Category Archives: Advertising

Uncovering The Right Models For Campaign Attribution

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Since the advent of online commerce, marketers are seeking solution to one unresolved question. How do you evaluate performance of online campaigns? Particularly, at a time when global organisations are increasingly relying on online advertising to improve visibility. It is true that measuring offline campaigns can be equally tricky, but online measurement is titillating. Simply because, there are enough mechanisms to employ a tangible measurement tool and marketers dwell with an increased expectation of being able to track and measure online campaigns.

Also, without effective measurement, it is a little challenging to convince senior management, those particularly averse to the new world of digital media. Lack of a good attribution model skews marketing contributions either by over-inflating or by under reporting the performance of a particular campaign.

Typically, an average conversion will have multiple touch points. For illustrative purposes, I have tried to capture five common online channels, which assists the conversion path. In the below example, I have taken paid search as the user’s first touch point, before he/she visits other channels such as display/display retargeting, affiliates, organic search, social media and finally converts by visiting the website directly. Now we are clearly aware that a user interacted with 5 different channels before converting, but what we don’t know is how much of an influence all these channels have on the user’s buying behaviour.

Old school attribution logic says that since the user visits the website to convert, this particular event should be fully attributed with the conversion, which clearly is the last click model. But does that mean that there is little need or necessity to run campaigns on different channels? This is where it begins to get clouded.

Marketers have experimented with different attribution models to identify the significance of a particular campaign. For example, from the above instance where a user travels through five different touch points starting from paid search before converting, we could attribute campaigns the in the following ways.

  • First click: Where Paid Search as the first touch point claims full credit for the conversion
  • Last Click: Since the user comes directly to the website, this model completely ignores the initial touch points and attributes the conversion to the direct visit.
  • Distributed: This is one of the simplest of attribution models where each channel is equally attributed.
  • Linear: This particular model attributes the value to a conversion based on recency of the user interaction in an ascending order, with the last touch point receiving the highest attribution.
  • Weighted: Weighted attribution model focuses on weighing the campaigns based on their significance.We have seen the different attribution models that can be applied to campaigns. But does that explain which model we should be using? Yes, I personally feel that weighted attribution is the way to go. However, one must realise that there are some subjective considerations while using this model.

In the above example, I have indicatively weighed Paid Search and Direct Visit with the highest attribution, while sharing a smaller percentage between the other touch points. This is a completely subjective option. Instead of weighing Paid Search higher, you may feel that for your particular campaigns, a display ad which has an online promotion initiates the traffic push. In such an instance, you may want to weigh a higher attribution to the display ad. Or you may feel that the one of your high converting keywords gains significant keyword positions on search engines, resulting in higher traffic, for which you may consider weighing Organic search with a higher attribution. You may even want to award a higher attribution to the recency of the interaction.

Weighted attribution certainly allows you to attribute the conversions effectively, but is it ‘the’ model for attribution? Well, it is debatable. However, one must understand that to fully comprehend the impact of different channels, it is imminent that we have to delve deeper. What the weighted attribution model offers is an improvement over other attribution models.

An Essential Guide to Successful Blogger Outreach

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Blogger OutreachWith social media rapidly consuming the internet space, it is increasingly becoming a part of our media landscape. In the recent days, more and more online news sites have embraced the pay wall model, resulting in social media, particularly blogs becoming an important source of news, opinions and products. Blogs represent an affordable opportunity to promote products & brands.

SO, WHAT IS BLOGGER OUTREACH?
In simple words, it is a process where businesses reach out to bloggers who are influential within a particular area of interest to the brand, product or service and have an interested audience (or target customers) where they can facilitate a conversation.

Businesses encourage this conversation, by offering something valuable which could be of interest to the blogger as well as his/her audience, which will then ensure acquisition of the bloggers audience, who could potentially be repeat customers to the business.

HOW DOES BLOGGER OUTREACH WORK?
Bloggers have an audience and have the ability to open a window of opportunity for the business to reach out to their reader-base, some of who could already be customers and many who are completely new. These readers help the brand websites by not just being a source of traffic, but also by being advocates of these brands to their own communities as well as search engines, which effectively would help in increasing conversions online as well as offline.

Most bloggers tend to write about subjects they are passionate about and on most times, the write-up is owned by the bloggers. The blog and the subject matter are therefore, extremely personal endeavours to bloggers. Choosing an influential blog /blogger in areas not just specific to the blogger, but also for us to promote our brand sentiments is the first step towards formalising a blogger outreach strategy.

Once we choose the blog/blogger and our niches, there are many ways to work with them (see box).

Bloggers Interest

WHY BLOGS?
The great thing about blogs is that they work in conjunction with the existing marketing efforts. For example, an online press release could generate sufficient buzz to result in a blog review. This blog review can then be promoted across a multitude of social media sites such as Facebook & Twitter, be bookmarked through social bookmarking tools such as delicious & digg and even communicated through our email marketing efforts. This results in creating that social influence which is fast evolving as one of the key metrics in the buying decision making.

Benefits of Blogger OutreachAbove all, blogger outreach of course, substantiates SEO efforts and helps in ranking higher on search engines, thereby ensuring higher visibility and traffic. The SEO benefits mainly come from the social interaction within the blogging community, where information and opinion is shared with individuals across many domains. Considering all these factors, Blogger Outreach remains one of the favoured strategies for online marketing. However, it has it’s own risks associated with it, which we will leave for another day.

Credits: 4 Imprint Blue Papers – Blogger Outreach.

The Science of Marketing Apple

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Apple‘s approach to product innovation, marketing & branding is legendary. Despite having a minimalistic presence in the advertising Arena, the company evokes sufficient interest from people who matter the most, customers. Apple’s customers are usually early adopters and if you give a high quality, well designed product to early adopters, then you can certainly expect others to follow them, which has always played a central role in Apple’s success. It has done a wonderful job of creating an Apple culture, where people are waiting to take cues from the company and advertise repeatedly through the simplest forms of advertising – social marketing, in other words word-of-mouth.

For me I believe, social marketing is the most successful way to reach out to your audience. Even before a product’s purported launch, there are whispers in the market, prompting people to speculate about it, write and even review without getting their hands on to the product. There has always been speculations on every generation of iPods Apple has launched, there had been plenty of talk about an Apple phone, years before the iPhone was launched, and of course people have anticipated newer versions of each of Apple’s products, be it a G4, Macbook, iMac, Mini or even indigeous add ons such as the Time Machine and the Apple TV. On top of this, it also offers an incredible operating system and some clever applications such as the iTunes. The latest buzz among apple disciples is the launch of a new product code named “brick”. What exactly brick is, nobody knows for certain. But it has garnered significant marketing attention world wide, with bloggers making various conjectures about the product, which includes a newer version of Macbook, an all new Apple TV and even an updated Mac Mini. Some blogs even claim that Brick is a Dual Screen foldable Net Book.

A leading Apple community on the web quoting an unnamed resource has reported that “Brick” is not a product, but a radical new manufacturing process, which apparently will carve out the newer versions of Macbooks and Macbook Pros from a single aluminum block. However, Apple has put an end to all speculation by launching improved thinner version of Macbooks with faster graphics processors and an iPhone like all glass trackpad and an extended battery life. Of course the lower part of the new Apple chassis is made from single aluminum blocks. Whatever the product, it has created enough buzz already. People are certain to queue up in stores either to get their hands on to Apple’s new offering or to catch a glimpse of it.

So what is the secret of Apple’s success? The company has always relied on extending the customers digital lifestyle by offering products which reinvents the way people look at those products. Above all, the company’s business strategies are based on creating products as a support system to its core rather than exploding the market with a wide spectrum reinforcing the company’s brand perceptions. For a technology intensive industry in which Apple participates, keeping a fresh image is absolutely imperative as products evolve constantly. The Apple brand is leveraged in such a way that it can expand from computers to music players and phones because they are known for “thinking different” and therefore setting an expectation of originality. Consumers don’t just buy an Apple product; they buy the idea of what Apple stands for. It is a known fact over the years that much of the success of products or services derives from the effect consumers have on one another’s decisions. Apart from anticipating what features individual consumers might find desirable, Apple has adopted strategies that take social influence into account. Macbooks, IPods & iPhones have managed to get more exposure among average consumers, which could be attributed to social influence and these average consumers are more likely to consider other Apple products, which further enhances the brand image and values associated with the product. Unlike other companies, Apple has always created products which are add ons to its core product. An iPod or an iPhone needs iTunes, Apple TV needs needs an iPod, and of course for the related applications to work, you need an operating system and Apple again stands out with its offering. To run the operating system, you need hardware and for that you have a sleek range of iMacs, Macbooks and Minis.

Consider this, not many would have thought that iTunes would be product on its own. It is an application, which many would have believed was developed to support the iPod range of MP3 players. But today, it is a market place contributing handsomely to Apple’s profit share. The strategy here is simple. Sell an iPod worth £200 which holds 30, 000 songs and sell songs on iTunes for 79 pence. Ideally (If there’s no piracy) to fill up the 30000 capacity iPod you would need £23000 worth of songs and as of September 2007, 150 million iPods in different capacities have been sold worldwide. Consider the average iPod sold is of a 5GB capacity and do the numbers taking into account people buying music from other sources and downloading pirated music from the internet. Although conventional wisdom states that Apple is loosing money on iTunes which it is making up by selling iPods, at a 30 % margin on every song sold, the profits are still enormous. Not to forget that it is expected to increase its market share to 85 % this year. Here’s a company, which believes in designing and developing superior products with innovative industrial design and and markets it with a similar level of creativity to profit from it. It is an ideal example of marketing success.

The Power of Email Communication – How to Win People

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For a marketing professional, I am rather quiet and reserved, though I am aware that I need to be bit more outgoing to nudge ahead of my career. So for the past few days, I have been reading a few self-development books and one of the first ones I picked was the much celebrated self-help classic by Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People“. Although I believe that soft skills are often intrinsic, this book certainly has the right ingredients to change your approach towards people. Not that I have been conscious of how I have interacted with people, but it certainly is an interesting read. What makes it interesting is that I relate to the book more often now, particularly when people around me approach others.

A couple of days back, I got an email from an individual selling a affiliate services. Though I was least interested in pursuing it further, the email was so compelling that I decided to respond with a polite refusal. A couple of days later I got a reply pushing the service further without being imposing. The first section of Carnegie’s book which speaks about “Fundamental Techniques of Handling People” encourages readers to use a similar language which is sure to win people. In Carnegie’s terms it is important to “arouse in people an eager want”. Had it not been for our previous experience with companies offering similar services with a slightly different marketing language, his emails are extremely convincing.

Here’s our correspondence:

I hope that you don’t mind me emailing out of the blue – I have just ordered my second bunch of flowers from Arena, I love the quality of the products, and thus I sought out your contact details to see if my company could help you grow online sales even further.

I’m sure that you’re using an affiliate network at present, but my company “XXXX” is the “XXXX XXXX XXXX” and we have been winning many clients from the UK over the past 2 years.  I would love to have a quick conversation with you when you have 5 minutes to highlight a couple of differences that we can make, and also our experience in the flower sector.

Best number is always my mobile and I’ll look forward to hearing from you Adarsh.

For which I had replied that it isn’t feasible for us to join another network as it adds little value in terms of incremental sales. And I got another reply highlighting how the network could improve our sales. Also, there’s a catch. He wants us to consolidate our services with other companies to his company, which means that we have to terminate our existing contracts with the networks we already participate in.

Thanks for your reply, and I am indeed not surprised to hear that your additional networks have not provided an incremental increase in sales to warrant the additional resource.

This unfortunately is standard across affiliate networks in the UK market, and something that our clients experience before joining “XXXX”

We work very differently for our clients and being the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, our experience in the online florist sector I believe will interest you.  Perhaps though only if you were willing to consider consolidating your other two networks into “XXX”, I could showcase the strategy to provide the missing incremental increase in sales.

Is there a number that I can reach you on Adarsh, or a meeting that we can schedule for next week with your colleagues and co-decision makers to propose a solution?  I can only reiterate that I am a firm believer in the Arena service and see a clear opportunity to help you grow sales further.

On a personal note, the email is certainly baiting the recipient and I find it to be an incredible example for email marketing. It certainly livens Carnegie’s fundamental principles.

Social Media Marketing at Dell: Strategies for Success

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After a long hiatus owing to a few personal commitments which has kept me busy for a while, I have come back to continue my infrequent updating on the blog. It’s ironical that in the age of Social Media Marketing, actively pursued by individuals and corporates alike, Longhop has such long gaps between posts. Strangely, the current post focuses on highlighting how Social Media can contribute to the success of a business. Obviously, the inspiration to post on Social Media surges from the recent Online Marketing & Media event I attended at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

Dell LogoWe have had many opportunities in the past to attend marketing events, but owing to resources we have only managed to attend a few. Each event is a great experience and offers great insightful learning from businesses who share their experiences in such events. One such learning comes from arguably one of the biggest ecommerce businesses in the World, Dell. Internet, as with many online organizations is a part of Dell’s infrastructure. Dell has fully embraced the participatory phase of Social Media Marketing by being actively involved as a listening company. It has firmly believed that messages need to be dynamic and co-created rather than the company being the mouthpiece for all its products. Part of Dell’s initiatives comes from its previous experience of dealing with customers. Jeff Jarvis, a disgruntled Dell Customer and an American journalist launched a crusade against Dell terming his experience as “Dell Hell” and extensively chronicled his communication on his blog Buzzmachine here. Jeff’s outbursts resulted in spreading the negative word about Dell’s customer service and impacting its overall corporate reputation. True, there were hundreds of peevish customers who had experienced Dell Hell before, but it took one influencer like Jeff Jarvis to coalesce into a crowd. The collaborative influence of bloggers in denting Dell’s stronghold launched the company into frenzy and Dell responded by identifying the shift in power and began listening to customers.

So what exactly has Dell been doing? Head to Dell’s Community Website here, which provides a glimpse of Dell’s pursuits in the social marketing arena. It is evident that the company actively engages in an ongoing conversation with customers to learn their perceptions, and to ingrain those perceptions into Dell’s outreach.

  • Dell IdeaStorm LogoIdeaStorm: Dell launched IdeaStorm in 2007 to engage with customers and to understand their needs and preferences to develop products. It is an incredible market research initiative with an added personal touch. Users are invited to share their ideas and collaborate with each other. This gives a clear idea to Dell about what their potential customers seek and to share these ideas throughout the organization to gain further thoughts to translate these ideas into products. In essence, Dell has converted its customers, non-customers and potential customers into a massive product development team.

“The name is a take-off on the word “brainstorm” and it is our way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another. The goal is for you, the customer, to tell Dell what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas

Our commitment is to listen to your input and ideas to improve our products and services, and the way we do business. We will do our best to keep you posted on how Dell brings customer ideas to life.”

  • Direct2Dell: Direct2Dell is Dell’s corporate blog; it’s a wire service about Dell to the world.
  • Dell Forums: As the name suggests, it’s the community forum where users share their thoughts and
  • experiences with others.
  • Studio Dell: Dell uses videos and podcasts to educate users on various emerging technologies and also offers tips, tricks and support to get the best out of a Dell product. Studio Dell is an interactive communication tool, which also encourages users to post videos of them using Dell products.
  • Smart Business 360: A resource center for small businesses offering product support and advice
  • ReGeneration & Dell Earth: Websites on sustainable living to emphasize Dell’s environmental commitment, identified as a key strategy to future growth.

These are some of the prominent community initiatives at Dell. The company participates in other popular social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, etc., etc. Customers are no longer interested in a company’s business structure. They seek experiences. They want to be a part of the business, they want to be heard, understanding which can benefit the business itself. Through Dell’s Community Networking initiatives, the company responds positively to customer needs fomenting strong relationships.

Business FocusOne of the perennial debates in the ongoing marketing world is how does a company leverage commercial benefits by participating in social media marketing and how can such campaigns be measured? Dell employs about 40 individuals working on the community network, which includes hundreds of interactions with customers through blogging, forum posting, Yahoo answers, twittering, facebook etc. Is it really worthwhile? How does it benefit the company? Isn’t social media marketing hard to quantify? Firstly, Dell argues that it doesn’t put a cost on social media. Secondly, Dell has gained significant confidence with regard to customer service and customer satisfaction. Here’s a metric then. Dell claims half a million of sales came from Twitter participation last year. That’s just a spoonful in a bucket of water, but it counts nevertheless. Furthermore, traditional metrics such as traffic, click through rates and conversion rates give a skewed image of social media marketing. The best metrics are often those which show how many people are talking about the company positively in the blogosphere, the number of people who subscribe to the site’s content, the number of positive reviews of the companies products or services etc. The best metrics derive on how social media evolves and what companies seek from it. In traditional marketing sense you could call this brand building.

Social MediaSo should all businesses participate in social media? While participation is essential particularly for online businesses, it entirely depends on the organizational objectives as well. If sales and not brand is the driving factor, then social media marketing can be time consuming and resource heavy. This is particularly true for smaller organizations. It’s more like a long term vs. short term strategy. Social media is clearly long term as it helps in creating an everlasting brand awareness which is extremely important to the success and longevity of a business. However, there is a note of caution. Social media is here to stay and it is essential for businesses, small or large, to realign their marketing initiatives to create the fine balance to leverage success.

Trademark Bidding – Winners & Losers!!!

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It’s finally here! A few years after trialling in the US, Google has extended the controversial trademark bidding by opening up the auctioning process to all entities in the sponsored links space. While Google reaps the benefits of a new open space bidding process, this move could fundamentally shift the Search Marketing landscape.

Previously advertisers and brand owners had some sort of insulation to protect and limit their brand related keywords from being auctioned. However, since May 5th 2008, Google has radically changed its trademark policies to encourage competitors to bid on the keywords. The new policy, mirroring the Google’s trademark policy in the US, is certain to rake in plenty of moolah to the world’s biggest search engine.

However, it is the businesses which will suffer owing to inflated CPC prices for their own brand terms. Also, businesses which had previously kept away from internet marketing will be forced to allocate a budget to ensure that their customers aren’t wooed away by the competitors. At the same time, they also have to ensure that the competitors do not take complete liberty of promoting themselves at the cost of their business.

Your Ad HereIn the UK, some of the larger online businesses like Lastminute, Teletext etc., have already taken up the cause by filing a suit against Google. A few of the smaller companies which are benefiting from Google’s new policies are being bulldozed by their larger counter parts with legal threats.

It’s quite interesting to see how the search marketing industry pans out in the next few weeks.

Everybody gonna dance tonight…

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Fate they say is not without a sense of irony

Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus – The Matrix

Strange it may seem, but just after I finished writing this entry and met a few friends for our weekly social gathering, someone walked away with my girlfriend’s bag that had the ‘apple of my ears’. My prized possession, to be sold to some cheap deal hunter over the internet! But in case if any of you come across, it is a white 30 GB iPod with the engraving ‘My girlfriend’s new job paid for this iPod’. ‘Hoping against hope’ I must say!

Anyway, I won’t let that ruin my post.

June 29th – The day which could potentially rewrite history with launch of the much awaited iPhone. After a long wait, a few lucky people in the US get their hands on the most coveted uber-cool gadget in recent times. Luckier are those employees of Apple who get to own an iPhone for free. But the unlucky ones to miss out are people living elsewhere. The scheduled launch for Europe and Asia is anticipated to be in December. A big day not only for gadget freaks, but also for shareholders of Apple, competitors etc. Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Research in Motion, Sony Erricsson etc despite claiming to be relaxed about iPhone’s success primarily because it is a 2.5g phone in comparison with the technologically superior products available in the market, wait with bated breath to see how iPhone performs. Apple, in the meanwhile, has set realistic sights of acquiring 1 % market share by 2008. Skeptics are quick to latch on to iPhone’s features, functionality, security and the expensive pricing, and have been criticising the product ever since it was conceived at Apple labs. Nevertheless, Apple has always thrived on publicity and this publicity is sure to capture consumers’ imagination.

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