I’m fascinated with the way new media channels mould new consumer behaviours. Yet one thing that tends to annoy me are claims that a new media channel will kill off an existing one. Foursquare is supposedly a Twitter killer. Online video is sure to kill television. Heck… the trend dates back decades! Remember… video killed the radio star! The reality is that these claims are almost 100% bullsh#t. Media channels rarely die. Rather, they evolve. And the web is helping shape that evolution, breathing new life into existing channels. Two recently released research reports validate this theory by providing insight into how the web is changing media consumption habits. The results are sure to surprise anyone who believes “old school/mainstream” media formats are living on borrowed time…

Exhibit 1 – Television

Television has long-been predicted to be on a slow spiral towards its inevitable death, primarily as a result of the exploding popularity of on-demand video sources such as YouTube and Hulu. However, Nielsen’s recent Internet and Technology Report confirmed that rather than falling, television consumption has actually risen! The most interesting insights from the report include:

• The number of hours spent watching television each week increased from 12.9 hours to 13.4 hours
• 49% of respondents multi-tasked watching television with Internet usage

The emergence of multi-tasking behaviour in particular is important when considering how people will engage with television in the future. It points towards a convergence between television and the Internet. Stan from BrandDNA recently wrote an excellent article on the topic of interactive television, citing the emergence of real-time audience congregation and conversation around the ABC’s Q&A program. So prevalent is the discussion that the Q&A hashtag regularly becomes a leading trending topic on Twitter during the program.

And while Q&A is clearly being driven by an intellectual early adopter crowd, the trend of interactive television is slowly penetrating popular culture. One of my favourite uses of Twitter is to follow discussion around live sporting events. And I’m not the only one… the Winter Olympics has been one of the primary trending topics on Twitter for the last two weeks. From a local perspective, there’s plenty of active discussion surrounding AFL games, even of the pre-season variety. And beyond the sporting arena, Masterchef was another phenomenon to dominate the Twitter stream during its first season.

There is no doubt that the interactive television trend will continue to grow as more people discover the benefits of connecting and communicating with fellow audience members in real-time. It’s most likely to explode once programmers recognise the trend and take it beyond Twitter by integrating audience interactivity directly into viewing experiences (most likely via mobile). All of which will make TV a pretty engaging channel for many years to come methinks…

Exhibit 2 – News

Newspapers are more dead than the dodo… right? Only if you consider the physical paper as the product, which it clearly isn’t. News media will always exist, because there will always be a demand for it. It is the means through which that news is distributed that is undergoing a rapid evolution. Recent research from Pew Internet provided fascinating insight into the changing news consumption habits. The key insights included:

• 92% of people use multiple channels to gather their news, with 46% stating they gather news from 4-6 separate sources of a normal day
• Only 21% of people rely one a single site to deliver their news
• 33% of mobile phone owners now access news via their phone
• 37% of users have contributed, commented on or distributed news via social channels

Much like television, news consumption is also moving with the technology. No longer do consumers need to wait until the 6pm news for their fix. RSS feeds, Twitter and smart phones have taken news into the world of real-time. All of which has increased the demand for news, rather than decreased it. The challenge for news media now is to adjust their business model to fulfill the consumer need for news to be portable and instantaneous.

Jeff Jarvis surmised the evolutionary plight of the newspaper industry perfectly in his book What Would Google Do:

“News organisations should stop presenting themselves as destinations and start seeing themselves as services, pushing out feeds, offering content to networks of sites, getting their news to where the people are. This is the new home delivery, the Internet as the paperboy.”

The industry has started to make the shift, with the ABC leading the digital way. The Age has also developed an impressive mobile application. Yet the problem lies in monetising the paperboy model. Being a destination is precisely what the online  newspaper business is built around. Eyeballs sell adspace… But the industry must evolve as consumer habits shift.

It may well be that the streamlined news media empire of the future maintains little more than a mobile site and an iPad application. Rather than retaining a journalistic workforce, a limitless pool of citizen freelancers could submit their stories for editorial consideration, with published authors receiving payment for their work. Regardless of what the future holds, you can bet that consumer demand for news will remain as strong as ever!

As will the demand for countless other media formats. The web changes everything. But it rarely kills anything. Except for the music industry. But I guess there’s an exception for every rule…

Banner advertising sucks! That’s been my view ever since I got into the online marketing world. Indeed, I frequently tease anyone who works with banners on just how ineffective their weapon of choice is. And I’m rarely proven wrong. As a web strategist, I advise clients on how to leverage each web channel (search, email, social etc). And my recommendations are typically very similar. Search and email are consistently towards the top of the priority list. Social media usually sits somewhere in the middle (despite the fact that I write about it frequently). And almost without fail, banner advertising comes in dead last. User discretion advised…! Yet last week I was given a stark reminder that under the right circumstances, banner advertising can in fact kick ass! Indeed, last week I executed a banner campaign that was so successful, it wiped the floor with search. Yes… and a pig almost flew as well…!

Facebook marketing for the WIN!

If the thought of a banner campaign outperforming search is enough to shock a seasoned online marketer, the fact it was a Facebook campaign would truly knock their socks off.

If you were to do any sort of independent research on Facebook advertising, it’s unlikely to make for pretty reading. Tales of abominable click through and conversion rates are the norm. And I must admit that I’ve always been a skeptic. After all, social networks aren’t search engines. People aren’t in research mode. They’re there to socialise. So why would they click on an ad…?

Despite this, my research led me to the conclusion that Facebook was a fertile ground for the client. Their customers were there. We knew that. Competitors had already established successful fan pages. And there were tens of thousands of people with brand related keywords in their profiles to target. It wasn’t rocket science! There was a real opportunity there.

So we took the plunge…

And boy did it pay off!

The campaign results

Within hours of implementing the campaign we knew we had a winner. The community was growing considerably by the hour. Within a week we had connected with over a thousand new “fans” via Facebook at a cost of around $0.30 per person. Furthermore, the new fans weren’t simply joining the page, never to return. They were contributing wall posts, uploading photos and commenting on each other’s photos. Within a week, the community had generated over 100 photo uploads and almost 200 comments on those photos. The audience was engaged. The campaign was a runaway success.

People often question the true business value of a Facebook “fan”. The truth is that those people don’t understand the potential of Facebook as a communications platform. To me, acquiring a Facebook fan is much like acquiring a customer email address (few marketers will question the value of email acquisition). In both cases, customers are opting-in to receive communications from the brand.

While being careful not to abuse that privilege, the organisation can now communicate freely with that audience. Obtaining a Facebook “fan” shouldn’t be viewed as a goal itself. Rather, it is simply the start of a relationship. It is what is achieved via the ongoing communications that drives the real business value. Web traffic, new product awareness, customer advocacy/retention and real-time customer feedback are just some of the marketing goals that can be achieved via those communications.

In our case, even after just a week of establishing the page, we are beginning to see tangible business benefits being derived via Facebook communications.

Proof that banner advertising doesn’t suck?

Well… no. Not quite. In this specific campaign we were the beneficiaries of operating in an extremely high involvement industry (definitely within the top 3-5 purchases a consumer makes in their life). Customers have a true passion for the product and many are active advocates. This was a huge factor in the success of the campaign. The fruit was ripe for the picking.

In another low involvement industry the campaign could easily have tanked. So the point of the article isn’t to pump up Facebook or banner advertising. Instead, the key message is to understand your audience first before determining which marketing channels to employ. Don’t rule out a particular technique based upon previous experiences in another industry…

Rather, determine who your audience is, what they want, where they hang out & how they behave. Once you understand this, you’ll have a far better idea of how and where to hit them with a message that will resonate.

Who knows… it might even be a banner…

The words “social media expert/guru/strategist” are practically insults these days. And you’d have to say with fairly good reason. The web is awash with “social media experts” making bold claims of how it will change  business  and marketing as we know it. And to a certain extent they’re right. It has made businesses more accountable for their actions. It has changed the way people make purchase decisions (ratings & reviews). And it has opened a new range of corporate communication channels. But… like any marketing channel it has its strengths and weaknesses. And it seems that amongst the hype, the weaknesses are often glossed over. This post aims address some of those shortcomings via a real life case study.

The inspiration for the post came to me as I read one of the most interesting articles I’d seen for a while. It was by Julian Cole and it analysed a social media campaign that didn’t meet the defined objectives. Imagine that! It’s exactly the type of post you never see from the self-proclaimed “social media experts”. They’re generally more busy talking in these terms (hilarious vid, but comes with a language warning):

So kudos must go to Julian for having the courage to publish his case study. And following in the spirit of honest and open analysis of social media campaigns, I’m bringing my own to the table which also fell short of fulfilling some of the campaign objectives.

The Case Study – Social Media Master Class

Back in September I was involved with Social Media Master Class with US author David Meerman Scott, which was organised by the wonderful Jennifer Frahm. Next Digital (my employer) were the major sponsors of the conference, and as a result I took on the role of marketing the event. My first task in developing the marketing plan was to identify the target audience for the event. Two distinct audiences were identified:

1. Social media professionals and enthusiasts
2. Senior marketing and business managers looking to understand social media

The core objectives of the marketing plan were pretty straightforward:

1. Create awareness and interest in the event amongst the target audiences
2. Convert that interest into ticket sales

Given the vastly different media consumption habits of the two audiences, a marketing plan was devised for each:

The Marketing Plan for Social Media Enthusiasts

It didn’t take Einstein to determine that the ideal place to reach the social media professionals and enthusiasts was within social media itself, particularly given the subject matter of the conference. A range of different channels were established to reach this audience:

• An event blog was created to serve as the hub for all event information
• A Twitter account was also created and used in a number of ways to (a) link to relevant content, (b) disperse event info and (c) host event related promotions (book & ticket giveaways)
• An outreach campaign saw prominent industry bloggers sent a copy of David’s new book and invited to an ‘invitation only’ event to meet David
• A 20 minute podcast with David was created by Trevor Young (who managed PR for the event)
• A partnership with Sydney’s Social Media Club (SMCSYD) was established, which culminated in a speaking appearance for David at a SMCSYD event. A discount offer was also created for all SMCSYD members.
• A Facebook page was created, although rarely used

The Marketing Plan for Senior Managers

While social media was ideal for reaching enthusiasts, it was quickly recognised that it would be ineffective in penetrating the senior manager market. Subsequently, a more traditional (yet still primarily digital) marketing plan was devised:

• Display advertising space was co-ordinated throughout Marketing Mag’s web site (an event sponsor)
• Promotional banners were purchased within the email newsletters of key industry publications including Marketing Mag, Mumbrella, Anthill and B&T
• A search marketing campaign was implemented to target people searching for keywords related to social media
• Display advertisements were placed within Google’s content network
• Dedicated email campaigns were executed to a range of marketing and public relations industry bodies

The Results

If you had told me the numbers we would achieve at the start of the campaign, I would have expected the event to be a resounding success. At the height of the marketing activity, the blog was receiving between 100-150 unique visitors a day, which is considerable for a niche event. The Twitter account also gained traction quickly with over 600 followers generated in around 6 weeks. Indeed, by the end of the campaign, Twitter had sent more traffic to the event blog than any paid media source. Cool. So far, so good.

But… did that hive of activity help us achieve our objective…? Did it actually sell any tickets?

Yes. But not a whole lot. In fact, the Sydney event had to be cancelled due to a lack of demand. Of course, there were a range of external factors that influenced our ability to convert awareness into sales:

• Awareness of David’s work isn’t as high in Australia as it is internationally
• At around $900 a pop, the tickets weren’t exactly cheap and that pesky Global Financial Crisis didn’t help
• A limited marketing budget restricted our paid marketing options

The fact that we were still able to host a full Melbourne event was evidence that we did something right (and the feedback from all attendees was resoundingly positive).  Indeed, a competing event hosted by Marketing Now with speakers of the calibre of Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse & David Armano seemed to succumb to similar pressures, eventually giving their tickets away for free. So the campaign certainly achieved an element of success in a difficult environment.

But the exercise made it abundantly clear to me that social media’s strength is not in direct response (a belief I’ve stated a number of times on this blog). Some companies such as Dell have made it work for their business, yet most organisations that approach social media with an advertising or promotional approach walk away disappointed. Social media is not an advertising tool. It is a communications tool. It is best suited to objectives related to customer awareness, customer engagement and customer retention, rather than pure acquisition/conversion.

The star performer of the marketing campaign was email. Yes… good old-fashioned email (although I should clarify that dedicated emails outperformed paid banners in third party newsletters by a significant margin). It was by far the most effective direct response channel. Despite the hype around sexy new mediums such as social media and augmented reality, it should never be forgotten that email consistently delivers a superior ROI than any other marketing channel. Time after time. Don’t forget it.

The biggest lesson of the campaign

In hindsight, the marketing plan had an overreliance on web marketing tactics. While effective in reaching the social media enthusiasts, it failed in delivering the message to our second audience of senior managers. Online activity alone (let alone just social activity) simply wasn’t enough to fulfill the marketing objectives. Proclaiming the death of rival media sources is a favourite hobby of many “social media gurus”. Yet all that proves is that the “guru” has never actually executed a serious marketing campaign.

Social media should now be a valid part of the marketing mix for many companies, but it compliments rather than replaces other elements (and it’s not necessary for everyone). A good social media approach aligns activity with objectives from a broader marketing strategy. Indeed, the social media strategy itself is simply a subsidiary of the marketing strategy. It will rarely succeed in isolation or without support from other media channels.

So in summary… there’s no question social media is emerging as an important marketing channel. But let’s not all get lost in the hype.

I recently had the pleasure of doing an interview with Tim Reid & Luke Moulton from Small Business Big Marketing. The boys were nice enough (or silly enough) to ask me to be a guest on their show, which was a lot of fun. Tim & Luke’s excellent podcast series focus on practical tips that small business owners can implement to improve the marketing of their business. Previous podcasts have included illustrious guests such as Iggy Pintado, Michael Klim & Martyn Thomas. And then there’s me… In the podcast we discuss the critical online channels every small business should be leveraging including search engines, email & social media.

Check out the podcast at Small Business Big Marketing, and if you like it, why not subscribe?

The Internet is still a relatively new tool in the marketing mix. Sure… it’s been commercialised for over a decade, but it’s a mere baby when compared to TV, radio and print. As a result there’s a LOT of business people (and even marketing people) with more dollars than Internet marketing sense. So they come to us for help. They come to us with their problems… and their grand ideas. The only problem in this equation is sometimes their ideas really suck. So what happens when they’re not willing to deviate from their totally sucky plans…? Do we take their cash and implement a plan we know won’t work? Or do we take an ethical stance and tell them to take their ideas elsewhere…?

I came across an ethical dilemma of this nature last week. A current client requested a meeting. The client runs a computer chain selling laptops and other hardware. He has a database of 40,000 members and uses our email marketing software to send a weekly email to his database. He typically promotes a couple of heavily discounted items in the weekly email and sees good sales every time. Everyone’s happy! Until our meeting last week… You see our laptop selling friend has had a bright idea… If the weekly email works so well, why not send it every day…

Say what…?!?!

Yes, I know it’s not spam… yes, I know they’ve opted-in. But it won’t stay that way for long Mr computer salesman. How often do you think someone wants to buy one of your computers…? Every day…?

I could think of a thousand reasons why his idea completely sucks:

1. He’ll burn through his list within a month.
2. He spent a lot of good money building that email list.
3. Current customers are worth far more than new ones. Do you really want to lose them?
4. Increases in sales will be offset by increased marketing spend to replenish the list.
5. Consumers don’t care if it’s technically not spam. They’ll still push that spam button if you annoy them.
6. He may damage his email reputation and reduce his deliverability.
7. His customers can’t change the email frequency if it starts to piss them off.
8. Etc. etc… you get my point

Our main problem is that our client has already made up his mind. He’s going to do this regardless of our best advice. And if we don’t do it for him he’ll take his business elsewhere… Hence our ethical dilemma. Because despite the complete suckiness of his idea, it’s absolutely fantastic for our business. His change in email frequency would multiply the email volume by five. Instead of sending 40,000 emails a week, he’d be sending 200,000. And that means a big ching ching for our cash register.

Of course, that is an incredibly short term view of the situation. After all, the size of the list is certain to diminish once he starts mailing it every day. But the irony of the situation is that if that happens, we may profit even further from the exercise. Who’s he going to turn to when he needs some help topping up his list again…? Us.

So what is a man to do…? Allow a client to make poor decision that will cost him money, but benefit our agency? Or stand firm based on our principles of ethical marketing and business practices? I’m on the stand firm side. A number of people in my agency aren’t. The decision is still yet to be made.

So I ask you… what would you do…?

Is it just me or is email marketing the ugly duckling of the online marketing world…? While social media and SEO continue to be red hot topics in communities such as Digg & Sphinn, poor old email marketing barely gets a mention. In fact, if you look at the top 100 stories on Sphinn right there’s not a single story relating to email marketing… not one. Here’s a break down of what people are voting for on Sphinn:

1. SEO – 23 hot stories
2. Search Industry News- 21 hot stories
3. Social Media – 20 hot stories
4. Miscellaneuos – 15 hot stories
5. Blogging – 13 hot stories
6. Reputation management – 6 hot stories
7. Web analytics – 2 hot stories

So what’s the deal..? Why have digital marketers lost interest in email marketing as a discipline? Is it because email is becoming ineffective as a sales and communications tool? It wouldn’t seem so. In Marketing Sherpa’s 2008 Email Marketing Benchmark report, only 16% of digital marketers thought the effectiveness of email was decreasing. Datran Media’s research is even more compelling, with 80% of digital marketers rating email as their best performing medium. And of course there is the often quoted ROI of $50+ for every $1 spent on email. So I think it’s pretty safe to say that performance isn’t the issue. Hmmm…

Is it because we’ve mastered the art of email marketing? Let’s think about that for a second… Hell no! My current full time role sees me working on digital communications strategies for a range of international brands. And I can say without doubt that very few organisations implement best practices in email marketing. In fact, it’s downright disturbing to see how some multinationals treat their email lists. I hate to say the word spam, but it’s oh so close… And if that’s what the big guys are doing, I can only imagine what the smaller organisations are up to…

Let’s keep thinking… Are new forms of digital media leaving email in their wake? We’re probably getting a little warmer here. Social media in particular is hot, hot, hot! But the ROI for social media simply can’t touch email. Not yet anyway. SEO consultancies are probably the only professional organisations to master social media. And it has taken a lot of dedication, foresight and hard work. Indeed, Jeff Quipp has been quoted as saying he spends as much as 6 hours a day on social media to maintain his kingpin status. That’s a lot of time to commit to a cause, particularly when results are likely to be modest for at least the first few months…

Hmmm… could it just be that email is simply yesterday’s news…? Are we as marketers so obsessed with the search for the hottest new trend that we take a good thing for granted? Quite possibly. After all, pay per click advertising (Adwords) is without doubt the most effective form of paid marketing to emerge on the web. Yet it also fails to rate a mention in the top 100 of Sphinn. I doubt that would have been the case if Sphinn existed 5 years ago when search engine advertising was hot news.

Or does it just boil down to audience. Sphinn is dominated by SEO professionals. So is it really any surprise that SEO is the hottest topic? Probably not. Social media and blogging are closely tied to SEO. Both provide SEO benefits and both are heavily practised by SEO professionals. So it makes sense that they are popular topics as well. If only there were more email marketers in Sphinn. More email marketers would mean more votes…

Oooh. Hang on. There’s the reason. D’oh! It seems we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves. An underrepresentation of contributors means that email marketing never really stands a chance in Digg or Sphinn. Unfortunately email marketers as a group haven’t had the foresight to contribute to the major social media outlets. And the result is a lack of visibility… perhaps even a lack of sexiness in what we do. Given the stranglehold SEO now has on the major social media networks it seems there is only one solution. We have to kidnap SexySEO and turn her into an email marketer…

Inspiration comes from the strangest places sometimes. Indeed, I would never have imagined my first blog post would relate to a boring transactional email. But I found a recent email from PayPal inspiring… Here it is:

___________________________

Dear James Duthie,

This email confirms that you have added the following address to your account:

45 Hxxxy St
Axxxxe xxxx, Victoria
Australia

Sincerely,
PayPal

Did you know:

EBAY HAS PRODUCTS FOR YOUR NEW HOME

* Lawn Mowers * Faucets * BBQs * Furniture
* Spas & Pools * Flowers * Lamps * Vacuum Cleaners
* Major Appliances * Plants * Tools * Wallpaper

___________________________

What’s the big deal? Relevance and intelligent use of personal data. What was a standard change of address confirmation message became a cross sell opportunity for Ebay (who own PayPal). They took a seemingly meaningless piece of personal information (a change of address) to correctly predict that I had purchased a new home. Now that’s relevance! It seems so simple in retrospect, but it really is smart marketing!

Unfortunately for Ebay the email didn’t motivate me to purchase any household items via their auctions. Given that it’s my first home I want all my décor to be shiny and new. But it did bring Ebay to the forefront of my mind as an alternative for household purchases. So kudos to PayPal and Ebay.

With this in mind, is it any wonder that marketers globally salivate at the thought of the personal data Facebook holds? If PayPal and Ebay can turn a change of address into a sales opportunity, imagine what could be done with someone’s personal interests, favourite movies, favourite books, favourite sports teams etc.

Now if only Facebook could find a way to use that personal data that didn’t totally piss their users off…