11.12.08
Posted in Online Marketing at 4:02 pm by Carla Fourie
4 November 2008 will be remembered for many reasons. Not only did the United States choose Barack Obama to be their 44th President, but it was also a great day for internet marketing. With Obama’s victory it was proven that internet marketing can no longer be ignored. With one objective in mind, Obama’s team created the best internet campaign ever employed by a politician – and it worked.
How did he do this? Amongst other things, Obama used Web2.0 techniques to manage his reputation and influence potential voters online. Obama’s team utilised social networks in a way never seen before in a political campaign. On Facebook the team created an application that allowed users to share and spread news items, blog posts and speeches featuring Obama. Taking it one step further, the team created a Barack Obama branded network where people could network and form a sense of community with other Obama supporters. The team blogged on a regular basis on the Barack Obama blog to keep supporters up to date with what was happening “behind the scenes.”
Businesses should look to these campaigns and think about how they can utilise internet marketing to promote their products and services on the World Wide Web. According to eMarketer B2B marketers in the US are planning to increase their internet marketing spend by 18% compared to 6% for traditional marketing spend. Carol Krol at eMarketer says “B2B marketers are increasing their online spending, particularly for customer acquisition, because they can measure it and determine quickly whether it is working. In an age of heightened accountability, the ability to measure is critical.”
Two internet marketing elements Obama exploited are online brand building (also known as online PR or web PR) and online reputation management. In a broad sense, online PR works in a similar way to offline PR by building trusted relationships. These relationships are formed with directories and websites that share an interest or operate in the same industry as your business. Online PR consists of specialist articles being created and optimised with the intention of distribution directly to these websites and directories. These articles create brand awareness and traffic for the client as well as enhance search engine optimisation (SEO).
With online reputation management the web is continuously monitored for mentions of the client on websites, blogs and forums. Online reputation management is of vital importance as it allows the client to respond in a timely manner to either positive or negative press and allows the company to either save or claim its reputation.
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10.23.08
Posted in Online Marketing at 8:39 am by Christine
As far as the social networks are concerned, I’ve always considered LinkedIn to be amongst the top business networks. Recently the platform launched their own advertising model which similarly to the Facebook platform flyers, uses profile-based targeting: by title, seniority, function, age, country, gender and company size, among other variables.
With all this information at hand LinkedIn have decided to partner with a few market research firms to conduct targeted B2B research among its network of some 30 million professionals worldwide.
Participation will be entirely opt-in, and those willing will receive market research surveys approximately once a quarter. They plan to incentivise participation through donations to charity, merchandise and cash incentives. That is all good and well, but I would like to see the results of the market research should I consider participating…
On LinkedIn? Connect with me here.
Hands up who likes Google Analytics?
Yes, okay - you all know I’m a bit biased - sometimes 
But to qualify - It may be based on Urchin, but in all my years, I’ve worked on a variety of Analytics programmes - some more user-friendly than others, yes, I’ve experienced a few snags here and there and have had to work around them, but as a Free service, Google’s offering is more than sufficient.
If you’ve recently logged in you will have seen that they’ve upgraded slightly. It now includes new services such as custom reporting (incl motion charts), advanced segmentation, API, visualization tool, integration into AdSense and an updated user and management interface (which IMO are subtle).
Young Adults Prefer Email over Social Ads
A recent whitepaper by Ball State’s Center for Media Design claims that young adults pay more attention to advertising through email than through social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. The study was based on a sampling of 1500 internet users only though (ages 15 to 65+). Again, I am a little biased in this assumption and would recommend accepting this outcome with a pinch of salt based on such a small sampling. Further to this the sampling of users is unfortunately not disected further from what I can see and therefore we do not really have the knowledge whether this sampling was leaning more to the latter age or the former in terms of participants.
Other interesting stats :
8% of those over 65 use SMS, and 4% subscribe to social networks! Another surprising data point is that 42% of teens prefer to communicate via SMS, yet 62% prefer to receive promotions via email vs. only 1% via SMS.
“20% of wired consumers have subscribed to marketing communications via text messaging - but they want to receive texts only for urgent customer service issues such as financial alerts or travel updates.”
“more than 50% of young homemakers use social networks and text messaging during the day, but direct mail and e-mail are their two preferred marketing channels.”
“81% of retired consumers have purchased online, and 94% have been influenced by some form of direct marketing to make a purchase. ”
One of the other statements in the article:
“It is too easy to assume that the media consumers who choose for their own news, information and entertainment are by default the best media to use for marketing messages,” said Mike Bloxham, director of Insight and Research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design. “This is a dangerous assumption to make in a time when consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their level of control over their media experiences.”
A fantastic statement. This is why market segmentation is still such an important part of the online marketing research process. Find out where your consumers are really spending time and be sure to have a presence there.
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10.10.08
Posted in Online Marketing at 10:41 am by Jono
Despite advertising spending dropping in most channels, online has defied the trend with spending up 8% according to a recent TNS Media Intelligence report.
A recent article on Epiphany Solutions in the UK revealed that more than half of chief marketing officers (CMOs) are looking to up their budgets for online advertising next year. Epiphany reports that a survey by Rackspace found that 61% of the 130 marketing professionals interviewed planned to utilise most of their marketing budgets online in the coming year.
Perhaps this is inevitable as more and more businesses are realising the power and advantages of advertising online.
Audiences are easier to segment, target and communicate with. Another very obvious benefit is the measurability of online marketing initiatives allowing businesses to see actual ROI from their advertising dollars.
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