Perspectives on the Digital Marketplace

An interesting post from Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog that warrants sharing with our audience in case anyone missed it. They conducted a recent reader poll of 400 business marketers asking what are the three internet marketing tactics they plan to emphasize over the next six months and the results are as follows:

• Search engine optimization (36%, 149 Votes)
• Blogging (33%, 134 Votes)
• Pay per click (26%, 107 Votes)
• Email marketing (22%, 89 Votes)
• Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) (21%, 86 Votes)
• Blogger relations/blog PR (14%, 56 Votes)
• Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku) (11%, 47 Votes)
• Affiliate marketing (11%, 47 Votes)
• Advertorial (NewsForce, AdFusion) (10%, 40 Votes)
• Video marketing (7%, 29 Votes)

Search engine optimization, blogging and PPC take the top 3 spots. Glad that we are in all three of those businesses with TruView and TruCast (shameless product mentions). Lee has some additional commentary on other categories/choices and I especially agree with his comments about social media investments in engagement strategies. We continue to see many major brands investing in social strategies to do more that just listen. What do you and your organization plan to focus on for the next six months? How will you be measuring ROI to continue to secure budgets and funding for your initiatives?

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

I finally got around to digesting Technorati’s new 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report (I’m glad they are back with the new numbers), and here are the less sexy stats that I found most interesting in the recent report.

I don’t get too excited about the size the community numbers as much as I do about the more insightful data. The devil in this industry is all in the details. So here’s the ones that caught my attention:

• 80% of bloggers say they have written about brands and products (companies beware);
• Nearly 40% indicate they have been quoted in mainstream media (15 minutes of fame?);
• Majority of bloggers have full-time jobs (they must be great at time management);
• 12% are blogging on behalf of their companies (that’s higher than I would have imagined);
• Two-thirds of bloggers reveal their identifies online (I expect that number to decrease over time);
• 33% of them have received free products (I wonder how many have returned them); and,
• “News” was the the most popular tag used by bloggers (does everyone think they are a journalist?).

Mike Spataro

Some new findings on consumer social media interactions from a study conducted by Cone Business which revealed, almost 60% of Americans interact with companies on a social media Web site, and one in four interact more than once per week. The survey finds that 93% of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while 85% believe a company should not only be present, but should also interact with its consumers via social media.

56% of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with, and better served by, companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

When Americans were asked about specific types of interactions:

• 43% say that companies should use social networks to solve my problems
• 41% want companies to solicit feedback on their products and services
• 37%feel that companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand
• 33% of men and 17% of women interact frequently (one or more times per week) with companies via social media

33% of younger, hard-to-reach consumers (ages 18-34), believe companies should actively market to them via social networks, and the same is true of the wealthiest households (household income of $75,000+). Two-thirds of the wealthiest households and the largest households (3 or more members) feel stronger connections to brands they interact with online.

And eMarketer reports that Generation Y (those born after 1979) online buyers are more immersed in online and mobile activities than any other generation, according to 2008 research from shopping comparison site PriceGrabber. Some 85% of Gen Y respondents said they participated in social networking, and 57% reported involvement with blogs.

Data from an August 2008 survey of Web merchants, sponsored by Internet Retailer, found that, of the 39.3% of retail respondents that use social networks, 32% have a page on Facebook, 27% on MySpace and 26% on YouTube.

I think data like this certainly affirm what we here at Visible Technologies are seeing with brands in the marketplace. Consumers absolutely view social media as channel for interaction and brands need to be actively present and interacting with consumers. If they don’t their competitor will. The challenge for brands is how to orchestrated this with hundreds or perhaps thousands of consumers interactions on a daily or monthly basis. The social media interaction channel/opportunity traverses many of the existing support and customer interaction channels in place at enterprises. Organizations need to rapidly put in place coordinated listening, measurement, engagement, and integration programs to both actively support customer issues and promote word-of-mouth opportunities.

To hear some insightful thoughts and best practices from leading analysts and brands: Jeff Zabin, from Aberdeen Group; Peter Kim, formerly of Forrester; Bob Pearson, from Dell; as well as Marty Collins, from Microsoft that are harnessing this channel have a listen to either of these webcasts - 1 and 2. Enjoy!

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

A civil lawsuit accusing an entertainer with a negative reputation of financially benefiting by promoting his bad boy reputation on the Web was the crux of an interesting trial I was asked to testify at. It was a real Web 2.0 case with viral marketing labeled as the “smoking gun.”

The plaintiffs are four young adults who allege they suffered injuries and emotional distress during a brawl that erupted in the audience at a 2004 concert in Springfield, MA., where the non-jury trial recently took place in District Court. The defendant is well known rapper Curtis Jackson, a.k.a 50 Cent, who leaped into the audience along with his entourage of band mates after being doused with a bottle of water by someone in the audience. The ensuing brawl was ugly and disturbing.

Arguing the famous rapper has a long history of similar bad behavior, the plaintiffs claim Jackson is reaping economic rewards as a brand and a business thanks in part to a professionally produced YouTube video of the brawl that has been viewed by nearly 200,000 people over the past year. The video also has been linked to by dozens of other popular gangster rap music sites, which further promote his bad boy selling image. The defense, of course, strongly disagreed.

The intersection of that argument is why I was asked to testify as a paid “subject expert” about online reputation management and quantifying the value of viral video marketing, namely the five-minute YouTube video.

I think there is little doubt in the world of marketing that people can make as much money from being a bad character just as much as Miley Cyrus does from her wholesome image. The main issue came down to whether or not Jackson’s complacency in allowing the video to remain online is contributing to sales of his music and merchandise. It was a hot topic that resulted in me being under oath a surprisingly long two hours. Even the judge got into the act, asking poignant questions about digital marketing and the comparative value of paid advertising on television vs. a free on-demand video on the Web.

It was difficult for the defense team to justify why Jackson’s camp didn’t have the video removed from the site if he really thought it was having a negative impact on his image. I’ve worked on campaigns with celebrities before and none of them were ever unaware of what was in the public domain and whether or not it should be stopped or enhanced. Jackson’s attorney was also surprised when I pointed out that in addition to the dozens of free 50 Cent videos on YouTube, his client also has his own paid branded community channel on the very same site.

At the moment the case rests in the hands of the judge so I’ll be sure to update on here the verdict when he rules sometime in the future. On a personal level, it was the first time I had ever had to testify in court and you quickly learn on a witness stand that your opinion means very little if it isn’t based on fact and first-hand personal experience. I hope I don’t have to “face the music” again anytime soon.

Mike Spataro

I have been away from the blog for a bit, but jumping back in with a pile of thoughts and content in the coming weeks. One of the more interesting reports that I recently read and digested was from Andrew Frank at Gartner. The report was entitled “Social Media Delivers Marketing Intelligence” and is a built on the framework he introduced in his piece about “Charting the the Social Media Marketing Landscape” which identified “social media monitoring and analytic services” as a key component in responding to the marketing imperatives of social media.

Andrew presents a view on how media companies and brand marketers can approach the topic and assess the vendor landscape and why Social media monitoring and analysis is a complex field, serving many constituencies and objectives. Visible Technologies is mentioned as vendor in the research. Some of Andrew’s key findings and recommendations are listed below but I would encourage agencies and marketers to have a look at the complete report as Andrew and the team at Gartner continue to expand their in-depth knowledge and coverage of the space. Watch out Forrester.

Key Findings:

• Social media monitoring is gradually achieving the status of a requirement among leading media marketing organizations.
• Although they contain similar core elements, social media monitoring solutions offer a wide variety of approaches to interpreting social media-derived data and supporting it with actionable workflow.
• A large share of the difficulty that social media sites have had in effectively monetizing their traffic is related to the inadequacies of current measurement regimes, which hampers attempts at marketing in social environments.
• Brand advertisers face a key challenge in matching the pace of social media reaction and opinion propagation with traditional campaign development cycles.

Recommendations:

• Agencies must embrace social media analytics as a baseline business requirement integrated into all customer offerings.
• Media companies investing in content development have a particularly strong need to understand and predict consumer trends through mining of social media, and must build core disciplines accordingly.
• IT organizations supporting new media marketing initiatives should prioritize adoption of social media monitoring practices and related metrics platforms.

13 pages of analysis await those who download the report. Nicely done Andrew.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies