Fanatically Digital

Author: steve

  • Video Advertising – bike style

    Video advertising is all around us in different forms. From the computer and phone to large outdoor billboards. But, this video advertising platform form Kino-mo is totally cool.

    The technology has the video reflecting off the spokes of the wheels while the bike is in motion. Relying on the visual trickery of the spokes seeming to form a solid surface, the video projects and then reflect off them.

    Aside from being attention getting and really awesome, this provides opportunities where people can see the video in places that might have been off the table before. They trick is to create something with impact in the few seconds a passerby might see the bike.

    For more on this platform, check out http://kino-mo.com/bikes

  • What to look for in a search marketing agency

    Organizational and cultural fit.

    There are a lot of search marketing agencies out there. And, putting our competitive natures aside, there is a lot of good talent spread throughout. Often it is not the competencies of the search marketers themselves, but the culture of the agency that will determine if they are a good fit for your company.

    Because of the nature of search marketing, virtually all agencies share characteristics. The difference comes in the mix of things such as reliance on bid management automation, reporting tools, processes and procedures, newbies vs highly experienced staff, and media partner relationships. Where companies put their focus directs where their culture goes, or their culture drives their focus, depending on the agency. Even this nuance says a lot about the fit.

    Price based agency

    Some client companies are price driven. There is a culture of tough negotiation and getting the cost for everything to the bare minimum. There are some search marketing agencies that thrive in this environment. Some characteristics include very regimented processes, standardized reporting and a heavy reliance on automation to offset a higher mix of newbies vs experienced search marketers. Essentially these are good for marketers who are purely price driven and don’t need / want high touch search management.

    Cutting edge agency

    I’ve seen clients who are heavily focused on being cutting edge. They like the bragging rights that come with always being the first to try new technologies, be in all the betas, and blog about how they were “there first”. Search agencies that do this well tend to be larger, often combined with other digital marketing capabilities, have a lower dependence on automation and standardization. You’ll typically find a higher mix of more experienced search marketers vs newbies. Generally, these elements have a higher price tag, but that comes with the ‘cutting edge’ search marketing label. For some brands this is a great fit.

    Performance focused agency

    Performance based search marketing agencies focus in on maximizing a client’s goals for each dollar spent. We didn’t say ROI because some companies can’t directly measure it. But, they do have goals that are important such as leads, content consumption, engagement, sharing etc. While the ideal is to measure direct ROI, the inability to do that does not preclude these companies from setting goals and optimizing their search marketing accordingly. These agencies tend to be more balanced in their approach because optimizing programs depends on the nuances of the programs; they can’t be too rigid yet they need the capacity to focus. They test into new areas (usually a predefined portion of the budget) and keep what works, trash what doesn’t. Often this is where knowing what to do when search marketing best practices aren’t working and how to integrate that with automation tools comes into play. Clients who can or want to start setting goals and developing reporting to guide decisions (not just fill up in boxes) work well with these agencies.

    Starting down the right search path

    For those looking for a search marketing partner, the trick in all of this is to be honest with your assesment of your own company. Too often, we’ve seen companies say they are performance based yet negotiated for a price point that simply cannot support the mix of talent to do that. Or, they’ll say they are performance based, but then constantly push for the new stuff (ie, unproven). Not properly managed, new stuff blows up performance based search marketing programs. As companies seek a new search marketing agency, they first need to prioritize their own objectives. One isn’t better than the other, but they all require different approaches and most agencies are simply better suited for one versus the others.

    So, what kind of search marketing agency is Fanatically Digital?

    • We focus on our clients’ program performance.
    • We use bid automation and reporting software to help manage the daily flow of search efficiently.
    • We employee search marketing experts to oversee programs and develop recommendations to make them more effective.
    • We implement Google Analytics to provide nuanced understanding of users activities.
    • Our reports are developed for each client to focus on the key elements of their program so we can, together, make well informed decisions.

    We offer our clients the option to be deeply involved with access to our own project management tools so they can (if they desire) know exactly where we are in our program management and optimization processes.

  • FTC Issues Guidelines on Native Advertising

    Ever read an article on the internet that has a link embedded in it that appears to be linking to information similar to the article, only to click on it and be pitched with something that is, at best, only remotely related to the original content? You’re not alone. This is Native Advertising at its worst. Native Advertising is intentionally created to look like part of the content in order to give it credibility in the eyes of the reader. The publishers and advertisers tried to make it appear okay by calling it promoted content, as if the content was independent of the advertisers. The deception got the attention of the FTC a couple of years back and now the body has given 11-pages of guidance for advertisers on, well, how to be honest.

    Those little in content ads lead to big revenue. According to SocIntel360 spending on these ads will climb to $8.8B by 2018. This is not an insignificant amount of advertising. With the new FTC guidance advertisers will need to be more clear on the nature of the advertising and so I wonder if the $8.8B project is still inline. With the new guidelines, there may be fewer clicks reducing the spend for pay per click deals and the negated fee for placement deals.

    However, the expense is not necessarily representative of the value. Advertisers may receive less traffic, but that traffic comes with higher intent as the initial ad was clearly identified as such. If done well, it can add value to the user experience and the value of each interaction, on average, will increase. Time will tell.

    The IAB and publishers are not overly concerned, though the IAB did express some reservation about the wording in one section that refers to advertisers / publishers clearly identifying the content as an ad. There is more on their response in the Ad Age article on the FTC action.

    FTC building - native advertisingFor now, the key elements of the FTC guidelines are here: FTC Native Ad Guidelines. The FTC provides direction on placement, prominence and clarity of meaning (it’s an Ad). The better publishers have been trying to keep the content and the ads relevant to their reader base and seem not to have any issue here.

    The guidelines give plenty of examples and instructions. They also reference the 2013 guidelines for making disclosures. So, the new ad format still needs to follow basic disclosure practices.

    An interesting note, and something that may eventually spur publisher concern is that the language refers to both publisher and advertiser responsibility in clear disclosures. Previously, it has been the advertisers’ responsibility. With the addition of the publishers on the block, it we may see them being more assertive in monitoring and enforcing guidelines.

  • SEO: Don’t underestimate the basic practices

    SEO: Don’t underestimate the basic practices

    Over the years SEO tactics have evolved to try to keep up with the changes in how Google ‘enforces’ what it considers to be quality websites and content. As we engage with new clients we see that many of the problems are related to ignoring the basics in favor of chasing the latest tactics. It is not that we should put aside these tactics, but they should be employed judiciously and only when the basics are covered. It is what we refer to as good SEO hygiene. Keeping your site clean helps avoid surprises and saves time in the long run. While SEOs can argue over priority, here are the areas we usually address first either because of their volume or their importance.

    Image alt elements are a lost opportunity for most sites

    The base intent of the “alt” elements(alternative text) is for a better user experience for the visually impaired users, as the alt text is used to say what is in the image. Search engines also use this information to identify the image content, as well as affirm the connection to the content on the page itself. Additionally, should the image not load in the browser, the alt text will appear in its place.

    Key to good alt text is an accurate description of the image content. Without spamming the text, it should provide the subject description and setting of the image. Chances are, if the alt text is one or two words, it is not enough to provide useful information for the users or the search engines. Keep the description focused and thorough to give the search engine enough to connect the image content clearly with the page content. (google on image optimization)

    H1 tags: none or too many

    H1 Tags (and subsequent H tags) are your way to indicate the primary subject area of the page. It should be a few words covering the broadest scope of the page content, using lower Hn tags to indicate sub-content. Generally, the more focused you can make your content subject matter while providing useful information, the better.

    We tend to see one of two errors. First, no H1 tags. This is a relatively simple fix provided you’ve done the keyword research to identify the best way to identify the content.

    The second issue is too many H1 tags. We see this when developers / designers decide to take a shortcut and use H1 tags because of their styling. Take the time to create a css style that will be used for paragraph or content area titles instead of using the H1 tags.

    Duplicate content on… everything

    From page titles and meta descriptions to page content duplication, we see this a lot. The culprit is typically a CMS that was not configured or implemented properly. The CMS may use categories and tags that create folders. If you apply more than one tag or category to a page, there will be more than one url leading to the page. There are other causes, but these tend to be among the most frequently seen.

    Duplicate content is not good, but engines have a tolerance for it when it’s on your own site. However, the issue is that the inbound links to your site on a given topic are diluted if they are spread among duplicate pages of the same content. By directing the inbound and internal links to a single source page, you increase the juice or PageRank of that page relative to the topic.

    Take the time to understand the CMS implementation and plan your categories, tags or other content organizational standards, and prioritize or eliminate components (use 301s if you eliminate). If you cannot eliminate duplicate content, select a primary page source and use canonical ref of all other pages to it, so the search engines know which page to give the ‘juice’ to.

    Broken Links lead to 404s and empty images

    SEO broken links chain demonstration
    Companies have to move fast nowadays and sometimes that means never looking back. But, when this happens we often see things break, but prospective clients didn’t notice. You’re giving up historical benefits and potential content validations when links break. Perusing your site, if it is not too big, or using SEO audit tools can help keep you on top of broken links.

    Counting for, not against

    We have seen some SEOs dismiss issues like this on the basis that the engines can be forgiving as long as the ‘important’ content is clean. However, overall site quality will eventually be affected, which will impact your rankings as user experience deteriorates. On the other side, you are foregoing the benefits derived from juice flowing freely through your site. While the algorithms change and the weight given to anyone aspect of SEO alters, keeping your basic site hygiene up will decrease the impact of any algorithm changes.

  • How you can leverage programmatic buying

    Adadyn conducted research with MORAR to get a better feel for perceptions and actions of digital shoppers. The focus is holiday season, but the lessons are applicable year round.

    Consumers don’t hate ads
    As much hype as ad blocking technology has received in the last year or so, it does not truly represent the actions of the consumers. Most consumers actually find ads useful if properly targeted. By applying what we know about the users, we can increase the likelihood that they will not just click on the ad, but take action on the site… like buy the products.

    More men than women shop online on a Weekly basis
    While women are “the shoppers”, men are more likely to shop online on a weekly basis (36% for men, 29% for women.) It is likely that women shop more, but men just avoid the stores by doing more of their shopping online. Whatever the motive, online advertisers should not ignore the preferences men have for online shopping.

    Remind shoppers with your ads
    Remarketing has been a powerful tool for online advertisers. Once a person has demonstrated interest in your company or products, they become key prospects for ‘closing the sale.’ Go beyond the simple retargeting by tracking the products or services viewed while on your site and use those product images in your ads. While some advertisers may not be able to do a one for one product to ad creation(there are technologies to help), at the very least, categorize your products by associated pages and deliver more relevant ads. These relevant ads are found useful by nearly 70% of users when shopping.

    Local still matters for online shoppers
    Use geo targeting to create local relevance. Even though people are shopping online, they have a preference for businesses that are nearby (71%). Let them know you are there. For national advertisers, reminding the shoppers of local stores may also help.

    Programmatic buying, really?
    Yes. The term brings forth images of highly complex algorithms that require PHDs to create, and in many ways it does. But the magic of the tools is that they have made the application of basic programmatic buying available for the masses. This is especially true as you consider the 80/20 rule. Much of the benefits of these highly targeted ads are available with the very basic tools.

    Geo targeting is build into nearly every ad platform. It may take a little time to create your targets and ads, but it is worth doing.

    Targeting ads based on the content users viewed is also a common feature of many ad platforms. Segment your URLs by content type. The more narrowly you can define these types, the more targeted you can make your ads. Again, this can take a bit of time to setup and manage, but the benefits of doing so can be fantastic, especially when you consider that your potential customer wants to see this.

    Take the above and layer on demographics and interest profiles (again, available in some ad platforms) and you can begin to develop highly targeted, effective ads. Many ad platforms will create “like” targets based on your website users, extending the targeting beyond remarketing. These are a bit “black box” and should be tested into cautiously, but it does provide another opportunity for targeting likely prospects.

    Do not let the term ‘programmatic buying’ put you back. Take advantage of the low hanging fruit of programmatic now, and over time as the PHDs continue to make the complex simple, expand your access to even more benefits of programmatic buying.

  • Content Marketing Over the Long Haul

    Content marketing is a cornerstone of many digital strategies. As we expand SEO and social, content marketing plans become essential in establishing a brand’s position with customers, prospects and their own employees.

    A study of content marketers in Australia saw in interesting change in the landscape ( I think this has implication in the U.S. as well.) While more companies were developing content marketing plans and felt confident that they are on the right path, with 46% having a documented content marketing plan vs 37% last year, those that felt they had an effective content strategy dropped from 29% to 28%.

    It appears that it is a case of the more you know the more you realize how far you have to go. Estimates for content marketing plans to be fully effective range up to a year and a half. As companies truly build out their plans, the reality sets in that, like anything worthwhile, this is not an easy fix. Content marketing takes work and time, with the effects being cumulative. Building up momentum requires persistence and a concerted effort to stay focused over time.

    Starting with a strong foundation means knowing what your value / solution is, which is the focus of the content plan. The Content Marketing Institute has a great piece on creating the content marketing plan; what you need to answer in the process. Like most business plans, the questions are thought provoking and, if you are honest with yourself, not necessarily easy to answer. Ultimately, you need to build a business case for content marketing that helps keep the plan focused.

    Content marketing can be fun, it must be creative, and absolutely needs to provide value over time to the intended audiences. It is not about an infographic, or a blog, or a video. It is about information and finding the best ways to share that information over diverse channels. Before you dive into content marketing ( I mean really dive into it) be ready to commit the time and resources for a 12+ month period before you expect to see tangible results.

  • Digital Analytics: Getting the Right Information

    How do you organize your actionable information from digital analytics?

    Good marketers are curious people and seek out information. This is a good trait, but too much of a good thing…

    Organizational Culture

    Information overload is a major challenge for many people and organizations. We have come to a place where we want information as it happens, 24/7. This is a bad model for managing a company, or even our daily activity. People tend to become overwhelmed and paralysis sets in, relegating them to rote activities that have little foundation in the data.

    When I work with clients, one line of conversation inevitably focuses on actionable information. To get there, organizations need to get better at aligning goals across employees, set these up in their analytics programs, providing access to digital analytics in a timely fashion (does not necessarily mean 24/7), and trust people to ‘do their job’. If your organizational culture allows you to get to this point, then there are a few things you can do with information to make it more consumable and actionable.


    Segment information into types

    Define information types in terms of their level a relevance to your objectives and the actions you can take. I like to look at information in three broad buckets: Actionable, Interesting and Alerts.

    Actionable information sounds easy on the surface, but truly defining it for individuals and giving them access to it, can be challenging.  Actionable information needs to meet certain criteria:

    1. Your actions directly impact the information you see. It is not just that you can take action based on what you see, but what you see is impacted by your actions.
    2. It has to be gathered over enough time for the results of your actions to manifest themselves in the information.
    3. You have to receive the information frequently enough that your next actions are still relevant.

    For any individual, the amount of information that fits that criteria is very small. As a general rule, the broader your authority the more time your actions take the become visible in the data. A manager of a paid search program can see their impact day over day. The director of digital strategy can take a month or more to see their results. Reports with truly actionable information should be concise. Big reports tend to include a lot of noise; small reports tend to be better.

    The next type of information is Interesting information, and is the most abundant. This is data that may be connected with your role, but which is not directly affected by your actions. Back to the paid search manager and director of digital strategy. The manager can’t take action against total site visitors, though the stats may be interesting to him. For the director, the price per click is not something she can affect (unless she is engaging in a role several levels below her pay grade), but she may be interested in it.  If we look through our in-boxes, we notice that they are flooded with interesting information that tends to distract from the actionable information.

    Alerts are just that, information that alerts us to the fact that something unexpected is happening. This can be good or bad, but it is related to the impact of our actions and are not (at least we hope) popping up on a regular basis.

    What do you do with this?

    1. Create reports or dashboard that are laser focused on the information your actions directly affect. Remove the superfluous data.
    2. Only receive reports as frequently as needed to take action. Getting reports everyday if you only take action weekly or monthly is a waste of your attention.
    3. Review company email distribution lists – the ones you send and the ones you are on. Cull these down to the absolute minimum. Receiving several emails each day with reports that are not actionable to you is a waste of your time, and the time of others.
    4. If you are in the right position, ensure that there is one source (one truth) of information and all people have appropriate access.

    As marketers we tend to be curious. So our day is not totally consumed with actionable information. We want to read interesting things about our company, our industry and our roles. Set time aside for this so that it does not interrupt your workflow, before or after you core work time. Stay curious, just in a structured way.

    One of the reasons I am given for why people look at reports that are not actionable is that they want to be sure nothing is going wrong; they want to spot problems before they have an impact. This stems for a fear that something will be missed. Rather than review non-actionable reports, this is what we use Alerts to handle. Set up your parameters and create alert emails when things fall outside them. Most analytics packages have these (we use Google Analytics).

    One of our best traits as marketers can also be our Achilles heel. Structure your information and organize your day to allow for your curiosity while not interrupting your workflow, and your productivity will increase.

    Related to this are the roles of “influencers” and stakeholders. These are people who affect our ability to hit our goals. Understanding their metrics, and what they do to achieve them is important to our results. But, that is another topic to tackle in a future post.

     

  • Cyber Friday?

    Yes.

    Black Friday overtakes Cyber Monday for online shopping this year, based on adults in two studies.

    According to the Deloitte study

    Black Friday surpassed Cyber Monday as the most popular online shopping day during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Two-thirds (66 percent) of those shopping over the holiday weekend plan to do so online on Black Friday, compared with 52 percent on Cyber Monday

    Criteo was seeing similar increase on cyber sales during black friday, with 32% of the sales coming from mobile devices.

    What we are seeing is the normal expansion of cyber shopping under the context of holiday shopping. The periods of purchasing are expanding as is the use of mobile and tablet devices.

  • Digital Analytics: Are you Measuring & Acting?

    Are you really ready for accountability? Individually, I hear people talk about wanting to measure their results, and then the fun begins.

    Digital analytics ebook

    What are your metrics?  “I Don’t really know.”

    Ok, what is your boss being held to?  “I Don’t really know.”

    How about your peers, do they have metrics? “I don’t think so.”

    I talk with people a lot about their online advertising and how they are tracking results. They often have some type of digital analytics package in place, but they don’t really know how to use it. So, that’s the reason they don’t have targets… (not really).

    The real reason is usually organizational or cultural. The tools can be implemented with a little effort, if you’re willing to invest the time and money. But, they often don’t know what they would measure. It is not just about holding someone accountable to a number. It is more often about providing them with insights into the results of their actions so they can improve the numbers, get things going in the right direction.

    Take a copy writer. Are you really going to hold the person accountable for actual revenue targets? No. But, if she is passionate about what she does, she will want to know if the readers are spending time on the content and taking certain actions / clicking. If she can see metrics, she can start to see what drives engagement and actions and incorporate this into future copy.

    There is not enough space in a single post to share all my thoughts on the topic, but I did put together an ebook (is on amazon, but hidden apparently as no one knows about it. 😉 ). If your are interested in a perspective on creating a culture of analytics, I think it can be helpful.

    Digital Analytics The Culture of Insights and Actions

  • Bing makes a profit

    Bing makes a profit

    Bing LogoBing is profitable (Fortune Bing story ) and the search engine broke the 20% search share threshold. So, are you still ignoring the search engine?

    Paid Search
    Google seems to get all the attention from many advertisers. But those who have taken advantage of Bing paid search have often seen their advertising dollars generate more efficient sales than on Google. We have developed Bing paid search programs for clients that proved more effective in generating profitable leads than google.

    With limited budgets it makes sense to explore the most efficient options. Google, as the default ppc option, usually gets first shot at ad dollars. However, for those with more limited budgets, it is possible that the entire budget can be absorbed efficiently on Bing. Better yet, find a blend with the two to get the best of both engines. For paid search, if you’ve only worked with Google, start testing into Bing.

    Yahoo is pulling in about 10% of the search share, making it a minor contender for attention. With the new Google deal, combined with Bing, advertisers will some of the Yahoo impressions with ads in either.