Don't Let Your Brand be Martha Coakley

It’s been clear for a week or two how the senate election in Massachusetts was going to end. But that doesn’t make it easier for people in and out of the state to accept. For the record, I’m a registered independent, on the email lists of both John Kerry and Barak Obama. If you mined both databases you’d find that I contribute early--important in politics. Not large amounts generally, but I did come close to maxing out in support of Obama. Ok, now you know more about me that I’m comfortable revealing, but it’s important to the story of why Martha Coakley lost when she was 30 points ahead for most of the campaign. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will say that it’s a textbook lesson in missed opportunities, but I’d like to give a marketing perspective.

1. Bad candidate. Snippy comments like ‘am I supposed to stand on a cold street corner and shake hands’ (not a direct quote, but you get the idea). That on a (cold) weekend when Scott Brown was all over the airwaves standing on a street corner shaking hands.
2. Bad messaging. Generic, appeals like ‘I’ll go to Washington and support health care for all’ (again not a direct quote). It’s typical of how I interpreted all of her ads: I’ll go to Washington and vote the straight party line. I don’t think that fits the mood of the electorate.
BTW; Massachusetts has universal health care with an individual mandate. It actually works pretty well. You either submit proof of insurance with your state tax form or pay a fine. It took a while for them to get systems in place to help people get insurance, but it seems to be working ok now.
This election wasn’t about health care per se. As I read it the main issue was government and government spending out of control.


3. Really bad campaign management.
• She announced her candidacy last summer and essentially disappeared for about 3 months, until a week or so before the primary election. She was 30 points ahead, and it made sense to save money, but no foundation was being built.
• The foundation needed was donors and an email list. Both Kerry and Obama have retained control of their lists but they make them available for acquisition on a limited basis from what I see. I never received a donor solicitation or anything else directly from the Coakley campaign. When they began to panic, senators and democratic campaign committees began forwarding her emails. Small Coakley list? I think so.
The email sign up is under the Get Involved tab on her site. Feels like kind of an afterthought. And when you go there, just a page asking for email and zip code. Nothing about what you’ll get, no privacy statement. Not best practices for any brand.
• When things started to turn about the first of the year the campaign had nothing to fall back on except fund-raise out of state (not a good image, given the nature of the campaign) and robo calls. Toward the end, I was getting maybe a dozen a day. I have ANI, so I didn’t answer them. Some did record, including one from the candidate on election day saying; “I know you’re getting a lot of these calls, but. . .” Is that going to affect behavior? Not unless maybe you forgot that yesterday was election day and that was pretty hard to do!
• Both candidates used direct mail and rental lists. I got two from Scott Brown the same day last week, obviously different lists. The same day I got one from Martha Coakley, also a rental list—thanks for knowing that I’m a loyalist!
• I saw Scott Brown ads all over the Internet during the last week. They were on sites like TechCrunch that would get traffic from Gen X and Gen Y techies, a large population in Massachusetts and likely to be independent voters. I saw no Coakley ads.
• Both had active Facebook and Twitter programs. I didn’t follow either—once again I was never asked—but the Boston Phoenix did. Another clear edge for Brown, apparently. I didn't see much PPC advertising for either, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

Neither campaign got below the surface of issues and that seemed to suit both of them for different reasons. I’ll leave it to political pundits to dissect the issues; just don’t believe all the nattering about health care as an issue; that’s also superficial.The impact, however, may be large; the media is not good at separating the two.

One comment last night did strike me. I think it was David Gergen who pointed out that the polls began to turn on the news of the sweetheart deals with Senators Nelson and Landrieu to win their health care votes. That was late November, and the turn makes sense from what I was seeing in terms of voter issues.

So this may have been a flawed brand from the beginning. But there is no doubt that the campaign did not speak to voter concerns—they could have been doing some serious listening last fall and some crafting of messages. In the end, when the crunch came, they had no way to reach a critical mass of supporters with a message that resonated.

I was told not long ago that this online media stuff was easy and it didn’t take much time. So wrong! Unless you have the strategy and the tools in place, you cannot react to either the good or the bad events that affect your brand! That’s the marketing message from this election. I wish I thought it was the only message.

Women, Brand Marketing, and Social Media

Two recent headlines summarize the dilemma for marketers:
• SocNet Branding Fails to Sway Women
• Are Women Really Ignoring Social Network Marketing? (eMarketer, September 17, 2009)
Both articles are based on data from a Q Interactive study recently presented at AdTech Chicago. (See the full presentation here; it has a lot of data and includes two successful brand studies.)

First, let’s admit that the research is all over the place and that headlines often fail to capture nuances. We know that women are on social networks like Facebook in large numbers. However the study as reported in eMarketer makes it clear that some brand marketing activities do have impact. In this economy, not surprisingly, coupons and discounts have the most impact—not exactly what brand marketers want to hear. Online ads have much less impact; purchasing advice from blogs, online communities and website have even less. A study by the Marketing to Moms Coalition and reported in Marketing Charts asks the question more broadly and finds 49% of online moms doing product/price research and 45% shopping for their children.


So moms are online; they are researching and making purchases. Why do they report so little influence from online brand development efforts like marketer blogging and use of social networks. Maybe it’s just the word “marketer.” We also know that WOM is still the most trusted source of information. In the study I talked about earlier this month “Consumer opinions posted online” came in a distant, but still strong, second. Surprise, surprise! Consumers have never been highly trusting of advertising. I don’t think it matters a bit whether that advertising is online or in traditional media.

The difference, obviously, is that consumers now have the ability to make their experiences and opinions available online. That puts them in strong competition with marketers who are trying to make their voices heard online. And since “people like me” are trusted to give good advice, their voices have impact. That says a lot about how brand marketers should be approaching social network marketing. In the Kraft and Fisher-Price brand studies in the Q Interactive presentation, you’ll see lots of coupons, which the data says women are looking for, and contests, which are engaging. But you’ll also see growing attempts to dialog with women and to listen to what they are saying.

But there may well be another issue that arises from the nature of the social platforms themselves. A study from BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners reminds us that women use different social platforms for different purposes. Social networks are primarily used for social purposes. Blogs score much higher for both getting information and sharing opinions. (See the full presentation here.)

Social media can work for brand development and marketing. It doesn’t come quickly or easily, as I’ve said many times. It’s important to start by recognizing that not all platforms are created equal, as far as marketers are concerned. The corollary to that statement is that it takes different types of marketing effort to be successful on different platforms. Starting from this rather simple premise should help brand marketers develop social media strategies that do have impact.

Consumers Trust (Some) Online Content

We know that traditional media is declining and that consumer attention and marketer budgets are aggressively moving online. One of the comments to a post last week reminded me of the importance of the question, “What content can we trust online?” That motivated me to pull out the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey data from this summer and take a look at it. This twice-yearly study surveys 25,000 consumers across the globe.According to the article in AdWeek, “When it comes to trust, personal recommendations and consumer opinions posted online are most valued by consumers worldwide.” Word of mouth from people you know is the most trusted. Consumer reviews posted online are second, although there’s quite a gap. It’s interesting that brand websites are equally trusted. It’s also interesting that traditional media ads rate considerably higher than do online ads.

Additional data from the study, presented in the Marketing Analytics blog, gives another perspective. The study found trust in advertising increasing across the board. According to this report, “consumers today are more trusting of every marketing channel tracked compared to two years ago, save newspaper advertising, trust in which declined a marginal 3%.

The study disclosed some good news for online in particularly banner ads. The percentage of global consumers trusting banner ads grew 27% between 2007 and 2009 and the percentage trusting ads in search engine results grew 21% from 2007 to 2009.” According to eMarketer (August 3, 2009) there are differences between various areas of the world. North America sits pretty much on the average. Even at that, the overall level of trust in online advertising could still be higher.

Why is trust growing? Better behavior on the part of marketers? More need felt by consumers? The respondents feel that advertising helps them make more informed decisions. Some even find it entertaining! I wonder how much the state of the economy has to do with it. Seventy-one percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “Advertising contributes to growth of the economy.”

That shouldn’t let marketers off the hook; it seems abundantly clear that consumers are looking for information—from their friends, from online reviews, and from advertising. Doesn’t that give a strong message as to what we marketers should be doing?

Facebook, Advertising and Revenue

You may have read the article in Ad Age on Tuesday that talked about Facebook’s continuing quest for ad revenue. It touted a number of types of “engagement” ads. I decided to do an inventory of my own page, groups, etc. to see what I could find.

First, I simply looked at Facebook’s advertising page. All that is offered on the public self-service page is Facebook Ads, small text or image ads with targeting options. There’s an interesting feature though—you can add “social actions” to your ad. That brings it into the social sphere, but I’m not sure how the URL of the DIY blog connected to Meredith or the Dave Matthews band, neither of whom I have any known connection with. Nor do I know how this aspect of the ad would change over time. But it is social!

Events. Because of the nature of my Facebook Friends, I get event invitations all the time. An interesting one is from C.C. Chapman who is drawing attention to a Charity:Water event. It’s a Twestival; if you can’t figure that one out, visit the website. When you do, notice that there’s a Connect to Facebook app on the Twestival page. Good connectivity.

Become a fan. I don’t do much of this, but it’s obvious why products, services, organizations, etc. would want you to become a fan so they can communicate with you, right?


Comment on a video. I didn’t really expect any videos with comments on my page; it’s just not the sort of thing I do. However, I checked my inbox and found that Sheldon Muddle, who has a site called Carib Life Central, had sent me a message about a video, on which I can comment. Check it out, but be sure your volume is down low.


Send virtual gifts. I don’t do this either, but it was pretty easy to find. Interestingly enough, it was the first fee-based service I found. At $1 per 100 credits, it doesn’t look as if Facebook is going to get rich on this app fast.

Poll within ad. Career Builder, as part of its Super Bowl program, invited viewers to vote on who would win the game and see the results on Facebook. The Cheezhead blog does a good job of explaining the process and points out that Facebook could make this one self-service if it becomes popular.

That’s Ad Age’s list of the “engagement ads.” I found another example or different type, I don’t know which, on my own—not very active—page that I would add to the list. It’s the Sponsored ad by Dell which encourages me to Wiggle into Social Media by “fanning” Dell’s Social Media for Small Business blog. That’s at least interactive—I’d call the way Dell is using it engaging. I got two different versions of the Dell ad while I was going back and forth and a different ad later appeared.

If you look back over this list of sever different ad formats for Facebook, only 3 of them Ads, Sponsored, and Gifts give Facebook a revenue stream. The others are essentially apps, free to corporate or individual users.

I long ago described Facebook as a metaphor for Web 2.0. Both its successes and its struggles mirror what’s going on around the world of social media. Monetization is one, but certainly not the only, issue.

It seems to me that Facebook is a good place to see a lot of things that are going on in social media. Have you made your Facebook page yet? Are you seeing other marketers doing interesting and potentially useful things there?

Video Ads Are Now DIY

A few days ago I stumbled on a mention of Jivox, which immediately sounded like AdReady, but for video ads instead of display. Looking at the site, I think my initial assessment was right, and that SMBs may be delighted to discover it just in time for holiday advertising. According to their site, their ad network consists of “over 600 premium - branded local television, newspaper, radio and weather related sites as well as some national brand sites and portals.” I see one of the major news sites in Boston on their list and others whose name I recognize, so the network looks credible.

The business was launched in March 2008 with venture funding and presumably is still in Beta, although they don’t make an issue of that. It allows users to create their own video ad or to run an existing video ad on their network. They describe it as a simple three-step process. Creating the ad is free, or they can arrange production. Let them explain the pricing in their own words as stated on their FAQs:

I thought the service was free? Why am I being asked for credit card information? There's absolutely no cost associated with creating your ads with Jivox. A conventionally produced ad for local television can cost $10,000 to $30,000, but you pay nothing for ads created with our revolutionary AdSlate technology. We charge you only for the advertising itself: running it on the sites in the Jivox network. Once you've create one or more video ads, you set your daily, weekly or monthly ad budget to place it on the Jivox network. Jivox will automatically match your ads with the audience that is most likely to respond favorably to your campaign. In addition, once you have a live campaign, we provide automatic upload to YouTube and to local search providers such as Google Maps and GetFave, free of charge.

The ads are created with an embed link so the customer can put them on a website, blog, etc., so they can do double or even triple duty.


There’s a gallery of ads and a page of case histories. These ads probably aren’t going to win creative awards any time soon, but a video ad could be a real breakthrough for a small local business like the B&B mentioned in a WSJ article about Jivox.

From the standpoint of both advertisers and publishers who accept the ads, this is another in a step toward making rich media advertising available to even the smallest local business in a way that makes economic sense. It’s also a way for publishers to monetize their sites, at least if the sites are advertising appropriate, as a lot of social media are not. That said, it puts a lot more pressure on the free content/advertising supported business model. Can that model carry the weight for publishers of content? That remains to be seen!

Better than Viral?

A few days ago an article in iMediaConnection entitled “Tips for Media Seeding” caught my attention. It questioned our ability to make most marketing campaigns viral—not news to many of us. Yes, there are some exceptions; Burger King’s subservient chicken has been around since 2004 and you can still interact with it. It’s important to note that this is entertainment, with minimal promotion for Burger King.

This quote from the article captures the essence of the “big seed” approach:

"As an alternative to traditional viral marketing, agencies can employ a big-seed distribution strategy. In doing so, a planner assumes a low pass-along rate for any piece of content. To counteract the effects of the low pass-along rate, the planner makes efforts through paid placements, syndication or sponsorships to grow the number of initial seed users exposed to the piece of content. Thus, instead of relying on a small number of seed users, the planner relies on a large number of guaranteed exposures."influencers, s

To prove their point the authors give a case history in which Sega of America produced 4 videos. The first one was “seeded;” read that paid advertising and sponsorships were used to promote the video. The other three had no promotion. The first was viewed 797,000 times, more views than the other three combined.

That means the advertising reached “influentials” who passed it on, right? I started looking, and the consensus seems to be that it’s not that easy on the Internet. Consider the statement in a recent post that everyone can be an influential at the appropriate time. There’s a lot of research going on; much of it coming out of the Collective Dynamics Group at Columbia University. Their working paper version of the HBR article referred to in iMediaConnection makes an important statement:

“based on our results we would go as far as to suggest that in focusing on the properties of a few “special” individuals, the influentials hypothesis is in some important respects a misleading model for social change. Under most conditions, we would argue, cascades do not succeed because of a few highly influential individuals influencing everyone else, but rather on account of a critical mass of easily influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence people” ( p. 34)

In other words, the old opinion leadership/influencials model that we all learned in either a sociology or marketing course is questionable in the content ecosystem of the web. Cascasdes (of information) can start in many places.

Here’s another lengthy, statistical treatment from the same researchers. There’s a lot of discussion of these ideas in the blogosphere also, some referenced below. I’ll plan to do another post soon and talk about metrics, because the measurement issues are key.

An Edelman white paper gives some of the easiest-to-digest information. This is the model they propose; it covers both influencers and the influenced. It doesn’t give approaches to identifying either, but it does work on the hypothesis that people use information to make sense of and maintain control over their worlds. That’s all of us, and the Internet has given us a bigger scope for our information search. They also seem to accept the view that context is critical. In this view influencers attract attention, engage others, and influence them to take action. That’s what we all want influencers to do for us. The influenced identify interest in a subject, fulfill their need for information, review that information, and then take action. Both make sense, especially if you accept the argument that it’s not a small group of so-called influentials, but crowds of people who like to influence and be influenced, depending on the context/situation.

That’s interesting, but it doesn’t leave us with any directions for marketing action. Valeria Maltoni’s Conversation Agent blog had a lengthy post with many links early this year. Her conclusions come from reviewing several sources and make sense to me. She recommends:

1. Focus less on who people influence and more on how people are influenced.
2. Think more about networks, and network structure, rather than treating everyone as behaving independently (group dynamics).
3. Move away from the idea that buzz can be engineered to achieve some pre-established outcome, and get better at measuring and reacting to buzz that arises naturally (observation from context).

There’s also an interesting, if a bit disjoined, live-blogging post from a September conference on the Mashraqi blog. He has some good recommendations also.

I keep coming back to the idea that this is a dialog going on in social networks or communities (are those the same thing? I think so). As marketers, we can’t just single out a few opinion leaders and expect them to do the job for us. The new Crest Weekly Whitening Paste seems to have taken that approach. I keep watching to see when it comes out of its “quiet phase” and begins to engage in active promotion. The only recent action in the blogosphere I can find via a Technorati search (lots of noise in those searches) is coupons for the other Crest Whitening products. Stay tuned.

It looks to me as if making a campaign viral, even assuming good content, is going to require several planned steps. Does that make sense?

Creative Strategy for Rich Media

DoubleClick was one of the first ad serving agencies and now offers a broad range of services to marketers. Because of the ad serving activity they have a lot of data and they’ve used it to provide many useful reports. I recently came across their “Creative Insights for Rich Media” report, which can be found on their Research Reports page (under the Insights and Innovations tab).

I was especially interested in the video formats although the report contains data on standard ad formats, with and without video. Here’s a table that summarizes the data related to video.

Video Formats In-Page Expanding Video Expanding Non-Video In-Page Video	Click-Through Rate	Larger creative sizes give higher click-through rates
	Interaction Rate	In-page and larger creative sizes give higher interaction rate
	Interaction Time	Format plays little role in interaction time (content is key)
	Expansion Rate	Video formats produce higher expansion rates than non-video ads
	Video Complete Rate	More videos are completed in expanding formats; even more in the in-page format. Fewer auto-play videos are completed than are user-initiated videos

The report concludes with two recommendations, both of which sound like no-brainers.

1. The marketer must know the definitions and methodology behind the metrics she is using. We all know CTR; the definitions of the interactive metrics are more complex. Those definitions are detailed on page 13 of the report.
2. "Only compare and contrast data that comes from the same system and that adheres to the same methodology." That sounds pretty straightforward also--right? For example, it's all DoubleClick data; isn't it comparable. No. They point out that they've updated some of the computations of some of their metrics recently--and other producers of metrics do the same. The marketer has to be vigilant, even when tracking the same metrics over time.
   

As I read the report, I remembered that MSN.com used to have a really explanation of rich media formats, including video, on their advertising page. So I went there to look for it. On the way I got sidetracked.

I saw the ABC ad on the MSN home page and decided to "Visit ABC.com."

There's lots of media on the ABC.com site; that's no surprise. Actually, I was most interested in the banner at the top showing Bill Gates. It invited me to "rollover" and I did.

That opened a page at Microsoft; apparently a new marketing program, "A PC is not a stereotype," whatever that means. It's some interactive "advertainment"--you can see who's a pc, or in the other tab you can see what you'd look like in various advertising venues--Times Square, for example.

Quite a few people have uploaded pictures to play their game. I expanded Steve Ballmer's picture. I love it when CEOs participate!

By that time I was tired, and the post is getting too long anyway. MSN has improved their rich media formats page since I was last there and they have an excellent creative gallery. Check them out for yourself. And think about the power of these new media!

Wither Digital Marketing?

Every so often I like to stop for a moment and look at the stats for online marketing, broadly defined. I’m such a believer, that I need an occasional reality check, positive or otherwise. Today’s eMarketer newsletter asking “How Much Marketing is Digital?” suggested this was a good time. And the news in terms of continuing spending and future estimates is positive. eMarketer forecasts (newsletter, March 31, 2008) online to be 10% of all media spend in 2009. Will growth in online slow as a result of poor economic conditions? At least some analysts don’t think so. According to Karsten Weide, of IDC, “A bad economy forces advertisers to save money by eliminating the least-effective forms, thus speeding up the adoption of new media advertising.”

Nielsen data for May (the most recent I could find) shows the Internet share at just under 7%. That’s a bit different from the eMarketer data, but there are lots of data sources, lots of definitions. There doesn’t seem to be any argument about the trend; it’s upward and the best argument seems to be the effectiveness one.

Today’s eMarketer article refers to the same Sapient study reported on by Marketing Charts on September 5. They quoted survey data that showed CMOs planning to spend more on digital with some of them inching up toward 50%. The main focus in this popular article was on agency relationships and the ability of agencies to meet digital needs. The CMOs surveyed weren’t confident they have that ability. According to the article: “More than one-third of marketers surveyed said they are not confident that their current agency is well-positioned to take their brand through the unchartered waters of online digital marketing and interactive advertising.”

What are the CMOs looking for from agencies? The article has a top 10 list, all worth considering. I’ll list just the top 4:

1. Greater knowledge of the digital space
2. More use of “pull interactions”
3. Leverage virtual communities
4. Agency executives who use the technology they are recommending

All this makes perfect sense, and agencies clearly have a major role to play in helping their clients navigate the choppy waters of new media, made even more difficult by economic conditions. Agencies have been struggling to service their clients in newest media and technologies (think direct and database marketing, for example) for as long as I can remember. And that will undoubtedly continue.

But it’s not enough to place the entire burden on agencies. Marketers have to understand the issues; they have to ask the right questions; they have to demand objectives and metrics that encompass the new media environment. Look at item #4 above; they want executives of their agencies to be users of the technology.

Marketers have to follow their own advice. I keep saying there is simply no substitute for using the media, trying out the technology for yourself. But marketing managers can go a step further.

I wonder how many marketing departments have any kind of a coordinated approach to who needs to follow which disciplines, newsletters, webcasts; who needs to spend some time on Facebook or MySpace or in relevant virtual worlds. None of us are going to learn to deal with the new media environment by staying in our comfortable traditional media cocoons.

More on that tomorrow.

Special K Meets the Online Challenge

Perhaps you noticed the Ad Age article Thursday on Kellog’s advertising entitled “Digital ROI Surpasses That of TV.” There was a follow-up on Saturday with a more specific headline, “Kellogg Says ROI on Digital Trounces TV by 'Factor of 2'.” Something interesting going on here!

Unfortunately, they aren’t talking about their advertising metrics, and that may be the most interesting subject of all, given their pronouncements on ROI. But a quote from CMO Mark Baynes seems to capture the essence:

"Maybe the biggest opportunity over time is driven by what the digital environments afford, and we are working to embrace this aggressively."

What are they doing?

I think the Special K Challenge is aptly described as an integrated promotional campaign. It’s been going on since at least 2006, winning an award from Promo magazine in that year for its multidisciplinary campaign. In the November 2006 issue of the magazine the components of the integrated campaign described the components as follows:

Sweepstakes: instant-win participants could redeem a free pair of blue jeans when a goal size was achieved
Online: advice, tools and chat to keep dieters motivated and engaged
FSI Coupon: with seasonally relevant on-pack offers and a coupon offer that boosted multiple purchases
Retail: events in key markets and promotional P-O-P garnered in-store attention for the Challenge, which was reinforced by on-pack punch
Media: print ads in fashion and parenting magazines and newspapers, as well as heavy cycling through TV programming with large female viewership kept awareness high

They seem to have stayed with those basic components to a large extent over the campaign and the message has been consistent with a variety of executions. One of the main rotating themes on the main site is a “get a friend” approach. That’s good weight loss/exercise advice; it’s also good direct marketing strategy. They aren’t talking about the effectiveness of the Yahoo! Group, but it seems to be active, and it has a lot of content. One thing you notice when you track the program around the web is the aggressiveness of their “diet” competitors (the challenge is not described as a diet). When you search “Special K Challenge” they own the first place in the PPC ranking; all their main competitors appear to have purchased the term also.

Where are they doing it?

That was one of the more interesting results of my searches. I wanted to find a banner ad. I found one on an Australian site. I hope the banner works for you. It’s a great interactive banner. The message is essentially the same as in the US. Get ready for summer by dropping a jean size.
The UK site features a more individual approach. That’s interesting. Is it just execution, or is the friends/groups approach less successful there?



The one that really surprised me is the execution of the campaign in the United Arab Emirates. They continue to focus on the “drop a jeans size” theme. The “wall” section of the site says 2500 women have taken the challenge and lists inches lost by various participants. The current campaign there seems to have an events thrust. According to an article in local business paper Al Bawaba in May:

Hundreds of residents from across the UAE descended on Jumeirah Beach Park yesterday to participate in K-Day UAE 2008, which kick started the Kellogg's Special K two week challenge in the UAE, and follows from the phenomenal success of the challenge so far around the globe.

Is this why the Special K Challenge has achieved such an impressive ROI? It is a long-running campaign—giving a change for learning and development. It has been consistent in theme and messaging, keeping a clear focus. There have been various executions of the basic message. The campaign runs globally, with a consistent message adjusted for local effectiveness. The answer is clearly yes, for all those reasons!

So integrated marketing communications work—no surprise there! The ability to measure the effectiveness of online within that complex framework and to identify online as more effective than traditional media—in this case TV—is the achievement of Kellog’s marketers. They deserve all kinds of credit for careful, clearheaded marketing planning and measurement. Many of the rest of us could take lessons!

Social Landing Pages?

I noticed this term a few days ago in Ion Interactive’s newsletter and thought it was interesting. Landing pages are an important—and too often ignored—part of the conversion process. Improving them is a subject that should always be of interest. So, as usual, I set out to explore.

The first thing I found out is that the term doesn’t seem to be in use on sites like Grokdot.com, which specializes in conversion issues, or Omniture, which touts optimization of various aspects of emarketing. What I did find was a number of services that help marketers test their landing pages. Testing is always good, whether the pages are social or not.

So I went back to Ion to find their definition. Content from their newsletter (July 08) answered that:

Subscriber question: What is a social landing page?
Answer: Social landing pages are landing pages that include social networking features. They bring together marketer-managed marketing and social interactivity.

In the news release for their LiveBall product, Ion’s president Scott Brinker adds, “A landing page can serve as a ‘connector’, bringing together people with a specialized, shared interest.” The press release goes on to describe 7 benefits of adding social features to a landing page that include recipient interaction, brand development and lower bounce rate.

These are interesting, but I wanted some examples. Their LiveBall product demo is interesting, although it stopped working about half way through the second step. It makes it clear, though, that the Ion product is marketer-controlled, and I’m always a fan of DYI.

But I’m still looking for examples, so I did something I don’t usually do. I clicked on some PPC ads. (I’m such a considerate customer that I always use the free search listing link if it’s available.) I’ve used the Vertical Response product and like the company, so I looked to see what they had and found a good landing page. After clicking on several banners on several portal sites I found an HSBC ad on the NYT site that had a good landing page.

The search alone is instructive. A lot of companies are paying for advertising and not using landing pages associated with their ads. Some of the ads took me to product pages, which were at least relevant. Others just took me to a home page. Shameful!

Take a look at what I did find. I’m showing the landing page and the home page. Both landing pages have URLs that prove my point, but I’m showing the home page anyway to make the point that the landing pages take visitors more directly into relevant product information than do home pages.

The Vertical Response page is long, so I cut in in half and put it back together so you could see it all. It’s not particularly creative, but it gets their Create > Send > Track message across, has some promotional content, presents a compelling offer (500 free emails), and lets the viewer sign up directly on the landing page. Maybe not “creative,” but it really does the job. You could get to sign up from the home page, but you’d have to click through to the email page, where you’d find much of the same information, but an offer for only your first 25 emails (small list!). Vertical Response clearly has a landing page that’s meant to maximize the conversions from its PPC advertising.

HSBC’s term life insurance landing page (if you could see the URL, you’d see they call it the “simplestart” page) is even more interactive. It allows you to select profile characteristics and request a quote, again, right from the landing page. HSBC is a more complex enterprise and it’s home page represents that. It’s insurance main page is remarkably unattractive, but it allows you to get quotes for a variety of insurance, including term, which was featured when I wrote this post, presumably to integrate with the current banner advertising campaign.

Neither of these had “social” components in the social networking sense, although other components are possible. Ion’s blogs, for example, cover issues like use of widgets in online advertising and news feeds on landing pages.

So, while I’d call these landing pages “interactive,” instead of “social,” and there’s a large frontier to be explored either way. As you explore, don’t forget to test every step of the way. There’s so much a marketer can do; the question should always be “what should I do in order to be successful?” Test and find out!