Feb13
Josh Bernoff: Strategies For Interactive Marketing In A Recession
“Many economists now believe we are in, or approaching, an economic
recession. In the last recession, online spending cratered along with
the rest of the advertising industry. But since interactive marketing
programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession. Social applications in
particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are
cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects’ decisions in
the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under
recessionary pressures. Interactive marketers should stop toe-dipping
and invest only in programs that can deliver on measurable metrics.”
Josh Bernoff: Why Social Applications Will Thrive In A Recession
“Budgets are tight in light of the economic conditions as you surmise,
but [the budget for social applications] has not been impacted. We are
still keen to move forward with our trial and have support….at this
point anyway. Interactive in general has been more protected than other comms areas and saw an increase.”
ADWEEK: Social Media to Weather Recession
“According to the Forrester Research report, marketer moves into areas
like word of mouth, blogging and social networking will withstand
tightened budgets. In contrast, marketers are likely to decrease
spending in traditional media and even online vehicles geared to
building brand awareness. Those findings stand in contrast to the
previous economic downturn, when spending on Internet advertising
cratered as marketers turned to tried-and-true media.”
Tom Foremski: The Influence Of The Blogosphere Boosts Salesforce By Over Half-A-Billion Dollars
“It always fascinates me to see how stories move through the blogosphere and into mainstream media. It is always interesting to watch what I sometimes term the “trajectory of ideas” within the mediasphere and the ripples of influence.”
Lucas McDonnell: Forums versus wikis: wikis often lose.
“Back in September of last year, I talked about some general questions people should ask before setting up a wiki. The very first question I asked was: ‘is a wiki the best technology for what I am seeking to accomplish?.” That may not always be an easy question to answer.”
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Nov28
Boom or Bubble? The Rise of Social Networking Websites for Kids
“As I was preparing my presentation for the Dust or Magic conference mentioned in my previous post, I couldn’t help notice how much new activity there is in the social networking world for kids. As the researcher Peter Grunwald shared with me just last month, social networking as a concept has always been available on the Internet. Even so, social networking somehow seems to have some newer meaning now in the context of an activity kids express interest in.”
Burning Question: Would you pay for my content?
“So here are some burning question for my readers: Would you pay for a subscription for a premium section on my blogs? How much is fair? (BTW - Zero is an acceptable answer).
“If I moved to a sponsored model how would that affect your perception of the blog’s independence?”
Google On Everyone’s Lips: A Trademark Nightmare?
“So, I got this Google-branded lip balm from the Google Store. I couldn’t resist it—it just seemed like such a kooky thing for them to brand. After getting it, I feel like Google might be approaching some sort of critical mass, and that they could be in danger of losing control of their trademark. Is this a trademark lawyer’s Nightmare?”
6 Brilliant Marketing Campaigns
“Here are 6 great marketing campaigns I’ve run across lately that are just brilliant. They are unique, memorable, and most of all, define the product.”
International Copyright on the Web: What Rules Apply to Me and What Court Will Apply Them?
“How does one know where a copyright infringement case is heard and what law is applied for violations involving parties from all over the world? Location of the server? Blogger? Copyright holder?”
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Sep13
By Steven Phenix, Viametric Principal
So you’ve heard that today’s customer is not like your mother’s customer, but you’d like to know exactly what the changes are?
Really you only have to think about how YOU are to know the answers. You’ve become incredibly short of time, you have a zillion things going on, you’re over-committed and overwhelmed with information – and on top of this you’re overworked, underpaid, shortchanged, and lied-to, same as always. So who, in this world, do you trust?
You trust your mother, your close friends, your proven business associates – and me.
You trust me, I promise you, because I didn’t approach you as a marketer. In fact it was one of your friends who introduced you to me. I’m a member of the same community you’re involved in. Sorry, it was the only way to get to know you nowadays 
I also didn’t act like a marketer. You can tell marketers by the way they approach you:
“Much of the abusing of customers that goes on comes from marketers who focus just on short-term goals at the expense of all else. Most of these fall into a category of marketers who do not think about customers at all, except as distant targets at the receiving end of their marketing howitzer.” – Returning to Marketing’s Roots
So, social networks, and communities of interest, are the only way to think in marketing now.
In this age of Web 2.0 and the long-tail customer, a marketer has to join a community, at least one for every customer and prospect – and a marketer also better know how to build one.
How do you build a community? And what’s a community of interest anyway? Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has the answers. She’s compiled a useful cheat-sheet of why and how and who, in the world of community building. You can find it here: The Art of Building Virtual Communities.
Sheryl quotes Etienne Wenger – one of the big dogs of community theory at the corporation level – as saying that the way to make a community succeed is to “build a fire of activity that is strong enough to draw people to the community and encourage greater participation.”
Remember that each one of those people is an individual. Long tail. So when you have, oh I dunno, say, ten thousand individuals standing around that fire you’ve built, make sure they each feel they can toast marshmallows one at a time.
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Sep6
By Steven Phenix, Viametric Principal
In my time as a PR person I was known to score the big one from time to time. This was when a message I put out there – today we would call it a meme – hit a particular note with the audience, and angels began to sing.
Occasionally this didn’t happen, and I had to ask myself what it was about the audience that I didn’t understand.
Those days are gone forever now. These days we don’t have to wonder about the customers, they speak for themselves loud and clear – in the words of the poet, they cry loud as any loon.
These days we have to wonder about the marketers, and the big question is, do they hear the customers?
Completely on this topic, the Forrester blog has started a meme called Immersive Marketing. Since Shar Van Boskirk wrote it we’ll let her explain it in her own words:
“Generally immersive marketing is planned to encounter the customer, rather than planned by ‘how many impressions in which format I should buy.’ And immersive marketing is often more subtle, taking a concierge-type approach rather than the carnival-barker style to delivering value.” – The Future: Immersive Marketing?
So this is about capturing the long-tail customer. And Shar is correct to talk in terms of the concierge approach. How to deploy it is a headscratcher, especially since the original thinking is talking about mass-campaign strategy: “Create a cohesive and all-encompassing experience across any channel where the customer is.”
Graham Hill, one of the best customer service thinkers around today, sees some drawbacks in the meme, and wonders if marketers have turned their own thinking the right way around yet:
“Immersive marketing must be driven by the customer’s perspective of how the experience should feel, not by the marketer’s. Most marketers today are still somewhat myopic. They are short-sightedly focussed on selling inside-out products rather than on their customers” – Can “Immersion Marketing” Save Marketing From Itself?
In the words of barbarian-philosopher Conan: “We shall see.”
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Sep5
By Sara Smith, Managing Editor, Viametric
Your typical online reader has the patience of a gnat. A bored, distracted, irritable gnat.
As a result, posting to your corporate blog with more of the ol’ blah blah blah you’ve written about a hundred times isn’t the best way to win over your readers. Nor is it very helpful—particularly on a corporate blog, where you’re representing a company with a specific product or service to sell—to write straight opinion pieces.
If people are coming to your blog, it’s likely that they want to know something. They want to know how to use your product, or who has used your services, or how you might help them solve a particular problem. In other words, they probably don’t care to know your mind’s subtle inner workings (alas). They want to come to your blog and walk away with something useful.
Blogger Allison Nazarian recently left a note in our comments about the difficulty of qualifying blog readership. And it’s true that you, as essentially an independent publisher, have no control over who reads your words. Even if you know the IP address of your readers, there’s no guaranteeing that your visitor from Prospect Company X works in the right department or is a key decision-maker.
One way around this is to write content that’s highly relevant to a very limited audience, so that readership is self-selecting. Now, that’s pretty easy if you’re working in a niche area to begin with. Writing about AJAX development will appeal primarily to—shockingly enough—AJAX developers.
But what if you’re in a big market with an offering that appeals to a variety of executive levels and prospects?
First off, lucky you.
Second, think about ways that you can encourage your readership to segment itself. Give them something—white papers, case studies, free trials, webinars—in exchange for their information. Divide up your content into discrete channels for different reader types. Run online surveys to learn more about your audience.
Most importantly, write about topics that not only demonstrate your expertise but give your readers something to act on. Good, actionable advice does both.
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Aug31
[Insight from ViaMetric] 10,000 Marshmallows: Web Two Point Daddy-O
“Part of the reason it’s hard to get a straight answer on Web 2.0 is that it’s such a happening thing, such a radical departure from the control-freak marketing and management of the past, that people who get it are more likely to smirk at you than try hard to explain. Because, daddy-o, you’re just a square.”
The Blog Herald: 8 in 10 Americans know what a blog is, half visit regularly, but without committing
“Marketing Daily has conducted a study on the blogging knowledge and habits of
Americans, and found that 80% of them know what a blog is, with half reading them on a regular basis.”
Social Media Today: Forrester on Enterprise Blogging
“Forrester said that blogging has hit prime time. It is being used for more that individual posts with organizations employing blogging platform for content management and group collaboration, community building, two-way customer communication, and lead generation.”
Phatterism
Cool, cool, cool blog
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Aug29
By Sara Smith, ViaMetric Managing Editor
We’ve been working on direct email campaigns for some of our clients, and as we’ve gone through this exercise I’ve been revisiting a few email marketing best practices. If the agency you’ve hired isn’t following these guidelines, you might want to ask them to explain the methods behind their madness. Here’s mine:
1.The length of the message depends on what you’re selling. The more expensive the product, the more you’re going to have to explain to people why they should buy it. But if your copy gets too long, you risk losing your reader altogether. A good marketer will walk the line, providing enough detail to make the customer bite without giving away the whole store.
2. Don’t give your reader too many options. People have short attention spans—especially when it comes to email. If you want them to respond, only ask them to do one thing. Maybe it’s “click here” or “buy now”. But if you tell them to click here, or call this number, or print out your email and fax it back, chances are they just won’t do anything.
3. Think through the whole process. That means thinking about landing pages, response forms, and fulfillment. When a customer clicks through from email to landing page, what do they see? Are you asking them only for the information you absolutely need? Are you saying Thank you once they hit the submit button? Are you prepared to service a variety of volumes of response?
Now, these are all pretty obvious points—if you happen to be paying attention. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the difference between bad work and good is often simply putting into action all those very obvious concepts.
Share your own email marketing best practices in the comments.
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Aug29
[Insight from ViaMetric] 10,000 Marshmallows: Web Two Point Daddy-O
“Part of the reason it’s hard to get a straight answer on Web 2.0 is that it’s such a happening thing, such a radical departure from the control-freak marketing and management of the past, that people who get it are more likely to smirk at you than try hard to explain. Because, daddy-o, you’re just a square.”
Marketing Pilgrim: 26 Free Tools for Buzz Monitoring
“There are a lot of companies that will happily relieve you of your dollars, in exchange for buzz monitoring services. While many large
companies will enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having a company track their reputation for them, the rest of us need something a little less expensive–or better yet, free!”
WSJ: Social Networking Goes Professional
“Social networking, popularized by teens sharing information with their friends online on Web sites such as Facebook Inc., is now blooming in the business world, thanks to new social networks that enable professionals and executives in industries such as advertising and finance to rub virtual elbows with colleagues.”
BusinessWeek: Profiting from Social Networking
“Here are two potentially billion-dollar questions: How can you turn the Web’s social-network users into consumers? And how can you turn idle browsing into a flourishing bottom line?”
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Aug23
By Steven Phenix, ViaMetric Principal
How can’t tell you how many times a day do I get asked what is Web 2.0? How many times a day do YOU wonder this same question?
Part of the reason it’s hard to get a straight answer on Web 2.0 is that it’s such a happening thing, such a radical departure from the control-freak marketing and management of the past, that people who get it are more likely to smirk at you than try hard to explain.
Because, daddy-o, you’re just a square.
When people ask the question, “what is Web 2.0?” they really mean, “what’s in it for me?” The full version of which is, “The hell with what it is, how do you leverage this Web 2.0 thing and make money?”
These are fair questions. What IS in it for you?
Web 2.0 – as far as you’re concerned, daddyo – is the second part of read/write. The Web is no longer just a read-only mechanism, it is writeable, and rewriteable, and actually now completely remixable.
The first Web rose up and got its message across, that content was king. And so to make money on Web 1.0 you had to pour content into those websites. Done deal, it worked fine.
But now, your stale content is mostly to be sneered at, for reference only. Real content has to be fresh, and the way to know that it’s fresh is to see it being created, in the Comments section, and to join in yourself.
Content is actually generated by your readers. Some of the best blog posts simply set the ground for debate, and the juice is in the following discussion between ordinary (well, hopefully famous) readers (and sometimes the author too).
Web 2.0 is a lot of things, but the number one thumbprint it leaves on a scene is participation: engagement, feedback, user-generated anything – just send it in, bring it on, and chalk it all over the place.
So how do you make money from this? Same as before. Before, you had to load up with content, and sell your product. Now, you have to load up with participation, and sell your product. It’s all still marketing.
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Aug22
By Sara Smith, ViaMetric Managing Editor
Remember how dot-com stocks seemed like a great idea until suddenly they were a horrible idea? Remember how adjustable rate mortgages did the same exact thing? I see this same aura of infallibility gathering around social media, which has me thinking: I’ve seen this movie before, and I didn’t like the ending.
But here’s the difference. First off, social media hasn’t caused a massive stock-market runup, ordinary investors aren’t gambling their retirements on it, and the modest idea that people might want to meet and share ideas online actually makes sense (unlike, say, Flooz). But I do think that, much like its predecessors, it’s being oversold as a tool for instant, effortless wealth creation.
As this Wall Street Journal article points out, blogs alone seldom create wondrous overnight results:
“A few months after launching a blog early last year, Get It In Writing Inc. started seeing traffic to its Web site soar. Today the small marketing-copywriting firm in Boca Raton, Fla., draws as many as 150,000 unique visitors a month to its site, compared with an average of only 100 before the blog… Blogging is ‘worth it,’ says [founder Allison Nazarian], ‘but you definitely need patience.’”
In our experience here at ViaMetric, we’ve found that blogs work fantastically well as a marketing tool in conjunction with traditional methods such as telesales, email, and direct mail campaigns. If your goal is pure PR, blogs function perfectly well on their own (well, a good Web site doesn’t hurt). But underpinning all these efforts there must be a great product with a strong message. Otherwise it’s all window dressing.
Social media will never make a bad business into a good one. But given time, and the right resources, it can help good businesses thrive.
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