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Tag Archives: advertising
Are Banana Peels Your Next Billboard?
During lunch yesterday, I discovered a pretty interesting sticker right on my banana. It was oddly shaped, with a QR code and website with a simple call to action: “Turn me into yonanas”.
Intrigued, I visited yonanas.com and learned about a new kitchen gadget that can turn overripe bananas into delicious, healthy soft serve ice cream. This marketing seemed directed right at me. I’m often faced with the dilemma of what to do with the last banana in the bunch that I just don’t want to eat. And as someone who loves ice cream but hates how bad it is for me, I thought the marketing and product was a great idea. There was even a video on the website showing yonanas featured on The Today Show. A quick scan of the yonanas Facebook page reveals a few people who saw the stickers and plan on purchasing a machine.
While this is definitely an unorthodox marketing strategy, it was a critical reminder to think beyond the obvious marketing strategies. In the case of yonanas, using the banana peel as advertising space made absolute sense, and they used smart creative and a clear call to action to support their message. This is an excellent example of using an ad to engage rather than invade. Rather than being offended to find an ad on my banana, I actually appreciate how well the company understands their target audience.
For your next campaign, consider how can you reach your customers with an ad that makes sense in their daily lives. There is no limit or shortage of possible locations for your next ad.
4 Ways to Extend the Reach of Your New Ad Campaign
Whether a print, TV, web or radio ad campaign, you dedicated your blood, sweat and tears to develop a creative and compelling campaign. But beyond the ad buy, there are ways to extend the reach of your ad campaign and deliver your message to more people in a more engaging way.
1. Social Media. Consider using social media platforms to engage your audience in a contest related to the ad campaign. This is a great way to draw those who viewed the ad to your social media sites as well as encourage social media fans and followers to seek out your advertisements where they appear.
2. Website & Email Marketing. When developing an ad campaign (no matter the medium) a website landing page is a great way to continue to keep the audiences engaged and provide additional information that you didn’t have room to include in the ad. If you have a quality email database, create an email marketing campaign that coincides with the advertising campaign (and drives visitors to the landing page).
3. Publicity. Is there a timely or edgy aspect to your new ad campaign? Develop a pitch or media invite positioning your campaign as part of a larger, compelling story. If you can secure media coverage for your new campaign, you have extended its reach beyond the actual ad buy.
4. Events. Does your campaign celebrate a company landmark? Is it in support of a new product launch? If there is a reason to celebrate and a bigger story to tell, consider hosting a live or web-based event. Invite customers, prospects, vendors and media to share in the celebration. And if the event itself is unique or unexpected, this may serve as another opportunity for some publicity.
5 Ways to Maximize Your Case Studies
A case study detailing the specific results of how your company or product helped overcome a unique or difficult challenge can be a powerful marketing tool. Since developing case studies is often time consuming, be sure to maximize their use.
Here are our top five tips for getting more value from your case studies.
1. Secure Media Coverage: You can achieve media coverage for your case studies one of two ways. First, you can develop a news release detailing the situation and high-level results of the successful project, and distribute/pitch to media as a story with a spokesperson available for interview. Or you can also offer key non-competing media the full case study to run as a bylined article; media are always looking for good content focused on real world applications.
2. Develop Engaging Blog Content: Divide your case study into several smaller segments and post a blog series on the project. Ensure each post leaves readers with a reason to come back for the full story.
3. Secure Speaking Opportunities: Use your case study as a way to secure a speaker at an industry show. Most industry shows/conferences are looking for good examples of how attendees can apply new/existing technology in their field. Ask your client to present with you as a team. The show is more likely to select presentations that include peers talking to peers and do not seem like a sales presentation.
4. Video Development: Consider documenting end results and customer testimonials on video. A video version of your success story can easily be incorporated into your website, online advertising, social media, email marketing, mobile marketing and even media relations strategies.
5. Advertising Campaign: If you have several interesting case studies with impactful results, consider structuring your next ad campaign as a series of testimonial stories focusing on applications and results .
Measurement Made Easy
Measuring marketing campaigns is key to determining if you should continue a campaign and necessary when showing upper management the value of marketing. The first step is setting measurable objectives and ensuring each marketing strategy has measurement metrics in place.
Following are six simple ways to help measure the success of your campaigns.
1. Develop dedicated landing pages for each ad, blogger campaign, QR code and email marketing campaign to better assess which strategies are driving results. Take this a step further and test messaging and design by developing more than one unique landing page for the same campaign to better understand what creative and content are most effective.
2. Install Google Analytics on your website. Visit http://www.google.com/analytics/ to sign up for a free account. Google Analytics will provide a simple code you can include on every page of your website, which will allow you to track which sources are driving the most web traffic (i.e. which search terms are most influential and which sites refer the most traffic). Google Analytics will help you track dedicated landing pages activity.
If you sell product online be sure your ecommerce is linked to analytics. This will help you determine what is driving sales.
3. Use dedicated phone numbers for different marketing/advertising campaigns. Track the number of calls and time spent on each call for each number to determine what is most effective.
4. Provide special offers linked to discount or promotional codes. Create a unique code for each campaign. When customers purchase product online (or even in stores) and use the code, you will be able to measure which strategies are most effective at driving sales. This works well for blogger relations campaigns, social media promotions, print and broadcast advertising.
5. Measuring intangible campaign results like brand awareness and changes in perceptions/beliefs is a bit more difficult. If you can, administer a survey to your target audience to assess awareness and opinions prior to the campaign, and use the research results to establish benchmarks. When your campaign is complete, redistribute the survey to determine if the campaign has impacted awareness levels and succeeded in changing existing perceptions.
6. A similar approach can be successful for measuring the impact of publicity and media relations. Conduct a media audit with target outlets before and after your PR campaign to measure media’s familiarity with your company. Of course do not forget to track media coverage and keep track of how many people each story has the potential to reach. For online media stories that include your URL, check your website analytics to see how much traffic the media stories are driving to your website.
5 Ways to Test Advertising Effectiveness
When considering advertising – whether it be print, broadcast, online or even through Facebook – run a test campaign before making a long term commitment. This is a good method for determining if advertising in general – and a specific outlet in particular – is an effective strategy for your brand. And while the definition of a test campaign implies a much smaller cost, you still need to ensure those dollars are well spent and ultimately provide useful information to shape your advertising strategy moving forward.
Below are our top five quick-tips for securing the most data from your ad test campaign.
1. Establish Accurate Metrics. In order to understand whether a test is effective – and ultimately make a decision on whether it will be part of your long-term strategy – you need to specifically correlate customer response to a particular ad or campaign. Using a distinct phone number, web page or sales code or phrase to pursue an offer are simple ways to track responses.
2. Test competitive outlets. Use the same creative to reach two different outlets at the same time. Be sure to establish measurable outcomes to track the results from each outlet separately. You may learn that advertising in the leading trade magazine is ineffective, but that its competitor delivers impactful results. If you simply had tested with the leader, you may have decided not to pursue advertising at all.
3. Test different messages with the same outlet. Similarly, once you understand your best medium, try testing different messaging with the same audience to determine what drives the best results.
4. Provide a very specific call to action. This goes hand-in-hand with the importance of establishing metrics for a test campaign. Use the test as an opportunity to drive a specific action among your prospects. A high level branding campaign takes time and frequency to deliver results, and therefore is not conducive to a test campaign. Instead of trying to change a perception or raise awareness in general, use a test campaign to drive a measurable behavior. This will enable you to know sooner whether the campaign has been effective.
5. Always ask for more. Ad sales reps use test campaigns as a way to secure long-tem advertising commitments, and they understand that the more effective a test is, the better chance you will become a regular customer. Always ask for multi-media support when running a test campaign (i.e. ask for no-cost banner ads to support your radio test, or ask for an e-blast sponsorship to support your magazine ad).
The Saddest Movie Ever Sold
Not that anyone will ever see this film or even care… it is worth reporting that Morgan Spurlock has now done for the branding and advertising community what he previously did for the fast food industry.
Thanks?
Though not due for release on DVD until August 23, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was released domestically at theaters back in April. The production budget was $1.8 million and box office receipts to date are $636,928, meaning not a lot of people have seen it yet.
Thanks?
It is, in a sentence, “A documentary about branding, advertising and product placement that is financed and made possible by brands, advertising and product placement.”
A staggering 82% of the people who saw it gave it a rating of A or B, and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine says: “I’m buying into Spurlock. As ever, he makes you laugh till it hurts.” I say, “It is a riches of embarrassment.”
As a movie fan, I love it. As a tenured industry insider, I must admit that the my laughter was eventually replaced by muffled cries of sadness. In his own entertaining way, Spurlock manages to shine a light on all the worst that exists in our business, surprising even me at times.
Thanks?
[Editorial Disclaimer: Though I did not sponsor this film with product placements, I nonetheless highly recommend it.]
How Many Followers Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?
We are a nation obsessed with numbers and crowds. It is all about volume. How many impressions did you make? How many unique visitors came to the site? How many click-thrus did you score? How many followers do you have? How many Likes do you have?
Funny thing is, as obsessed as we are with numbers when it comes to traditional media, we are not nearly as concerned about the numbers with social media. Why is that?
If we are talking TV, you must not only provide Nielsen and/or Arbitron data that confirms the number of viewers, but those numbers MUST BE HUGE. Same with radio, same with newspapers, same with magazines. If you are not reaching hundreds of thousands – or millions – then what’s the point?
Even You Tube is judged by its huge volumes. No one cares about a video until it reaches the magical one million views mark. Anything less than that is just a video.
But Twitter and Facebook get a pass. Why is that?
Maybe the numbers are not all that important. Instead it is about the connection and the engagement and the dialogue or conversation. But if that’s true, if it is not about the numbers, then why is everyone so obsessed about increasing their numbers? I was on the Terracyle website the other day (I love this company) and they actually had a link at the top of their home page asking people to friend them. In high school we called that pathetic. I mean, who pleads with people to be their friends or worse, bribes them? And what value do these types of “followers” have? That’s like driving 10,000 visitors to a website with a misleading PPC ad and getting a 98% bounce rate… not exactly useful.
I’m just saying.
Advertising Doesn’t Work. Oh Wait, Maybe It Does.
Hello Diet Coke! Goodbye Pepsi.
Hello traditional media! See you later online marketing.
According to the Wall Street Journal: “PepsiCo made a big bet in 2010, when it didn’t market its flagship cola on the Super Bowl or in other TV spots. Instead, it launched the Refresh Project, an online charitable-giving program that disbursed $20 million in donations “for refreshing ideas that change the world.”
Here’s the bottomline: when it comes to marketing there is no silver bullet or magic potion, let alone an effortless solution or easy answer.
The most effective product and brand marketing campaigns involve a mix of traditional, digital and social media strategies that feature connectiveness as a priority characteristic. Not just integrated marketing strategies, but interactively connected tactics that enable consumers to participate through all the media and in all the channels they prefer – TV, websites, newspapers, blogs, magazines, text, e-mail, snail mail, blogs, coupons, mobile apps, telemarketing, outdoor, in-store, events, exhibits, seminars, webinars, podcasts, in-game, etc.
Or get used to being #3.
Is Mass Media Advertising Dead?
Is mass media advertising dead? Are there so many targeted options that I shouldn’t use it? Conversely, is mass media so splintered and difficult to measure that I shouldn’t use it? (e.g. broadcast, cable and satellite television)
Associate Vice President, University Communications and Marketing
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By Jennifer Manocchio
Mass media advertising is not dead. TV still remains king of all media and should still be considered a sound advertising strategy. Consider these facts:
- According to a July Nielson Co. report, the average U.S. home has 2.86 televisions and more than 114 million homes in the U.S. have at least one TV.
- Nielsen Media Research reported last November the average American watches 142 hours of TV in a month. Last season the typical home had a television on for eight hours and 18 minutes each day. That’s up an hour per day from just 10 years ago.
- In comparison, the amount of time consumers are spending online is leveling off at an average of 12 hours/week and only 80 percent of US households have Internet access.
While mass media is difficult (costly) to measure compared to other strategies, some goals are difficult to measure no matter how targeted the strategy. So let’s break this down:
If your goal is to create awareness and build brand, mass media fits the bill. You can reach hundreds or thousands or hundreds of millions and make initial connections and build credibility. And yes, Virginia, you can measure the results. But you must be willing to invest in benchmark and follow-up research.
If your goal is to drive web site traffic or increase calls into a toll-free number or push consumers into a retail outlet, mass media also works; it’s just a different approach to messaging and creative. It’s not so much about the brand as it is the offer.
Can you use targeted strategies to do the same thing? Yes. Can you even use them in combination? Yes. Is there a “best” solution? Probably, but that depends on each individual situation. There is never a single right answer; this is not a shelf service business.
On any given day, for any given situation, mass media and/or targeted media may be the best solution. There is no easy answer. And by the way, measurement is a requirement for both strategies.
But mass media is not dead and in fact, will likely never die. It will continue to evolve as it has for the past century (we are including radio and film along with TV here). Even media geniuses like Jason Kilar acknowledge that people will continue to want to sit around their living rooms or at local establishments and share “shows” and “events” and “news”, if for no other reason than to socialize and have something to talk about around the water cooler the next day. Only mass media can provide that experience.
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