Question about video placement and click through rates - getting stuff noticed etc.
Call to action buttons. Put the video in a prominent position. Build in a way to gather testimonials. RSS Feed to news section. More choices for interaction
New Media 2.0 blogs and whatnot for the banking industry.
Well it’s regulated and staid. Dull and stuffy. MSN money - use tools/widgets and such.
Show a younger demographic a bit more openess and visibility - especially a credit union. Alignment.
Public Sector Blogging.
People are going to complain no matter what. Political transparency people. These problems don’t go away but it’s also an avenue to plant more positive stuff and develop a more positive conversation. Rather than anonymous detractors tackle them head on. A valid point for all businesses and folks wanting to blog. Pull your head out of the sand. Don’t be an ostrich.
Goodwill advocacy ambassadors. Remember to be proactive. It doesn’t have to be a singular effort, the more the merrier.
Now if there’s one thing I’m taking from today, or has become apparent in this really good little end session, and it’s that the morning’s initial negative comments / general ambivalence to blogs and blogging seems to have been turned around. Not only do more people seem more accepting but the room seems to get it more than they did.
Perhaps I’m wrong and hopefully you’ll set me right.
So an exceptional job, gentlemen. It’s been an absolute pleasure from my point of view.
Great little example of advocacy of Zappos.com from Jenny in the audience in her explanation of her Zappos usage - “Any shoe you would ever need.”
If you check their site you have have testimonials front and center. Let others toot your horn.
Good memory moment from Justin about a great thing Zappos did for a customer a while back. I’d forgotten about that one, but then again, I’ve forgotten what I had for lunch.
Seriously, read Seth Godin. If you don’t have a sublime realization of zen-like wowser-ness then I’m a numpty.
The whole general idea here is to not act like you give a crap but to actually give a crap and align in that kind of engagement with you and your customers. Yes, it’s something you have to do, but it’s something you honestly can’t fake. Or can’t fake honestly.
You can inspire them with going the extra yard like with the Zappos example above.
If you do happen to be an existing member of Linkedin or sign up for the service after the conference, feel free to mentioning it in the comments if you’d like to connect.
Whatever the channel, you need to engage and communicate with your customers and develop a deep relationship. It’s fairly simple. Blogs are fabulous in the current Web landscape that is of the read/write variety, but if you feel more comfortable utilizing video or audio (podcasting) then go right ahead.
From a personal point of view I’ve always been a more avid writer than speaker. And I’ve always had a face for radio. Blogs are an easy choice from my pov . I’d also argue that because of additional benefits such as the search engine reach they’re more beneficial as a more rounded marketing strategy. Let a blog be your Web presence’s engine room.
Is it possible to liveblog a Q&A while scoffing a marshmallow cookie?
Probably not.
Video:
Does only two percent of this fine nation ski? I’ve never really thought about it to be honest.
Anyway, a niche market is a niche market. Brad is talking about wanting to keep Snowshoe’s customer’s engaged via direct marketing. Where are the 5 million new skiers coming from - no idea but Snowshoe wants to be in the right place to help them out.
Question Time:
How’s your marketing become two way rather than a megaphone one-way blast:
Travel. Coattails and slipstreaming. Float around see what people are saying and monitor forums and blogs and cream them off.
Key new marketing influencers
Really powerful voices - Beware being hijacked by trolls…..the John McCain strategem. Tap into the voice of the customer. FInding key influencers. Take them out skiing. Show them what SNowshoe does and let them enjoy your service
Do you key people into email adveritisng effectiveness
Easy email tool. 80,000 on email list subject line versioning - split messages between two groups. Email A/B split testing.
Which Web 2.0 tools do you use.
MySpace - not sure on effectiveness. Paid search is the best tool they’ve found so far. Not strictly speaking Web 2.0, but nice bone thrown to us at Direct Online Marketing. Now he’s advocating buying competitor’s brand names as keywords. It’s all shades of grey.
Talk about search phrases Snowshoe uses
Branded and non-branded. So, those terms with Snowshoe in them and those that don’t include those terms. So terms with Snowshoe as a modifier.
Anything helped with bad ski seasons.
Not a lot can be done with bad snowfalls
Seasonality?
7% of revenue during summer. 40 % of ad revenue spent during summer. Snowshoe = skiing during the winter but they have diversified to include other sports elements and lesuire activitities during the off-peak season. Marketing is busier off-peak preparing for the ski season.
Snowshoe got together to devise their grand brand plan. Devlopment of their core brand strategy. They came up with a brand book so they were all on the same page - as it were. ONLY FOR EMPLOYEES. It’s a secret.
7/11 and Snowshoe as a partnership….no. Subaru and Snowshoe - yes. Right partnerships and new products.
Measurement: how do you measure the right mix of response rates and their correct combination.
Unique phone numbers for each. Web visits - shopper to buyer ratio. Gone from a 56 to 16 page brochure. Wondering if it’s still viable.
How do you maintain the site.
Dangerous to market by committee. It’s a one person shop with 10 urls. Brad is that one person. Consistent voice on the Web site.
What kind of market research?
Voice of customer - intercept surveys when somebody comes out of a restauarant on holiday gets surveyed then gets sent a follow up email with discounts offer. Net promoter - raving fans vs non-fans - 60% score.
Focus group of people who used to come every year but why they had stopped. Found they had a higher propensity of coming at a later date. 15 %
Traditional media doesn’t work. They only use traditional channels to please employees. Targeted mail and direct research.
Nutshell moment from Brad:
Understand paid search. Have everybody in line on who the company is and what they want to achieve.
It really does help if you actually take notice of the agenda for the day. Jeff’s back on about influencing the influencers.
Developing relationships in marketing in an eHarmony stylee - the 29 degrees of ultimate connections. Is eHarmony that one with all those smug self-satisfied types wittering inane anecdotes about what they did after they met. Whoops….we’re onto something else.
Prioritizing Customers - in no particular order:
revenue - potential
revenue - historic
repeat revenue
profitability
lifetime value
relationship
influence on others
noise.
Let’s concentrate on the influencers. By the way, I might as well plug The New Influencers by Paul Gillin as some follow up reading.
What kind of weird term is pyschographic targeting? Is it one step removed from pyschopathic targeting? Sounds like facebook and Beacon.
Influencing influencers isn’t quite the same as trying to suck up to the cool kids at school. However, it’s key to find those people who personify and embody the exact values and demographic of your target market. If you can excite the people who may be purchasing your products or services then you can or should be able to excite the influencers.
Is it the same as John McCain and his his family bbqs for journalists?
It certainly isn’t the same as the John McCain campaign trying to spam / troll / influence other political blogs by sending out his online minions to comment on related posts and receive points for posting what they’ve posted back on his site.
I’m not having a go at Mr. McCain, just at a really dumb tactic.
Just a little background info - Justin just so happens to be my boss and I just happen to be his “New Media Specialist”.
So you can rate this liveblog post on a scale of 1 to 10 on the blowing-smoke-up-backside-o-meter…
Anyway here’s the basic gist of the general gist:
Organizational blogging
Social networking, wikis, twitter, and other forms of social media
Search engines, online press releases, and ways to fuse online and traditional forms of marketing
Blogs: Somebody not interested in reading blogs - man it’s like a personal slap in the face…..I shall get to this at some point.
It shouldn’t be a case of reading blogs so much as coming across information written on blogs. I mean, does anybody claim they don’t read forums as an entire mass? Pfft.
How many people write blogs…..stat attack. (will find)
Still amazes me about the low information threshold on RSS feeds and such.
Basic blog rules and ethics. Probably best to throw out a few top five lists on certain points Frightening or perhaps not or maybe I’m in my own little blogging bobble bubble.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
We’re at least fairly cogent on facebook mysapce and social networks.
PRESS RELEASES:
Brad wins for most press releases with 4-8 a day.
Press releases as SEO.
A big happy new media and old media conflab. All media is crap apart from the decent crap. Point out the uses of social media with regards to blended/universal search.
Not as much on this as there should be and that’s my fault.
So, seeming you’ve got your notes, go ahead and ask any questions you’ve got loitering in your frontal lobes.
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