Much has been made recently out of Twitter leveraging their feed to search engine providers with Facebook making a similar play. (Though not as successfully.)

Once Facebook figures out how to get its members to opt in to this. (*Hint* By providing a separate public feed apart from their regular status updates that go to friends. *Hint*) There will exist a phenomenal opportunity for marketers. It’s their own virtual marketing research lab.

As a marketer, how would you like to get immediate feedback from the public on how a business strategy, service or product offering will be taken? That’s the potential here.

Of course, just because the opportunity exists and your business concern exists doesn’t mean that this is a slam dunk. You need to have established a history of cultivating an active consumer base and engaging them in meaningful dialogue. You need to be trusted and be prepared to weigh in on issues that may affect them even if it doesn’t translate into sales. (Not immediately anyway. Trust = preferred brand and that definitely translates into sales, so be patient and cultivate away. You’re savvy and understand how to engage social networks. The consumer driven market doesn’t scare you and you don’t try to shoehorn old marketing tactics into new technology.)

Once the ground work is done between you and the Internet you’ll be able to get consumers to opt in to marketing research. With the correct phrasing they will play an integral part in shaping the future of your business concern. More importantly, they’ll give you information to help figure out needs that they may have that they haven’t even articulated yet. That’s the real synergy in participating with social networking.

Once you establish that there may be a need for something, the benefits of a real-time Internet could go beyond the initial market research of your network. Now you can query a word or term and tap into feeds to find what the untapped potential of your business proposition is.

You can be the Kreskin of your business and present psychographic/ demographic data to support a business direction. How do you think that will affect your marketing budget and the general POV a company takes towards the department? Looking good? Yeah, I thought so. Use this effectively and you can be a hero to both the business and its consumers.

*** UPDATE *** – After much debate I have finally decided which SEO company I am going to choose – Syntactics Inc (www.syntacticsinc.com). The deal I am going with is:

More about the package I have chosen:

• A site audit is first made on the URL to be optimized prior to setting timeframe and targets.

• No long term contract. You pay us each month and we keep working for you.

• Comprehensive reporting on everything we do, updated at the end of the month.

• Once we achieve front page rankings we keep you there on maintenance plan.

• SEO packages must be paid in advance.

The management cost is waived when the number of hours to be worked has reached 800 hours per month (5 dedicated seo personnel working at 160 hours per month).

On instances when the clients cannot attend to calls for a specific short period of time (1 or 2 weeks ) because they are away on a vacation or business trip, our business development officer and myself assist the clients (if you sign in, you too) in answering client queries using your identity and brand for free

I have taken the liberty of attaching our company background in this email, I hope this will give you more information regarding our team and experience.

For SEO, we have been doing SEO work for 4 years now and have quite a good grasp on the skills needed to make our client’s site rank. In terms of tasks, the following are our strategies:

1.       Forum Postings

Forum Posting having link back in signature to your web site provide Direct Traffic to your web site, the person who read your post can visit your web site. It also provides you Direct One Way Incoming links to your web site which is good way to create one way theme based links. Search engines also assume that you are well active in community and they regular index your website as well as give more importance to your web site.

2.       Directory Submissions

Directory submission is one way of gaining link popularity. Directory submission is proven to be a wonderful method for gaining quality one-way incoming back links. Even newbie SEOs ( Search Engine Optimizing people ) knows how incoming links play an important role in today’s search engine optimization procedure. Higher the quality of incoming links better your search engine rankings and Internet visibility.

3.       Article Submission

Article Writing is a process of information that talks about your websites products, services and websites updates that gives the most effective methods of getting completely free promotion for your business.

4.       Online Group Posting

Online groups are like a list server and a message board with file-sharing and chat. Your groups live on a free website with no ads.

5.       Classifieds Ads Posting

Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, e.g. Free ads papers or Pennysavers. Classified advertising differs from standard advertising or business models in that it allows private individuals (not simply companies or corporate entities) to solicit sales for products and services.

6.       Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

7.       Blog Commenting

Blogging is a frequent chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web Links.

8.       Link Exchange Request

Link Building is the process of creating inbound links means to ones own website.

9.       Press Release

Press release is designed to be sent to journalists in order to encourage them to develop articles on a subject. A press release is generally biased towards the objectives of the author. A press release is written in order to highlight an important event, program, or piece of information by an organization that succinctly describes the who, what, where, when, why and how of the story.

10.     Link Wheels

A link wheel is one of the most creative uses of web 2.0 websites. It is a series of web 2.0 properties that link directly to your website (aka the “hub”) as well as interlinking to one another (aka the “spokes”). These sites have high authority in the eyes of the search engines so those pages will often rank quicker and higher than your target webpage. Second, by building several different websites that contain your content, you increase the chances that you can have several spots in the top 10 results, and therefore increase your chance to capture that traffic. It’s not uncommon for a properly developed link wheel to secure 2-5 positions out of the top 10 spots depending on the keyword that you select.

Included in the report are:

1. The number of links created on a certain month

2. The Current Alexa Rankings

3. The Page Rank of your site

4. Ranking Comparison of the keywords

5. Detailed Traffic Analysis of the site

6. Links where the site are posted with its PR, PR Score, Alexa Rating, Industry Relevance

Initial Tasks for the first month:

1. Web Master Tools – Submit Site Map to Google

2. Establish XML Sitemap

3. Creation of Link Wheel for the each of the first 10 major keywords.

4. Create a Twitter profile for the site.

5. Create a Technorati account for the site.

6. Create an RSS feed for the site and submit them to 9. RSS feed sites

7. Establish On Page Sitemap (OPTIONAL)

8. Start the regular SEO campaigns

We can also do video submissions but the client would have to provide the video and materials to us. If the client has their own press releases and articles, we would appreciate getting copies of these as well so we can spin it and submit it.

Do let me know if there are any further clarifications and information needed. Looking forward to a favorable response and in being able to provide you with our quality service soon.

Ho, Ho, Ho: My Tips as Gifts. Santa’s here.

Here are my Holiday’s Gifts to you in the form of useful tips.

Headers

Some search engines weight texts in strong, header, and anchor tags. So instead of this:

<h1>keyword 1</h1>

try this:

<h1><strong>keyword 1</strong></h1>

or this:

<h1><a …><strong>keyword 1</strong</a></h1>

CSS-style them to your heart needs. Try with several keywords and headers (h1, h2, h3, etc).

Element Size Rendering

On most browsers, medium size text is 16 pixels which is rendered as 1em when body is 100%.

Thus, for any body font-size %, X px*(1em/16px)*(body %) = Y em.
When body font-size is set to 100%, converting px into ems reduces to dividing by 16. If no nested em units are used, then

20px*(1em/16px) = 1.25em, rendered as 20px
19px*(1em/16px) = 1.1875em, rendered as 19px
18px*(1em/16px) = 1.125em, rendered as 18px
17px*(1em/16px) = 1.0556em, rendered as 17px
16px*(1em/16px) = 1em, rendered as 16px
15px*(1em/16px) = 0.9375em, rendered as 15px
14px*(1em/16px) = 0.875em, rendered as 14px
13px*(1em/16px) = 0.8125em, endered as 13px
12px*(1em/16px) = 0.75em, rendered as 12px
11px*(1em/16px) = 0.6875em, rendered as 11px
8px*(1em/16px) = 0.5em, rendered as 8px
1px*(1em/16px) = 0.0625em, rendered as 1px

At this body %, the mininum size is 1px = 0.0625em. To render 1px to smaller  ems, lower body font-size %;  e.g.,  if it  is 80%

1px*(1em/16px)*0.80 = 0.05em

Nesting elements with ems can also do the trick (*Please, see note).

BTW. Watch out for nested ems as you would need to account for these; For instance,  for body 100% all these are rendered same size:

<pre><p style=”font-size:1em;”>edel</p>
<p style=”font-size:16px;”>edel</p>
<p style=”font-size:2em;”><span style=”font-size:0.5em;”>edel</span></p></pre>

Under the Counter Prescription Medication

Extra Strength Tylenol PM contains  500 mg acetaminophen (pain reliever) plus 25 mg diphenhydramine HCl (antihistamine, nighttime sleep aid).

Regular Tylenol contains 325 mg acetaminophen

Regular Benadryl Allergy contains 25 mg diphenhydramine HCl

Which one would you take and when?

PS. I modified/corrected  some lines.

* Conversely, to retain 1px exactly as 1px at the 80% level, use 1px*(1em/16 px)/0.80 = 0.07812em.

* Some authors like to set body to 62.5% and then simply divide by 10 all pixels to get ems which is easier to remember. Your choice. I prefer the 100% mark across all  browsers.

*Pre tag above are to insure rendering in the post and not needed in the actual HTML code. I though this was obvious.

*You can also try

<h1><strong><a …>keyword</a></strong></h1>.

The above nesting techniques can also  be tried with in-page navigation (jump links) and even with img tags. If you care about W3C conformance, validate your code before putting to use  any nesting technique.

My Comments On: “REI TV Ads Portraying the Outdoors in all its Uncomfortable Glory” By Dan Neil December 1, 2009 LA Times.

I just read Dan Neil’s article on REI’s brave commercial execution that features 2 women scarfing down a PB&J, without the J. It’s like they can’t wait for the sandwich to be complete. Who needs all the ingredients when 2 will do in a rush? This is the great outdoors in all its cold, damp, uncomfortable, realistic glory. The commercial’s voiceover says, “Oct. 28. Jenny Kruger finds out that even the finest four-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars.” The camera pans up to a patch of sky between the clouds in the dusky blackness.   View the commercial via the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZh_7vMSZxY&NR=1

Dan called it “very nice”.  I call it brave, honest, intrusive, compelling and overall OUTSTANDING!  Great job, REI and BBDO.  And congrats to Dan Neil and the LA Times for their insight in bringing it to our attention.

Wow, it can’t wait to be cold and uncomfortable again because of this execution. Thanks REI.  I’ll be sure to stop by first before I leave.

Let’s face it, not everyone is easily brandable. And furthermore, sometimes it is not an efficient use of time and energy trying to try create your unique brand if, at the end of the day, you are really an exceptionally good, effective “generic” product.

Before everyone gets ready to lynch me for heresy, I certainly feel that if you have truly unique skills, or a standout business persona you should do everything in your power to differentiate yourself and build your personal brand around these unique attributes. But sometimes what one offers is, at best, uncompromised performance at being a generalist. You know the proverbial “jack of all trades and a master of none”. Sometimes what is really needed is a superb generalist.

We can’t all be chiefs and generals. Sometimes the army just needs great troops, not another great tactician of outstanding strategist. If the organization’s bench strength is already strong with great generals and chiefs in place, what I would want for the organization is a proven professional who can execute the chief’s strategies flawlessly.

Ok, I can already hear you now. You are saying that the ability to be a great executer is by itself a unique quality, worthy of being a brand. Well, I site a real world debate that I had with a VP of marketing from an office supply/paper goods manufacturer. (I did not work for this company.) I argued, “Do you need to offer the market another brand of legal pad, at triple the price, with a higher quality yellow pad, with a brand name that is really unknown to most anyway”. Competitively, a 5-pk of regular pads will cost less, perform the same, and no one even cares or looks at what the name brand is”. But, we still expect…and get, an acceptable level of efficacy from the 5-pack of cheaper paper pads. I have yet seen a legal pad that did not perform up to expectations, no matter what the quality of the paper.

The same can be true of professionals who are only brandable with great deal of effort, energy and creative positioning to craft a brand. The end result is still answered by “who cares”. Know your brand quotient and position yourself accordingly. You’ll be more successful in the end.

I recently got intrigued by the whole Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort. Obviously I am way behind the true thought leaders in this field. I didn’t get my FaceBook site until a year ago when a friend chastised me for being behind the curve of the social networking trend. I just got a Twitter site within the last 6 weeks. Yes, I was a Linker (LinkedIn), and I was on another lesser known social network site but I viewed this whole trend as something for those who were not very serious business people. After all, if you were a serious business type how did one have the time to tinker with these time consuming diversions. Well, I now smell the coffee. I have gotten excited about the whole process in its entirety.

I started with completing my LinkedIn site so that my status shows 100%. Then I posted a professional profile that is viewable on my FaceBook site through BrightFuse.com. I even created my own website within the last 2 months. But I mainly did these things because others said that marketing professionals should be getting involved at this level. Especially, if you were recently unemployed as I am. But they said that it was necessary, particularly if I want to stay relevant in the newest phase of the electronic technology expansion called Social Media. But at first I was just going through the motions. Then I got exposed to some folks that are really proficient in the whole SEO process. I have even been lucky enough to meet a true professional in the field, John Nosal through an organization called Career Connections. These folks helped me to understand how little usage I was getting out of my tools it they were not complete. Then once complete they needed to e optimized to reach people through SEO efforts.

I had to start optimizing and linking my sites. At first it was just a list of activities that doubled my ever growing “list of things to do”. But then I got started and I got hooked. I stared optimizing each social site. I then took my very basic website and started dressing it up so that it spoke “professionalism” to other marketing professionals who viewed it. Don’t get me wrong…it is still basic compared to some that I have seen. But it is not a company website. It is just my personal site to market me, Wendell Hall, and Mother Nature Marketing. Very recently I created my first blog on WordPress as you are no doubt reading now. Each baby step that I learned has made me go back and continue to refine the earlier social networking sites.

As I began to tinker I found myself more and more intrigued by the creative process. Being unemployed I have more free time than I have had in years to devote energy to just learning, just for sake of “learning”. Intrigue grew into real enjoyment. Now I happily logon to Blog, Tweet, FB and Link. See, good things come from the most unfortunate circumstances. Certainly I wish I was still among the ranks of the employed. But since I am not I have learned a new set of skills that, hopefully, keeps me relevant and informed.

Right big smack center is a picture of a crouching President Obama geting golf tips from Tiger Woods and it shows how print media, with its long lead times,  can take it on the chin every now and then.  Obviously this was planned months ago, and was printed and sent to their subscribers weeks ago, but still, what timing.  Many people today are debating whether print media is dead, if only electronic media will survive.  My take is less presentation media supremacy, instead focusing on the real values of independence, fact checking and analysis.  Not to mention digging for new facts and exposing cover-ups.

Be it via e-reader or on paper, the real value of journalism is content and that costs a lot more money than assembling a bag of links and sending it out along with some pop up ads.  Is there room for both e-media and accurate, well written content?  The WSJ has a thriving business model; the Times tried a charge for service and failed.  If you ever visit a newspaper building, you’ll see rows of writers and then an entire factory of paper movers and house sized presses, leading to loading docks and trucks.  I recently toured the Bloomberg building in NYC and saw what a 21^st Century news organization looks like.  Instead of printing presses, there were rows of programmers and system administrators, along with radio and TV studios.  If in newspaper plants you can sense the ink, here you could sense the bytes.  The number of printing related jobs must be immense and costly, distorting any business model.

Fortunately, there’s a business model emerging here. Many physical businesses use outside parties to provide them with private labeled ebusiness front ends, in many cases ranging from ordering to fulfillment. GSI Commerce and others come to mind, serving such companies as Toys R US, Ralph Lauren, Major League Baseball, and so forth and you can’t’ tell it’s not the actual company.  Another firm, INTTRA, is owned by multiple ocean container carriers (i.e.: Maersk) providing a full online booking, documentation and tracking service.  At some point, the remaining newspaper organizations may have to create an INTTRA like service, in a GSI like wrapper.  Thus, content is delivered via an industry cooperative/association infrastructure, while the GSI component is the custom look, feel and branding of each newspaper/magazine, i.e. no loss of identity.

All well and good, but here’s another approach.  Who has a nationwide set of pipes big enough to handle this bandwidth load without having to re-run cables across the country?  Power companies are using their hi-voltage lines to send internet traffic and are rapidly building out their own last-mile for the smart grid to be used to both conserve energy and to handle the expected loads of a nation of electric vehicles all needing recharging nightly.  Utilities already have massive billing and customer service (and sometimes customer dis-service) organizations and under deregulation, are hungry for new revenues. It can also help transform utilities from slow moving behemoths with ‘go along to get along’ cultures to faster paced agents of innovation. Everyone wins.

Rather than build its own servers and distribution infrastructure, print media should team with these utilities, charging a flat fee for content under their own logo,  included in a regular monthly bill so content becomes another utility – expected to always be available on demand, quality assured.

Rich Eichen is a Managing Principal of Return on Efficiency, LLC, who’s website is www.growroe.com and is one of their senior turnaround leaders/CROs, Program and Interim Executives with over 25 years experience reshaping companies, Operations and key initiatives. He can be reached at richard.eichen@growroe.com

I have learned to look to the natural world as a source of learning and solace. Mother Nature, herself, has frequently taught me the lessons of slowing down to a point where I can think and process the information around me. She has shown me that natural selection is the way of the universe and is not necessarily a bad thing in business either. Consumers gravitate to the best ideas, the clearest message and products that fill a need and make life a little easier or happier.

Similar lessons from nature are all around. She has shown me the wonders of immense snow capped mountains, vast green valleys and the awesomeness of a rushing river, the beauty in desert environments and the wonders that lie in tidal waters of our oceans. All of the elements of her natural world have lessons waiting to be learned. If listened to, these lessons combine with my spirit, make me a more knowledgeable person, a more thoughtful business man, a more creative marketer and a more patient and tolerant human being. Some might say that Mother Nature is my Therapist.

Back in 1997 I wrote an article for the American Marketing Association concerning control issues in research design.  The AMA titled the article “Control is elusive in research design” and it is as pertinent today as it was 12 years ago.

The article talks about the important role control plays in the college research lab – how students learn that the integrity of research findings rests in large measure on the level of controls built into the designs – and contrasts this to the different reality researchers find in the commercial world.   While understandably the role of controls in marketing research differs with the experimental intent in the lab, the ability to set controls within our designs is just as important to the success or failure of our research.  And yet defining and implementing parameters of control is elusive outside the research lab due to many factors, not the least of which are those related to the peculiarities of clients’ needs & resources, timeliness, logistics, and cost.  The difficulty of managing control can also come from the research process itself.

In quantitative research we strive to minimize error by, among other things, carefully designing our survey questionnaires to maximize clarity while minimizing potential response bias.  Yet, for all the effort put into questionnaire design and interviewer training, the reality of any given telephone study is that a certain amount of control must be relinquished when fieldwork begins – after all, it is impossible to train interviewers and coders for every situation or possibility, leaving them to make their own subjective judgments as necessary.

Qualitative researchers typically cry “oh no!” at the idea that controls play a part in qualitative designs, yet there are any number of control parameters built into these studies.  As one example, many moderators hope to gain a truer understanding of discussants’ reactions to visual stimuli by systematically controlling the order in which concept boards (whatever) are shown from focus group to focus group in a multi-group project.  Although I don’t agree with this practice (the reasons why may be explored in a subsequent post), it is interesting to note that the moderator’s defense of rotating stimuli typically draws on the quantitative-leaning concepts of primacy and recency.

And, of course, both quantitative and qualitative researchers grapple with lots of other control issues you won’t find in the research lab, such as professional respondents (“repeaters”) and those who pretend to be who they are not (“cheaters”).

So what is the role of control in our research designs?  Real world commercial research is not an ideal experimental environment but that shouldn’t diminish our consideration of control issues as we perfect our research designs.

ComScore Ad Metrix goes Germany: Holtzbrinck ranks as top display ad publisher in September; http://j.mp/53gNjl

Author : WIENARTO, YONG

Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a handheld video game console created by the top global video games producers, which is Nintendo. It is originally come from Japan, but now becoming the global electronic toys. No one can really deny the fact that many video games/computer games/arcade games are geared more toward the male population. It?s not by accident either since it?s partially because of the nature of males who loves playing games. However, as time goes by, women are starting to play video games as men do. This open to new opportunity for video games producer to penetrate this segment. This opportunity creates an idea for making a research that discusses the video games for girls. As a result, this dissertation reveals the possibility of selling handheld video games to girls segment. This report is focusing on the market research, and developing appropriate marketing strategies that matched with the result of the research. Furthermore, the girls? buying behavior towards video games will be included together to see their demands and expectations of video games. Finally, there are also some useful recommendations for Nintendo to modify the consoles so that makes it more attractive and appealing for girls.

Keyword : marketing strategies, consumer behavior, marketing research

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1162/

I know I said my next post would be about labels, but I read the latest issue of Marketing News last night which was all about Market Research and it got me to thinking about market research.

One of the major issues brought to light in Marketing News is that when surveys are web-based it is next to impossible to tell if the person taking the survey is who they say they are. This factor can be critical to analysis. It does marketers absolutely no good to analyze data that is not based on truth. On a personal note, I do take a lot of surveys, mostly because I like it and believe it can be a great learning experience to see how other companies set up their surveys. I have taken many surveys that start with a pre-screener that asks for age and gender. On the next screen, once one gets past the pre-screener, the survey then asks the same questions again. I don’t see how this is useful. I am an advocate of not asking those questions again until the very end of the survey. This way, if the person is lying, by the time they get to the end of the survey, they may well have forgotten what lie they told. I have a fairly good memory and I can certainly remember what I put for age and gender if you ask it immediately after you just asked me. While asking later it the survey can create issues, after the survey taker realizes that this is they are unable to remember what lie they told in the beginning, perhaps they will catch on and start telling the truth.

The article also mentioned that there are many “Professional Survey takers” out there and that there has to be a way to combat the problem. In addition, the article dealt with the incentive issue. This issue is clearly a cause for concern. It was noted that there are several Professional Survey Takers that will rush through the questionnaire simply to get to the incentive. especially if it is a monetary reward. There were examples of some creative solutions to this issue, one being to offer a donation to a charity of the survey takers choice. The belief here is that the direct benefit is then removed, but the survey taker is still willing to participate because they are helping to do something good for someone else. Another solution was to offer points toward future rewards. The belief here is that when people are offered non-monetary rewards, they are less likely to rush through the questionnaire because the award is not immediate. Suppose for example, the prize that you want is 100 points, but you only get 2 points for each survey. It doesn’t do you any good to rush through it to get those 2 points because it won’t get you the prize any faster.On the hand, the rewards for the survey should be commensurate with the time required. Today, I was offered the opportunity to take a survey where the estimated time to complete was 90 minutes and I was being offered a sweepstakes entry-needless to say, I did not partake.

A major issue is what happens when you have a respondent whom you know to have lied on their questionnaire. What do to about their responses? Do you keep them all? Do you throw them out? Firstly, by saying that you know they lied-intentionally or unintentionally- I mean that you notice some blatant inconsistencies, an example being, “Do you have any children under the age of 18 living in your house?” Response-No, Next question, “Please list the ages of the all the children living in your house in each of the following age categories”- You get responses. This could very easily be unintentional, but it still leaves a major conundrum. As much as it pains me to say this, I think you have to discount the whole survey because you can longer ascertain the validity of each response from this respondent.

As a person who has taken many surveys in my day, I am a proponent of surveys that are creative, fun to take and pleasing to the eye. I am also a major advocate of the progress/status bar. These make me more inclined to not only take a survey, but to stay focused on the survey. I recently took a survey that was one of the most interesting I have ever taken. At one point, it wanted me to watch a tv commercial, so it took me to a screen with a TV and it said, “when you are ready, push the power button on the tv to start the commercial”. I did. It then wanted me to see an ad on a search engine, so it took me to a screen with a computer and it said “When you are ready, push the on button on the computer screen” so I did and then it zoomed in to the “search engine screen”. While these aspects seem silly to some they really made me enjoy taking the survey and it made me much more inclined to stay focused because I wasn’t just staring at boring screen after boring screen filling in bubbles. A downside to this is that it might be possible that I was so enamored with the aesthetic aspects of the survey that it may have impacted how I rated the products in question. I don’t think this is the case because I personally use the products and love them, but it is possible that this could be an issue. This should hold true for every survey. If the screens are boring and there is not progress bar, it is possible that  the respondent’s boredom will be reflected in how they rate the product or service. This is definitely an issue that needs to be studied and addressed, how the aesthetics of the survey impact the responses. We know that in paper surveys, on, above or below the fold can impact answers, so why can’t this?

The status bar is an important feature because it tells the respondent how much longer they have to go. I know when I see that I am half way or more than half way finished it makes me more willing to hang in there, rather than on surveys where I have no idea when the questions will end.

Other issues I noticed is that the makers of some surveys forget two of the cardinal rules:

1. Questions must always be mutually exclusive

2. Questions must be unambiguous.

I had a survey ask me Age-18-24, 24-30. Well, what if one is 24? This is the sort of issue that when I see it on a survey, I stop taking the survey. This shows me that the survey is poorly designed and I do not want to take part in a research study that is poorly designed. I also cannot stand surveys full of spelling errors. This indicates that there was little oversight and someone just rushed through it to get the survey out. Again, I don’t finish these surveys. Surveys should always been clean, spell-checked by multiple sources and tested on people outside of the group of people responsible for the design of the survey, for ease of use and to see if the questions make sense to an average person trying to take the survey.

The other major issue that I have with many of the surveys that I receive is if I am given a Likert Scale with multiple rows of questions, but since it is being completed on a computer screen, there are so many rows that upon scrolling down, the answer choices are no longer visible. I am not about to keep going back and forth. A good survey designer will be aware of this issue and place the choices at various points on the screen if they are going to try to keep it to one screen, or they will split the questions up into multiple screens. If the survey designer is not wary of the issue, the respondent could just randomly select choices again devaluing the data.

-Novafan23

Reaching almost the end of the year we must look humble back at 2009. Informal talks with researcher of different organisations learn that probably on average turnovers will decrease by 5 to 15%  in the market research companies. The trend was already clear in 2008. Although major players could sustain their turnover in 2008, their gross operating profit was reduced by 40%, which promises nothing good for 2009.

The only reason why most of the major research companies still could present an increase in turnover in 2008 was only possible because research International finally decided to stop its business after years of reporting losses. Their 4 million turnovers in 2007 dissolved over different competitors. Mainly significant, Ipsos and Synovate could profit from this admission of defeat but it did not result in more profit for them. The RI case in Belgium should be studied more in detail because it demonstrates how vulnerable all research companies are. In 2002 RI reported a turnover over 12 million. Over 5 years it saw its sales reducing to only 3.8 million in 2007 and finally 1.2 million in 2008 over 6 months resulting in the final call “retreat to the Netherlands”.  If it can happen to RI it could probably happen to any of us.

That research International was not able to transfer most of its turnover to their Dutch operations demonstrates how local the research industry in Belgium has become. This will not improve given the number of HQs that are leaving our country. It is also rooted in the fact that most research businesses in Belgium are based on personal relationship of its founders even if they are taken over afterwards by one of the international groups. Synovate’s Censydiam affiliate had to learn this the hard way. The turnover of Censydiam decreased from 10 million euro to 6.7 million in the same year that Jan Callebaut research tycoon and research entrepreneur of the first generation decided to leave the company after he realized that he rather would be king of his own castle than a lieutenant in an international army, taking with him a dozen of former Censydiam employees. Although his company does not report turnover it can be expected based on the reported gross margin and profit to be 1.5 to 2 million euros. Also Ipsos is still licking its wounds of the takeover in 2004-2005  of the at that time market leader INRA. Failure to acknowledge local management and loss of the eurobarometer resulted in significant losses in the years to come. Ipsos still reports a loss in 2008 of 0.4 million. However Ipsos seems to crawl slowly from its pit given its reported losses was no less than 1 million Euros in 2006 and 0.6 million Euros in 2007.

Given the personal nature of most of the companies it is difficult to put the reported results in perspective. Purely based on the reported gross profit one could ask why large groups still bother to do business in Belgium. The reported turnover of about 65 million euro of some of the 5 biggest research companies (Synovate, ipsos, Significant, Dimarso, insites) is one would call aggregated an average company. The total reported gross profit of 1.7 million euro (2.7%) is a cry for help. Main reasons why one stays in business is that results are somewhat deflated by internal transfers to management companies, international parent companies as well as some large salaries. It does not make it easier to compare results. How big this effect is, one can only guess.

Further the results shows that turnovers between 10 and 20 million Euros do not create sufficient economies of scale. The problematic mergers of Synovate and Ipsos demonstrate this clearly but also Insites the Belgian online pioneer had to report lower gross profits mainly because it invested a lot in people (They went from 34 to 58 FTE’s) in one year and consequently salaries over 2007 and 2008.. A bold investment but given the low economies of scales it will not yield increasing gross margins for them for several years.

It also means that the Belgian market cannot sustain more than 5 companies with more than 10 million turnover. As such further concentration of the industry will certainly happen in Belgium. Among the larger players this will be internationally driven. This resulted already in the merger of TNS and Research International creating the world’s largest custom research company. For RI in Belgium the merger came too late but it will probably not be the last merger we will see. Midsized local players will try to keep pace by looking at each other and to some of the smaller fish.  

The low gross profit also shows that the major strategy of far stretched standard product suits does not work in Belgium. In most cases a lot of the offered international tools are simply too expensive in a Belgium context. A small country means relative small marketing budgets. Within this small budget pool market research is further simply disregarded. Luckily this also explains why the research industry suffered far less than the advertising and media industry in Belgium.

Many of these industry characteristics explain partially why the industry reports average to low gross profits but they do not explain the further decrease in gross profits in 2008. It is clear that due to the crisis lower research budgets were allocated in 2008 and to keep turnover at the same level many companies followed the ill strategy of price cuts trying to keep one’s piece of cake as large as before not realizing that the entire cake is getting smaller. Further expected losses in 2009 and subsequent over- reacting price cuts might endanger the industry entirely for years.

The applied cuts did not only serve the goal of maintaining turnover. Given reserves were still high one had high hopes medium and smaller providers could not follow and would be forced out of market. This would mean future opportunity to increase turnover.  This strategy is not a viable one. The net value of this surplus turnover is zero because it will be realised with zero or low margin potential. Second it is based on the belief that medium and smaller competitors would not be able or willing to follow these price cuts. In most cases they did and could because their cost base is considerable lower.

Although it becomes clear research budgets will not be cut further in 2010 it will remain some difficult and challenging years for the industry. Some have shot in their own foot. Whether they will run again is almost entirely out of their scope of control.  Luck is democratic so who knows who will run again and who will remain crippled. Good luck to you all.

JStokes Agency, a Walnut Creek full-service advertising agency is looking for a friendly, high energy intern to join our account services department. Immediate, current semester or upcoming. Flexible schedule. Offers great experience for communications students. Specializing in business-to-consumer accounts, JSA caters to QSR and franchised brands. A successful candidate will have excellent written and verbal communication, enthusiasm, a willingness to learn, the ability to work in both a team environment and independently and possess a strong attention to detail. Passion for the industry is a plus.

Contact:
Janelle Navrat, JStokes Agency
phone: 925.933.1624
Sender’s email: jnavrat@jstokes.com

The primary responsibilities of the include, but are not limited to:

Client meeting preparation:
- Creates meeting notices and manages timelines for distribution
- Follows-up with administrative support on pre-meeting calls and meeting checklists
- Manages meeting facility, makes reservations and secures food, beverages and other needed amenities
- Coordinates with Account team on meeting packs; printing and pack assembling
Meeting PowerPoint Presentation /pack responsibilities:
- Researches and evaluates competitive advertising and operations in the local market
- Collects data and assembles charts for account team review, as well as client review for trending, weather, holiday and other factors that might impact business
Newsletter responsibilities:
- Collects the appropriate information and constructs the newsletter draft for internal review
- Manages the flow of approvals on newsletters to make sure every account team member has an opportunity to review and provide feedback
- Releases to the franchisees – in either email or postal mailing
Creative collaboration:
- Evaluates creative needs and participates in campaign building with the account service team
- Proof-reads and provides feedback on creative elements with account team
Media Support:
- Assists with value added programs, including radio remotes and community involvement
Account Executive support:
- Assists Account Executive with any admin duties associated with day-to-day business

REQUIREMENTS: Current or recently graduated student.
QUALIFICATIONS: Organized, friendly, self-motivated thinker.
Comments: Open to all interested majors, prefer mass communications path.

Found at http://iplot.typepad.com/iplot/2009/11/the-customer-isnt-a-human-being.html  tnx Nick Marsh

To be continued at http://iplot.typepad.com/iplot/2009/11/the-customer-isnt-a-human-being.html

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These costs are for my marketing campaigns and additional advertising and marketing costs. Im just trying to get my costs together so I can roughly work out how much everything is going to cost:

SEO –  £300/month

Trying to find an SEO company is proving to be tricky. I posted a job on elance.com for SEO work for my website. I got a huge reply from their and choosing one is going to be difficult. I also have been recommended to use two other companies including 1webpromotion.com. Taking all these quotes into account I am expecting to pay £200-£300 per month and I know that I need around 3 month of work to start seeing any results. Price will also depend on how many keywords I am going to choose to rank for. It is inevitability one of the key factors that is going to determine the long term success of my business.

Video Creation – £12/video

I am beginning to appreciate how YouTube can seriously impact my business. On YouTube  there are many private tutoring companies who have posted up videos of maths and science ‘how to videos’ which have tens of thousands of views. I want to create these videos so that I can guide these people to my website, I can also add them as friends of I can have them subscribe to my channel. I would like to grow my video collection to around 40-50.

Leaflets/Flyers – £741

Combining my 3 campaigns I have set a target of a total of 70,000 leaflets to be delivered. 10,000 for 11 plus then 30,000 each for GCSE & A-level. I have a distribution system set in place that will enable me to do so.  After shopping around I have found printing.com to be the most cost effective. 10,000 leaflets = £199 , 2 x 20,000 leaflets @ £271 = £542. Artwork is included in these packages.

Online Advertising – £450 +

I have been testing advertising campaigns out on Google Adwords in order to find successful keywords, campaigns and also to see an average cost per click (Av CPC). My average cost per click was between 18p and 27p, which from my previous experience from Adwords is quite low. In this section I can spend as much or as little as I need. It will help me drive instant traffic to my website. Working out that each customer will have an average of 5 lessons with us, then each customer will be worth around £20-£25, so based on our conversion rates we can work out is Adwords is a viable marketing tool for our business.

I will also be looking to advertise on relevant revision websites such as s-cool.com to promote my services to highly targeted customers. I must however remember that it is the parent that buys the service, so banner ads will have to appeal to them and be advertised where parents are looking.

Technical Stuff – £240

I am still getting a quote from the company I used to build the website (www.premierchoiceinternet.com) but an educated guess would be around 8 hours work at £30/hour = £150.

Professional letter to be written – £35

I have spoken to Carol Crompton, the lady who wrote my press releases, and was given a quote of £20 for 2 letters to be created for the headteachers.

Newspaper advertising – £360

Advertising in local publications costs between £25-£35. For each campaign I will be expecting to advertise in 4 publications. Therefore the total cost is between £30 * 12 = £360.

I have also been thinking about having a professional copy-writer to re-write the website and a new tutorial video to be created for the website. After some time thinking about it, I think these changes would definitely benefit the website, but at the moment I should best spend the money getting people signed up and using the website. I think these changes should be applied some time down the road.

I am sure there is other costs which I haven’t included and I will include them as they arrive, but these are my basic and main costs. I will also try to barter to get these costs down as well as seeing if they use affiliates and save money this way. When a customer signs up to the website they have to state how they found the website, this will give us some indication to what advertising & marketing is working.

**** Press release distribution – £100. One off fee.