesting that social media marketers still need to provide fans with value, even if it isn’t directly in the form of a coupon or sale.)
These findings coincide with earlier research from ExactTarget, which showed that a huge component of liking a brand on Facebook was due not just to an affinity, but as a means of self-expression for others to see. This promotional desire was more pronounced in Facebook users than Twitter followers or email subscribers. “Affluents” then, in their “love of the brands” they connect with, are largely acting as brand ambassadors.
Data from the study also reveals that the affluent aren’t using the same social networks as the general population. Facebook was the No. 1 social network used by all groups surveyed, but LinkedIn and Twitter attracted affluent internet users at nearly double the rate of the general population.
Our take away from the study?…. Any marketer targeting affluent consumers needs to know not only where to reach that audience, but what appeals to them. For wealthy internet users, connecting with a brand is largely about the brand itself, not gimmicks and offers. Affluents need to see a consistent message that makes following a brand meaningful for self-expression, just like when buying a brand in real life.
But I don’t think this idea just applies to the affluent—It’s the Brand ambassador we all want to be our friend. The person who “likes” us because of our brand-our quality, our customer service, our distinction in the marketplace.Keep your brand consistent throughout all of your social media efforts. Your ambassadors, wealthy or not, expect it.
Google Panda
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 by David Morgan
Google’s recent “Panda” update is getting plenty of notice and discussion on SEO and web marketing sites. This is an algorithm update, the formula Google uses to rank sites—using a variety of areas of your web site.It’s clear that one of the biggest goals for Google’s algorithm update is to provide higher page rankings for quality, rather than quantity, content. The biggest sites hurt in the change seem to be the “content farms”. A content farm (according to Wiki…) “employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines”. In other words, spammy content designed to fool Google into better results.
While your site may not be a content farm, you could be adversely affected by this update if your site contains:
* Relatively high amounts of advertising on the site
* Duplicate content (either on your own site or other domains)
* Page headlines that don’t match their contentYou can improve your site’s ranking with:
* Authoritative and useful content
* If your site is currently light on verbiage, more words per page may be an asset
* Content that provides value to your visitors
* Social network visibility via comments and sharingGoogle constantly looks at their search methods, and modify them to help you bring you the results you want. Good content—relative content—is always the proper way to build your site. Force 5 tries to stay abreast of the latest search methodologies – contact us if we can be of assistance as you update your site.
Web of One
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 by David MorganI was listening to a TED talk yesterday from Eli Pariser, who just wrote the book “The Filter Bubble”.In his talk, he tells of the personalization taking place on the web. Everything is filtered before it gets to us. I have an interest in sailing, and listed that on my facebook. And lo and behold, I see ads and articles on Sailing. Google Ad words looks at blogs, and then show ads linked to key words found in the article.
The Filter bubble by Eli Pariser
In fact, Google uses 57 different criteria to filter content to you. This might include your location, you age, gender, and whatever else they know about you.
Is personalization a good thing? In most cases, sure. I don’t mind seeing ads on sailing, but what am I missing? Eli’s premise is that you start to see only your filter—a filter that’s not necessarily controlled by you. So if I’m conservative, I may not see liberal points of view. If I like dogs, I might not see cats…Get the picture?
Some argue that most people lack the time, motivation and self-knowledge to customize their filter, if they are given the chance. But others think that automatic personalization severely limits the power of the net to stretch our minds.
Do you want to see opposing views on a subject? Do you want to see challenging and contrary viewpoints? Is your filter relevant, important, uncomfortable, challenging, other points of view? Again, as we’ve noted in previous blogs, its all about data mining.
As a brand development and marketing communications firm, Force 5 is always interested in metrics. We want to know if our target audience for any given product or service is seeing (and responding to) our message. But has data mining and filtering gone too far—limiting our selections, making a “web of one”—instead of a “web of many”? What do you think?
Where in the world are you?
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 by David Morgan
A peek at location data sorted on an Iphone
For the last week, the tech news has been reporting that Apple has secret files on the iPhone that track user location and store it on the device, without the permission of the device owner. It’s unclear what the data is used for and why Apple has been collecting it in iOS products that carry a 3G antenna for nearly a year now.
There’s no evidence of that information being sent to Apple or anybody else. Even so, the data is unencrypted, giving anyone with access to your phone or computer where backups may be stored a way to grab the data and extrapolate a person’s whereabouts and routines.
Soon after this announcement, Microsoft and Android fessed up as well—stating that their devices collected records of the physical locations of customers who use their mobile operating system. Microsoft does say, however, that location histories are not saved directly on the device. That’s different from Apple’s practice of recording the locations of visible cell towers on iPhone and iPad devices, which can result in more than a year’s worth of data being quietly logged. Google’s approach, by contrast, records only the last few dozen locations on Android phones.
All of these practices have come under scrutiny by members of congress and several attorneys General of some states.
Note this isn’t the data that you allow to happen—like our Ipad asking whether or not it can use location services to see if I’m close to a gas station. This is data being recorded without permission. To make applications like maps work, of course, it’s necessary for a smartphone Ipad to transmit its GPS coordinates to a remote server–and, in exchange, receive nearby restaurant reviews, or driving directions, and so on.Privacy concerns begin to arise when a unique device ID is transmitted, which allows a company to track a customer’s whereabouts over an extended period of time. That’s the privacy issue.
As marketers at Force 5, we’re always interested in how our advertising or marketing campaigns are doing—are they reaching the right audiences, are we getting responses? However, the unauthorized location services on smartphones is going too far. Tracking minute by minute locations is certainly an invasion of privacy. This will be in the news for a while as a good balance of location services for convenience and safety versus invasion of privacy issues are debated. Stay tuned. To read more, check out cnet.com
New Research Shows Mobile Internet Usage a Daily Habit for One in Five Americans
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 by David MorganGoing Mobile? -Listen to this projection….
A recent study by Morgan Stanley projects mobile internet users to exceed desktop internet users within the next few years. (2015)
Yikes! – - Powerful stat.Believe it or not, the question isn’t “Should you go mobile?” but rather “Can you afford not to…?”
Here are some more mobile stats for our Force 5 friends to ponder:
• U.S. is the #1 country using mobile web — taking up over 30% of the global mobile web market.
• 87% of mobile users access the mobile web more than once a day, with more than half accessing 5 times per day.
• Over 50% of males between 18-34 are using mobile media, making a mobile web presence a must for advertisers (and over 37% of females between 18-34.)
• 85% year over year increase in overall smartphone ownership.
• Mobile Media Users (mobile browsers, application users, and downloaders) are growing 24% year over year.
• 80.1 million mobile users browse, use applications, or download via the mobile web.
• 35% of all U.S. mobile phone users (and 78% of all smartphone users) are browsing the mobile Internet to visit their favorite companies.
• mobile payments via PayPal are up nearly 650% over the previous year.
• mobile page views for U.S. retailers increased an average of 388% over the previous year.Now, listen to this…
According to the 2011 Mobile Internet Attitudes Report from Antenna, 27 percent of American and 27 percent of British consumers that can access the internet on their mobile phone are discouraged from using the mobile Internet by websites that don’t display properly or function properly on their mobile screens.
A mobile website gives your customers and potential customers the freedom to interact with your brand at their convenience. And nothing is more convenient than their mobile phone. Without a mobile site, this great opportunity is lost.My friend, Brant Kelsey (Kelsey Design) explains it this way: “Think of your website as a convenience store and your mobile site as a vending machine. Your mobile site needs to have your most popular goods and services front-and-center and easily accessible.”
I love the analogy. The smart phone is small—the content area is limited so your content must be specific. Mobile users aren’t just surfing-they go to the web for concise and direct content – They have a reason to visit – They find the information and move on. Most importantly, they won’t waste time trying to find information on a site that hasn’t been built for the mobile web.If your site hasn’t been optimized for the mobile web, viewers may see content out of order, missing images, links and tabs not formatted—in short…a mess.
Having a mobile site adds to your contact with the customer—and it empowers them to visit you wherever and whenever they need you.
And hey, there’s nothing wrong with being in your client’s pocket.Source:
(Marketwire – February 24, 2011) –
www.antennasoftware.com
