Archive for the 'Online Marketing' Category
Managing a Businesses online reputation - common sense should prevail
We are becoming pretty familiar with bloggers every now and then ripping into businesses that are providing poor customer service and poor customer experience.
I’m talking here about someone that writes a less than complimentary blog post on a product or service; I am not talking about conversations and threads on an online forum, etc.
Most businesses will have little experience about how to engage properly with negative commentary from bloggers, who by definition will be pretty savvy communicators.
The jump from email, phone and forum dialogue through to discussion on the bloggers site - an away fixture if you will - is a lonely place to be slugging it out in defence of a product or service.
The thing that’s missing for me though in these encounters is the success rate or closure rate for the blogger vs. how it could have been achieved through “traditional” avenues?
Does the public dialogue and exposure help solve the problem?
Does the service provider often just dig their heels in and say “feck you” to the negative criticism of the blogger - thinking that it will go away.
The latter is the worst case scenario for the blogger - probably more than made up for by increased traffic and just a little more profile.
The worst case scenario for the service provider is in how their brand name will probably now be submerged in negativity in their first page of SERP’s.
From that perspective alone, they should be swallowing their pride, desisting from cease and desist and such foolishness, and attempt to make the customer happy - regardless of the feelings of indignation, anger and loathing that they feel.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Listened to a podcast featuring Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine on the IT
Conversations network last night while out walking.
His talk centred around his motivation and proposed proposed model for giving away his next book for free.
This was a pretty painless 30 minutes for a quick whip around of the notions of free that we are all familiar with, but have not maybe considered for our own businesses.
Yet everyone is familiar with the low cost printer where you pay premium for the replacement ink; or the cheap flight where you pay for onboard entertainment and refreshment; or most annoying of all, the cheap “razor system” with the expensive blades.
Most of the models that Anderson discusses not surprisingly, were based around publishing and books, with the ideas and statistics being particularly interesting. For example, making selected chapters available in PDF format, giving away audio versions, etc;
An example was given from Make Magazine where downloadable instructions were getting something like 5.7% click-thru rates on embedded advertisements. Impressive.
So what is the motivation for giving stuff away for free? Of course it has to be based on selling the customer something else. Free is the way to maximise the audience - you give it away in the expectation that you will be able to sell other products or services. Anderson’s own expectation is very simple - with free books, he believes he will sell more speaking events.
The link to the show notes and podcast are here - i really like his take on what makes books indispensable -
“excellent battery life, fanstasic sceen resolution, portable, looks good on your shelf and easy to flip through”
Are viral internet marketing campaigns just pot luck?
This paragraph, deep down in a Fast Company article questioning the fundamental reasonings behind The Tipping Point summed up the argument nicely :
Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. “And nobody,” Watts says wryly, “will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.”
So successful campaigns are just pot luck then? Explain that to the customer you’ve just sold your ideas on viral internet marketing campaigns.
Read the Full Article.
Advertising companies and online presence.
Now that the domain registry rules for .ie registration have become a little easier to navigate, we will probably begin to see more and more sites and microsites associated with specific campaigns.
For example, the Power of One Campaign is one that springs to mind. This must have a huge budget that extends across broadcast, print, (schools, workplace education ?), and the web.
The thing is though, while remembering the URL is handy with the likes of this campaign, it appears from finding the site on the web, it is also apparently mandatory. If I do a quick search on the most obvious google search for this purpose, nowhere does the Power of one site appear.
So I suppose my question is this - what are the issues in apparently allowing the advertising agency to also drive the web strategy in terms of search optimisation and site or microsite naming ?
Could Power of one gone for something as simple as www.savingenergy.ie and have been far more effective online?
Managing a Businesses online reputation - common sense should prevail
We are becoming pretty familiar with bloggers every now and then ripping into businesses that are providing poor customer service and poor customer experience.
I’m talking here about someone that writes a less than complimentary blog post on a product or service; I am not talking about conversations and threads on an online forum, etc.
Most businesses will have little experience about how to engage properly with negative commentary from bloggers, who by definition will be pretty savvy communicators.
The jump from email, phone and forum dialogue through to discussion on the bloggers site - an away fixture if you will - is a lonely place to be slugging it out in defence of a product or service.
The thing that’s missing for me though in these encounters is the success rate or closure rate for the blogger vs. how it could have been achieved through “traditional” avenues?
Does the public dialogue and exposure help solve the problem?
Does the service provider often just dig their heels in and say “feck you” to the negative criticism of the blogger - thinking that it will go away.
The latter is the worst case scenario for the blogger - probably more than made up for by increased traffic and just a little more profile.
The worst case scenario for the service provider is in how their brand name will probably now be submerged in negativity in their first page of SERP’s.
From that perspective alone, they should be swallowing their pride, desisting from cease and desist and such foolishness, and attempt to make the customer happy - regardless of the feelings of indignation, anger and loathing that they feel.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Listened to a podcast featuring Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine on the IT
Conversations network last night while out walking.
His talk centred around his motivation and proposed proposed model for giving away his next book for free.
This was a pretty painless 30 minutes for a quick whip around of the notions of free that we are all familiar with, but have not maybe considered for our own businesses.
Yet everyone is familiar with the low cost printer where you pay premium for the replacement ink; or the cheap flight where you pay for onboard entertainment and refreshment; or most annoying of all, the cheap “razor system” with the expensive blades.
Most of the models that Anderson discusses not surprisingly, were based around publishing and books, with the ideas and statistics being particularly interesting. For example, making selected chapters available in PDF format, giving away audio versions, etc;
An example was given from Make Magazine where downloadable instructions were getting something like 5.7% click-thru rates on embedded advertisements. Impressive.
So what is the motivation for giving stuff away for free? Of course it has to be based on selling the customer something else. Free is the way to maximise the audience - you give it away in the expectation that you will be able to sell other products or services. Anderson’s own expectation is very simple - with free books, he believes he will sell more speaking events.
The link to the show notes and podcast are here - i really like his take on what makes books indispensable -
“excellent battery life, fanstasic sceen resolution, portable, looks good on your shelf and easy to flip through”
Are viral internet marketing campaigns just pot luck?
This paragraph, deep down in a Fast Company article questioning the fundamental reasonings behind The Tipping Point summed up the argument nicely :
Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. “And nobody,” Watts says wryly, “will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.”
So successful campaigns are just pot luck then? Explain that to the customer you’ve just sold your ideas on viral internet marketing campaigns.
Read the Full Article.
Advertising companies and online presence.
Now that the domain registry rules for .ie registration have become a little easier to navigate, we will probably begin to see more and more sites and microsites associated with specific campaigns.
For example, the Power of One Campaign is one that springs to mind. This must have a huge budget that extends across broadcast, print, (schools, workplace education ?), and the web.
The thing is though, while remembering the URL is handy with the likes of this campaign, it appears from finding the site on the web, it is also apparently mandatory. If I do a quick search on the most obvious google search for this purpose, nowhere does the Power of one site appear.
So I suppose my question is this - what are the issues in apparently allowing the advertising agency to also drive the web strategy in terms of search optimisation and site or microsite naming ?
Could Power of one gone for something as simple as www.savingenergy.ie and have been far more effective online?
