Welcome to your Digital Classroom

Paul, Seb, everyone: strong points throughout…

And looking at some of the comments from web publishers on one of Digital’s Publishing Strategy Academies, I’m conscious that every brand suddenly needs a dose of publishing know-how.

There are some real strong ideas, just here - see if you can apply them in your team:

http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/publishingstrategyclassroom/exercise_what_rocks_and_flops/index.php

MY ROCKS ARE

Marketers can talk direct with customers
Marketers can hear straight back from customers
Marketers can prove the effect their work is having
Marketers get to involve customers into the brand
Marketers can build for the future

ROCKS

Banner with a sense of humour
Clever user interaction
Expanding banners
Sites that continue the story the TV spot started
Different packets of video content in the ads

ROCKS
1. Local placement of banners, ie different creative for each country
2. Rich Media Technology such as full page overlays and floating ads garner huge responses
3. Email opt-in lists (subscribers)
4. Mass Targetability- Geotargeting, ip targeting (.gov, .edu) there is no waste
5. Exclusive downloads, only available online

FLOPS
1. Sites that are down
2. Marketing fluff and vanity publishing
3. Print brochures on the web
4. TV commercial on the web
5. Press releases on the web

ROCKS
1. Depth of information: even the most simple advert can be a gateway into a catalogue of deep and rich information
2. Accountable: Easy to measure
3. Video: you can stream video content into banners
4. Adjustable: It's easy to change - if I want to change it I can
5. Smart use of space: Expandable banners create more space for each advert

FLOPS
1. Ads I can’t close because there's no X button
2. Spam
3. Spam in search
4. Ads with audio on
5. Print ads converted to the web

ONLINE MARKETING

To get you started in this classroom, as the designer of this internet marketing training programme, I thought it worth sharing some of the things I feel ‘Rock’ in online marketing. Whether you are on our two day advanced online marketing courses for agencies, or the just on a half day intensive Academy, look at the ideas here and think about whether the points from me or other people could help you think differently about your marketing.

A FEW OF MY ‘ROCKS’
1. Search: Setting the price you can pay for a customer, switching it on and watching the monies roll in.
2. Finding stuff, fast: Providing the information you’re looking for is there, then the speed of getting to the exact bit of information is so fast and efficient that it changes the way marketers can think about providing information.
3. Finding stuff, anywhere: Being able to get information on companies and products on my laptop, on my phone and any time of day.
4. Tapping into social networks: Getting marketing messages shared with groups and passed from one friend to another, all with their recommendation and stamp of approval.
5. Email: Allowing brands to stay connected to their customers.

AND A FEW FLOPS
1. Broken links: Every site has them, everyone gets hacked off by them.
2. Link farms: Those annoying sites that look like they’ll have just what you want in the preview on Google and then turn out to be just filled with junk links.
3. Navigation that fails to navigate: Lack of links, lack of clear links, or just clearly lacking
4. Poorly targeted pop-ups: It’s not the format that I hate, it’s the poor planning and execution – back in 2001 I ran a promotional campaign to try and get the UK online ad industry to ease back from using them because I had a hunch it was hacking off the viewers and a backlash was coming - yeah, the campaign was a dismal failure ;-)
5. Hopeless landing pages: seeing brilliantly written search copy take prospective customers to a page that wholeheartedly fails to do anything to convert them to become customers.

Use these comment spaces to paste in what 'rocks' and 'flops' for you...