Facebook Advertising: Failing to Deliver On Real Value

Those of you who know me, know that for a long time I have believed strongly in the fairness of the system adopted by Google in its' Adwords platform (namely the Pay-Per-Click or PPC system).
Simply put you pay Google every time someone sees you sponsored link and clicks on it where they are transferred to your landing page or website.

Unlike this system, Facebook adopt the Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) system which charges the advertiser not on the number of times someone clicks on your ad but rather the number of times it appears organically next to someone's news feed for example Facebook may charge you a dollar fee per 1000 impressions. This occurs regardless of whether or not anyone ever clicks on the ad. Is it just me or is this a very sweet deal for Facebook but so much for the advertiser?

Now if this wasn't bad enough I had the opportunity this week to work with leading IT and multimedia expert Trent Rebeiro  who updated me on the extent to which ad blockers are being adopted by people today.

As of this week over 15,000,000 people who use Google Chrome as their browser have installed mostly at no cost the Ad-block software extension that as the name implies, disables all your incoming ads.

Now think about this from a marketing point of view for a minute. In good faith you the advertiser are paying Facebook money for impressions that are quite often being blocked and therefore never appear. How unfair is that?

Over time and as people find out about the availability of such options I have no doubt that number of 15 million will continue to grow. So what if your target audience is one that is computer savvy and is therefore likely to include the lions share of these people on Facebook. Imagine how this will impact on your ability to efficiently target your niche here.

If this all wasn't bad enough this week I also heard that Facebook have now come out and formally admitted in a statement saying that: "We expect organic distribution of an individual page's posts to gradually decline over time, as we continually work to make sure people have a more meaningful experience on the site."  Translation: Facebook want you to pay for the right of getting your message across and it is being touted that there will be around a 40% reduction in organic reach even to your pages followers.  That's what I call a double whammy.

On the one hand Facebook want you to do more advertising but on the other hand the real effectiveness of Facbook advertising is being erroded away with the adoption of Ad blocking technology.  Memo to Facebook.  There's a reason you struggle to make money and hopefully this post will shed some light on just some of those reasons.  Please fix it soon.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

The 3 Key Elements of Excellent Advertising

I was asked a great question recently by a very bright young marketer who inquired about are the key elements that are needed to be present to achieve excellence in advertising. I find these type of questions great on two levels. Firstly they go to the core of the matter about what all marketers need to strive for to potentially succeed in putting an effective advertising campaign together and secondly, given its importance how rarely it gets asked at all.

Well unlike the expression, 'I'm not sure how to define it but I know when I see it', the 3 key criteria for advertising are both easy to define and can be easily identified when used appropriately.

The elements are:

1. A Hook
Simply put the ad needs stopping power which is the mechanism by which you can literally stop people as they are walking past or flicking through the magazine pages or scrolling through the website pages and stop them dead in their tracks at your ad. Look at the advertisement above from Audi. It stops you with both a visually striking piece but also the clever integration of Audi's logo within the word Joy as a key attribute attributed to driving such a wonderful automobile.

2. Relevance
Once your ad has managed to stop people (who are hopefully from your target market), you need to ensure that the means buy which you stopped them was relevant and aligned to the needs and expectations of the target audience or other wise they will feel as though they have been cheated and stopped on false pretenses. And again referring this back to Audi ad above the relevance is clear enough as the experience of driving an Audi is very real being a superbly engineered  motor vehicle.

3. Branding
The third and final element is branding. Now when I speak of branding I am not referring to only the corporate logo which is certainly present and strategically positioned in the bottom right hand corner of the advertisement (remembering that the eye reads diagonally down the page from left to right).

But it's also everything else that a company does consistently in terms of all the different design elements that are consistently used and that both consciously and intuitively alert us to the fact that we are looking at an Audi ad.

Examples include the colors used, the relative positioning of key blocks such as headings, pictures and text on the ad to convey its core advertising message. Again bu comparing the quality offerings that Audi give the market periodically you can see how consistently clean, efficient and uncluttered they are regardless of the model being promoted or the core message being espoused.

It's obviously not a coincidence that highly successful multinationals like Audi so routinely produce advertising of this quality that gains attention, raises awareness and ultimately drives selective customer demand for its wide range of prestige cars.

Now go and review you latest ad or the last 2 or 3 and with a (constructively) critical eye review the 3 elements we have discussed in this post and apply them to your advertising to see how you can make it even better moving forward.

And remember also that if ever you want to learn more about developing proven strategies for your business you can attend one of the fine VECCI marketing courses by clicking the link below:

http://www.vecci.org.au/business-solutions/training/short-courses/marketing-sales-and-service/winning-marketing-strategies-p


And until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Gathering Business Intelligence: Identifying Excatly What Are People Saying About Us and Our Rivals

I believe more than ever before our clients, customers, members, prospects and stakeholders in general have more o say than ever before and importantly, the means to be heard more than they have ever had before.

For this reason it is imperative that each business has a definitive strategy and plans to carry out thorough and ongoing market analysis to consistently be aware of what is being said about our business and brands as well as our key competitors and their products.

As is the case with anything in marketing, a business can spend literally thousands of dollars each month to gain this information. The problem of course is that many businesses don't have this type of money to spend and therefore need to be make sure that they are using the more cost effective options to gain this intelligence.

There are many tools that fit this bill but 3 that I'd like to discuss here today that I believe all businesses should set up are as follows:

1. Google alerts: www.Google.com.au/alerts
This Google product allows you to monitor the web and receive notifications based on any key word that you input into the search field.  It could be your business name, your brand name, the name of key executives or employees.  I'm also pleased to say that like most everything else Google does, it's free to use and highly effective.

2. Hyperalerts: www.hyperalerts.no
This is an alert system that provides email notifications on any terms highlighted within the Twitter and Facebook platforms. It is an equally effective tool and is also free and simple to use like Google Alerts.

3. Mention:  https://en.mention.net
The third option is also a media monitoring application that can be use to used to track conversation around specific names and terms. It has a free option of one user, 250 mentions and 2 alerts, however they also have a $7, $20 and $65 a month packages that basically give you greater numbers of each data type per month.

Using these types of tools you will be well placed to know what is being said about you and others. Clearly this type of insight is no longer a luxury to have but rather a must have that will drive future planning and decision making for any business. So hopefully if you don't already have them you can go out and investigate these and other media monitoring tools for your business.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Post Christmas Sales. Is there a Way To Make Yours More Impactful

Hello one and all and a very happy New Year to everyone as we enter the 2014 year. And of course one of the classic post Christmas events we have all come to expect from Businesses here in Australia, is the Boxing Day sales that people feel compelled to queue up for for hours and in many cases buy items that don't appear to be of great value just because they are being told things like:
'everything in the store reduced in price'.

Yes if a dollar is taken off everything in store than such a statement would certainly not be in breach of any advertising or business law anywhere. My other favourite is when you routinely hear stores proudly pronouncing up to 70% off store wide.

Great so if you want to buy something outdated, old fashioned, obsolete and usually ugly you get it 70% off the regular price. If you want something a little more modern, functional and aesthetically pleaseing you're lucky to be getting 10% off the price from two days earlier.

Now there are a couple of key points here that need to be considered. Firstly the need to provide true value to our customers during these sales where we know they already have a strong desire to spend, and put an offer together that provides real value not this mickey mouse stuff I have talked about in this post.

So be brave and put a compelling offer together such as:  '40% off everything in store'.

The reality is that most retailers have at least a 100% mark up on everything in store so this tactic will not only be seen as legitimate by the customers, but will still mean that you will more than cover your costs with each purchase made, whilst driving many sales that would otherwise probably not have been made had the powerful buying motivator not have been put up in the first place.

Once you have the right offer in place the next step of course is to promote it on all appropriate frequencies so that your target audience (both current customers and prospects), will know what  you are offering them. For this you will need to understand what they are listening, watching and reading and formulate a blended approach to promotion that will ensure a strong coverage with core mesages being repeated, understood and acted upon.

Naturally this will also mean you will need to set aside a specific budget to drive these promotional activities and given how tight the timelines are it goes without saying that the planning needs to be done well before Christmas to be effective.

Regardless of how well or other wise your business has done this year, start planning now for a spectacular close to 2014 and ensure that you take the lions share then with a combination of a great offer, a savvy promotional plan, a budget to facilitate the plan and the proactive implementation of the plan well before the event.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

Seasons Greetings to One And All

This week I'd like to take a step back from  Business, Social Media and all things Sales and Marketing and focus instead on something more important.

Namely family and friends and how at this time of year it's certainly a time to reflect on how fortunate we are to be surrounded with so many good people who all help enrich our lives and really help to make life worth living.

On a personal note I'd like to thank all the readers for their support, feedback and input as it makes doing the Road Scholars blog so enjoyable.  As well I'd also like to wish you and those special to you a very safe and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

And until next time, good luck and as always, good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

Strategic Alliances - The Greatest Under Utilised Business Stategy

Put simply a well thought out Strategic Alliance (SA) is the most underutilised business strategy and this is especially true for SME's that somehow have this unspoken belief that every business needs to go it alone to be successful. Of course nothing can be further from the truth and all we need to do is to look at how the larger companies do it to see what amazing benefits a strong SA provides for all parties involved.

Just the other day I was involved in a discussion on this very issue and discussed with a colleague the wonderful example of the global strategic alliance that has been formed between: McDonald's, Village Cinemas and Pixar Movies Animation Studios.

What wonderful simplicity when you think of who the target audience is for all three of these businesses that you realise that they are for a large part, the same group.

 

I really don't suppose for a minute that we should be surprised that when business heavy weights like these organisations mentioned the result will be good, given their resources and marketing talent.
But the simple truth is that and businesses or organisations can do it with a little thought.

The first question that needs to be asked is what other quality organisations out there, already  target my target market and may already have well established good will, market expertise and professional networks already set up.

The second question  you need to ask is which of these organisations from question 1, can I approach that are complimentary but not competitive with what my business or organisation does?

Finally what am I willing to offer and what would I like those other businesses to offer the same market in any co-marketing campaigns between us. Here you literally have a blank canvas and are only limited by your own imagination and creativity.

In the case of the example above the specifics are well known with movie merchandising available at the restaurants and access to McDonald's vouchers when you buy movie tickets, and so on.

 In marketing I believe that this tool works so well because the businesses leverage and support each others efforts.  It is a classic win-win scenario and one that should be very appealing to SME's everywhere.

So go to it and start thinking about who you could approach to form such an alliance with.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

Wow Factor the Key To Customer Satisfaction

I have often tried to impress on my students and clients the fundamental need to be able to inject some Wow factor into your Total Product Offering (TPO) as it's the Wow factor that energises people to talk about things that they have experienced and act.

 A lot is understandably made of the various research data classics such as the TARP data that focuses on the inevitable consequences of customer reactions to their level of dissatisfaction. It is frightening data on two fronts because it shows us both that the vast majority of customers who are dissatisfied will not necessarily complain about it and also that if they remain dissatisfied will usually tell around ten people who in-turn will go out and tell another five each.  OK then the simple message here is don't do the wrong thing by your customers and hopefully you will avoid this.

But as business owners we do not go into business to avoid dissatisfaction. Surely our aim needs to be universally to delight our customers with a consistently high level of customer satisfaction that at very least meets their expectations and hopefully, exceeds them.  To do this of course we need to inject some WOW factor into our product offering to the market.

 The specifics of how you do this will naturally enough depend on what your product is and the market that it operates in. The key point is that in every circumstance there is an existing level of customer expectation that need to be addressed in your promotional campaigns where you verbalise your brand promise which outlines exactly how it will meet the prospects needs.
 Beyond the promotional campaigns and the purchasing comes the actual product usage and experience. This is as Jan Carlson so aptly put it: The moment of truth.

It is here that the additional features and benefits and perhaps value added services kick in to leave the customer surprised and excited about the product, the value that it offers them and the consequences of using it in terms of a better outcome when compared to alternative brands that they may previously have used that did not provide them with any WOW factor.

One of my favourite anecdotes that I like to share on this topic is the story of when I gave a presentation in Portland Victoria which is around a six hour drive from Melbourne. I arrived at around 5 pm to deliver a 4 hour class which went from around 6 to 10pm.

I had driven my own car and noticed when I parked it in the underground car park that it was very dirty from the trip and I thought that the next morning I would have to find a car wash to wash it before making the trip back home or run the risk of being pulled up by the police and fined.
Anyway the night went well and I enjoyed a comfortable night there and the next morning on approaching my car I noticed that it had been washed and a message had been left on my windshield. It read:

“Mr Lima thank you so much for choosing out hotel to stay at whilst in Portland.
We noticed that your car had become dirty from the trip and we took the opportunity to wash it for you at no cost to ensure you have a safe journey once you leave here. We hope you had an enjoyable stay and hope to see you again. Many thanks."
Staff and Management of the Comfort Inn.

Now that's what I call Wow factor.  Do you provide your customers with this type of experience?
If the answer is no, not yet, then start now.  Do something to make people feel good about you and give them a reason for them to spread the gospel of you and your brand.
So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards
Daniele