Empecemos con la primera idea: el sitio web como un producto. Los objetivos de cada tipo de web varían según el punto de vista de las empresas y de los usuarios. Las razones de visita de los usuarios serán diferente y dependerán de qué tipo de sitio (o qué combinación de tipos de sitios: información transaccional, servicios) ofrezcamos. Los vistantes podrían venir a nuestro sitio a:

- Buscar detalles sobree productos.
- Revistar la situación de un pedido tanto online como offline.
- Ver cuándo saldrán las siguientes versiones de sus productos.
- Unirse a una comunidad online.
- Comprar su producto online.
- Hacer un nuevo pedido o compra.
- Leer noticias.
- Ponerse al día sobre información acerca de un tema concreto.
- Buscar accesorios para algo que compraron o tienen intención de comprar.
- Obtener sugerencias y trucos para el uso de un producto.
- Buscar la solución para un problema.
- Utilizar el servicio al cliente.
- Bajar información: folletos, datos adicionales, boletines informativos, actualizaciones, premios.

Corrective Advertising:

Advertisements or messages within advertisements, that the Federal Trade Commission orders a company to run, for the purpose of correcting consumers’ mistaken impressions created by prior advertising.

(Covering the social news from 11/14 through 11/24)

With 2010 just on the horizon, we’re beginningto hear social media predictions and the new strategies that advertisers will be rolling out next year. Here’s a quote I liked from Chris Bruzzo, VP of brand, content and online at Starbucks: ”People are saying this is going to be a big year for social media and we’re a microcosm of that. Whereas last year it was a curiosity, this year it’s a core part of the program.” Starbucks is planning to cut back on its TV spend and invest quite a bit more in social media. Read about their strategy in this story from Ag Age.

LinkedIn has been busy working on sweeping changes to its features and services. Earlier in the month Social Media News reported LinkedIn’s plans for a homepage redesign and the new ability to link Twitter with LinkedIn updates. On Monday, LinkedIn announced that it will open its API to third party developers, a strategy that has been critical to the rapid success of other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Last week, LinkedIn announced a new program for advanced group pages, called Custom Groups. Currently, LinkedIn group pages are little more than discussion forums. With Custom Groups, organizations can transform their group page to a central, multimedia social hub that will allow groups to post videos, white papers and feeds. The program costs $50,000 a month, however LinkedIn will include advertising support to drive traffic to the custom groups. Lastly, LinkedIn and Microsoft are joining forces to sync Outlook contacts with LinkedIn information. In the 2010 release, Outlook users will be able to quickly view LinkedIn user activity and information of their contacts as a subpane of the email window. These are very smart updates to the LinkedIn product offering, and will ensure that LinkedIn becomes an even more powerful business social networking tool for individuals as well as businesses and organizations.

A couple small updates on the Twitter front:

The Twitter Geolocation API has been officially released, however we won’t see anything new on Twitter.com just yet. For now, the release is significant for several third party developers that have built applications that will utilize the Geolocation feature, like Foursquare and Seesmic.

Twitter has also made a small improvement to its new Twitter Lists feature, allowing users to add descriptions to their Lists. It’s a nice-to-have, but personally I can’t wait to see Twitter roll out the ability to search Lists. I believe the lack of a search feature is the single most crippling disadvantage for Twitter Lists.

HootSuite is a Twitter publishing and management tool preferred by many, including myself. New updates launched this week allows HootSuite users to connect their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for the first time. In addition, HootSuite users can create new columns to pull in their Twitter Lists feeds.

YouTube also released new updates this week:

YouTube Direct is a new platform for professional news organizations to solicit and utilize video content from citizen journalists. It’s an API that news media can incorporate on their existing websites to allow individuals to submit video coverage around current events. The news organization’s moderate can preview submitted material on a backend interface, then choose whether to approve the material to be linked from their site. Get the details from MediaPost.

Google has matched its speech recognition technology with YouTube’s caption feature to unveil a new automated video captioning service. Laurie Sullivan from MediaPost explains how the new service will have a big impact on SEO.

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

Ad Age

Behind the Redesign: Virgin.com Mixes Social Activity and Lead Generation

Starbucks Rings in the Holidays With Big Social-Media Push

Bing: an America’s Hottest Brands Case Study

Brands on Twitter: 76% of Accounts Are Infrequent Users

Why Murdoch Can Afford to Leave Google for Bing

Ad Week

Is Facebook Getting Uncool for 18-24s?

Social Media Users Really Are More Social

Brand Sweepstakes Get Twitterized

Media Post

Facebook Targeting Fans’ “Connections”

100 Ways To Measure Social Media

Brightcove Unveils Latest Platform, Integrates Mobile and Social Functionality

Q+A: Razorfish’s Shiv Singh On ‘Social Media For Dummies’

YouTube Unveils Tool To Connect News Organizations With Citizen Journalists

LinkedIn Launches Custom Groups For Marketers

YouTube Automated Captioning Changes Game For SEO

LinkedIn Opens Up To Outside Developers

Mashable

Toys R Us Explodes on Facebook With Black Friday Preview

HootSuite Adds Support for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter Lists

How Google Wave Is Changing The News

Twitter Lists: Now You Can Add Descriptions!

TechCrunch

Blogging Vs. Microblogging: Twitter’s Global Growth Flattens, While WordPress’ Picks Up

Salesforce Chatter: A Real-Time Social Network For The Enterprise

Microsoft Outlook To Become Even More LinkedIn

Foursquare Continues Its ground Assault With 50 More Cities

Twitter Turns On Location. Not For Twitter.com Just Yet.

Blogs and Other News Sources

Clearing up the Clutter (Smart Marketing)

Chrome Unveiled; Microsoft Cheers (PC World)

Google Unveils Chrome OS; Tech World Yawns (PC World)

American Express stands out among b-to-b marketers for its award-winning promotion of OPEN — a card targeted at small business — across several media. “Many business owners have what we call a ‘high relationship IQ’ but a ‘low social media IQ,’” notes OPEN’s Jason Rudman. The division has a forum that serves as a resource to boost their social-media skills, help small businesses network and boost brand recognition for OPEN. “We keep a pulse on how we are doing by measuring engagement and soliciting feedback,” Rudman adds. ZDNet

Remember that one quote from the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come?” Well, in the internet business that idea doesn’t translate well at all. We’ve seen this a thousand times: a business invests its hard-earned marketing dollars into a (hopefully) well-designed website and then groans that they aren’t getting the traffic to their site that they were expecting. Now why is that?

It’s because they aren’t doing anything to promote their website! It’s like having a phone, but not giving out the number.

There is a difference between a website and a web presence, and there are several things you can do to ensure that your site gains standing on the Internet. First off, you must have a plan for marketing once you have launched your site and be ready to bombard the users online with your brand and message. If there isn’t a well-formed plan, it will not be as effective. Here’s a basic checklist that can help you harness the capabilities of the web:

- Become active on Social Media websites, but be smart about this.
- Add the URL to business cards, postcards, holiday cards, etc.
- Write periodic newsletters to keep your site’s information current and provide additional value for your visitors.
- Send permission-based emails to your contact list and include a link back to your site.
- Fine tune your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Keep an eye on your traffic. Google analytics is a great, free resource for this.
- If your company has vehicles, decal them tastefully with your logo and URL.
- Throw a sweepstakes to promote your new launch.
- Place effectively targeted ads on other sites that your target audience is frequenting.
- Become involved in online discussion forums on sites that your target audience is frequenting.
- Audit all existing site content and update regularly to stay relevant.
- When you think you’re finished, don’t stop! This is an ongoing process.

It is easy to get lost in the tangled mess of websites that are out there these days. You have to become familiar with the successful websites with whom you are competing, but you also can’t completely disregard all of the amateur sites that flood the world wide web. Just be mindful that hundreds of thousands of other companies are attempting the exact same thing you are — trying to create an online presence — and it’s those things that you do uniquely that will set you apart. So, build it, promote it, get feedback, tweak it, fine tune it — and they will come.

Are you still trying to figure out how you and your brands fit into the world of social media?  While many still ponder, many more are on board and raking in the benefits – so can you!

I still see ads, webinars and seminars promoting social media and how everyone can benefit from its platform.  It’s key to have a social media strategy as a living portion of your overall Marketing Strategy.  Why?  Because your customers (both current and future) are looking for you in the social mediasphere and if they can’t find you, I guarantee it – they will find your competitor.

For all of you Marketeers or Business Owners who need to learn more about marketing, a study set out to understand how marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses can be a wonderful guide to help you understand, analyze, commission and execute.

According to The Social Media Marketing Industry Report, (Stelzner, 2009), marketing professionals still have a lot of questions regarding the essential factors of experience, commitment, exposure, leads and overall benefits.

Owners of small businesses (2 to 100 employees) were more likely than others to report greater exposure (84.8% reporting benefits). Nearly all marketers who’ve been doing social media marketing for years report it generates exposure for their business and a significant 64.86% strongly agree. Owners of small businesses (2 to 100 employees) were more likely than others to report greater exposure (84.8% reporting benefits). Nearly all marketers who’ve been doing social media marketing for years report it generates exposure for their business and a significant 64.86% strongly agree, Stelzner (2009).

If you haven’t started working your Social Media strategy, I strongly suggest you begin today or hire a Marketing professional (not a designer) to help you gain exposure, engage with your customers, reduce marketing expenses and generate new revenue.

REFLECTIONS ON INBOUND MARKETING

What kind of relationships do you have with your customers?  Do you listen to them?  Do you connect with them in person? Do you use tools like Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube or Facebook?  Are you integrating your touch points and providing “relevant and remarkable content” through blogging, emails or newsletters? I hope so because it’s the new and measurable ROI – Return on Influence.

ROI is crucial for Word of Mouth (which by the way, is STILL the #1 global marketing tactic) through viral marketing.  If you want to learn more about viral marketing and how the word is spread online, check out Seth Godin’s Blog (one of my industry favorites) about Viral Marketing HERE.

Now, I began reflecting on inbound vs outbound marketing and decided to dive in and learn more.  I’m glad I did!  HubSpot powers the Inbound Marketing University (IMU) out of MA and it’s a pretty sweet setup.  They invite industry “inbound” experts (professors) to present topics directly relevant to the inbound marketing principles and best practices.  So, I’m listing the Top 10 things I’ve learned (and are proven) about how your customers find you and interact with you (as a brand) through Inbound Marketing methods.

• Listen, Listen, Listen – enough about you, it’s all about your customer now
• Creating content is no longer applicable, creating REMARKABLE content is what gets you found
• SEO is more than keywords and phrases
• Know your marketing persona
• If you build an online community, you have to really care about people. Build communities around people, not products
• Organic SEO is the new black
• Quality vs Quantity is always best when building your opt-in email list
• Public Relations is critical to your inbound marketing strategy since it “should” be collaborative with your online audience (customers, journalists, reporters, and of course – bloggers)
• Use a landing page to nurture visitors and a form to convert visitors into leads
• Test and use comparative analytics

OK, I learned more than the Top 10 I’ve listed above however, if you incorporate even a few of these methods, I KNOW you and your customers will experience a new level of trust in your relations and they will in-turn, share their experience with their network……online.  And, the ROI is repeated.

Today as ever brand marketers are wrestling with how much of their media spend to put online and are looking for case studies that allow them to “trust digital media” the way they do traditional media.  All of the unique visitor metrics and total impressions numbers aside, there remains a confidence gap until big brands start to circulate big cases where digital has delivered big results.

Now they are starting to come in like this one from Ford published in the WARC News Email:

In April, Ford, the automaker, asked 100 influential US bloggers to test drive its new Fiesta for a period of six months, and regularly post their opinions of the car on portals like Facebook and Twitter.

By October, it estimated that the resulting material had received 4.3 million hits on YouTube and 3 million comments on Twitter, while 540,000 people had viewed photos hosted on Flickr.

According to Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president of global marketing, recognition rates of the Fiesta have grown rapidly, despite the fact it won’t be available until mid-2010.

“If you would have told me that we would have 100 vehicles in the US … and we would have 60% brand awareness in the segment, I would have said there is no possible way,” he said.

“To get 60% awareness in traditional media, it costs somewhere north of $50 million (€33.6m; £29.9m),” continued Farley, who added that the web is now a viable, and more low-cost, alternative to these channels.

“Online has become mass media. A Yahoo or Google page takeover actually gets more eyeballs than a network TV commercial now. That hasn’t happened before.”

In April, Ford, the automaker, asked 100 influential US bloggers to test drive its new Fiesta for a period of six months, and regularly post their opinions of the car on portals like Facebook and Twitter.

By October, it estimated that the resulting material had received 4.3 million hits on YouTube and 3 million comments on Twitter, while 540,000 people had viewed photos hosted on Flickr.

According to Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president of global marketing, recognition rates of the Fiesta have grown rapidly, despite the fact it won’t be available until mid-2010.

“If you would have told me that we would have 100 vehicles in the US … and we would have 60% brand awareness in the segment, I would have said there is no possible way,” he said.

“To get 60% awareness in traditional media, it costs somewhere north of $50 million (€33.6m; £29.9m),” continued Farley, who added that the web is now a viable, and more low-cost, alternative to these channels.

“Online has become mass media. A Yahoo or Google page takeover actually gets more eyeballs than a network TV commercial now. That hasn’t happened before.”

B2B companies please pay close attention to and invest more of your marketing dollars into internet marketing. Internet marketing is gaining great momentum and is the future of marketing. Forrester research predicts that 21% of all marketing budgets which translates into $55 Billion will be dedicated to interactive channels such as display advertising, mobile marketing, email marketing, social media and search marketing campaigns by year 2014. This could be considered cannibalization of traditional media.

By investing more into their internet marketing programs B2B companies not only are able to capture more share of the market but also will benefit from greater brand recognition and reputation that only an early adopter can enjoy.

Traditional marketing campaigns were considered successful once they would meet their initial goals set by their marketeers but marketing through interactive channels are an ongoing effort. With the help of new online marketing tools and software platforms available today, interactive campaigns can and should be revisited and constantly optimized in order to achieve their full potential.

Interactive marketing campaigns can be evaluated and optimized in every step of the process. From the time you set out to drive prospects to your website by usage of search engine optimization and marketing, Pay-Per-Click advertising, online ads and Social Media (Pre-click), the time that they click on your web site or landing page and still are not considered a lead (Post-click) to when the prospects share their information and before they become a real customer (Post-conversion).

Optimizing interactive campaigns means something different in each phase.
In the pre-click stage you can optimize your content in order for your web pages and online content to appear in the top rankings of search engines. You can also optimize your keywords in areas of popularity, relevance and competitiveness. Your digital assets, such as images and videos also can be optimized for search engine ranking purposes. Social media content is also searched by search engines and therefore optimizing them for purposes of search engine rankings as well as link sharing is extremely important. Pay-Per-Click campaigns are mainly used as a tool to react to negative results from organic searches. Optimizing them is crucial to every business’s marketing efforts.

Once prospects arrive at your website the post-click phase begins. The prospects need to land on pages that are most relevant and by making those pages most effective translates into increased conversions. Therefore optimizing your website pages and landing pages is of great importance.

In the post-conversion stage, segmentation, automated nurturing and lead scoring are elements of optimization effort that are crucial elements of a marketing campaign and they can be achieved through a marketing software platform.

Therefore, I recommend optimizing, optimizing and optimizing those interactive campaigns.

My last word of advice is to please keep in mind that if an asset can be searched, it can be optimized and be careful not to over-optimize. For example if you use a keyword too many times you will run the risk of getting penalized by search engines for “keyword stuffing” which means using a keyword repeatedly in a list or hidden in text.

Good luck!

Hybrid pricing (Tarificación combinada):

Modelo de precios basado en una información del modelo de precios CPM y un modelo de precios de rendimiento.

It gives you a measure of control and security.  How are you setting expectations for your clients?

My favorite Honda guy also takes the time to ask me a series of discerning questions.  He asks me to tell him a story about my car and the challenges that I’m having with my car.  It’s really important for him to have me explain my challenges, because not only does it give him a checklist of things to work on, it also helped him identify my priorities, needs, preferences and opportunities.  His listening skills were incredibly powerful.  He asked intelligent questions, he really did his best to understand what my experience was and understand what kind of experience I wanted to have with him.  Do your clients experience your listening skills?

After testing the car, my favorite Honda guy contacts me with a list of different options and explains the value of each one.  He walks me through what I can do to improve the experience I have with my car and how significant an investment I need to make at different intervals.  He takes the time to explain all this to me in the way that I need to hear it.  So, if I just want the facts and the investment amounts he would treats me like a CEO and cuts to the chase with just the information I need.  If I am open to a more creative and collaborative solution, he can explain to me how I can rebuild my car, spend a sixth of what it would cost to purchase a brand-new car and be good for another 150,000 miles.

Continuation coming up next!

The presenters (John Barton and Tom Masterman) skillfully shared the stage and the presentation to highlight main marketing challenges: drive traffic incorrectly and measure success incorrectly.  They went to the basics of the conversion funnel (awareness, interest, and preference) and applied both objectives and measurement to each stage of the funnel.

Hopefully the presentation will be available in the event page – it would be useful to review.

Research and measurement are important at each stage of the conversion process.  All marketing funnels include:

1. Targeting: what we know about the people
2. Brand: what they know about us

Awareness

Objective: knowledge about the company, product, or service

Measurement: page views… brand recall (if budget allows), fans, followers, number of video  comments

Interesting point: at this stage of the buying process companies might create content sections on their sites with information and resources attractive for certain segment of customers.

SEO as awareness…

Do not accept unfocussed targets or immeasurable social media

Interest

Objective: increase involvement

Research: learn more about your customers

Measurement: click through, submitted information

Interesting note: “response tail” for marketing to physicians is long (physicians could respond to the offer months after receiving the original communication – the offer page should still be available after a few months and relevant, if possible).

CRM dream: marketing should have not only prospect/customer information, but also to which messages the prospect/customer responded. Plan for data-driven relationship.

Preference

Objective: form relationship

Research: in-death knowledge about individuals

Measurement: intent to buy, purchases, repeat purchases

Other actionable ideas for marketers:

1. Take customer service manager for lunch – learn about customers
2. Take sales manager for drinks – learn about customers

(I must admit that accompanying sales rep on sales calls was one of most eye-opening experiences for me and helped understanding customers better)

One of the answers to the question from the audience recommended to spend time helping clients to understand what their goals are.. . oh that everlasting goal question ;- )

Here is the foreword by Ruth Mortimer, Associate editor (features), Marketing Week:

There hasn’t been much good news for marketers in 2009. But when it comes to interactive marketing, there are a whole host of exciting initiatives taking place that promise great return on investment (ROI) for brands.  As the number of online channels increases, more consumers than ever before are logging on to their desktop and mobile devices to meet their diverse shopping, entertainment and information desires. Broadband penetration in the UK has now reached 60% and mobile phone penetration in Europe has already exceeded 100%.  With so many potential customers out there, businesses need to use as many techniques as possible to build up interest and generate spend on their own brands.  It isn’t just a case of being able to reach people, however. It’s also vital to find the right ways to reach consumers, in the right places, with targeted messages that appeal to them. The extra challenge in the current climate is to do this as cheaply as possible.  Marketers need to remember to be creative too. The web is often praised for its tools that allow marketers to measure the ROI of any promotional spend. But we should not neglect the innovation that online marketing can bring to a brand. While analytics and statistics are vital for ensuring that campaigns can be effectively analysed, it is now more important than ever that companies bring flair and originality to their work.

This comprehensive look at all elements of marketing in the online and mobile areas. From the measurable disciplines of search and affiliate programmes to the creativity of social media, it all adds up to a very exciting range of tools, ideas and strategies for marketers.

Please find the full pdf supplement here:

Interactive7_2009

It’s been a great few week of calls and conversations with some major players across quite a few industries.  What’s interesting about the work we do is how applicable it is to so many types of business.  I wanted to share some great ideas from the interaction we’ve had across many seemingly different org types.

Real Estate – A great conversation this week with the CEO and Marketing Director of a major Real Estate Group in Wisconsin.  We talked about the type of advertising and marketing they’ve done in the past, and how they create messaging to their prospective new home buyers.  Some great questions to consider:  How do you get a message out to area home shoppers that it’s time to buy, or to buy from them?  How do you capture people before they are ready to buy a home, so when they are ready, they come back to you?  How do you capture buyers who are increasingly younger, and don’t seek news in the same places you’ve advertised for years?  Our contests applications create relevant engagement with these prospective new home buyers because we custom design the contest around an idea that would interest your target market.  If you’re looking to target new home buyers, create a contest around a room remodel, or a best family photo.  How about a best snowman contest.  It’s community goodwill and that’s the point.

Create a contest that reaches your audience, find a prize that creates incentive, make spreading the message simple, make voting addictive, add a offline conversational component by offering a campaign product (like buy the picture of your son’s snowman on a magnet), and voila, you have a campaign that captures an audience and brings them back.  When they are ready, you’ll be the company they need your product or service.

Politics – A new program we’ve joined forces with to test our application in the political space has some very interesting implications.  A great new documentary “By The People – The election of Barack Obama” provides insider accounts of the pandemonium that developed along the campaign road for our new president.  Produced by Ed Norton, it captures a clear picture of the emotion of the campaign trail, and it’s incredible.  A must watch, and a great case study on what components led into a successful campaign for the Obama group.

The interesting conversation in politics is the topic of how to make people care about an election, or a candidate.  Especially in local elections, no one really thinks about an election until the close to election day, and even then a very small percentage actually vote.  In local elections less than 10 percent typically come out to vote.  How do we capture that audience?  How do we understand and speak to their issues?  How do we communicate with them?  How do we let them spread the message?  How do we keep them engaged longer than that guy at the grocery store that asks if I’m registered to vote in San Diego?

Though it’s only one small component to a successful political website strategy, our voting and engagement technology can help open the door and start a conversation.  If you want to reach a target audience of 25-45 yr-old affluent women in a the San Diego area, try a home makeover or a garden photo contest.  If you want to reach Latin-Americans in Miami, try a favorite food, or family picnic contest.  The prize is a special lunch with you, their next local politician.

Sports – After helping launch a new campaign in partnership with Active, and the NBA/NCAA we got into the door with a few Sports franchises.  Our first major team campaign launch will be a major NFL team this month.  Some great questions here.  As an NFL team how do you get your fans to participate with the organization when they’re not watching a game?  What’s your objective with fans that come to the website?  How are new fans exposed to you?  How do offline, online and event marketing strategy work together?

Fan supported contests, especially ones that have real value because they bring the team spirit home (to a backyard BBQ for example), or to a tailgate party, create real viral engagement.  What if fans could submit photos of their favorite team spirit moment on an easy to use and addictive to play platform.  What if they were competing to win free tickets, and free team gear.  What if recognition were available to everyone that submitted ideas, like showcasing the best ranked photos on the megatron.  What if we captured 5,000 new fan photos every month, and fan’s emails to send them updates on voting and new promotions.  Would advertisers be interested in sponsoring a contest that captured that kind of data, and created one million votes per month or more?

It’s going to be an exciting 2010.

Server pull:

Proceso por el cual el navegador de un usuario mantiene una conexión o perfil automatizado o personalizado con el servidor web. Normalmente, el navegador realiza una petición única que se registra y almacena electrónicamente como referencia. Ejemplos de esto son: solicitudes para el envío automatizado de boletines de noticias por correo electrónico, solicitudes de contenido web basado en un criterio de búsqueda específico establecido por el usuario, o la creación de una página web personalizada que adapta la información enviada al usuario por una selección propia confeccionada con anterioridad.

Let me give you an example of someone that really touched my life.  I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband and we had a really fabulous old Honda that we just adored – a Honda CRX.  It was a great little car; really zippy!  It had a ton of miles on it and it just kept on going!  We wanted to find a really good mechanic.  Fortunately, I worked with a woman whose husband was a Honda mechanic and he raced  Hondas in his spare time.  This loved Hondas so much that he knew everything there was to know about them!  He was a total geek about these Honda cars – he could fix them in his sleep! 

The mechanic’s passion was so infectious that it spilled over into how he ran his business and the way he interacted with his clients.  Pay attention – I’m about to reveal his secret sauce!

When you bring your car in, the mechanic explains his process and how he thinks about these cars and what he does.  He sets your expectations in advance so you know what to expect, what he is going to do, and when you will hear from him.   It’s really comforting to know what’s coming!  It gives you a measure of control and security.  How are you setting expectations for your clients?

Stay tune!

I read a very good and insightful article in today’s Adage, “Why Digital Agencies are Indeed Ready to Lead” by Jacques-Herve Roubert. I agree with his contention that Digital agencies are indeed ready to lead and as he points out, our company, Ascentium, is demonstrating that in fact with our relationship with Precor, but also increasingly so with some of our other accounts who are looking for to us for ideas and strategy and their traditional agencies for mass advertising.

The reasons for this are many and you pointed out some really good ones regarding where the energy, ideas and innovation is coming from. But the basic underlying reason is rooted in the business model of the big traditional agencies more than anything else. The traditional business model is based on revenue streams from media, not direct billable hours. This means that to be successful, agencies were forced into thinking about media as the prime distribution channel because that is how they make money. Digital agencies are not boxed in that way and as a result, they are able to look more broadly across channels and take a more customer-centric approach to communication than a media or product based approach.

Devotion to gathering customer intelligence across multiple channels online, offline and emerging social channels and then applying that to create customer experiences which produce trackable and measureable results is the key to our success at Ascentium and I believe that same can be said for the other great emerging digital agencies cired as well, like AKQA and TribalDDB. The big agencies are saddled with the innovator’s dilemma and while it won’t be the end of them, it certainly erects a big speed bump to innovation.

There is a new barcode in town called “QR codes.”  It’s much more than just a barcode. It is changing the way people are doing things all over the world. Scanning these codes is similar to scanning items at Target or Wal-Mart with your mobile phone, but QR codes have far more data than barcodes. The “QR” in QR code is an acronym for Quick Response. It is an application on a mobile phone that leads people to additional information, videos, text, websites and more. It uses Smartphone technology to speed read high capacity, high density data by scanning it.  The applications can be downloaded onto an iPhone or Blackberry.

QR codes are:

• Two-dimensional barcodes
• Easy to generate. Create your own codes at QR Stuff
• Placed in multimedia, on signs, products and business cards
• Scanned by mobile phones
• Leads people to more information (website, v-cards, coupons, additional text, product information)

The QR code can display on:

• Business cards to scan and download a v-card right to your address book
• Signs or brochures for travel based tours and reviews
• Bus stop signs to find schedules and routes
• Department store check out areas that will have a coupon or discount
• Art gallery items telling more about each peice

How they work:

• Download the application to your Smartphone
• Take a picture of the QR code with your cell phone
• QR reader decodes it
• It directs you to more information. (Educational websites or additional text and more)

It’s easy! Please, share your thoughts about this below.

By Kakie Fitzsimmons

Crowd Sourcing and Engagement are probably the two biggest buzz terms in marketing today. My non-marketing friends know about interactive marketing; know that it’s here to stay, and know a handful of terms and buzz and then wonder what in the hell I do.

Of course any interactive campaign has several goals:

• Fan/customer engagement
• Crowd-sourcing
• Differentiating yourself from competitors
• Drive time on site and impressions
• Increase ad revenue
• Email capture
• Attract new customers or advertisers

It’s possible to have several goals but it’s best to identify your primary objectives. Although it is possible to have both as objectives, one has to take precedence over the other or the campaign could be viewed as a failure. The two basic types of campaigns that our technology can be used for are crowd-sourcing efforts or customer/fan engagement. Engagement campaigns can be fun, safe ways for brands or media properties to interact with their fans while crowd-sourcing campaigns can be a great way to tap into the community for creative work.

Here are the distinctions between crowd-sourcing campaigns and engagement campaign.

Engagement

• Low barrier to participation- Photo contests with very broad themes are the best way to guarantee high participation. Ihoops is an NCAA/NBA collaborative; their theme is simple—youth basketball.

• Results are not as quantifiable- Around the office we use the term ‘fan engagement’ rather than ‘customer engagement’ because customers that are fans will champion your brand to passive customers. Tapatio Hot Sauce is a perfect example- The hot sauce is sold and served in restaurants across North America so it must have millions of passive customers but it has formed a quirky and massive following of 27,000 facebook fans who have demonstrated they are willing to share their love with their friends. This month’s contest is best “Tapatio costume contest.” There are a suprising number of Tapatio themed costumes out there—by hosting the contest Tapatio has given these fans a chance to share their enthusiasm.

• Engagement campaigns can be sustained long-term- Themes can be loosely based, seasonal or change based on the community. Starting December, Sacramento Press will start a series of neighborhood photo contests. These have a very low barrier to entry, can be recycled easily and can easily attract local sponsors.

Measures of Success for Engagement Campaigns: quantity of submissions, number of votes, and time on site

Crowd-sourcing

• High barrier to participation- Anything other than drawings and doodles requires a certain level of expertise especially video editing and graphic design.

• Must reach out to people outside of brand- The San Diego Science Festival asked us to help them host a contest for a new mascot. Initially submissions were below their expectations but the AOR began reaching out to design students and comic book artists and have dramatically improved the quality of submissions.

• Requires worthwhile incentives- If you want someone to submit quality work you have to give them incentives. Simple enough right?

• Difficult to maintain long-term campaign- Most of these campaigns are one-offs for new product design, logos or mascots. Plus the high barrier to entry and high-value prizes make long-term campaigns unattractive.

Measures of Success for Crowd-sourcing Campaign: Quality of submissions- at least one usable design, hopefully several

This post was inspired by a post on Creativity Unbound by Edward Boches about a new agency that will specialize in crowd-sourcing campaigns. It will be interesting to see how Victor and Spoils will do. One of their biggest challenges will be maintaining enough clients when they’re only running short term campaigns. They should be able to negate this by; establishing a network of designers, solid relationships with AORs and reaching out to top-tier customers with multiple brands. Their business model is solid and they seem like a talented team. (Actually they seem like a team of evil lawyers but we’ll see their true colors once the new website is up- via crowd-sourcing of course!)



Social Media or Social Marketing is overwhelming. This is especially the case for the B-to-B world since, in many ways, this group has moved slowly in embracing the Internet for the purpose of marketing and communicating. Now, on top of all of the other caveats to Internet Marketing, many are seeing this dimension come into play and there is more to learn. Going forward, this will be a critical component to your business and it is not a matter of “Do I want to develop a Social Media plan”? It’s a matter of HOW SOON can you develop and implement a Social Media plan? This is what this writing is about.

A recent study released by Business.com of 3,000 Professionals across the United States indicates that Social Media is alive and vibrant within the professional environment. Some of the compelling statistics that stood out:

-69% indicate they use Webinars and Podcasts to obtain business information
- 83% Chose Facebook as the overriding favorite of the social networks
- 7 social sites - The average company that responded stated they participated in
- 65% of them staffing the initiatives in-house
- 71% of responding companies had less than 2 years experience using social networks

If this doesn’t validate that business professionals use social media then perhaps the fact that LinkedIn (a business social site) has over 50,000,000 registered users or that Facebook is adding 500,000 New Users each day should confirm this.

Data is out there to support the growth of Internet usage, for social purposes, among business professionals. As a result of this expansive growth, many sites have risen to the heights of popularity and each of these domains has unique functions that have propelled them to this status.

The more that a company looks at this as an expense of resources and weighs the pros and cons of such an endeavor, the more risk they face at missing the opportunity to get people connected to them. Meanwhile, their customers and prospects are thriving online and excitedly, they’re connecting with like minded individuals in many different ways. They’re connecting on Community sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, CR4, Facebook, or any of the other popular domains. More myopically… they’re connected in Groups within these sites. They are most certainly connecting! Realistically, a company should look at this more as an investment of resources than an expense of resources.

In the following paragraphs I am going to explain the core components of what you can do to begin this plan and start servicing the people that matter most to your company. By no means is this a detailed plan. I will make suggestions using components that are FREE or of minimal cost. The most costly component will be time.

At the end of the day what you hope to create is a funnel. At the wide end, you message the masses in many ways in order to create interest in you and your Community. In the middle, you have your Virtual Community which is where your clients and prospects interact with peers and your company’s pros. The small end of the funnel is your website or your company directly. The result is keeping your people close to you and doing so in a way where they do not feel the pressure of sales but feel the essence of inclusion and bond.

The components that you should look to utilize in fulfilling the core of your initial plan are Management, Messaging, Community, and Participation.

Management – Designate a person or team that will dedicate time to organizing, implementing, and managing this side of your business. This is not a full time responsibility yet but it will be down the road. In time, you will want to create a position to act as the liaison to the aggregated Community. In the interim, it can be managed simply as part of the day to day tasks of your current team with an understanding that this piece of your current marketing effort will undoubtedly grow.

One of the initial responsibilities will be research identifying where the hot spots are on the net that attract your buyers. You can find this out by simply polling your current database and asking them directly where they go, what they do, and why they see value in these venues. You should also look to your current advertising partners and vendors. Ask them what they’re doing to satisfy their subscriber’s desire for Community. If they are active, they are working right now on this very same service. You will want to know what they are doing. Spend time using Search Engines to locate all of the domains that operate in the fields of expertise that your clients and prospects do. Search the groups and gatherings within these popular sites (And join them). Also, consider spending time speaking with some students at colleges that are pursuing careers in your target markets. Why? These important people will be buying your stuff in the coming years. They have their ear closer to the ground regarding the Internet and emerging technologies than you could possibly imagine. These folks will keep you ahead of the curve going forward.

You are gathering this information for two reasons. First, you’re going to be engaging with these resources to capture mind share, develop a following, and ultimately bring awareness of your Community. Secondly, in this process you will be developing an understanding of how this whole Community thing works. You will gain valuable knowledge that can then be leveraged in the construction of your own Community..

Community – All of the research that you have accumulated is for the purpose of escorting people into your Community of clients, prospects, and in-house pros. One of the benefits of having an established Community is that you can communicate, in near real-time, with your constituents. You can immediately get messaging out that could influence positive perceptions and have them work for you in utilizing the tools of Social Media to spread the word. Adversely, you can address and resolve many situations that could point a negative light on your company in venues that you are not active in.

A good place to start would be a facebook fan page on facebook.com. Developing this area is pretty simple and I’ve provided a link on the right (and within). From a personal perspective, your targets have a familiarity with this venue as it pertains to keeping up with their own personal networks. Facebook gives you the opportunity to be where they are. It means that you are in their neighborhood. Your clients and prospects can become “Fans” of your business page and they can see what other “Fans” have to say about their experiences with your company. Facebook, like a mini-site within a site, also gives you additional functions to provide for your “Fans” including Events, Additional Info, Press, Discussions, Video, and a “Wall” which becomes your primary landing page. People speak on your wall in the form of brief messages. The nuances of this informative resource can be discussed in a later writing but it is a powerful ancillary benefit of Social Media.

I referenced Facebook and strongly encourage you to have a presence here but you will find other reputable venues that offer similar functions. You should be there too. Do not limit your exposure and take advantage of every venue out there that is relevant to your demographic. However; you should make every effort to point them to a single source and I do think that Facebook is a good place. It is all about Aggregate and the more people that you can get to stick to your Community the better off you will be in terms of management, analysis, and messaging.

Good examples of Business Fan Pages: Sprint - GM – Girl Scouts – Papa Johns Pizza. (Require facebook registration to access)

Messaging  – This is the fan to the fire of your Community build and management. NO ONE will know that your Community exists unless you make them aware. You will want to harvest your House List and create an ongoing campaign that encourages them to seek out and join your Community. A series of email messages incorporating the link to your Community and informing them what you hope to accomplish with their involvement. Additionally, this message should be included in your periodic Newsletters and informative correspondences. Many of the resources outlined above offer the ability to embed your link to your representation in the form of a graphic in your emails and websites. USE THEM!!!

Going forward, this will become a permanent inclusion in all of your marketing and communications. Hundreds of millions of connected individuals have spoken in the form of action that this is here to stay. Once you create the Community you will always see the need to feed it. You should require the links as part of the email Signature of each employee, include logos and links on letter head, speak of it in your automated telecom systems, and include it in ALL Mar-Com materials. You need to drive people to your Community page. This is NOT about traffic. The more encouragement you give to your prospects and clients to enter and contribute to your Community, the more effective it will be for you. The best way to encourage is to consistently keep access to this portal at the fingertips of people you want to be close to your company.

Participation – This is where you get other members of the company on board and involved with your Community. Designate a representative from Customer Service, Sales, IT, etc. to keep an eye on the subject matter being discussed and to access the messaging features that you choose to utilize. Near real-time response goes a long way today in satisfying a question, comment, concern, or buying question. Put your best people in line to represent your company to your Community.

In addition to your own Community site, your company can gain a lot of credibility in other forms of participation within the sites that feed your Community. I have referenced LinkedIn a number of times and I do so as I believe that this is a great resource in meeting and connecting with like minded professionals across all spectrums of careers. In the sense of participation LinkedIn has a fantastic number of Groups that represent everything from Candy Makers (1,900 Members) to Orthopedic Surgeons (295 Members). In these groups are ways to seek job opportunities, review the latest news, and post & participate in discussions. It would only add value to your brand and the build of your Community if you had people from your company involved in these Groups as well. Again, you will want your company representative to communicate their messaging in non-salesy language and provide access to your Community page or corresponding web page (which also will have a link on it that can allow a person clicking-through to join your Community / Fan Page). Also you can look to your Vendors and their websites as a forum to leverage your community. Talk with them to understand how you can interact with their members as well. It could be through editorial content, sponsorships, advertising tools, or they could have Groups within their domains that allow your people to participate in discussions or answer relevant questions. The objective is introducing people to your Community.

Twitter - What is it and how can it help me help my business grow? Simply put, twitter is a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.(their words exactly). This is how it works: You set up an account under your company name and you begin “tweeting” (sending relevant 140 character messages from your account to your followers). You get followers in a number of ways. You broadcast your twitter name in all of your media and communications and get followers organically, you can share “tweets” with informative content and your followers will “re-tweet” out to their network increasing followers if your content is valuable to them, and you can share tweets sent to you from your network of followers with the rest of your followers. There are certainly many other ways to increase followers but they are complicated and best saved for a later time. These basic methods will build your following and over time, you will be quite surprised at the ongoing growth. The key to success using twitter is to continuously feed the following with relevant information w/o trying to sell to them. Whether it’s a new Data Sheet, New Product Announcement, Appointment of Personnel, Discount, Recall, Discontinuation, Award, Acquisition, New Technology, New Equipment, New Client, Webinar, On-line Video, Job Opening, Investor Messaging, and anything else that positively influences your company’s perception within your constituency. Twitter allows you to get messages out in real time in 140 character snippets. Twitter, is an extension of your company’s Mar-Com resources and doesn’t necessarily tie directly into the Community environment being discussed here. However, your presence and participation within this domain allows for a number of ways to direct people back to your Community and to your website. This is another piece of the Social Media puzzle.

Social Media on the Cheap is possible and not that difficult an endeavor.

1) Create a Fan Page on Facebook

2) Involve yourself with as many social networking resources as possible

3) Create Profiles of your company everywhere possible

4) Encourage employees to contribute to discussions / answer relevant questions

5) Blog about business issues your company can resolve

6) above all else – point them back to a Community (Facebook Fan Page) and allow them functions to interact with you and with each other.

The reality of Social Marketing or Social Media is that it really is not that overwhelming. It does require an investment of time in terms of management as well as learning the tools that are at your disposal. If you begin by developing a plan utilizing these simple resources you have the starting point in creating your own personal foot print in the world of Social Media. More importantly, you are on the way to creating a long term relationship with all of the people that matter most to your business’ success.

My Two Cents…

In his book Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss the importance of building a professional and businss identity online as one of the most vital things to do to build credibility.

For those of you wondering why we believe in the importance of networking for business and social reasons is because we are addicted social and professional network users ourselves who understand that these networks keep you in touch with people that matter, faster, better and cheaper than traditional networks.

The reason why we at Riazu Inc are stressing on the importance of building your professional network and business network is because it is what defines you on the world wide web. Information cannot be hidden on the worldwide web and it is simply transparent. If there is no information about your company, you, your product or your brand you simply do not exist on the largest medium of communication in the world. As a result of simply not taking being present in the global conversation business owners and brand owners will lose out on consumer interaction, sales and even brand value.

Your Business is not a heartless corporation, and people need to see the humanity behind the corporation. You are the brand owner, business owner or the person responsible for your companies success and in order to get to the success you have defined for yourself you must present yourself to people so they can interact with you.

Business is not about being impersonal, its about being there for your consumers and visitors when they come calling for help, advice, questions or info about the availability of the product.

You might own tons of websites, and you might already even be on various online communities like us but do you have a home for your company or brand that is represented by you.

People would love to get in touch with their brand owners, favorite stores, and more we want you to try out for yourself if building a business identity online sky rockets your business or not.

The best thing about networking and interacting with your stakeholders is that you can communicate your business updates, and keep your customers/clients connected to your brand/business or product.

We found that the human touch can give your company,product or brand a deeper connection with your customers, that is why we built the Riazu L!ve system as we needed a system ourselves which would help us spread our message to our followers.

The Riazu Team already uses Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin because we think these services perform terrific functions and we highly recommend these applications.

For those of you still unsure about trying out new networks after facebook let us give you the low down on each application

Twitter —– Conversation Tool, Great for Political Campaigns, and organizing events, ideas, sharing links

Linkedin   —– Terrific Industry and Employment Networking Tool, great for business opportunity discovery and landing a hot new job in the best companies around the world.We love their new people search tool.

You can use people’s natural curiosity to get them involved with your brand, Wyatt Wood writes. Offer something in exchange for participation — TGI Friday’s gave out burgers to gain Facebook fans — and stay on message even when conversations turn negative, he advises. You can also take advantage of new tools, such as Facebook’s link-sharing functionality, to get users to spread your message. The Buzz Bin