marketing Archive

After meeting with a number of clients of the past month and discussing goals and strategies for 2010—I began organizing my thoughts into a list of what I think we can expect to see from marketing, PR, social media, and technology in 2010:

1. 2009 was the year that social media “experts” infiltrated the masses. Everyone with a Twitter account and Facebook profile was deeming themselves an expert. In 2010, the real enthusiasts and savvy folks will emerge and the snake oil salesmen will fade.

2. The press release continues its evolution. I do not believe the press release will die in 2010—however it is undergoing a transformation. Think Optimus Prime.  Organizations will always need tools to disseminate their news and adhere to disclosure rules—however never before have we had so many different options. Linking to content such as online video, blogs, social media will make the press release smarter and also improve your company’s “searchability.”

3. While not the first person to think this—I do strongly believe that Twitter will either trial an ad-based model or perhaps introduce a professional fee-based option in order to generate revenues.

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NY-based Groupable has announced a new angel round of funding in the amount of $300,000. The Funders Group, LLC led the round, with The Venture Capital division of Insurial Americas, Inc. joining the round.  Groupable notes that the funding will be used to further develop the company’s online marketplace platform.

Groupable provides a marketplace bringing together online/offline groups and sponsors. The company describes their service as, “We are an online marketplace connecting groups of all types to corporate and local sponsors.” The concept is interesting because so many groups and recurring meetups are always looking for a helping hand from a sponsor for food, venue, etc.

To learn more about Groupable, checkout our initial review. My only concern with Groupable is the ability to get a large enough supply of sponsors into the network. Today’s announcement of their angel round of funding should help gain more groups and sponsors.

The Marketing Donut launched today and their goal is to, “provide small and medium-sized businesses with tools to make their marketing more effective.” The site is based out of the UK and they guarantee not to show any ads (although they show sponsor offers). The first two sponsors are Google and the Royal Mail (the post office for the U.K.).

The Marketing Donut gathered 100 experts to provide advice in a number of categories including PR, marketing, advertising, customer support, market research, events and strategy. There are also a number of pre-packaged themes for startups.

It looks like the experts traded their content for a listing in the consultants directory. The directory is broken up by location in the UK and each expert has a bio page and contact information.

The site has a lot of good content but what’s missing are the connections and subscriptions. For example, there appears to be no way to subscripe to the different content sections – either via RSS or an email notification once new content is added. They have a Twitter account but it’s not listed anywhere on the site. There’s a share button but only on some of the pages – sharing should always be everywhere! Same goes for the tools section – give me a way to be notified when you add more tools! This is the type of site that a person will visit and then might not return to – the email/rss is critical to get users to continually return.

At a recent SXSWi panel conducted "core conversation-" style (in which a presumed thought leader guides a group discussion on the subject at hand), the hour spent sitting on the floor in a cramped meeting room proved one important fact about social media: Even the professed experts are doing it wrong.

A Dougie Howser-esque "social media specialist" at Razorfish and a group of others ranging in age from 17 to 32 years old sat cross-legged on the floor and cross-talked their way through a series of stereotypes, assumptions, and painfully incorrect conclusions.

It is generally agreed upon by all in the social media space that brands began using social media without sufficient understanding or strategy. Traditional models were applied to new media with dismal return on investment; ineffective impressions by the billions were suddenly considered par for the course as expectations dropped and consumer tune-out skyrocketed. Really, the metrics are embarrassingly unacceptable.

And whereas more recent experiments in the social web showcase a willingness to experiment, they often also demonstrate a grave misunderstanding of what social media is for and how (and how much) consumers are willing to engage with brands online.

The all important "be human" dictum was followed to disastrous effect by Skittles, which brand ended up aggregating offensive, lewd, and racist tweets on its new "social" homepage. And for all the "conversation," none of us, it seems, can remember the last time we bought a pack of the candy itself.

As far as Gen Y is concerned, the "core conversation" was as unfocused as the discussion leader’s definition of Gen Y itself (he gave the age range as being between 5 years old and mid-thirties; good luck marketing to that homogenous, monolithic demographic). It was noted that privacy is not as much a concern for many in this technological generation. People will publish just about anything these days; they likely have multiple profiles and will not feel personally invaded by targeted ads. These consumers are adept at using new media tools, at monitoring and restricting their online sharing, and at switching between applications.

For a miniature case study, take me. I’m squarely in this generation. I’m sure by now I have well over 50 online profiles, at least half of which contain my email address, physical address, phone numbers, and specific whereabouts at any given time of day. So much for privacy. I’m more concerned about self-expression and transparency than I am about whether a stodgy would-be employer will disapprove of a picture of me in a cocktail dress; however, I watch my incoming links, page views, blog/pic/video comments, and new friends/fans/followers like a damn hawk using tools as simple as Google and as complex as… Well, let’s just say there are some pretty nifty free analytics tools out there that are deceptively simple and allow for hours of online navel-gazing.

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Jolie O’Dell is a designer, writer, and consultant based in Richmond, Virginia.

SlideRocket, the Flash/Flex-powered web-based presentation creation software, is today announcing a major overhaul of its Marketplace to include new content partners, a brand new services directory, and a a cleaner, portal-style user interface. The Marketplace was launched in November of last year, when SlideRocket came out of beta, as an additional way to earn revenue on top of their software as a service business.

SlideRocket employs a freemium business model, offering a stripped down free version of their very slick presentation software, and paid versions that include additional features like more storage space, versioning, and collaboration. Paid subscriptions are their main source of revenue, and SlideRocket’s Senior Director of Community and Product Marketing Tracy Pizzo Frey tells me that they’re converting free to paid users at an impressive 10-15%.

The Marketplace is a very smart source of additional revenue for SlideRocket. It allows users to purchase assets for their presentations — photography, icons, music, etc. — directly from within SlideRocket, automatically securing the appropriate digital rights. Because the Marketplace is available to both free and paid users, it acts as a way to bring in revenue from free users of the product. According to Frey, SlideRocket has sold “thousands of credits” and is averaging 35 per user. Use is spread evenly across both free and paid customers, so the Marketplace has been successful so far in monetizing use on both ends.

Until today, SlideRocket’s only offered assets from Fotolia (stock photos) and Mimeo (printing services). They’ve added two new partners, PresentationPro (templates, icons) and Andertoons (cartoons), with others on the way, including Fotolia (videos), AudioMicro (stock audio), and Ascender (fonts). In addition, SlideRocket is releasing a services marketplace today, with 11 providers at launch offering design and authoring services to the app’s users.

According to SlideRocket founder and CEO Mitch Grasso the Marketplace, “greatly streamlines the creative process and helps our users save time and money while delivering the best possible presentations.”

It’s also a very smart way to bring in additional revenue and monetize free users.

Josh Catone is the Community Manager at DandyID and the co-founder of Rails Forum.

To extend my thoughts on people vs. content further, let’s consider the opportunities for those in marketing, PR, and advertising who hope yet to realize value by engaging social media. In spite of their differences, one thing these industries have in common is a taste for volume. Their taste for success is a taste for more, and their appetites sated best by high calorie helpings of servings that perform.

That said, we all know that high volume advertising across social media are just *this* far off the bottom of the feed trough. Just ask Scott Rafer of Lookery (here’s Allen Stern’s interview with him, dated but relevant). CPMs are notoriously low on social media because users are disinclined to pay attention to ads whilst they’re busy with friends. But sites like MySpace and Facebook serve up a huge number of pages, and are the equivalent of the outdoor advertising marketplace online.

Richer, more embedded, better targeted (by means of micro-targeting to the user, social graph targeting to the group, or social context targeting to audiences of followers) marketing is a better indicator of the future of online marketing. But as anyone in this space knows, ROI is not yet measurable, as is performance. In order for one-to-one or relationship marketing to make their comeback in the guise of social media marketing, industry and application standards will need to show success. And those successes will need to be evangelized by the social media community as case studies and best practices. The phase of application and service innovation is maturing, and is ready for adoption by those who can see a path to engagement.

And now back to my point on people vs content. It strikes me that there’s a fork in the path to adoption, one that possibly reflects a choice between people or content.

On the People side are those of us heralding the cause of influencers and influencer metrics, supported by social media practices like following and friending. Industry speak on the social graph, on conversation, on feeds, lifestreaming, flow apps, and so on all suggest that marketers should get in with the people doing the talking, by means of course of the talk tools we all use (twitter, friendfeed, etc).

And on the Content side are those of us who champion the visibility and relevance of social media news, supported by social media practices like content rating, digging, aggregation, blogging, posting and commenting. Industry speak on the value add of socializing the web, of user generated content, of conversation around published and wired stories, videos, images, and more all suggest that marketers get in front of the context in which social media content is produced and consumed.

These are possibly just two sides of the same coin. Marketers can approach influencers and through them obtain exposure to more relevant audiences, and by means of more valued and trusted sources. Or marketers can buy exposure in the sites, on the pages, and possibly in the feeds that get the most traction, thereby and presumably reaching those most influential and attentive.

I’ve seen more discussion around influencers and the need for a measure of social impact than I have around their content. This could be that content is covered by web analytics and page rank, search, etc already. Or it could be that social content still awaits robust and reliable sentiment and semantic tools (yes, there are some but social talk is notoriously lacking in the context and meta data that content analysis needs for accuracy).

So I don’t know if the distinction I’m making is material in the end. Current marketing and advertising practices continue to emphasize exposure: messages are placed alongside audiences and their activity. But merely being contiguous to the social isn’t good enough. One wants to be in and of the social. So perhaps the industry still needs its paradigm shift. From being in front of the audience to being in the audience, and from being associated with the consumer to talking with the consumer, attentive both to who she is and what she says.

Adrian Chan is a social media experience expert and analyst. You can follow him on twitter at gravity7.

I’ve written a number of times before about startups who employ the freemium model which brings together a free option plus premium paid upgrades. Most startups give away so much for free that users have no reason to upgrade. Most startups I speak with do little (or no) testing to see just what the right level is to set the free/paid bar at.

Marketing Sherpa posted a case study late last week of a golf supply company that increased their sales 685% by adding a "haggle" button next to the item price. The golf Web site is pretty Web 1.0 in look but the case study is well worth a read. You’ve got to keep testing your pricing plans until you find the sweet spot. It could easily mean the difference between small growth and major paid usage growth.

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