Archive Page 3 of 20



Engagement and Dialogue: Justin Seibert

One way conversation is that old creaky dinosaur most beloved of the old creaky media.

Nice. Charlie Brown’s teacher as the zoned out messenger. Good impression with hand gestures to boot.

Justin’s flagpole – the story will happen and will you join the conversation.

The conversation is uncontrollable. It’s the old Oscar Wilde quote about the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Twitter.

Two chances to make a first impression – when you first meet and when you first screw up. A Huntington attendee took the idea and threw it round his bank as a mission statement type thingy.

So how does one maintain one’s online reputation.

Half of all purchases are made with online customer reviews. Negative and positive.

Search Providian

Really. As if a Boy’s Gone Wild video starring Justin would’ve sold any copies whatsoever. Now I’ve got a terrible mental image.

46% of all employees have talked about their workplace online.

Google Health Service

Truly universal healthcare provision.

Ebayink.com

How on earth do you win a severed finger in a bet?

All businesses have advocates. Embrace them and cajole them. Take them skiing like Brad does on a regular basis.

THREE THINGS TO DO TONIGHT

google.com/alerts

Techrigy

Start building a Web presence – even if it isn’t a site per se, start building a rapport online. You can use one of the above services to find out where your brand is being mentioned.

Set up a paid search accounts – only half an hour on Google and Yahoo with your brand and business name results. If and when it happens it’s set up so you can adjust whatever it is that has occurred as a modifier.

“Google are awful! Absolutely awful!” – Justin Seibert, President, Direct Online Marketing.

Man, this isn’t half a test of my flabby touch-typing skills. Then again, it doesn’t take much.

Building your Brand through Differentiation and Mythology: Jeff James

Jeff’s back and we’re on with brand differentiation.

  • Creating value propositions and messaging that create separation between you and competitors
  • Building a story-driven brand that emotionally connects with the target audience
  • Using a proven “success” template for “sticky” communications

Apparently we’re steering away from the discipline and onto creativity.

The Sticky Story.

Dare to be different. What is it that can or does makes you different from your industry?

The building of the brand. Emotions built into a logo. All us people want to be understood as individuals. Brands unique markers of human identies. We are all our own brand. Connecting customers around a way of thinking as opposed to the product.

BEACONS OF DIFFERENCE.

I likes it.

Best cost. Best product. Best total solution.

Walmart = cheap Asian sweatshops.

Please don’t get me going on BOSE. Look around and check what the influencers on audio messageboards and sites have to say about Bose. There is a very different perception of Bose by the general public and the online influencers.

Apple vs Microsoft

Innovative. Creative. Cutting edge vs Practical. Clunky. Unusable.

Hasten to say, I’m a Windows guy. Smug Apple fanatics.

Do not confuse your branding message by claiming the best service then offering huge discounts.

One has to develop the emotional connection and couple it with the functional to be truly successful.

Make people feel. And I’m feeling weary.

Play a role in the life of a customer and provide an emotional attachment.

Jeff’s on fire here. So I’m actually going to listen.

Ok. Stopped listening and time to bang on about stories. It’s not that you have to find a story as a business but that you are welcome to tell your story as a business online through tools such as blogs.

EVERY BUSINESS HAS A STORY. And you can, as Jeff points out, frame it in one of the emotional archetypes that’s described in the presentation.

Made to Stick

SUCCESs

Simplicity – finding the core of an idea
Unexpectedness – combining surprise and interst
Concreteness – bringin git alive with the five senses (memory velcro)
Credibility – tapping the power of authority – or any-authority- to build belief
Emotional – priming people to care
Stories – generating involvement that leads to action

Q&A with Brad from Snowshoe

Brad from Snowshoe.

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’s easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Jeff James: Understanding and Prioritizing your Audience

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.

Google Books preview of The Tipping Point

Mavens – connectors – salesmen.

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.

Lunch time, my good fellows.

Skip Lineberg: ROI Measurement – Setting up and Tracking for Success

Skip Lineberg - Maple Creative Partner

Read Skip Lineberg’s bio here.

It’s all well and good having all the fancy creative fluff but how exactly do you measure its success in terms of your bottom line?

Skip is about to let you know….What’s this happy clapping stuff?

It’s like an American Life Insurance seminar. ;-)

A very nice little exercise in what we actually measure in relation to marketing efforts – which, to be fair, is what this session is about.

Everybody else goes devilishly specific whereas those in the so-called know go generic.

A very nice way for people to adapt and integrate their own businesses and tracking experiences into the session. Who mentioned charitable donations?

So, it comes to what’s working and can we do more of it. That’s probably it in a nutshell.

Seth Godin’s Blog
Yes, the guy is a guru of sorts. Do give him a read.

I’ve never understand why we’ve settled for the direct marketing success percentage, Like 2% is really worth a carrot in this day and age. We’re eveb having email as 91% ineefective due to those nasty Nigerian oil scams.

So, in relation to this new generation of marketing.

Meet mountain man w/ shotgun as traditional media spraying his advertising/marketing pellets left, right and center.

How do we get more precise, and, to be more precise, why do you need to be. Blimey, he’s just chucked 75 cents at the presentation screen. I trust we all understand the metaphor, yes?

Commit to measurement – think about it – plan it – do it.

Reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

“We cannot manage that we cannot measure” – Peter Drucker.

In terms of measurement tools use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. It’s still quite astonishing that these fellas are free.

As with all things worth doing it’s 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Add your own quote about having to work hard and smart. All of this conference is related to working real smart. Yes, there’s a difficulty and inherent learning curve but it isn’t unfathomable. After all, Skip, Justin and Jeff all drive their businesses and related efforts while continually learning and adapting as these concepts and tools do likewise.

But once you have the core issues you have a decent foundation. I suppose the devil is in the detail.

The key here is that everything and anything can be measured way beyond its component parts.

Why Google Analytics is an important piece of software is that it helps you look at your Web statistics in a very different way than pure eyeballs. It helps you work out what these eyeballs are actually doing and where these eyeballs are coming from. Web stats without meaningful analysis are pointless. Don’t try and impress anyone with dull tales of how many visitors per day. It’s a worthless metric. (ok, maybe a touch harsh, but in isolation it is.)

So we have search referral terms and what pages they’re click through to and the times spent on that page.

Why would one want a blog in relation to an increase in traffic?

I can concur with Skip that a blog can be the major traffic driver to an overall Web presence. It’s the engine room. Remember it does a lot of good work with your more long tail search phrases. Note that he isn’t saying that a blog should be used to drive traffic or for pure SEO purposes.

And even if he isn’t I am!

Has anybody noticed as yet how much of this stuff is free as in not costing anything? And remember tat with something like Google Analytic it’s the de facto search industry standard for Web traffic measurement.

Referrals as risking reputation.

Are you the King of all you survey in Google? Come on, now’s the time to come clean about your desperate vanity searching.

A nice free eyeball mapping tool for your own Website – Crazy Egg

Seriously, heat maps of cursors are really rather sexy.

I’d say finally that it’s worth incorporating some, if not all, of these tools even if you might not use them as effectively as you might as they’ll be collecting your data that you can always refer to at a later date.