In my very first (2002) published article The 4S Web Marketing Mix I reflected on the dot.com gold rush of the 90s ending with the millennium Internet bubble (this was the real millennium bug after all!) that turned the nerdy ephemeral e-millionaires from heroes to zeroes. From one day to the other many of them woke up in the real world: from lavish parties in the Valley where Japanese cocks were regularly flown from Tokyo to cook the sushi to the payroll of the local McDonald's. Another memorable phenomenon of the dot.com gold rush was the exponential and beyond control explosion of “experts” and "innovators" who could persuade anyone how to become a millionaire online in elevator pitches.
Looking to the Social Media / Web 2.0 landscape I can’t help drawing some parallels with that era wondering if we see the dot com bubble revisited. In amazement I see the thriving industry of self-proclaimed Social Media “gurus”, “evangelists”, “missionaries”, “specialists”, “authorities” and “experts” all around. Webinars, books, white papers, courses (online and offline) are everywhere. At the same time a growing industry of buzz analyzers, customer voice hunters and cross media marketers wave with their solutions to the horrified marketers trying to come to terms with customers who do not listen any more. In this setting it is not surprising that businesses caught in the hype are jumping on the Social Media train for a trip to the unknown. While the same time last year most businesses have not even heard of social media according to a recent report of the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business social media adoption by small businesses in the US has doubled from 12 percent to 24 percent in the last year.
While the Social Media seems to become an important component of the future marketing the inflation of experts without any actual experience or knowledge of the subject does not promise anything good. I read about marketers becoming frustrated from the social media mantra and even becoming sick of the term. Negative reports about the power of social media as information sources begin to surface. Recently I came across reports about low trust on social networks as product recommendation sources for consumers and increasing skepticism of peer recommendations. I am not surprised if such reports are true considering the unavoidable misuse of the social media by some (maybe advised by one of the above mentioned “gurus”?)
I would like to raise a red flag to the Social Media gold rush as a warning that like in the previous dot.com gold rush ignorance and greediness can turn things wrong; the knowledge vaccum on Social Media grows and studies of questionable standards and motives appearing everywhere only add to the confusion. Academics should engage actively to the discussion and put the issue in perspective, supported by vigorous and unbiased research. I am the first one who advocates the Social Media as marketing strategy but together with all those who are really interested in the subject I recognize that we still have a lot to learn. The self-proclaimed Social Media gurus, experts etc. remind me a sad story I have seen before and hope not to see repeated again.
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts
Does Search or Social Media Have More Impact?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Of course there’s a secondary question—impact on what? For several days I’ve been thinking about two specific questions:
1. Does search marketing or social media drive more traffic to websites? I’m going to limit it to PPC and not include SE0.
2. Does PPC or social media have more impact on sales?
Both sound pretty simple and straightforward, right? If we believe that, we’ve forgotten all we know about the interconnectedness of media. Nevertheless, starting out with two specific questions led me to some interesting data.
Going backwards, we also know that question two is not as simple as phrased; there is immediate impact on sales and delayed impact. From early studies we know that web exposure, which was mostly display advertising at that time, had some immediate conversion impact but also had longer-term impact. In other words, it often took more than one visit for a consumer to decide to make a purchase. Think about your own behavior—does that make sense? We also learned that conversions occurred offline in retail stores after consumers had visited websites. That was a pretty common phenomenon in the early days, “research on line buy offline.” Again, we’ve all probably done that. Are we more likely to just go ahead and buy online today; probably depends on a number of things.
The same is true of the online vs. offline conversion issue. These 2005 data seem pretty straightforward. More people convert offline. comScore went on to say that they “analyzed the time lag between consumers’ initial searches and subsequent purchases made in the same categories during November and December of 2005. . .more than half (56%) of consumers’ online holiday buying actually happened in subsequent internet sessions, clearly demonstrating the strong latent impact of search.”
I’ve been looking for a replication of this study ever since. I’ve never found one. Does that mean that the latent impact of search has become part of Internet marketing conventional wisdom and no one sees the need? I did find a marketer’s analysis of a single campaign in 2009. He found that initial Google results were faster to come in than Yahoo’s, but that 31% of all results came in after his (approximately 1 month) campaign was over. I’ll take that as confirmation until someone shows me otherwise.
Ok, so here’s what I found in terms of traffic. The answer to question 1 looks pretty simple, right? Search is the winner by a huge margin. But look at what else eMarketer said (newsletter, October 22, 2009):
According to research by ad network Chitika, social sites Facebook and Digg are more likely to send returning traffic your way than search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing. More than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were as loyal.
It doesn’t say that the loyal users were more likely to buy, but would you agree that the likelihood of a purchase goes up with repeat visits? It does seem likely; how much is unanswered, at least in any recent research I could find.
The most interesting data I found is this 2007 study of the influence of newspaper advertising on web traffic. 44% of people who saw an ad did additional research; 67% of them did their research online; and 31% went to a search engine first.
But strong brands matter; in 2009 Nielsen found that 61% of the holiday traffic of retail web sites came from direct visits, not search. A Nielsen spokesman said:
the fact that such a high percentage of people go directly to retail sites and even those that search generally have a pretty clear intent as to which website they'd like to go to -- it makes a compelling argument that brand and past experiences [with a marketer] matter an awful lot and will be far more significant determinants of success than any customer acquisition strategy that they're going to engage in."
That’s really interesting. Two things strike me. First, that’s holiday shopping data for retailers and it may be different for purchases during the rest of the year. Second, all marketers have to do customer acquisition, so the question as to whether social media or search is best for acquisition still matters. Each and every marketer has to answer that by looking at quality vs. quality of initial referrals and the persistence of customers who were acquired in various channels—in other words by Customer Lifetime Value. At the same time, it’s unlikely that one acquisition channel will ever be enough; the question is allocation of resources.
Question 2 one more time--does search or social media have more impact on sales? Here’s data from the current Razorfish Fluent Report. Offline friends are most trusted when making a purchase—WOM again and always. TV was also trusted by these respondents, then “online” activities of several types appear. Search is down at the bottom as far as trust when making a purchase is concerned.
The issue is not straightforward in the sense that either search or social media is “best.” However, there seems to be a pretty clear picture in these data. Search brings more people to your site; social media gives them more trusted information on which to base their purchases. It’s not either/or.
Several times while I was looking for data I came across a good piece of advice. Marketers must measure the impact of various media at each stage in the conversion funnel. It changes from “just looking for information” to “deciding to buy something” and in between. That’s the real message; marketers must use all the tools in their arsenal—wisely!
1. Does search marketing or social media drive more traffic to websites? I’m going to limit it to PPC and not include SE0.
2. Does PPC or social media have more impact on sales?
Both sound pretty simple and straightforward, right? If we believe that, we’ve forgotten all we know about the interconnectedness of media. Nevertheless, starting out with two specific questions led me to some interesting data.
Going backwards, we also know that question two is not as simple as phrased; there is immediate impact on sales and delayed impact. From early studies we know that web exposure, which was mostly display advertising at that time, had some immediate conversion impact but also had longer-term impact. In other words, it often took more than one visit for a consumer to decide to make a purchase. Think about your own behavior—does that make sense? We also learned that conversions occurred offline in retail stores after consumers had visited websites. That was a pretty common phenomenon in the early days, “research on line buy offline.” Again, we’ve all probably done that. Are we more likely to just go ahead and buy online today; probably depends on a number of things.
The same is true of the online vs. offline conversion issue. These 2005 data seem pretty straightforward. More people convert offline. comScore went on to say that they “analyzed the time lag between consumers’ initial searches and subsequent purchases made in the same categories during November and December of 2005. . .more than half (56%) of consumers’ online holiday buying actually happened in subsequent internet sessions, clearly demonstrating the strong latent impact of search.”I’ve been looking for a replication of this study ever since. I’ve never found one. Does that mean that the latent impact of search has become part of Internet marketing conventional wisdom and no one sees the need? I did find a marketer’s analysis of a single campaign in 2009. He found that initial Google results were faster to come in than Yahoo’s, but that 31% of all results came in after his (approximately 1 month) campaign was over. I’ll take that as confirmation until someone shows me otherwise.
Ok, so here’s what I found in terms of traffic. The answer to question 1 looks pretty simple, right? Search is the winner by a huge margin. But look at what else eMarketer said (newsletter, October 22, 2009):According to research by ad network Chitika, social sites Facebook and Digg are more likely to send returning traffic your way than search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing. More than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were as loyal.
It doesn’t say that the loyal users were more likely to buy, but would you agree that the likelihood of a purchase goes up with repeat visits? It does seem likely; how much is unanswered, at least in any recent research I could find.
The most interesting data I found is this 2007 study of the influence of newspaper advertising on web traffic. 44% of people who saw an ad did additional research; 67% of them did their research online; and 31% went to a search engine first.But strong brands matter; in 2009 Nielsen found that 61% of the holiday traffic of retail web sites came from direct visits, not search. A Nielsen spokesman said:
the fact that such a high percentage of people go directly to retail sites and even those that search generally have a pretty clear intent as to which website they'd like to go to -- it makes a compelling argument that brand and past experiences [with a marketer] matter an awful lot and will be far more significant determinants of success than any customer acquisition strategy that they're going to engage in."
That’s really interesting. Two things strike me. First, that’s holiday shopping data for retailers and it may be different for purchases during the rest of the year. Second, all marketers have to do customer acquisition, so the question as to whether social media or search is best for acquisition still matters. Each and every marketer has to answer that by looking at quality vs. quality of initial referrals and the persistence of customers who were acquired in various channels—in other words by Customer Lifetime Value. At the same time, it’s unlikely that one acquisition channel will ever be enough; the question is allocation of resources.
Question 2 one more time--does search or social media have more impact on sales? Here’s data from the current Razorfish Fluent Report. Offline friends are most trusted when making a purchase—WOM again and always. TV was also trusted by these respondents, then “online” activities of several types appear. Search is down at the bottom as far as trust when making a purchase is concerned.The issue is not straightforward in the sense that either search or social media is “best.” However, there seems to be a pretty clear picture in these data. Search brings more people to your site; social media gives them more trusted information on which to base their purchases. It’s not either/or.
Several times while I was looking for data I came across a good piece of advice. Marketers must measure the impact of various media at each stage in the conversion funnel. It changes from “just looking for information” to “deciding to buy something” and in between. That’s the real message; marketers must use all the tools in their arsenal—wisely!
Customer Experience Counts in All Channels
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Forrester recently completed its 2010 customer experience ranking. Data was collected from 4,653 US consumers in November 2009. The full report is available only to Forrester clients, but Bruce Tempkin released key summary statistics yesterday.
His summary of the findings, much of which is displayed in this chart, is interesting:
• Retailers take 12 out of the top 20 spots. I’m happy for them, but I also wonder why retailers appear to think that customer experience is more important than do other types of businesses that sell things—B2B or B2C, products or services?
• Healthcare, Internet and TV services dominate the bottom. Quelle surprise! We all have our stories. My most recent one is yesterday. I called a physician’s office for an appointment instead of her competitor whose office’s customer service was dissed on local ratings services. So far, so good—the appointments secretary was nice to me on the phone!
• There was very little excellence. Again, not news to most of us. Excellent customer service, and it’s outcome, excellent customer experience, is a sustainable competitive advantage. Why? Because it’s hard and it requires upfront investment.
• Liberty Mutual improved the most. Interesting. I’ve actually paid attention to their “responsibility matters” TV advertising. I wondered how that fit into their ability to improve customer experience, so I decided to look around.
What I expected to find was some trade buzz that Liberty Mutual had really been working on its customer service. Maybe they have, but that’s not what I found. I found The Responsibility Project. Business Week had an article and video interview with Stephen Sullivan, senior vice-president, communications services at Liberty Mutual. Sullivan talks about the challenges the firm faced in 2008 as it tried to expand market share in the face of competitors who could outspend and customers who didn’t trust. He says:
"It's a wonderful thing to say that we do the right thing, but it's also a more difficult message to get across to consumers because so many people want to say that," says Sullivan. "What we wanted to say is 'We recognize that personal responsibility is one of your core values and if this is true, then you will like doing business with a company like us because we share that value; in fact, we celebrate it on your part.'"
That view is the core of The Responsibility Project. TV is the responsibility of Hill, Holiday. PR comes from Ketchum, which describes the project as follows:
The Responsibility Project, created by Liberty Mutual, uses entertainment content to create a forum for people to discuss personal acts of responsibility. Through short films, online content and television programming, The Responsibility Project is a catalyst for examining the decisions that confront people trying to “do the right thing.”
Take a look at the project website. The entertainment content is obvious with short films from Liberty Mutual and “responsibility partners” including NBC, Slate and BeliefNet. I was interested in the box that describes their outreach to bloggers at the summer BlogHer conference. The site is reasonably interactive with a blog and an opportunity to post stories, vote on issues and make comments.
Individually, the pieces are impressive. More impressive is the degree to which Liberty Mutual integrates the “doing the right thing” into all its messaging—from the blogger outreach this summer to the career pages on its website. In the Business Week interview Sullivan made the point that employees had to believe in the message in order to be able to deliver on the promise. That starts with hiring the right people, as they are obviously trying to do. One assumes that management at Liberty Mutual is behind the program in both word and deed. Otherwise, the results wouldn’t be showing up in customer experience rankings.
Where did this all start? Liberty Mutual, of the 133 organizations in 14 industries that Forrester surveyed, improved its customer experience rankings the most. That means it supported its words with actions in a most impressive way--another best practices example.
Social media is nice. However, marketers have to use all their channels and use them in an integrated way. If the message doesn’t resonate and the experience is not satisfactory, all social media can do is to reflect customer discontent. If social media is to reflect a strong and trusted brand, business actions are going to establish the foundation. Getting the message out is important, but the actions of employees and the everyday experiences of customers are the ultimate test of strategy.
His summary of the findings, much of which is displayed in this chart, is interesting:• Retailers take 12 out of the top 20 spots. I’m happy for them, but I also wonder why retailers appear to think that customer experience is more important than do other types of businesses that sell things—B2B or B2C, products or services?
• Healthcare, Internet and TV services dominate the bottom. Quelle surprise! We all have our stories. My most recent one is yesterday. I called a physician’s office for an appointment instead of her competitor whose office’s customer service was dissed on local ratings services. So far, so good—the appointments secretary was nice to me on the phone!
• There was very little excellence. Again, not news to most of us. Excellent customer service, and it’s outcome, excellent customer experience, is a sustainable competitive advantage. Why? Because it’s hard and it requires upfront investment.
• Liberty Mutual improved the most. Interesting. I’ve actually paid attention to their “responsibility matters” TV advertising. I wondered how that fit into their ability to improve customer experience, so I decided to look around.
What I expected to find was some trade buzz that Liberty Mutual had really been working on its customer service. Maybe they have, but that’s not what I found. I found The Responsibility Project. Business Week had an article and video interview with Stephen Sullivan, senior vice-president, communications services at Liberty Mutual. Sullivan talks about the challenges the firm faced in 2008 as it tried to expand market share in the face of competitors who could outspend and customers who didn’t trust. He says:
"It's a wonderful thing to say that we do the right thing, but it's also a more difficult message to get across to consumers because so many people want to say that," says Sullivan. "What we wanted to say is 'We recognize that personal responsibility is one of your core values and if this is true, then you will like doing business with a company like us because we share that value; in fact, we celebrate it on your part.'"
That view is the core of The Responsibility Project. TV is the responsibility of Hill, Holiday. PR comes from Ketchum, which describes the project as follows:
The Responsibility Project, created by Liberty Mutual, uses entertainment content to create a forum for people to discuss personal acts of responsibility. Through short films, online content and television programming, The Responsibility Project is a catalyst for examining the decisions that confront people trying to “do the right thing.”
Take a look at the project website. The entertainment content is obvious with short films from Liberty Mutual and “responsibility partners” including NBC, Slate and BeliefNet. I was interested in the box that describes their outreach to bloggers at the summer BlogHer conference. The site is reasonably interactive with a blog and an opportunity to post stories, vote on issues and make comments.
Individually, the pieces are impressive. More impressive is the degree to which Liberty Mutual integrates the “doing the right thing” into all its messaging—from the blogger outreach this summer to the career pages on its website. In the Business Week interview Sullivan made the point that employees had to believe in the message in order to be able to deliver on the promise. That starts with hiring the right people, as they are obviously trying to do. One assumes that management at Liberty Mutual is behind the program in both word and deed. Otherwise, the results wouldn’t be showing up in customer experience rankings.
Where did this all start? Liberty Mutual, of the 133 organizations in 14 industries that Forrester surveyed, improved its customer experience rankings the most. That means it supported its words with actions in a most impressive way--another best practices example.
Social media is nice. However, marketers have to use all their channels and use them in an integrated way. If the message doesn’t resonate and the experience is not satisfactory, all social media can do is to reflect customer discontent. If social media is to reflect a strong and trusted brand, business actions are going to establish the foundation. Getting the message out is important, but the actions of employees and the everyday experiences of customers are the ultimate test of strategy.
Does Behavioral Tracking Threaten Consumer Privacy?
Friday, December 4, 2009
According to a recent study by researchers at the Universities of Pennsylvania and California at Berkeley and sponsored by the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, consumers think it does! Whatever marketers themselves think, these opinions threaten behavioral advertising, and we should take them seriously.
The New York Times had an excellent article when the report was published. It’s an important report, and I’d encourage you to use the link in the Times article and download it to read the entire thing. You will find careful methodology and a carefully chosen, if not huge, sample.
The findings are what’s most important, and here are two of the key ones:
• Even when they are told that the act of following them on websites will take place anonymously, Americans’ aversion to it remains: 68% “definitely” would not allow it, and 19% “probably” would not allow it.
• Americans mistakenly believe that current government laws restrict companies from selling wide-ranging data about them. When asked true-false questions about companies’ rights to share and sell information about their activities online and off, respondents on average answer only 1.5 of online laws and 1.7 of the 4 offline laws [questions] correctly because they falsely assume government regulations prohibit the sale of data. (pp. 3 & 4)
I think the incorrect beliefs about government regulations contribute to the aversion problem; it’s another instance of people feeling duped when they find out the truth. This is a societal problem, not a problem for any one business. Still, individual businesses can be open and honest about their own activities, building trust as they do so.
Both these issues are important but let me present just one chart on aversion to behavioral tracking with the two columns you need to compare highlighted.
First, note that the respondents are more willing to allow tracking when it produces discount offers they want. We’ve been seeing a lot lately about how intensively consumers are using the web to look for promotions and discounts, so that makes sense.
Second, lower table, when the question includes specifics about the information used to tailor the ads, discounts and news, the percentage of people willing to accept goes down—a little less for discounts, but they all go down. Look further; when information is brought in from other websites (the essence of behavioral advertising) or from offline, the willingness to accept plummets.
The full report also had a breakdown by age segment. Younger people are more willing to accept the tailored offers than older ones, but there’s not as much difference as I expected. And younger people show the same pattern of being less willing to accept tailored offers when the source of information is specified.
This is disturbing to the Internet marketer, and there is no easy solution. There have been a few meager efforts by coalitions of businesses and trade groups to better inform users about the nature and benefits of collecting and using consumer data and the differences between anonymous and identified data. The efforts appear to have been half-hearted and it’s clear that they had little impact.
Worse, that’s the only real solution I can think of. Do you have any better ideas???
In the meantime, keep building your trusted brand!
The New York Times had an excellent article when the report was published. It’s an important report, and I’d encourage you to use the link in the Times article and download it to read the entire thing. You will find careful methodology and a carefully chosen, if not huge, sample.
The findings are what’s most important, and here are two of the key ones:
• Even when they are told that the act of following them on websites will take place anonymously, Americans’ aversion to it remains: 68% “definitely” would not allow it, and 19% “probably” would not allow it.
• Americans mistakenly believe that current government laws restrict companies from selling wide-ranging data about them. When asked true-false questions about companies’ rights to share and sell information about their activities online and off, respondents on average answer only 1.5 of online laws and 1.7 of the 4 offline laws [questions] correctly because they falsely assume government regulations prohibit the sale of data. (pp. 3 & 4)
I think the incorrect beliefs about government regulations contribute to the aversion problem; it’s another instance of people feeling duped when they find out the truth. This is a societal problem, not a problem for any one business. Still, individual businesses can be open and honest about their own activities, building trust as they do so.
Both these issues are important but let me present just one chart on aversion to behavioral tracking with the two columns you need to compare highlighted.
First, note that the respondents are more willing to allow tracking when it produces discount offers they want. We’ve been seeing a lot lately about how intensively consumers are using the web to look for promotions and discounts, so that makes sense.Second, lower table, when the question includes specifics about the information used to tailor the ads, discounts and news, the percentage of people willing to accept goes down—a little less for discounts, but they all go down. Look further; when information is brought in from other websites (the essence of behavioral advertising) or from offline, the willingness to accept plummets.
The full report also had a breakdown by age segment. Younger people are more willing to accept the tailored offers than older ones, but there’s not as much difference as I expected. And younger people show the same pattern of being less willing to accept tailored offers when the source of information is specified.
This is disturbing to the Internet marketer, and there is no easy solution. There have been a few meager efforts by coalitions of businesses and trade groups to better inform users about the nature and benefits of collecting and using consumer data and the differences between anonymous and identified data. The efforts appear to have been half-hearted and it’s clear that they had little impact.
Worse, that’s the only real solution I can think of. Do you have any better ideas???
In the meantime, keep building your trusted brand!
Consumers Trust (Some) Online Content
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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?
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?
Is the Answer Disclosure or Context?
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Another follow-up—this one to a post on compensating Mommy bloggers that I recently wrote for Reaching Women Daily. In that post, I argued for disclosure of any compensated blog post and suggested some guidelines for marketers who want to reach out to the vast blogosphere of mommy bloggers. (If you’re not aware of the vast network of connected moms or are looking for data, you might find this recent report by Razorfish and Cafรฉ Mom useful.)
So I was interested in today’s 3-minute Ad Age video, an interview with one of the founders of BlogHer.com. According to the interview, they have a different approach to disclosure. It’s not on a post-by-post basis but requires the creation of separate blogs for compensated posts and those that are purely personal opinion. View the video here.
I searched the site (I’m not registered, but I didn’t find any parts I couldn’t enter) and I didn’t find an example of what Elisa Camahort Page describes in the video. I also couldn’t find a community rule that specified it exactly. What appears to be the newer BlogHerAds section may be the execution of the “context” policy, although what it says in the editorial policy is:
Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party, and/or contains paid advertising links and/or spam. Every opinion expressed must be the true opinion of the author.
They certainly are concerned about blogger compensation; so is the FTC, which is still in the review process but intends to issue guidelines that will affect bloggers as well as other endorsers.
However, I wonder about the context issue. Thinking about how people read (or perhaps how much they often ignore), it seems to me that a disclosure policy like the one I reproduced in the post or a segregation of compensated posts still may not be enough.
If each post that had compensation (including “freebies”) associated with it had a simple disclaimer statement, wouldn’t that be better? That way it’s precisely where the content is located, not in a disclosure or an about this blog statement that might not be read.
That’s where it would be most visible and most meaningful. That would be good for readers; less good for marketers? Maybe, although in the long run, I still believe that transparency rules!
So I was interested in today’s 3-minute Ad Age video, an interview with one of the founders of BlogHer.com. According to the interview, they have a different approach to disclosure. It’s not on a post-by-post basis but requires the creation of separate blogs for compensated posts and those that are purely personal opinion. View the video here.Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party, and/or contains paid advertising links and/or spam. Every opinion expressed must be the true opinion of the author.
They certainly are concerned about blogger compensation; so is the FTC, which is still in the review process but intends to issue guidelines that will affect bloggers as well as other endorsers.
However, I wonder about the context issue. Thinking about how people read (or perhaps how much they often ignore), it seems to me that a disclosure policy like the one I reproduced in the post or a segregation of compensated posts still may not be enough.
If each post that had compensation (including “freebies”) associated with it had a simple disclaimer statement, wouldn’t that be better? That way it’s precisely where the content is located, not in a disclosure or an about this blog statement that might not be read.
That’s where it would be most visible and most meaningful. That would be good for readers; less good for marketers? Maybe, although in the long run, I still believe that transparency rules!
Compensating Mommy Bloggers--The Virtue of Transparency
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
This post was originally published in the ReachingWomenDaily blog.
As I recounted in the first post in this series, I originally became fascinated with mommy blogs by watching my daughter, a new mother at the time. I gradually became aware of their potential as marketing media, although in those early days, I was thinking mostly about their value for targeted online advertising.
I was also intrigued by the number of blogs that were busily distributing coupons.I should have realized sooner that there was more to the coupon activity than meets the eye. It began to dawn on me when I saw this press release and visited the Jessica Knows blog. Her right nav bar has clear indications that she is affiliated with various brands. She also has a clear disclosure statement.
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. We will and do accept and keep free products, services, travel, event tickets, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations. The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. The owner(s) of this blog is sometimes compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for some of our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog may contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/
For several months there has been a lot of buzz about compensating bloggers (WSJ, subscription required) but most of it hasn’t focused specifically on the mommy blogosphere. Here’s a good example; this post explains the controversy surrounding Chris Brogan’s Kmart posts and links to Chris’s reply. The controversy raged for awhile even though Chris’ posts were clearly labeled as being sponsored. The mommy blogosphere is so active there are now various lists of top ten mom blogs. This one focuses on the coupon blogs. I took a look at all 10 and found the following:
• Only one had a disclosure statement and it seems word-for-word the same as the one above. It probably came from the same place. Good for these 2 bloggers!
• Most of the others give clear evidence of monetization. I’m basing that on the blogs being hosted and design and navigation suggesting the use of a professional programmer.
My sample size of 11 blogs wouldn’t pass the “representative” test, but I think the results are compelling. Mommy bloggers are being compensated in various ways and they aren’t bothering to disclose it.What should marketers do? I think it’s obvious that they should require a reasonable level of disclosure. The disclosure statement in use seems to cover the waterfront and it would make sense to require it of affiliates. Perhaps what the business is supplying to bloggers makes a difference, so I’d further suggest:
• Coupons. The mere distribution of coupons through blogs doesn’t seem to create a huge issue. Do users care where coupons come from? I don’t think so! Is there sometimes paid travel or other compensation for the couponing affiliates? It appears so, and disclosure of that would be desirable.
• Product descriptions and ratings. Full disclosure is required when products are being discussed. Consumers have come to rely heavily on peer ratings, and they want to know if the recommenders are truly peers or whether they are compensated endorsers.
• Content. Be sure to brand any content that is made available for use in the blogosphere. That protects both sides.
Wal-Mart seems to have gotten it right with their Elevenmoms blog. It’s linked to the Wal-Mart site and the bloggers and nature of their activities are disclosed. From there, it’s a matter of how well done and useful the blog is. If consumers find value, they will use it. And Wal-Mart, apparently having learned its lesson a couple of years ago, isn’t letting itself in for brand-damaging disclosures.
Transparency Rules!
Author Notes: The second post in this series can be found on RWD. Soon after this post was written the FTC began an investigation of compensated blogging.
As I recounted in the first post in this series, I originally became fascinated with mommy blogs by watching my daughter, a new mother at the time. I gradually became aware of their potential as marketing media, although in those early days, I was thinking mostly about their value for targeted online advertising.
I was also intrigued by the number of blogs that were busily distributing coupons.I should have realized sooner that there was more to the coupon activity than meets the eye. It began to dawn on me when I saw this press release and visited the Jessica Knows blog. Her right nav bar has clear indications that she is affiliated with various brands. She also has a clear disclosure statement.
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. We will and do accept and keep free products, services, travel, event tickets, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations. The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. The owner(s) of this blog is sometimes compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for some of our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog may contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/
For several months there has been a lot of buzz about compensating bloggers (WSJ, subscription required) but most of it hasn’t focused specifically on the mommy blogosphere. Here’s a good example; this post explains the controversy surrounding Chris Brogan’s Kmart posts and links to Chris’s reply. The controversy raged for awhile even though Chris’ posts were clearly labeled as being sponsored. The mommy blogosphere is so active there are now various lists of top ten mom blogs. This one focuses on the coupon blogs. I took a look at all 10 and found the following:
• Only one had a disclosure statement and it seems word-for-word the same as the one above. It probably came from the same place. Good for these 2 bloggers!
• Most of the others give clear evidence of monetization. I’m basing that on the blogs being hosted and design and navigation suggesting the use of a professional programmer.
My sample size of 11 blogs wouldn’t pass the “representative” test, but I think the results are compelling. Mommy bloggers are being compensated in various ways and they aren’t bothering to disclose it.What should marketers do? I think it’s obvious that they should require a reasonable level of disclosure. The disclosure statement in use seems to cover the waterfront and it would make sense to require it of affiliates. Perhaps what the business is supplying to bloggers makes a difference, so I’d further suggest:
• Coupons. The mere distribution of coupons through blogs doesn’t seem to create a huge issue. Do users care where coupons come from? I don’t think so! Is there sometimes paid travel or other compensation for the couponing affiliates? It appears so, and disclosure of that would be desirable.
• Product descriptions and ratings. Full disclosure is required when products are being discussed. Consumers have come to rely heavily on peer ratings, and they want to know if the recommenders are truly peers or whether they are compensated endorsers.
• Content. Be sure to brand any content that is made available for use in the blogosphere. That protects both sides.
Wal-Mart seems to have gotten it right with their Elevenmoms blog. It’s linked to the Wal-Mart site and the bloggers and nature of their activities are disclosed. From there, it’s a matter of how well done and useful the blog is. If consumers find value, they will use it. And Wal-Mart, apparently having learned its lesson a couple of years ago, isn’t letting itself in for brand-damaging disclosures.
Transparency Rules!
Author Notes: The second post in this series can be found on RWD. Soon after this post was written the FTC began an investigation of compensated blogging.
Transparency and the Media
Monday, May 18, 2009
I’m working on a post for Reaching Women Daily that includes admonitions on transparency, so Bob Collins’s retweet of an article in TechCrunch about the 104-year old British woman who Tweets caught my attention—thanks, Bob! A little exploration revealed more interesting facts.
First, this story seemed to originate with UPI, part of the traditional media establishment. They should have checked their facts more carefully.
First, does Ivy Bean, resident of the Hillside Manor in the UK, use Facebook? Not exactly. Search Facebook and you’ll see what I mean. I counted 30 or so facebook pages on the subject of this Ivy Bean (obviously there are other people with the same name, but most of the fan pages have picked up the same pic, so they’re easy to identify). This is the largest I found, the Ivy Bean Appreciation Group with 2019 members. She probably deserves the appreciation of this and other fan pages, but it’s not her page.
When you go a bit deeper into Facebook you find several pages with a message like this.
Ivy Bean is 102 years old and has been told she can no longer add anymore friends as she already has 5000 but has another 6000 requests all please join so Ivy bean can have as many friends as she wants as she is 102 thanx for support
I don’t see any Ivy Bean pages with 5000 members, so I’m guessing a prank here that other Facebook users fell for. There are a lot of people who need to get a life and the manager of Hillside Manor needs a lesson in Facebook!
Second, there are numerous blog posts that attribute the Twitter account to the Geek Squad. So I went to Twitter to find out. First thing I saw on my page is numerous people retweeting about Ivy Bean. Some were non-committal, others are calling it an unethical PR stunt. Ivy Bean does have a Twitter page, established on May 14 with 31 updates, as recently as this morning. "She" has over 12,000 Twitter followers; is following 94. I looked at a few of the people she is purportedly following—students, friends of Geek Squad members, perhaps—or just generally looking for a life??
In any event, I judge the Twitter page to be a scam. Worse, someone is perpetuating it, even after it was revealed as a farce.
The TechCrunch post says that the Geek Squad “press-released the hell out of it.” As if it was a serious event, obviously. One assumes that’s where the UPI got it, and British newspapers picked it up from there. Does no one in traditional journalism fact check any more? I just proved that it’s not difficult!
Marketers, do you want your brand associated with this kind of PR? Even little jokes can backfire. This seems to have been a serious attempt to garner press attention with false information. It also winds up making Geek Squad look like they’ve taken advantage of a 104-year old nursing home resident. I don’t consider that positive PR.
And consider the fact that it was bloggers who outed the incorrect information in the traditional press. It’s a strange world; be careful who you believe!
First, this story seemed to originate with UPI, part of the traditional media establishment. They should have checked their facts more carefully.
First, does Ivy Bean, resident of the Hillside Manor in the UK, use Facebook? Not exactly. Search Facebook and you’ll see what I mean. I counted 30 or so facebook pages on the subject of this Ivy Bean (obviously there are other people with the same name, but most of the fan pages have picked up the same pic, so they’re easy to identify). This is the largest I found, the Ivy Bean Appreciation Group with 2019 members. She probably deserves the appreciation of this and other fan pages, but it’s not her page.When you go a bit deeper into Facebook you find several pages with a message like this.
Ivy Bean is 102 years old and has been told she can no longer add anymore friends as she already has 5000 but has another 6000 requests all please join so Ivy bean can have as many friends as she wants as she is 102 thanx for support
I don’t see any Ivy Bean pages with 5000 members, so I’m guessing a prank here that other Facebook users fell for. There are a lot of people who need to get a life and the manager of Hillside Manor needs a lesson in Facebook!
Second, there are numerous blog posts that attribute the Twitter account to the Geek Squad. So I went to Twitter to find out. First thing I saw on my page is numerous people retweeting about Ivy Bean. Some were non-committal, others are calling it an unethical PR stunt. Ivy Bean does have a Twitter page, established on May 14 with 31 updates, as recently as this morning. "She" has over 12,000 Twitter followers; is following 94. I looked at a few of the people she is purportedly following—students, friends of Geek Squad members, perhaps—or just generally looking for a life??
In any event, I judge the Twitter page to be a scam. Worse, someone is perpetuating it, even after it was revealed as a farce.
The TechCrunch post says that the Geek Squad “press-released the hell out of it.” As if it was a serious event, obviously. One assumes that’s where the UPI got it, and British newspapers picked it up from there. Does no one in traditional journalism fact check any more? I just proved that it’s not difficult!
Marketers, do you want your brand associated with this kind of PR? Even little jokes can backfire. This seems to have been a serious attempt to garner press attention with false information. It also winds up making Geek Squad look like they’ve taken advantage of a 104-year old nursing home resident. I don’t consider that positive PR.
And consider the fact that it was bloggers who outed the incorrect information in the traditional press. It’s a strange world; be careful who you believe!
Can Your Corporate Blog be Trusted?
Monday, February 9, 2009
Because it represents your brand, your business blog needs to be trustworthy. A widely-quoted report by Forrester puts corporate blogs far down on the trustworthiness scale; (download the Forrester report here). I’ve written about creating a trusted corporate blog previously, but a new article on Marketing Profs makes it worth returning to. It’s a subscriber-only article; let me give you a quick summary.
According to Kimberly Smith, writing for Marketing Profs:
• Provide real value for your readers
• Be transparent to a fault
• Be direct and write in an engaging, personal style
• Welcome reader involvement. That requires moderation and a policy to guide it; I’ve written about that before also.
• Make it clear that it is an official corporate blog and what the policies are.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that many blogs that appear to be “corporate” are actually personal blogs and have the required disclaimers. Which is the right approach for your company? Or should you encourage a mix of “official corporate” blogs and personal blogs from corporate executives? Both, in fact, have value.
If you are pondering these issues, you might want to invest in Marketing Profs Smart Tools: Blog Marketing publication. It gives some step-by-step guidance that could be helpful. I’d suggest that the first recommendation is the most important; “Define blog objectives and profile your blog’s target audience.”
Your corporate blog is a communications tool, and it must be planned and managed like one. You have to build trust in the information it provides, just like you’ve worked to build trust in your brand.
But I keep asking—can you afford not to communicate with your customers? to communicate directly and without filters and artifice? That’s the way the world is moving. More important, I’m willing to bet that it’s the way the expectations of your customers are evolving. If you doubt that, ask them!
• Provide real value for your readers
• Be transparent to a fault
• Be direct and write in an engaging, personal style
• Welcome reader involvement. That requires moderation and a policy to guide it; I’ve written about that before also.
• Make it clear that it is an official corporate blog and what the policies are.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that many blogs that appear to be “corporate” are actually personal blogs and have the required disclaimers. Which is the right approach for your company? Or should you encourage a mix of “official corporate” blogs and personal blogs from corporate executives? Both, in fact, have value.
If you are pondering these issues, you might want to invest in Marketing Profs Smart Tools: Blog Marketing publication. It gives some step-by-step guidance that could be helpful. I’d suggest that the first recommendation is the most important; “Define blog objectives and profile your blog’s target audience.”
Your corporate blog is a communications tool, and it must be planned and managed like one. You have to build trust in the information it provides, just like you’ve worked to build trust in your brand.
But I keep asking—can you afford not to communicate with your customers? to communicate directly and without filters and artifice? That’s the way the world is moving. More important, I’m willing to bet that it’s the way the expectations of your customers are evolving. If you doubt that, ask them!
CMO to CCO?
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Monday’s post looked at some of the challenges facing the CMO today. The common thread is that we must all adjust to the new media world, and in doing that we may find our jobs changed. The EIU report quotes the IBM SVP of Marketing and Communications as saying:
Some long-standing advertising agency partners are still figuring out how to help their clients make the necessary transition. The marketing agencies and the advertising agencies are really having a rough time, not embracing the new methods, but making money from them, says IBM.s Mr Iwata. Although virtually all traditional advertising agencies tout their new-media skills, some are relying on old-media business models and profit margins. For example, some agencies offer to produce podcasts and YouTube videos for clients, just as they produced print advertising and television spots. Yet they still charge clients tens of thousands of dollars, he notes, for new-media content that costs next to nothing to produce. And the clients who don.t know better say, .What a bargain compared to prime-time television. (p 17)
Ouch! I can vouch for how careful we need to be when buying services of any kind. I just ran into a situation where two services firms were offering essentially the exact same product but the charge differed by tens of thousands of dollars. Quotes for custom work often vary widely; that’s not a surprise. But I was surprised to find so much difference between two products that seemed to offer exactly the same functionality.
Mr. Iwata has been in the “chief communicator” job at IBM since July. The combination of marketing and communications under a single senior executive is interesting, especially in the light of what this study says. I looked around a bit more and found an excellent video done at the PRSA convention in October. Mr. Iwata talks about his perspective on how to meet the challenges—a worthwhile 5 minutes!(but you may have to go to the Nov. 22 post and pause that video; sorry!!)
With his comments about technology and social media being embedded into business models of all types today, the recommendations of the report make a lot of sense. They see they job of CMO morphing into a CCO in the sense of John Iwata at IBM. This gives the CCO a leadership role in:
• Defining and instilling corporate values
• Building and managing relationships among a multiplicity of stakeholders
• Enabling the enterprise with new media skills and tools
• Establishing trust with all constituencies.
A while paper by the Arthur W. Page Society calls this “The Authentic Corporation” (download from this page.) I’m writing this on the day that CEOs of the American auto makers are driving to Washington for another round of Congressional hearings, so the conclusion of this report seems especially prescient. They say that corporate:
actions and reputations, which used to be safeguarded by a cadre of professionalized functions, are now the responsibility of everyone in the enterprise. What used to be controlled within the company’s “four walls.” Is now spread across multiple partners, communities and individuals around the globe. (p. 6)
A tall order for all of us, especially the CMO/CCO!
Some long-standing advertising agency partners are still figuring out how to help their clients make the necessary transition. The marketing agencies and the advertising agencies are really having a rough time, not embracing the new methods, but making money from them, says IBM.s Mr Iwata. Although virtually all traditional advertising agencies tout their new-media skills, some are relying on old-media business models and profit margins. For example, some agencies offer to produce podcasts and YouTube videos for clients, just as they produced print advertising and television spots. Yet they still charge clients tens of thousands of dollars, he notes, for new-media content that costs next to nothing to produce. And the clients who don.t know better say, .What a bargain compared to prime-time television. (p 17)
Ouch! I can vouch for how careful we need to be when buying services of any kind. I just ran into a situation where two services firms were offering essentially the exact same product but the charge differed by tens of thousands of dollars. Quotes for custom work often vary widely; that’s not a surprise. But I was surprised to find so much difference between two products that seemed to offer exactly the same functionality.
Mr. Iwata has been in the “chief communicator” job at IBM since July. The combination of marketing and communications under a single senior executive is interesting, especially in the light of what this study says. I looked around a bit more and found an excellent video done at the PRSA convention in October. Mr. Iwata talks about his perspective on how to meet the challenges—a worthwhile 5 minutes!(but you may have to go to the Nov. 22 post and pause that video; sorry!!)
With his comments about technology and social media being embedded into business models of all types today, the recommendations of the report make a lot of sense. They see they job of CMO morphing into a CCO in the sense of John Iwata at IBM. This gives the CCO a leadership role in:
• Defining and instilling corporate values
• Building and managing relationships among a multiplicity of stakeholders
• Enabling the enterprise with new media skills and tools
• Establishing trust with all constituencies.
A while paper by the Arthur W. Page Society calls this “The Authentic Corporation” (download from this page.) I’m writing this on the day that CEOs of the American auto makers are driving to Washington for another round of Congressional hearings, so the conclusion of this report seems especially prescient. They say that corporate:
actions and reputations, which used to be safeguarded by a cadre of professionalized functions, are now the responsibility of everyone in the enterprise. What used to be controlled within the company’s “four walls.” Is now spread across multiple partners, communities and individuals around the globe. (p. 6)
A tall order for all of us, especially the CMO/CCO!
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