PARTICIPATION IS THE NEW LOYALTY

Optimizing Content to Improve Engagement and Conversions

If you allow users to participate in the making of a product or service, you demonstrate unequivocally that they are an important part of the process rather than just a recipient of whatever you think is best.  We’re moving from the limits of the age of mass production to a new age of mass individualization.  Not only will people get used to it, they will demand a level of uniqueness in every product and service they consume. 

Most media publishers however are only interested in increasing returns on marketing investments through improved conversion and engagement - - and are still missing out on opportunities to increase conversion. For example:

• 80% do not promote content based on performance metrics,

• 46% are spending less than five hours per week optimizing onsite conversion,

• 80% of respondents do not serve personalized content to visitors,

• 70% of the promotional content decisions are made by one person, unsupported by data.

Opportunity

There are many opportunities to immediately begin improving conversion. Automated tools exist that encompass testing and targeting, as well as onsite search and content recommendations to help improve engagement on existing site traffic.  A tremendous amount of time and money go into building an audience for your online media properties. Therefore, it’s imperative that you maximize the value of that audience by ensuring the experience these visitors have with your content is both relevant and rewarding.

Whether the main goal may be to boost subscriptions for premium content, increase page views to promote growth in advertising inventory, or extend the amount of time visitors spend on your site - - often a company’s goals will include a combination of any or even all of these. Regardless of the desired outcome, online publishers today are looking to leverage their content and its presentation in ways that propel site visitors toward a desired action.

Traditionally, publishers have engaged with their audiences by operating under the adage “content is king”—the publisher with the scoops and exclusive stories had the competitive edge. But in today’s modern publishing world, this old adage, although still relevant, carries far less weight. While having exceptional content remains a prerequisite, the Internet has transformed content into a ubiquitous resource that is difficult to own or differentiate.   Online content is highly perishable, and—by and large—free. Audiences are more fickle than ever, and almost nothing prevents them from quickly jumping to another site to find the information and the experience they are seeking. Today, media sites have to be more than just relevant— they have to resonate with viewers.

While the challenges in today’s media landscape are vast, so are the opportunities. Audiences can consume content virtually anywhere, on multiple devices, and this translates into the chance for publishers to reach media consumers across many touch points. Public places such as coffee shops and airports are equipped with Wi-Fi access to make content and news constant companions. Social media sites have made media consumer’s active participants in the publishing process. New mobile devices make it possible to consume content on the go, and in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. All of these trends have transformed and expanded the media ecosystem dramatically and have significantly increased media companies’ opportunity to inform, educate, and entertain consumers.

Along with these diverse new opportunities for distributing content, most media outlets are also sitting on enormous opportunities to improve the performance and revenue generated by their existing sites. In fact, many media outlets today focus immense budgets and energy on driving traffic to their websites—while investing far less on making proactive changes to their site that facilitate visitors’ ability to accomplish what they came to the site to do in the first place.

According to 2009 Forrester Research, targeting online content drives productive visitor activity—yet marketers currently deliver targeted content to only 24% of website visitors on average. Forrester further states 58% of marketers reported an incremental lift in conversions over the control group by 5% or more as a result of using relevance tactics. Content and messaging delivered with contextual meaning for website visitors—derived from current session activity or historic profiles—consistently outperforms generic one-size-fits-all content.

Today, to distinguish oneself from the competition and improve your sites performance, optimization is key. Publishers must tailor their homepages and article pages based on visitor behavior and preferences, rather than executive opinion or reaction to competitors.  All too often, designers, marketers, and executives come together as a committee and negotiate website concepts and copy based on assumptions. Or, site redesigns are completed in a rush when a major competitor launches a new design or experience that makes your site look outdated. Some companies turn to focus groups and research that provide valuable data points but can only tell you so much about who your visitors are and what they want from your website collectively.

Drive to relevance

The online media experience, first of all, must be highly relevant to each individual visitor. Repeat or new visitors must easily find tailored content on your home and article pages that is pertinent to what they are searching for, and sometimes, where they live, what season it is, and other variables. Pay special attention to your article pages—most media companies concentrate on their landing and home pages, but the article pages are the place where visitors are likely to spend most of their time and form opinions as to the relevance of your site to them personally.

The second major theme is efficiency. From the very first click, visitors need to have a relevant, fulfilling content experience on your site. Visitors need to be guided with speed and ease to article pages that meet their intent and fit their interests. They have little time, so they need to be consistently rewarded for coming to your site by finding relevant content through easy navigation.  In the media space, it is vital for visitors to feel connected to your site—almost as if they have some ownership in the experience. Visitors need to be comfortable with your navigation and layout and they need to trust that you will provide exceptional recommendations for additional relevant content. Empower visitors to become active contributors in the experience if they wish. Give them opportunities to interact with the content itself.

In order to build a sustainable loyalty with your site visitors, they need to feel immersed—and a key part of that involves transforming them from passive observers into active participants. Don’t be afraid to solicit comments, ask them to fill out forms, or sign up for newsletters. With the options for site visitors to comment on articles or quickly and easily share stories with their social networks, visitors are more interested than ever in taking an “active editor” role in their online media experiences.


If you are asking site visitors to share personal information about themselves in exchange for greater-value content or services, tell them up-front and clearly what they will receive in return if they sign up for a subscription, newsletter, or other premium content.  Make any forms short and intuitive and give customers reinforcement at appropriate points during the process that highlight how and why they should trust you with their personal information. Prove to them that you will provide them with increased value and a greatly enriched experience.

New formats and PLATFORMS

Keep in mind that you have many opportunities to optimize and differentiate your media site—even for visitors who are not sitting in front of a computer. Today, you have the opportunity to extend the visitor experience to a variety of mobile and wireless devices to provide a more engaging, immersive experience to media consumers. New digital media technologies not only deliver increased engagement by immersing readers in the ads and content and allowing them to interact with them, but also offer better ways to measure and optimize content and ad effectiveness than traditional print magazines.

Companies can use in-depth editorial analytics, customer demographics, and advertising analytics to improve the effectiveness of content and ads.  The same tools that you use to optimize the content on your website can be used off-site as well. Whether you have an app designed for Android, a monthly newsletter, or an upcoming display ad campaign, each represents customer touch points that you can and should optimize.

The media landscape is changing faster than ever, especially in a world where content must share its throne with experience optimization. Now, rather than relying solely on scoops and exclusives, publishers have an unprecedented opportunity and requirement to tailor content and speak to media consumers in personalized, meaningful ways. Online media companies now have the chance to communicate to audiences across a wide array of devices and allow people to explore and interact with content like they never could before.

The key to success in today’s fast-changing media world is to let consumers vote with their clicks and then respond to those clicks by improving your online experiences based upon what you have learned. In a changing landscape, you can mitigate risks and successfully challenge the status quo by presenting multiple media experiences and navigational schemes to your visitors and then continually testing and optimizing—with huge potential upside.  Companies that continually optimize are deriving significant competitive advantages and achieving dramatic returns.

The proliferation of online social media represents a fundamental shift in the way people obtain information. Instead of companies or institutions, people can now get the information they need from each other. Naturally, brands want to remain relevant to their customers, and this means being more transparent and accessible. What your brand should really have is an overarching strategy that may or may not include social media tactics - - depending on whether they make sense for your customers or not. Start from the customer and work out. Understand your audiences, including demographics, attitudes and beliefs, cultural realities affecting their lives, and technology adoption. 



And if you need help, we’re happy to assist.

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Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Ad Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. Visit Goodbuzz or join the conversation on Facebook.  Note: Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

PACIFICO BEER’S “WEBTREK” ONLINE SCAVENGER HUNT

Pacifico Beer has launched an interesting online scavenger hunt called the Pacifico Webtrek.   The website experience is touted as “sort of a job application to see if you can handle all the stuff the Pacifico lifestyle throws at you”.   If you can prove you can, they might just hire you for their next adventure.

The travels starts with print, digital and OOH that contain searchable tags and QR codes pointing people to Pacifico's Facebook page.  There, they learn about the Webtrek and can view the short film (below), Grey Whale Sessions, which will offer the first clues of a journey retracing the path of the surfers and musicians in the film. Players will travel across a series of websites, each of which will offer a clue. 

The appearance of the Pacifico bottle cap lets you know you're on the right track. Follow the trek to its conclusion for a chance to take part in Pacifico's next trip to Mexico.

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Goodbuzz Inc. is a Toronto-based Digital Agency that creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. This is accomplished by focusing on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting. From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes. Visit Goodbuzz or join us on Facebook. Any / all product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged.

ATTENTION BRANDS: TWITTER USERS AREN'T TALKING TO YOU OR ABOUT YOU. IN FACT, THEY BARELY KNOW YOU EXIST.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Attention brands: Twitter users aren't talking to you or about you. In fact, they barely know you exist. That's one of the conclusions of a six-month analysis of the service's ubiquitous 140-character messages conducted by digital agency 360i and released today.

Despite marketers' embrace of the medium, brands are finding themselves on the outside of the conversation. Of the 90% of Twitter messages sent by real people -- the other 10% come from businesses -- only 12% ever mention a brand, and most of those mentions are of Twitter itself.

Further, only 1% of consumer tweets that mention a brand are part of an active conversation with that brand, meaning marketers are, for the most part, conducting one-way conversations -- the opposite of the way consumers often use Twitter.

The most mentioned brands on Twitter tend to be there because they are part of a constant daily conversation, not because of anything the brand is or isn't doing on Twitter. The most mentioned brands on Twitter are, in descending order, Twitter, Apple, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Blackberry, Amazon, Facebook, Snuggie, eBay and Starbucks.

Embedded in the culture

Snuggie is the surprise brand on the list, but that appears to reflect the brand's place in the culture, not its own Twitter activity. Official Snuggie profile @OriginalSnuggie has just 591 followers and @WeezerSnuggie, an account set up to promote the once-popular Weezer video, has just 693 followers and has been dormant since November.

After spending six months going over a statistically significant sample of 1,800 tweets, 360i Senior-VP Sarah Hofstetter was struck at just how mundane and personal they were. "They're mostly doing what people mocked Twitter about in the first place, as in, what I had for lunch."

The vast majority of real people's tweets, 94%, are personal in nature. Most tweets, 85%, are original and not re-tweets of other messages. They're also very often conversational: 43% of tweets begin with an "@" sign, meaning they're directed at another user, not the sender's followers at large.

While marketers such as Dell, Comcast, Ford and Starbucks have been, at times, clever participants on Twitter, the majority of marketers use it as a mini press-release service. Only 12% of messages from marketers are directed at individual Twitter users, meaning marketers still see it as a broadcast medium rather than a conversational one.

Showing up isn't enough
"There is still a misperception that if brands show up, people will listen to them, kind of like Facebook a few years ago," Ms. Hofstetter said. "Twitter can be used as a promotional RSS feed, but that's not going to establish a relationship with anybody."

The study was conducted before Twitter took any advertising, from October 2009 through March 2010. Twitter has since rolled out a series of ad units including promoted tweets and trends. Ms. Hofstetter said the ads are great to help boost things already popular on Twitter. "They are only going to work if they are relevant in the first place," she said.

Twitter posts are intrinsically navel-gazing, conversational and personal, but they aren't predominantly self-promotional. Depending on your circle of connections, it can certainly feel, as Wired's Evan Ratliff noted, that "self-aggrandizement" is "standard fare" on Twitter. But the 360i study found only 2% of tweets were professional updates or career-related.

What do Twitter users talk about? Beyond the 43% of individuals' tweets that are conversational, 24% are status updates, 12% are links to news or comment on current events, and 3% are seeking or giving advice.  The good news for brands is that when a consumer does mention them on Twitter, they're usually not complaining about it. Only 7% of tweets mentioning brands indicated negative sentiment, 11% positive and an overwhelmingly 82% neutral.

Is your company or brand using Twitter and finding different results?  Let us know.

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Goodbuzz creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. We focus on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting.  From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes.  Visit Goodbuzz Inc.

The Challenge of Building a Dynamic “Butcher” Brand Online - Social Media

Victor Churchill, a European-inspired designer shop of carnivorous inspiration (Butcher) in Sydney developed a website and released an iPhone app, appropriately named “Ask the Butcher”.  The “Ask the Butcher App” (created by Australia’s  Blind Mice Studios) extends users a connoisseurs guide to buying and cooking meat. 

“Ask the Butcher” answers all your questions about the perfect cut of meat, how to cook it, and what recipes to use it in.  The app even has a built in timer which reminds when to turn the meat - all in an attempt to keep premium meat, well, premium. 

What we find most refreshing about this brand is simply the fact that it’s only a butcher shop – but fights well above its weight class.   Whether Victor Churchill does in fact reap direct and measurable return on investment (ROI) from the iPhone app becomes secondary to the buzz created around their messaging and positioning.  The forward positioning becomes the differentiator and Victor Churchill is seen as a market leader.   Moreover, the PR and media buzz created more than offsets the cost of development.

Victor Churchill radically differentiated themselves as a brand and stand out in the market as a result.  In their quest for innovation they continually reinforce and amplify the core values behind their brand. It’s a reminder to all of us, no matter what we do, we need to be constantly looking for new ways to express and refresh brands.

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Goodbuzz creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. We focus on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting.  From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes.  Visit Goodbuzz Inc.

The world’s first purported socially integrated e-commerce website.

Tinypay.me is the easiest way to sell virtually anything and is the world’s first socially integrated e-commerce website.  Genius Idea: If you are thinking of putting an old watch up for auction on eBay or listing your latest T-shirt design on Etsy, you may want to check out Tinypay.me first.

Tinypay.me is an e-commerce service that enables users to create quick listings for their products or services. Simply fill out the name, price and a quick description of the good or service you’d like to sell, type in a few personal details and upload a picture. You can also opt to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity, and identify your product or service’s location on a map.  You can then share your listing directly with your social networks or set up your own online store on your blog or website. The whole process can take less than a minute.

The service only asks for your name and your PayPal e-mail address; you don’t even need to set up an account or share any of your bank information. You can also sync your listing with Facebook, Twitter and Google Product Search to share your listings instantaneously.

While the service is great for selling your products and services quickly and easily, it lacks many of the benefits of e-commerce sites like eBay, Etsy and Amazon Marketplace. They are destination sites for buyers and drive most of the traffic to the listings of individual sellers via marketing and excellent search and recommendation engines. And although Tinypay.me allows visitors to leave comments on a product, it has yet to implement seller and product ratings.  In other words, if you want to succeed with Tinypay.me, you’re going to have to depend entirely on your website and social networks to advertise and sell your goods.

Find out more about the service in the video below.

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Goodbuzz creates social media campaigns that entice consumers to play, create, and share brand experiences. We focus on developing "branded utility" - moving away from interruptive 'push' models towards more meaningful ways of connecting.  From simple metrics to actionable insights that enable data-driven marketing decisions - Goodbuzz links social media efforts to business outcomes.  Visit Goodbuzz Inc.

Tiffany & Co's iPhone app for engagement rings

Beware the lure of the sparkle. Tiffany & Co.’s iPhone app for engagement rings has been carefully engineered to usher unwitting commitment-phobic grooms through the daunting process of selecting an engagement ring.  The app allows you to customize the ring of your (or your fiancé’s) dreams and view it at actual size. For husbands to be clueless as to their better half's ring size place one of her existing rings on the phone and it will automatically size it for you. No kidding.

 Once you’ve selected some ring options, they can be shared via e-mail, text message, Facebook and Twitter — a great option for getting feedback from friends and family members if done discreetly. Good luck getting out of it this time. ;)

Purchasing an engagement ring can apparently be an intimidating process, and while Tiffany & Co.’s iPhone app is clearly designed to drive customers to stores, it makes the whole experience significantly less daunting by providing a wealth of pertinent information, options, and prices. You can even book a one-on-one diamond consultation.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you.  Check out the video overview below.

LATEST SOCIAL MEDIA OFFERINGS TARGET BOTH ADVERTISERS AND CONSUMERS

It’s been said that advertisers today are competing for cultural impact, not just product sales.  To this end, today’s engagement goes well beyond convincing a person to buy something.  Advertisers are interested in finding ways to seamlessly weave a brand experience into the mix that consumers perceive as adding value. It's achieved when the consumer feels they have a relationship with the brand and steps forward to act on behalf of the brand or with the brand.  The latest wave of social offering’s attempt to provide new ways for brands to advertise online or consolidate existing social.  Some of the new kids on the block include:

WeReward - Couponing

You already use services such as Foursquare or Gowalla to share physical locations and Flickr to share photos. WeReward adds an incentive for users who participate in advertising-related activities.   WeReward converts social activities that consumers are already enjoying into ways for advertisers to get attention. For example, a company such as Domino's, which is a client, might offer rewards to users who post photos getting pizzas delivered. WeReward lets users check out lists of tasks from advertisers and claim points, discounts or small sums of money for completing them.

VideoGenie - Video User-Generated Content

VideoGenie harnesses users' passion for creating videos and posting them online by allowing brands to request videos on certain subjects.  The company's platform makes it easy for everyday people to produce usable content with prompts and timelines. The goal is to extend all the tools necessary to allow users to make a video without any need for editing. VideoGenie also offers rewards and/or discounts to users who complete videos or whose videos are selected.

GeoToko - Social Dashboard

GeoToko helps brands harness the dizzying array of social services through a single interface and works with the review site Yelp, the location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla, and the microblogging site Twitter. The platform allows marketers to offer prizes, discounts, and contests through all of these sites, increasing overall efficiency for advertisers.

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http://www.goodbuzz.ca

ADVERTISING 2009: THE DEATH OF THE BIG IDEA

Beware The Bottom-Feeders: When Procurement Turns Thinkers Into Executors 

Article by Alan Schulman, Friday, January 8, 2010

It doesn't take many ‘creatives’ (in “Ad” speak) to argue the short sightedness of allowing clients to drive down, or discount, the value of developing bigger (and longer-term) brand-building ideas.  After all, what are ideas, if not the cultural currency that differentiates one brand from another?   Ultimately, we agency folk are not only "agents" - but we are all fundamentally in the IDEA business.

What's astounding is the value (or lack thereof) that clients seemingly place on the power and cultural currency of BIG Ideas.  Witness 2009.  Having already rolled over the media services operations and account service functions being provided by their agency partners -- asking for everything from money back, to blended hourly rates that can barely afford a $50K FTE -- the question is, do they really think they've won?  What did they win?  Another half of an FTE?   Or a mid-level media supervisor holding down the responsibilities of an account director?  It makes this creative wonder if they know the difference between thinkers and executors?

But if it's simply executors Clients want, it's executors they shall have (witness any Top Five Global Ad Agency).  A few smart CMO’s have finally realized that the strategic and creative business is no place for Six Sigma.  Rather, it's where ideas are born, nurtured, shepherded and communicated until the customer starts talking -- and buying. Sadly however, as long as short-term, top-line revenue growth continues to drive stock prices up, public agencies will be forced to negotiate the value of their people and their ideas down to ensure the tonnage of dollars continues to flow.

As an industry, who among us will be brave enough to stand up and clarify that we are ultimately in the IDEA business -- not just the billings tonnage and stock price business?  In this climate of procurement driving poetry in motion, it looks bleak for ultimate value of great ideas. 

Perhaps we put ourselves here.  Buy/sell technology platforms have crossed the chasm from Silicon Valley, purportedly making media planning and buying more efficient, agencies and digital media networks have become seduced by scale rather than by skill.  The embracing of these platforms of scale under the guise of efficiency ultimately leads to only one place -- the commoditization of media inventory and the devaluation of strategic thinking and ideas.  Happy 2010. 

Article by Alan Schulman, Friday, January 8, 2010

Alan Schulman is Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of U. DIG > The Digital Innovations Group. He is a member of the Creative Versioning Professionals and his creative agency develops new ad units for new and emerging media platforms. 

Contact him here.

THE GOODBUZZ FACEBOOK BUNDLE

Toronto-based Social media agency Goodbuzz is launching a new bundle package for its strategy and campaign services, which focuses on building a branded online presence specifically on Facebook.  

The Goodbuzz Facebook bundle includes a Facebook application, Facebook Connect integration with their client’s site, and a branded Facebook Fan Page for engagement purposes with Facebook users.

  We'll also link to Twitter, You Tube, and any number of others dependent on client objectives.  The bundled package is customized to each individual client, with provisions for design, campaign management and tracking. Other features include quality assurance testing, consulting, campaign launch support and other key analytics for measuring purposes.


What can we do for your brand? Contact Goodbuzz today.  

STELLA ARTOIS LAUNCHES MOBILE AUGMENTED-REALITY BAR GUIDE

The worlds top Belgian beer; Stella Artois has launched an augmented-reality bar guide application called “Le Bar Guide”.   “Le Bar Guide” is a free 3D Augmented-Reality iPhone application that lets consumers search using geo-tracking for bars nearby via ZIP, Postal code, country or user rating. The simple premise of the new application is to enable Stella Artois to promote all bars that serve Stella Artois.

Le Bar Guide fuses the real-world view of the consumer’s immediate surroundings in augmented reality, providing a guide to bar locations.  When the iPhone is held vertically, Le Bar Guide shows profiles of bars in the consumer’s immediate vicinity. The profiles are overlaid on the street view from their location.  Consumers can hold the phone with the camera pointing at the ground and the application will show arrows pointing the consumer in the direction of nearby bars.

This social application also importantly features user-generated content.  Consumers can rate bars according to the menu, atmosphere, other clients and the service.  The application also has a section for comments about locations for other Le Bar Guide users.

The application currently has more than 50,000 bars listed worldwide. Bar data comes from a Stella Artois Web service that provides geo-location information on all the bars that serve Stella in the U.S. and worldwide.

The Le Bar Guide’S handy “Le Taxi” feature even sources numbers for Taxi services from a local country directory.

Using the iPhone is also perfect for Stella’s target of affluent males between the ages of 25-35.    Adding Augmented Reality, the overlay of images on the real world via a device’s camera, adds a heighten experience and a more intuitive user interface.  Moreover, “Stella Artois chose this technology because they believe over the next three-to-four years augmented reality will be the primary delivery mechanism for location-based services. This is where the users are.”  

Read original article.