Haiti and the Art of the Deal
Posted by BobFaricy in All Postings on February 25, 2010
There have been many examples of the impact of new media in the last couple of years. For some time, the news that leaked from a media-paranoid Iran after elections there via Twitter was a prime example noted by articles and blogs of all kinds. But the current example has to be the money raised through “text donations” for the Red Cross following the disaster in Haiti, reportedly more than $35 million to date. This campaign combined the ease of a text message with the viral strength of social media to spread the word. And both channels were heralded accordingly.
But what really facilitated the ability for this system of donations to work? In fact, it was the business relationships that the mobile carriers have with their customers. With that established relationship in place, there was a mechanism to bill, collect and distribute the contributions. Without it, it’s just a bunch of texts drifting into the digital ether. This system can continue to work, but now the opportunity is also leading to a new start-up to facilitate payments through Twitter, a newer version of TwitPay.
What does this mean for the rest of us? For starters, consumer relationships are more than social connections. They are about financial transactions. Your relationship with your customer can begin, grow and be nurtured by social media. But at the core will be a transaction where value is exchanged for value, and where there will have to be a way to quantify and exchange that value. Social media – and really marketing of all kinds – is what we use to get to the transaction. Successful businesses can start by understanding what relationship they have with their customers now. What value do you provide and how are those transactions facilitated? Then you can apply marketing, media, PR and social strategies to further leverage those relationships, to expand services, increase purchase frequency, get referrals and build more loyal customers.
Branded Entertainment in a New Media World
Posted by BobFaricy in All Postings on January 13, 2010
Recently The Tennessean featured a story about Rink Entertainment, a local company which has carved out a niche in branded entertainment. Getting his start with a young Taylor Swift (I mean, even younger than she is now), Jim Rink now produces vignettes that combine entertainment with brands and celebrities to deliver relevant messages in compelling ways. Of course, as marketers and consumers we’re no stranger to the creeping role of advertising in programming of all kinds.
Now comes social media, built not on entertainment, but on the connections between people. The kind of connection marketers really want to make. So instead of inserting advertising in the middle of entertainment-based programming, companies are hoping to get their messages intermingled with personal communication.
In this environment, the challenge for companies is how to build a sincere relationship with customers so their communication is appropriate and accepted. But for media professionals, and more importantly journalists, the challenge is to be ethical and honest with their audience. Marketers want the benefit of the relationship that media has with their audience, but it can’t come at the expense of that relationship.
Since the core product of the Tennessean Media Group remains The Tennessean, we deal with this directly. We’ve long had a church/state relationship between what we write about as news and what appears as advertising. Every week, more than 900,000 adults in Middle Tennessee rely on us for news and information they can trust. And that’s a relationship we value.
That said, we have a lot of content that helps readers select the products and services they choose to buy. That role can naturally be combined with the help we provide local advertisers. But it’s our job to be sure we make those connections in a way that respects the relationship we have with our readers.
Luckily, there are more opportunities to bring readers and advertisers together in a way that makes sense for both all the time. The evolution of technology has transformed not only marketing communication but the consumer. They are smart enough to know whether or not companies are being sincere, and they have the tools to filter what they want to let in. Meanwhile, companies are getting smarter about building their businesses on the true value they deliver and communicating it in a relevant way. If not, there is no celebrity, programming or third-party relationship that can help.
The Tennessean’s Sunday Circulation Still Growing
Posted by Dave Gould in All Postings on January 4, 2010
The December numbers are in and, in the core 17-counties of Middle Tennessee, our Sunday circulation grew again.
Sunday circulation was up 5,405 copies or 3%!
An Important Source of Leads
Posted by Dave Gould in All Postings on December 29, 2009
I really like this article about referrals. In our industry, we have not spent much time focused on referral business, but that needs to change. Lead generation has become a critical part of our business and referrals are a great source of leads. Just last week, we acquired a new customer based on a strong referral. We have put together a strong digital campaign for this new client as the owner is trying to expand his business. Our current lead generation program treats a referral like a “happy accident”, just as the article mentions. We will be implementing some of the suggestions made by the author to help improve our program.
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/treat-referrals-like-a-sales-force-instead-of-a-happy-accident-ivana-taylor
Generating a Opt-In Email List
Posted by Chris Fehrmann in All Postings, Tennessean Media Group, email marketing on December 22, 2009
According to a 2008 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study, commercial email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent. That combined with the stats that email marketing produces the highest response rate of any direct marketing methods makes it more and more important for you to start growing your opt-in database. Whether you are just jumping into the world of email marketing, or you are already reaping the benefits, more subscribers means more response.
This 2008 ExactTarget Customer Survey shows list growth tactics rated by customer popularity. Which tactic do you use? Is there a new tactic on the list that would make sense for your business?
It is no surprise that successful email marketers utilize more then one list growth tactic, but how many is right for you? According to this 2008 ExactTarget Customer Survey, 35% of respondents make use of 4-5 tactics to help grow their lists.
Look forward to more on Email Marketing and Social Networking in our next THRIVE Seminar Series presented by The Tennessean Media Group.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em!
Posted by Dave Gould in All Postings on December 8, 2009
Good article from Poynter Online about how companies are spending money to create unique content for their websites to try and attract readers. The author refers to this as “below the line” spending.
Here’s an example he cited:
“PepsiCo, which spends many millions of dollars on marketing every year, is just one example. During Internet Week in New York, I helped lead a project for which we hired nine “social communicators” (some of whom were traditional journalists) and built out a suite of blogs and social media tools, including a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel and a proprietary app, to cover the week’s events and, PepsiCo hoped, reach an audience of influential people in digital media and marketing. PepsiCo has done similar projects for the SXSW festival and said it is planning more in the future.”
The representative from Pepsi went on to say, “we are going to shift the mix of dollars from what might be a hundred percent paid advertising to something less traditional.”
The author gives a couple of other examples, and there is no doubt that he has spotted a growing trend. While he sees this trend as a threat to traditional media, I see it as an opportunity.
Later in the article he says, “I believe the trend will extend to local merchants, too. What happens, for example, when a local business that might have spent a few thousand dollars a month to attract customers via local circulars or news blogs instead decides to spend some or all of that money on its own digital media, attract its own audience, and glean all that data for itself?”
The problem with this is most small business owners we talk to have neither the expertise nor the time to pull this off. If they decide to go down this road they are going to need help from credible marketing services companies that can develop and optimize websites, create copy, provide social networking services, etc. That’s where we come in. We are doing these things for scores of customers as we speak and our client list continues to grow. And from a business model perspective, it gives our company access to “below the line” marketing dollars that we have never been able to vie for in the past.
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=174032
Will New Marketing Models Change Black Friday?
Posted by BobFaricy in Search Engine Marketing, Tennessean Media Group on December 2, 2009
I keep reading that the average American is sleep deprived. Then why do so many get up at 3 a.m. to buy a TV on sale the day after Thanksgiving? Black Friday sure does inspire consumer behavior, but what do we make of it in the new age of marketing?
First and foremost, Black Friday continues to be a key barometer of the consumer psyche. This year, reports are that more shoppers came out, but focused mostly on the “door buster” deals, they each spent less, leading sales to be flat or slightly up to 2008. As for advertisers, there’s hope that marketers will come out of their spending slump to invest in the holiday season. For example, at The Tennessean we know we had more inserts than any time in memory.
Online shopping may be even more robust. According to comScore, Inc., consumers spent $595 million in online sales this year on Black Friday, making it 2009’s second-heaviest online spending day to date. On Cyber Monday, sales reached $887 million, 5% more than a year ago. Much of this is likely still driven by traditional advertising, including print and broadcast. For example, according to a study by MORI Research and the NAA, 39% are motivated by a print ad to go online in some way.
But this is really the first Black Friday of social media. In great numbers, retailers used Twitter before and during the day to post updates, and stores used Facebook to pre-promote their specials to their fans, like Sears, who held a contest for a $500 gift card and a chance to pre-shop their Black Friday deals.
Here at The Tennessean, Ms. Cheap and the Shopping Diva, Cathi Aycock, kept their followers informed and up-to-date as they shopped on Black Friday. And of course there were the millions of tweets and posts from individuals sharing their great deals and mall experiences.
So how will this change Black Friday? Historically, retailers have relied on the gift-giving tradition to drive sales, using deep discounts and loss leading “door buster” promotions to spur purchasing. All of which is marketing driven, born of the need to sell, rather than a true connection to the consumer.
The marketing model closely tied to the growth of social media is more about the connection to the customer. It’s about using your connections to learn more about the customers’ true needs and wants, to get feedback on current and potential products and services, and to create relationships with your brand so you can deliver information in a welcome manner.
Success will come more from long-term relationships than one-day sales, particularly if the great recession has created consumers that value saving as much as spending, as some have predicted. Indeed, the things we learn in the new marketing landscape will likely change the shape of Black Friday in years to come. Who knows, you might get to sleep in.
Google Caffeine
Posted by Chris Fehrmann in All Postings, Search Engine Marketing on November 30, 2009
It is hard for anyone who follows the search industry to escape the news about Google “Caffeine.” Here is what small businesses and organizations need to know:
- Google is updating their search algorithm. The search algorithm is the mathematical equation that Google uses to determine which websites to show for the keywords that the searcher typed in. This update project has been code named “caffeine.”
- Google Caffeine focuses on making the Internet faster. Google’s goal is to make their search engine faster. They are accomplishing this by providing tools and technology to website developers that enable them to improve their websites speed. What this also tells us is that Google Caffeine is going to start giving weight to websites that load faster. So, make your website faster and improve in the search results!
- Like any update Google does, Caffeine is going to improve the accuracy of your search results. They are doing this in many ways, but it tells us that keyword strings are even more important then they were before.
- Google’s index size is going to increase. Their index size is the amount of webpages that Google has in its database to reference when you perform a search. For example, if you do a search for the word “dog” you will see in the upper right this:
Before Caffeine
You will notice, the same search performed with Google Caffeine provides nearly 7 times as many indexed results.
After Caffeine
- Search is moving into real-time. Real-time searching means that instead of a search engine referencing their own database of your websites that it crawled and stored data on sometime in the last 30 days, the search engine is going to be searching webpages directly in real-time. For example, if you do a search today for a subject, you might find Twitter or Facebook postings, but those postings will be older in time. By searching in real-time, a search engine would be able to provide up-to-the-minute content in its search results. Twitter and Facebook are known for launching their own real-time search engines in the near future, and Google will have to compete. Although Caffeine is not including a real-time search feature, there is reason to believe that the algorithm update will be considering webpages that include more up-to-date and fresh content. This means that if you are not updating information on your website on a regular basis, you better start.
- Google Caffeine will not be launching until after the holidays. It will launch in one of Google’s data centers and will slowly begin to roll out across their network after it has been sufficiently tested.
- Lastly, DON’T PANIC! Business owners and website publishers should not panic. You shouldn’t see a dramatic difference in the search results in the immediate future, but you should be aware of the changes that are forthcoming and make sure that you focus on your website in 2010! Get your site up to speed (literally), update your website and put in a plan to keep fresh and up-to-date content on it (a blog would be a good solution), and lastly, if you are not on Facebook and/or Twitter - get on it!
The next IBM?
Posted by Dave Gould in All Postings on November 12, 2009
Interesting article about how IBM completely transformed its business. They went from a hardware company to an IT services company. The author believes that newspapers are at that same crossroads but he doesn’t offer much insight into how newspapers are going to make this transition.
Fact is, we are already doing it.
Our digital agency, 1100 Broadway, opened for business a year ago and the lessons we have learned running a digital agency have taught us so much. The original idea was to provide digital and direct solutions for our customers. We have certainly done that. We have served 126 customers so far through 1100 Broadway and the list grows every week. 1100 Broadway revenue will be twice in the fourth quarter what it was in the first quarter. Most importantly, our customers are getting results. With a vastly expanded product line we quickly have realized that we have the ability to sell broad-based marketing solutions to customers. We have gone beyond our own products and services and we are now buying media for our clients, helping them with social networking and helping them track their results. Just this morning, we met with a client in an attempt to sell them our “agency of record” services for their ten-state operation. The customer was quite impressed with all of the services we can offer. We are finding ourselves having these types of discussions more and more with our clients. While we have a long way to go to diversify our company we are more confident than ever that we are on the right track.
Wouldn’t it shock some people if we were the next IBM?
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/dchase/200911/1794/
Tennessean Sunday Circulation Update: More Good News
Posted by Dave Gould in All Postings on November 4, 2009
Throughout the month of September I reported that Sunday home delivery numbers in the 17 counties of middle Tennessee were exceeding last year. Last week, not only was home delivery up but so was single copy. In fact, total circulation in middle Tennessee was up 5,386 copies versus last year!
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