Small Campaign, Big Campaign

Instead of launching big campaigns all at once and hoping that they’ll work, perhaps we can take a page out of the lean start up playbook.

Let’s launch small campaigns based on that one idea. And instead of one, let’s launch a handful. If we’re worth our salt, at least one of these campaigns will work. At least one of them will stick and be something we can then put a big budget behind. This means we do some more work upfront with smaller budgets before taking a big bet with a big budget

Banner Ads turn 15 years old

Today marks the 15th birthday for digital advertising. Which means banner ads are just a year away from a driver’s permit. Scary thought. Adage has an interesting article on the first online banner advertising campaign.

So while I haven’t been doing banner ads for 15 years, here are some pointers on if you’re putting ads up on your site.

1. Know your audience – It is worth doing one site surveys, some pixel tracking and other sometimes seemingly fussy activities on getting to know who is on your site. It’ll help you optimize AdSense, what other ad networks might makes sense, and help immensely with direct sales. And direct sales are where higher CPMs are.
2. Design layout with ads in mind – Don’t throw your ads on the page without regard to design. If your ads are integrated with the page, they will perform better. To some extent you’ll need to put ads near content where it’ll interrupt your users. But good design can minimize how annoying your ads are.
   1. Ads along the outside perimeter of the page get lower CTR
   2. Ads above the fold command both a CTR and a branding premium
3. CPL vs  Branding – There are two very different types of people that buy direct sales. There’s CPL, people who are looking for leads or conversions. Then there are people looking to help with branding, and the two are basically opposites in terms of what they look for. Figure out if your site performs well for either and shoot for that one. Don’t put too much effort into the other
4. Tweak Adsense – From ad sizes to color schemes to channels, sometimes small changes can make a big difference. If you can break out traffic into segments that advertisers really care about, then they’ll bid up the CPM. PlentyOfFish excels at this and offers different demographic segments that really help drive advertisers to spend more without having to increase inventory.
5. Get creative with ad packages – Yes there are homepage takeovers, but you have to be a size-able site in order to get people interested. There are other little things you can do such as roadblocks that are simple but can be effective. Custom units are tricky because advertisers dislike having to make custom creative. But you can throw it in as a value-added (read freebie) and offer to design it yourself. If your custom size is small and/or has a photoshop template, it can be pretty quick and easy. Custom spots are good for tapping into site specific mechanics and can have pretty good CTRs

Getting the most out of consultants & agencies

Stepping into social media can be intimidating and overwhelming. Dipping your toe in isn’t so bad, but getting into a serious regimen often means you’ll need outside help. Even if you’re pretty good at social media, you might not have all the tools or skills to maximize your ROI. If you do get some help from a consultant or agency, here are some tips on getting the most out of them.

1. Don’t be clueless. If you want to get into social media, go learn the basics. Read a few blogs, get caught up in the latest news or trends. If you don’t have time to get a broad picture, you’re not ready to make the commitment it takes to see real returns.
2. You can’t outsource everything. Social media should be integrated with the rest of your marketing and your business. It can’t be a separate island. You can’t hire a great social media agency and just walk away. Make sure you have a team in place internally that’s in tune with your business working with your agency or consultant.
3. Be willing to experiment. Often times you can do this internally. It’s usually cheaper to experiment yourself and it’s a good learning experience for your company. After you’ve made some mistakes, you’ll appreciate and understand your agency much better. *Tip: You can play around with a fake account not tied to your business.
4. Realize mistakes are necessary. And I don’t mean a necessary evil. Mistakes are vital learning tools. Only after making enough mistakes can we learn the underlying lesson. Otherwise you’re just going through the motions and not understanding why. Budget for mistakes. Don’t expect to hit a home run every time, but you should expect your team to learn something every time.
5. Practice without your teacher. You need to practice social media even when your agency or consultant isn’t around. When you hire a piano teacher twice a week, your child gets the most out of it if he or she practices outside of those lessons. It’s the same thing here. Make sure you guys are practicing all the time, even in between campaigns. It doesn’t have to be huge, but the consistency needs to be there.
6. Have heart. Worse than having no social media presence is spending resources on one that no one cares about. Social media won’t make you interesting. And if anything it’ll do the opposite. It’ll show you exactly how boring you are. Might be a rude wake up call, but I actually think it’s a very useful outcome of social media. It’s easy to pretend or ignore these types of things if you’re in your own world.

Social Media is a Habit, not a Crash Diet

Social Media is really more of a lifestyle change than simply starting a campaign. A campaign can be a good way to get your feet wet and get a feel for what’s going on. If you go that route though, don’t do it on the cheap. Look at it as a learning experience as well as a campaign. Otherwise, it would be like ordering something from a late night infomercial instead of committing to a personal trainer. If you want to see results, you have to do a little everyday. It’s not so much about quantity as it is about the consistency.

In fact, social media in many ways is a lot like the getting a personal trainer. You don’t end up paying for the tools so much as you pay for the expertise and nudging. Nudging might be putting it lightly if you’ve had a good personal trainer. Good personal trainers push you harder than you could push yourself, and so does a good agency. I think too many agencies don’t push hard enough, or clients are too stubborn to give them a chance, but that’s a separate post.

So the question is, can you make it a habit? Can you make social media part of your routine? If you can make it fun along the way it’ll really help you hit your first big milestone. Also, just like going to the gym, having a buddy helps a ton. So if anyone wants to be my social media buddy, I’m taking sign-ups in the comments.

5 Tips for a Viral Video learned from Freebord

This is a cool little video a friend sent me. It’s 36 freeborders taking over a hilly San Francisco street to create a neon tetris (or tetris-like) video game. If you want to start a movement, this is a great way to begin. I’ll go over what makes this video viral after the jump.

36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game w/ Freebords

Here’s what makes it great.

1. It’s an awesome idea. A big budget only gets you so far, and usually a good chunk of it gets spent in the most uncreative of ways. Just by watching you get an idea of what freebording is about, you can see and feel it’s culture and personality. Or as a facebook comment said, “OMG THIS IS SOOOOOO SICK !”
2. It’s short. A minute thirty is about as long as you want it to go. I usually say keep it under a minute, but this video has other qualities (mentioned below) that help pull in viewers for the extra 30 seconds. You want a flashbang. I know you feel like you have tons to say, but think about it, would you sit through a 5 minute movie trailer? You actually know you’ve done a good job if you leave people wanting more.
3. It’s low on branding. Your marketing or branding guy may hate you for this, but you’ll need to tone down the branding. The point is to get spread and some people will ask more about the video. The majority will just think it’s cool, a few will spread it on and even fewer will look into it or associate it with you. That’s ok. Even if no one remembers you, you will get to brag about how many views you got to potential customers you find elsewhere, or to the press or to investors or sponsors. Plus, if you’ve done a good job with your awesome idea, and it gets across your company’s culture & personality (see point 1), then the amount of views you get is just an excuse to indoctrinate people into your brand. Trust me, if you’ve done a good job with point 1, then you’ll have plenty of uses for it.
4. It moves and feels quick and has a natural progression. Not only is it short to begin with, but it feels like it’s even less than a minute thirty. There’s a build up and you obviously know where the video is headed but you stick around to see it out. You sorta get the idea after the first couple of blocks, and if there was no end in sight many might have left sooner. But because it moves quickly, with different camera angles and upbeat music, and it has a clear ending in sight, I think more people stayed till the end.
5. Surprise twist at the end. Imagine how many people told their friends, “wait for the end” to show them the the strobing neon blocks. It started strong with a great idea, built up with along the way and then had a great finale. How many people saw the last piece go in  place and then seconds later gasped, “no way!” Just like in sales, you’ve got to close.

Cleaning up the Social Media Campaign Graveyard

There’s an inherent disconnect between media campaigns and the internet. Media campaigns are meant to be temporary, whereas the internet is an all you can eat archive. My new favorite simile about this is, “trying to take something off the internet is like trying to take pee out of a pool.”

So what happens when a social media campaign ends? Traditionally this isn’t a problem with radio or television, but big brands seem to have a graveyard of old social media campaigns.

Obviously if you don’t want a graveyard, you have to stop tombstoning those old domains. That means you have to stop creating an archipelago of microsites to begin with. My suggestion is instead think of your microsites more like the New York Times homepage. Make it a permanent hub that’s designed to have flashes of updates. You can shut it down to a dim flicker when you don’t have a campaign running and then flip on a switch to bring back all the bells, whistles and Christmas lights.

Something like your Facebook Fan page is well suited to this, and with this each campaign gets to ride off the momentum of your overall fan base. It might not work for every campaign, but it’ll help clean up your microsite collection considerably.

Top 6 Reasons Companies Should be Scared of Avoiding Social Media

I loved BL Ochman’s Top Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media so I’m making a top 6 list of reasons why avoiding social media is scary.

1. You need to keep your job. Yes this includes you mr. marketing guy at big corporation. Social media might save your job. Bosses don’t go around asking, “Who could I fire?” when cuts come around. They ask themselves, “Who can’t I afford to lose?” If your marketing plan has been the same for the past 3 quarters and looks a lot like everyone else’s, well you probably won’t make the short list. You need to stand out.
2. You already lost control of your brand, now go get it back. You lost control when YouTube went big, and even more when Facebook and blogging came about… oh yeah and then came Twitter. People have had free reign for a while and you’ve just had your head stuck in the sand. ComcastMustDie.com sprouted without Comcast doing anything with social media.
3. People don’t care enough to hate you. This is true for most of us. We’re not well known enough to hate. I’m not sure what combination of ego-inflation and low self-esteem causes people to think, “So many people will know about us right away because we’re so important, but hate us immediately.” Go make people care, its your job.
4. Prevention isn’t sexy, but it is cheap. It’s easier to prevent a PR crisis than to recover from it. Tell your boss you’re flossing to avoid a root canal. Ask anyone who has had a root canal what they’d to to avoid it.
5. You need a reputation. Even if you can’t prevent all PR nightmares, if you want to handle it well you’ll need some loyal followers. You need people to vouch for you and say, “This is out of character and while it was terrible, I’m impressed at how they are handling it” Crisis management starts way before the crisis even begins. You can’t let your first impression be an apology.
6. You can’t play the waiting game. Let’s face it, you need the experience. Even if you’re a little uncomfortable with social media now, you’re going to need to be able to do it sooner or later. When social media becomes big, old and accepted, you’re going to need experience doing it. No one is going let you run a big campaign if you’ve done absolutely nothing in the medium.

Hope this was interesting,
slideshare_dan

Figuring out Metrics for a Social Media Campaign

If there’s one thing I’ve learned lately, it is to be very clear about what metrics need to be tracked during your campaign, down to all the nitty gritty details of how they will be tracked. Between the brand, the agency and the site there will be a lot of back and forth on what can be tracked and how it will be tracked. Here’s my list of 6 things to take care of.

1. Get a your ducks in a row before you start. Agreeing on metrics should ideally happen at the RFP stage, but perhaps that’s me being overly optimistic.
2. Make sure everyone understands the goals and the limits of the campaign. There should be one central document outlining this. Sometimes it makes sense to have an acceptable goal and a reach goal.
3. Realize every campaign is different. This is true for all three parties. Be flexible to the circumstances and creative in solving new problems
4. Accept that there will be problems. Agencies hate telling clients this, but it happens almost every time. Usually not big things, but little snags happen everywhere. Just make sure to catch them early and fix them quickly. If they don’t prevent you from hitting one of your goals, take it as a learning experience
5. Build momentum early. The first day or two of the launch are usually overrated. But the first week as a whole is pretty indicative of what direction the campaign is headed in. Make sure to overcome inertia and be prepared to do something drastic if things aren’t working out well. Better to realize it early than late.
6. There are multiple ways to track a campaign. This means getting a little cozy with your tech team, but at least have a high level understanding of the ups and downs of the tracking method you’re using. Pixels tracking can get cached, javascript can fail, some people browse without cookies, server logs include bots. You can’t fix them, but be aware of them.