Not sure I agree with the original title of this article. In fact, I don’t and I changed it in my title. The original title was misleading. This is really a short interview with Bogusky on how his agency does some things. There is value in each comment he makes, but I would not call this rules for being a media maverick. As a matter of fact, I quote him below and that quote addresses honesty in advertising. Hmmm…
One thing we do as we begin a creative project, instead of working on specific media, we write press releases about our ideas. For example, a press release for the Whopper Freakout campaign would say, “Burger King announced today they would be removing the Whopper from their restaurants.” It would go on to talk about consumer outrage. It’s a good way to determine whether you have a rich idea or not. If an idea is good enough for someone to write about, it’s probably good enough for someone to talk about.
We don’t want to find some trend and then do advertising that basically
lies about the product to attach it to the trend in the hope that it
will sell. If it’s Burger King, and we want to help guys who are being
inundated with the notion of metrosexuality, understand that it’s OK to
have a killer burger — that’s a great path.
This event will be live on August 13, 2008 at 1:00PM EDT.
In this webinar, marketers will learn how to increase their spend on SEM to dramatically boost sales and branding, while maintaining – or even increasing – overall ROI. Wister Walcott, VP of products at Marin Software, will outline five simple and practical strategies to help you “spend more and spend better” on your paid search marketing campaigns.He’ll explain why SEM consistently delivers the highest bang for your buck – some studies show that SEM converts at twice the rate of email and banners – and show marketers how to obtain the highest ROI on paid search, even while increasing spend. In these unpredictable economic times, it pays to invest in the marketing methods that deliver the best sales results. So sign up now for this informative and insightful webcast, and learn how to get more out of your search marketing spend today.
This is yet another model of rewarding customers for watching ads, but for some reason videos make it easier if they are good. I am not so excited about the magazine subscription, but the rewards can be improved.
Do you feel the value? If the ads are creative enough you will watch the videos and look at the products. I just did with a Kleenex ad. I never like these concepts, but maybe this one will work for a phase. Then again, you never know and I was compelled to at least check it out.
The San Francisco-based start-up AdPerk has begun its service with Dwell magazine.
Visitors to the Dwell home page are provided with a subscription offer. Those who watch a few videos get free magazines.
Marketers connect with targeted audiences. On this new platform, ads and other content are “pulled” by the registered users. Viewing ads are by choice and viewing them offers a rewards.
Advertisers in the launch include Duxiana, LG Electronics, Delta Faucet Company, Disney Mobile and Kleenex. Here’s the company’s news announcment.
This could be an important way for marketers to get their ads watched by folks who want them. It could be good way for content creators to generate revenue.
MarketingProfs put together an excellent list of the “5 best and worst things about landing pages”. In fact, this seems to be more of a dos and don’ts list but overall it is well done. Below are a few of my favorite excerpts.
Landing Pages Can Be Matched With Advertisements essentially means in my mind must be matched with advertisements. If you are building a landing page and it is not tied to a specific ad, then it is likely a waste of time or at the least will not produce the results you want. The fact is that for every ad you run and every search term, your landing page must match that if you want it to convert to what you need it to convert.
Landing pages are quick and cheap. <snip> But “cheap” should be measured by CPA (cost per acquisition), not absolute dollars. If you spend twice as much time on a three-page landing path, but it generates a 5-times factor in your conversion rate on the same ad dollars, that’s a good investment.
Landing pages can be “matched” with advertisements.
And those are the good things!
The top 5 worst things about landing pages (and tips for how to fix them):
Sagging Page Syndrome (SPS), also known as “the kitchen sink.”
Trying to cram as much as possible onto one page puts the burden on the respondent to sift through it. Unfortunately, most of the time, they’re just not that into you yet.
If you’ve got that much to say, and it’s valuable, then break it into digestible chunks across a multi-page path, ideally in a way that lets respondents choose which chunks are most relevant to them.
Giving bad brand. Collectively, all of the problems above contribute to making landing pages bad branding experiences. As noted earlier, landing pages are quick and cheap—which is good—but they often look quick and cheap, which is not good. Not good at all. Because it signals quick and cheap for your brand, and unless you’re the Dollar Store, that’s not a good image to put in people’s minds.
There are a lot of good tips in the piece they were just put into a strange package in terms of the 5 worst and best things about landing pages, when in fact it is really 10 tips for optimizing your landing pages and making them more effective and thus increasing the value of your advertising dollars.
Excellent points throughout this article. I would like to quote a great deal more, but I would be way beyond fair use on it. If you are hiring folks to provide you with web marketing or any kind of marketing services, then this piece will arm you well for proving the value.
When you’re looking at website operations or online marketing technology solutions, you’re probably already challenging yourself with these types of questions:
What are the strategic business challenges we are looking to solve with this technology solution?
What will success look like? Should we save 20 percent with this solution? Should we increase revenue by 10 percent? Or, should our cost per lead go down by a third?
How much will this particular solution contribute to that particular metric?
Then, if your vendor uses an ROI pitch to sell you the technology solution, challenge them with these questions:
How does your solution help us deliver against these specific business objectives?
What are you willing to do to help us achieve these business objectives?
Can we depend on you to deliver this ROI and help us with the ongoing improvements to either deliver against it or to continually improve on it?
My friend Sumantra Roy wrote a great piece published over at Web Marketing Today on the 10 most important factors to test on your landing pages. This is an excellent overview of the critical issues all advertisers must consider on Adwords or anywhere else on the web. It’s all about the landing pages and testing. If you really want to test properly, then you should check out Sumantra’s company Conversion Multiplier. Their technology is fantastic and their results are amazing. I’ve seen results from his multi-variate testing increasing conversions up to 600%. Call them and tell them Brad Nickel at ClickBrain.com sent you.
…these are all based on actual tests that we conducted for our clients.
1. Long Copy vs. Short Copy. Conventional direct marketing wisdom is that long copy always wins over short copy. Well, not always. Our tests show that while long copy wins over short copy in some cases, short copy performs better than long copy in others. …
2. Credibility Logos. Signing up with organizations like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Hacker Safe and displaying their logos on your site can often significantly increase your conversions. But, don’t assume that this will always be the case …
3. Security Assurance in Order Form or Shopping Cart. Test whether adding a few lines of content somewhat prominently in your order form or shopping cart page assuring visitors about the security of their financial and personal data increases conversions. This often proves to be a very important variable especially if your target audience tends to be somewhat older in age, or somewhat new to purchasing things on the Internet.
I am all hot and bothered over video “advertising”, but not so much advertising. I want real world customers and users testifying as to the value of a customer’s services, products, and overall value. Yesterday I met with a major retailer about their online SEM and other marketing needs and I believe very strongly that that firm could get a lot of value by adding customer testimonials as well as real life case studies. I also am pushing clients into community and content with video as well to drive lower cost search engine marketing (SEM) by utilizing indirect terms to content rather “buy this” terms. I call it “Indirect SEM” “Indirect Search Engine Marketing (Maybe I should trademark it).
Great content alone doesn’t cut it. Marketers need to put their online video content to work across a number of different channels. With promotional campaigns, high-quality destination sites and custom channel branding, marketers can increase user interaction and participation while communicating their message to a wider and more engaged audience than ever before.
The real challenge of online video is about what (as in what makes good video content, if you don’t have good content then you’re toast anyways) and it’s about where: figuring out how and where to use online video, while still maintaining the integrity of brand. If done right, there are a variety of ways for companies to distribute and display online video to grab an audience and retain their attention.
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A great example of a recent successful promotional contest is the collaboration JVC developed with VMIX. VMIX provided a platform and a JVC custom channel for the “Create Our Commercial Contest,” which asked individuals to submit self-produced ads that they filmed with their new JVC Everio camera to the VMIX JVC channel.
The online video contest produced more than 80 quality entries for JVC, garnered national print and web publicity for JVC and the winner, and ultimately provided a major grassroots marketing campaign for JVC, targeting lifestyle, college, retail and events. The winner of the online promotional contest received $2,500 and saw his commercial aired on Spike TV.
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