Digital Marketing Academy Classroom

The conversation threads in this online classroom have now switched to a private classroom only accessible for teams taking part in training programmes in this area. If your team are interested in this type of training, workshops or strategy development then simply email Admissions@DigitalTrainingAcademy.com to find out more.

What should the balance be in the media mix in Central and Eastern Europe? What's the role of TV commercials and how much shoudl a consumer brand be spending?

Exploring consumer interaction in meaningful depth

It's a complicated issue because it strikes at the heart of the new ways audiences are engaging. Bottom line? Just because they are there does not mean they will respond. The problem is that while audience volumes may be high, it doesn’t follow that the consumer’s engagement with brands will match this, and the nature of customer communications means many brands invest heavily in communication that just doesn’t get the traction they hope for.

This is something we explore in the advanced and masterclass levels of the Digital Media Planning Academy as what we’re seeing is a more subtle mix of consumer behaviours emerghe as people online in ‘creation mode’ (building blogs and writing) behave differently to those in communication mode (messenger, chat and email) to those in entertainment mode, and other more passive browsing modes.

Overlayed onto this are the cultural differences between internet users in each of country and this diversity suggests the best solution for brands is to think more about the target audience and try researching their unique behaviours to gain insights about how communications can unlock pass-on effects and deliver a real cut-through in the increasingly cluttered media landscape.

Here are a few questions to reflect on:

- Is the communication you are producing interruptive (like the normal TV commercial model) or something that invites discussion and pass on? There are a few examples of these in the Digital Viral Marketing Academy classroom, here: http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/viralmarketing/

- Can the web presence you have act as a hub for discussion or provide a service audiences actively want to engage with? Remember that the success of most websites is through the utility they provide: brand building messaging rarely delivers the engagement and repeat traffic so think about what people use and how you can satisfy that need.

- How can you find out more about the mindset of consumers and your own target audiences? In these new and unfolding marketing landscapes, commissioning some focus groups for how your own customers use the web might prove very insightful. But above all, use the websites themselves to unlock a rich vein of feedback about what people engage with, how, and why.

Do you have any specific insights on Digital in Korea (eg search, consumers, media planning etc)? Reason is that my colleagues question the depth of the consumer interaction online, they argue that there is no sharing and building but rather copy and paste from news sites. Although broadband penetration is amongst the highest in the world, we struggle to identify the opportunity properly.

Many thanks for your input.

Online moderation – Deciding when to moderate comments in social media

Having a policy and process in place for moderation is key to maintaining strong online discussion and removing risk for you as a web publisher. But the practice is difficult because it raises the deepest of questions about the relationship between publisher and participant. How do you deal with conversations between viewers that descend into a flame war? How do you maintain a thread of comments that are on topic? How do you build credibility in the debates on your site without censoring everything that's written? How do you avoid the legal risk of libel when you are the publisher but your readers are the author? Social media tools are great ways to engage audiences and boost page traffic, but moderation needs to be taken into account from the very start.

http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/articles/2008/03/best_practice_online_moderatio.php

Should I moderate the discussion in the new social media and forum spaces we are creating?

Getting more clicks for the viewers you have

Audience acquisition and audience retention strategies are two parts of the triangle of creating high sustainable audiences. A key areas is in making more from the audiences already on the site. The effective cross selling between different parts of the website can trigger a step-change in the audience numbers and the level of engagement. When publishers appreciate the direct relationship between the number of pages viewed and the number of advertising exposures, it’s clear that there is a strong need to creating more opportunities to click deeper, encouraging audiences to click between different areas of the site and to consume more pages. Here are some simple tips for making the most of what you have:

1. Navigational language

Think about whether your navigation is written through the eyes of a publisher or those of a viewer. Look for language that fits with the customer’s and the way they describe products and services. A simple example of this is the word ‘classifieds’ to describe the small-ads listings in newspapers and magazines. It’s so deeply embedded in the industry jargon that we don’t even see it, and yet customers are far more likely to be looking for ‘flights’, ‘cars’, ‘homes’ or ‘jobs’, so by switching the language around to match their needs it makes content more discoverable and creates greater opportunities for clicks.

2. Navigation structures

Apply the same process to the structure of the site itself. The example of ‘classifieds’ works well here too: why put all the content from such diverse areas into one section? Link the motoring adverts and listings from the motoring content pages and put property advertising in a dedicated property section. Many media groups have gone as far as creating dedicated sites for each of the classified ‘pillars’, but the model of having content cluster together around a clear human need state is a proven way to help web publishers get more from their online resources.

3. Cross promote in smart places

There’s often a natural relationship between the audiences in one part of a website and those in another. For example, publishers reading Digital’s articles about web publishing strategy might also be interested in Digital Media Sales, so that would be a logical place for this publisher to anchor some cross promotional activity. By learning about your audiences and the patterns and connections they share, publishers are best placed to get their cross promotion working much harder.

4. Cross linking with editorial

Hyperlinking within the text of an article is at the heart of online journalism. Back in the mid 90s when I helped run The Daily Telegraph’s internet businesses in the UK, we had a team of sub editors manually coding those sort of links every night. It was an arduous process, but the value to the readers was immense, and built on the very heart of the hyperlinking discipline that predated the development of the web. This approach has a powerful way of boosting traffic because it presents the most relevant content just at the right moment to the right person.

One approach is still to do this manually. It’s a major challenge for many publishers, but requires no system development, and if the editorial team and content is small it can prove cost effective. Another hinges on categorising the stories with attributes (tags) that describe what they are about. Popularised by the blogging platforms, the latest generations of content management tools have tags at their heart and when used well these massively amplify the number of related links. But the web continues to evolve and the new generation of smart contextual search tools, such as British technology firm Grapeshot, are opening up even better ways to achieve this. They can figure out the relationships between different documents on the website and automatically connect relevant content together.

5. Getting internal search right

It’s still staggering that many websites seem to forget to put search tools into their navigation. By making content across the site searchable and the services quickly discoverable by people already on the site, the potential for a reader to move from one section to another rapidly increases. Some publishers are overly keen on adding many fields for filtering within search, but remember that the more fields and search variables, the fewer results will appear.

6. Sitemaps are for readers and now for Google too

Sitemaps may not be the most exciting aspect of web publishing, but many sites still overlook them. Now that search engines have a way of recognising them and harnessing them to speed up the website indexing process, they have become useful tools for assisting discoverability for those who already know the brand.

How do I get more page views from the people already on my site? We’re an online consumer magazine and have a low number of page views per person.

Retaining online audiences is something many media owners invest far too little time and attention in. Yet it is much cheaper to reacquire an existing customer than to acquire a completely new customer, so by building loyalty among existing readers the firm is well on the way to boosting the traffic and activity on the site.

A good model is to think of the sink with a tap of water pouring in new customers and a plug hole where existing traffic is draining out. Plug the hole just slightly and it has a dramatic affect on the audience volumes.

Examine ways to open up a relationship with existing users to help them reconnect with the content. Here are some of the most effective ways of quickly changing the engagement levels with existing users:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a way of helping existing readers get reminded about the brand
2. Email newsletters are the most powerful way of maintaining contact with occasional readers: create newsletters that take elements of the website and package them into a format easy to send and click through from
3. RSS feeds are increasingly powerful in helping sophisticated readers find the right material and content
4. Encourage bookmarking, and social bookmark use such as Delicious – getting into bookmarks means customers will be reminded about the brand regularly, raising awareness as well as click rates
5. Syndicating content: look for good partners to syndicate headlines and simple feeds to ensure content is easily discoverable by audiences who know the brand
6. For mainstream consumer brands, desktop ticker devices like Skinkers can be a great way of staking a claim for the most previous real-estate on the web: get into the customer’s desktop or bookmarks is getting into the front of their mind on a regular basis

How do I keep audiences coming back to my website? (We’re an online magazine)

Boosting the traffic to websites is a ceaseless challenge and as many businesses become increasingly reliant on their web presence to acquire customers or deliver messaging, the marketing of that web presence needs an increasing amount of attention.

For media owner websites there are the additional challenges that stem from the tight relationship between internet traffic and revenues (on every page there are ads the media owner only gets paid for when the page is viewed so the more views, the more ads, the more income).

Building sustainable audiences to an online media property takes focus and effort, but smart publishers plan out a strategy for customer acquisition and retention. After all it’s easy to buy ten thousand clicks from Google, but getting the right people and getting them to stay takes skill and insight.

Start with a strategy for strong audience acquisition mechanisms. Examine ways to make the content of a site discoverable by non-users and invest in content development to ensure that there is a tight match between the content created and the ways people might look for that content in search engines.

* Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) remains the most effective long term tool for customer acquisition
* Create body copy in the stories which is written with Google in mind: ditch some of the more flamboyant headlines and look for language that creates immediate clicks
* Email newsletters are a great way of maintaining contact with occasional readers, but also to reach new readers by encouraging them to forward their news to a colleague
* PR channels both offline and online can provide some of the most creative thinking about audience acquisition and there’s a tight relationship between PR and some of the most outstanding thinking in viral marketing
* The new generation of social media are proving powerful ways to raise awareness, although not necessarily delivering large volumes straight away
* RSS feeds are a way of helping the more web savvy users stay in touch and monitor a site’s content, but they are only one form of feeds, and with similar techniques available to supply content and headlines into FaceBook profiles and other channels, having the content in this form can prove extremely flexible
* For mainstream consumer brands, desktop ticker devices like Skinkers can be a great way of staking a claim for the most previous real-estate on the web: get into the customer’s desktop or bookmarks is getting into the front of their mind on a regular basis

And then there are the range of tools and techniques of cross promotion in moving audiences between media channels. Here are a few quick tips:

* Weave the web address into the masthead and logo
* Give the website a clear positioning in the mind of the reader: “See updates, live, online at …”
* Use house advertising to drive specific propositions; rather than generic messages about the website, link the location of the advert to a specific message such as something like this in the cricket section of a printed newspaper ‘More cricket news and team archives online at…’ or this in a directory of a business magazine “For more listings of leading suppliers, with web addresses and online reviews, visit…”
* Take the URL into all merchandising so the publication echoes the website at every point
* Check that web addresses are always present in online and offline advertising campaigns

How do I boost traffic to my website? We’re a media owner and although our traffic is okay, I don’t get the sense that we’re really getting what we should from the market.

Is there life after television?

Probably the best way of answering this is to take a look at ‘Life after the 30 second spot’, a provocative book from author Joseph Jaffe that attacks the thinking behind TV media planning and argues that in today’s media landscape this is money poorly spent. We interviewed Joseph when he was speaking at a conference we helped with in Central America... http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/thoughtleaders/2007/08/joseph_jaffe.php

What is the pressure that forces advertisers to ditch television?

Web 3.0: innovation doesn’t stop

There are lots of perspectives on the third paradigm, and a battle raging between the academics. The views of French intellectual Joel de Rosnay are particularly interesting, and following my interview with him, we wrote up a few words here: http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/thoughtleaders/2007/07/joel_de_rosnay.php

What is Web 3.0?

The next phase of online advertising products: examples from Google
We’ve written an answer about this here in the form of a short article http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/articles/2008/01/online_ad_products_more_innova.php

What are Google’s next online advertising products?

Trends in online advertising

There are many ways to examine this, but we’ve highlighted a few key trends and placed them in the Digital Training Academy pages, here: http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/publishingstrategyclassroom/strategy_online_advertising_tr/

What are the big online advertising trends for the next 18 months?

Search advertising products: going way beyond the click based listing

2008 is set to be another massive year for online advertising product development. A few key players will drive these initiatives because their global economies of scale allow for exceptional research and development resources. The PPC listings model is working brilliantly and looks set to continue to dominate the sector for years, but that doesn't mean there are not other powerful tools being developed by the main global search engines. My two favorite new tools from Google are Google Video Units and Google Gadget Ads.

There are some notes here about them… http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/articles/2008/01/online_ad_products_more_innova.php

What are the ad formats that will grow in search engines. Is it just PPC listings?

MPU

Messaging plus unit: one of the most popular ad formats

PIMPs

Page Impressions

Trading models abbreviations:

· CPM – Cost per thousand impressions

· CPD – Cost per day

· CPC - Cost per click (or cost per customer or cost per conversion)

· CPA – Cost per action

· Use www.DigitalJargonBuster.org for more

What are the definitions to some of the key acronyms?

Not yet, but watch this space.

Can you set keyword corrector in your browser like Google has?

Building strong keywords and keyphrases

Talk your customers' language. Learn what they're looking for. You know your business inside out, but do you really know what consumers think about it? Do you know how they describe your products?

To most firms this may come as a shock, but there is usually a real gap between how you see your products and how your average customer descries them. On the highstreet none of that mattered, shop assistants bridged the gap; translating the way a customer described what they were looking for into a set of potential product that matched those needs. Forget it; that highstreet experience is long gone. The clever names you gave your ranges, the descriptions of the colours you agonised over, the technical specs you wrestled with for hours – they may all count for nothing. Instead, start in a different place.

Start by listening to your customers: talk with them. Hear what they say when they speak about your products, about their needs, about what they're looking for. Whether that means getting your field reps to visit clients, reading through blogs and online forums, dropping by a branch to track down those shop assistants, or simply taking a few of your regulars out for pint at the local – chances are it will be one of the most insightful things you've done for a while.

Develop a range of keywords and key phrases

The problem is the complexity of language and 'intent'. Someone looking for a holiday cottage might also use words like 'farm' or contractions like 'B&B' to describe it. There may be geographical names they'll include, or groups of products and different themes. Tiny variations in the term 'House Manchester' vs 'Houses Manchester' could yield different results.

The point is that as patterns emerge, savvy search marketers will be looking for many clusters of words and phrases, within which it might reveal hundreds of alternative terms…

How do you build up search terms and keyword lists?

Advertising in social spaces: some tips when starting out

There’s a huge excitement around social networking and social media, but that doesn’t mean the same techniques from traditional advertising placement will work here. For example, many of the social media are private or semi-private spaces, with content that individuals have chosen to share with their friends. Your brand may be able to buy media space that includes thousands of these pages, but there’s a question as to whether you really have their support, or whether you’re invading their space.

Next up, think about the nature of this content a little more. There’s a great deal of content out on the web that you probably wouldn’t want your brand associated with, so if your campaign includes social media then consider how your brand can be protected. Here are a few key questions to ask yourself:

What profanity filters are in place to block your ad appearing next to inappropriate content?

What gives your brand permission to advertise in this space?

Are you considering customising your creative to fit with the needs of social media?

If you have a presence in social media, then could your campaign benefit from integrating your social media advertising with your own social media content?

Can your campaign factor in social media from the very start to ensure the integration really works?

Social media give you a massive range of tools to work with, but even simply advertising in these spaces using simple online graphical formats can create risks unless you think them through.

In ‘Web 2.0’ are there any risks for advertising?

Can corporations really blog?

Simple question; tricky topic. Like all good exam answers we need to start by defining our terms and then fleshing out the context. The problem is that 'blogging' has several meanings here. It can describe the technology (the content management systems that power blogs) as well as the process of writing, both of which any company can readily embrace. At one level blogging technology is simply the use of accessible content management systems, and the explosive growth at which new blogs appeared from 2005 onwards reflected the way many smaller firms simply switched their website engines to blogs.

But blogging has a more emotive meaning as well. It's culture grew from the individual rather than the corporate, and in the early days blogs were synonymous with diaries and personal expression. Although that personal publishing has grown – and continues to grow – as the tools have broken into the mainstream the context of blogging has changed.

Some firms have succeeded in combing both of these strands; articulate business leaders writing passionately and personally about their industries and their firms. Leaders like the President and founder of Sun Microsystems have proved it can be done (http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ and http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/executives/mcnealy/), but unfortunately they're the exception rather than the rule. Much corporate blogging activity either tries to rework press releases into blog posts, reads like the marketing copy from the company brochure or sticks to the middle ground in a way that's as uninspiring as it is unchallenging and unreadable. Corporate governance and passion don't readily mix.

Can any firm blog, or does this fusion of corporate goals and a democratic open web create problems?

Getting the balance right in customer engagement

Sadly it's true. For all the wonders of Web 2.0, your customers might not want to comment, post, debate, blog, chat or podcast, and all of the ideas and models that we see in online marketing need to be put through a clear reality check: what's in it for them? Why should someone spend ten minutes of their time taking part? If there isn't an answer then there's isn't going to be much participation, and certainly not much of value.

It's easy to get carried away with the new technologies. Some web developers seem like kids in the candy store, but it's also easy to dismiss the new tools too easily. Give people what they need and they'll readily respond. In the world of user generated content, think about what is motivating the users. Get the value equation right and something amazing can happen: discussion. 'Users' suddenly become 'people' again, and those people begin that wonderfully human, natural and unpredictable process of conversation. And that's where it gets interesting for publishers and web marketers.

If those conversations are on a clear topic and contain material that's perceived as valuable, then you're on to a winner. The format could be raw information, the answers to other people's questions, something thought provoking, or posts that are rich and entertaining – it will vary with the community and the nature of the discussion, but this is where the value is. For every one person who posts, a dozen or more may be reading. As posts build up, over time their value grows rather than weakens. Succeed in capturing your community's imagination and there's an asset that will start to pull audiences back in time and time again. Simultaneously this user generated content is helping drive search engine optimisation (think of the keyword density!), viral marketing (you now have brand advocates passing on news of your site to their friends), and a resource that can become self perpetuating.

What if your customers don’t want to engage?

Using misspellings to buy website traffic cheaply

One of the challenge with language is that most people are not perfect spellers. One word, typed two or more ways, is not uncommon. Add in the differences between, for example, British and American English, and there’s a recipe for even greater challenges.

Smart search engine marketers harness this by recognising the challenges of misspellings and buying those words as part of their keyphrases. In fact, this can be some of the cheapest ways to buy traffic, although don’t expect a massive rush of customers, as, fortunately, the volumes of those phrases in search engines should be quite small.

What is the best use of misspeling tool?

Changing copy in online advertising

In theory you could change the ad right now; at this very moment you could insert a different copyline or change the click through. One of the unique advantages of web media is this flexibility, but it doesn’t mean the process should be the norm. In contrast, the standard for creative should be to deliver the content from an agency to a media owner many days in advance (maybe 3 days for simple artwork and 5 for complex rich media software). Different countries and media owners have different policies, but the ‘last minute dot com’ nature of creative delivery has typically caused massive challenges for the web industry. Here are some tips to help you navigate copy delivery:

Talk with media owners, agencies and creative teams
Ensure every stakeholder is clear about delivery
Learn about the risk areas, and where a delay is likely to have knock-on effects
As a client, ensure you are clear about the sign-off, and what can cause extra time to be taken (often what may appear to be minor artwork changes are in really significant recoding of software – and that’s a risk area)
Develop a model for workflow that helps all parties deliver on deadline
Be clear about which types of artwork and media have which types of deadline (for example, a campaign of one JPEG banner with one clickthrough is very different from a media campaign of 20 creative formats that vary be region and time of day)

How long does it take to change campaign? How often do we need it do it, revise it, how to do it, when?

Deciding on formats

Remember that larger formats in general have higher recall than smaller formats, and that the more interruptive and intrusive the space, the higher the recall. However, as with all advertising, those rules of thumb are inextricably linked to the quality and impact of the creative executions. The very highly intrusive formats may be too strong for an audience, so be sensitive about the use and the volume of rich media and pop-up advertising in particular. Static formats such as the MPUs (messaging plus units or mid page units) in the centre of a page can have a great deal more impact than the banner or buttons. Our tip is on process, bringing together all of the stakeholders early on (media agency, creative agency and clients) to examine the possibilities and devise a campaign that plays to the strengths of the creative as well as the formats.

How do you select the right formats in online advertising?

Media placements for online advertising

There are many issues to tackle when you are putting together an online campaign, and at Digital we devised a 10 step process for effective media planning. In the middle of those steps are the issues of selecting the right format and deciding which sites to place your campaign on. See the online classroom for the Digital Media Planning Academt for more tips. There are some tips.

How do you approach media placement?

How do you measure the performance of your site?

Here's a place where you can list some of the key questions you have about digital marketing. Use it before your Academy to steer the content, or afterwards to follow up with your tutor on areas you'd like more information.

We hope you enjoy your Digital Training Academy as much as we've enjoyed putting it together for you :-)